Conquer Laziness: Daily Habits For Unstoppable Motivation & Productivity | Todd Herman

[Music] well welcome to another episode of conversations with Tom I am here with Todd Herman Tom it's the dawn of time it's the Tom and Todd show today it is it is indeed welcome man yeah great to be here finally I'm super excited to have you it should be a lot of fun you've got a very interesting concept and I wanted just before we started rolling you were talking about New York is where you ended up from Canada very surprised by that yeah that's because it's the epicenter of ambition yeah so what was it about ambition and and what do you like about the realities of New York that there is this phenomenal pursuit that's always happening there like you don't come to New York to live a quality of life that's interesting what do you mean by that well you're not there because it's easy because New York isn't easy you're there because you're you're pursuing something like there's so many industries that that's the place where you go whether it's fashion or whether it's media or whether it's finance or you know insert the name of like eleven others really you really onto something interesting though that I am I'm not sure how the world comes down in this and I think I may have a weird view on this so you're saying that they don't go there for quality of life for me I'm assuming what you mean is like a work-life balance ya know like what I mean is like you're there like people it's you meet so many interesting people that have got big dreams big pursuits whether they're gonna make it or not that's that's not the argument but you meet people who have chosen to go to a place where I mean quality of life in that you're not living in a 2,000 square foot apartment that you're paying 1,500 month for okay there I mean I had friends were five six of them were living inside of a one-bedroom apartment right and but they were all pursuing the dream of living in New York City even like that you think there's something I've often referred to my own drive as a sickness now I say it as a sickness like Batman has a sickness yeah so to me even that's kind of cool yeah the sexiness to that yeah we're gonna jump into that deep with disgust that's true with the whole notion of an alter ego that you're great for yourself absolutely so is when when I think about New York when I think about ambition when I think about people going somewhere and giving up what some people may call a quality of life for me that is the juice that is the quality like seeing all in yeah so my context of the colder life that I was just talking about was like the sort of accepted one in suburbia right that you know you live in a hermetically sealed home with a two-car garage and then you get inside of your medically sealed vehicle and you drive 35 or minutes to an hour to hermetically seal the office and like that's very much what people's existences are you don't have that in in New York like it's a little bit grimy it's a little bit dirty and and I love the dirt under your fingernails and and that's why for me this is what you and this is what you're hunting for in your conversations in your stories is you like hey I love all the gloss I love all the kind of like you know zenith rising story and the the hero coming out of the journey but I want to get into the cave part like tell me about the dark part and I mean that's where I've lived for 22 years working with ambitious whether it's athletes leaders executives entertainers is shepherding them through the really challenging parts of making change happen for themselves so that's interesting I I wouldn't have paraphrase what you do is making change happen yeah and I think that where people have a really really hard time with change so what is that sort of dark night of the soul what's the cave about where do you people struggle with change well I mean if there's a force that we just give a name to it's resistance whatever and resistance can come in so many forms whether it's just you know the cavalier term of fear but you know what sits behind it sometimes it's the narrative that we've got about ourselves in our story that we've really attached ourselves to and we've used it as a way to define ourselves and then we've locked ourselves into a cage of limits saying that I can't go and do that because no one from my small town has gone and done that kind of thing do people hit you up a lot with the there's someone I love I love them so much and they they tell me they want to change and they ask for it but then they don't do anything do I get that a lot and I've certainly lived that a lot that's probably one of the most frequent questions I get if I'm doing a QA yeah it's either my significant other my parents my children whatever I've introduced them to a growth mindset yet they reject it they don't go for it but I know they're unhappy yeah do you like my immediate response to that is you're not gonna be able to change them love them where they're at and you just sit with them is usually what I say just sit with them don't try to change them just sit with them yeah do you have better advice because lord knows I would love to be like say these six words it will change them forever yeah that's always what I'm hoping for yeah so no I mean the advice is gonna fall into the same line I mean people need to find the place where they need to they need to change like you can't do it for them very bad news yeah no it's it but it's it's it's the reality of it all so what the one thing I'll say is that we need to be really careful with the language that we use the choices of our words and what have become just common vernacular that we use in our vocabulary are the things that people don't realize are actually trapping them you know we as human beings we've got this phenomenal gift of language language is what we use to create our worlds right there's a great TED talk where this researcher who studies language was looking at okay so you know in some cultures they don't have the word spend okay okay so if they don't have the word spend like we do in our you know Western you know English culture does that change their financial existence so German culture for example doesn't really have a word for spending like getting money and then spending it like thinking and so what does that change well Germans have a higher rate of savings and financial wherewithal than english-speaking cultures there are tribes in Africa along the same lines where this tribe right here doesn't have a word for the terms doesn't have a word spend but this tribe over here does and so this one has a higher level of prosperity because of that it's really interesting so I read one time and I have no idea if this is true but it hit me is intuitively true yeah that there is a shade of blue that we have lost because there's no word for in the English language and when there's no word for it your mind can't conceive of it and so it shoves it into another category yeah and thusly you become effectively blind like even though you're seeing it you don't perceive it as being different it's a scotoma yes scotoma scotoma is a blind spot you can't see it it's like when your word come from it's good where's it come from yeah scotoma comes from I don't know exactly if it's coming from the medical side but the psychology is it a hematoma like is it the same Toma in this no no because that's a hematoma is a physical manifestation like it's a it's a it's a thing that you hold scotoma in this sense isn't more the psychological kind of the ethereal right you know in a scotoma as an example would be you know when you're walking around and you're saying I can't find my keys anywhere okay but to play this out imagine that they're in your pocket or they're in your hand and you're going freakin lost my keys I can't find them anywhere so what your mind does because you're one of your your brain's responsibilities is to protect you from looking like an idiot to yourself so it has to actually it's because it's teleological it's goal seeking so if you're telling yourself something it needs to help prove it in your physical world so when you tell yourself that you can't find your keys anywhere the mind's processes go as well actually your keys are in your hand but I can't make you look like an idiot to yourself because I got to protect the identity that had protect the self so I'm gonna deaden the nerve endings in your hand plus in your in your cones and rods because we don't see with our somebody studied this it sounds crazy represent yeah yeah it's in tons of psychological texts how do they test whether it's deadening the nerves or not a great question don't have that data for you man I'd be so interested yeah read those studies that's so weird so it definitely ties into the notions of the psychological immune system and how it's going to come to your aid and protect you from feeling stupid but Wow yeah I've never heard that aid in that way well in its kind of I mean trying to tie back to like the idea that we've lost this shade of blue it's just the language that we use with ourselves just causes us to see blind spots in the world like despite the fact that something's right in front of you like the opportunity is right there but if you're if you're telling yourself a narrative that it's not there then you can't see it you just can't see it right right it's like when you've you know we've all had that situation where the moment we've sort of fallen off the cliff out of love with you know a girlfriend or a boyfriend at the time and then all we see is their faults and it's just annoying us despite the fact that 80% of the time they're doing amazing things for us even but you can't see it that's why to get to your other point that you had talked about with regards to the person standing up and saying hey like I really want something more for my butt they've got a blind spot to it you're but it's don't quit on it right like if this person is someone that you care about then don't quit on it can continue to feed the environment around the person because environment is one of the most overlooked parts of helping people make change happen you know everyone talks about habits and behaviors and all that stuff is great and of course it's powerful but you put someone in a completely different environment and just the environment itself through the osmosis of it can help shift and change behavior you have any examples of that and is this the same