How to Rewire Your Brain for Resilience with Mitch Weisburgh

Welcome to the social community show, where our mission is to help you learn, grow, and transform on your path to becoming legendary. Today, we're diving deep with someone who's cracked the code on why smart, capable people get stuck in their own heads. Mitch Weisberg has spent over four decades shaping the way people learn and adapt in a changing world. From founding one of the earliest computer learning centers in America to advising education leaders and launching nonprofit initiatives like Games for Ed, Mitch has dedicated his career to helping people unlock their potential. Most recently, Mitch has been teaching the art of mind shifting and sharing practical ways to build resilience and capability clarity through sense making. His book, stop your brain from sabotaging your happiness success offers tools to break free from limiting mindsets and step into forward momentum. Mitch doesn't just talk about learning. He creates communities of practice for educators and lifelong learners alike.

Whether you're navigating change, designing your next chapter, or seeking ways to overcome mental roadblocks, this conversation will give you tools to reshape your thinking and your life. Mitch, welcome to the Social Chameleon show.

Tyson, thank you for having me on the show.

Absolutely. I mean, it's hard to pass up your pitch. You're talking about mind shifting, and you had a bunch of things in there. I was like, well, I've got to have this guy on. So you do have your book, your first book, Mind shifting Stop your brain from sabotaging your happiness and success. If you guys want to get the book, I'll link in the show notes. You guys can go get that and read that on your own. But what is one story you'd like to highlight from your book?

So one of the stories actually comes from somebody who was taking the course, which, you know, the book was modeled on a course that I teach. And this is a woman who, you know, she and a friend had a. Have a third friend who was in an abusive relationship, and they were going over on a Saturday to help her move into a safe place. Okay. Okay. And they had given her a list of things that she had to do to prepare, and then they were going to go over Saturday, and they're just going to move her and her kids to a. To a. To a safe place.

They show up Saturday morning, and their friend had done nothing on that list.

No.

And so you can imagine it's like, we're giving up our Saturday mornings, you know, and what. You know, we just gave you a simple list, and you didn't do any of them. And it's like, that's what's going on in their heads. Okay. But the woman was taking the mind shifting course, you know, and so, so she says, well, wait a minute, you know something, let me, I know that I'm in survival mode right now. I'm just reacting to the situation. Let me calm myself down. And so she and that second friend did some breathing exercises to calm their minds down.

And then once they were more in control over their own brains, they were like, you know something? What's really important to us and what was really important to them is that they had a friend who needed help to move into a safe place and they were going to help her set up with a better life. And once they were in control of their self, it's like they understood like, you know, this poor woman, you know, she's, she's taking care of her kids, she's taking care of the house, she's trying to avoid being beaten. She's, she's, you know, she's reacting to so many different situations. This list of things to do was kind of a nice to have, you know, but, but she, she had to survive first. And so the fact that she didn't do the things, it was just like, there's no way. But, but what they did is they, they, you know, they were able to regroup because they got control over their minds and work with her, get all these things done that could have been that, you know, they thought were going to be done earlier. They spent the Saturday they moved her to, to, to another place and they were all like, wow, you know something, look what we did today. And so that's the power of just understanding how our brains react to situations, how we can control them.

If we don't control them, then we're just reacting and you know, anger or fear or anxiety or whatever. But we can learn to recog that. We can calm that part down. We can access our resourceful minds. And when we do, not only are we a lot more effective, but we're a lot happier and we feel more fulfilled.

So would that be getting into the parasympathetic state?

Yes. So. Right, yes. I don't really actually, you know, those. I tried to write the book and I tried to teach the courses as much as possible without using terms that, you know, like sympathetic or parasympathetic. But you, you know, you hit it. Exactly. That's your, you know, your calm.

You could call it equilibrium, equanimity. I call it the resourceful mind or the sage mind. You can say it's, you know, the prefrontal Cortex, but those are all related.

And so I guess, please, please correct me however I get this wrong or mixed up. So I understand that system is if, if you're in a heightened state, you can't think properly.

Right.

You're in like the survival mode versus, you know, I'm sorry, if you're out of that state. But when you get into that state is when you, you're able to kind of like turn that kind of offline a little bit and then you're able to start thinking again. Is that how we're kind of thinking about this?

Yeah. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just riff on that for a minute and just kind of back up and say, and this is obviously oversimplified. Okay, sure. Because the brain, you know, it's, it's, the brain is probably the most complex system in the universe. I mean it's got, you know, hundreds of billions of connections between neurons and, or, you know, so, so to say it's got, you know, I say this got two parts is, you know. No, it's got hundreds of parts. But, but if you, if you think about it as having your survival parts of the brain which, which started evolving with the earliest multi celled organisms that could move. And those organisms, you know, over, you know, very early on in evolution, they learned how to rapidly assess if they were in danger and take some type of action.

And so, and then it, you know, it, it developed and you know, it could be moving, it could be fighting, it could be blending in with the environment. But it's like this is a danger. This is what we have to do. Focus the entire organism on that type of situation. And then you had to be able, you had to be able to do that quickly so that parts of the brain wake up in like 2 to 3/100 of a second from some stimulus.

It's not even a blink.

It's not even a blink. Okay. And they have to be able to come to decisions on, on not full information, you know, just, you know, quickly like this is a danger because otherwise if they're wrong, the organism isn't going to survive. And then, and then, and then focus you and then, you know, like how you forgetting whether it was like a billion years or a million years, but you know, but hundred, you know, hundreds of millions of years later with the vertebrates and the mammals, we started developing a higher order system of thought, the, you know, our cortex and, and, and that's the part of the brain that was more developed in mammals and more developed in the great apes. And really it's pin human race is really the pinnacle of that. And that's where we get our ability to think critically, to think creatively, executive function, to really connect. But that part of the brain wakes up in two to three seconds. So if you think about it, something happens within two to three one hundredths of a second.

Our survival brains wake up more often than not. They're assessing it as a danger because that's what they're primed to do. They come up with a thing to do. And then when our prefrontal cortex or, you know, survive or our resourceful brain wakes up, they're saying, okay, this is what we're going to do in. Give me a justification. And so almost always what we think of reality is just this justification for what we've emotionally determined to do. Because our survival brains thought we were in danger. And so in the way they can they prevent the resourceful parts of the brain from, from activating is through stress hormones.

So the stress hormones, I mean, they give us, you know, superhuman strength, they allow us to focus our efforts, but they also inhibit us from being able to take in new information to be able to. We can't think critically, we can't think creatively. You know, we can't really have an open discussion with other people. We can't explore. We can't relate things to what we most value. It's like we're just focused on this is what I have to do. So, so what, you know what mind shifting is the first part of mind shifting, the resourceful part of it is about is how do you recognize when you're in this limbic or this survival mode? And then how do you quiet it so that those stress hormones start coming down? And then how do you access your resourceful parts of the brain and stay in resourceful mode even when things start to go wrong again?

So that's part of your, your three core capacities that you, you have on your. And your. Was on your, on your thing, the resourcefulness, the resilience and the collaboration. So I, the, I guess the, the only way maybe I, off top of my head I can think of is getting into that state. Is, is a breath like you were saying in that story. Is there, is there more ways or is that the best way or the easiest way? How do you think about that?

Well, so again, this is probably a simplification, but I use that. There's three ways of getting into that state. Okay. And then a fourth way that I'll go into afterwards. But the Three ways is first, is first of all self awareness. Sometimes just realizing that you're in a survival state of mind or you're, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm acting in a survival mind. Again, this is my limbic brain. And that, and that's enough.

Okay, Sometimes we can just talk to ourselves like, well, what do I really want to happen here? Or you know, I know I can't do this, but if I could, what might I do first? Okay, so there's positive self talk, not argumentative self talk. Not like, you know, no, stupid, you just got to work harder, you know. No, it's, it's, it's, it's talk that kind of, that opens you up rather than furthers the release of the stress hormones. And then the third way is some type of distraction. And so meditation and mindfulness are two, are two methods that are very effective. Taking a walk, taking a walk in nature, if, you know, doing some sports or athletics, if you're into music, listening or playing music, if you're into art, looking at some art, doing some art, you know, so it's something that takes your mind off of or away from your, your, your living survival mate. So that, so that it's naturally going to start calming down and then using your positive self talk to kind of direct yourself to your, you know, your resourceful mind. So those are the three things that you can do yourself.

Self awareness. Sometimes that's enough self, self talk. Sometimes that's enough with, that's not enough meditation or distraction. And that could be as little as like 30 seconds or a minute very often. And then, you know, there are times for all of us that we can't do that ourselves. You know, like, we're just like really angry or we're really anxious and, and so I, I, I don't know what to do. And so in those times, it really helps to have other people that you can go to. So for some, for some of us it's, it's our spouse or the person we're having a relationship with.

My kids are adults I can call my kids, you know, and, and, and it's funny because when I call them, they're like, dad, you wrote the book. You know, like, you know, I'll just, I'll just give you one of the techniques in the book and, but that's all I need. You know, I just thought I couldn't do it myself. I needed a third party to just walk, walk me through that.

Yeah. So this is kind of how I'm here. I'M hearing that whole thing. So when you're in this like fight or flight mode, then you take these kind of, I don't want to say distractions, but something that gets your mind out of that. You do one of these things and then you can go off to that side, you know, do your art, do your meditation, whatever it is, what technique you've chosen, or it works with you breathing and then breathing, whatever it is. And then you can go, when you're over on that other place that's just metaphorically. Then you can start to kind of calm down and say, okay, now I can think. Okay, what happened? What do I need to do?

How do I respond?

How do I react? How do I, how do I come up with 500 bucks because my car broke down? How do I, how do I do whatever it is? Right? Is that, is that correct? Am I summarizing that correctly?

And it's, it's funny because, you know, like I'm, you know, they're, they're built into mind shifting, but a lot of us do that anyhow. I know growing up, you know, my mom was always, before you say something in anger, take a deep breath and count to five. And I never, you know, when at, at six years old, seven years old, I'm not thinking about, oh, that's mind shifting or anything, right? Hey, you know, it's like, wow, you know something? She never studied my, but she just knew that. And that's, you know, that really helped.

I do notice for myself, you know, when I, I, I heard a meditation a lot and I was like, it's not for me. And I, I can't do that. Of course, all the cliches, right? And then I said, and then I came across Sam Harrison. He had an app. And I was like, wow, let me try this. And then it was nice little nuggets, you know, of, of information. We, I think it was like a 30 day thing and just at the base level, just learning how to catch myself in a thought, I noticed just that thing right there. It helps a lot with, you know, like, you know, you're on your phone, you're scrolling through whatever it is or something like that.

