2410: Mastering the Mind: Breaking Limiting Beliefs and Cultivating Growth with Britt Lefkoe

Welcome to the show. This is Jason Hartman, your host, and every 10th episode we do something kind of special, kind of different. What we do is we go off topic. So regardless of which show it is on the Hartman Media Network, whether it be one of the financial shows, economics, real estate investing, travel, longevity, all of the other topics that we have, every 10th episode we we go off topic and we explore something of general interest, something of general life success value. And so many of our listeners around the world in 164 countries have absolutely loved our 10th episode shows. So that's what we're gonna do today. And let's go ahead and get to our guest with a special 10th episode show. And of course, on the next episode, we'll be back to our regular programming. Here we go.

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company.

For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit HartmanMedia.com. Hey, Jason, just wanted to send you a quick message of gratitude. So grateful that I got into the game and got in with properties that make sense because the rent income keeps coming in. So thank you. Glad we connected. And I'm glad to be in the income property game instead of the Wall Street game for my future.

Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques, and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self-made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer, and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

It is my pleasure to welcome Britt Lefkoe. She is an executive coach, and let me tell you, I met her only about a little over a week ago, and she's amazing. I mean, I was just blown away by some of the stuff she had to say, and her intuition and ability to interpret situations is just second to none. So I'm really glad to have her on the show. Britt, welcome. How are you?

Good. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

It's my pleasure. And you're coming to us from Salt Lake City, right?

That's right.

Excellent. Well, you coach people and help them overcome lots of obstacles. And, you know, there's a great quote. I want to say I learned this quote maybe when I was age 17, and I think it was by a guy named Jack Parr. And the quote is, my life seems to be one long obstacle course with me as the chief obstacle. And that's true of all of us, right?

I love that.

Yeah, it's— I love that quote too. You know, a big part of life, maybe the biggest biggest part of life is overcoming ourself and our limiting beliefs and all of our programming. You know, maybe speak to that to start with.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the way that I see it, there's, there's two things that are kind of happening at the same time. One of them is we're trying to avoid suffering. Like, we don't want to be stuck. We don't want to be frustrated. We watch ourselves saying, I understand that the key to my success would be to do these three things. And I have done none of them. Right? I understand whether it's again, like, in order to— the quote that it reminds me of is, The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now, right?

I say that all the time.

That's amazing you said that. I love it, right? And so, this idea that like we understand that now is the time and yet, we don't act. And so, I think the first part of what comes up for me when you ask that question is like, how do I get out of my own way? How do I get out of suffering when I understand that the key to, you know, making more money is to taking risks, being visible, being courageous, and yet I struggle with those things. Or I know that there's certain ways that I wanna show up and I'm not. And that's the first part. The second part for me is really the exploration of infinite possibility. And what this means to me is like, how do I live a life by design and not by default? When I look at my core values, how do I make sure I'm living in alignment? When I look at this again, kind of like infinite possibility vision for my life, what is that? And what is the gap between where I am and where I wanna be? And I think we move between those kind of two poles. One of them is trying to overcome the obstacles, right, that those internal obstacles, and the other one is really exploring what's possible for our lives and looking at who do I need to become in order to achieve that vision?

Yeah. So would it be fair when you talk about the infinite possibilities part, would it be fair to kind of point to an abundance context versus a scarcity context?

Yeah, I think it's abundance in so many different ways, right? Like, one of them is abundance of opportunity, abundance of wealth, abundance of meaningful relationships, I think the other piece is just often the way that we view trade-offs, that I can have this, but this is what I'll have to sacrifice. And I think cultivating an infinite possibility mindset is kind of putting back on the table the idea that not everything is actually a sacrifice, that you could make a lot of money and not actually have to grind and work really hard, that if you figure out how to be strategic, if you can find your zone of genius, that there are unlocks that actually don't require hard work, or that you can have meaningful relationships and still have boundaries, still put yourself first. Like, there's so many places where I think for people, they make these trade-offs in their head of how things need to be, and those trade-offs don't necessarily exist. I see this all the time in business, that I'm the one as the entrepreneur, as the founder, as the CEO, I care the most. I'm the only one who knows how to do it. I do it better than everyone else. And the reality is like that trade-off actually exists only in our minds. And when we surround ourselves with people who are more equipped to do their job than we are to do their job. What we see is that through delegating and staying in that strategic visionary role, the sum becomes greater than the parts. And that's an example of we expect that there's going to be a trade-off, but there actually doesn't necessarily need to be. And so I think of infinite possibility as putting back on the table the idea that not everything is a trade-off and that there's actually ways of having things that we just don't see as possible because we've deemed them impossible. We've collected data that they're not possible, but that data just gives us information about what we've seen, not in fact about what is possible.

