How to Live Future Ready with Frederik Pferdt

So, John, what are humans for in a world where machines can think?

Well, we'll find out on our new show, The Mindset Economy. We will.

Coming January 2026, wherever you get your podcasts. Is the future in your hands? Do you feel in control of your life? Perhaps more than ever, we want to feel that the answer to these questions is more yes than no. And yet There are many stories we can tell ourselves that the future is not actually ours to shape. The incredible speed of change and the feelings of existential crisis over AI and climate change or our political systems failing are all rational enough reasons to feel that the world is changing faster than we can cope. And yet, instead of focusing on what we don't control, and often trading away our personal power in the process? What if we double down on what we can control? What if we believe in the possibility that we have more power to shape our future than we often give ourselves credit for? That's what today's show is all about. John and Frederick Viert, Google's first innovation evangelists, are interviewed by our colleague Sarah about their shared interest and how we can build a future-facing mindset as our superpower to realize our future. Let's listen in on a great conversation.

When we started talking to Fred Frederic Furt about his new book, What's Next Is Now, he suggested a conversation with John in which we brought John's ideas together with Frederic's to create an expansive moment. Let's jump in. Frederic G. Furt is on a mission to empower everyone to fulfill their visions for the future. From shaping Google's fabled creative culture as their first chief innovation evangelist To nurturing students' minds at Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Fredrik has a mission to help others realize their creative superpower to imagine and invent a better tomorrow. Fredrik, John, welcome to The Evolving Leader. How are you feeling?

Thank you, Sarah, for having me. And thank you, John, as well. How am I feeling? I'm feeling grateful. Yes, grateful to spend time with you.

I'm feeling similarly grateful. I've really enjoyed all the conversations leading up to this with Fredrik, and I'm feeling very expansive at the moment as a result of that. So yeah, let's— looking forward to this conversation.

Thank you both. And I'm feeling very open today and perhaps curious. So Fredrik, maybe we can start with your time at Google and get a sense of what you were doing there and maybe a bit of what you learned.

Yeah, that's a great question to start with. Maybe we can also expand on that, why I actually left, because that's the question I get a lot from people as well. So, you know, I spent over a decade, I think it was 12 and a half years in total at Google, and it was a wonderful time, I have to say. It was probably one of the best times I had in a corporate environment. And so really what I tried to do is I helped build a creative culture, you know, where innovation is not just allowed but actively encouraged and celebrated. And I started by actually training people's minds and afterwards build environments where these brilliant minds could not just think of ideas but really make them a reality. And so, I learned a couple of things. I learned a ton, actually. And I don't think we have the time to go into detail of all of my learnings. But I learned very early on by actually, I think I visited 26 offices in my first year at Google just to understand how innovation happens and how people come up with these brilliant ideas and how they make these a reality. And I learned that it's really about 3 things. It's about empathy. It's about expansive thinking and it's about experimentation. So, I packaged those things up and tried to really train everyone in those things to really be more empathetic, to think more expansively. We call it 10x thinking and experiment. And I really learned that innovation is not about resources, right? You can throw a lot of money at people and there might not a single idea actually see the light. And it's also not about time, right? That's an excuse a lot of people have. It's really about where people's minds are at. And so, that's what I try to focus on, really helping to train people's minds and then building environments where what I like to call it where I remove the friction from having an idea to building it. Places like the Google Garage where we just experimented with lots of ideas or other environments. I think I even got a bus for the office where we could spend time while being on the road to create ideas and test them out and so forth. So that was some of the learnings I had and what I tried to do at Google. Yeah.

And perhaps you can address why you left.

Yes. So it was really, it's now coming up 2 years and it was an incredible day. It was a Friday, it was sunny. I had my wife actually come to the office too. So we had a lunch and, you know, I said goodbye to my friends, to my team and colleagues. And then, I closed the door behind me, not knowing really what's going to happen next. But I had this deep belief that I was working at one of the most innovative companies in the world, had a tremendous rewarding job, kind of like being the chief innovation evangelist. So, what I wanted really to do is leave on my own terms at my own time and at my own pace to bring all these things that I've learned to a lot of people in the world, right? Because I felt very fortunate and very lucky to be in that position and with those people, but I also felt a responsibility to bring it to other people so that they can build the future and build innovative ideas and so forth. And I left on that day, again, on that sunny day with my wife, I left with a smile because I really was opening myself up for the future and at the same time owning my future as well as I chose to take that step outside of this comfort zone that I was in for 12 and a half years to really go into something uncomfortable, which I didn't know a lot about. And, you know, it was a good feeling overall.

And I think, Frederic, you start your book actually by talking about the ambiguity and the uncertainty in the future. And I think you say in your book because you see the opportunity that this represents. And John, I think you have a somewhat similar orientation and thought process on ambiguity. So your recent book, Leading in a Nonlinear World, addresses specifically the need to accept that the future is very fast approaching. Can we start with your thoughts on how we can face this acceleration of change and acceleration of the future?

