How To Actually Achieve Your Goals in 2025 (Evidence-Based)

If we think about the things that like especially leadership is asked to do, it requires some deep thought sometimes and at least we'll enjoy that experience better if we can do it uninterrupted. Now some of those times it's like somebody calls and we have to take that phone call or something urgent comes in. But lots of those times, in fact the vast majority of times, people are switching of their own accord. What's the problem with that? I mean, isn't that multitasking? Isn't that just the way that life works? Well, no, because there's a cognitive cost to doing that. We might feel like, oh, we're working on six things simultaneously, but actually we're not doing any of them at our most efficient.

I'm a big believer that distractions can basically disrupt anything you're trying to get accomplished. And it was very interesting. I've never actually thought about how we perceive information, whether coming in or going out. And I know you're a lot of the research that you've done kind of specifies in that and, and, and can help us all become, you know, better and more successful what we do by understanding it. So break down the science of the focal achievement thing. I, I'm, I'm super stoked to learn more.

Yeah, totally. I mean there was a really cool study that relates to one of the first parts that, that, that you mentioned. It was actually conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago Business School. And, and they, they did an investigation of what's happening inside two different companies, really different industries, but still pre big companies. They looked at executive leadership, middle management, and you know, sort of entry level employees, so all stages of the power hierarchy within a couple different companies. And they were looking at like, how often do we let ourselves get into a really focused state as compared to doing a little bit of something, switching to something else, moving back to that other thing, moving on to a third thing and just trying to juggle all of what life throws at us in a workday. And how do we manage it now? I mean, I think probably you probably resonate with this too, that by the end of the day I'm exhausted and it's not because I ran a marathon, never have, but it's just because of that constant toggling between I can't remember what I did.

I was like, what did I do?

Yeah, exactly. Right. Even though we know we did a lot, but can't name three things because we aren't, we don't get the chance to really focus and get into that flow state, that probably brings out creativity and is more enjoyable when we get to experience that. And what this research team did was actually follow these people for a couple days with stopwatch, in a sense. And look at how long do people give themselves to just focus on one thing that they're working on before they toggle to something else and then jump onto something else. You want to take a guess how long?

I'm going to say five seconds. Just knowing my normal day.

Yeah, I mean, that probably resonates with what it feels like. The answer is three minutes. We only focus on something and you know, it can be prepping a big presentation, it could be working on an annual budget. You know, we're talking about high level things that can't get done in five seconds and can't get done in three minutes. But that's the amount of time that people give themselves to engage in focused work before they switch to something else. And if what we're doing is working on screens, which is like most of our life, honestly, that drops to every two minutes because a notification pops up. You know, there's a little, there's a buzzer that goes off. You know, something about that screen is telling us, hey, come over here, come over here, come over here, come over here. Right. So if we think about the things that like especially the leadership is asked to do, it requires some deep thought sometimes and at least we'll enjoy that experience better if we can do it uninterrupted. Now, some of those times it's like somebody calls and we have to take that phone call or something urgent comes in. But lots of those times, in fact, the vast majority of times, people are switching of their own accord. What's the problem with that? I mean, isn't that multitasking? Don't we, isn't that just the way that life works? Well, no, because there's a cognitive cost to doing that. We have to put sort of, you know, a bookmark in whatever we're working on. Shut that door, open up a new one. Remember where things are at with that project. And that is called the cost. Like that's the cognitive cost of task switching, that we can't do that that efficiently. Our brains are not wired to quickly shut down something else and quickly turn on whatever it is that we're switching to and to do that efficiently. So we're not, we might feel like, oh, we're working on six things simultaneously, but actually we're not doing any of them at our most efficient.

Yeah, well, it also makes me think too, if I Just, I'm. I'm just, you know, I'm. I'm going to be candid and honest with my. With everybody in the audience. The audience is used to it. So I'm very, very much on the front end here. For me, when I have to stop and break away and then go to something and then come back to it, then break away and try to come back to it, you know, to handle little fires or whatever that pop up, I end up having to do a lot of the work twice because of the distraction leads to mistakes, and the mistakes leads to more problems and. Which almost starts a snowball effect of a loss of productivity.

