Living The Joy-Success Cycle With Kevin Surace

Hey, everyone. My name is Penny Zanker, and it's time to reset. This podcast goes beyond just navigating change. It's about new ways of thinking, about how you can approach challenges, how you can shift your mindset when needed. Create some space and grace for yourself so that you can rethink, recharge, and reprioritize when and where needed. Are you ready to unlock your full potential? Thank you for hitting play and sharing this next episode with me. It's time to reset. Hello and welcome to Take Back Time. My name is Penny Zanker and I'm your host. And on this show, you know, I say this every time. We're looking for people who are going to spark some creativity. They're going to help you find, think differently, and most importantly, to help you get clear so that you can focus on what matters most. And that goes across the board. That's a pretty broad statement, and that's why we have some fantastic guests that are coming from lots of different angles. And today is certainly no exception. And it's been a topic that I've been talking about lately, and that is the topic of Joy. As a matter of fact, interesting enough, this past weekend, someone had asked me. They were in a relationship and they wanted to know whether there was a difference between having being in Joy and being content. And of course, I think there's a difference. I hope you guys think there's a difference, but they're also on a different scale. Anyway, without going into all of this for all of you, I'm excited to have today's guest with us. Kevin Suras is with us, and he is a father of the virtual assistant in Silicon Valley. Innovator, serial entrepreneur, CEO and futurist. He was Inc Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year, CNBC Top Innovator for of the Decade.

Whoa.

I mean, listen to this. These accolades are pretty impressive people. World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer Chair of the Silicon Valley Forum, Planet Forward Innovator of the Year nominee feature for five years on tech TV, Silicon Spin, and inducted into RIT's Innovation hall of Fame. Wow, guys, you are in for a fantastic treat. And he has 94 patents worldwide, so without further ado, I could go on and on, but we've got a rock star here and I want to get talking to him. So, Kevin, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Penny. It's hard to live up to all of that, but we'll try to make it exciting today.

I know, right? You hear that bio and you're like, wow, that Dude's cool.

I did some of that. I go, what? How did that happen?

You know, so interesting, though, listening to your background, tech exploration, right? Futurist patents, really looking at. And then the topic that we're talking about today is Joy.

Yeah.

Tell me how they connect.

I will. So I've been in the artificial intelligence space for about 25 years. I did invent the virtual assistant. So all that technology got licensed to Apple for Siri and used Siri and Alex and all those things, they came from me and my team in the 90s. But what's super interesting is that at one point, someone asked me and said, how is it that you can have, like, all these pants in different fields, a totally unrelated fields, and how is it you're doing things that seem to actually impact people and impact humanity, et cetera, et cetera? And I. I really began to think about that. And Goldie Hawn happens to be a friend for 25, 30 years. And Goldie, one time, this is probably 20 years ago, said Kevin. And you know, she's bubbly and she's fun, and she's all of those things. She says, kevin, you're one of the few people that I met that always seems to have high dopamine. What is that? Why is that? And I started to put that together over time and said, that's actually a cycle that you can get in. And if you start to live your life in a way that says, I have to stay in that cycle, and I call it the Joy Success cycle, then joy creates more success. And I'll go through what I mean by that. And more success, of course, gives you joy. And success doesn't necessarily mean money or fame or fortune or could be anything, right? Could be a little success with your family today. It could be just doing this podcast. Doesn't matter, right? Every little bit of success creates more joy. Now, if we look at all of the things we do in a day, and maybe today, if you make a list, I typically make a list. I may have 20 things on that list I must achieve, right? And some of them, I look at them and you do, too, and we go, oh, I don't want to do that. Okay. We are taking away points from our positive quotient, right? And we're taking ourselves down sort of the joy killer highway. And it's a very negative thing. And we all see ourselves do it. We've seen our friends do it. We've seen. And then you get down this spiral, and you got to get yourself all the way back up. I Don't want to go down there. And I decided years ago I'm just not going to go there. I'm going to look at every task, even the ones I dislike. I'll give you an example. Example. I've run companies, run a lot of companies. And when you run companies, you hire people. And in general, you have to fire people. It just comes along with the game. It comes along with the territory. No one wants to fire anyone. It's hard to do. Whether you like them or don't like. Often they become friends. I mean, whatever. But I began to look at this and say, look, this is just part of the job. And me letting someone go gives them an opportunity to be more successful somewhere else. Gives me an opportunity to cross something off my list and gives me an opportunity to also tell them how much I enjoyed working with them. But a reminder that jobs are a temporary thing, right? We come in, we drop some gold nuggets, we pick up some, we move on. So even in the harshest of tasks you have to do during a day, you could find joy in every single one. If it's nothing more than just, I completed a task because there's great joy in completing a task. Great joy. And that will lead to more success.