That is really powerful. So just correct me if I'm wrong here, but are you saying, at least in part, are you saying that we decide we want something, right? Or we want to be some way. And we also tell ourselves we're going to have to make trade-offs to get that. And basically we have this like bargaining session with our own mind where we say, well, that's going to require this big trade-off, which isn't necessarily even true. But we decide that, and that's what blocks us from taking the action. Is that—

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I see it all the time, right? Like, even this idea that if I put myself out there, like, if I think about something, somebody who's trying to get a business off the ground and they understand we live in a world of social media and they need to be willing to put themselves out there, in their mind, the trade-off is that they will be humiliated. Humiliated. That's made up, right? That's something that we've made up in our minds. Humiliation is an internal game. So when we show up with this kind of infinite possibility mindset, we start to explore what if there actually aren't these trade-offs? Like, what if it's possible that I can have both of these things at the same time? And in some of my more advanced work, like, one of the things that I look at is I define maturity as the ability to hold two things, often contradicting, at the same time, the ability to manage paradox, right? And so that, that more advanced, again, like that strategic infinite possibility mindset is not creating in our minds these limitations, but really exploring what's possible. Even as an example, what I think of is I watch people get stuck in this productivity mindset and thinking that productivity is going to get me where I'm going. But the problem is productivity sabotages curiosity. Curiosity is a much more powerful agent than productivity. That doesn't mean productivity is bad, but if we seek productivity, we will sabotage curiosity. In contrast, if we seek curiosity, we will be productive, but we'll end up following our passion and we won't burn out, right? We're playing at a higher level. And so where I'm always looking at are what are the levers that we can pull where we're unconsciously playing small, thinking that that is the way, but it's actually keeping us out of our zone of genius. It's actually causing burnout. It's actually limitation. And when we can see more clearly, the path will illuminate itself.

That's, that's also very powerful. So one of the things I always say on the show is I talk about this idea, and it came from a Sherlock Holmes episode. And the, the concept is you can't hear the dogs that don't bark.

Okay.

And in the episode, Sherlock Holmes figured out who the killer was because the dog didn't bark and the dog knew the person, right? That's so true in life because if we're focused on the idea of, say, time management. How can I just pack more into my schedule? What software or app can I use to just do more and be more productive? That might be, or sounds like you're saying for sure it is, draining away, uh, creativity from us because we're just trying to just be more productive, like by the numbers, if you will. Uh, maybe it's quantitative versus qualitative. Maybe that plays into it?

100%. And the thing that we miss out on is if you self-identify as somebody who's productive, that's a hard worker, you are orienting around tasks. Where if you say, I am somebody who's looking at where I can be most strategic in my life, I'm looking at 10x outcomes, all of a sudden your brain starts patterning to what are the things I can do that are going to make the most difference. Focusing on productivity will give you linear growth at best, focusing on, again, creativity, curiosity, infinite possibility, the types of ideas you have, the way that you prioritize. Like, I, I say so often that if you self-identify as somebody who is a hard worker, what do you require in order to be who you are? And the answer is hard work, right? And so you're not asking, how do I be effective? How do I be efficient, right? Again, how do I get better outcomes? You're asking How do I make sure I'm working hard? So you're constantly patterning. Your brain is a prediction engine. Like, it patterns to what it is that you look for. You find what you look for. And if you self-identify as a hard worker, you are unconsciously seeking work, right? And so you're filling your schedule with work. You're filling your schedule with things to be productive around. Again, rather than saying, wait a minute, hold on, let me take a step back. What are 2 or 3 things I could do that are actually going to move the needle in my finances, in my business, in my life, in my marriage? Those things create exponential growth rather than linear growth. And I watch people all the time who have gotten validated early in life for achieving or accomplishing or, you know, getting a lot done. And so they have an entire identity that keeps them in the dopamine game of how can I check the box and achieve these small things? But they're achieving things that aren't actually moving the needle in their life. If we can take a step back from the need to achieve and really look at what is my vision for my life, right? And I think about this in terms of investing. Instead of saying like, how can I feel like I'm winning all the time? It's what is my financial vision for my life? And what are the ways that I need to show up? What are the ways that I need to engage in order to walk towards that? Because sometimes that doesn't feel like achieving, but you're actually taking steps toward a much grander achievement, which is actually having the life that you want. And sometimes that requires not feeling like you're winning because you're investing in other ways, right? Sometimes those investments don't pay off right away. And so you're not getting that feeling of I'm an achiever or I'm a winner, but what you're doing is you're laying a foundation again for actually having that vision of your life start to become realized.

Wow. Okay. So a few things there. Number one, what we always talk about in the real estate investing game is that real estate is a multidimensional asset class. And, you know, most investments, it's really simple: buy low, sell high. That's the whole game, right? And maybe it's a dividend-paying stock— buy low, sell high, get some dividends in between. Real estate, there are 6 major ways you get a return on investment. And I always liken it to an iceberg where most of the iceberg is below the surface of your water, of the water. And I have seen so many investors over the years kind of come and go from the investment idea because they're actually winning, but they think they're losing because they just don't know how to do the math.

That's right.

And if they would just learn the simple math of real estate and understand that some of this return is below the surface of the water and you can't really see it right away, but it's there, they would have the faith to continue. Okay, so that's one thing I want to put out there. Another thing I want to put out there is I recently saw an interview with arguably, probably not even arguably, the most productive person the human race has ever known, Elon Musk. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, someone asked him, the interviewer said something to the effect of, you know, what is the one, like, secret to, you know, running all these companies and being so successful and being so productive? And he said the biggest thing is people optimize things that just don't need to be optimized. And that was like a lightning bolt. And he gave this example. He said, in one of the Tesla cars on the floor, we have this soundproof board, right, to, you know, reduce the sound in the car. And he said, and they were just trying to optimize this, and it rattled and this and that. And Elon said, why not just remove it? Like, does it even need to be there? And they did sound tests with the car without the board. And it was lighter and more efficient and didn't rattle or whatever the problem was. Maybe it wasn't rattling. I can't remember. But he said, just take it out. Just don't do it at all.