Yes. We hear it a lot, right? Like everybody talks about that, that change is happening very fast in our times and so forth. What I like people to ask is that think back in time to the day, I think it was March 16th because it was my birth, my son's birthday, 2020. And think back to that day when the pandemic was officially announced as a global pandemic. Just think how you reacted in that situation when you heard about that, right? Where lockdowns happened and we know what happened and during those days, the first days of the pandemic. And just think back like how that change affected you and how you emotionally reacted. And then think back to November 2022 when OpenAI announced ChatGPT and made that accessible and available to people. You know, what were your feelings that day, right? Were you like, you know, excited? Were you throwing your hands in the air and say like, yes, finally, you know, we have a useful tool with AI? Or were you anxious or afraid even? And so I think those two points mark tremendous changes in the world. And we have like many more changes that we see obviously happening. But just thinking back and feeling like, okay, what's, what's the reaction that I usually have to, you know, changes that we, we don't see as something positive or negative immediately, but, you know, that turns out to be maybe opportunities, right? Even in a pandemic, you can see many opportunities if you look for, or if, you know, AI is, emerging, like, how do you react? Are you again, like, looking for opportunities and seeing that as a positive or negative? And I think you can choose, right? You can choose how you respond in these situations and how you respond to change. But yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts, John, around how we deal with ambiguity and that uncertainty that the future holds.

I love the beginning of your book because of the optimism in it and not a kind of blind optimism, but a very constructive, pragmatic way of of looking at things. And I think, um, you know, my, my, my take on it at the time was I sort of— throughout my career I've heard this mantra from every business book, every, you know, kind of corporate presentation going back to the early '80s: the world is changing faster. And it's the same old rap about, you know, what is changing— technology, globalization, so on. So it's kind of like we're, we're inured to this idea. And I think we're at a point where we are, we are going through a really fundamental change because some of the things that you've been talking about in terms of technology. But are we asking the right question about what that looks like? And the opportunity part of it is, is, is part of it. But the, the inherent assumptions that we're making is that we actually know what's going to happen and that, that, that we, we can extrapolate from what OpenAI and other technologies will do. But what What if we're wrong? What if those things are going to be completely different? You know, what if our children are actually going to become, you know, part AI, not working with a cobot, but actually, you know, it's much more integrated, or something else completely different happens? And the thing that I believe, at least at this stage, is what we should be focusing in on from embracing uncertainty is to understand what only human beings can do and amplify that, and really understand how to amplify those things. And I think, again, this is what comes across in your book. You've taken strands of human ingenuity and you've amplified them to a great extent in terms of this is what we need to do in order to be able to embrace uncertainty. And I think the Venn diagram between Frederick and John's work is pretty— it's coming together in a very nice way.

I love that, John, what you're saying, that we are probably asking the wrong questions. And for me, that really comes through when we think about the future and we ask ourselves, what will the future bring? That's usually the question that is on everybody's mind. And that's why we are going to these conferences, to the books, to the podcasts, to the videos, to the articles that trying to explain what the future will bring. But I think that's wrong because it gives you a false sense of security. Our minds love that security that they get when we anticipate or predict what's to come. I think we need to move away from asking what will the future bring towards what future do I want to create and what future can I actually create and owning your future a little bit more because that's the only thing that we can control. The other stuff is out of our control. And I think that's a beautiful shift in question that we should all undertake.

Yeah, I agree with that because I think, you know, my, my business has been in the past very heavily focused on serving leaders and organizations to do the things they want. And I've completely pivoted in recent years to, to understand what contribution I want to make to the world and then, you know, obviously deliver that and bring that to people to create value. But I know what I want to do. And what part of the world I want to create around that. And that's what the team outside is doing. And we're on a decade-long mission to bring about that future. So I totally agree. The only way in which you can own the future is actually create it, envisage it, and create the vision you want.

I'm super curious about that, Sarah, if I may just jump in. Like, you know, what is the contribution, yes, John wants to make in this world? Because I'm I'm, you know, pondering with that question too. Like, what's, what's the, the real contribution, you know, I want to, um, give to, to people and to the world? But like, you know, is that changing over time as well?