And that's where the dopamine is, too. So the dopamine comes from finishing the task. So you could wait just from that. And it does the joy from not resisting it anymore because it's more painful in the waiting period sometimes than it is to just rip off that band aid and do it.

That's right. So think about this, though. Think about this, that this is a way of life that you start to say, I actually have to live this way. And I'll give you sort of one of the rules, and I'm writing a book on this.

Before we do that, let's discuss a little bit and have some points I'd like to pick out. And then I'd love to hear your rules. But so what I hear you saying, because sometimes people like to hear it in different ways so that it can really connect for them. So you're not saying, like some people say, well, delegate everything you don't like.

Right.

Sometimes that's not possible. Right. So you're not saying that, and you're not saying to do an affirmation, say, I love my work. I love my work. Right. You're not going there. Right. You're kind of saying that you can find something to. We can focus on the good or the bad or the joy or the pain. Or the parts that we want. And if we look, we control it. If we look hard enough, we're going to find something that we can take away.

Yes. Even if it's just completing the task. Even if it's a horrific task and it's just completing it and that's the only bit of joy there is in it. You can focus on that. And that's why I say it's sort of a mental trick. Right. It's a mental trick to say I have to find joy in everything I do and I have to still do them. I can't just delegate them away. Right. Some things delegate away, but a lot of things, you go, I have to do this. This is going to be hard, but I'm not going to think about it as hard. I'm going to learn more while doing this. I'm going to learn how to do this better. I'm going to get better at something and I'm going to complete it. There's all goodness in that. But if you don't do that, you're taking yourself further away from success. That's the problem. And when you realize that, you go, stop. I'm not going to go that way because it'll take me more time to dig myself out of that hole, and I don't want that shovel and I don't want to be digging.

Right. I totally get it. So what I call these moments that you recognize that you're resisting something or you're frustrated and. Or procrastinating or any of those types of things, when you recognize that you're in that sort of, as you said, that spiral. I call them reset moments. Right. And so you're finding your cycle of joy is what I call a reset practice. Like, you have a way that helps you in that moment when you recognize it, that you can say, okay, I'm going to. I'm going to reset right now. I'm going to reframe this so that I can. And have more peace in going through it. And so it's having more peace or making it a little easier. It's not making it easy, but just that little bit can make a huge difference.

Absolutely, Penny. And you know what's interesting? There's great joy in easy, and there's great joy in hard. It has nothing to do with how hard the task is.

That's right.

Nothing. In fact, sometimes the harder the task, the more joy there is in accomplishing it. Right. So it's not that. It's literally, how do we look at it? And I know you talk about reset points, and it is. If you start to look at something in a negative light, stop and reset, because that is bringing you further away from success. And I think once you internalize that joy equals success, there is this joy success cycle. There is really no success without. Joy is a big piece of getting you there. Right. You realize that then you start thinking about your entire day differently. You start thinking and planning it differently, you start executing it differently. You start looking at all the tasks differently, you start looking at the things that come at you differently, and you try to find that other way of looking at that situation. It's raining outside. Oh, I wanted to go on a bike ride. This really sucks. Stop at one. I could ride in the rain. Kind of cool, actually. Okay. Two, I could do something else that's on my list. Three, I could realize it's great that we get rain, because the alternative is really bad, as we know with droughts, et cetera. So there's all kinds of ways to even look at something you can't control at all and say, but where is the joy in this? Now, we're not talking about like, a hurricane comes and takes away your house. That's not the point. Right. And we know that there are these points that have nothing to do with your track towards success. So we're talking about pretty much every day in the United States of America as we're executing our plan, which most of us do. Can I instead look at things to make sure that I find the joy in every single moment? And then I'll give you some rules, but we'll talk about this a little more.

