Mindset Skills of High Performers: Psychology Hacks for Thriving Through Adversity w/ Dr. Adam Wright and Nick Holton

What's up guys, welcome back to the podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Adam Wright, who is the director of mental performance of the Major League Baseball's, the Washington Nationals, and Nick Holton, co-director of human flourishing and an optimal performance coach. Both of these men specialize in antifragility training, which is the art of not just surviving, but thriving in the face of challenges. They're committed to democratizing the science behind wellbeing, resilience, and performance so that it can be made available to the people who need it most. These are two men who are extremely well-educated in the field of positive psychology and are able to weave the mindset practices and perspective shifts in with the science behind why it actually works. So we have a really interesting conversation where we talk about antifragility, how to cultivate it, and why it's different than plain old resilience, the hedonic treadmill and our addiction to more money, more success, more recognition, and why we're constantly moving the goalpost. How to stop being failure-averse and feel more confident taking risks, post-traumatic growth, and how to turn the shit that life hands you into fertilizer for a richer life. Some of the signature frameworks that they use with executives, athletes, and major corporations to help them improve their mindset and perform at a higher level. I also get these two science guys with PhDs to believe in manifestation, so enjoy listening to me try to sway them.

If you are a personal development girly, you are gonna love this conversation.

All right, let's get into it.

Welcome to the Makeshift Happen podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Daly, entrepreneur, life coach, and your no BS bestie, here to bring you all things mindset, manifestation, and personal development. This podcast is designed to help you expand your mind and uplevel your life. So turn the volume up and roll the windows down if you're coming along for the the ride. Let's go make shift happen.

Welcome to the show, Nick and Adam. I'm really excited to have you guys here and dive into all things mindset. As I shared with you all, we have a lot of entrepreneurs, CEOs, women that are deeply invested into mindset and personal development. So I think they're going to froth on this episode because we get a lot of the feminine side of things.

We get a lot of the woo over here.

But I know you guys are very based in science and research, and we're also here for that. I love it when someone can give me the facts and so it can give me the details behind how things are working. So I'm excited to chat about subconscious mind and, you know, how we can change our lives and create more success for ourselves through understanding how our inner workings contribute to our ability to create certain outcomes in our lives. So welcome to the show. I'm very excited that you all are here.

We're excited to be here. Thanks for having us.

Yeah. Okay. So I know that a lot of your work centers around this idea of anti-fragility, and I think it would be a great place to start just to kind of define what that is, because I'm, you know, when I think about that, I can kind of maybe guess what it is, but I'm also curious about how that's different from like good old-fashioned resilience. So if you want to just kind of like break down what antifragility really is and how it maybe is the same or different from resilience.

Absolutely. Great place to start. Let's, let's start with 3 terms. You mentioned 2 of them, antifragility and resilience, but let's actually start with fragility. So audience will know fragility. Adversity strikes, things get difficult. You crumble, you crack, you fall apart. In the psychological world, this might be what we call learned helplessness, could extend all the way into depression. It can be debilitating. It's a serious thing, right? And the baseline for most people when they hit adversity is they actually grow from it. They actually improve from it. They get better from it. And so he said, okay, so what's the difference between those people and quote unquote fragile people, right? Are they just more resilient? Well, what's resilience? Resilience is when that adversity strikes. So, you know, you lose a client, you lose a lead, you got to change your business model. Maybe you're dealing with supply chain issues, whatever it might be. But that adversity strikes, you bounce back. There's a dip. Maybe well-being goes down, stress goes up, maybe performance is hindered a little bit, but you bounce back to baseline, right? That's resilience. So antifragility then is the next extension of that. It is the idea that we can preemptively, sort of proactively train ourselves up to actually not just bounce back to baseline, but thrive in and because of the adversity itself. Right. It's, it's kind of a, you know, you mentioned maybe this will be a little more masculine. And I think this phrase is, but this iron sharpens iron sort of idea. Right. And so we think that's important from a variety of perspectives. Performance is one of them, certainly. But when you really look at human potential or what I study a lot, which is human thriving and flourishing, there's this impression that that just means things are pleasant and positive all of the time, right? That's certainly not the case. I'd argue that's not even psychologically healthy. And so then you say, okay, well, if the unpleasant side is really important, right? And I need to understand how to relate to that and process that and work with that, then I think it really suggests a skillset like antifragility, right? Or a capacity of antifragility sets you up to thrive consistently, right? During the good times, but even potentially during the, the not bad but unpleasant times.

How do we train that? That's my next question, is like, okay, yes, understanding that, that's a skill we all want to develop. I'm sure it's a skill we want our children to develop. How do we cultivate that? How is that created? Is there anything specific that we can do or not do that might be different from the norm of how people tend to react to challenges? That would provoke that maybe post-traumatic growth or post-stress growth that people experience once they go through the dip and then they're like, okay, I'm coming out of the ashes and I'm rising and better for it.

So that's— so that's a great question. Adam, I want you to jump in here. I saw you're about to, but you mentioned the ashes and the way we often explain this is with the juxtaposition of the phoenix and the hydra. And so if your listeners know those mythical figures, the phoenix literally rises from the ashes. We actually push back against that metaphor just a little bit 'Cause we'd argue that the phoenix is coming back the same, right? The hydra, it maybe, maybe your folks don't know, you know, Greek mythology, but the hydra is that mythical creature with a bunch of heads. You chop one off, it grows back two more. That's a significant difference right now. We can break down what we mean by antifragility, and that's probably a good entry point into how to, but Adam, I think you cut, I cut you off.

No, I could talk about our model in terms of our, our, our biopsychosocial model. We call, you know, top-down, bottom-up, or outside-in. We can get into that a little more deeply, but I also think it's like, Well, what are we actually talking about when it comes to behaviors? What would we consider like antifragile behaviors? So things like being able to more effectively embrace stress and volatility rather than run for it and try to repress it, try to just manage it. Our goal is to lean into it. I think it's about learning from mistakes and failures in a way that we frame things rather than looking at simply things as a threat. We may look at them as a challenge. Part of that is psychological, but part of that is physiological too, and learning to work with your environment with some political acuity. I think it's about creating more optionality, maybe even redundancy and diversity in your systems, in your people, getting better at decision-making without all the data based upon your experience, understanding your intuition and understanding, getting better at interoception and reading yourself and that internal knowledge that you've gathered through years of work. You know, it's taking small controlled risks of a certain kind, of a certain magnitude that allows for the possibility of growth. So it's like, Allowing yourself those small exposure to stressors that over time, when managed properly, you get stronger and stronger, right? And then it comes all with continuous learning, continuous adaptation. If we're looking for one thing, to me, it's always about psychological flexibility, right? Responding to situations that contextually appropriate based upon our training, based upon intuition, based upon our own dispositions.