Yeah, it is changing over time. And, you know, it doesn't start with a, an endpoint of by 2035 or whenever I, you know, kind of get to the point where I'm no longer functioning, that the end game, as it were. Um, I think it, it starts with the purpose of being a driving force of human evolution, because what— when, you know, I look back over the last 30 or 40 years, I'd say that we have adapted negatively to most of the technology that we've created in the world. We've become either slaves to inboxes, or we have become— we've confused doom scrolling with renewal. You know, neither are particularly healthy. And as we've got, you know, AI, virtual reality, robotics, and so on, are we going to adapt negatively to those things, reactively to them? Are they going to make us more unhappy, more unhealthy? Um, or are we going to actually transcend, um, and, and become more of— more human? And I think that's, that's, that's the purpose really, is to become more human with those technologies. And that's why I went, you know, back to my roots in neuroscience to kind of figure out a redefinition of mindset, which isn't just about this kind of abstract psychological basis of mindset, but actually the hard science of neuroscience and say, like, how do we make sense of ourselves in this situation? Because when you can strengthen that element of who you are, when you know how you're reacting to change and uncertainty, and you know not only how you're doing it, but you know what to do about it to to be constructive about that. That's the contribution I want to make to millions of people. I want to help millions of people understand how to make better sense of themselves in a changing world.

And Frederic, if I could jump in, how would you describe your contribution?

That's a great question, Sarah. Yes. And again, like, that's a question that, you know, is on my mind a lot. And I think, you know, Leaving Google was one of the steps I took to say like, okay, what's the contribution now beyond an organization that I can serve and help, you know, 165,000 people to, you know, innovate and create a creative culture? But what's beyond that? And I think what I want to do is I want to help people to have a different relationship with their future. Again, that they don't see the future as something distant that is controlled by someone else, but that they're in control, that they own their future. And I want to really help people to not just start believing that, but empower them to really build also a future and a tomorrow that they want to live in. And I like your your remarks about our relationship with technology, right? And I think there can be a healthy relationship with technology. It has so much potential, but it's upon us. It's upon us to decide how we want to leverage technology for good, right? And for even better. So that's, I think, what I want to contribute is to really help people to have a different relationship with their future. And move away from complaining that the future is owned by someone else and help them to understand that it's totally in their control, right? Most of the things that they choose to do will determine their future.

Here on The Evolving Leader, we're committed to stretching the leadership conversation in every episode, and we invite you to help spread the word. If you've learned or been inspired If you've been inspired by something you've heard on this podcast, the chances are that others would be too. Please consider sharing your favorite episode on your network, on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram. Thanks for listening. Perhaps shifting gears a bit and speaking of technology and maybe disconnecting from technology, I know that mindfulness and meditation are important to both of you. And Frederic, I think in your book you talk about a 10-day silent meditation retreat that you went on that was quite transformational. I'm assuming there was a very deep disconnect from screens, from tech, from, from any sort of connection to the outside world. How did that feel?

Yeah, it's an interesting point you're making, Sarah, that it feels like you're disconnecting. But I feel it's— it was the opposite for me. You're really connecting with your deeper self, which is very powerful. And so imagine, you know, you going somewhere where you not allowed to use a phone. You're not allowed to write anything down. You're not allowed to read anything. You're not allowed to, you know, look in someone else's eyes. You're not allowed to talk. All of those things to really help you to just be with yourself, right? And be with your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, and whatever comes up. And for me, it was transformational. And I like, I like to do, I like experimenting, right? So one of the things I tried to, to do is like, you know, go on the most extreme experiments that I could I could find around, you know, mindfulness and meditation. And that's the 10-day retreat usually, because there's really nothing that is, you know, guided or provided. And you're just with yourself. You're sitting on a cushion for 10+ hours for 10 days. And it's— it was probably one of the most hardest things I've ever done, which is also interesting because you're doing nothing. You seem like to do nothing, but you're really sitting with your, your thoughts and your emotions and your feelings. And one of the realizations I had is that notion of impermanence that really comes through, that, you know, everything is changing all the time, right? Your shoulder or your neck is kind of like hurting one day, and then, you know, 3 days later it's gone, right? So that has changed. You have like strong emotional feelings one day, and at the other, on the other day, you're very happy, right? And you're smiling., for a couple of hours. So, so these changes just were for me, like, on an experiential level, very profound to see that change is really something that is part of, of the human experience. It's part of our life. It's part of, of, of everything. And, so that all to close out, I think that also helped me to, start my own meditation practice, which I do every day. Uh, in the morning I get up, and before everything else, I sneak up here into our little forest, into a little A-frame, and sit upstairs and try to just understand and notice what I'm feeling and how I'm feeling. And that's for me the best start into the day because then I can start actually controlling a little bit more how I want to respond and what are my intentions for the day as well. But I'm curious to hear, John, yeah, what's your story about mindfulness and meditation?