idea that you've talked about with context or is context an environment different I would they're similar but different so an example is just so there was a young athlete that I was working with who it's from the age of 10 Connor growing up in South Florida hockey player really good hockey player really skilled and I was talking to his parents about listen at some point in time because if he wants to pursue this he needs to get out of the environment of Florida you know me being a Canadian you know huge hockey country or whatever and then in the northeast of the United States and some other pockets like Minnesota and even California's got a great you need to get him into an environment where he's around the best because that environment is gonna allow him to see the work that needs to get done in order for him to compete at a higher level so you need to pull yourself sometimes out of an environment and put yourself into another one and that alone and so he did he went to this amazing private school up in the Northeast you know great lineage of producing you know amazing talent in the NBA and hockey as well and if that's an example here's something that I've heard you talk about I think is really interesting I've obsessed with this notion I think the reason that environment the way that you're explaining it is so powerful is you're going to be like you're gonna become like the people that you want to impress and if you're around people may have a value set and that value set is ambition it's Drive it's discipline it's pushing themselves it's reaching for greatness yeah and for whatever reason you want to impress them they're good the thing you want to be good at yeah they're cool for whatever reason then you begin to adopt seamlessly without even really thinking about it you begin to adopt their values as a method to impress them and then because the values are going to control your behavior so to to affect the behaviors that are going to impress this person you're naturally going to begin to inhabit their value system yeah and the malleability of values is something that I think not a lot of people understand yeah what is your like what do you talk to people about in terms of values how do you train them to change them like if if put dropping them in with people that already have the value system I'll call sort of the the apex move but what are things that people can do you know if they're home alone by themselves but they want to adopt new values well to go one higher the real apex move is to change someone's identity okay so value sit just outside of like the like the way that you truce here like an identity has made up of values no but when you that's why the whole concept of the alter ego is so powerful because the moment that you've disabilities does disassociated yourself from the you that you're describing yourself as and you're now acting through a new self a new identity all bets are off because now you're not shackled to the same behaviors habits values even that you had before same narrative about the things that happen to you or you know the the negative beliefs that you've got about your capabilities because you're acting through something different so as a place to start but getting to your question about the values yeah absolutely you know ship ding someone's just what they appreciate more like when you get around people who've got a high financial acumen and you're around them a lot like I'm fortunate in New York some of my best friends are some of the biggest people on on Wall Street and money was never a skillset that I had like horrible with money but when I moved to New York that became a goal of mine was to master that skill set more and being around them just how they talk about things how they talk about investments are different I'm like well what but I want to get to like why are you seeing it that way because I don't see it that way but you've because you've got a blind spot because I don't have the right questions in my head yet so how are you appreciating this investment or how are you appreciating this paycheck that you get with this money now that you've got and now you're gonna go and turn it around and put it somewhere else to invest as opposed to other people take it and they go and they spend it on something to grad self gratify or whatever but talk to me about the process of breaking out of your identity one I think that most people they're not aware they have an identity yayyyyy and here's here's one of the things that I think people really struggle with I think this is true of beliefs I think it's true of identity I think it's true of values is people mistake it for truth so they they're growing up in an environment people tell them that that's how people should act that this is what you should do this is the things that you should value which of course they never say they just they reward they punish based on what you do what you don't do you know things like do you turn the other cheek when somebody threatens you or do you know you got punched in the face did you go tell the principal or no you got punched in the face you go punch them back and don't come home until you do so all of those things begin to create the person's perspective but they are all of those things because they start learning them when they're so young they create this veil of self evidence II you know it simply is it has been a part of their life from the beginning and so they have a hard time teasing out that oh these are all like this is a form enter values here and you enter your values and your belief here and to your identity here and then that gives you the output of sort of the human and their behaviors and their neurochemical rewards and punishments and all of that not realizing like that's that's how I think of it it's it's like a form that you fill out or a computer program maybe just to make this really easy it's a computer program you punch in the variables and then outcomes a neurochemical response which makes you feel some kind of way yeah and that's some kind of way you're either gonna move away from pain or move towards pleasure and so once you can get people to see these are variables and you can change them you can manipulate them how you want you can insert new things here then people can really begin to - I'll say shift their identity I'm not sure if you would agree with that or if you think identity is is something wholly separate of that but if somebody wanted to go through the process of changing their identity how do they go about it how do you first make them aware or do you start with making them aware of the identity they have yeah yeah so it's well I'll get to that but I want to go back to the language thing that we were talking about that we use language as a way to create our world yep and so a good example is the word u u so we use it all the time we say like you're this way and so if someone keeps on telling you over and over again that you're a certain way like wow Tom like you're so ambitious or you know Tom you're such a good detailed person and depending on whether that feels good it doesn't feel good you're like yeah I'm detailing you like reaffirm it to yourself and then that sort of continues to stack on and to your point about now we're programming and we're reinforcing that program adding more lines of code to it to make it you know come to fruition with our behavior but you there is no you there is no you you cannot I cannot put Tom Bill you underneath a microscope or underneath any sort of nuclear machine and find a you there is a body that has many many different expressions of this person Tom bill you how you are with me right now in this interview is a different bill you that shows up when you're around Lisa right so we have that the purpose of me really hammering home that point with people is to get them to realize that you have many ident there is no one identity so if you say that your because I've worked with you know Navy SEALs Green Berets Rangers and when they put on that uniform they have a specific credo that's being hammered away every single day of what it means to wear that uniform and what they have challenges with is when they go home and they take off the uniform they continue to act that way and it's very easy right you've been flexing the muscle of that habit that behavior that mindset over and over and over again and so what I do with them is like what you have a uniform that you step into when you go home you should you should have a dad uniform that you put on and what is that dad uniform mean to you so that your kids can get a different version because I'm telling you that that version of you that shows up that's going to be a drill sergeant to them is gonna wear them out and you're gonna have some like familial issues going on later on so there's many it's we're shapeshifters and and this is what I'd say the Self Help the personal development some of the spiritual rituals have done a very poor job of for a long time is hammering away at people a lot of really poor narratives that just are not true on how human beings are built and our malleability our flexibility the playfulness that we have built into our creative imagination where we can be and act in any way and that's not a bad thing that doesn't make you a schizophrenic that doesn't make you a multiple personality disorder individual no that makes you a human being that's simply tapping into a power that allows you to perform at your best in all the roles that you have or the ones that are important to you because if I have a Navy SEAL that walks up to me and tells me that it's not important for him to be a good dad that would be a shocker to me so you know okay well then if you're struggling with the fact that you've got issues at home because that's typically where we'll go police officer same thing some of the highest divorce rates that are out there why because uniforms mean something to people right and get into it in the book and that's actually like step four of the process for like how you actually start to create identities for yourself that are powerful and the the real power of this comes from the power of the tension most people are to your point earlier are walking around completely unaware of their own identity and they're trapped by it because they think well no that's just my story like that's how I grew up it's like well good for you congratulations on that that doesn't mean that you have to be