Yeah.

And Nick mentioned this idea of like human flourishing. So I kind of want to piggyback on that too. It— like, I think a lot of people, like you said, they would paint this picture of happiness or fulfillment in life or flourishing, as you say, of things being easy. Nothing is going wrong. Like, the finances are good, the job is good, family is good, everyone's healthy, everything's in order. And then we're disappointed, or, you know, we feel deceived when that's not the reality of life, or when there's only small windows of that happening. So I guess the argument, or the question rather, is, is human flourishing even possible without these risks that Adam mentioned and the challenges that Nick is speaking to that we're inevitably going to face? So what is, from your perspective and the research that you've done, what does flourishing actually look like? What does that entail?

What a question. Uh, we could spend the whole episode just on that, but I think you raised some really important points here, and also I'll try to get to the point quickly and break it down. So if, if you took— you use the word happiness, right? In the literature, there's a few different types, really more than a few, but primarily what you're talking about that, that your audience will resonate with is what's called hedonism. You've probably heard the hedonic treadmill, right? Hedonic adaptation. This is, this is pleasantness and unpleasantness, just a ratio, right? So that's kind of momentary affective, right? Then you've got what I did a lot of work on, which is eudaimonia or eudaimonia. This is like a meaning-based happiness. Okay. It's more highly predictive of life satisfaction than hedonism. Right. So, for your audience hearing that pleasantness unpleasantness ratio, not highly associated with overall life satisfaction. Deep meaning is. Okay. And so, then you go into flourishing, you say, okay, well, what does that mean for flourishing? Well, flourishing typically includes a few ingredients. We'll run down the list. Hedonism. So pleasant emotion matters, right? Laugh, love, experience awe, experience joy, right? Those sorts of things. Experience serenity. Okay. The tricky part is, is, and I love this term from Todd Kashian, who's a professor of well-being at George Mason, psychological richness. All the experiences, the meaningful deep experiences that life has to offer will not be experienced exclusively on the pleasant end of the spectrum. Okay, so for example, your audience said, uh, primarily women, right? I'm gonna assume a lot of them have children. Paul Bloom's work, The Sweet Spot, talks about, um, kind of the difference between suffering and chosen suffering and meaning and happiness. So for most parents, when they have kids, happiness goes down but meaning goes up, right? And so often fulfillment and life satisfaction will go up, right? So that's the second category, meaning. Pleasant emotion, meaning. Third category, single greatest predictor of well-being, happiness, life satisfaction worldwide, bar none, quality social connection. It's just your people. Not about quantity, it's about quality, right? So, pleasant emotion, meaning, relationships. The other categories are things like physical health, character and virtue, different things like that. But the The point you really want to make is that in order to really have intense pleasant emotion, you actually have to be familiar with and experience some unpleasant emotion. It's— there's a relativity to it, right? In order to get meaning, there typically has to be struggle, right? So think of, you know, what is meaning? It's transcendence, it's connection to something greater than yourself. And so the parenting example, like, why is that more fulfilling?? Because it's— I don't know if we can swear, but it's fucking hard. It's hard, right? And so it tends to be more fulfilling and rewarding. Relationships. Well, they're not pleasant all the time. They require work. Sometimes they're really difficult, right? But they tend to be more rewarding too. What are the deeper relationships? The one where there's been vulnerability and difficulty and challenge, right? So there's all these ingredients. It's the usual stuff that you might hear: pleasant emotion, meaning, relationships, physical health, et cetera. But the idea that it's strictly pleasantness that gets us there is 100% a myth.

Yeah. When you were talking, it was kind of reminding me of the film, well, or the book, The Giver. I don't know if you've ever read it or watched it, but I had to read the book when I was in school and I just recently rewatched the film. And it's that whole concept of he's got to receive all the memories of the past of the world. And some of them are incredibly beautiful that he can't even believe that they've been forbidden from society. And then he also has to feel the deep pains of the past of the world, of the war and the sacrifice and the hunger and the poverty and all of the horrific things. But even through all of that, he decides that everyone should be able to re-experience because there is no magic, there is no fulfillment, there is no meaning to life unless you have those polarized ends. So that's kind of just the image that was, was coming through when you were talking about how you need the negative to feel positive.

I know the name, but I've not read it or seen it. I'll have to check it out. That's interesting.

Yeah, it's interesting, Samantha, when you talk about that. I think about when I, when I graduated many moons ago as a newly, you know, printed PhD, I think I had all the answers. I've worked with some very high-powered women, both national team members, professional athletes, but really rock stars in the business world too, CEOs and hedge fund managers and so forth. And I made this assumption that those who are at the top of their trade pretty much had it all figured out. So, they had the achievement aspect and the mastery aspect in line, but then when you dug deeper and you really got to know some of these people, they were really suffering on the other side of their life. Things like deep engagement, things like meaning and purpose, those positive relationships, even things like self-acceptance and compassion or intrinsic motivation were lacking. So, while they wanted to— they hired me to perform better, You know, my focus ironically was to get them to be a better human being. And as an emergent property, you know, their performance hopefully would improve or not. Sometimes maybe that's not even necessarily a focus. Maybe they need just a little bit more integration to appreciate all that they have achieved.

It's worth mentioning. And as Adam lays that out, you know, what I did not mention in the ingredients for flourishing according to the science, and that's achievement. It's actually really not a big deal for most people when it comes to how they kind of retrospectively and holistically look at their life. Now, competency and self-esteem, right, and feeling that we are capable, and some things that can come from achievement, okay, that's a different sort of story. But like awards, accolades, big goals, those can sometimes be a little bit of a trap. Because if we, if we set ourselves up to experience well-being, happiness, flourishing, whatever we, we want to call it, as a result of those goals, we can kind of become a dog chasing our own tail because you hit that goal or not, either way, you're then going to move on to something else, right? And so it's this constant, like, I'll be happy when sort of attitude, right? As opposed to being able to sit in and savor and sort of flourish in the moment, um, despite the, the pleasantness or unpleasantness, right? So it's worth highlighting. Now, too, you know, hobbies like flow activities, deep engagement where you can lose yourself, people might hear that and think, well, That's my form of achievement, and that feels really good. But I'd push them to reflect, is it, is it only the achievement, or is it the experience itself that's really rewarding and satisfying, right? The, the painting, the playing the game, the writing, the reading the book, whatever it might be.