All right? Yeah. That's fantastic. So what I wanted to ask you was a lot of people think of joy. This comes back to my intro when I talked about joy and content. And we were having this discussion, and she said, well, I'm. My friend says that she's content in her relationship, and, you know, what's better, to be content or to be in joy? And I said, well, aren't they two different scales? Like, to me, me, content is kind of like safety. It's like a safety level. It's a comfort level. And so it's a different scale. Then joy, to me, feels like. I mean, you're mentioning it as to find joy in every moment. I would think of joy as something that's not something that you sustain it all the time, but something that you strive to have as many joyful moments as possible. But is it realistic? I'm playing devil's advocate here. I mean, I Feel like a happy person and a joyful I. But is it realistic to look for joy in every moment?

Well, I'm going to ask you a question. We have our joy killers, and that's fear and stress and burnout. But it's also just negatives, right? So when you get up in the morning, people get up in many different ways. But you might get up and go, oh, my back hurts, or, oh, it's raining, or, oh, I've got a really long day today, or, oh, my last calls at 6pm or whatever it is.

Right, right. I know someone like that.

What happens is you have already taken away points from your positive quotient. Right. You're already starting to dig the hole down into the ground that you're going to have to dig yourself out of later.

Oh, absolutely.

Why even do that? So here's one of the rules, and it's a rule in the book. We take you through how the book isn't out, so you can't buy it yet, but it takes you through a variety of things that you can change your attitude about your entire day. So one of them is if you were to count. Penny, if you were to count the number of either negative thoughts or complaints you might utter during a day, you are going to find by the end of the day, you're not going to like the number because it's going to be over a hundred. And they're little things. Oh, someone left this thing on the floor. Oh, look at this problem. Oh, look at this thing on my list. Oh, I didn't make a list. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. We do it because humans naturally want to do that, right? And a lot of it, we complain outwardly, some of it, we complain inwardly. I encourage you and your audience to count up tomorrow the number of complaints, starting with the minute you get out of bed. Whether they're internal and they were just a negative thought or you complained externally to someone, it's easy to get to 100. Okay? You can imagine that every single one of those is taking us further away from where we mentally need to be to solve the problems of the day in the very, very best way. So the following day, you have a new goal, different way of life. You get one complaint a day. I don't care if it's internal or external, you only get one. Which means if you've used it up the minute you woke up and said, oh, this light isn't working in this room, you're done for the day. And the minute you start thinking that, you go, I better Be very careful about doling out my negatives, internal or external. Very careful, because I only get one per day. 1. It changes your life. And then you start looking at everything and say, well, I can't look at this negative because I already used up my negative for the day. So what's positive about packing for the trip? Well, I get to relook at my clothes, and I get to see all the cool things that I have, and I get to rethink what I have in my closet. Whatever. Right. You start to find joy in all of the tasks and all of the things that you have to do and all the things that come at you. Right. So I don't know if you have children, but if you have children, they spill things. Yep, they spill things. And there's multiple ways to look at that. But the best way to look at it, because you can't change it after they spilt it. Right. You can't cry over spilled milk. The best way to look at it is, I adore these kids. I love them, and I'm so lucky to have. I am so lucky to have them. They spilled soda. The carpet is fixable, cleanable, or replaceable. The child isn't. So I have great joy in having this child no matter what they do. Because when we were young, we probably did the same thing, probably worse. So, again, it's all how you look at every task and everything that comes at you, especially if you start measuring the joy killers. You measure those negative moments. Right. And you get it down to one a day.

I like that. I really like that. And we'll leave people with that challenge, because we do. We overreact on many things that just don't matter. And if you talk to anybody that had something really severe happen in their lives, like a health scare or a big loss or of some sort, they don't cry over spilled milk. Right. They are so focused and energetically on different things and bigger things that they let a lot of those little things go. Unless they're caught up in, like, an anger phase. Right, sure. But you know what I mean. There's just a different way of living. So I agree. We want to check in on those things. And back to your point about how many times we reach for the negativity or the complaint or the blaming or whatever of those things that just really aren't healthy. They don't improve our relationships, and they just drag us down, and it takes.