Right. Right.

Yeah. Maybe it's just an eliminate. Sometimes it's not optimization. It's just elimination.

Right. And the thing that I think is so, so brilliant in this example is if we are committed to productivity, if we are committed to achieving or accomplishing, we will spend all of our time working with the board. And it takes a level of distance from productivity. It takes a strategic mind to say, I'm not attached to working hard. I'm not attached to achieving. And that doesn't mean you don't want to achieve in your life, but there's a difference between walking toward a life achievement and being obsessed with the task-oriented achievement along the way, which are often useless, right? That it takes that distance to be able to say, wait a minute, Why don't we just throw out the board? And we do this in our lives so much. We are constantly asking, how do I solve this problem? How do I solve this problem? But again, if you are a problem solver, what do you require? Problems. Right? So, you spend your life looking for problems instead of looking for opportunities. And so, the way that I think about this is there are so many places where we can move from, as an example, problem solving to opportunity creation. It's the same skill set. It's the same mind. But instead of using it at a lower level of problem solving, we use it at a higher level of opportunity creation. And one of them is a production mindset. A production mindset is very much about effective problem solving. And that at a strategic mindset, the exact same skill set is deployed for opportunity creation. And so, again, whether you're on the getting out of suffering side or whether you're on the infinite possibility side or somewhere in between, the question really is, how do I get out of the lower level thinking, and into a higher level of thinking. And that might mean, you know, exploring my identity. Where do I self-identify as a winner? And so I'm not giving myself the space to lose, or I'm not giving myself the space to quit when something isn't working anymore. Where am I self-identifying as a producer or a problem solver? And that's keeping me out of being strategic. Where am I having an identity that I value security, right? Security is not secure. Right. Security doesn't actually exist when we think about it. Right. The way what we end up doing is playing small, which is the opposite of security. So where am I self-identifying as? I'm someone who values security rather than somebody who wants to build my wealth, who wants to grow my wealth, who wants to— And so that's why I think one of the questions that we forget to ask is, what is it that I actually want? Right? Like, where am I going? What is the vision that I have for my life? And then what are the mindset blocks that are keeping me stuck in where I am? Right, doing the same thing and getting the same result rather than doing something different to get a new result.

Okay. So I think one of the issues for people is that everything you say sounds great, but, you know, there's that old saying, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know, right? And people usually understand that idea of the quantitative thing of being more productive, of optimizing, of just getting more done, checking more off your list. That's kind linear and, you know, it's pretty easy to understand. Right?

Right.

I got the to-do list. I'm checking things off, checking the boxes. But the other stuff is sort of out there in the ether and it's not—

Yeah.

You know, we don't know that it's really going to happen, that we're really going to get it. And maybe it takes longer to produce the result. So.

Right.

How do we overcome that?

Yeah. So I've got 3 really tangible, tactical things that you can do.

That's what people want. Tangible.

There you go. Tangible, tactical. Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about is fear. And here's— I'm going to give like a really brief neuroscience lesson for the purposes of our conversation. I'm going to kind of simplify that there are two parts of the brain that really matter: your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. Your prefrontal cortex is your executive function. This is the part of your brain that gets excited about the possibilities, that understands that there is a vision. Beyond where you are that you want to walk toward. It's also the part of your brain that wants to go to the gym and meal prep, right? Like, this part of your brain doesn't really need our help. Our prefrontal cortex is doing great. You also have your amygdala. This is your emotional brain, right? This is the part of the brain that is wrapped around kind of the safety center of your brain. This is your kind of emotional black and white, right? That fear and what if this happens, what if that happens, is where all of your limiting beliefs live. And if you look at functional MRI data, there's two really important things that you will see. The first one is that we spend 95% of our time in our amygdala. Okay. So we think that there's logical people and emotional people. There are people who do a really good job using logic to justify their emotions and people who don't do a good job at using logic to justify their emotions. Right. But we all spend 95% of our time in that amygdala part of our brain. The second thing—

We're all emotional. That's right. More emotional than we think, right?

That's right. That's right. Yep.

I agree with that.

We're all driven by emotions, right? Totally agree. And so even if you are somebody who is highly rational, highly logical, you might be the most logical person that's ever walked the planet, you might be at 7%, right? So the numbers are nowhere, it's not 54 and 46, right? It's, it's 5 and 95. The other thing that's really important to understand is that when you look at functional MRI data during decision-making, it is the amygdala that lights up, not the prefrontal cortex until the decision is made. Right. So you'll see the, you'll see the activity in the amygdala. Once the decision is made, we'll move into the prefrontal cortex to try to logically understand the decision.

Right.