Yeah. And I like it, kind of going back to this mention of the hedonic treadmill. When I think of that concept, that is, I think of the, you know, I'll be happy when, and then you get there and it's not, or it's temporary. So then you get back on the treadmill and you're like, okay, well, maybe it'll actually happen when this, or I'll be able to finally relax when I achieve why. And it's just this, you know, continuous cycle. And I think entrepreneurs especially, but anyone, you know, who's a high achiever or who wants to create impact in the world, especially if you have a mission that's really heart-centered and it's really important, the work that you're doing in the world, I think sometimes we can get stuck in that place. So I'm curious if there's any wisdom that you can offer around this, of getting off of that treadmill, getting out of that cycle. And, you know, we talk a lot about enjoying the journey rather than just obsessing about the destination, but I think from my own personal experience that that's so much easier said than done. It's, it's insidious how we continue to convince ourselves something that we even know is not true. Oh, but maybe this time it will make me, you know, it'll be the magic pill, or it'll be the thing that finally allows me to be like, oh well, I did that, so now I can relax, or I did that, so now I can feel happy. Any, any wisdom around like what it actually takes to stop.

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Maybe I could frame that in terms of like, um, this might be going off the science end of it a little bit, but just what I see is the traits of the high performers that I also feel like they found a way of holistically integrating rating of success in their life. Just to touch upon some of those elements. And the first thing that I've seen is that these people take time to self-reflect. They've done the work necessary to, number one, know what their potential is. All right. In the midst of actualizing potential and set their expectations accordingly, you realize they can't have it all. Like, I have a lot of female clients who have to choose to have children, and it is a constant struggle and a balance, and there's a constant internalized aggression that they feel like they're not doing enough. Right? And sometimes we rather talk about balance, we talk about integration because sometimes you may have to be a bit out of balance and your focus may have to go on one thing and then the other. But the people that have it figured out is their priorities in place are already in place and their intention is set so that there's sense of agency and control over what they're doing. They don't feel like they're a leaf in the wind. I think that's an important aspect. I think the other aspect that goes along with that is having clarity of clear goals and purpose. But they're set within the constraints of self-discipline. So, for a lot of my clients, they don't like discipline placed upon them, but the idea is that that creativity, that energy is going to come about when some of those impulses are controlled. And having a team around you, having systems in place, having things that largely are placed on automatic, so there's not a constant internal battle. Should I get out the exercise? Should I not? Should I have this meeting? Should I not? Like, so in some ways, having the systems takes a lot of that cognitive load off that person, and there's actually more room and freedom to be.

Yes, structure creates freedom. I'm obsessed with the fact that you just detailed that because that's so real, especially if you are ADHD or, you know, any type of neurodivergence. I think that's huge.

And you better have— and you better have your priorities in, in place and to know yourself really well. And I think that's an important one, not just creating structure because that leads to me, rigidity and entropy are two problems, all right? Equally, it's one side, right? It's two sides to one coin and they're equally problematic. So being stuck with structure, being almost to the point where one of these obsessive compulsive, overly conscientious is just as bad as being overly chaotic and living on emotions. So it's kind of a, it, it like living in that river between, you know, both sides and kind of going with the flow. But a lot of this has to do with constant reflection and knowing yourself.

Yeah, I think there's a lot to pick up on. When you first asked the question, my head went to actually a conversation I had earlier this week with a young lady, Division I athlete, All-American, real go-getter, like tremendous athlete in person. And we, we talked about— and I don't want to get overly semantic here, but we talked about what I'd consider the difference between satisfaction and fulfillment. For the high achiever, um, satisfaction is not a good thing. And I think that's a potentially really important reframe, right? So if, if we or your audience is, is, you know, sitting down at night and they're kind of asking, well, do I feel satisfied with where I'm at, what I'm doing, etc., and the answer is no, I don't know that is necessarily a bad thing. Now, if they're on a burnout track and there's all sorts of toxic issues, right, you know, there's different contexts. But if they are satisfied, right, then by definition that's going to impact kind of motivation and drive and habits and consistency and that sort of stuff, right? So the key is, are you fulfilled by the grind, by the process, right, in a way that taps into that pleasant emotion, that sense of meaning, that deep engagement? Are you cultivating relationships in and because of these sorts of endeavors in a way that accomplishes what Adam mentioned, which is integration, really feeling whole, not, not balanced, not even slices of all those ingredients for our recipe for flourishing, but the ingredients in the right amounts for us and our values and our sort of desires. Right. And so I think, I think that's an important reframe. Like I said, the difference between satisfaction and fulfillment, that's the difference between have I done enough to stop versus do I feel good with what I'm doing along the way? Right. Really enjoying that process.

Yeah. I think it's Ed Mylett maybe that says blissfully dissatisfied. That's like a, a thing that he uses as like his frame of like, I'm, I'm, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I'm in a blissful state, but I am dissatisfied. And that's a good thing for me because it means I'm gonna keep working and growing and, you know, trying to rise to new levels.

Add one point to this, and I just, just an observation. I think we, you know, in the world in which we live with, you know, constant biohacks and optimization, I think we think understanding mechanism, we could talk about the dopaminergic system and, you know, all this neuropsych, which is interesting. And I love it. I studied it. I teach it. However, the lived experience, reflection, real and relationships to me is really where the money is. And I think that's where change happens. Understanding your emotions and your emotional drivers. Most of what we're doing is largely unconscious. Arguably sometimes, you know, some researchers, you know, 90, 95% of decisions are unconscious. And basically what thinking brain is just creating narrative, linear narrative to make sense of it all, even, even construct our emotions. So like the idea is like, let's have meaningful conversations. Let's take the time to do the coaching. Let's take some time to do the therapy. Let's take the time to read the books, listen to podcasts like yours and understand ourselves better. And we spend too much time trying to hack our way to performance and we're losing really the meat of the lived experience in existential element I think that we're really trying to get at.