You further away from success. However you measure success, if success is, I want to get my child into a Good college. Every single, you know, sort of negative thought, negative thing takes you further away from that rather than having you focus on what can I do to advance the cause, Right?

Absolutely. And I use this in my TEDx called the energy of thought, which is very similar to what you're talking about, is that we have control over what we think, how we feel and how we show up. There's a statistic, you probably saw this, that we have 70,000 thoughts a day and only 5% of those are new. So if you find yourself in that challenge that you said, complaining all the time, that's your natural behavior, right. That one day really tell you a lot because that is what you are repeating every day over and over again. And no wonder you feel like you're on the gerbil wheel and not getting anywhere is because it's your own language that are getting you there.

Joy killers are success killers. Joy killers are success killers. This is the important connection that we try to make. Joy is directly connected to success. They're not separate things. It's not how I could be successful, not joyful, or I can be joyful. And I know they're actually connected. And in order to have success, you need joy in the tasks that get through there. And every time you have joy and you have a little success, it brings you more joy. And that's that joy success cycle. You want to stay in that cycle. And every time you stop and go, oh, oh, this really sucks. Now you've left that cycle and you're now in a joy killer cycle. And it's a terrible feedback loop heading right down in the ground where you don't want to be. Then it takes days to dig out of that, right?

Absolutely. I want to hear the juice because this came from somewhere. You didn't just. You weren't born in a place where you just lived all these joyful moments. I feel like there's a story that we need to hear about where this came from. Right. Did you find yourself at the bottom and had to work your way up or. I think understanding your story will help people to really connect to it that much more. So what's your story?

Sure. Well, there's so many stories as there are in any life. Right. In my life is not any more special or different than anyone else's. But look, I've had losses. I've lost two ex wives that died and had to get out of that. What could be a horrific joy killer. Right. And again, that's a unique life experience. But people take that in many, many different ways and can end up stuck there for a very, very long time.

Absolutely.

And there's no question a lot of this came from people asking me, how did you get all those patents and what did you try to do? And I started digging into that, actually. I said, well, one of the things I try to do is solve real problems for real people. So I invented a drywall called Quietrock. It's soundproof drywall. Right. And it's used in every hotel today, in every condo and townhome, and everybody builds with soundproof drywall. And how did you invent soundproof drywall? You're working on an AI. Well, I was in a hotel and I heard lots of noises. And then I talked to contractors and they were getting sued. And I said, there's an actual human problem that needs to be solved. Let's figure out how I can solve that. Now, you can't do that if you're not a joyful person, like, almost all the time, because your mind isn't open enough to see the problems. Silicon Valley is famous for creating solutions for which no problem exists. And we do it all the time. There are some 2000 funded AI companies just in the last year or so, of which 1950 will probably die. They've created great solutions for which no problem exists. And so you had people, maybe they were chasing money, maybe they were chasing fame, I don't know. But they never stopped with an open enough mind to say, I wonder if this is a problem that not only exists, but people are willing to pay me for. Right. So world hunger in certainly in some countries exists. It's not a problem that someone is willing to pay you for. So you, as a funded company, shouldn't go try to solve that. Right. But you can solve little problems at work or little problems in your life first. You have to be open enough. Open enough to see the problem.

Yeah.

And so how are you going to be open enough? You better be in a joyful state almost all day because you don't know at what moment that opportunity to see that problem hits you. You have 70,000 thoughts. One of them could be, wow, look at that. Someone needs to go solve that. But if you're not open at that moment and you're heading down the joy killer route, you'll never see it.

Yeah, it kills your creativity. Joy is a creativity killer. I mean, sorry, the lack of the other way around.

Reverse backwards. Yes.