Yeah, exactly. And what. You know. And I know that about myself also, so, you know, I try to leave myself annotations if I'm working on something. I try to leave a note about, like, what is this thing that I was working on, what needs to happen next so that when I come back, then I. I don't have to, like, try to remember that. But that takes time. Right. So even my workaround leads to inefficienc.

Yeah, no, me too. I. I've gotten to where most days I'll. I'll shut my door if I know I need to be in a day of like, I need to get something done. In fact, I've been accused of being almost too focused of trying to get stuff done. You know, I have the accidental stink eye somehow. Come knock on the door, walk in, like. Almost like I was busy. Right. You know, not wanting to be disrespectful, but I think it's written all over my face. Well, I want to talk a little bit about leverage. So I'm a big believer that you can lift most anything with the right amount of leverage. And to me, leverage is obviously getting more out of one action, one thought, one resource. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, how. How your work is helping others create that leverage or getting, you know, getting more done or getting more achieved with less effort.

Yeah. My whole philosophy really is that if we understand. If we understand more about our psychology and how our mind and body are connected, then we can expand the toolbox that we have available to us to make progress on our goals. So, you know, the strategies that I talk about are meant to do that, to expand the different types of tools that are available, so when something isn't working, you can quickly pivot to using a different tool. Yeah. So, you know, I think is one example. One of the tools that I talk about is materializing the idea that we need to make something visual, make concrete, so that we can use the power of sight to help us inspire the actions and the choices we actually want to be making. You know, you can think about what's on your to do list. Either the actual one that you keep for business or for personal reasons or the one that you just have sort.

Of running in your head.

Exactly. Right. And there's probably at least two of those, right? The one that's in your head and the one that you, that you have written down. And the one that you have written down in whatever form you do that it probably is the stuff that you, you think is like more important. Yeah, but I, you know, but I asterisk that. Is it really more important than what you have going on in your head? Somehow you prioritize. What gets written down might be professional life and what stays in your head and that be might be more of the personal stuff, but that's no less important because it's taking up your neurological real estate. It's taking up your brain space and your memory capacity to keep that sort of internal monologue of like, I gotta remember to call that doctor and set up that appointment. I gotta remember to like buy the dog more dog food. You know, like your dog still needs to stay alive and so do you. So schedule that appointment and buy the dog the food. But why is that any less important than what you have written down about like, you know, your KPIs for the year or whatever, you know, whatever it is that the goals that you actually are looking at in your official professional to do list? Yeah, and I say that, that, I say that because that's really a difference in materializing. What we try to keep in our mind isn't. Those are the things that we're going to punt on more quickly than the things that we have written down. The same with our calendar. The things that we schedule into our calendar, we usually do or at least are responsible about canceling and rescheduling those compared to the things that we just try to sleep slot into our availability by remembering to do it, we're going to forget it or we deprioritize it because it's not in our calendar. But again, just like buying the dog the food or scheduling a doctor's appointment, those things matter and it is okay to put them into our calendar in the same way that we might a meeting with our boss or a meeting with the next investor. Scheduling time for things like buying the dog food actually will help us to better realize where do we have time not Rely on our own memory and to be a better accountant with how we spend our time and how we get done, the things that we need to do for all aspects of our life.

Yeah. You know, one of my good friends, Rory Vaden, wrote a book called Take the Stairs, and he talks a lot about multiplying time. So he'll automate or delegate or come up with some system. And I gotta be honest, I've been trying to model my behavior after what I see in him and him and AJ when they're kind of doing their, when they're doing business and life, because they've seemed like at least that they've got it figured out. This is, I'm focused here, and when I'm done focusing over here now I'll pivot over here, where I'm probably 80% there, but I still pivot through the course of the day. I'm curious to know, in your research or even some of the practices that, that you've kind of shared, have you come up with your own frameworks or own techniques in, you know, helping someone multiply their time? You're getting, you know, twice as much done in that amount of time.

Yeah. You know, it's going to come back to the, this idea about using our calendar too, and how do we account for our time and all of the things that actually do take a lot of time, but that we never, like, in a, in a formal way, factor into our day. You know, like, I, I tell people this, but I still don't do it. Put into your calendar. Shower. Not that I needed to take a shower, but I need to factor in that time. Right. Like that's, that is valuable time that like, needs to get accounted for in the day.