that way tomorrow because we as human beings are not oak trees we're not trees and oak tree has to be an oak tree forever human beings don't have to be that story that they've been living through forever we have the ability to shift and change rapidly so how do you walk people through that is it an exercise about tell me who you are like how do you get them how do you force them down a path of awareness yeah well I mean I don't even need people to tell me who you are is need to look at your results and that tells me what you are you know and even the word who who you are is a dangerous question to ask people because when I ask you who you are again that comes from the spiritual traditions again like I'm such a nerd on this stuff like I want to DoubleTap deep on all these things and get people to really see that sometimes the phrases the questions the statements the words that we use don't help you actually make change happen so who you are not that it's a dangerous question it's a misleading question because when I say who are you Tom you immediately go to your past and you go well I'm this and it's almost like an about me page hits your resume right and and that's not helpful so instead of what do you want them to do is what are your rates no it's what are you okay what are you made of because I want something you can hold into what you know how to answer that though exactly because we don't think about it so what would what's an answer that somebody's given you that you thought yeah they get it yeah so young athlete I was working with second year in his NHL career like National Hockey League and I said you know because we kind of got in this conversation about who are you Kiessling who brought it up and I said no no like what are you and he just thought himself and he's like I'm invincible I thought where does that come from whereas in vincit like where in you does invincibility sit and he was just well when I think about all of the kind of tough stuff that I have done I always get up I'm like great that's a that's a great building block to work from you're invincible what else are you because I want to get to like meat and potato stuff there's so much and again people that are watching or listening to this right now you see this like there's so many beautiful little sayings or there's platitudes that are shared amongst the personal that make you feel good I'm not a feel-good guy I'll never be the most popular person when it comes to making change happen because I'm Way too in people's faces like I want to confront people with the reality of doing tough stuff like I want to pour salt on your hangnail because when I do that what do you immediately do you want to wash it off you take action whereas everyone else they want to get you a band-aid in some ointment for it no no no no change happens from pain so how do you somebody come to you they're an elite athlete there's a certain amount of they consent to having this done mm-hmm but how do you find the hangnail how do you start pouring the salt on it what do you make them do are you is it a therapy session you putting them on a treadmill oh I don't do thoroughly I'm a performance guy okay performance is all about moving forward they come to you then what yeah so they come to me and I mean we have this diagnostic that I go to you know kind of measuring people on seven different pillars of like mental toughness concentration ability if they're answering questions or well it's a diagnostic yeah so let's do they're just writing down their answers or not writing them down but they're grading themselves on scales of like one two four okay on these different areas and that just shows me on the index like where we've got the greatest opportunity to make a change happen so you know if they're currently under indexing in their performance and they've rid themselves low in focus then that would be you know a training thing that I'm going to pull out and start working with them on that the one which is a bit of a red herring that I put in there is motivation because motivation is something not something that I work with you on doesn't say why is that a red herring because motivation is that you think not a me thing I'm not here to motivate you like an elite performer doesn't look for me to motivate them that's a you think not a me thing like and all these other people who are out there trying to motivate individuals you know as someone who's been a practitioner of this I mean I've worked with people for 17060 for hours one on one Wow one on one that's not counting all of the like seminars or workshops or boot camps or speaking you know engagements around the globe that's one on one and so when you're working with someone one on one tell me you understand that so when you working someone one-on-one like there is a completely different level of nuance where people are going to be sharing with you in a completely different way about what they're actually doing or what they're actually thinking about themselves in those moments when they're both succeeding or when they're under indexing and they're and they're failing and and that's really really important for anyone who is out there trying to change something in their world if it's an entrepreneur who's you know trying to change their marketing find practitioners find the ones who are working people one-on-one because that stuff matters because I'm I'm only you know paid by improving someone's performance if I keep on giving you strategies Tom and they're not working for you we're gonna be working together for a long time whereas in a group environment where someone's standing on stage there's groupthink that is it that is a natural phenomena that exists amongst human beings where groupthink happens where you know if someone's trying to gain the love and adoration of you know Tom or Todd or you know Tony or whoever and Tony says that one strategy or Todd says that one strategy don't work for you and someone who just wants to be a pleaser because yeah that worked for me and then other people start raising their hand then the other person who hasn't raised their hand yet because they've tried it they're like again we don't wanna kicked out a kick out of our tribe and now all these people are like raising their hand so yeah that strategy works amazing despite the fact that it doesn't work how much of what you do is is pure intuition not am not very much so you've not even in the beginning quite a bit I was gonna say because you've got the diagnostic I'm having trouble following like exactly what you do you'll have a diagnostic because what I'm trying to do is some at home right now I was listening they want to have the change that want to have the breakthrough yeah what the [ __ ] do they do is so okay well that's that's different front like if we're talking about identity I'm talking about oh that's the process of if I'm onboarding someone into my bits like into my I love that yeah so I think that we'll get into the nitty-gritty of yeah like what you're trying to tease out so they're doing the diagnostic it's telling you yeah it's telling me where they need training like where they haven't spent much time on mastering the mental and the emotional part of their game okay okay right because we're trying to is this reminiscent of a personality test nah well there's there's there's elements of that but you know I use a whole bunch of different Diagnostics because I'm not a believer like there's so many people were out there or like I'm an infj or infj or whatever it is from myers-briggs and I'm like boy again what a fantastic way to trap your and limit yourself because people love to say you know that's why personality tests and all these quizzes online are so popular they go viral because they go I'm of this people love to discover more about themselves but what it actually does is it traps many people because they're like I'm an introvert and introverts don't blah blah blah whatever they say it's like okay great now you're gonna live through that when you hear that you hear alright this person has a label now yeah label has created limitations well they're no longer recognizing that they're actually a multitude of and what's interesting is I don't know what word you would use their personalities traits multiple events no multiple of identities so identity okay so now real fast define identity what does it encompass an identity encompasses I talked about in chapter 3 of the book the different layers that gets tacked on so you know at this core of what we are is just like pure possibility like we can we can move in many directions with our with the kind of inborn talents of what it means to be a human being okay so there's a possibility outside of that creates what I call this kind of core drivers layer core drivers are things that you've that you've attached yourself to and that are attached to you because of your your race your religion your values where you're from because people don't realize just how much that stuff shapes them no well I'm black so that means that this or I'm white and that means this or I'm Asian or I'm a Catholic Rama Jew or Avenue have you heard that study where if you take an Asian woman who's about to take a math test and stereotypically women or worse at math and stereotypically Asians a better at math yeah and if you prime her by saying oh you're a woman I wonder how well you're gonna do on the test they'll do worse but if you take that same person and Prime them oh you're Asian I wonder how well you doing the test yeah then they'll do better yeah that is so crazy to me yeah and when I was diving into some of your research that was what I was thinking is like that there's some of the you're taking control of the priming essentially yes so all right so keep going understand so core drivers sit there and again even being a part of a larger group or like military man police officer you know this so we we have these labels and now because we they're they're the things that really can help either block someone's possibility or you know unleash it in many ways we see that the Olympics where someone who's coming out of nowhere but now because they're wearing to know the red white and blue on their back or the red and white from Canada or the wherever from somewhere else they just level up because of what it means to now represent their country other people conversely I can't use it with them because I've worked with you know well over 100 