Yeah. And, and earlier you were kind of talking about, well, I guess we can expand on understanding emotions and working through them aside from therapy and coaching. You had mentioned some of these frameworks that you guys use, top-down, bottom-up. Can we maybe like from that lens expand on what that looks like and what that means?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Any time you're really trying to do anything, but let's say in this case, generally change, Okay, so how might you want to change? Well, we would argue if you're trying to develop antifragility, there's 3 things you should be focused on: well-being, build the good, resilience, practice navigating and get a toolset for the bad or the unpleasant anyway, right? And then optimize performance, structures, habits, routines, redundancy, those sorts of things. We would argue those are sort of the 3 components, right? So, how do you do each of those no matter what you want to do? Adam used the phrase earlier, bio, psycho, social. So, what's bio? Bottom up. There's no brain and body. It's all 100% nervous system, right? You'll hear this as the mind-body connection. And so, bottom up where the juice is worth the squeeze, and first and foremost is sleep. Always sleep, right? I say this all the time. If we're lucky, we're going to spend a third of our lives in this state. It's a, it's a big effing deal. It's just a huge deal, right? Memory consolidation, cognitive acuity, processing speed, energy levels, discipline, self-regulation, motivation, you name it. Okay, sleep. But then after that, it's kind of the usual suspects. It's, it's, and I like the way Adam says that energy in, energy out. So energy in is nutrition, hydration. Energy out, movement in some way, shape, or form, right? But dialing in the body so it can be primed to kind of be its best self. So then you get to psycho, right? Bio-psycho. That's top-down. That's thinking about your thinking. So a good example is the reframe we just did with fulfillment and satisfaction, right? Using what the— one of the Rs Adam mentioned, which is reflection. This is mindset research. This is gratitude. This is optimism, right? This is cognitive behavioral technique, Acceptance Commitment Technique. It is really being metacognitive, stepping back and thinking about one's self-talk, inner dialogue, perception of reality. We all perceive reality a little differently.

We—

if you think about it that way, we often exist in different realities to some extent. So that's the top-down piece. Last is outside-in or social. None of us exists in a vacuum, right? Our habits are often a product of people we spend time around, right? Our emotions are often a product of people we spend time around, right? Emotional contagion, behavioral contagion, what we call network effects, concepts like purpose and altruism and giving that have huge implications on resilience and well-being and performance. These are all social in nature. They're not so much me skills, they're we skills, right? And you have to recognize that a lot of the person that you are, the behaviors that you execute, are a result of outside-in influences. And then step back and say, okay, who am I surrounding myself with, right? How much time am I spending with these people? Why am I spending that time with these people? Not necessarily in an over-calculated way, but in a way that comes with like intention and thoughtfulness and purpose, right? So that's top-down, bottom-up, outside-in, or bio-psycho-social. You got to consider all three lenses.

One of the huge pieces there that I'm hearing is environment, you know, not just the people that you surround yourself with, but like your actual physical environment and how that impacts your ability or desire to show up the way that you want, or to just be stuck in that kind of subconscious autopilot. Routine of doing the habits, patterns, and behaviors that aren't really serving you. I just think environment has been so huge in my life. It's widely influences my mood and my ability to just treat myself the way that I deserve to be treated and show up for the things that I want to show up for, like my living situation, my— the state of my house, the cleanliness, the organization, like all of that impacts me a lot.

You want to do a little, little, uh, question and answer kind of experiment here? I'd be curious about something since you shared that. So, so there's, there's Richard Wiseman is a luck scientist, okay, a luck researcher. And we've used a few terms here that I think might resonate, and I wonder if they're going to resonate with you personally. So earlier you asked how to be antifragile, right? And Adam said things like flexibility, change up your environment, right? Look for novelty, see things differently, actually create a little bit of that, if you will, chaos. And so Richard Wiseman has studied luck for almost 2 decades. He's narrowed down what he would argue are the 4 traits of generally lucky people. Okay, so traits, behavioral traits, and I'm curious if these will resonate with you over the course of your kind of moving and your journey, right? So number 1, They notice and they take chances. They have the conversation, they go to the different restaurant, they take the different route to work. They look at the scenery when they're wandering around the city, whatever it might be, but they're pulling more stuff into their reality, which thereby gives you a bigger canvas to work with potentially. It's, it's simple math, right? Number 2, they set positive expectations. That turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. So self-fulfilling prophecy, exactly what it sounds like. You start with a mindset or belief. We're not big on like the whole idea of manifestation, but that will lead to behaviors that will increase the likelihood of those things coming true. Right. Number 3, and Adam used the word earlier, it's intuition. Lucky people trust their gut. And number 4 is they're resilient. Even when things don't work out, they're able to sort of transform that bad luck into something good. And so I think these traits of lucky people, they're traits of optimists, and I think they're traits of antifragile people. And I'm curious if, if you thought over the last 5, 10 years or so, right, noticing and taking chances, setting positive expectations, trusting your gut, and being resilient, if that's been a big part of, of your journey.

Absolutely. I mean, the listeners of this show will know more, but just to share a little bit with you guys, when I was 21, I decided to decline my corporate job offers and move to Spain, whole new country, live with a family that I'd never met before that spoke a language that I didn't know. I met a guy on Tinder and I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna decline my job, I'm gonna come. I don't know what the plan is, but I know something is waiting for me. I'm gonna discover more about myself. I'm gonna learn a language. I'm gonna travel. Like I am, uh, I trust my gut, I take risks, I look for opportunities, I set expectations for myself, and things tend to work out. And when they don't, I'm always the person that's kind of like, okay, but like there's gotta be something else around the corner, or like, what is the lesson that this is teaching me, or how am I growing from this? And I think sometimes, you know, there's gotta be space for sitting in the bad, as you mentioned. You know, Adam was kind of talking about processing emotions and actually being able to be with them. But then there's a point where we, we have to choose to alchemize those and to move beyond the suffering, or rather the pain, so that the pain doesn't turn into suffering, right? To move beyond the pain and have that positive outlook of like, okay, what did I learn from this? How did I grow from this? And, and what's next from here? So absolutely, I mean, those 4 traits of lucky people, I strongly identify with all of them.

And you hit the nail on the head. It doesn't mean those are pleasant experiences all the way.

Yeah, I mean, they were— they're hard. It sounds, oh, fun, you moved to Europe and whatever, but there was challenges weaved in through all of that, you know. People judging me, not, not understanding. My parents not understanding why I wanted to do nothing with my degree that I just got from this great university. And oh my God, like, there was, there was a lot, you know. And, and being over there, I was unemployed. I didn't know what I was going to do for work. I was really limited. There were tons of challenges. I was broke half the time. So it wasn't all easy, but it was well worth it.

Yeah, I mean, what a perfect example of antifragile behaviors, right? And also what I'm thinking, I'm listening to you describe your experience of that, the way you process it too. I think it also, it's a good time to double-click on Acceptance Commitment Therapy, or ACT, which is one of our major cognitive models, cognitive behavior models, because number one, you had your values and priorities really set, right? You knew you're going to have some uncomfortable feelings and thoughts inevitably. You were able to recognize them. Hopefully label them and accept them non-judgmentally. And then rather than getting caught in a repetition compulsion of avoidance or repression, you chose to take value-based action. No matter how uncomfortable that was, you were continuing moving forward. And, you know, basically you embraced all these behaviors we talked about, about antifragility. I mean, pretty much you're kind of the walking poster. This is perfect. You could— I mean, it's almost like you are the perfect paradigm.