So I mean, that's just, you know, kind of a glib example of that. But, but thinking about how do we use our calendar is a way that we can find more time. So we did, we did a study on this, you know, by looking at people that I was working with, team members of mine, and thinking about things that were really important to them that they were trying hard to get done. They weren't going to be things that they could get done in a day, in a week. For many of them, they weren't even going to get done in a month, even though they were some of their top priorities and top goals that they were working on. These were like long range plans that required continued persistence over the long haul. And we tried two different ways of thinking about how are we going to get the job done. So for One week, you know, people woke up on a Sunday morning, Monday morning, and they thought about, what is it that I'm working on? They wrote it down, make sure it's fresh in their mind. And then they thought about like, what today? What can I do today that's going to help make progress and when in my day can I do it? And they made an appointment with themselves, you know, even for things that they may not normally schedule appointments or carve out time in that formal sense themselves, like getting this phone call in or whatever, just like closing my door so that I can get some creative brainstorming bandwidth opportunities here. But they made an appointment with themselves for the day to work on this aspect of the project that would make forward progress for today. At the end of every day, everyone reported on how much time did they spend on elements of this larger goal that they had. And we counted it up to see how many hours did they spend by the end of the week working on this project. A different week though they did some elements that were the same. They thought about what it is, they wrote down what it is that they're working on, what's this long term project? They thought about what they needed to get done, what would be these incremental steps, what would be some goals along the way that I need to hit, what do I need to concretely get done to make progress. But they did that not for the day. They thought about like, what's, what can I do in the week? What does this week require? And they didn't think about just today and making appointment with themselves for the day. They did it for the entire week. So they thought about Monday, they on Monday morning, they thought about Monday, made appointments on Tuesday, they made appointments with themselves, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And what happens when we do that? Well, the further out we go from today, that calendar is open, right? It's wider open. But we've made a pre commitment. We've committed, you know, six days in advance at this half an hour is for me and for this project. And what happens naturally is that the rest of your obligations get scheduled around that pre commitment, that appointment that you've made with yourself. Like the week before, they reported how much time at the end of the day they spent that day on making progress. And what they found was that in both cases, like, you know, people were working on these projects, they were getting stuff done. It's just that they found two and a half more hours when they made those pre commitments a week in advance. So when they scheduled appointments further out for themselves, they held those appointments with themselves and were able to find more time. They found more time to, to advance on the goals that really mattered to them. And this strategy was effective for finding more time than thinking myopically or planning locally, trying to slot into an already busy schedule. When am I going to work on this? It worked for 66% of people. Two thirds of people were able to find that. That on average two and a half more hours in the week to work on something that mattered.

Yeah, no, I think that's awesome. I will say that, you know, my early days of building my first business, it was, it was a lot of shooting from the hip all day long. And you know, I felt like because I was busy, I was getting something done or I was making progress. And you know, over time I very quickly realized that my calendar was probably one of the greatest assets or tools that I was under utilizing. So much so that in today's environment, I'm fairly regimented in how my morning ritual is practice from everything from prayer and meditation and in the gym and then, you know, personal development and then what I'm listening to, why I'm listening to it on the day that I'm listening to it, and so on and so forth. And then I used to have a big gap, so finish all that massive gap to technically, you know, 5, 6, 7 o', clock, whenever I'm actually going home. And then, you know, I might, I might have, you know, I need to do this for my wife or I need to do this for my kids or whatever, but in the middle there'd be a massive gap. About three years ago, I switched to bucketing it in 30 minutes. So I have 30 minute buckets, right? And if something's going to take an hour and a half, I just lump it into three buckets kind of thing. So is there such thing? Because I'm thinking about some of the personality styles that I've seen. So, you know, I'm a big personality style guy. I like, I like that kind of science of what makes people tick. And I know that I'm very, I'm not historically very great with details. I'm super good at strategic, super good at vision, super good at relation, that kind of thing.

And then I've got a friend of mine who's like super off the chart details. He's like, Mr. Spock, like everything is organized in its place and all that kind of stuff. I'm wondering if there's a sweet spot of how we, you know, kind of organize those time slots to get the most Productivity. Because I'm just imagining myself for these, for my friends that are like super bubbly and highly go lucky, like, I gotta stop and like do my calendar, right? And then, and my other buddies, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, no, of course you've got to do it. Of course you have to. Like, this is like everything needs to be listed. Is there a sweet spot, like of kind of bucketing of time or do we really need to be as thoughtful as, you know, let's feed the dog. Let's, you know, how deep do we need to go?