I think during my 20s and 30s when I started doing it, I got it all wrong in that I probably thought of, even though I was taught well, I thought of it as a sort of the Zen blissed out kind of thing. And I guess most of the time I'd use it just to try and fall asleep. That was the win. I'd missed the point completely about what it was. So now I look at it like a full stack, from the kind of psychological experience of it to the physical experience of it. And my practice starts in the morning where I do a body scan as the first thing before I kind of acknowledge to the world I'm awake. And that is quite a short exercise, but it's really about trying to connect my body with my mind. And, and get that kind of whole self together, and to be able to tune into the state of my body, um, and to ensure that I'm not confusing my physical feelings with my emotions that I, you know, I might, might construct. And that really helps me to actually set my intent for the day. It's not full meditation by any means. And then I think then the, the The meditation that I will do later in the day, usually when I go home after work or I finish work, is, you know, like the bit that resonates for me is it's the hardest thing. It's the struggle to gain control. There's nothing pleasant about it. Generally it's a battle of attention, and I sometimes I win that battle and sometimes lose it, but the more I do it the more I feel, um, that every, every problem that I have starts to diminish.

Yeah, I haven't reached that level yet, John.

Well, it doesn't happen all the time, but it does. But it, it has really truly helped me to, to start getting that bigger spectrum, emotional spectrum, and where, where problems become smaller, um, and in context and, um, and observable rather than experienced. And, um, that, that That is, I don't find easy, but I find it incredibly rewarding.

I'd love to add my two cents in here. I've had, I think because of my background in yoga, I've had a long relationship with meditation. And for me, I really resonate with what you're both saying, but it's also about being okay with what comes up. So being okay with the discomfort, being okay if one day it's about crying through my meditation and one day it feels blissful and recognizing that it's this wave of change and it's It's this parallel, this mirror to life where you're staying present in discomfort, you're staying present in pain, and you're also staying present and happy and recognizing that it's the ebb and flow of life. And when I— John, I really connect with what you've said because when I let go of how it should always be blissful and always feel good, I was able to sit perhaps with a bit more comfort within that discomfort. And it opened up a little bit more for me as well. I love what you've both said about that. I'd like to chat a bit about distinguishing between mindset, mind state. I know, Frederic, you talk about mindset as a fixed attitude that you have that's determined by your history and determined by formative factors that shape how you interpret, shape how you respond to what happens to you. And then you talk about mind state, I believe, as a perspective that you have in any given moment, and that encompasses our current thoughts, it encompasses our feelings, our focus, and it determines how we experience the present. And John, that's been a bit of an update on our current definition of mindset in light of neuroscience research. And I feel like that's very aligned with Frederic's definition of mind state.

Well, I'm very envious that Frederic came up with a new term. I believed that mindset was such a prevalent word, and it did actually mean so many things to different people that encompassed state attitudes, mental models, ideas, and so on, that what I wanted to do was to try and co-opt and evolve something that people understood rather than to create a new term. And a lot of people did say to me when I was doing this, you should come up with a new term. So kudos to Frederick. But I think we're saying something very similar. My, I think my starting point was to identify what I thought was missing. And I think what I, what I thought was missing from, from the, the original definition is that it is a static definition. Mindset seemed kind of like you have a mindset, it's fixed, it's growth or whatever. We have multiple mindsets. They change. They can change in this conversation. You know, they're— it's a constantly dynamic thing. And then the bit that was really missing out of the definitions that you see is the effect of your body on your mindset. And the effect of your emotions that you construct, and the science that underpins perception, consciousness, emotions, reframing, you know, just so many different forms of new understanding meant that we could actually build a really actionable model of what a mindset is. And that, that we're continuing to develop that actually every month. There's new stuff that's coming in that's really helping us to deepen that understanding. So my, my, um, without trying to make this a science project, my, uh, hope was that we could give people something to make better sense of themselves that was grounded in something that's real rather than something that was an opinion. And then, uh, you know, build very practical strategies to help people to, to have a stronger set of functions that sit beneath that, um, to make them healthier and more productive. But I think Frederic's saying many of the same things.

Exactly. Yeah, I fully agree. I think, you know, we are living in a time where mindset is just a term that is used everywhere and all the time, which has its benefits, right? I think the focus on it is good so that we understand that it's an important part of who we are and how we interact in the world. But I also felt that it was overused. It was also like, if you see started like comedians starting to use it in a specific way, you know that it's— and people writing books and making fun of mindsets, you're starting to realize that it probably crossed a boundary or like an edge. And I felt also at the same time, Whenever I came across something where, you know, someone talked about a mindset and was going into how to train that and how to develop that, that's where they stopped, right? Where they said, like, okay, you know, you should have that mindset, but I can tell you how to change it or to develop it or to grow it.. And that's always, for me, unsatisfying because, you know, understanding something is one thing, but then practicing it and actually using it, I think, is another thing. And so I really wanted to go beyond something that is, you know, not really changeable over time. That is, you know, a little bit more static and focus on that dynamic lens of perception, you know, that is shaped by our thoughts and feelings that really guides our interaction with the world.. And for me, that is a mind state. And yeah, I hope with that we move a little bit away from that overused term, but also feel like it's a dynamic thing that we can control and train and use to really perceive and interact with the world in a different way.