I'm the poster child.

You really are. I mean, it's like I couldn't come up with a better explanation. What does this look like in the real world? This is it.

Yeah, well, then I got fired from a dream job, and I was like, well, I'm gonna start a business. And then I became an entrepreneur. So it's just kind of like this whole story of my life, I feel.

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It is, and I want to be careful with this term. I know it's a little loaded here, but what we're talking about is really the antithesis of a, of kind of a victim mentality, right? It doesn't mean bad things don't happen. It doesn't mean we're not all fighting certain fights or rolling the boulder up the hill. And some of those boulders are bigger than others and some of the hills are steeper than others. But, you know, at the end of the day, shit happens. What are you going to do? How are you going to respond? Right. There's, there's certain ways and mentalities and behaviors that will help us to respond in ways that are more probable to create well-being or that resilience or that PTG. Right. In those moments, it's just the fact of the matter.

Somehow people think in that they've had negative feelings or negative assessments or they replay an old narrative that often isn't even from them. It's something internalized from a primary caregiver or teacher or whomever that, that means they should not move forward as opposed to having, you know, the agency and autonomy to start working on a separate narrative. Doesn't even have to— I would say narratives don't have to be true. There's a level of truthiness to them, but I want them to be workable and I want them to be empowering. I want them to give agency. I want somebody to be able to take chances and usually to take what otherwise might be internalized aggression and self-hatred and turn outside of the world and take meaningful action. Mm-hmm.

And it is— there's such an important point here that we, we kind of mentioned at the start, but I really just want to make explicit. And Adam said it a few times: flexibility. Because you hear anti-fragility and it can sound, I think, like mental toughness, right? Or, or rigidity, like a stiffness. But when you think about the things that are truly fragile, right, they tend to be very rigid. Right? They tend to be easily snapped and broken, right? And what isn't is something that has a little give and a little flexibility. So it's, it's knowing values, it's knowing boundaries, but it's having optionality. Adam said, right, that, that toolkit to be able to look at things differently, adjust to things differently, play with systems and practices and habits and mold in whatever ways, right, molding needs to occur to move forward in the best way possible.

Hmm. Something that Adam had mentioned earlier was about like priorities and being able to— and you also brought up this idea of balance and how that's maybe, you know, like my idea of balance is like a 75-25 sort of situation versus like a 50-50. I think the general view of balance is both equal parts. But to your point that you were making earlier, it's like that might not be the balance for you. And to kind of bring that into the realm of priorities and values, I think sometimes where people struggle is, and myself included in that, is wanting, wanting all of our buckets to be equal. I call this bucket theory. I made it up. It's not research-based, but, you know, it's imagining that you have all these different buckets of different areas of your life. And if you're trying to pour, you have a limited amount of energy, time expenditure, resources, whatever, and you're trying to pour an equal amount into all those buckets. It's going to really feel like you're not growing and things aren't moving. And so to Adam's point, sometimes having your priorities straight and knowing— and those change over time, right? It's not like your priorities are set in stone for every season of your life, but really understanding this is the season of life that I'm in. And if that's parenthood for you, then maybe that's the primary focus. And so some other things take a back seat, or you're just less— you have less energy expenditure to give to those things. So I'd love for you guys to kind of talk about this from a science-based perspective of priorities or core values. Like, how do we actually determine what these things are and how flexible are they? Because I'm of the belief that my core values as they are today as a 30-year-old woman are going to be very different when I'm 50.

Adam, I'd love to hear your answer about the values piece.

Yeah, I think we'll probably approach this because we're training a little, little differently. I think that's what we do so well because we complement each other given our backgrounds. But, you know, to me, I would argue, so yes, I think our expression of our values, our expression of our principles may change over time in terms of our developmental life and where we are in our situations. But ultimately, I don't think they change that much. Now, we use some formal assessments to get a little bit closer to this, but usually in a formal interview, and first time, you know, I have a therapy practice too. I went back to learn to be a psychotherapist. A lot of times in the initial interview, within the first session, you could just ask some questions, dig a little deeper. You can get a good sense of what really drives someone beyond that first layer, right? With some good pointed questions. And I think once you can get that and you can get that in shape, then we can say, okay, let's think, let's think about your principles and your values now, but what is the best pathway at this time to express them? Rather than thinking, right? Rather than thinking that I have to do everything at once, it's like, no, let's just find one path that allows us the opportunity to express them now. Well, let's focus on that and maybe do some work here. The problem I think people often have is that they get caught up in this idea that their work has to be perfect, their life has to be perfect, and everything has to be embraced in such a way that they're living their perfect life in a perfect expression who they are. Largely, I think that kind of fantasy thinking without reality testing becomes problematic. So even though personalities are largely stable over life, I think how we express them and contextually how we get to them in the work that we do and the relationships we have is going to change and you have to allow for that.

Adam, what are some of the assessments you use?

I like the VIA. I think that's one, the positive psychology assessments, that's really useful and it aligns with Stoic philosophy, which I also like in terms of— Yeah, I think that's probably one of the best ones. What about you?

We have V— so VIA, Samantha, is Values in Action Inventory. And what it is, it's a selection of 24 really virtues or character strengths, if you will. You could look at them as values as well that are for the most part kind of like universally acknowledged or accepted, like across culture, across geography, across religion, those sorts of things. So you can imagine stuff like humility, self-regulation or discipline, optimism, gratitude, love, leadership, right? Those sorts of things. So if people want to start kind of digging into some of those strengths and virtues and values, they can go to— I think it's viacharacter.org/survey. It's a free survey, easy, easy way to just kind of check it out and get a report. Oh, you want to jump in, Adam?

Just— here's another thing. When you do this kind of work, here's what's really useful about this, because, you know, there's a dark side to our values as well. So for instance, I appreciate honesty. Right? What, right? So that's great until I overrespond to someone who is not perfectly honest to me, and now it becomes a liability and I'm responding and transferring my emotionality to the situation that really doesn't deserve that kind of intensity. So, so it's not just cultivating, right? These top 5 or 7 or 10 character strengths or values. It's also understanding how they play into our life and our relationships, but then looking at the ones that are at the bottom of the bucket. And saying, well, why aren't they valuable to you right now? And what is it about these? And maybe how can we integrate them in our lives with behaviors that we can bolster them and leverage them a little more if it allows us to move in line with who we want to be?