Or to use logic again to kind of rationalize or justify the decision. So here's what's really important to understand. We make emotional decisions based off of fear, and then we try to logically talk ourselves into our decision. But ultimately, we are being driven first and foremost— one of the primary drivers in our brain is fear. So we're trying to manage fear.

But you say it's emotional, but is the emotion— well, it's fear and emotion, but is it always fear? Or maybe it's ego or, you know, recognition, whatever, something else, right?

Like, so it's almost always managing fear and I'll tell you why. So your brain has one job and that is to keep you alive, right? So the brain is a really expensive, like energetically really expensive organ. It takes a huge amount of effort.

20% of your energy is your brain, right?

Exactly. And the reason why is it's constantly patterning on the lookout, trying to figure out like, How do I keep Jason safe? Like, how do I keep Britt safe? But here's the problem. During our first 7 years of life, we are in what is called codependent survival. And what that means is our survival doesn't depend upon ourselves. It depends upon our parents or primary caregivers. So when we look for safety, where are we looking? In here or out there? We're looking out there. As long as my family is happy, I know they're not going to abandon me. I'm not going to die. All is going to be well. So as we're trying to figure out what is safe and unsafe, We're not asking where the danger is. We're asking what creates harmony or disharmony in our family. And this is so wild. During those first 7 years of life, we pattern what will for the rest of our lives be perceived as safe and unsafe. So let me give you an example. If there was conflict in my family from 0 to 7 and that fractured the feeling of harmony, right, there was disharmony in my family. My brain will go, got it. Conflict is unsafe. Now I know that for the rest of my life. So then at 30 or 50 or 75 years old, there's conflict. There you go. And what emotion do you feel? You feel fear. There's only one trigger in the brain for fear, and it is a perceived threat to your survival. So the problem is the roadmap for what is dangerous and not dangerous has nothing to do with an actual threat to our survival. It has to do with our perceived threat to our survival, and that perception is determined between the ages of 0 to 7. So the things that create fear are not the things that are dangerous. The things that create fear in your life today are the things that created disharmony in your family from 0 to 7.

So, okay, so let me ask you a question about that though. Yeah, look, we all know people like this and we've all probably been this person at some point, right? Some people seem to relish conflict.

Yes, that's right.

How would that happen?

Right, because that didn't create disharmony in their family from 0 to 7. So if I grew up in a family where there was a lot of conflict, conflict, but we talked, we worked through it, or we yelled at each other, but we still felt like we really loved each other. That wouldn't create disharmony. If I grew up in a family where there was conflict, and I had a parent who wouldn't speak to me, they, they'd ice me out. That would disrupt the harmony, that would create fear, right? So the things that disrupt the harmony in our family are the things that create the fear later in life. So I want to, I want to give a couple examples.

Yeah, I'd like to know more than just conflict. Let's just do one or two more, maybe.

Yeah, great. So if I grew up in a family where when I was achieving and accomplishing at a high level, I felt loved, but when I lost or failed, I felt like that disappointment from my parents, and I felt like— and it isn't that they didn't love me, it's that the feeling went away. All of a sudden, I would have fear about not achieving. I would believe that the way to be safe and loved is to achieve. And if I don't, I'm not safe, right? So it could be that if you're again performing versus not performing, you feel loved versus unloved. That's an example. Another example could be when you took up a lot of space, right? That if you had, let's say there's 7 kids and there just like wasn't a lot of room, and if you took up a lot of space in your family, they would pull away or they would get angry or they would get upset. Another really important one is emotion. As an example, let's imagine that you had a mother or a father that was highly emotional and that it felt again, that, that disruptive emotion can cause fear for the rest of your life, right? If you have an angry alcoholic father, when, when he got angry, he would throw a chair at the wall. Somebody gets the slightest bit angry and that survival mechanism in your brain turns on and you go, I'm not safe. So every time there was disharmony in your family, your brain catalogs that as unsafe because the people who your survival depends upon all of a sudden feel unstable or you feel like you can't figure out how to get in, you can't figure out how to secure that attachment. That fractured moment of attachment repeatedly will actually be cataloged in your brain as a lack of safety, even though it has nothing to do with safety. Your parents aren't going anywhere, but your brain doesn't know that.

And what's interesting or terrible about this is that these programs are running and they're kind of like behind the scenes. We don't even know they're running us, right?

That's right. That's right. Exactly. And so I want to give people a way to manage this more effectively. Because fear is one of the primary reasons that we make decisions. We do the thing we're not as afraid of, right? So if it's between me feeling like I'm risking my survival by being humiliated or me not risking my survival by staying stagnant, I'm going to choose stagnance, right? Because my brain is set up to survive. It's not super interested in me being happy and successful and fulfilled. That's nice, but that's secondary to survival. So here's, here's one thing that people can do. I want people to be able to distinguish between unsafe and uncomfortable. When we feel fear, your brain is responding as though you are in danger. And as long as you say, I feel unsafe or I'm afraid, you are unconsciously reinforcing that fear. So here's something that you can do. When you notice fear come up, you can say, oh, that's so interesting. This is a survival mechanism that has nothing to do with my survival. I am not unsafe. I'm uncomfortable. This is just outside of my comfort zone. The desire to expand our comfort zone actually re-engages our prefrontal cortex. So we move from an amygdala hijack back into our prefrontal cortex. That's where our problem solving, our highest levels of thinking, opportunity creation, curiosity, that's where all of those higher levels of thinking exist. So if in the moment when fear comes up, you can go, wait a minute, I'm not unsafe. I'm just uncomfortable. I've been uncomfortable before. I'm outside of my comfort zone. Great. I'm outside of my comfort zone. I'm not outside of my safety zone. You can actually reengage your prefrontal cortex. The more you understand—

which is what you want to do.