Yeah, I love that sentiment because I share this notion that typically what the call to action for a mindset is to adopt it. You understood it. You know, there's a slide here that shows you the characteristics of somebody with a mindset, behaviors. Now do it. And that's like, it's like saying, right, watch this video of a, you know, a breakdancer or a ballerina. Now do it. Adopt that.

You can't do that. Um, maybe we could pause on, on Frederic, this thought of mind state, and I think you call it the future-ready mind state, and you mention in your book 6 key dimensions. So you mentioned optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy, and what you call Dimension X. So can you maybe walk us through some of these at a high level and specifically Dimension X? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yes. And I hope that everybody recognizes these dimensions, right? Because those are actually part of us humans, right? We all have a level of empathy. We all are, you know, open to a degree. We all experiment sometimes. And, you know, we are born as curious individuals, right? But what I try to do is put a couple of other labels on it to signal that it's not just these qualities or dimensions that we already possess, but I want to, you know, dial those up and trying to really unleash those. So that's why I call optimism not just optimism, but radical optimism. And for me, radical optimism means this is not just your everyday hopefulness, right? Because hopefulness for me is passive, right? It's like, you know, you cross your finger and you wait. But radical optimism is really about believing in great outcomes and going for it. And using that metaphor of seeing that glass half full or half empty, which is usually signaling like if you're an optimist or a pessimist, for me, it's not just about seeing the glass half full. It's seeing the potential to fill it completely. And that is, for me, radical optimism.

When you mention radical optimism and that idea of glass half full, glass half empty, that to me brings this idea of we either have it or we don't.

Do you feel like optimism can be built? Exactly. Specifically radical optimism, right? It's something that you can train yourself in. And you can really then look at every situation with that lens of saying like, what is the opportunity here that I see? What's the lessons learned? What is something that I can take away from? Again, we often hear that question, is the glass half full or half empty? And that just measures the level of optimism or pessimism, right? Again, a person who sees the glass as half full focuses on the positives and Others see the glass half empty, focus on the negatives. But actually, radical optimism goes beyond this binary view. Again, it's not just about seeing the glass half full. It's about recognizing the potential to fill the glass further. And so, a radical optimist really sees the possibilities and opportunities for growth and improvement even in challenging situations. And maybe to give you an example here. When you, you know, work on a project, right? And halfway through, you just acknowledge the work you've done and the milestones you've achieved, right? So that's where you say, like, okay, I just acknowledge where I am and what I have done so far. But then you can envision the potential. So ask yourself, how can I fill this glass further? Meaning, How can I look at the work and what's to come? So visualizing the end results and the impact it will have. So you think about your project in a way what a successful completion would look like. And you identify areas where you can innovate or improve. And then you think creatively about how to use the available resources that you have and opportunities to, even fill the glass further. So for me, that radical optimism really involves also action, right? How to take concrete steps to fill the glass further. So this really means setting these ambitious goals. You know, you're working towards them with determination and creativity. And it's something that we can practice, right? People usually say to me like, hey, Fredrik, why are you always so positive? And I say like, I'm not just positive, I'm a radical optimist because I'm trying to look at every situation with that lens. And that's something you can do and you can choose.

I'm really intrigued about what's the radical optimism conversation around the dinner table with the family? What does that look like?

Yeah. For household? Amazing. Yes, that's a great question. That's really the test you always need to do is take these things to children and see how they respond. And yeah, I get these funny looks from my kids all the time. I have 3 kids and they roll their eyes and they're like, oh, Fredrik, you are— or Dad, you're again so optimistic. Why are you optimistic about this? I think that's the only choice I have, right? We also know from research actually that optimists, they live on an average 15% longer than people who are not optimistic, right? Which is, you know, I tell my kids and they're like, "Oh, that's cool. Okay. And now I understand a little bit more." But it's really that notion that we shouldn't see the world through these rose-colored glasses, right? It's not just seeing everything positively. It's acknowledging that there are bad things that are happening. It's acknowledging that you're in a difficult situation and a challenging situation. But, at the same time, you can't change that situation because it already happened. What you can do is you can choose your response and you can choose how to look at that situation. And I think that's something where we probably need a lot more of, especially nowadays, because radical optimism is just very rare these days, I have to say. Besides, there's an album coming out from a very famous singer, I think, that was released 2 weeks ago called Radical Optimism. So I think there's a little bit of hope there.

Fredrik, you mentioned in your book the idea of saying yes and what it does to your brain state in terms of reframing. And John, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well.