The shadow side.

Always, always.

Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, we do this, and I don't want to conflate strengths and values as the same thing. We're talking about slightly different stuff here. But yeah, you can The simple idea is you can overuse and underuse a strength, right? And you can be sometimes, I think, overcommitted or undercommitted to a value. You know, if we, if we stick with values, that's actually a good segue because this is going to be highly predictive of well-being. It's going to predict whether or not you stick with the goal you set. The psychological term is coherence, congruence. It's alignment, right? That shitty feeling you have when you do something that is out of alignment with your values or a value. Like, good, that's feedback. That's saying, hey, you messed up, do something about it, right? Reset sort of deal. Um, so like, so the starting point of just like getting to know what those are is crucial. And then I, I personally— and this isn't really scientific, but I find it to have some utility sometimes— if you're really trying to step back and say, what is most central to me? What are some of my most important beliefs? Which is what a value is, right? Which I can found my behavior and my goals and to a certain extent my identity on, I would ask one simple question: What is a belief that I'm not going to just abandon for the people around me? Right. It anchors me to me, not necessarily to the people around me. Right. If you all of a sudden are abandoning beliefs because of groupthink or confirmation bias or whatever it might be, I might push back and question how deeply held of a belief or value that was in the first place. So again, not super sciency, but I think a simple lens to sometimes think through.

Yeah, I think it's great. Again, let me add 3 questions, right? This is something I always ask people when I sit with them. It's like, tell me some times when you're happiest in your life. Tell me some times that when you, when you experience something or you, you executed something that made you most proud. Identify times when you're most fulfilled and satisfied and who were you with and what exactly were you doing? You know, some simple questions like that allow you to dig deeper, you know, and you can get a little bit closer because what you imagine that your values are may be very different than what your behaviors actually tell us about you. Because I think often people are defined by their actions and they're not even aware of that so much.

So we're talking about, you know, thoughts that become beliefs that are our values that anchor the thing, our behavior and how we show up in the world. Which is kind of like this whole construction that creates our personalities. And Adam had kind of said, like, your personality is over your lifetime, you know, it varies a little bit, but it's largely the same. But I've also heard from— I think it's Ben Hardy, he's a psychologist, and he has a book that's called Personality Isn't Permanent. And I think his argument is that when you start to change the thoughts, you can then change the behaviors, and then you can change how you show up. And that kind of can look or appear or feel like you've adapted this sort of new identity, new version of yourself, new personality. Um, and I know this is a lot of the work that my listeners are trying to do all the time in their lives is, you know, can I create a new identity for myself? Can I create new beliefs for myself so that I can act differently, so that I can perform better, so that I can achieve better? So I'd love to get your perspectives on this idea of adopting new identities and actually being able to become an new version of yourself, whatever that means scientifically.

You want to go first, David?

No, you go, Adam.

Yeah. So, so if you look at, um, the most researched aspect of personality is the Big Five personality characteristics, right? So it's, it's openness. It's, this is all a continuum scale. Openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, introversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And when I went way back in the day, I was told that they were pretty stable. There was some movement and some fluid, but very little. What the new research is saying is, right, state can change trait to a point because a lot of these are genetically, you know, epigenetically driven to a point. So I think when we talk about this in some ways, I think if we want to be more optimistic, we, we, we, we tend to like commit to more optimistic behaviors and force yourself on more optimistic frames. That doesn't mean you're going to adapt the positive explanatory style of someone who is genetically gifted in that way. But can you move the needle?

Absolutely.

So the way we like to look at it, where I look at it with clients is, you know, there is a multiplicity of selves. And the idea is that we can access them based upon the context and knowing ourselves and having these options and having the flexibility that's most appropriate. That doesn't mean you're giving up your sense of identity. That doesn't mean you're giving yourself the values. It means you're bringing your, a certain sense of yourself to a certain environment because it's appropriate. So I, I think we, you know, it's important to be, um, I want to make it like, I want to make it usable, but at the same time, when we, when we act in these ways, I think we have to, we really have to have a foundation of science on which we're coming up with these ideas. And if we're going to look at, well, I know, Nick, you could do it, is there's one body of research, it's Big Five personality. We really need to frame that and understand it when we talk about these things.

Yeah, in a world being psychology that oftentimes takes legitimate, understandable criticism for some of the measurement tools, the Big Five is, I think, widely considered one of the best that the field has ever come up with. Yeah, right.

Um, high replication rates.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, Adam hit the nail on the head. You know, I'll just kind of like add on a little bit here. Um, we talked earlier, right, top-down, bottom-up, outside-in. So, so there are— yes, personality can change to an extent, right? Other than that, it's genetic. Okay. And environmental, which we talked about earlier.

Okay.

So what's the saying, right? Genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger, sort of deal, right? So by the time you're old enough to even understand what a personality is, let alone metacognitively think, I want to change it, I want to shift my identity, a lot of stuff's happened. It's just the reality of the situation, right? But here's what I would say to, you know, we talked earlier about learned helplessness. Adam used the term explanatory style, like, what's the point? In thinking I can't change my personality or identity, right? That, that's pretty deterministic, right? That'll lead to just inaction. On the other hand, optimism, whether it's Pollyanna-ish, right? I can be whoever I want to be. That's, that's not so much the case versus realistic optimism. The science says I can change some of my tendencies and part of my personality, but I'm dealing with a history as well. Well, that's a belief I think we should want because that at least gives us the possibility of taking action that might turn into that outcome. We use self-fulfilling prophecy earlier, right? So there's caveats and nuance to the science, but at the end of the day, like, the simple answer is, like, yeah, believe you can make change because that's going to increase the likelihood you'll actually try, which will increase the likelihood that you might.

Yeah. Well, and I know that, that you guys believe in the science behind gratitude, which practices, which is a version of what we're talking about. You know, if you want to live a better life or become a better version of yourself, it has to start with how you're thinking and what you're looking for. And so what I hear you saying is, why not look for the good? Why not lean towards the positive or attempt to make those changes and believe that it's possible? Because then you might start to see things through a new lens, which will then allow you to behave in new and better ways.