I, I was, I started to notice, like, oh, wow, I can catch myself in this thought now. When I would get angry, I could catch myself in that thought or I really want to say something that was going to cut deep and I got to come back for you. Before this, I would probably have just said the thing and just flown off the handle and, you know, whatever. But after I learned that technique. I was able to kind of, sort of in the moment kind of look, okay, I must say, look down on myself in a way and say, oh, okay, hold on here, buddy. You're. You're upset.

You're.

You're kind of getting a little heated.

You.

You want to win the argument or prove your point or whatever it was I was trying to do or whatever. But after learning that, even I haven't done it in a long time, since I first did it. I think I did it for like a year straight. And then. But since then, I still have those skills.

Yeah.

And it feels like you just. I personally, I just kind of need a tune of. Every once in a while, I'll notice myself not noticing, which is interesting in and of itself. But, yeah, I. I have to have experience with that. And it's interesting, once you learn that, how you can kind of look upon yourself and say, okay, well, hold on here, buddy.

You're.

You're in a bad state right now. Let's. Let's, you know, readjust.

Let's shift and, you know. So I'm gathering you're a sports fan, because I see the 49ers, okay? But you look at an elite athlete in any sport, and look what, what. Look what they do when something either goes right or. Or especially when. When something goes wrong, it's like they know how to. It's just like, it's gone. It's like, okay, I let this, you know, football, you know, I. I threw.

When he cackled the quarterback. It's like, you know, you don't. They don't beat them, continue to beat themselves. It's like, okay, that's done. What am I going to do the next play? And so they learn those techniques on how to very quickly switch from what they naturally would be. Was dwelling on it like, oh, I'm a horrible player. Look what I just did. And it's.

If you're thinking that, like, that the next play, you're gonna do something stupid again, okay? But when you're. When you can reset and prepare, like, you're just ready for the next thing, it's like, I'll, you know, maybe after the game is gone, I'm gonna watch the film and figure out what I. What I did wrong. You know, whether it's in tennis or. Or soccer or football or, you know, whatever the. The sport is. But while I'm in the game, I'm gonna do a quick reset, and I. And I have to be in resourceful mode because I have to Be at my peak.

Yeah.

And it's interesting if we continue the sports analogy, I can feel like I notice when a guy does get in his head and you see him, he's a little timid. I made a guy, you know, start dropping balls or the quarterbacks, like, you know, he throws a pick in the next play, you're like, oh, you're just throwing checkdowns. You're just throwing, you're just handing the ball off a lot. And you see a guy getting his head. And when it's the other team, I really love it. I'm like, hey, look, this guy's in his head now. Hey, let's go, let's, let's, let's, let's pounce on this guy. He can't control himself.

But I also, you know, like these interviews, I'll go back and I'll watch them and I'll critique myself. Like, oh, I should have, I should have been quiet there. I should have said this or maybe I should have done this or maybe I should have told that joker. But I, you know, over 100 and something episodes now, you know, I, you know, I've got, I, I, you know, so even with, you know, in your professional life, you know, you, you record these zoom meetings, whatever, go back and watch yourself and give yourself honest critiques and you know, don't over overly critical, but also be honest with yourself as well.

And, and then having somebody that you can go to also like you, you work with, with, you know, entrepreneurs or solopreneurs entrepreneurs, and you know, they'll probably come to you and they'll just be like, oh, geez, nothing's going right. And, and you can't give them advice at that point because the first, until they're in a resourceful point of mindset, they're not ready to receive anything. So your first job is to, is to get them right. Isn't that in your coaching, isn't that what you do?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You, sometimes you just got to listen and let them get that all out. And a lot of times what my experience, what I found is, is as they're talking, they're kind of figuring it out themselves, right? Or just a little, a little, a little probe here, a probe there. And it's like you've just answered the whole question for yourself. And it's like, well, there you go. It's like, oh, thank you so much. This was a great conversation. I was like, I said nothing.

No, because most of us, and so this is, you know, in the, in, in this book that's, that's coming out the Conflict and Collaboration book. One of the key techniques that we go over is something called motivational interviewing, which comes from social work, which is. Which is all about getting the other person to understand where they're ambivalent about something and kind of sort through for themselves what's really most important to, to them and what they should do next. And once they start doing that, the solutions start coming to them. But they couldn't do it without somebody walking them through the questions to get them to, to ask themselves the same questions, the right questions, or to. Or to think about the questions in a different way.

I love that because I think there's a power in living that examined life. I talk about this quite a bit on the show and. But that's to me, in general, I think that's missing from a lot of society especially. I know I think I can only speak for America, but I kind of feel like I see that in the Western world a lot where we don't examine things, we just kind of go through things. But the power of sitting down and examining what do you want? What are you doing?

What are you doing right?

What are you doing wrong? Where do you want to be? Are you on track? All these things. Asking those questions will give you direction. We'll give you a leg up over, I think 95 at least of all people.

Right? Right. And I think, you know, a lot of that comes from again, our limbic minds, okay. The. Which when everything is binary, something's good or it's bad, period. Okay? And just another aspect, you know, we've gone into, you know, being angry and fight or flight or, or even freeze as, as the, you know, as prime reactions from our survival brain. We should also be conscious that there's two more types of actions that are. Our limbic brain, our lizard brain uses also is looking to conserve energy, of course. So in conserving energy, it wants to do something.

It wants the organism, you to do something where you don't really have to think about it. So it's actually looking to. Looking to come up with something that you already know how to do. Well, what are your habits? What are your fluencies? Okay. And so it doesn't have to think anymore if you know, anything. Anytime this happens, this is how I react. Okay. And you know, kind of rules, roles are like that.

And then the fifth type of reaction is as human beings, we have this is incredible drive to be part of groups. And that's, you know, that's what's one of the things that's made us like the, you know, the alpha animal on the planet, right? Because we can build cities, we can build technology. Look at all the things that we, we can do in groups. We, we have family groups, we have work groups, we have religious groups, we have social groups. You know, we have this, this strong drive to be a member of a group and to blend in and do whatever the, the rest of the group is, is, is doing. But the flip side of that is that when we're doing that, we're not thinking. And so we have this thing that like, oh, you know, everybody in my group is doing this and you know, like that becomes a, that's, that's the thing to do. We don't even, we don't evaluate it.

Then when that gets challenged like you're wrong or why are you doing this? Or here's another way, then our limbic brain comes in and says, oh, this person is challenging me. That's bad. I have to react and I have to fight or flight. You know, I have to fight them or I have to run away from this. Avoid it. And so then you get the fight or flight and you get the, you know, those, those fear hormones that are flooding your brain and preventing you from critically thinking and being creative and being empathetic and, and linking to your higher level values. So, so when we're doing things and we think that these are the things, these are things that we have thought out, but there are things that have been, that have been determined by our survival brains that then have, have. When our resourceful brains, when our prefrontal cortex is finally woken up, our survival brain is basically saying, give me a justification for this.

And so, you know, it's like, well, you're doing this because it's the best thing to do. You're doing this because it's logical. You're doing this. Everybody else is doing this, so this must be the right thing to do. And so that's our reason. But the reason actually came after we had already made the decision to do do it, right?

Our brains come up with the reason after we've already made them usually emotional decision, right?

And, and functional MRIs have confirmed that, you know, they've confirmed that first, you know, that those parts of the brain that come up with a thing to do and rule it, that we're going to do it. Those parts of the brains are firing first and then after they've already calmed down, that's when the, the thinking part of the brain fires up. So it's naturally it's just like, okay, this is what we're doing. This must be why.

So that phenomena you're speaking about. I try, I might have the terminology wrong. Please correct me. So, like the group think kind of mentality. Yep. I try my best to not belong to a group. It in, in the best I can. I know it's, it's not entirely, you know, you know, practical, but, you know, whether it's, you know, politically or Religiously, except the 49ers, I'm part of that group and I'm gonna stay there.

But of course, but I, I. Because I don't want to fall for this group dynamic, this group think. Because you do kind of start to like, like we're talking about here. You do try to start to justify, like, well, my group does this thing good or bad. I'm not, I'm not saying any which way here. And so then maybe you don't agree with it or you're, you, you're raised a different way or something like that. And then you start to kind of justify like, oh, my group's doing this. So I think it's okay.

And then what can happen sometimes is that just, you know, extrapolates out to greater and greater things, typically on the negative side. So I like to try not to do that. Where is my thinking wrong? And maybe is there, or is there maybe something to that where we can try to avoid some of that?

How.

I know I'm kind of rambling a little bit here, but I'm trying to kind of put my head around this thought. If you, if you kind of get what I'm saying. I don't know if we can.

Well, I think what you just noted, you, what you've just shown is that you have this tremendous self awareness that there's a group and you're not just going to do something because of the group. That self awareness has been something that you've learned how to do. Most of us never really learn that. So most of us, when we're part of a group and the group does something that's a little bit off from what we want to do, it's like, well, you know, something everybody else is doing and I'll do it and then that becomes the new center and then there's the next thing you. Could you, I think one, you know, one story is, you know, you're at, you're at Thanksgiving, which is around the corner, right. So you're at Thanksgiving and the turkey comes and it's way, way overcooked. It's like, dry as toast. Okay.

And the host at host said, you know, how do you like the turkey? Okay? And it's like, yeah, it's. Well, it's good, you know. And then the next person says, yeah, this is tasty. And so, like, you know, then you're asked like, three days later, how was the turkey? And it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, it was. It was good. Because, you know, there's that conditioning. You've heard it five, six, ten times about how good the turkey was. That.

That. That just changed in your brain. There's. There's another story. Like, have you. Like, I think it's called the. The Abilene story because it. It took place in.

In Texas where, you know, a bunch of people, you know, say three people are discussing, like, you know, what are we going to do for dinner? And somebody says, well, there's this restaurant about an hour and a half away, or there's this restaurant. And then somebody looks it up and says, oh, it's only an hour and a half away. And somebody says, yeah, it would take me, you know, two minutes to get changed, and then we can go. Okay. Now, if you evaluate that conversation, nobody ever said they wanted to go to that restaurant.

I didn't even realize that.

Right.

I was stuck on an hour and a half away. That's too far.

Right? Okay, okay. But it's, you know, it's special. Whatever, you know, 45 minutes away. Okay. But like, you know, but you just feel like this part of the. Somebody says, it's only, you know, an hour and a half. It's only 45 minutes away. You know, somebody suggested the restaurant.