Yeah, totally, right? I mean, joy brings out your creativity. It brings out your essence, your human spirit. So, yeah, I can totally see that. And so we have a lot in common in that way is I approach it in a different way with these reset moments. And then a reset practice helps you to, I think, is your cycle. I talk about getting perspective in whatever the situation is and how we can find the best way forward in whatever circumstance that we're in. And I love that. So solving the problem, That's a whole nother show in and of itself. But before we close out today, I want to ask you two quick questions. So I told you a little bit about my reset moments. And the more of these moments that we build over time when the more that we take, we create what I call a reset mindset, which is similar to what you say. It's when we're. It's just intuitive. It's the way that you show up in looking for these opportunities.

It's when you start to live. That's why I like the rule of one negative a day. It forces you to start counting and you can only have one. And it just changes the entire day. Right?

Absolutely. And we're going to challenge people that. So my question to you is, from your frame of mind, how would you define the reset mindset and why is it important to you?

Well, I would define it as if you start to head down those negative thoughts, you need to reset right away. You need to stop and say, and you need the motivation to reset. Right. And the motivation, I think, is this joy success cycle, meaning that once you realize that when you look at something in the negative and you complain about it internally or externally, that you're now going to have to work twice as hard to dig yourself out of that negative emotion. Right. So it's time to reset before you even start. Oh, it's raining. Reset. Isn't it great that it's raining? I'm going to make hay while it rains. I'm going to do something with that in a positive way. Right.

When you live in that place, you actually recognize those negative things in that bubble and you can pop it before it actually comes out of your mouth. And the more that you do it, it won't even form a bubble.

It won't. That's right. I completely agree with you. Do you live that way?

I try to live that way as much as possible. I'm not saying that I never have a negative thought, but I do. I do try to. People have always called me the queen of reframe because I can't help. It's just. And that's why I wrote this book, right. Is I can't help but think that way, because I have rewired my brain to be like that. Right. We know that it is possible to wire and rewire our brain through neurotransmitters.

I've rewired my brain to look at every task and find the joy in everyone, even if it's just finishing the task, even if it's just that. Because how much more joy can there be than climbing that ladder and checking each rung off as you go up the ladder? Some of the rungs are good. Some of the rungs are weird. Some of the rungs are falling apart. Doesn't matter. I'm checking each one off and I'm making progress all the way.

Well, that's fantastic. So how can people reach you and get more information about your new book that's coming out? I don't know when it's coming out, so just tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My website's kevinserrace.com. it's just my first name, last name, dot com. I do 40 or 50 keynotes a year, mostly on the Joy Success cycle, but also on artificial intelligence. Everybody wants to speak about AI these days, and I'm still very active in AI development, so all of those are there in disruptive innovation, stuff like that. But you can see some of my keynotes and you can reach out to me. There's a contact form and all that.

Okay, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Is there anything that I didn't ask you yet that you really think you want to share? Because you didn't share it yet?

No. You asked great questions and reframed it in a way that brings reframing into focus.

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much and thank you all for being here. So Kevin has left you with a great challenge. Take one day and recognize where you're sucking the joy out of your life. All those joy killers. Recognize every complaint, every time you blame someone. Every time one of those unproductive thought comes up, recognize it and tally it and see how many you have. At the end of the day, your goal is clearly to have as little as possible. But this is an awareness exercise. And then the following days, let's say take seven days. One week after that first day, for the next six days, you get one. Maybe the first day you need to do over a reset. That's why I'm telling you to do six more days and see if you can't. By the end of that week, if you can't see the difference in how it reduces and just being aware of it is going to reduce it. But then practicing it and putting in practice, see the difference that it makes in your life. I know what Kevin is saying is true. I do this with gratitude. And when we fill ourselves with joy and be intentional and create these reset moments so that we're intentionally putting that into practice, it's going to change your life. So thank you all for being here. My name is Penny Zenker and this is Take back Time. We'll see you in the next episode. Hey, thank you for spending this time with me. It really means a lot. If you're feeling a little off, distracted, overwhelmed, stuck or just out of sync, remember that's your signal to reset and that's all it takes, just recognizing one reset moment at a time. So stay tuned for more tips, tools, tricks, stories, strategies, all here on time to reset. We'll see you in the next episode.