Exactly. Exactly. Which is where all your higher levels of thinking live. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because the challenge exists when we're in our amygdala, right? When we are in our lower levels of thinking, when we're in our fear brain. And the more that we can understand what are the things that actually create the fear, and you can even just like spend a couple minutes writing down what are the things that created disharmony in my family from 0 to 7, where are the places where either I got the silent treatment, where a parent got really angry, like what were those things? And you'll notice those are the things that create fear today. So when they come up, you're already prepared for it. You go, wait a minute, I know what those things are. It's the conflict thing.

Know your triggers.

That's right. And then you can remind yourself, it's outside of my comfort zone, but it's not a threat to my survival. It's a really powerful way to start to reframe fear.

You know what's interesting is that we're pretty good at knowing the triggers of other people who are close to us, right?

Yeah.

Like, I know my mom's going to react a certain way about certain things pretty much, right?

Right. Yes.

But you're saying know that about yourself. Like, I don't know that we necessarily— at least I'll speak for myself.

Yeah.

I don't— I haven't really thought about that too much, you know.

Right. And that's why it's so important. It's like, it's a simple thing that we can do to literally like, you don't have to sit on the couch and, you know, think about your childhood. It's just looking at what are the, what are the places where I remember the disharmony happened? And you can just start to notice the pattern. So that you can become more effective in dealing with it. And I want to talk about one of the other things that I think, again, is really tactical and important. Like, this is one thing you can do is just kind of survey what those things are and then be able to reframe unsafe to uncomfortable, because now you have an identity of, I am someone who is really interested in expanding my comfort zone. That's what I want to do. So when discomfort comes, instead of me being like, oh no, I'm not safe, it's like, oh, Good. That's what I was looking for. I'm interested in expanding that comfort zone. So the identity kind of shifts. But the second thing is I want to talk about control, because most of us want control all the time. It is incredibly important. And there are some people who don't want control, but for the most part, we all struggle with control. And here's what I want to offer. We think that we have a control issue, but there's actually no such thing as a control issue. We only try to control the things that we don't trust. It's not a control issue. It's a trust issue. And often where we get into trouble is we see trust as aspirational instead of observational. Right? We trust that we're going to get what we want instead of paying attention to the data and seeing what is likely. So when we deploy our trust in this way, that's aspirational. That's not trust. That's hope. So let me give you an example. If I say I trust that this investment is going to go really well, but I'm not actually paying attention to the data, that's not trust. That's hope, right? Our job is to look at the data, see what's likely, and then trust that things are going to be exactly as they are, right? So now we're using the predictive mechanism in our brain. We're using better logic to try to understand how things are going to go. One of the reasons that we often don't invest is because it makes us feel out of control. Right? We don't want control, we want trust. And the way that we create trust is by paying attention observationally to what's likely, right? And then using the data to make an informed decision. That's another way of getting out of our amygdala and into our prefrontal cortex. Amygdala wants control, prefrontal cortex wants trust. It wants to actually observe what's likely and then make decisions based off of that data.

So control We have control issues with things that we don't trust.

That's right. That's right.

That's really interesting. Yeah. And I would say in the jealous lover paradigm, that's absolutely true, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like if you don't trust the other person, you're going to want to control them, right? But if you trust them, you don't feel like you need to, right? Or the micromanager in business, right?

Saying exactly, exactly. And that lack of trust very often comes from not understanding what you're looking at, right? So in certain cases, you don't trust it because somebody has clearly fractured that trust, and that's understandable. But a lot of the times we don't trust it because we just don't know anything about it. So if you, if you feel like, okay, maybe I don't know that much about real estate, it's hard to trust something that you don't understand. So what you want to do is consume enough information and then start to see, okay, what are the things I need to build that trust? Do I need to hire somebody to help me? Do I need to learn more? Like, what are the things I actually need to do? And then once you have that foundation of self-trust, right, trusting yourself, or, you know, feeling like you can, you can trust somebody that you're working with, or you have a general sense of competence, all of a sudden the desire for control will start to disappear and it will be replaced by a self-trust that, okay, I understand what's going on. And so things might not work out the way I think they will, but I trust myself to shift and pivot, or I trust myself to kind of navigate things because I have that base level of trust in myself and my own abilities.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think that moves people out of the fear zone into the opportunity zone. It moves them out of the scarcity zone into the abundance zone, right? Like when people understand, they'll dive in deeper, right?

That's right.

Now, there is one type of person, though. You, you mentioned investing, so I'm going to bring it up. Okay, there's this type of person who's like the seminar junkie, right? Yeah, the person who knows everything and never does anything, you know, that has been to every educational event, you know, goes to every conference, but never never does anything. What's going on with that person? I mean, they're obviously fearful. They don't have confidence. Right. But they, they've learned it all, it would seem.