Olympians that actually crushes their performance like it's just too much way it's too much or they actually don't care some people don't care like it's that's not meaningful to them that they're an American or a Canadian or a Brit or an Aussie whatever the cases so so that's the core drivers and then outside of that I call it the belief layer so that's where your attitudes your perceptions your beliefs about you or the world around you sit okay this is all shaping that identity and it's shaping it in the different areas of our life and the roles that we play that of an entrepreneur that of a parent father husband wife you know lover brother sister mom like all those that we have and that's why it's important that we sort of peel away the layer or peel away and show that no you've got many identities and we can shape you know you get to shape yourself because it you're doing it anyway I'm not I'm not explaining anything to anyone that is not grounded in gravity like it's real it's truth we have many identities we just don't think about it but I'm trying to build awareness so that people can see it and they go because once you build the awareness all bets are off with people because now do you have like archetypes of alter egos that you push people towards depending on what they're trying to accomplish I love archetype stuff but that's probably where it's a little bit intuitive but not necessarily you know the the natural lean when you talk about this is people talk about you know like bringing that kind of like lion to things or that roar or whatever but I have one client she's in the book where I talk about you know that never resonates she's this real soft-spoken like super kind person and her trying to bring out like an inner lion thing wasn't wouldn't work but for her she's German she has a she's a deep history and her family of like exploration being in the outdoors and she had this really great reverence for a buck like a male deer and for her it was like the way that it stands its ground despite the fact that a bear is coming off that's what people don't people don't see the fights between a wild buck and a bear or a cougar where it fights it off with its antlers you don't see that they all see the kill but sometimes the prey wins and in a big male buck will will do that and fight with its antlers fighters well but for her what she needed because she was a business owner and she again very common thing where she had a sort of a freelance marketing company and you know scope creep you know it's like so now she's but she's building a website for someone I go you know what we need some brochures done too you know can you add that on yeah I'll do that too and because she's so nice and kind all this and now she's completely unprofitable or she's just making you know a laughable amount an hour so the way that she started showing up in her business was through this lens of a buck that stands its ground and honors the fact that she's valuable like she is what she has is valuable and people need to respect that Lyon wasn't gonna do that so no archetypes I don't push people towards certain ones and at the end of the day the most common sort of alter ego identity that people adopt is actually grandmas if there was a category Amma's and grandmas because in order for you to either elite performers not renowned sir or cops and these are these are people that are either in in the business world grandmas aren't popular necessarily in the sports world that's not where so I'm coming with grandma so it and again you're not becoming the grandma you're adopting the traits the qualities or the abilities that you admire about your grandmother okay I've got a really wealthy man in in New York who's a client for a long time and he was kind of a traditional Wall Street type that just railroaded himself towards success burned out and churned out a lot of leaders in his business but now he had a very large private equity business and his leadership team was burning out quite a bit and so when I started working with him his identity needed to change because he was now in a completely different role that what got him to be successful right so that hard-charging thing that really helped him but that's not working now that's gonna break his business so he needed to step into a new identity couldn't figure out a way to do that so when I was talking about like well who do you respect like who do you admire as great leaders of business or just leaders in general and he was talking about like Jack wells or Sumner Redstone and and these names were coming out and so I kind about it just talking to him I could get that he wasn't like emotionally connected to that idea hmm so then I just asked him what his family cuz I knew a bit about it I mean I knew his history and he started talking to me about his his grandmother her husband died in the Holocaust she had four young boys brought them over to America classic story of you know settling in the Lower East Side with nothing seventy dollars in her pocket raising these four amazing young men all going on to have tremendous success my client was the son of one of them and you know just talked with great reverence about just how like amazingly nurturing she was but really strong with an iron rod up her back with like the values of how we operate as a family and and I said that's that's who your identity is how did people then grab that and actually put it to use because you were talking earlier about you know you need a uniform and do you have the uniform or the dad you can walk in so I'm thinking what's the uniform of the grandmother but I'm guessing you're gonna say it's not quite how it works yeah so there's again there's there's different ways to activate this so I went on like you know continuing on with that it's like actively like getting him to realize well what are those qualities that you just appreciate about your grandma like what is it about it because the reason well what are those qualities one of those attributes and one of those traits and then so yeah a uniform really helps something we call them totems and artifacts something that physical that you can put on that can help you step into that because again we're acting with this intention now as you're choosing it and and that item represents what you're activating so for him there was no thing there was no something there isn't something he was gonna go put on but there was another quality that we use is something that you use in your environment so he had a framed photo of his grandmother and he wasn't going to be like you know acting through this identity throw his entire date but it was when he needed to have conversations with his leadership team that he needed to like you know pump the brake on his extraordinarily aggressive personality and and start you know acting with a completely different intention so anytime he was about to have a leadership conversation he had this frame of his grandma sitting on his on his credenza on his desk sorry and it was we we like to create triggers so there was a switch so he would turn that frame so now she was facing him what's the importance of the triggers that's really interesting to me the importance of it is to create rituals and why why does that matter because human beings are are grounded in rituals and there is an it's almost like an honoring ceremony because what I want you to do is I want you to I don't want you to dishonor the memory or the spirit of whatever or whoever it is that you are activating by not truly acting through the qualities of that individual so the conversation with him is is like now you know choose your grandmother very carefully because you you cannot go into a conversation with your leadership team and act the way that you do and dishonor the way that your grandmother would handle that by you acting in this completely you know kind of wild and you know swear Laden way because she wouldn't do that so that trigger again it's just it helps to send a signal through your entire electrical system that something different is happening so interesting are you familiar with Tony Robbins and this whole idea of state change Cheryl VESA sure that stuff's really interesting to me and there's something so fascinating about the human ability to change your state like in reading your stuff about alter egos and I was like okay this is interesting there's something about for anybody that that doesn't quite have their hooks into this yet do the following exercise sit down close your eyes and think smile yeah and what's weird is you will feel the change like you'll feel a neurochemical change just by thinking smile yeah like you're not actually moving the muscles you're just thinking about the smile yeah my gut instinct is if you sat there long enough thinking smile you'd actually start to smile and then to take this to where you started that ritualistic move there's something about birthing it through physicality yes that and actually be really curious to understand the research or yeah you know the the underlying physiological thing so I have this obsession with physiological hooks so there there is something about tying your mindset to physicality sure that is incredibly important like when you see people trying to do a state change athletes will do this all the [ __ ] time yeah and I've done this I do this sometimes if I don't want to get in a cold shower and I'm like [ __ ] yeah I don't want to do this yeah and I have to like state change it I'll [ __ ] pound my chest there's I don't know what it is but dude you do that and boom it's like I've got the aggression I have exactly what I need to tackle this and to just completely I always think of it in terms of frame of reference but my gut instinct is if I were to define frame of reference and you were to define alter ego we would find that they're similar they may exactly overlap but it's a no a very similar I mean I've seen a lot of stuff here I mean you talked a lot about identity with people right like you're you're you you're dancing around the stuff that I've been working with people on for you know 22 years really alter ego stuff is what came into my practice in 2003-2004 because I just started to discover that this was the golden thread that was weaving together all of these elite people that I was now starting to work with where they were talking about I've got this persona that I step into I've got this other kind of identity I have this character that