I think reframing is a way that has been well established in people's minds about how to solve problems differently, and there are lots of techniques and so on. But I think at a more human level, forget problem solving, just being able to look at things differently and see things. I think a frame, what it does is it allows you to see the world in a certain way. And sometimes the frames that we hold up to the world are too tightly held, they're too much about our identity, our sense of value. And then that becomes a very vulnerable position for us, both in terms of missing things and actually then feeling threatened because of the way we're looking at things. So I think, you know, in terms of a mindset, a big part of this is being able to be flexible in that and teaching children from a very young age that they have, you know, the ability to be radically optimistic is to see both and, you know, to your point, Frederic, you know, things are bad, but things can be better and they're not mutually exclusive. The both and thinking, and you can't do both and thinking if you have a very fixed frame around things.

So that's— that would be— you make a great point about reframing, right? It's such a powerful tool. It's probably one of the most powerful tools. And it's also a matter of language that we're using, right? Not just saying yes more often. And I know that's, you know, it's controversial because there's, you know, a school of thought that helps you to, you know, say more often no, right, to things to protect yourself from like going in many directions. But I am arguing for the opposite. I say like a yes gets you to you know, see more opportunities. It gets you to explore more. It gets you to, you know, discovery and so forth. And, you know, a no is usually a very simple way of just, you know, stopping, right? And moving away or not feeling engaged. But as soon as you say yes, right? You say yes to your job, you say yes to, you know, your partner, you say yes to a new project or a new idea, you're getting involved, right? You're committed to something that leads to an opportunity. And I think that's a powerful way of doing that. But I have an even better reframe that I love. And that's the notion of replacing but with and. You know, when you say yes to something, right, you usually add a but, right? You're adding a constraint or you're adding a reason why that would not work or something like that.. But if you just in your language use 'and' instead of 'but,' it just changes everything. You know, for example, if you say, 'I would like to get more physically and mentally fit, but I don't have much time,' right? That's the usual sentence we tell ourselves. If you just replace that 'but' with an 'and,' you go, 'I would like to get more physically and mentally fit, and I don't have much time.' See what that does, right? It opens up opportunities where you say like, okay, now I'm brainstorming, like, you know, what can I do in a very short amount of time? Instead of like this excuse that you say, but I don't have much time, which basically stops your brain from going into expansive mode and thinking about solutions and ideas. And it's super powerful. When you just try to do that exercise more often and replace your buts with your ands to really go into expansive thinking mode, to come up with ideas and not just come up with reasons why something would not work.

I know, um, when we talked, Freda, we talked, uh, some interesting things about our relationship to the future as well, which I'd love you to talk about.

So there's an interesting question that I was exploring when writing the book, and that's our relationship with our future self. What do we imagine ourselves to not just look like or behave like, but what is really— how are we going to be in the future? Are we going to be people who care, people who are happy, people who are satisfied, successful, healthy, whatever you want to use as a descriptor. And I found this piece of research that's really fascinating on your future self because it really examines how individuals' visions of themselves in the future affect their current behaviors and decisions. So these findings indicate that a clearer and more connected sense of one's future self is actually associated with better decision-making areas such as health, finance, or even personal development. And so it's research coming out of Stanford, and what they've done is they basically used in one study VR glasses and put them on 20-year-olds to show them their older selves, how they would look like and behave with an avatar. And what they could demonstrate is that these individuals actually then put more money towards their retirement. So, they already made a different decision around their finances. And, you know, some of them, you know, started to eat more healthy and like, you know, have a healthier lifestyle. Others, you know, invested some time more in personal development and so forth. So, what's fascinating is like interventions like visualization exercises where you usually try to imagine your future self, right? And you can do that in a meditation as well, by the way, trying to really visualize how you're going to be in the future, who you're going to be surrounded with, and so forth, or even writing to one's future self, you know, those letters that you can write to your future self, really aim to strengthen this connection and potentially then lead to improved life outcomes. So the goal really here is to understand and enhance the influence of future self-perception on present actions. And that means that the more we can close this gap between today and our future self in 5 or 10 years and really empathize with our future self in the future and build that connection, the more likely our actions today will actually change and we're going to live more healthier, we're going to put more money towards retirement, we're going to probably have different relationships and so forth. Which is very powerful, I guess, when you think about all the research so far that has been mostly focused on your past and how you can work through trauma. This is really focused on your future and how you can better envision your future self to then change your actions today.

Friends, if you're enjoying The Evolving Leader, I encourage you to order a copy of John's new book, Leading in a Nonlinear World, which provides a new understanding of mindset and how to build it in order to thrive in a more uncertain future. It's available online at all major retailers, and there's a link in the show notes.

I'd love to take a moment and dive a bit deeper into curiosity. I know for me, I'm a very naturally inquisitive person. For many of us, we actually get curiosity as we age coached out of us, whether that's at work or outside of work in our personal and our social lives. And I'd love to hear both of your thoughts on why curiosity is so important for us to take back, to reclaim, and to hold deep within us.