Well, then in your mind, it's like this. If there's. If they're naming their restaurant, they may want to go, so, oh, it's only 45 minutes away. And the next person says, well, I can just get ready in 15 minutes. Well, you know, nobody said that they wanted to go. And you go, the. Maybe the food wasn't so good. Maybe you didn't want to go there.

But on the way back, you know, you're having this conversation like, well, that was fun, right? Yeah. We should do this again sometime. Well, how about in three weeks? Yeah, let's. Let's. Let's go back in three weeks. And you just kind of get locked into this thing that, you know, the group is doing. But what, what you're saying is, you know, you do, and you probably, you know, you. You probably help your clients do.

It's like, well, wait a minute. Are you doing this? You know, if you can step back a minute and just ask yourself, what do you really want to do? Okay. And so it begins with a self awareness. And then. And then, you know, maybe the self talk, like, you know, what, what. What do you really want to do? Or maybe it actually takes a while to distract yourself. Like, okay, you really caught up in this. Why don't we take a walk for, you know, and just talk about nature or something, you know, football for a couple minutes.

Okay, now, like, now, now that, you know, let's just think about this. Like, in this situation, what, what do you really want to do?

Yeah. I encourage my children especially to, you know, politely challenge these things that they feel are a little off or maybe goes against something that they're thinking. And what, what I, what we do typically find, in my experience, and also I hear this from my kids as well, is, is when you do challenges, group dynamics, there's something. And I'm trying to work out what this is, and I think you can help me with this. Is, is this. When you challenge this, this dynamic or this consensus, whatever, is this an ego thing, is an identity thing? Like, what's happening where people have this visceral reaction to you not going along with it or you're not listening to them or what is that?

So we have, I mean, it's obviously complex, but again, we have this drive to belong to groups, and we also have this tremendous fear of being rejected by groups. And fmris on the brain have shown that when somebody is thinking that they might be rejected from the group, they're feeling as much pain as if they were really in pain, if something was really hurting them. It's the same parts of the brain. So when we, when we're thinking about, oh my gosh, if I go against the group, they might kick me out of the group. They might, they might publicly humiliate me. They, they, they. They might punish me. They might take it, you know, like that we have this physical pain from doing that.

And so, you know, it, it may be that if we were really in our right man, it's like, so, okay. But when we're in the moment, it's like, oh, my gosh, you know, like, I can't, I can't. I can't go against the group. And so, and by, by not going against the group, we're reinforcing whatever it is that the group is saying to do. So then we move over in our mind, even if we're not 100% there yet, we're partial. The way that part of the way there to accepting it. We see this, you know, all up and down the line. We see this in family dynamics.

We see this in companies. We see this in politics all the time, where, you know, we stake a view and. And if we really thought about it, it's like, you know, something, it's not that bad, or it's not all the way like this, but we don't. Because we're. We're part of that group that feels that way. Everybody else is feeling that way. We don't want to be. We don't want to go against it.

So we. We go that way also, and then we move over in that direction.

What about the person in the group that's giving you about it or, or calling you names or, Or. Or really just kind of going after what. What is that person? What's happening in that person's mind or brain where they feel like they have to have this visceral reaction towards you saying you're dumb. That's not how it does. You know, whatever it is they're attacking you for. For questioning or challenging what the group is. Is saying.

So in most of the cases, what they're feeling is that they're right. Okay. Okay. So they're in that binary state where something is right or something is wrong. You are going against the group norms. You have to be put in your place. Okay. So for the most part now, I also think that there's this.

That there are just some people who are just so masterful that even though they know that, you know, they shouldn't be arguing with you, they know that that's the way to control you. And so you get an awful lot of. I would, you know, I guess an expression might be demagogues or autocrats. Okay. Who. It's like, you know something? The test of this person's loyalty is even though they know something is wrong, that they do it anyhow because it's coming from me. Wow. Okay.

So those types of demagogues, they're always. They're. They're using it as a test. And when you do it, you become, you know, but you become much more aligned with them. And when you don't do it, they then crowd everybody else to say, look at this person. They're, you know, they're a piece of garbage. Okay, we want we. You know, we.

And so they're, you know, anime, enemy fing. That's even a word. But enemy flying is one of the strongest ways to build cohesion in a group. You find something to hate, you find.

Something I'm an enemy.

And you, and you get everybody. So this person has defied us. You know, we're all in this together. Look what this person did, you know, there. And, and you, and you bring the rest of the group together. So there are people who, who are so good at that, and they get into leadership positions that they're just using that in order to manipulate us.

Is there, is there something in their brain or something that, that their identity or something is being challenged and they have to kind of react and show, I don't know, their dominance or their, their smartness or education level?

Yeah, I think, I think there is something of that. And they're all, you know, and again, and most of the people who are doing that are doing it because they're so sure that they're right and that you're wrong. And the way we're taught how to handle conflict, most of those ways really don't work over the long term. And so they're using, they're using the common ways of dealing with conflict, which is being aggressive or rewards or punishment being louder, which is really part of being aggressive. So, so, you know, most people, it's, it's not like their intentions are bad. It's just that they, that they know that they're right and that, and the standard ways of dealing with conflict is to just put down the other side. But I, I, I, I think we all should also be aware that there are certain people who understand how, that, how, how effective it is to do that. And so, you know, they know what they're saying is, is, is, is not in your best interest and, or whatever.

But, but what they're trying to do is they're trying to consolidate their power. And they know that by doing that, they can consolidate their power with other people.

It reminds me of the 40 laws of power. The first law is never outshine the master. And I feel like some of that, some of that is there. Right? We also had the master. The master's like, hey, listen, buddy, I'm gonna put you back down. I know the game.

Yep, yep, I'm the master. Okay, you don't, you, you don't do this.

Okay, Very interesting. One of your other frameworks, resilience. Can we, can we talk to resilience? Is that training? How do we talk? How do we think through this? How do we work through that?

Okay, so, so the first part was resourcefulness. The resourcefulness is how do you access the most resourceful parts in your brain? Okay, now in resilience, we, we really start off with the way most of us approach situations, whether we approach problems or the way we approach opportunities. The, again, the human mind being binary. We look at situations of saying, you know, something, there's, there's going to be one right way of handling this. And very often it's like, you know what the right way is, okay, so there's one right way of handling this, which means that anybody who disagrees is wrong, right? Because if this is the way to handle it and you come up with something else, then. Then the other person is wrong. So that's, that's part of it. And then another part of it it is also means that we're going to do this and it's going to solve the problem.

And the, and the issue that we get into is it's very rare that there's one right way, right? And it's, it's even rarer that the first thing that we do is really going to solve the problem. But if we're sure that this is the right way to do it and it's going to solve the problem, then when it doesn't, our reaction is to go into judgment or blame. It's like, oh, you know something, it wasn't my fault. It was just like, you know, everything conspired against me, or you got in my way, it's your fault, or, you know something, I'm just, I'm just an idiot. You know, I'll never amount to anything. It's my own fault. So we go into that, you know, blame my. Blame yourself, blame another person, blame the situation.

And so we don't have, we don't have the resilience. The res, the resilience training is first of all to understand that that happens and then to say, well, okay, so, so how do you, how do you, how do you get above that? How do you, how do you respond in a way that allows you to keep on moving forward? Well, one way is to recognize that there are different types of situations. And clearly there are types of situations where there is a clear one right answer. Like, I'm thirsty right now. So here, here we go. Okay, that's clearly the right answer, right? But most things aren't that way. Sometimes you need more information. Sometimes you need analysis.

Sometimes you need expertise. Sometimes you need expertise to figure out what to do. Sometimes you need expertise to do it, usually in situations like that, which are generally called complicated situations. So generally in complicated situations, there's more than one answer that could meet your needs. If you wanted to, to build a car or, you know, there's, there's a thousand ways to build cars. Okay? Now, you know, there's trade offs. Some cars will be less expensive, some cars will be faster, some cars will last longer. Some cars will use more gas, some cars will use, you know, so this, there may be trade offs, but in the end analysis, if your goal is to get a car to be able to go from one direction, one place to another place, any of those cars would meet that basic need.

And if there's a bunch of people involved, it's, it's much less about finding like the only car that's going to meet your needs and it's more, it's, what's more important is that everybody buys into the fact that, hey, you know something, we could have bought any one of these four, five cars or we could have done any, any one of these six different things that we could have done. But let's just coalesce around one of them because we have to choose one so that everybody's on this, you know, on the same table. So we don't have like, you know, in the case of building a house, we don't have the carpenter who's following one set of plans and the electrician is following a different set of plans and the plumber doing something else. So, you know, to understand that there's complicated situations and in complicated situations you may need more information. And in all likelihood there's going to be more than one good way to, good way to act. And so you don't have to fight for one. You just have to coalesce everybody around something that's going to work. And then there's an awful lot of situations where nobody knows what's going to work.

You know, like, can anybody, nobody has a solution to education. Like, there's no, you know, if people knew what was great education, we'd be doing it. Okay? But it's the fact that it's a complex problem that, you know, first of all, nobody knows what to do. And second of all, every time we do something that changes the whole system, that changes the whole way we measure things and then people react to that. And so you've got different problems every time you try to do something. And so with complex problems, which are different from complicated problems, the key is to be, is to try different things, knowing eventually something's going to emerge and you're going to try something, you're going to use the information you get back and that's, and then you're going to adjust and you're going to try something Else. Well, you talk about resilience, okay. If you're going into something and you're thinking, I'm going to do this and it's going to work and then it doesn't work.

You know, you have to fight to get back in the game and that takes a lot of energy and that's really hard. You can't do that over the long term. But if you're going into the situation thinking, you know something, I don't really know what's going to work, nobody really knows what's going to work. But let's, let's just try these, these two or three different things and let's see what the information comes back and we'll figure out what to do next. That whole, you know, that you're, you're a lot more resilient and that whole issue of grit and persistence go, goes away because you don't have to fight to be persistent. It's like you're going into it knowing that, that there's, you know, that you're, you're just getting information so that you can choose the next thing and then, and then even from that you're going to get information and over time something's going to emerge and, and, and that's going to create the new status quo. So those are basically, you know, three way, three different types of situations. And then there's the fourth type of situation where something really is urgent.

Something has to be done right away. Maybe you're in danger, like if your house is on fire, that's not the time to sit back and say, well, I should rewire the house so this doesn't happen again. Right, right. So, you know, with those emergency situations, that's where you have to do something immediately to get safe. You're not as concerned about a long term solution. You're just concerned about getting to a safe, you know, a safe situation. Like, you know, floods, fires, if you're in the middle of a fight with somebody, you know, your network goes, goes down in your company. You know, at that point, you know, you just, you have to get to the point where you're safe.