This is and again, we're kind of coming back to flexibility, but it's a really good example. And I think we could kind of concretize this, you know, for your audience a little bit. So some might know the name Roger Bannister. Roger Bannister was the first human being that we know of, right, on record to run a mile in under 4 minutes. And he's a really interesting story. And he comes up all the time when you're doing mindset research and expectancy theory because he was told by doctors and scientists physically impossible to do that, right? But, you know, he has a belief that leads to training and action that eventually turns into breaking that 4-minute mile, right? And so you hear that anecdote and you think, well, I should just— positive belief, self-fulfilling prophecy, manifest it, right? All those sorts of things. Cool. Okay, fine. You know, I have my podcast co-host is in London, right? So if I wanted to go have a pint with him, Right. Should I have a growth mindset and optimism and a positive expectation that I can swim there? No, I should not.

Right.

Like, there are some limitations to these things. Right. And so coming back to flexibility, that's the toolkit. Do you have the capacity to be realistically, strategically pessimistic when it's required? Right. And healthy and safe.. But do you also have the nimbleness and flexibility to take the optimism and the self-efficacy and the sort of, you know, affirmations, if you will, or gratitude and wield that as well? It's not an either or, it's a both and.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, in, in my realm of work and kind of more of this spiritual space, we look at that as different energies and kind of like the masculine energetics and, and the feminine energetics. And it's, it's not a this or that. It's not just hard work, grind, hustle, be realistic, put your head down. Or it's not just simply, you know, will your way, just sit and meditate and think that it will happen and it will magically fall into your lap. It's this beautiful combination of if we can actually do both of those things together, if we can take aligned action and believe that things are possible, then what is the power of what we could create in our lives? And I just wanna add, 'cause I know you guys are, you both have PhDs, you're well-educated, you clearly love the science of things, but you brought up manifestation a couple of times and I do just wanna like push back a little bit and say that manifestation does require action. And I think that's one of the biggest myths about this overarching idea is that manifestation is just the, the positive believing and the sitting and the hoping and the wishing. But when you actually get into the practices of it, it's not just that. It's the positive thinking. Yes, it's setting realistic but dreamy expectations for your life and your potential and possibilities. But then it's also sitting down and going, and what do I do about it? Right? What is the first aligned action step that I have to take? Who do I have to talk to? Who, like, who can I call? What do I— what email do I need to send? What first step do I need to take to actually put the wheels into motion? So I think we're talking about the same thing.

Probably. Yeah, probably. It's, it's the, it's the believe it, poof, it happens that I would take issue with.

Yeah. I think you speak to another issue too. I think a lot of times it's kind of, I, I like to say old wine and new bottles. Yeah. A lot of times in, in academia it's called, you know, operational definition. Like we talk about very similar things, but we come at it from different angles or use different words and consequently we talk past each other.. And I think what you just did a great job of explaining what manifestation is, because I've had another idea of it. And I think having these conversations, we realize we have much more in common than, than we do, you know, apart. So, so yeah, I, I agree. If you define it that way, absolutely makes perfect sense.

Yeah. Cool. Okay. One thing that I wanna talk about is this idea of, cuz we've mentioned a lot, you know, a lot of our life is controlled by our subconscious beliefs Some of the research says 95 to 99%, as you've mentioned, is, you know, we're kind of autopiloting through life for the most part. So if one of your clients had a subconscious belief that was, let's say, not supporting them, or is it— it was in direct contrast to the goal that they wanted to reach, how would you guys go about helping them shift that? Maybe it's a belief of like, you know, I always have to work I have to work harder or struggle or suffer in order to be able to make more money, or I'm always busy and there's never enough time, or I don't know if it's possible to be wildly successful and also be a great mom at the same time. If there was some sort of subconscious belief that was getting in the way of your client achieving what they were working towards, what are some of your methods or tools or frameworks, um, to help them aside from the things, you know, so much we've already mentioned in this episode? To kind of help them rework and rewire that subconsciously?

Nick, I'll let you start with some rational— yeah, and I'll go my analytics approach.

Well, no, I'll take— you know, that'd be great, but I'll, I'll take kind of 3 simple steps, right? So if, if you're— especially if you're working with a coach, right, or say a therapist or something like that. But I think that's a great first step because generally if something is subconscious, it can be really hard to make it conscious and to become aware of it, right? And so it's this external perspective and this questioning and conversation that I think can sometimes unearth that for us. So step one is if I identified what we would call a potentially limiting belief that they might not even be aware of, my first step is to make them aware of it and not in a judgmental way, but just, hey, I noticed you use this language that sounds to me like your belief is X, Y, Z. You know, do I have that right or wrong? Like, oh, that's right. But I guess I've never stopped to really think about it that way. So, okay, step 2, let's challenge that belief. Adam, you use refute. I don't mean refute, I just mean challenge. Let's check the math. Okay. And this is cognitive behavioral technique. So am I falling into one of 8 common thinking traps? And so I'll use this example. You know, listeners will know the acronym RBF, right? Not a very nice acronym. Okay. So I have the male version of that. You can't tell right now while I'm smiling and conversing with you, but I've been in a lot of meetings where that's gotten not in trouble, but like it's created situations that were not intended.

Resting bitch face for anyone who's like, what's RBF?

Thank you. Yes, thank you. Yep. So, so I've got the male version, right? So what was happening in that scenario, right? Well, their belief, if you will, was that I was mad at them or angry about something. Okay, so what do I mean by challenge and thinking traps? Well, they're jumping to conclusions. They don't evidence, right? If they do have evidence, they think it's my face. So they're mind reading, right? They're externalizing, they're making assumptions. And so step 2 is about helping, say, a client kind of ask some of these questions and say, is there a problem with the logic, rationale, or even evidence behind your belief? And sometimes that's enough for them to look at that and say, oh, my belief really is inaccurate. It's not grounded in evidence or good thinking. And they can kind of make a shift from there. Sometimes it isn't. Either way, it's about checking reality so you can move to step 3, which in my opinion is then accepting that reality and figuring out how to move forward. And here's maybe where I'll, I'll just throw it to Adam.

Yeah, I think, you know, that model is great. I could say another way is you understand the argument, you know, that someone's making. Be clear, ask clarifying questions. Sometimes people don't even know what the argument is until you ask better questions. I think you were going to identify what we call logical fallacies sometimes in the argument itself and the content, the narrative, and like You know, where is there a false dilemma here? Is kind of what I'm hearing here is not necessarily true in reality. So it's a reality testing, gathering more evidence. Now maybe, maybe it's data, maybe it's better understanding, more research, maybe historical facts, using clear logical reasoning to move forward and presenting some counter-evidence. So to support that, and I think then creating a, you know, an action-based goal set that's value-informed to move forward. However, here's my other— the flip side is that sometimes just by asking, is that moving you forward or moving you backward, is a simple question to get someone to pause for a moment. And rather than engaging with the argument itself, I'm going to say, I'm going to recognize it, I'm going to accept it for what it is. It's an old narrative. And I'm saying, can we come up with something better? And now I'm just simply going to create an if-then algorithm. You may have these thoughts come up, you may have this narrative come up. Notice it, accept it. But then when you notice it, you are going to take an action that moves you forward as opposed to getting stuck in rewind. And as I mentioned before, these repetition compulsions, which usually, like, we kind of do the same thing, the same relationships, relive them over and over and over again. And as why am I doing this? Well, it's because we have unconscious drivers that are making us make these decisions. We just call timeout and say, hey, what are your values? Is this aligned?