I use and you know I played college football at a high level I was a nationally ranked Bama player I played sport out at a high level not pro but I was a good athlete and my responses back to those people was always like oh that's really cool because I use I use that as well it was more like an interesting kind of connection point and then it was me preparing a US swimmer a lady for the Athens Games back in 2004 where's just the way that she said it worse all of a sudden all of these dominoes of past conversations came together and as like wait a second there is this consistency amongst the people who are consistently performing at their best they keep on referencing this idea there's something there do you know who's Sasha Fierce is of course I know who Sasha Fierce is yeah absolutely to me is when I heard so for anybody listening that doesn't know who Sasha Fierce is that's Beyonce is alter ego yeah on stage and I thought whoa that's so interesting that somebody that's successful uses this technique to have the balls essentially to go out on stage to own it to be fierce and she needed it you know when you take a look at her Gouri she's a gospel singing young black girl from Houston Texas who people would show up every Sunday they can't wait to hear Beyonce saying gospel songs her dad recognizing her talent and her love for music gets her and Solange inside of a dance group there's eight of them and now Beyonce who's used to dressing very modestly in a church environment singing gospel hymns and songs is now asked to sing provocative music dancing provocatively she had a real internal-combustion over this right now I want people to track this are there some things that you've got some internal-combustion over right now that you're resisting against because you have a tough time seeing yourself do it despite the fact that you want to manifest it you want to pursue that entrepreneurial career you want to pursue that acting or that singing or you want to get out there okay so she then created Sasha Fierce someone else another identity to go out there that loved going out there performing loved the provocative loved dancing that way and that's who she would step into and activate when she went out there now all of a sudden she could protect for herself that sort of more innocent Beyonce and what she found and that's why I share in the quote there's her in the book there's this great quote by the Hollywood golden era actor Cary Grant where he said and again born in Bristol England in a very modest family single mother but always wanted to make something of himself traveled over to Hollywood and you know became known as this you know charismatic debonair good-looking guy but at the end of his career he had this great quote where he said I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person or he became me but at some point in time we met which i think is one of the most beautiful quotes that a human has uttered the only thing I would change is not I pretended but I activated you chose it and so if you think about it is there's this you that you've got described in your own mind right and I think of it like a circle of a vendor qu'elle vienne diagram and you've got this other self that you want to be or this kind of aspirational idea of what you want to be and for me the alter ego was the thing that could help bring them together and then after a while you're truly acting behaving thinking this way and you don't need to activate Beyonce or Sasha Pearson where because Beyonce in 2008 when she came out of her came up with her album famously retired Sasha Fierce she said I don't need her anymore but that was her private section verses always her private sort of identity but now she could go out there and own the stage and you know didn't need to activate or didn't need to think about Sasha anymore cuz she that was what she became how is this not pretending because pretending is just the word alone is has the sort of intention or the thinking of concerning yourself with the thoughts opinions and judgments of other people screw them like it doesn't not necessarily a change in affectation but it's a change in the way that you think about it it's the way that you changed we because any time you're trying to do something to deceive or trick other people yeah that that isn't a healthy way to be operating from because what it ends up doing is it traps you because that's that's not the healthy way that you want to build your identity but even in the book I talk about the difference in chocolate I talk about the difference between that outside in approach which is you trying to do things for other people trying to impress other people worried about what other people are thinking about you so then you don't do the thing anymore concerned with you know what if everyone sees this crappy video that I've just done and you know they they judge me as being you know a loser on video or whatever or we could all see that it's just the maturation process that you've gone through like the tom bill you in interviews today is different than the tom bill you that came out interview number one right like you're you're I'm and I'm guessing but I know it's true you're better at asking questions you dive deeper you've got a you know a richer said of you know just confidence around being patient kind of saying you know what you just said something let's go back to that you know we were talking about that earlier sir whereas the intention of you saying you know this this is how I want to show up now I am NOT going to stay tethered to this past narrative I'm gonna stay tethered to these ideas that I have to be this way because someone from Topeka Kansas has never made it somewhere or that someone in Topeka Kansas can't be the most creative artist on the planet what if you were the first in Topeka Kansas to be the most creative artist on the planet and people flew into Topeka in order to see you that would be phenomenal for you to go and do so it's just it's the changing in the perception of where we're coming from here but I wanted to come back to something you had said is like when you said you were just fascinated with this whole state change thing and that you're like getting into the sense well don't me to show you some science yes so a great piece of research so there's a psychological phenomenon that we've got called in clothed cognition enclosed cognition is that we as human beings we attach meaning and story to the clothing that other people wear or that we wear so Kayson oh wow yes so if someone were to walk into this room with us right now and they hung on a doctor's coat or a lab coat immediately at an unconscious level you're gonna make a whole bunch of assumptions and tell a story about that person question right so it could be that they're successful and again everyone's different because all of us have had different experiences with people in white coats but for the most part it was a doctor's coat it's that they're successful or they're they're smart they're detailed and and so on so we do that what people don't realize is that with this power of include cognition by you putting on something you're actually changing at an unconscious level the way that you're about to go and act dude I'm so with you yeah so there was you know I've done for the longest time my whole alter ego method that I would use with athletes was like my 11 herbs and spices like I kept it locked away I didn't talk about it very much because I became well-known at like really high levels and whereas the guy I'm like I'm like I'm the quick hit artist I'm the quick change guy like when someone's playing at the US Open on Saturday and they're in a rut right now on a Wednesday you know meditation undoubtable it is a core pillar practice that we put in place for everybody I've been talking about meditation since 97 when yoga wasn't cool right because there's just nothing that can help align the mentally emotional in the physical self better than meditation but meditation ain't a quick hit thing so you know I didn't talk about you know on stages and very much around the idea of an alter ego because I really didn't want some of my compete tree it's to latch onto it so but I done a speech and a word got back to this lady and universal Minnesota at least that's the story that was told and she did this great little study with four to six year old kids where they they brought them into this room and there was this kind of puzzle with a whole bunch of padlocks on it and they gave all the kids this ring of keys to unlock all the padlocks okay but they divided them up into groups of three and one group they were just in their plain clothes and given the keys and then another group they were told to pretend like their favorite superhero or someone that they look up to the favorite superhero so then they do it and then another group they brought in a rack of clothing and there was Batman and Dora the Explorer costumes and they said put on the costume and and here's the keys and let's go in awe at those costumes fascinating what happened the kids that were just in their plain clothes quit on the task of opening all the padlocks because the keys that they had didn't open any the locks it was a red herring they just wanted to see with frustration how long they realized so they quit the first they were the first ones to quit so what's that measuring grit and perseverance two things that you know we all talk about all the time of just what it takes in order to achieve something right because you're gonna need it now the young kids that pretended to be Batman or whatever their favorite superhero was they lasted longer but they didn't last as long as the kids who had on the costume or the uniform that is [ __ ] so interesting and but here's the here's the other side effect of it they weren't expecting to be tracking self-talk so how kids were talking about because young kids if you if you around them they don't just keep the thoughts in their head they're talking it out loud it's like when they when they meet someone who's chubby or they're like oh why is he so fat like it's just you know you're like let's just please just you know have some social decorum so the young kids that were just in their plain clothes or say like I'm not good at puzzles or I can't get this I quit okay so I I can't get this I quit I'm not good at puzzles kids we were wearing the uniform though they would say things like mm wouldn't quit so