Yeah. Yeah.

What's, what's the— there's a big gap between, like, learning and doing with some people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I was going to answer your question, but what immediately came up is actually something that happened the other day. And so I'm going to explain this in terms of an example. I was working with a client and he was in that exact place that you're talking about where he was just stuck everywhere. He wasn't making any moves. Right. And so he felt stuck in the lifelong academic to the person. Exactly.

100% college degrees. Right.

That's right. Yeah. He was stagnant in his career. He wasn't making moves. He did actually want to start investing and hadn't— like he was just stagnant everywhere. And here's what we worked on. What we realized is that he was stuck in a paradigm of trying to get it right. He was trying to figure out the right thing to do. And as long as you exist in a paradigm of right and wrong, you're always trying to figure out the right way and you're afraid of the wrong way. And that creates paralysis because there is no right way and wrong way. All there is is the next move and the next move and the next move and the next move and the next move, right? When we think we're going to get it right, we become paralyzed, right, with what is right and what is wrong. And it all exists up here. Everything is in your head.

That speaks so well probably to childhood. You know, I'm sure you can think of a way to say this better than I, but if you had a parent or caretaker that always, like, scolded you for doing it wrong, that's right, you're, you're gonna—

yeah, that's right. And so we get stuck in this paradigm of right and wrong, and what happens is we have so much anxiety about getting it wrong that we don't move.

Yeah. And so I gotta figure it all out before I dive in.

That's right. And so you become the intellectual consumer and never the creator, right? You're just consuming content and not making moves, not taking action. So, here's what he and I worked on. The first thing was getting that there's no right or wrong way to do it. That the way that I said it is my way, your way, his way, her way. We all have our own way. And his job was to figure out what his way was, not to get it right, not to avoid doing it wrong, that there was no right and wrong, that there was his way. So, what is his way of investing? What makes him feel comfortable? What makes him, right, come alive? What aligns with his goals and values when it came to his career, right? What was his way of doing things? And what he started to see through this exploration was first that he was getting lost in the details because he was trying to get it right, and that he was actually a lot more strategic than he realized. All of a sudden, he realized that he was stuck in his business, in the business, because he was focusing on the details. And wasn't zooming out. It was like this immediate shift where he was like, wait a minute, my way is actually to be strategic. There is no right way and wrong way. It was the same thing with investing. He immediately, like immediately after our call, he was like, I started having conversations with financial planners and looking at like, how do I want to deploy my capital? Like, what are the things that I want to do? And what that came from is he was no longer worried about getting it wrong and trying to figure out how to get it right. He just wanted to figure out his way. And so all of a sudden he moved from this external, ethereal idea of right and wrong, conceptual idea of right and wrong, and into an actual goal-oriented, what is my way, what do I want, and how can I work towards my own goals? It's also a lot more iterative. The right and wrong is an outcome orientation, where my way is a process orientation.

I love the iterative comment. Is so valuable because that's what life is in everything. You've got to start and iterate along the way. Nobody ever figures anything out in advance, you know, right? There's just such a myth, you know, like I have a friend who's, uh, next year she'll be a doctor, right? And now she's a fellow, I guess. There's no way she could have figured out how to do cardiac surgery, you know, And she still hasn't. Right. It's just you learn along the way. Our mind does not assemble everything in advance. We just don't do it that way.

Right. Right. Right. And when we move out of an outcome orientation into a process orientation, we unlock the ability to be iterative. But we can't do that if we're trying to get it right, because right is a light switch. And we can't do that if we're avoiding getting it wrong, because that's a blockade. So when we get rid of right, we stop thinking it's a light switch. And when we get rid of wrong, we remove the blockade. And when we just say, What is my way? We really start to tap into our zone of genius. We really start to get curious about what our specific goals are. And then we start to get curious around, you know, what that process orientation, like, what are the things that I bring to the table? How do I function? How do I do things? And then we take one step at a time and we shift and we pivot and we look and we seek feedback. And so we enter into a longer conversation that actually ends up leading to the outcomes we want. But it's in a way that isn't, isn't paralyzing.

We have to give ourselves permission to engage in the process.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And getting out of right and wrong is one of the most effective ways I've ever seen people do that. And I work with people all the time who feel paralyzed in some area of their life, whether it's in, again, investing or business or starting the business or selling the business or marriage or dating or whatever it is. And when we get out of right and wrong, we unlock so much possibility. And that really is when we start to see— because it's interesting, you think about like someone else's course, what they're teaching you is how they did it, not necessarily how you're going to do it. They're teaching you how they did it, right? And so we spend our life trying to figure out how everyone else did it instead of looking at how am I going to do it? And that process of understanding how I'm going to do it, like that's where we play to our strengths. And I mean, I see this so much in myself that like there are so many great pieces of business advice that I've never taken because they don't feel interesting to me. That's not my way. And so I run my business my way inside of my genius zone, right? Same thing in my relationships. It's like my friendships or in my marriage. It's like I want to do it my way, the way that works for my husband and I, or the way that works in my friendships. And when I started, I was very much in right and wrong. And I was afraid of, you know, getting it wrong. And working through that just unlocked so much for me. And I see it with my clients all the time. And I also want to say that the more we get curious about our way, the more we see the exponential growth, right? And we get to distinguish between our comfort zone and our genius zone, right? Something might be outside of our comfort zone because we've never done it before, but it might be smack dab in the middle of our genius zone. And sometimes we miss our genius zone for our comfort zone. We can always continue to expand our comfort zone and say, I've never done that before. But it's the same brain, right? It's asking of me the things I've done a million times, I've just never done it in that way. And so sometimes taking a few steps is about understanding that we're stepping outside of our comfort zone, but we're still inside of our ability. And we can rely on and have confidence in that ability even if we haven't done this exact thing before.