And then afterwards you can consider the long term circumstances. And in those circumstances, you know, in those urgent, chaotic events, then in all likelihood you are in your limbic mind. And those same autocrats, those same demagogues as before, they know that if they can get you to think that something is urgent, they can put you into your limbic mind so that you lose the ability to think. And so one of the defenses is when Somebody is telling you this is a major problem, and you have to follow what I say. If we're going to get rid of the problem is to just stop and think, well, wait a minute, you know, is this such an urgent problem that only one thing is going to work and we have to follow this person and we have to do it now? And very often you're going to realize that, you know, the house isn't burning down, you know, you know, I can be a little bit more, you know, I can think about this a little bit more. I can. I can talk to people about it a little bit more. So, you know, there certainly are an awful lot of situations where there are crises and we do have to react quickly.

But. But demagogues and autocrats tend to fake those situations so that we go into this fight or flight mode, going back to resilience. If you go into situations and you understand and you go into the situation and say, well, is this a situation where there really is one right answer. Is this a situation where, you know, I know that there's things that are absolutely going to work and I need some expertise or some analysis or information to come up with something that will work? And then that doesn't matter which of those things we choose, but, you know, we'll choose one of them and then we'll get everybody behind it. Or is this a situation where nobody knows what's going on? And so let's come up with a couple things that we can try, things that aren't going to hurt us, that we can get good information from so we can come up with our next step. Or is this really an urgent situation and somebody's just got to tell us all, you know, somebody's got to be the one to say, we all have to do this and we all have to get safe first. And so that's the, that's the first part of resilience. And then a second part of resilience is if you know that so many of the things that we do really are complex because people are complex, then what's a methodology that you can use so that you're always ready for more information? And in, in my courses and the book, and I actually go into this also in a little bit in the third book.

The methodology that I use comes out of the military. It's developed by somebody named John Boyd, who was an Air Force pilot. Observe, orient, decide and act. OODA or ooda. And in OODA loops, basically your first step is to take in the information you're observing the Second step is to use what you already know and the information that's coming in and, and, and then, and figure out a few things that you could possibly do and what the likely results of those things are. And then the third step is deciding. That's when you're picking one or two things that you're going to try and then you're acting, but you're acting while you're observing. So you can, with, for the purpose of figuring out what you're going to orient the next, you know, what, what things you're going to come out with with, with next.

And, and there's actually two different ways of thinking about the OODA loops. One is we're in the middle of, when we're in the middle of a situation, we have to be able to react fast. So in that orient step, the idea is to have as many things as possible that, you know, could possibly work and so preparing. So if it's an urgent situation, that's why we have fire drills. So we're prepared when the urgent situation comes up. When we go into the orient step is, okay, I know exactly what to do. This is a fire. I will, you know, I know where the exit is, I know how to get the people together, I know how to move out.

So, so this, the fast OODA loop is using things that we've already come up with and then there's a much slower OODA loop which is, okay, we're, you know, we don't have a fire right now. But you know, I'm gonna make a figure up, you know, fight, you know, not 5%, but, you know, 1% of all houses have fire every year. And I know that figure's wrong, but, you know, so I know that there's a possibility that at some point my house will be, will go on fire. Let me come up with the emergency plan so that when that happens, everybody is ready. And so that slow OODA loop is preparing and practicing so that when the, when the situation occurs, we're much better able to, much better able to react.

How do you get, not get stuck in complacency? Say, listen, we have a fire drill every month and nothing ever happens. I'm not even playing this game anymore. How do you not get stuck in something like that where you're, you're, you're complacent?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think, I think it's human nature to get complacent.

Conservation of energy.

Yeah, I think that, But I also think that, you know, you, you get Complacent until you hear of somebody else who didn't and suffered. And so, you know, I guess either you look or you or people look and say, you know, something. Look what happened to the Smiths two miles away. You know, you know, how. You know, how prepared are you? And so that kind of brings it back. But you're. You're right. It's.

It's human nature to get complacent.

Absolutely. Reminds me of. I'm sure people listen, have heard the story a few times, but I'm. I'm big into stoicism, and one of the things Epictetus, one of the stoics, says is, you know, what are you afraid of? Sleeping on the floor, eating scan food, whatever. There's a whole list of things. So I took that to real, and I was like, hey, guys, you know, we're gonna do once a month is we're gonna just. I'm gonna make a pot of beans and rice and going to be just fine. I guarantee you we'll be all right.

And, you know, and I kind of played this little game with my kids, and then my eldest, she was like, this will never happen. There's no situation in my life, well, I'll ever have to do this and. And not. But I don't even know. Soon after, there's Covid, and the shelves are empty and. And it's like, hey, right, here we go. We're fine, right? Everybody's worried about this, that and another. But we've already practiced this.

And.

Yeah, but there was the complacency of, like, oh, you're dumb, and why do we do this? But then it happens, and, you know, and it's interesting because it does, right? But, like, we're saying, right, you've got to go through the fire drills, and somehow we've gotta, I don't know, make it fun or something or make it interesting, and we stop the complacency. And there's probably a lot of situations in our lives where we do this, right? Especially things become habitual and just kind of go through the emotions. And he thought a treadmill and all these different things that kind of come up.

So what you're bringing up in, you know, one of the ways of preparing is, like, if you're, you know, you're thinking of doing something and you want to be able to be resilient is okay. This is. This is what, you know, we're thinking living, you know, or we're thinking of doing this as a company. This is our course of action. This is our, our plan is what you know, called like the three stories, the three story technique. So say, okay, let's, let's, let's say you do this, tell me, you know, fast forward some period of time, six months, a year, five years, whatever the time frame is, and it was successful. Walk me through how that was, how that was successful and what happened and how you're feeling now that that that's successful. Okay, so that's story number one.

Okay, now story number two. Let's say that it's whatever the time period is, let's say that it didn't work at all. Walk me through how implementing this ended up not working at all. Where you know, what happened in each step of the way and how is it six months from now? How does it feel? What are you doing now that it didn't work? And so that's, that's what, you know, kind of a pre, like a postmortem but a pre mortem. Okay, Right, right. What didn't work? Okay, so that's the second story. And then the third story is. Okay, let's just say that you implemented what's something that you absolutely could never expect happen.

Something weird that just happens, you know, in your house, in your world and you know, something weird that happens that throws it all open. How do you, you know, what, what six months from now, a year from now, how did that affect this and what did you do now? Whatever that weird thing is that happens, that's almost guarantee you that particularly weird thing is not going to happen. But there's a good chance that something weird, something unexpected is going to happen. And just by preparing for something that was unexpected means that you're much better able to be prepared for anything else that happens unexpected. And by examining, you know, making the assumption that it didn't work, okay, you're going to be able to go through like either you're going to adjust your plans, you're going to make some minor tweaks, or you're going to say, you know something, maybe this plan really isn't the best because now that I'm looking at it, it probably wouldn't work. Or, and, and, and, and when you walk through how it did work the same, something similar is going to happen. Is you're going to say, well, we did this and this worked. Oh my gosh, I'm thinking about this, but the chances of that happening are really small.

So maybe I have to go back and adjust something. So three Stories technique is, is really powerful to help people be more resilient as they're acting, you know, through their plans.

Yeah, I've heard of that. That does work really well. How do you. When you're going through this and you're. You're iterating, you're doing these things, you're trying to build resilience. How do you not get stuck in like a. Like a doom loop where you're like, you know, like all. You know, I'm doing these things.

It's like all this and this and that. I'm not. Hopefully, this is coming across. If you understand what I'm trying to get out there. How do you not get stuck in that negative thinking of, you know, you're trying to build resistance, but you're constantly in this negativity.

That's it. So, you know, I have an answer. I'm not sure that it's a hunt. It's. It's 100% answer to your question. It is one of the ways. And that is, as you think of situations, you go through what, what people call the Walt Disney method. Are you familiar with it or do what.

No, I've never heard of it.

So the Walt Disney method is. I think it's dreamer, realist, critic is the sequence. So, so you, you're going to go through stages. So the first stage is dreamer. It's like, what are all the things that I want to happen? And how, you know, how do I think they're going to happen? Okay, what, what should I do? And then the realist is, once you pick one or two of them, you say, how do I make this happen? And then the critic stage is, okay, so what could go wrong? And how would I. How would I overcome it? And it's. And it's an iterative process because then you go back to the dreamer stage. It's like, okay, well, given this, what do I really want to happen? What do I now think I want to happen? How, you know, I had these plans, now how do I adjust the plans to make sure it happens? And now what could go wrong? So by consciously going through that, you're.

You're having your critic stage, but you all know that that's just a stage and you're going to revert to another stage.

Okay, thank you for that. I just was trying to think we're talking about the loop and stuff like that. I was like, oh, I can see somebody getting stuck in like a doom loop. Of like, this is this bad and we're never learning or we just suck. And, you know, so that's interesting. Yeah, kind of like we're kind of earlier, like a little maybe pre mortem, postmortem back casting something as well. Right. To try to work out these unknown unknowns maybe or whatever it is you're fear mongering yourself or something.

Yeah. And, you know, going back to what do I want? What do I really want? Okay, what I really want to happen. And to understand that you're critiquing, your criticizing is not for the purpose of, of knocking something down, is for making something better. So how does this critique work to make something better? And then the other, the final thing is, is if this is a, you know, if this is a new type of situation, if it's a complex issue, you'll never get 100% certainty. And so it's the confidence of knowing that you're going to do something and you're going to get information back and that information is going to feed the next thing that you do. And so the whole purpose of that OODA loop is to get to action. And you don't want to spend so much time in that orient loop of putting things down because, you know, your purpose is to get into action, but on the same time, you don't want to skip that orient step because then you're not considering different alternatives, you're not considering what might go wrong.

Right. Yeah. I was, I was talking to somebody the other day a similar kind of thing where they're like, you know, we're saying I'm seductionist, all this stuff, and I gotta do it all myself. And I'm like, why? So I can't trust anybody else to do it. I was like, can you train up these people to do at least 80 of it and then you can come by and, and get the rest done and eventually you're going to train up a staff. And he was like, yeah, actually I could do that. I'm like, all right, let's move on here, buddy.

No, and it just, just. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Okay. When you said, you know, train these other people to do it, then that goes back. And I'm sure you, you said this also is your goal in being a manager, is your goal in running this company to always be doing it yourself? Right. So if your goal is not, then maybe letting people try things and letting them do it not quite as well as you do so that you can teach them. Maybe, maybe you're teaching somebody to fish instead of giving them fish.