You know, I think the sweet spot is finding something that you actually can stick to. Right. So if we, if we do believe in those things, like if we do believe that personalities exist, then, you know, me trying to say, like, this is the way to do it is going to backfire. Right? Like for some people it just won't work. But finding what does work for you, which tool in this toolbox of possibilities resonates with you, that you can stick with and not, not only that you can like, you know, get through the grind of doing it, but that you enjoy it so that you'll keep coming back to doing it. Like, that's really what we're going for. So, you know, that very bubbly person who doesn't want to stop and have to think concretely, like what might work well, you know, notion. Notion is a, is a tool that some people use, right. And it, and it allows for more creativity and expression for creating a to do list or for making assignments for yourself. You know, and a lot of people that, that I work with in my team that do that are that way, that are very creative and, and engaged, you know, they, they love using notion and then they love sharing notion and they love teaching each other about how they use their notion. And you see it and it looks beautiful, right? It looks like a beautiful to do list. Now, I don't want to spend my time making my to do list look beautiful. I want it to be very practical, even though I do consider myself a creative person. But that's not where I spend my creativity. Not on my to do lists.

Yeah.

You know. Right. And so maybe asana is better for you or something like that. Right. Like, there are so many tools that are out there that what might be the slog is invest in trying to learn what the options are. Because I, I can imagine that there is going to be something that resonates with you, that you will look forward to, helping you define what your goals are, breaking them down into smaller units and. And being able to track your progress. You can be better accountable to whether you are just running the rat race, feeling crazed and feeling like, really busy with the illusion that you're getting stuff done as compared to actually being able to track whether you are getting things done.

Yeah. No, that's so good. I was just thinking this, and this is going to sound kind of. It kind of goes along with what you just said. So when my. Before my wife and I met. Okay. We had individual people tell us that we should make our list about the spouse that we wanted. Okay. And my grandfather spent a lot of time, you know, telling me, start with the character traits first, and then back your way into all the aesthetic stuff. Because I had always had it reversed years prior to. And, you know, so I. I do. I literally create a to do list. I have a. I have a little hole that I can literally color in the hole as I'm kind of going down. Right. And I used to carry that mentally. My wife, on the other hand, come to find out after we are engaged, she pulls out her list of, you know, the husband that she was looking for and all this kind of stuff and look more. Much more like a creative collage. Like, there was. There was a heart over here and a cloud over here. But, I mean, it was easy to follow. You could connect the dots. These are all the. You know, it was the same list. It was just like decorative version. So I like. I really like that. I want to talk a little bit about overcoming obstacles some. If it's cool with you.

Yeah.

For the sake of fun. But, you know, but the person that I married, I was coached into making different life choices for how I found that person than what had been my default before and figuring out what our diagnostic criteria of somebody. A good partner. And I needed someone to tell me to do that work. And so finally, like, I had that list with the hearts and the clouds and whatever, at least mentally. And they were like, no, no, no. The hearts in the clouds thing, that's not working for you. You need. And what we came to realize is that I need somebody who has their own health insurance and that will be really diagnostic of all the other qualities that would make for a good spouse. And when I did find that person, one of the first who actually did have his own health insurance, like, lo and behold. Yep. All the other.

Came along. Yeah. And married that guy.