I'm not gonna quit Dora the Explorer always finds a way so I'm gonna find a way right they had now disassociated from whatever their own identity was and they started acting through these other traits of Dora of Batman that's kind of like me sort of putting together the pieces for everyone around why using a totem an artifact some sort of object is so important to help you activate those traits from the person or the thing that you're most inspired by I want you to have an emotional connection with this new identity that's why grandmas are chosen so often I'm not saying like 50% of all all three goes I'm saying if there's a category they get chosen quite a bit because it's an easy emotional connection that's why for that one lady a lion wasn't gonna work but a buck did you know Kobe Bryant's story of you know Black Mamba now he's going through an extraordinarily challenging time when that sexual assault case was going against him he was losing his edge losing it felt like he was losing himself in it he was losing his what his identity watched Kill Bill saw the black mamba and kill Vil Kill Bill and said that's I'm gonna be the Black Mamba on the court I would put Kobe Bryant up against any you know animal biologist on the planet for knowledge of a black mamba he knows a lot about black mambas because when you find something that you resonate with get to know as much if you can as you can about it because it it's it's like the grapple hooks you start to get their story into you now is that so we're gonna start acting through as those qualities so Beyonce she created Sasha Fierce she's one of the few people that you just sort of out of thin air created something a lot of people use and leverage something else like I talked about in the book with Bo Jackson using you know his alter ego which was a character in a horror movie yeah you know when he stepped it was important yeah so my point about that I was like no there is science and research behind it yeah before we move off that I want to talk about self signaling so this is a personal obsession of mine so we did a whole clothing line at impact theory it's called the self signaling line and it was all things you should be telling yourself where exactly the mantras and things that you should be thinking about believing because to me I feel very different if I'm wearing something that reminds me of something yeah that is important to me yeah so and the notion of having a totem like one of the things a lot of people come to me and the punchline of the reason from my perspective they're not getting where they want to get is they don't know how to desire they don't know how to obsess yeah they don't know how to marinate in something like you want this thing well you have to [ __ ] like it like it really got to be a part of you you've got to make it a core part of your identity yeah and for you to make it a core part of your identity you have to find ways to soak in it and one of the ways is to have that totem that artifact that piece of you just whatever you wear that it becomes like your cape or you know whatever the case may be so like for instance I wear a ring it has a robot face on it it is it is arguably the most enjoyable thing I've ever purchased in my life and for me the robot is a symbol of creation of being able to create something this the the notion of of being man-made yeah and there's an island in Tokyo called Odaiba which is a man-made island and on that island they have this giant Gundam robot that actually articulates and talks and yeah it is insanely cool to me yeah and the whole notion of just like what a man can do like when they learn the things they need to learn they have the skills the skills have utility they put them to use they create an island out of nothing yeah and then put upon that Island a gigantic robot which also is made me it's just like there's something about the power of human ingenuity of creation of all that that I love and then it's a [ __ ] giant robot and I just like trying and so I bought the ring and I remember saying to my wife Lisa when I got it I said this is so silly and yet so powerful for me as like this incredible reminder yeah and every time I feel its weight on my finger I think about the grand ability for humans to create now why is that important I'm trying to build the next Disney it is the most gigantic like undertaking that fits within my bailiwick I will say that Elon trying to yea colonize Mars is a lot bigger so I'm not saying it's the biggest ever but in terms of like what I'm actually interested in the skills that I want to acquire and all of that it's it is a very big dream and it will take me a very long time to execute against and so having this totem having something that I can put on having this thing and the funny thing is literally because I'm telling you this story and I'm allowing myself to get animated and I'm allowing it to fill me up I'm further reinforcing 1% what it means and so tomorrow when I put the ring on yeah like it's actually going to mean more to me tomorrow than it did today because I'm reinforcing this notion right this is my grandma I'm thinking about Grammy I'm trying to honor grandma I have this ritual of putting the ring on and you should weren't touching it more as you're doing it and putting it on sliding it back and forth because for me you know to to that like that's like that right there is amazing like that I love that like for me like starting out in business 22:21 looked like I was 12 maybe 10 like I had a baby face and I was so insecure about what other people were thinking of me how could I go on stages and now talk about mental game I haven't won four awards I haven't run written three books I'm not 43 years old I don't have a tweed jacket with leather patches on my elbows all that kind of stuff but the reality was I was really freaking good at getting across these principles that had helped me because I'm not a physical specimen I'm not six foot four 240 pounds but I played way bigger than my size was and definitely got as much out of myself as I could in order to you know perform how I did in athletics but I was so insecure about how young I look and he was stopping me from making the phone calls book in the workshops or you know getting clients get myself out there whatever whatever it was at the time and and I was like wait a second you used Geronimo as your alter-ego on the football field and I said why don't you use that Todd and I was like wait a second cable Geronimo was a little bit rough doesn't quite work in business so then I was like well you know who who or what am I really inspired by and would love to activate their qualities to help me get through this phase and Benjamin Franklin always loved Benjamin Franklin Joseph Campbell you know one of my one of my personal heroes and and Superman like you know the 1980s you know Superman and that was it and I was like okay that's I'm gonna and because I had this whole ritual that I'd go through and I was in the locker room to get ready for football games I'm like well what's my what's my thing I didn't call it a told him at the time but what's my object and it was gonna be glasses because I was gonna do the reverse Clark Kent you know Superman put on glass to become the mild-mannered version of himself to be accepted by society and walk around but I was already mild-mannered I was already blending into the walls as oatmeal that I didn't want that so my glasses were gonna activate that superhero self inside of myself and so I went out and I bought a pair of non prescription glasses and that's what I wore and I'd put those on and I would practice putting them on and feeling more because I was I lacked confidence I was indecisive and I wasn't very articulate with you know what I was what I had to offer so I wanted to be confident decisive and articulate that's who I wanted to be and I knew that the people that were gonna hire me they wanted that too because anyone who is trying to hire someone who has an expertise in something what they're actually hire hiring is certainty and confidence and clarity those like when someone shows up and you're like oh like I feel like if I had that guy on my team or that woman on my team we're gonna make it happen so I you need to show up that way and so I practiced putting those on putting those on my point about this was - getting to your whole you know when you put that on tomorrow that trigger it's just being embedded that emotional charge that you get the act of this little arm sliding across here because now I just wear glasses just for dress I don't need them to to step into that confidence particulate self now I just use it for dress but even now when I do this it's like a switch is getting flipped and I'm being very intentional because I want to be intentional when I show up as a whether it's a leader for my team or when I'm showing up on a call where we're gonna close a new team to work with or a new client or something like that like I want to show up as my absolute best heroic self for that other individual because I'm deeply driven by service it runs deep in my family I want to serve I know that's you as well like you want to serve and then you're gonna leave this amazing legacy for this thing that you built that's what's so impressive legacy yeah like it's what so impressible Gaudi he OD who's Gaudi Gaudi he started the construction of a church in the early 1900s which based on his design was going to take a hundred and fifty years to be built the vision of that man to start working and laboring on something that he was personally never going to see the end of people have talked a lot about vision in business he's the ultimate benchmark of vision that is next level I mean it's still under construction outside of Barcelona Spain or in Barcelona and you know it's one of the most amazing structures that's on our planet right now so you know when you were doing that I almost wanted to reach over and like except there's gonna look really weird on camera if I was doing that but like yeah yeah yeah don't do that Todd that's a little bit too intimate but like it's just like yeah play with that on there you know it's interesting to me how it grows with power like understanding how you can reinforce the stuff how you can make it meaningful like there are so many this word is played out but there's so many hacks and things that people can do to reinforce this stuff and I think all too often people look at