No?

Well, let's work together to find another action that's going to move us forward.

It's like the quote that says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll rule your life and you'll call it fate. I think it was Carl Jung.

Yeah. Jung. I spent 4 years going back and became a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. So I've studied depth psychology now for 4 years and I have a lot of patients, which all we do basically is talk. And the whole goal is to make the unconscious conscious, to take the implicit and make it explicit.

How much, how much of the process of change do you think is simply handled by bringing those things to light and actually becoming aware of them? Like, how much does that help? How far along are we in the process just by going, oh shit, that is a narrative, that is something underneath. Oh my God, I didn't even realize that. Now I, now I know it, and now I can find all these pieces of evidence to go against it, how much of the, of the process of change are we accomplishing in just doing that? Is it small? Is it big?

I'm going to argue in terms of change, zero. Insight in and of itself is not going to motivate or catalyze useful change because largely what's driving your behavior is emotional and you're still going to go back to unconscious patterns. I think it's part of the pie, but that necessarily is going to get you from here to there. And Nick, me, you could argue against it, but that's usually, I mean, that's the psychoanalytic model. Freud used to say, If I can make it known, if I can give you that insight and that aha experience, you'll change your behavior. And what science has shown us, like, that's really not the case. It's helpful, it's interesting, it's enlightening, but it doesn't get you to take that next step to change your behavior.

Because I think that's where a lot of people are stuck, is they're like, oh, I know all of my shit beliefs and patterns, but like, what do I— it's still like, I'm still doing it.

Yeah, that's— and you just, you just hit it, Samantha. All I was going to add was a couple examples of clients we work with where the, the awareness piece or the reframe unlocked a whole lot of other stuff because they were already reflective, strategic, metacognitive, right? And intentional about behavior. We don't necessarily, you know, in one case the client, like, we helped with a reframe and unlock. And then that, that ended the relationship. It was like, cool, I'm good now. And then she could move forward and get unstuck and like do what she needed to do. Right. So I think awareness is, is really crucial. But to Adam's point, you do have to have some of those tendencies or behaviors or some coaching or accountability to help actually turn it into action.

And I would imagine, you know, in terms of your base, you know, Type A, highly intellectual people that are listening to this podcast, sometimes Further intellectualizing, looking for more insight is a way not to move forward. I see that as a defense and is often fear-based.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. I get that for sure. Have you guys heard of expanders? Maybe that's more of like a manifestation type word, but it probably exists in science in some other capacity or some other language. Cause you had mentioned about, you know, finding evidence to disprove You know, okay, you find this unconscious belief and you're like, you bring it to the light, you're like, wow, okay, I realize that's how I've been operating, that's what I've been believing. And then you ask yourself, is that really true? Is it always true? Can I disprove it? Can I find some evidence that, that goes against it? Expanders are people in the world that are proof, uh, that what you would want to believe is possible. So it's essentially evidence that your old belief doesn't have to be true. So you find people that that, oh, they are a mom and they are successful, or they have built a business for this demographic, or it is possible to, uh, create a new business and be successful later in life in your 50s or 60s. You're finding these examples of people that have done what you want to do, and they're helping you actively disprove those limiting beliefs. We call them expanders.

Guess what happened after Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile? A bunch of other people did, right? And then, so this is what we call self-efficacy. What you just described and, and there's depending on the line of research you follow, but there's tends to be kind of 4 primary contributors to it. And 2 of the major contributors to our belief in our own ability are actually other people. It's verbal persuasion. Yeah, yeah. Verbal persuasion and what you just described, which is vicarious experience. Yeah, right. Biggest predictor of belief in our ability to do something is having done it before. Duh, right? But if we haven't, yeah, we need some sort of evidence that this thing is in fact possible, right? And that can usually come from these other people, or as you call them, expanders.

Absolutely. Yeah, cool. All right, you guys, well, you heard it here first. I just convinced two PhDs that manifestation is real, and now they believe in expanders.

Well, you just said it was self-efficacy and self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, I'm gonna stick to my nerd language.

Yeah.

Old wine.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah. I'd love to close just by getting you guys to kind of share the bigger vision for your work, because obviously what you're doing is really important and, you know, you're helping people in so many different ways. But I'd love for you to just share the larger vision for the work that you're doing.

Sure. We appreciate it. Listen, this is a human potential movement, right? And we are one part, one company, because that's, I think,, you know, playing a role in a larger collection of entities that are trying to move forward human potential. And, and Antifragility is one of those routes. And we focus our time and efforts really kind of— it's kind of a barbell, right? We serve, as you've heard a little bit here, kind of the top 1% of the 1% in the executive world— surgeon, legal, finance, CEO, entrepreneur, you know, professional athlete, etc. But really the mission and vision is to take a lot of the stuff we're talking about here and that we use to serve those folks and help those folks and democratize the hell out of it, get it into schools, get it into sports programs, get it to kids, get it to young career professionals, get it to parents. We think that's where the juice is. I think is really worth the squeeze in terms of, I mean, candidly, societal change, right? If you're talking really big vision. So it's just at the individual level by maximizing potential and helping people self-actualize.

Yeah, that's perfect.

Lovely. I have a vision myself of this kind of mindset work. And, you know, emotional intelligence and all the things that we've talked about today, being more prevalent, especially for, for kids, because of what we know to be true about the subconscious mind and, you know, how that's forming in those crucial 8 age range from 0 to 7 and, you know, just really having that be a part of their education and being able to understand themselves and their feelings and tap into gratitude and create productive thoughts and all of that. I think it would really, like you said, change the world. So super admire what you guys are doing. And I think you'll have a lot more luck than me convincing people of its importance because of your credentials.

And because of the— I'm not too sure about that.

Yeah. Because of the old wine, scientific approach. But I really appreciate you guys coming on today and sharing all of your wisdom. I know our listeners are gonna eat this up because we are speaking the same exact language, but it's so cool to just see it through a different lens. So thank you guys so much for coming on.

Thanks for having us. Appreciate the time and the platform.

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