Yeah. And this. No one had the idea, we're going to give marital advice today. But it worked, right? This process works in this scenario. Hey, Guys, I hope you're enjoying the show. Steven Scoggins here. I've got something that I think is I'm just going to blow your mind. Imagine taking your life and your business to the whole another level. I'm talking about eight figure level and beyond. You see, you've been working your butt off to build your business where it is now. But what if you could work smarter, free up more time, make more money and impact along the way? How much would that be worth to you? You see, I can prove that basic steps, basic mindset shifts and subtle changes can make the biggest difference. I want to introduce you to the eight figure mindset makeover. It's absolutely free and it's here for you. It's a powerful summary of my top strategies that help propel me from the streets, if you will, to upwards of nine figures in quote unquote success as we like to chase it. This is more than just tips, though. It's a complete mindset overhaul with simple hacks that you can apply today to begin working on your unprecedented heights in your business. I would like the honor to share these types of things with you that turn my dreams into reality so you can experience the same type of joy and freedom that I now get to live out in my own day. In other words, it's time for you to build your own unstoppable enterprise. And if you're really ready to take it to the next level and elevate your life and your business, this is an absolute game changer for you. So if you want to take advantage of this free resource, simply go to the Show Notes and click the link. Or you can go to steven scoggins.com backslash8 figure that's steven scoggins.com Backslash8 figure. Until then, much love, God bless. Let's get back to the show. Take care. You know, one of the things that I see people struggle with a tremendous amount that I've worked with, it's something I've. I wouldn't say I'm a perfect at it. It's something I've had to work on continually. So I'm better at it than I used to be. Right. Is letting an obstacle propel me forward versus an obstacle hold me back. How is perspective and the work that you're doing geared towards helping overcome obstacles? Because I, I feel like that that's. You know, they always say that your success or whatever, your beautiful life is on the other side of your most painful thing or, you know, whatever, whatever way you want to communicate that so what has research shown?

Yeah, I mean, I think the way that we communicate about obstacles is a big part of this issue. So when we, you know, we can think about obstacles coming in at many different stages. You know, one of those is that the planning stages, when we start thinking about what is it that we're trying to accomplish. You know, some people, people should, and people do dream big about what is it that I'm working towards. That's great, that's inspiring. It can help sort of put you in the right direction, you and your team in the right direction. But we need to couple that with planning concretely for what are those micro goals and what are the concrete steps that I can take that's going to like transition or pivot me from where I am right now to where it is that I want to be in that far off future that needs to happen at the planning stage so that we aren't just doing this like rah, rah, let's do it, come on, this is where we're going people. And then everyone leaves that meeting and they're like, yeah, but which way do I go? That way, that way, that way, that way. And then everybody just ends up running all over each other because they have this excitement and the enthusiasm with no direction. Right. So that's why we need to plan, to couple concrete action planning with that big picture thinking. When we're having these like goal setting meetings either with ourself or with our team. But in those meetings we also need to think about obstacles, foreshadow, failure. Again, whatever you want to call it is important, call it whatever you want. But thinking about what are the challenges that we're going to experience that needs to happen in the same time that we are thinking lofty and articulating what our quarterly or yearly or 5 or 10 year goals are and that, that is going to set us up better for success because it helps us to have a safety net, right? So when we start taking our steps in this direction to achieve that, that, that long distance goal, we will experience obstacles along the way. And usually in those moments that's when we're shy of resources to figure out a solution to work through them. And that's why people fall off the bandwagon is that they come across an obstacle, some something that challenges them and if they haven't thought about what are they going to do, it can derail them and they won't have the, the hours, the creative potential, the time or the money to figure out how am I going to get through this but if you've done that work in advance, when you do have time, resources, talent, the collected minds to troubleshoot. What will we do if X and Y happen? Yeah, you know, we're going to be able to weather that storm better. So, you know, so why don't people do that? Some people, when I talk to, when I talk to individuals or organizations, they don't do that because they think it's going to be demotivating. When I'm trying to come in and say, like, here's our vision for the future, let's spend some time thinking about the seven ways it's not going to work out. Yeah, I don't want to do that. I just want to have this session be really positive and future focused and not in the weeds about all the challenges. This is my motivational pep talk moment. Yeah, yeah, okay, I get that. But you do a disservice then in a number of ways people are not prepared should they experience that and you've lost an opportunity. When all of the minds are gathered and they are enthusiastic about moving forward to help them feel prepared for what will be the inevitable is that we're going to experience challenges. The other issue is that having those kinds of conversations with ourselves or with our team or with our family is that we normalize setbacks, we normalize the experience of problems or the idea of failure. Right. And again, I'm putting that in air quotes because like we don't need to be thinking about them as failures. But when we, when we don't have those conversations about challenges are going to happen, is that we communicate instead sort of non consciously that we don't expect and we don't allow for you to experience challenges. And if you do, then it's probably something about you. That's how people react to that. And so what happens then when it's like, oh, I can't be the one that fails, I can't be the one that has a problem, I can't be the one that makes a mistake and I, I can't tell anybody if I do. People become risk averse. They don't take as, they aren't, they aren't as innovative because they are afraid of being the person that causes the problem that no one has talked about. Yeah, right. So we create a culture that, that, that suggests that we should all hide if we experience a problem, that we shouldn't reach out and ask for support to move through it. And, and this is what's coming from organizational psychology research, is that people cut corners again to try to hide or shove things under the rug when they do experience those problems and they don't experience innovation at the same kind of rate. So bad stuff happens. We create toxic cultures of competitiveness and unethical behavior, and we don't allow ourselves and our companies to. To grow in the ways that they're capable of because people are being afraid of being the one that makes the mistake.