Yeah, for me, curiosity is just fascinating. Again, like you said, Sarah, like we're born as curious individuals, right? We're crawling around on the floor. When we were very little, like we take everything in our hands and put it in our mouth or look at it or smell it, whatever it is. But also curiosity can get us into trouble, right? We all know the signs where it says like, do not touch or don't go there or whatever it is. And those are usually the most intriguing places, as you said, Sarah, like, you know, you're a very curious person. And we love to go to these places where we don't know something or we don't know an answer or something like that. And so, really, curiosity drives us to explore the unknown and push boundaries where really in a world where answers are at our fingertips, right? We have our search engines. Now we have AI. You know, we have all the answers usually. I think it's now important to find better solutions by asking the right questions and Curiosity is all about asking questions. And as you know, Albert Einstein said, I have no special talent. I'm only passionately curious. Right? That's what he said. And you know, you know where his curiosity led him to discover and explore all of those amazing things. And for me, that curiosity really comes through with questions like, I wonder., right? When we ask questions that start with, I wonder, you know, for example, I wonder how we can make education better with AI, right? I work a lot with teachers and in, in universities. So that's a question that they wonder. Or I wonder how can I improve my relationship with my partner? Or I wonder how I can maintain a healthier lifestyle, right? All of those wonder questions are beautiful descriptions of curiosity. But now here comes a trick that you can do to even trigger more curiosity. And I have this exercise in my book, and I just love it to use it all the time because you can also use that with children very beautifully. So if you use those questions and you actually turn them upside down. So let's say your question was, I wonder how we can make education better with AI. You can do it with an upside-down question and say, what could you do to make AI negatively impact education? Or the other question, what actions would damage your relationship with your partner? Or what habits would you lead, would lead to an unhealthy lifestyle? Right? So you turn these questions upside down and then you see where your curiosity leads you to and what are, are some things that might actually come up. Which is a beautiful way of first showing your curiosity, but also then allowing your mind to follow that curiosity to an unexpected place.

And I think I experience the challenge of curiosity in a very practical sense. And I just, you know, had some coaching calls with teams who are having a challenge with curiosity being, you know, sort of culturally inappropriate. So most organizations are so focused on short-termism and minimizing risk and being predictable and safe and so on that curiosity is deemed as unhelpful, as irritating, as indulgent, frivolous, and so on, because it's not actually going to— it's also at a very social level regarded by some people as being not having answers or being nosy or, you know, there's a whole bunch of negative connotations associated with it. And so part of what we are doing to children at a very early age is ironing, as Sarah said, that out of them. And Ken Robinson, you know, talks a lot about this when he was talking about the education system, but we do it in corporate world. Like from day one, this is how you do things, this is how we solve problems, this is what's expected of you. So being curious beyond actually understanding the system is really culturally not appropriate in many organizations. And if we're going to build companies that can actually generate more ideas and more growth and so on, that's got to change radically.

Absolutely. Yeah, I love that notion that Curiosity isn't about answers, right? It's about asking the right questions. And how often do we find ourselves in cultures and communities and organizations that allow you to ask more questions, right? We always want to go towards the solutions and the answers. And so that's why it's just, as you said, not socially accepted to always ask questions, right? Because even in German, the word curiosity means neugierig, and it has a negative connotation, right? Someone who is neugierig is like, as you said, he's nosy or she's nosy. She's like, always wants to look behind the door and find out and so forth, which is just negatively like in our language showing up.

And I, yeah, we need to fight that. Yeah. And just help me understand the pressures in Google to, because there's obviously a tension there between having answers. There's a lot of very smart people in that organization who go, what are we solving for? What, you know, and so on, versus people who can actually ask questions where they don't have to know how socially permissive was it around there?