Right, Exactly. If you're constantly handing these guys, they'll never learn. They can't fish as Good as me. You're just handing a fish. Well, there's no incentive to learn. I don't need to go fishing. I can go do something else. I, you just handed me the every day.

So speaking of that, I guess can we move on to collaboration?

Sure, sure. So in collaboration, which is the third book, you know, at the beginning of the book we build somewhat of the foundation so we go into many, you know, the, some of the resourcefulness techniques and some of the resilience techniques so that you're prepared for conflict and collaboration. And so the, you know, the first part of the conflict and collaboration is to understand why so many of the techniques that we, that we naturally go to, to handle conflicts don't work. And very often they don't work because they put the other person into the feelings of being threatened or, or well, which, which then results into, into fight and flight. And they, they may comply but they may not, you know, but they may comply in the short term or while you're watching, but as soon you turn your back or as soon as you're not there, they'll go back and do what they wanted to do anyhow because they feel that they're being forced to do it. So the, you know, the data shows that trying to convince people with facts, trying to convince people with logic, trying to reward people, trying to punish people, trying to out argue people or just force them to do things. Some, you know, sometimes it has no effect, sometimes it has a short term effect. Like you know, if we're in this, the chaotic situation, you know, we, we have to get it, we have to get safe.

But the long term effect of that, you know, it's, it's demotivating and it's not going to get people engaged to continue that, that, that type of work. So then kind of knowing that the next step in the book is to go through the five different ways of handling conflict. Okay. And so one of the ways of handling conflict is, you know, competitive is just, you know, you tell people what to do. We, you know, that's you know, like okay, you know, it's your bedtime, I'm the boss. Okay, okay. Or you know, like I, you know, I, I told you to do, I told you to do this report by, by 3:00 clock and it's 2:45 and you better have this on my desk in 15 minutes. You know, so that's a competitive, you're just telling me, you know, you're telling people what to do.

The competitor is actually looking for the other person to be Accommodated. Use the accommodation technique. Which, and that's, that's can be a bit, you know, a valid technique is you're figuring out what the other person wants you to do and you, and you're doing it. So that's accommodating. Third is avoiding. And we all do that. Okay? Like this person is just going to tell me to do something I don't want to do anyhow, so I'm just going to kind of hide it from them or I'm, I'm not going to deal with this or you know, what's, there's no sense in arguing, so I'm just going to, I'm going to let them talk and then I'll do it my way anyhow. So avoiding.

And then the two others are collaborating and compromising, which in English we very often think of our synonyms. But in conflict, you know, people who study conflict, they regard as two different things. When you're, you know, kind of, when you're settling, what you're doing is you're saying, well, look, you want these three, you want these five things? I want these five things. Why don't we do two of mine and two of yours? Okay, so nobody's 100 satisfied, but you know, we, the issue's behind us and we can move on. And then in collaborating, what we're trying to do is we're trying to expand the pie instead of splitting it. In collaborating, we're saying, look, I want these five things. You want these five things. What can we do that will meet, will meet both of our needs.

That can be more work, but it also ends up being very often a longer, longer term solution. Not that any one of those five different ways of handling are wrong. So there are times where each one is advantageous and there's also, other than for collaboration for the other four, any one of the other four could be handled when we're in resourceful mode or when we're in fight or flight mode. So if we're competing for fight or flight mode, we're definitely causing resentment, okay? When we're accommodating, when fight or flight mode, we're just fleeing, okay? When we're, you know, when we're avoiding, we're also fleeting. When we're compromising, we're just saying, just, just settle it, you know, so. But on the other hand, when we're in resourceful mode, it's like, well, I, you know, you can still be assertive, you know, like you're, you may be the boss of a situation and there may Be, you know, three or four things that one could do. Somebody's got to make the decision. You don't have to do it in an aggressive fashion.

You could just say, well, look, okay, we, we've heard all the information. We have to move forward, we have to make a decision. I know I would be upset also if somebody didn't pick my solution, but I'm just, I'm going to pick this one. I think this is a, this, this is a way to go these other ways they might have worked as well. This is the way we're going to go. Is everybody on board with this? And so you can do that from a, you know, phrasing it and from a position of being resourceful. So most of the, all of all five methods could be done from using resourceful brain, but four of them could also be used from using your limbic or your survival brain, which tends to stir up more, more negative emotions. So, so you learn the five different ways, you learn how to use them in both resourceful mode and in limbic mode.

And then we go into what I mentioned before, interviewing. I just forgot the name of the term motivational interview.

Yes.

Yeah. Which is a way of questioning and listening where you're getting the other person to really talk about, you know, if you're trying to sell them something or you're trying to get them to learn something, you're trying to get them to change their ways. They probably are somewhat ambivalent. If they really think about it about the way that they were originally thinking about doing it and it's getting them to talk about, well, you know, something, I was thinking about doing this, but now when I think about my main, my main goals, maybe it doesn't really align so much. And so if I think about my main goals, maybe there's three or four other ways of doing this. If, if they're picking up that you're doing this just to manipulate them that through really easily what you, you have to be, you know, you have to be empathetic, you have to be connecting with them. They have to feel that you're genuine, genuinely listening to them and interested in them. But the, you know, so motivational interviewing and then strengths based feedback.

So instead of just giving people feedback based on this is what you should be doing. But using strengths based feedback as part of motivational interviewing and then nonviolent communications, which is a way of then phrasing what people should do in a way that makes them not feel that you're threatening them, makes them feel positive about it. And then once you have all those techniques, then the final chapter deals with group pressure and groupthink and how group pressure and groupthink and exacerbates all of our survival brain problems and how we can be, you know, we first have to learn how to get out of it ourselves and then things that we can do to work with others. And frankly, very often when you're getting into these group situations, one of the strategies is avoid. It's like, I'm just not going to bring this up because I know that, that this person, you know, I'm really not going to have an influence unless I spend a tremendous amount of time connecting with this person. I don't have that amount of time. So I'm going to put my efforts into the things where I can have the greatest, the greatest effect. And so that's.

That basically is an outline of what's in the Conflict and Collaboration book.

Yeah, that's some good stuff for me. Some additional books I like on that is never split the difference from Chris Ross, the FBI negotiator. And then also he, in that book he recommends start with no. Also a great book.

Yeah.

It helps you reframe the way you think about these things. And like you're saying there's a lot of power in this. I, when I started learning this, I was like, you. I don't want to. It's not talking about, they're not talking about manipulation or anything like this, you know, but you're able to get more things done because you're able to, like, you're saying it's not, not a win win. And everybody kind of feels a little kind of scummy about it. When you're able to collaborate, like in the true sense of the word, everybody's kind of getting things done where we're, you know, we're doing all this. I think those are additional great resources.

I'll link to those for you guys too.

Those are great books. Yep. Yeah, yeah.

You talk about avoid. I'd like to kind of double click on this here. I notice, and I'm not trying to pick on the younger generation, but I do notice it in the younger generation, avoid. It seems to almost be the default when they hear something they don't like or want to do, though. Am I reading this wrong? How do you see it? And if so, how do we connect with them and talk with them and kind of get them, pull them back from that avoidance stage they're in?

So I think a void is a very, very common in young people of every Generation, I think we used. Well, you're younger than I am. Okay, but, but you know, in your generation and in my generation, we used, you know, we used a void. Because really, if you think about it, well, you know, the first three reactions that we have that we developed as, as human beings were flight and freeze. Okay. And so, you know, freeze and flight are basically very close to avoid. And so. Yeah, so, so when you see somebody avoiding, you yourself have to think, is it, is this something that's worth having a conversation about or do I want to wait for another opportunity to have this conversation or just not, you know, wait for them to outgrow it? Okay, but if you then decide that this is worth having a conversation, this, you know, motivational interviewing where you're using non judgmental questions to get a person to start thinking about what they're doing, why they're doing and what else they could be doing, is a very powerful technique.

That's what it came out of. Therapists, therapists who are working with people who are doing risky behavior like drugs and risky sex. And so therapists using it with people to get them to talk themselves into doing better types of behavior. And then from that it was used in more types of situations with adults and then more types of situations with teens. And it's used with kids, you know, as young as, say eight, you know, third grade. Eight, eight, eight years old. Before then there's a question of, you know, do the kids have enough development in their prefrontal cortex to be able to think this way. But once they're 8, 9 years old, you can use those types of questions kind of modified, you know, you're not using three syllable words, but you know, maybe you're making some suggest more suggestions than you would with an adult instead of like open ended questions.

But you can still use the motivational interviewing questions to get even, you know, eight, nine year olds to start understanding trade offs and, and their own values.

Is, is motivational interviews that only in your book or do you also have some maybe blog posts on that or whatnot I really like?

Right. Okay. So if you, you know, my, my blog is Mind Shifting with Mitch blog. Okay. Okay. And my, my website is, is mindshiftingwithmitch.com which also links to my blog. But from there you could do a query. It's the motivational interviewing.

And there are, there are articles on motivational interviewing.

Okay.

That I've done. And you could go on the Internet, you know, and just put motivational interviewing and there's a ton of material on.

It, what I've, I'm new to that, that phrase. So this is interesting.

Yeah, it's a, it's, it's so one of the early course, early times that I taught the course, a school social worker was, was taking the course and as I go to motivational interviewing she was saying this is what I, this is what I use, this is what I was trained in. And she says, I'm so happy to hear that you're training other people to use this because it is so powerful. So there's, there's a, there is a lot of material on motivational interview. Not that I'm the be all and end all and most expert on it. What I've tried to do is, you know, first of all, you know, practical ways of using motivational interviewing and second of all, how do you integrate it with strengths based feedback and with, with nonviolent communications? So you're leading towards things that people, you know, agree that they're going, they're going to do and they feel more receptive. Yeah, it is.

Okay, I will, I'll query your blog and I'll link directly to the query for you folks. So it's easy to just jump in there because like I said, I'm interested. I'm going to dive deep into, more into this. So I've kind of gone through the three, I want to say pillars of your stuff and in your book. From what I gathered, I have not read it, so I'm not going to speak as if I pretend like I did, but I found there was 50 techniques in the book. Is that correct?

There's 50. Yeah. So yeah, that's the first book, you know, stop your brain sabotaging your happiness and success. 50 techniques around, you know, recognizing self awareness about things that you can say to yourself, things that you can imagine different ways of just of distracting ways of recognizing in other people, you know, techniques that you can use to be more resourceful.

So I know we talked a lot of techniques, but I'm wondering if maybe we haven't covered it yet. Is there maybe the least understood or maybe and, or the most overlooked technique that'll be like the most powerful shift or unlock for people?