Yeah, no, that's really good. I was thinking through my earlier days as an entrepreneur, obviously is more of. More on the visionary side of things. You know, it used to be easy for me to go, it's going to be beautiful. Everybody, we're going to make lots of money. Everybody's going to share in it. We're gonna have an amazing time. Right? And then, you know, fortunately, I was very gifted in that moment to have people who were like, no, there's going to be a blind spot there. That's going to be a blind spot there. And that early days, I would get all deflated. I'm like, but you don't. You're not. You don't see it. You don't see what you know, kind of thing. And then I realized that one simple principle changed the game, which is you need to have a management team that has. Has other perspectives to talk into what would become the vision. But you hold it with an open hand. And then if someone bring. The role that we have is if someone brings up a challenge, a concern, they also have to bring up some solutions. Right. So you can't just poke holes in it all day long. Because again, I feel like certain people are gifted at poking holes and stuff. And from my perspective, they were gifted that way. Right. Because you need people that are really good at seeing other ends of the spectrum that you're not seeing. The requirement just, okay, well, if you could. You're going to give me five different ways in which it's not going to work. Tell me five more ways in which we can make it work even if it doesn't look the same. Now, would you say that that's kind of in the same framework?

Yeah. The how are we going to make it work? Is acknowledging that it is likely it's possible that we experience this thing, and here's how we're going to move through it. Right? It's the safety net. It's the backup plan. We're going to think creatively here about if this thing happens, what are we going to do about it? Rather than just stopping at like, no, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. Okay, great. Now we've thought about how it's not going to work. But then do the harder work of figuring out, like predicting the future, what will be the resources that are available and what can we do. And maybe that doesn't like that isn't available in the future. But you've already started that process then. First of all, you're creating the right culture to get people to admit if something bad has happened and they do need help. And second of all, you've started that process of brainstorming then about like, what could we do? And so even if you know that backup plan isn't a viable option at that point, maybe half of it is relevant or you've already got people started to think about what, what is possible if we need to pivot quickly.

Yeah. Well, it also seems like.

By going through some of that work on the front end, it seems like it would reduce anxiety on the back end because a lot of, to me, a lot of the anxious feelings that I had, at least, you know, building businesses along the way was if I didn't have a preemptive planning, so to speak, that when stuff did hit me, it would feel twice as well anxious, for lack of better word.

Yeah, totally. You know, I think a great example, you know, from the world of sports I think resonates here. It's the story of Michael Phelps and, you know, world class swimmer. Back in 2008, he was in the, he was in the Beijing Olympics on the world stage in a big way for the, really, for the very first time. And in those first Olympic Games, he was poised to do something that no Olympian had ever done in the history of the Olympic Games, which was win eight gold medals in a single competition. At the time of this story, he had already won seven. So all he needed was one more, all he needed was one more gold medal and he would break, you know, world history. He just had to win the 200 meter fly. That's his jam, right? That's what he is known for. So it seemed like a shoe in. Except for when he dove into the pool, his goggles started to leak. And by the time he had just one length of the pool left to go, his goggles were completely filled with water and he was essentially swimming blind. Now if that was me, I would have been panicked that entire time, and.

Especially I've been swimming off course into the other lanes.