somebody who's successful and they think well lucky them it must be nice you know they have this out of the other they have the confidence whatever not realizing at some point you find a way whether it's through physiological hooks which that was a big one for me to lower my anxiety so diaphragm breathing is a physiological hook into the parasympathetic nervous system known as rest and digest so if you're wondering like how the hell do I get out of this anxious over AMP State sure there is a physiological hook which is as you breathe from your diaphragm whether you want to or not you're going to begin sliding into that state yeah and then there are some things that you just have to decide so you talked about decisiveness decisiveness is intoxicating like when somebody has like they're just they're gonna do it they're convinced they can get other people on board like this is it that level of clarity is so intoxicating to people and when I do it for the team and they see it I can feel them galvanizing behind the idea and the thing is I'm honest with them I'm just [ __ ] deciding I'm just saying like there's seven options before us I don't [ __ ] know which one is gonna work yeah but I'm not afraid to pick one yeah and go with all my gusset and I'm not gonna pick one that's obviously bad yeah so I'm picking one that I think has a shot but what people allow themselves to do they allow themselves to be paralyzed they allow themselves to accept from themselves that oh I don't know I'm not sure [ __ ] that like my whole thing is being unsure you don't think I'm unsure you don't think I wonder I wonder if this is gonna work yeah but I've simply decided you have to value decisiveness and once you say okay I'm gonna I'm gonna value this thing then I'm going to act in accordance with it with chains okay I'm looking at two options I'm not entirely sure which one I'm gonna go with a maybe I'm going with a because I have a lighter ring on that hand and so just felt better to point towards one who the [ __ ] knows but I'm gonna go with that I'm gonna be all-in I'm gonna do everything I can to make it work but I'm gonna constantly look and see is it actually working yeah it's not working that I'm gonna switch so now I've got this dual thing and my team knows one I'm not afraid to pick I'm gonna move forward I will accept the consequences yeah and I'm not a dumbass so if it's not working yeah I'm gonna move but like beginning what what I love about you messages people at some point they have to take responsibility for who they want to become write this Harry grant quote yeah it's who you want to become it's not necessarily who you are today yeah but it is who you want to become and at some point you do have to take the first step into the unknown you have to act you have to act as if like you've got a you've got to put it out there you've got to be decisive even when you're unsure you've got to move forward you've got a project confidence so that you can begin to really feel and internalize the confidence you've got to have yeah the physical thing whether it's turning your talisman or having in your pocket and running it over but understanding that whether it's the buck imagery whether it's your robot ring you have to infuse it with meaning mhm like the fact that you said that Coby knows more about the black mamba than anybody else it's like that's how you infuse it with meaning yeah yeah I might talk it there's so many things to ping off with it I want to go back to when you said that when you put in your ring you're like and you set your wife like this is gonna be silly there's actually I mean we're having a serious conversation with deep and meaningful things that we hope that at least one person that's listening or watching is going to like make a paradigm shift and just all of a sudden a new world's gonna show up for them but one thing I want to reinforce with people is one of the great powers of this idea or one of the great powers that human beings have is playfulness the thing I love about this idea and I could see with people as I could see stress and anxiety melt away when they started to get engaged with the idea and see how playful it is to know that this is you again I I am I am the the person standing out in front of other people talking with the power of alter-egos I don't care that people know that the glasses that I wear are not real like it's just wear them for dress what I don't care about that because I'm I'll use them as a signal and a totem to tell other people that I don't care but you do know that I am being very intentional about I want to bring my best self so I can serve you in this moment that's why they're there but it's that when I could when I could see someone really understand that this is them being playful it's like you don't even know I'm showing up as Batman in this moment when I'm in the boardroom right now like that playful idea cuz playfulness the whole reason that I'm doing this is because I'm I want to get my clients the people that buy our training programs and whatnot to get to that zone in flow state that zone in flow state where every capability that you have comes flowing out of you unhindered by the resistance that or the judgment or the self-talk that typically slows you down that's the reason that we do this playfulness is the key that unlocks the back door to peak performance and we're walking through the doorway of our creative imagination to make a habit that is our superpower the you know the best genre of movies right now superhero movies that Marvel comic that DC comic world that's out there why because there's this natural hero's journey narrative that we latch on to with it also we love the fantasy idea in our own mind of like what would I have if I had a superpower you know but we forget when we do human beings do we're the only living thing on this planet with this one ability it's not love it's not affection am I saying that they're not powerful a hundred percent they are but nothing else on this planet has creative imagination nothing else on this planet can choose to in the moment decide to be someone or something else can make you know a heaven from hell or a hell from heaven we have that ability you've got two people the same experience is happening to them one chooses a completely different path and they you know strive and they thrive another one gets crippled by it that's fascinating to me that's fascinating that we can do that that our creative imagination builds story and narrative in our own minds yeah that that's crazy have you read the long walk to freedom by Nelson Mandela no I have dude [ __ ] read that book it's crazy so I read Joseph Campbell when I was must have been in my late teens early twenties something like that and he talked about how you know rituals really lost and he thought that that was a big part of why adolescents had become stunted like there was no grand a moment where you knew like hey you're different he was like there were societies that used to take teenagers out into the woods and they would literally kick their teeth in yeah you had people that would you know circumcise adults with no anesthetic or not adults but you know a 13 year old and you you went through something hard and by going through that thing like you knew okay on the other side of this I'm a different person yeah and so in long walk to freedom Nelson Mandela was one of the last generations that went through this thing and they took three or four boys at once that we're all I think 13 and they have them sit down with their legs splayed and like elder comes along with a really sharp rock and the kids are sitting there buck naked in front of the whole tribe yeah and the guy comes up grabs their foreskin and just cuts it off with the rock and then they have to yell I think that that throw their arm up and yell this warriors like create yes yeah and I just thought whoa like in that moment yeah you know like because the moment is imbued with so much meaning and there are people there and it is ritual literal yeah percent like once you're on the other side of that you really do like something kicks in and makes you feel differently and so when I got married I wanted to do the same thing I wanted to be ritualistic Elise card yeah and so because I wanted to be a different person before and a different person after and so I ended up getting tattooed it's the only tattoo that I have yeah and I wanted something that was painful and at the time I was just absolutely terrified of needles yeah so doing something that was facing this gigantic fear that I knew was going to be painful and that was gonna leave a permanent scar on my body it like carried all this weight in this emotion for me but it goes back to that notion of what is it imbued with mhm and so really being conscious of grabbing ahold of that narrative understanding what that narrative is understanding that humans are meaning making machines that's what we do all day long and when you can take a hold of that in your own life like I don't have to wait for nobody told me to get the tattoo alright so it was just your own life where's an area where you can apply a different meaning a new meaning a more powerful meaning to what you're doing yeah that's going to give you that direction and purpose that's going to allow you to step into your inner superhero or whatever but it's going to give new meaning to what you're doing which elevates it importance which gives it a lasting impact which then gives it the ability to sort of pull you through difficult times times where maybe you're indecisive or times where you're feeling weak or whatever you've got this thing to fall back on that narrative and do you know you've all know a Harare yes oh man so as you know like his work around humans and narrative and the way that societies are organized around those narratives it's it's really pretty extraordinary well and and that gets to my point like when I was talking about the whole you know when you build out that identity model at that core drivers layer that societal narrative that sits there you know people don't realize that it can be a dome or a glass ceiling that they don't even realize is is stopping them until the example of a time where it holds somebody back yeah so you know yeah there is a client just I'll use an example of a client in in New York a Jewish woman who you know grew up in an environment where in in her particular kind of tribe the female shouldn't