I think one of the things that people get shocked about most when they first hear it is when I tell them that whenever you are sure of something, it means that you're in your limbic mind. Because if you're in your resourceful mind, you're never completely sure because you're always curious and exploratory. So when you're sure that you have to do something. When you're sure that you can't do something, when you're sure that the other person is wrong, when you're sure that you're right. It's like I'm in limbic. Okay. And then the thing is, you know, use some of those other techniques to open yourself up to, you know, question yourself, question the other person, get curious, connect, question your, your, your, your values. But I'd say that's, that's the thing that tends to shock people is like, is to understand that whenever they're sure of something that means, you know, and maybe it's not 100% because nothing's 100%.

We're all people but 93.75%, give or take 10%. But you know, most, by far, most of the time you're in, you're in limbic mode and you're not being creative, you're not accessing your ability to critical think. You're not able to take in new information. You have all your cognitive devices there.

I love that. That's a great self examination kind of question. When you have that maybe visceral reaction. Yeah, this is correct. Let's go. Is there also maybe a bit of like a Dunning Krueger effect as well?

Well, that's the whole thing, right, because is Dunning. Dunning Krueger is kind of a, you know, and an instance, you know, it's when, you know, people who really don't know enough to know that they don't know enough are absolutely positive. And it, you know, you can also say, you know, the four, you know, the four steps to improve. And we begin with, you know, unconscious incompetence. You know, we're not, we're not competent and we don't even know it. Which is kind of Dun and Kruger. Okay, then conscious, conscious incompetence. We understand that we don't know something.

Conscious competence, we, we're learning how to do it, but we have to think about it. And then unconscious competence, which is when we don't have to think about it because it's become internal to us.

Right? Yeah. If you guys aren't aware of this language, to me the easiest way to learn it is think about driving. You just drive and you're good at it. You just drive and next thing you know you're like, how am I home? That's that unconscious competence. But when something pops up and all of a sudden you gotta think about driving, that's where you kind of revert back. When that's why I, like, I teach. I thought I taught my son about that. That's like that example I use for him.

Wonderful. That's. That's a great analogy. Yeah.

So you have had, have a, a extensive career in the education kind of realm. I guess you cut your teeth as an entrepreneur and stuff there. You built a pretty large company. If an educator was listening to this right now. And I'm not just talking about school teachers like we're, on some level, all of us are educators. We're all leaders, parents or managers, whatever it is. Yeah.

Co workers, friends.

What would be a technique and if we talked about already just kind of shoot that out there, that would have the most immediate impact right now.

I, I'd say understanding that when somebody is in fight flight mode and somebody is in their limbic mode, whether it's you or with somebody else, that they're not ready to accept any, anything new. And before you try to teach them anything or show them anything or influence them, that you are very conscious of first getting them into resourceful mode and connecting with you. And once they're connecting with you, you know, then you can have a conversation about what you'd like them to do or what you'd like them to change or what you'd like them to learn. But when they're in this mode of blame or anxiety or fear, you're just, you're, you're not going to be fruitful. Nothing you say is going to help.

I also noticed confusion as well. Right.

When they're, when they're, when they're, when they're really confused, it's like. But when they're centered, when they're like, okay, you know, then, then you can move forward with them.

What would be maybe the most counterintuitive advice you'd give to like a teacher or an educator?

Well, there's so much of this that's, that's counterintuitive, I think. You know, we had this, just one example. We have this tendency when somebody says they can't do something to respond like, well, yes, you can. You know, you know how to do that. And that response then triggers in them much more that this person is disagreeing with me and they're threatening with me, they're threatening me. So I'm going to, I have to fight back or I just have to like, get away from them than it is like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know something, thank you so much. I didn't know I could do it. That's not going to be the reaction.

So, you know, What? One of the techniques in the stop your brain for sabotaging your happiness and success book is the perhaps I can technique. And if you can get them to say to themselves, perhaps I can. Not like I can, but say, you know, if you can get them to say perhaps I can, or if I knew how to do this, what might I do next? Or something like that, then you're kind of tricking their brain to open up rather than trying to drive it, you know, drive them into being, being more able. So, so I'd say, you know, the direct approaches that we learned and that are habitual to us, that they don't work, that's counterintuitive. And the indirect approaches tend to work a lot better with people.

For myself, when somebody tells me I can't do something, my initial response is, watch me. Is there, is there a flaw to that thinking?

No, I, I, I'm, I'm the same way. If somebody says you can't do this, it's like, I bet you, you know, there's a, you know, we, I'm sorry, we, we, we can't help you. It's like, well, you know, something, let's, let's, let's take a look at that. So it's so, you know, like I'm, you know, because with, they're in limbic mode at that point, okay, when they're saying you can't do this, they're just, you know, they're just going from a reaction, good, bad, you can or you can't. And so to the extent that we can open their minds up that there might be possibilities, and it's just like, and, and if we're, if they're saying you can't do it, and I just respond, yes, I can, then I'm in limbic mode also, you know, but that's not to say that I'm wrong to be in limbic mode. It just means that that's my limbic reaction. And then maybe I can use that limbic reaction to open them up.

Or even when you're saying that, what I was thinking was when I jump, I'm in that limit mode because I, I, you know, I, I say, watch me. And then I, I think if I'm able to step back and say, okay, now I've just committed to this. I just, I'm talking a bunch of right now, how do I get this done? Like, you know, I don't know if I can actually do 10 pull ups right now, but how do I get 10 pull ups done? That's Kind of how I think my brain kind of just kind of.

Yeah.

Ends with that.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, I don't think I could do 10 pull ups, but I could do 10.

I can't anymore, but I, I just. That was just. My son has always challenged me on that and he knows that. He likes to play that game with me.

Yeah.

He'll tell me I can't do something. I'm like, watch me. And he jokes with me.

He's.

He's a teenager now, so he's starting to get strong and he's starting to get big. And so he's getting closer to. We're getting close to capabilities. So I'm still. For now, I can still beat him in just about everything except for pull ups.

He's.

He's got, man. So he challenges me on those things a lot. And it's fun. I. I know it's fun.

It's fun. Yeah. It's great watching people, you know, watching your kids improve and eventually, you know, get, get better than we are. Get smarter than we are. Get stronger than we are. Yeah.

Yeah. Because, you know, like I said earlier, that 40 laws of power. I don't like that quote. You know, never outside the master. I was like, I want you to outshine me. So that's my, that's my thought process. Like, if you outshine me, I've done my job.

Yes.

That's how I think about that. So you, I mean, you've got so much knowledge and all this stuff and, you know, of all these things. I know Daniel Kahneman. He said he's a famous psychiatrist, psychologist, something he wrote Thinking Fast and Slow and some other books and stuff like that or whatever. He said even though he knows all these things, he's still fooled by a lot of these things. Is there something that still trips you up as well?

Well, I'm human, you know, like. Yeah, okay, so there are times you're gonna be shocked at this. But, but Even, even after 40, 40 years of marriage, there are times where I, I get angry at my wife.

You know, I do too.

There's times I get angry at myself. There's times where I don't think that I can do something through learning all these techniques. It's long, you know, the, the time that I'm in that, that mode is not as long, and I'm, I'm, I'm better able to, to recover it. Just a funny story. So we've had, we've had a lot of exchange students. We've had 12 exchange students who've Lived with us for a semester or longer. Okay. And.

And a bunch of other ones that we've lived shorter. So our second exchange student is from China, and she's now living in the U.S. she was with us in, like, 2004. She. And she was over for dinner, I think, at this point, like, I don't know, two months ago. Okay. Actually, she was over for the. We spent the entire day with her.

But at dinner, she looked and she says, you know, you and mom aren't fighting anymore.

Oh, interesting.

And it's like, well, yeah, because look at all these techniques that I've just spent 15 years studying. Right, right, right.

And you're just getting better at reps.

Right? Right. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we. I mean, we still. There are times, you know, we're, you know, two people living together. You know, there's gonna be times where we're, you know, disagree or we fight or, you know, where she's obviously wrong. But, you know, I've learned. I've learned to accept her being wrong, you know? Right.

Especially spouses and siblings, they just know the right button to push at the right moment.

Oh, yeah. Like, okay, so just today. Okay, not that. So I was on. I, you know, I had a. I have this phone call with this person from Quebec who isn't, you know, basically, we were talking about something else, but I brought up these courses, and it turns out that they. They just fell in love with the idea of the courses. And they said, we want to.

I'm going to bring you into Quebec so that Quebec teachers could take these courses. Because we offer. We offer the courses. You know, when a. When a state or province brings us in, we offer them free to the. For the. For the teacher.

Oh, it's amazing.

That's. That's my. That's my mission is. Is. Okay. So, like, I finished that phone call, and I was just, like, so up. So I, I, you know, I put the headphones down, I go into the kitchen where. Because I work from home and where my wife is, and I'm like, I just had this great phone call.

I was on the phone with somebody from Quebec. They're going to bring the course into the teachers in Quebec. And she turns to me, says, well, if you want to make yourself useful, how about emptying the dishwasher? And, like, the first response is like. And then it's like, you know, something. That's your limbic response. Yeah. You know, dishwasher has to be emptied. You know, I might as well empty it, you know, but, yeah, but still, that first response is like, human, right?

Yes. Well, that's beautiful. I didn't know you did that. Thank you so much for giving back in that way. That's amazing.

Well, we, you know, so, you know, I'm, I'm 72 years old. I think people in my generation, our job on this planet should be helping the next generations excel. And so that's, that's, that's my job right now, is to help the next generations live lives that they really want to live.

That's a, that's beautiful. Thank again. Thank you. And we all should learn from that. I think, you know, I try to do the same. I'm not, you know, that old, you know, but we should all be helping the next generation be better than we were so they can help the next generation be better than they were. So you were around in the early computer days?

Oh, yeah.

Computer training and all that stuff. What did you learn from that industry that can help adults unlearn old patterns?

Well, the first thing is that you can unlearn old patterns. And that actually when you start understanding that you can unlearn old patterns, that's really that first step to. Towards improvement. So I think that was really one of the, you know, the first things. There's, there's kind of an old joke. Like the, the joke is, you know, that there's a statement, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Right? Okay, but you can teach an old dog new tricks, but then you still have an old dog. Right? So.