Yeah, right, exactly. I would have been in another pool if I was even invited into the pool in the first place, which wouldn't have happened. And so. Right. That requires a quick pivot. That is a major obstacle now. And I think for most people, that would have been the end. Right. There's no way you can come back from that, especially knowing, you know, what amount of time separates first and second place or second and third. I mean, we're talking about microseconds here. And if anxiety had come into play, then we're going to lose that microsecond advantage. That is the difference between a gold medal breaking Olympic history and nothing and just being a great, A great person that, that eventually the next great person surpasses. Yeah, but for him, he. So I don't think he let anxiety get the better of him because foreshadowing that obstacle was something that had been part of his preparation. He and his coach envisioned that this could happen. So they would practice swimming without his goggles or with them, with them being filled with water, or his coach, you rip him off his head and swimming and smash them on the ground to, you know, to, To. To mar any possibility of being able to use them. He had practiced for this. And so instantly he was able to pivot to his backup plan, which is counting as strokes. He knew exactly how many strokes it would take to separate him from one end of the pool to the other, made that instant pivot, won that 200 meter fly, won his eighth gold medal, broke Olympic history, and then would go on to win 15 more medals in his career. So an amazing example of what, you know, foreshadowing, failures, foreshadowing, obstacles can do is that it allows for that instant pivot when maybe those anxieties would have otherwise come into play and then thwart your best behavior.

No, I love that. I was thinking, too. You know, another example for me was, Is the, is the US Military, Special Forces. You know, when they're going through their training, they're going through all kinds of stuff, wartime scenarios and bombs going off everywhere and people shooting, you know, machine guns over top of their. Their heads and tear gas and, you know, all of these different things. And, you know, I think, I think the preparation level that will allow them to be the elite that they have is very much in the same framework with Michael Phelps. It's very much of, hey, these are things that could happen because they've happened in times past. You can use history as a predictor of potential impediments and things in your way. Right. So I love. No, I think that's amazing when it comes down to the anxiety side.

You know, I know we kind of talked a bit about foreshadowing. Are there other things that can help us kind of have a higher levels of achievement even when dealing with anxiety? Because like, especially entrepreneurs, you feel like the world's on your shoulders. You feel like you're isolated so much. You know, I'd love to give some more tactical help to, to them as well.

Yeah. I mean, I think what anxiety can do is change the way that we see the world in a literal sense. You know, that's a lot of what my work comes down to is that we're having different experiences with what we're seeing. And you and I might have the very same social context, you might be in the same meeting, but you see it in a different way than I see it. And not just like my thoughts about it, but literally what am I looking at? Am I focusing on this person who's smiling a lot or this person who's giving me that side eye a lot? That's one way that it shows up. But even if we're looking at the same, at the same thing, we're going to come to different interpretations about it. There's some work that I did in my lab looking at that, you know, looking at the interpersonal context and how we, how we respond to and read other people. And that's really key, especially for leadership. And there's been some great work done looking at how well do executives read others within their companies and what are the impacts of that. We studied it in the context of close personal relationships and what we found was that there is like a personality characteristic for how we read others. If you see somebody's facial reaction, it's very rarely the case that there's only one expression that's coming across on their face. Because we feel lots of emotions at one time and our face is capable of expressing more than one thing at a time. But that makes it difficult for a perceiver like me to read what you're trying to tell me with your expressions on your face. Because you're giving me literally mixed messages.

No poker faces.

Yeah, right, exactly. But like, that's something that we're not really aware of in the moment as we're trying to work through difficult conversations, manage, you know, manage the content of, of conflicts and those, and those hard discussions that we're having to be aware in that moment that like, oh, there's actually multiple things that I am picking up on that you are trying to tell me. Instead we just have these knee jerk reactions of like, oh, he's angry. Or like, oh, she's, you know, she's sad. Right. It's probably. There's probably a lot more going on. There usually is a lot more going on than what our quick instant read is. So back to the idea of personality characteristics. There are. There are, you know, differences in what we pick up on as perceivers, and we have proclivities to see the negative in people's emotional reactions or see the positive when both are possible. So I'm not trying to say somebody was wrong. If you, if you see this person scowl, you see their anger, you see their frustration. I'm not trying to say you're more right or more wrong than the person who sees the, like, the glimmer of, of hopefulness or sympathy or compassion that might be read as sadness by somebody else. But we have these tendencies to either pick out the negative more easily or pick out the positive more easily.

Do you think it's more of a tendency or more of a bias?

Yeah, bias, for sure. Bias is the right word to use here.