Yeah, really interesting. Really interesting. Wow. There's a lot here, Britt, for sure. What else would you like to share? I don't even know what to ask you. I'm pondering all this.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, something that I would encourage people to think about is in business, we do goal setting, right? And I think sometimes in life we do goal setting very rarely, but I think even goal setting can become overfocused on an arbitrary metric. And I think something that we don't do is create a vision for our lives, right? It's like there's one or two things we want. We want to make a certain amount of money or, you know, we want to have a certain amount of kids or whatever it is. And I think a question that I would offer to everyone listening is like, what would it look like if you sat down and created a vision for your life? Who is the person you want to become? What does this person have that you don't? How do you want to cultivate those qualities, right? Because you can hit a goal, and I imagine for every single person listening, you have said, when I hit this goal, I will feel this way. And then you went flying past the goal. And now you just have a new goal, right? We move the goalposts. So rather than continuing to move the goalposts, getting clear on what are the qualities I want to cultivate in myself, like what would my life look like if I was a little bit more courageous, or if I had a little bit more discernment, or I was a little bit more values-aligned, like, what would my life look like? And I think what we'll find is when we have a clear vision for our life and for ourselves, for what we want our life to look like and who we want to become, all of a sudden we become a lot more intentional about how we live our lives. And that allows us to actually cultivate more of that courage. I want to share a quick personal story of how this really impacted me in my own life. I had a huge opportunity that that showed up almost 10 years ago. And I was asked to do— so there was an opportunity to kind of throw my name in the ring to do a keynote. At the time it was Facebook, now it's Meta. And when that came across my desk, I got really excited and was like, hey, if you want to write a proposal. So I did. I won the proposal. And I just remember being so stressed out. I was so worried about how it was going to go. And I was slaving over my slides. And when it was over, I I just had this feeling of like, God, that was so stressful. And it hit me that I was like, I am never gonna make a global impact if I view that as stressful. Like, this will be exhausting. I need to shift my relationship to discomfort. I need to shift my relationship to my vision. And what I did was I sat down and I was like, what is my vision for my life and who do I need to become in order to create that vision? And I realized that I needed to shift my identity. I needed to become somebody where when I was outside of my comfort zone, I got excited. That doesn't make it less uncomfortable. Still totally uncomfortable. But my way of engaging with it was different. It was like, yes, I'm growing. I'm becoming that person. This is exactly what I want. This is what I asked for. That changed my life. That completely changed my life because then when opportunities came across my desk, when they made me uncomfortable, instead of saying, oh my God, this is not how I'm supposed to feel, I would say, yes, that's exactly what I want. I'm growing. I'm expanding my comfort zone. This is how to build. This is how to build. And so I focused so much on the person I was building and the life I was building instead of on how I was feeling. The goal is not to be happy all the time. The goal is to become the person I want to become and create the life I want to create. And me orienting around my vision instead of around how I was feeling helped me to cultivate courage and momentum that I never would have been able to create otherwise. And so I would just offer again to everyone who's listening, instead of just goal setting or not goal setting at all, what is your vision for who you want to become and your vision for your life? And if you start to focus on those, I think you'll find that you will become somebody that you're far more proud of, and you will build a life that you are far more proud of.

I think that is excellent advice. You know, arbitrary goals are a disease.

Yes, 100%.

Yeah, I've done it too. And I like, why I have this goal? I have no idea why I even have this goal. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. But that's very interesting. I think one of the other things that you just kind of very quickly mentioned is this idea of happy.

Yeah.

And I don't think the goal of life is to be happy. Now, maybe that's bad or good. I don't know. But, you know, it seems like really what creates fulfillment is being useful.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, I don't know, am I wrong about that?

No, I mean, I don't think you're wrong. The way that I've looked at it is like making some contribution, right? 100%.

You know, chasing happiness is like hedonism. That's not right.

I mean, 100%. And it doesn't lead to happiness, right? It's ineffective. And I think the way that I would look at it is, I think pride kind of got a bad rep And I think instead of looking at pride as ego, it's looking at pride in a really positive way. It's like being someone you're proud of, right? Doing things that you're proud of, making decisions that you're proud of, building a life that you're proud of. And I think that leads to purpose and fulfillment and service, right? It's like become somebody that you're proud to be. And I think that's a much more effective driver than seeking happiness, right? Making a choice that you'll be proud of, again, building a life or being a person that you're proud of. And when I look at, again, the times that I've been really courageous, I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I'm kind and generous. And so I think seeking that can be a lot more effective. And so, yeah, it's, it's understanding that happiness is a byproduct, not a target.