But yes, I think that, that. And, and then I guess in terms of learning that, you know, we think that we should be training people on there's, you know, on facts or on. If it's software on, you know, there's this command and there's this command and then there's this command. But that really, people learn by solving things that they regard as problems or by taking advantage of opportunities. So that really, when you're, when you, when you want to. A person to, to change or when you want a person to learn something is to give them a problem where they have to learn it in order to solve that problem. So you give them a really interesting, you know, you let them understand that there's something that they don't know how to do by posing a question to them or posing a problem to them, and they realize they can't do it, and then they're much more willing to listen to. Well, so here's the technique, here's the concepts behind it, here's the techniques, and then, and Then you have to practice, because until you have this very limited amount that you can learn, they say, you know, five plus or minus two things that you can hold in your conscious memory.

So you can't just teach one thing and the next thing. And the next thing you have to teach, like, one or two things. And then you have to say, okay, let's practice this two or three times so it becomes part of your habits. Now that this part of your habits, let's move forward with the next thing. So those are some of the things that I learned from being around the technology and teaching people how to use the technology back all the way back from the late 70s.

Oh, wow. There's Commodore days and stuff.

Well, even the mainframe days. Wow.

Yeah. Tape reels and stuff. I don't remember that, but I know of it.

You know, I was a. I was a Cobol programmer, you know.

Wow. I guess they. They could still probably use you. I heard they still use that language in the government.

Yep, yep, yep. But those days, I'm just not interested. I'm more interested in people.

Is this more. Is this like you're learning how to learn? Is that what you're kind of going after with that?

It's learning how to learn. Learning how to. How to be in control over your own life rather than just reacting to situations. And in a sense, we all are creating our own realities anyhow, but many of us are doing it without realizing that we're creating them. And by being conscious of. You know something? This is what I thought of reality, but it's really just one story. What are some other stories that are involved? What, what. What can I learn differently? So getting people to.

To really consciously choose what they're doing, what they're thinking, how they're acting. That's. That's my goal. I think people will be a lot happier when they can do that.

I definitely agree. Like we said earlier in an episode, the Examine Life.

Yes, exactly.

Creating, designing how you want your life to be. How do you know a student or how do I know as myself? I'm. I'm having this mind shift or my mindset.

My.

I had the mind shift instead of just parody new language or is parenting new language okay? Because the repetition will slowly kind of seep in.

So I'm not quite sure of the conversation. How do I know that I'm making progress or.

Yeah, how do I know I'm having the mind shift or how to mind shift? And I'm not just saying things that sound. Well, I'm not just Quoting quotes. I'm not actually learned anything. I'm not actually making those transitions. I'm not making the shifts, I'm not changing the behaviors, the habits.

Well, if you find that you're in a curious state of mind, if you, if you find that you're exploratory, if you're thinking about things and saying, how does this mesh with my higher level values, what I really want to accomplish. If you're finding that you're, you're with other people and you're building off of each other's ideas, rather than one person closing off other people's ideas, that just, that means you're, you're, you're living it. Okay. And you're not going to be doing that 100% of the time. But the more that you're doing that, the more you're mastering it.

Yeah, it just kind of reminded me of. I, I don't know if this is a real person or just like a parable or something, but the person was talking about a PhD. I think it was a, some kind of doctor, psychiatrist, college, something like that. And he came to work for him or at the hospital, whatever it was he was working at. And he was like, and the guy graduated, like top of his class and all this stuff. And he started, so he started talking to him and he's like, you don't actually know anything. You just know how to recite facts and information.

Right?

You never learned anything in school. Like you have your PhD, but you don't actually know. So that's what I was trying to like. How do you know you're just not a good testing or you're good at regurgitating things. You're actually internalizing it and moving forward in the transformation.

It's not so much what you do, it's how you are and how you feel. So if you're feeling curious, if you're generally feeling happy, if you're generally feeling empathetic with other people, if you're feeling that you're aligned with what's really important with, important to you, then that carries through with what you, with, with what you're doing. And that's the, that's the, the biggest part of it is just is, is who are you when you're doing that? Because we just tend to be robotic or we tend to be angry or, or anxious. But if we're anxious about something, you know, that's, that's valuable information to have. It's not like being anxious is bad, but we want to stay anxious about it for for days. We don't, you know, it's like, you know, when, when, When a stove is really hot, you know, burning your hand on that stove is really valuable because you, you know, it causes you. But we're not, you know, when we're anxious about something and we're angry about something for days, I mean, it's just like keeping our hand on the hot stove and saying, yeah, this really hurts. Yeah, this really hurts.

Yeah, yeah, it hurts, you know, like, no. So if you, if you find that you're moving back from the anxiety and you're saying, well, you know, let me, you know, what am I curious about? What am I Will? How am I, you know, am I arguing with this person or am I connecting with this person? And if I'm not connecting with this person, how can I connect with this person? Then you're. That. Then, Then you're living it. And that's more important than any of the techniques.

Reframing the emotions. Is that maybe how we can think of that?

Yeah. Emotions, Right. Okay.

Because I think a lot of times we mislabel our emotions as, you know, maybe good or bad or, or whatever. I know a lot of people talk about, like, nervousness is actually. Can actually be excitement. Like, you know, you're going on stage, I'm so nervous and anxious. Like, actually, you're probably excited. There may be some of that as well. But maybe we've learned to mislabel some of these emotions.

Yeah. In the conflict and collaboration. Well, actually, both in. In the stop your brain book, I go into this a little bit and then more into the conflict and collaboration book. But, you know, we go into, you know, there's some levels of anxiety that are motivating, like when we're, you know, when we're in a game situation and we're not sure that we're going to win. And, you know, there's, there's. We feel some pressure, but it's motivating us. It can be motivating us to do more.

And then there's certain situations where we're anxious and it's. And it's. And it's holding us back. So it's, it's, you know, the term is like eustress, EU stress or distress. Dis stress. So eustress is stress that motivates us. Distress is stress that demotivates us. To a large extent.

Whether something is eustress or distress is in our heads, it's not this. The situation is the situation. The better we are at mind shifting, the better we are converting those situations to eustress so that we're enjoying them as ways knowing that we're growing, then there is chronic stress. And when people are opposed to trauma and repeated drama, you know, adverse childhood experiences, and they're, and they have chronic stress, well, that's a time where a person really needs professional help because they, the chances of a person getting out of that by themselves are, are, are very, very small. And when we see that in another person that the person is, oh is triggered immediately, then you know, we can, we can do certain things to help them out. But basically what they, what they need is something, somebody probably more trained and somebody more professional than we are.

That's a beautiful way to frame that. Thank you for that. I like that thought pattern there. So you went through the PC revolution, now we're in the AI revolution. What are some mind shift things that we need to do to kind of be prepared and maybe unlearn and relearn the AI revolution?

Well, there's so much I, I use AI a lot. So I'm, and actually I, so right now I'm primarily, you know, writing and I, and I, and I have the courses that I teach over, over zoom. But, but I'm in the process of just finishing a course that will be an asynchronous course. So it'll be out there that people could sign up for. And in that course, one of the uses of AI is we've got AI mentors. So in, so when I teach the course, let's say the, the course on resourcefulness, which is, you know, to stop your brain for sabotaging you. When I teach that course and I go over technique, I call somebody up and then I coach them through the technique and then I have people in the course coach each other. Okay.

But in the asynchronous course, I've now trained AI agents to do the same questions that I would. So you, you know, what's, what's a problem that you face that's like this, okay. And then they ask you the same questions. And, and, and you know, because it's AI, it's not like rote, because they're asking questions and reframing what you're saying based, based on your program. So, so I guess one thing with AI is to, is to consider, you know, how, how can you use AI to be more effective. But another thing is that, is to understand all the limitations of AI because I fed AI, you know, pieces of my book and I had it put together content, and I written and I looked at the Content. And it's like, this is not what I put in the book. This is.

Yeah, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a, there's a technique that uses an acronym, the S C O R E. And I asked it to train somebody and, and it came up with its own acronym for score, which is very different from what, what was it? It was like. No. So, so you, you know, to just like, you have to check yourself. Like, am I going by limbic? You have to check. The AI is like, is this reasonable? Could this be biased? I guess those are some of the things I, I'm really concerned about the future of, of people who are creating things because AI is just sucking it up and giving it away without benefit to the people who actually came up with those things. So how are we gonna, are we gonna build systems so that people who were, who are creating stories, who are creating art, who are creating music and really giving value? How, how we, how do we create systems so that they get paid for that? And you, and you know, you see with, with, you know, they're, they're not, you know, people aren't buying their albums, so, and they're, they're, they're, you know, putting the music up on, you know, not to pick on Spotify, but on Spotify and they're getting paid nothing, you know, or virtually nothing for, for, for their content. Whereas before, if they, if, if 10,000 people bought their albums, that's not, that's not a tremendous amount, but that gives them a decent amount of money that gave them, used to give them a decent amount of money.

So it's like, how are we going to use AI so that we as creators and we as people benefit from it. And it's not just the person who owns the AI package who's benefiting from everything. I know. Did I, did that answer your question or was I rambling? I'm not sure.

I just wanted to hear your thoughts on it. But I mean, you, you bring up some valid things. I know as of time of this recording In September of 25, there are a lot of citations now within the AI feedback. I know, I think, boy, it was a perplexity or somebody. They're offering people some type of like royalty payments similar to like a Spotify kind of thing, Apple Music kind of thing. So, I mean, yeah, that's. We're gonna have a weird period like the Napster days when everybody just took everything and movies and music and right now everybody's just taking everything. But I think eventually I think we'll figure out some type of.

Eventually, yeah, something, something's gonna happen, right?

Yeah. And then, you know, back to kind of, you know, I do notice I do use a lot, but I do also put a lot of time in training and coaching the AI to do what I wanted to do. And it gets better. And it's gotten better as the, whatever, maybe two years or so now we've been, this has kind of been out in the mass market, but like you're saying, you got to be careful of the slop. You've gotta, you can't just go into a subject or a topic blind and just think that whatever it told you is 100 true. So you better be careful, be careful when you use it in that way.

Right.

But if it's something like you're saying that you know the content and, and you want help with a rough draft or a first pass or a second set of eyes, sure, yeah. That's something helpful for now.

Yeah, I use it for a lot of content generation. If I'm doing a proposal to speak at a conference, and I know this conference is, let's say entrepreneurs, and let's say that one of my topics is on motivational interviewing. I'll say, give me 10 examples when an entrepreneur might use motivational interviewing in a management situation. Now, it'll give me 10 examples, I'll pick two of them, then I'll ask it to expand those two, and then I'll, and then inevitably, you know, I'll go down the conversation that's come up with and say, okay, the first, the first four statements are true. You know, you keep the first four statements, but at the fifth statement, have the person make this objection and then carry it through some more. So, but it's, but it's ended up. It's, it's saving me, you know, 60, 70% of my time when I'm doing that.