We would call it a tendency or personality characteristic. If you consistently do this with the same person or across different people in different instances, that would be like the tendency or that personality characteristic. And what we have found is that, you know, you take the same kinds of expressions. We test this in really controlled ways. Like we create the faces, and we create these faces that we know have mixed emotions coming through. We've made them be that way and ask somebody, what's this person? What's this person trying to show you? What's this person trying to show you? And some people can pick out the negative much more easily. Some people pick out the positive more easily. And what happens then is that when those people then actually have conflicts, they're working through challenging conversations. Like, you know, in our lab space, sitting on couches, talking with a partner, talking, you know, a personal relationship partner, a business partner about something that matters to them. What we found is that those that have a tendency to pick out the negative, that everyone gets into conflict. We know that conflicts are inevitable, but they experience it as much worse. The same kinds of conflict about who takes on more of the share of this chore or this chore, or how are we going to work through this tricky, you know, like, whose parents are we spending the holidays with? That conflict feels much worse for the person that has the tendency to pick out the negative. And they can't get over it as easily and as quickly in comparison to those that are looking at the same faces, but they can see the positivity there. They can recover more quickly through conflict. Even though those conflicts are of the same sort, they aren't felt as bad and they can get over them faster. So that's something that we found in the lab and what we know is that in the business realm that that really matters for people who are and for, who are, you know, executive level leaders of major companies. There was a big case study that was done of a major, you know, technology company, you know, a couple decades back. They're at a really bad place because technology, the technology was changing. And so there was a lot of uncertainty about the future of this major corporation. What's going to happen to them? Morale was really low. There were a lot of layoffs that were happening and it was just a really scary time for most, for most people there. And so this, you know, an organizational motivational psychologist was brought in to try to see what can we do here? We have to fix this if we are going to weather this storm for our company. We have to figure out what's happening internally with the dynamics here. This guy came in and did this kind of training looking at the like, emotional perception can these executive leaders, how much time are they spending and trying to read those that report up to them and read them accurately. Investing in training people on being able to read each other's emotional expressions more accurately, to see the nuance that's really there to stop and not only listen more, but see better was a major return on investment. Now when that leadership gave more of a voice, tried to understand the perspectives and the lived experiences of those report to them and, and even people that don't directly report to them, they saw that there was an increase in trust, that they said that the leadership has their back. It was building the morale by investing in that sort of emotional intelligence of the upper management. Even though they had, you know, things that in their mind were much more pressing, like, like managing these budgets that are dwindling and we're just, we're just like every, you know, we're hedging money left and right to slow down and think about investing. Investing in relationships had a major, major return on investment there and did a lot to fix the morale problems, which was necessary then to get people to double down and do the hard work that was required to get through this storm.

Yeah, I'm actually a big believer that one of the reasons that one of my, one of my businesses stayed at the eight figure category, couldn't bust through the nine figure category is exactly what you just described. The team not being able to communicate with the leadership. Leadership not being able to communicate with the team in a way that was allowing trust to be built. You know, for someone like myself who's historically been very hands off, it's been very difficult for me to become our hands on, become hands off and not, you know, and not put myself in between my leader and the team member to try to help, you know, help them figure it out because of, you know, my. This is how I would do it and get to that level. I've also seen that myself, for example, I tend to see the best in people.

I tend not to see their blind spots or what they struggle with most. Where my. My COO is very good at seeing the blind spots, you know, so I feel like there's balance in the force that way. Man, I love that. Before I ask you the final question, just out of curiosity, where can people find out more about your work? Because it's actually absolutely fascinating.

Thanks. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of these thoughts I've put down into my book, Clear, Closer, Better How Successful People See the World. But I try to share as much of it as I can too, on LinkedIn when, when I've done other interviews and write for Psychology Today as well. So if you want to see the science written up in a. In a quick. A quick bite, you can check it out there.

I love it. I love it. Well, I always ask this of my guest because I always get differing perspectives and opinions, which is why I love it. What does it mean to become unstoppable?

I think, you know, I think what stops us is ourself more than anything else is that our mindset and is at play here when, when we believe that there's more that we can achieve. Our bodies and our minds are really incredible. So I think we are our biggest limiting force. And recognizing that is empowering.

Emily, it's been a joy. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

Thank you.

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