Yeah, I think that's really important. I do have one area that I'd like to ask you about.

Yeah, ask away. Ask away.

Well, it's this idea, and I've pondered it for a very long time. I think it's just so important because it sort of just sets the overall environment for the way we think. And that's the idea of context versus content. Right. And, you know, we seem to focus mostly on the idea of content. Which is maybe back to productivity versus overall vision, right? Like moving the things around on the board and, you know, maybe we're getting more things, but we're not expanding the board.

Right. Yeah.

You know, speak to that if you would.

Context is so exceedingly important. Context also requires us to be able to see things from different perspectives. Perspectives. And so a way to get kind of out of content and into context is to look from multiple perspectives. And the more we practice that, the more effective we become at it. And so I think just a really simple thing to do is to try to look from 2 or 3 different perspectives and just to ask a few questions, like even something as simple as, again, like right and wrong lacks context, where if you say, is this effective or ineffective? Is this aligned with my values? Is this going to help me create some momentum? That's contextual. Yeah, it's effective right now. That doesn't mean it's right. That doesn't mean it's wrong. I'm not putting a stamp on it. It's working right now. Great. Let me come back in 10 minutes and see if it's still working. So there's other paradigms that I think allow you to stay in context. And one of my favorite is effective and ineffective. Effective and ineffective is totally contextual, right? Instead of good, bad, right, wrong, which are judgments and lack context. Effective, ineffective is a phenomenal paradigm to get back into context.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, no, it's just that simple. Then instead of asking, is it right? Is it wrong? Is it good? Is it bad? Saying, is it effective or is it ineffective? It's effective and it's working great. And then come back, you know, and see if it's still effective. Is there a more effective way to do this, right, or not? And so when you're saying it's not bad or wrong, it's just ineffective, that pulls you into the context, and then you start problem solving how to make something more effective. And so just from a paradigm standpoint, asking, is it effective or ineffective, will pull you into context.

And it's amazing. I mean, there's literally 8 billion different ways to live your life, right? That's how many people there are. And this can help. What you're saying, I think, also speaks to the idea of just being grateful for things. Yeah, I remember over the years I posted a couple things on social media. Like one time I said, and this was years ago, that, uh, like, be grateful. Do you realize that 60% of the world at the time lived on less than $2 a day, right? I think that's with inflation adjusted, it's like $7 a day now, right? Um, but it's, it's just amazing how good most people have it, yet they can be depressed, unhappy, if they just would maybe go somewhere and put themselves in a different environment to see how good they have it, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think it's hard because when we feel bad, often we feel bad for feeling bad. And we get into a cycle. And I think one of the problems with seeking gratitude is that when you feel crappy and you don't feel grateful, and then you beat yourself up for of feeling crappy, it becomes a spiral. And so I think something that can be really effective is just acknowledging this feels hard right now. Great. That's okay. This feels hard. It's not gonna feel hard forever. It just feels hard right now. And the more we acknowledge that something feels hard, rather than blaming ourselves for that feeling. Often the road to gratitude is not lined with gratitude. Often the road to gratitude is lined with grief or rage or truth or whatever you're feeling. So it's like if you can just feel how you feel instead of fighting how you feel, you'll move to the other side of it. Gratitude is the gift of clarity, right? Gratitude is what happens when you feel your feelings instead of fighting yourself, right? And I know feeling our feelings is a hard one. I spent my life avoiding all of my feelings, and that's a whole nother issue. But the more that we can just acknowledge how we feel without judging it, the faster we get to gratitude.

That's so good. You know, it reminds me, I took this mastery course many years ago And the first couple of steps were, number one, experience your experience.

Yeah.

Just feel it. Right. And then number two, communicate your experience with the intention of others getting it. And then number three is have what you have.

Yeah.

You know, that's just sort of the acceptance of, right, this is what I have. It is what it is.

And yeah. Yeah. And I think also, you know, on the gratitude front, going back to this idea of maturity, You can be grateful and angry at the same time, right? Like, you can be grateful for what you have and still want more. You can be grateful for what you have and angry you don't have something else. We don't have to be one-dimensional, right? It's like you can simultaneously feel two things. And I think also the more that we accept that, that I am really grateful for what I have and I really do want more, it's okay to have those two feelings at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. Britt, give out your website. Tell people where they can learn more about you. I know you, you coach people individually. You have very limited space and time to do that. But it is available at, you know, on and off basis. I can't wait till you write a book. Thank you.

I, yeah, I'm working on it.

I'm gonna be the first one to buy it.

Oh, thank you. So you, my website is britlefko.com. My Instagram is @BritLefko. And yeah, I was gonna say, you know, if anybody's interested, reach out, I'm happy to have a conversation. You know, if there's opportunities in your organization, I do, you know, leadership development trainings. I do have a spot or two for one-on-one. And yeah, I'd love to connect with your audience.

Good stuff. Britt Lefkoe, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. This is excellent, excellent material. Everybody listening should probably just listen to this 2 or 3 times because there's a lot, a lot of wisdom there. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, hartmanmedia.com, for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guests' opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.