Yeah. So there, there is one event, I think, that beautifully showed that curiosity and openness are values that are encouraged. Uh, you know, um, an all-hands meeting that happened and still happens every Friday called TGIF, Think Google, It's Friday, which was really early on from the founders started like Sergey and Larry just gathered everyone. The end of the week. And what they did is they just opened up the forum for questions. So, they just basically were for 1 hour getting questions from every employee. And most importantly, from the new employees called the Nooglers, right? They were actually allowed to ask questions first. And I think that's beautiful because they usually had the most curious attitude because they didn't know and they asked everything basically to the founders and to the leadership as well. And I think that's a great demonstration, a great ritual even for allowing an organization to be curious and to be open as well. And one of the things that I try to train people in is less around brainstorming and coming up with idea because that's what most people can do, right? It's like, that's the easy thing. You can use a couple of tricks to even go, you know, for a better brainstorm. But question storming, I think, was for me the thing that people really didn't do that well, and they had to be coached and trained in to ask better questions. And in one of my class, uh, at Stanford, we had actually 4 and a half weeks of trying to frame, reframe, focus, expand on questions. And it was one of the hardest things for students. And I had one graduate student come up to me after the class saying, Frederick, this was one of the hardest classes I ever took. I was an MBA student. And asked him, like, why was that? And he said, like, because we only worked on questions. And not the answers. And so even the final presentations were in what we called a quest room. So we had an exhibit that we set up where the students could actually display their questions with, you know, an item or a product that actually showed the questions in a beautiful way. And it was so powerful because, you know, imagine students displaying— one student I had, he displayed letters of people who committed suicide to ask the question, how can we solve the mental health crisis in the world better? And so this was kind of like his question that he wanted to address. And by allowing people to really discover questions and frame questions and reframe questions, it's a great way to train your mind to be curious and to not go to default idea solutions mode, but actually stay with that ambiguity in the questioning.

Finally, I would like us to come back to Dimension X. I know we mentioned it a bit earlier on in our conversation, and I'd love to find out how our listeners could find and then amplify their superpower.

Maybe we can close with that. Yes. I have 6 dimensions around a future-ready mind state, and you mentioned them already. And one of them is a dimension X that's really a unique superpower that everybody has. Some of them, some of the people are just not aware probably of it yet. So what I want to do is help people to discover their their unique dimension X, their unique superpower, and then actually use it in their lives and in their work, in their relationships and so forth. So I have an exercise in the book that really helps you to map out your life, your highs and lows, and then trying to identify what were your mind states in all of those pivotal moments that help you to overcome these sometimes challenging situations, sometimes very positive situations, and so forth. And mapping that out really helps you to then discover and identify what is your unique superpower. And I've done that with 14 people I feature in the book, Googlers and former Googlers. I call them future readies, incredible individuals. So everybody shares their Dimension X and how they found it and what, what it actually does for them. So my, my dimension X is a bias towards action that really helped me in most of my life to, you know, move forward, make progress, not ask for permission, but most of the time ask for forgiveness. And bias towards action is something that is a unique superpower that I have and I like to use, right? Instead of talking about a lot of ideas or, discussing them. I usually like to try them out and make progress. And so, Dimension X is something that I feel people not only should be aware of, but really should use in their lives to be future-ready. And I help people to find it and use it.

And John, what's your Dimension X? I think optimism. I think the radical optimism is, uh, is, uh, is probably the thing that most stands out for me in this conversation and reading the book. And I, I really resonated with that because I genuinely believe things can be better and will be better. And I'm, I'm energized by that. That makes me, um, create a brain state shift in others as well. I think that, I think that that is something that I feel good about.

So I would say that's probably where I'd land on.

Sarah, have you found yours? So funny you ask, Frederic. When I was reading your book, I kept coming back to this idea of infusing energy and creating connections for people, like creating spaces and bridges for people to connect with each other and bringing energy to these spaces.

Amazing.

I haven't, I haven't made it as succinct as how you would describe your Dimension X, but it's a work in progress.

No, it's wonderful because you, you just demonstrated today, that you are actually, you know, not just talented in it, but you have that unique superpower to bring, you know, John and myself together with you. You bring energy to this conversation. And so, yeah, here you have it. You already used your Dimension X in a, in a beautiful way.

Thank you. So usually when we close our conversations on The Evolving Leader, we ask our guests what's next for them, but I'm wondering if perhaps we could reframe that question today. So I'd love to ask you both, what will your future mind state bring you?

I hope that my future mind state will be bringing me a big community of people interested in finding out more about what we do and benefiting from it. So I want to be part of something much, much bigger.

That's what I'm hoping my future mindset will bring. So my future mind state will bring, I guess, more opportunities.

I love that. Thank you both for this conversation. This was wonderful, so insightful, and very much fulfilled my, my curiosity that I started the conversation with, my openness for curiosity.

So I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Sarah. Thank you, Frederick. Thank you, Sarah. Yes. Thank you, John. And very grateful. Yes. So my initial feeling is now even stronger, that I am very grateful that I've been able to spend time with wonderful people.

So thank you. So after 5 years of The Evolving Leader, I guess you could say our show is evolving.

Yeah, it's time to move forward after hundreds of shows with thousands of insights and some quite emotional.

It's time to do something new, bring this chapter of The Evolving Leader to a close. Yeah, this is very exciting. We've been talking about this for months now and I can't believe we're here. Yeah, we want to do something in direct response to the changes in the world. Yeah, which are significant from AI AI, to climate change, and a whole host of new social and political and economic realities, all of which are setting the context for this new show. So welcome to The Mindset Economy. Yeah, we'll look at how to thrive in a world where machines can think.