Yeah, absolutely. I use it, I mean, I use it for this interview. I use it for all kind of things, you know, but it's all, it's about like, everything in life. It's, it's what you put in. It's, it's the training you do. It's the, it's the work you put in up front where you get the payoff on the back end. So like, you know, I have, I, I've given it everything I've ever basically said in whatever form, and I've given it rules and we've. I iterate and, and whatnot.

And I do notice it's starting to sort of sound like me Or I'm wondering, am I starting to sound like it?

Because, you know, well, and, and I have a template for, for proposals. Okay. And so that constantly gets updated because, you know, here's the template and here's the requirements that these people have said. Here's what I talked to the person about. Use the template, incorporate what they've said, incorporate what the requirements are. Give me a proposal. And then, you know, I still have an hour or two worth of work to go through the proposal and edit it. But, but what turns out is a better proposal than if I'd written it by myself in a lot less time.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I, I'm just writing a newsletter. I same thing. I've got a format and I, I feed it the information and it just took me several hours. Now it takes me about an hour, maybe a little bit less. And it's just like, it's great if you use it correctly. And you, yeah. You know, I think you go through a lot of techniques that we talked about in this episode of, of framing things correctly and understanding these things and, and not getting upset or mad at it when it doesn't listen or it's doing things and, and asking better questions. And you know, me and my son did a little experiment.

We basically asked the same question in two different ways and it gave us two sort of different answers. So you got to be careful with that as well how you frame the questions. If you're framing the question with the bias, it's going to sort of give you the answer to your bias so that you got to be careful with that.

So I wanted it to create an image or I wanted to create an image of a girl repairing a, repairing the derailleur of her bicycle. Okay. So you, you know, the, the derailleur is what shifts the gears. Okay. And so the derailleur is generally there's one usually in the middle of the bicycle and there's always one if you, you know, on the, on the back wheel. And I used three different AIs and I tried eight different times with each one of them and they never gave me a bicycle that was actually a bicycle. You know, sometimes have one wheel, sometimes have the derailleur on the front tire. Sometimes, you know, like it would have the derailleur like separate from the bicycle.

You know, like it never gave me a two wheeled bicycle with a derailleur on the back tire with maybe the, the chain off of, you know, never anything that I could use. It's like. Yeah. So finally it was Just like, okay, forget it. You know, I'm just, you know, I'm gonna get an image of a bicycle, I'm gonna get an image of a girl. I'm going to combine them myself and you know, and I put it together that way. But, but yeah, sometimes it can be frustrating using the AI because there's just certain things it just won't do for some reason and I don't know why.

Yeah. And then to think about, for everybody listening in too, this is the worst it's going to be, right?

Yeah. Every year it's going to get better.

I mean, at this rate, I think it's something like it's doubling like every nine months or something like that. Yeah, it's beyond that. I forget his name now. That, that rate of doubling normally.

Right, the intel guy.

Yeah. Right, right, right, right. So is that your custom trained AI? Is that come with the courses, something you get separately?

Well, so if you. So, so this course will, will be basically, I think it's going to be $30 to, to take this course. And for certain, and I don't remember the amount of time for $30. It might be a month, it might be two months. But while you're subscribed to the course, you can go back and use these AIs, these mentors. There's 30 or 31 different AI mentors in that course. Wow. And so if you, you know, if you have a, if you know, let's say you, you took the course and now it's like I have this type of problem and I think the perhaps I can technique will help me.

I don't want to go through it myself. Let me go to, in chapter two, lesson five, the perhaps I can technique. And boom. Let me, let me walk, let it walk me through that technique again. Boom. It'll walk you through the technique. It won't remember. You can go on five minutes later and it won't remember the transaction it just had with you.

It's not storing any of the information once it's done. But while it's going through, it's gonna, it's, it's gonna, you know, riff on whatever you say your problem is and ask you the, the questions dealing with whatever the technique is that you're exploring.

Yeah. For personally, when I encounter AIs like that, I'll have a separate doc open and I'll be copying and pasting things so I have my notes per se. Okay, that's awesome. So we have that, we have all your courses. We had your newsletter, your website, your Book anything else you wanted to kind of shout out and let people know about?

Well, not just for me. It's just like, you know, I just, you know, if you as an individual are, you know, you're feeling lost, it's. It's that feeling of being lost or overwhelmed or anxious. Understand that's your brain trying to protect you. But. But having more techniques to be able to be aware of when that's happening, to be able to use self talk to get you out of it, and to be able to use distraction like mindfulness, to be able to get out of it, that returns you to your resourcefulness. And you can do that. You don't, you know, like, yeah, I'll give you extra techniques, but the core of it is you can learn this also on your own if you want to put the time in on your own.

That's great. Thank you. So I'll link to all those things for you folks. I'll link to all his socials if you guys want to connect on all those. And then on the social community show, I like to do a weekly challenge. It could be something we talked about here today or maybe something we didn't talk about at all to, you know, implement maybe ideas or concepts I'd like you to implement or I'd like you to give this week's challenge.

Okay. I'm trying to think of, do I want to do a challenge for a person individually or a challenge where they're dealing with another person. Let me just. Individually. Okay. And that is think of something that you're absolutely sure of. And if that. And how do you talk yourself into being curious about what else could be other than what you're sure about? So it could be something you're sure that you can do, something that you're sure that you're right, something that you're sure that somebody else is wrong.

And how could you get curious about whether or not that was completely true and whether you might be able to learn and modify it by even as little as 10%? That's the challenge.

I like that it reminds me of a little challenge I suffer myself. I noticed every morning I get into a nice bath and. And I stand there and I. I just procrastinate about every dang thing there could possibly be. I'm wiping my glass on my car, I'm sweeping the garage, everything. And then so the other day I got in and I sat down and I was like, in about 30 seconds, probably actually less. I'm like, what was I complaining? Every day I do this for like three years. Why? And I was like, what other 30 second bits of pain am I avoiding? Just like that.

So it kind of reminds me of that. Like, you know, how many of these things are we doing that? You know, once you kind of get like. Like I said, I sit down maybe 15 seconds, I'm like, it doesn't even, it, it doesn't even bother me anymore. Things.

Right.

I'm not thinking about anymore. I don't remember why I was avoiding it, but I'll start thinking, like, what other areas of my life am I avoiding? 30 seconds a day, a week, a month of pain when I could just get started. And then I'll never remember even why I hesitated.

Yeah, one of the women who was taking a course, you know, let's say it was in the third session, you know, she comes into class and she, and, and, and she was saying, you know, it was so amazing. She says, last night, you know, when, when we, I was talking with my husband about, you know, our limbic mind and our resourceful mind and how the limbic mind puts everything into binary. And we were talking about the something that we've been arguing about, and we both looked at each other and we started laughing because we realized we were just both in our Olympic minds. And what we were, what we've been arguing about for 15 years didn't make any difference at all. We couldn't care less. And we just started laughing.

That's beautiful. Imagine more if you evaluate that into your life, all the things you are complaining about. I just reread the book. Oh, shoot. Wherever you go, there you are. Something along.

Oh, I love. Yeah.

And then he's talking about in the book is like, you know, I was. Whatever he was irritated about every time somebody, I don't know, put a bowl in the sink or something like that, he's like, why? And so I started thinking. I was like, I have a water peripheral thing and it drives me nuts. Nobody fills that thing up. So now after. And it's funny, I, I had to reread the book to get this. I look every day, I, I look at that thing and it's empty. And I say, all right, I don't have to be mad about this.

And after a few days of that, I'm like, it's. I mean, I still wish people would fill it up, but it doesn't really bother me, obviously. Be like, who? And fill this up now. And I'd be so mad about it. Like, just fill it up. It takes four seconds. It's driving bananas Now I'm just like, all right, well, I guess.

And I'm looking over your. I'm looking over your right shoulder, and I see books by Bill Walsh and Phil Jackson, and that basically that's what they taught, right?

Yes. And that's the thing I. I'd like to, you know, kind of second on that we need to reread these books because every time you're a different person, you never walk in the same now, never steps in the same river twice or whatever, something like that. But every time you reread these books, you find something different. You're in a different place in your life. Your different problems are coming up in different challenges. I reread that book, and I'm like, five years ago, I could have known this information, but because I reread then I pick that up now, and I don't get so irritated anymore.

You got it, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So that's the challenge is find something that you're. That you're really sure about, and how do you get curious or open about it so that you can modify it by even as little as 10%.

10% is huge. Over weeks, days, months, years. It's awesome. So the last question here I'd like to ask you. This doesn't have to be necessarily a grandiose thing. However you think about this, that's how I want to frame this. So what does becoming legendary mean to you?

So. So I. I actually think that all we see and hear and feel is illusion. That actually that in our essence, that we're all very much connected. And so to me, the having media or whatever and being legendary is really unimportant. It's legendary just to me. Good to me is if I know that I'm making a positive impact, I know that's affecting the entire universe. When I see somebody having a positive impact, that's affecting me.

That's. That's a legendary feeling. And that's, to me, is, you know, it's. It's not that legendary the way we think of legendary, but it's like in the spirit of, you know, all that there is.

I think it's legendary. It's legendary to you, and it's legendary. You give the gift you're giving of a giving away yourself. To me, those are things that build a legendary life. So, yes, I love it.

Well, thank you. Thank you, Mitch.

I had an absolute blast. I have an entire page for notes. Thank you so much for coming on, sharing all your wisdom, entertaining my silly, crazy questions.

You crazy. You had great questions because you really challenged me. You saw that there were probably eight, ten times where you asked a question and like, it's like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to say? It's like, so those were great questions that really caused me to think. I hope that people get, you know, some techniques that they can use and, and, and they, you know, people can reach out. They can, you know, if, if they find my book useful. That's great. I'd love them to consider the book or the other courses.

Perfect. And I'll make it easy for you guys in the show notes. Everything to get a hold of Mitch will be there for you guys.

Okay, Tyson, thank you once again.

Thanks, Mitch. That was an amazing episode. I hope you guys took away some golden nuggets. I did. I got a lot here. Check out his resources. Check out the different things. I love this subject matter.

So I like to go into this. I'm going to be all in this and just another resource for me, another way to learn, another way to keep adapting, growing and transforming because that's what I'm about too. So what also, what we were not about here though, is paywalls and premium content. There's nothing to subscribe to. We give you everything up front. We hope you love it. One thing we ask is if this episode brought you value share with these two other people. You can connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or your favorite podcast player.

For perhaps past episodes and links to everything we've discussed here today, head over to the social chameleon show. Until next time, keep learning, growing and transforming on your path to becoming legendary.

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