be making as much money as the male counterparts okay it's not even just a Jewish community it's pervasive in you know other white communities and Catholic Christians so but and it was but but again it the that's why I say like in the book I talk about the two selves there's the trapped self which ends up happening when you have this outside in pressure that you know when you're trying to worry about other people and and you feel trapped because you know that all of you isn't getting out there somehow and then there's the other side which is this heroic self and the heroic self isn't that you're a hero but you feel heroic in the moment because whether or not you got the result that you're looking for you acted the way that you wanted to know whether it was that whether it was you in a moment sticking up for a friend who someone else was you know you know lobbing insults at and you got in there and you you know is you taking a stand saying you know you don't do that or whatever your response is in that moment or you raising your hand in a in a meeting and you you know voicing your concern when typically you would state rap because you don't want to say something in front of your boss you know that feels heroic to you so so for for her she had this huge aspiration and desire to continuously grow her business but she was stunting it because if she did if she made even a thousand dollars more she was going to surpass her husband and and she was making all these assumptions without even talking to her hospital was she unaware of it or did she know she was unaware what I don't want she was unaware that that was that that was actually the thing she was she was you know using other things as the reasons why her business wasn't growing I can't find the right customers Todd I don't think my marketing is really working right now what was it that she said or did that got you to that realization so this is where just the experience that I have of knowing that you know there's a lot of things that are hidden from people that they don't realize me knowing that she's what do you look for though are you looking at body language are you looking at word choice yeah well I'm looking I'm looking at the whole I'm looking at the identity of the person so she's a Jewish woman I know kind of the the group that she you know lives inside of so right away big that's why it's so important for us I think for people to help make change that I need to consume as much as I possibly can around cultural narratives like you know I've I've worked in 86 countries around the world whoa like not my phone traveled to Kazakhstan I've worked in every a stand that there is Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan Afghanistan Pakistan like you know so I've been and it's and when you and when you work inside those cultures it's very different than traveling there as a tourist we get to work inside then you get to really see how they're you know the coexisting and whatnot so it's important for me to just really dive deep into all these different you know worlds that are different from mine so that I can pick up on them far more quickly so I can you know because I want to be known as someone who can make change happen fast a lot of people don't want that because the place is an expectation on you I want the expectation I'm a tiger I want to hunt that down I want to get the kill for you faster than someone else you know I want that moniker placed on me a lot of people don't want it know I want it and that's what winners do winners want that winners want that final play that's drawn up with two and a half seconds left and the coach saying you're getting the ball I want the ball and everyone that's watching this and listening to this they should want the ball to the moment that you make the decision that you want the ball all bets are off boy like I get chills I'm right now I got chills because it's amazing when someone makes that shift maybe were talking about with decision when you when you decide now we use the again it's a platitude who's that you know like men you just when you decide to take responsibility for your life hey that's wonderful so those are those are great platitudes me I want meat potatoes I want to give you something that helps you truly embody that and for me it's I get I get right now that you can't see yourself making that change but what I do know is you have the capacity and abilities gifted with you as a human being to start acting to and through some other identity someone else that you're inspired by and whether you use glasses to activate that whether you use a robot ring whether you use a picture of your grandma on the table whether you use a Wonder Woman bracelet like one of my equestrian clients uses when she activates one room and when she gets on that horse think about that as a sport it's the only sport where you have another animal that most beautifully transmutes your emotional state to everyone else you talk to me about that so horses are [ __ ] weird men so how is it that they're picking up on so much human emotion well it's who knows I am not the expert on definitely all things emotional around horses but they have this phenomenal capacity to detect your energy field that's why they're used in you know so many different types of therapy whether it's around autism whether it's around you know helping but overcome PTSD and trauma there they're just these walking caretakers they're phenomenal like you know I grew up on a big ranch I had you know three horses of my own Cracker Jacks oxen midnight and you know the the lesson that my father gave me early on was if you're ever out on the farm and the ranch and you get lost just ask them to go back home and and that's that that's the thing if you're ever lost in the wilderness and you happen to have a horse with you follow the horse the horse will take you back someplace in something or someone and but you know getting back to to my client she was someone who was a Type A personality ran her own business and kind of operated in novice competitions in the in the category of dressage so it's basically like you know intricate you know you're doing intricate moves out on in this arena where every single little subtle movement on your part and the horses part is being graded right so you got people watching you and judging you well that's already gonna trigger some anxiety in people so if you're getting on this horse that beautifully transmutes your emotional state and you're someone who's anxious now the horse is anxious it's not going to hit its mark and so when talking to my client and I asked her I'm like okay get it Lisa you're anxious but what I do know is there is a version of you right now that isn't anxious now who could we use to activate that non anxious person now who do you look at that you admire the way that they show up and immediately it was Lynda Carter Lynda Carter's version of Wonder Woman because this is before the new Wonder Woman movie there come on this is several years ago and I said why what is it with Lynda like and I mean I do it in a way where I want to challenge people like yeah that sounds cliche that's boring or whatever because I want them to sell me on it right Oh cuz again I want that emotional charge happening inside of them so wine Lynda Carter because she stands her ground no matter what's happening around her she owns the space that she's in it doesn't matter she moves forward all the time she never retreats but she just it's this and I didn't need her because words are clumsy for us and I was like all I care is that I see that there's an emotional state change for her mmm that she gets it on the inside I'm like I just don't like I get it say no more because I don't her to talk herself out of any right so that was it so we went out and that was the ritual now before she got on the horse she would snap and I'm and I tell her make sure that the class but that you get because she made a custom-made bracelet make sure that that clasp is like it makes a sound because sound is a phenomenal trigger to the human brain like and so when you hear that snap boom that's when Wonder Woman takes over but you gotta honor her because Lynda Carter would never ever go out on that horse and not own that routine own sitting on top of that horse and let your horse know that you're you got this make it relaxed and confident in the routine her trainer is the world's top dressage trainer he's got a barn out in Connecticut he's got the most world champions that train out of his barn he called me up ten months into us working together and and and my client asked if he was okay they connected I said yeah absolutely and he said Todd I gotta say I don't get I don't get this I don't get how this person who is always kind of in the average is now winning the championships around the world it doesn't make sense that someone can ascend that quickly and as like nothing about the human being above human beings makes sense but you know our jobs as people who coach and train and mentor and advise other people is to make sure that we don't look at someone as someone we need to fix is that we don't need to tell them that there's something outside of them that they need to go and get or acquire in order for them to be better be whole or whatever I treat you like everything that you've got in order to be successful right now is already there it's just under a bunch of muck and mire a bunch of dust it's under a bunch of story a bunch of narrative that if we cut those strings those puppet strings those miserable strings that are stopping you or preventing you or making you behave in a certain way that all of a sudden this this possibility this new possibility comes out of you and anyway you know he was just so I explained to him like the process of how I was working with her and what we were actually doing behind the scenes and so I said you know it's not you know Sarah up on that horse that's that's one woman up on that horse and she owns that she hunter % owns it that's who's up there competing is Wonder Woman and she loves that playful idea in her mind that no one knows that Linda Carter and Wonder Woman are up there competing it looks like Sarah but it's not talk to me about Olympians and pressure this is something that I think a lot about like the amount that's on the line for somebody and make a mistake a tenth of a second is the difference between ten million dollars in endorsements and a life of absolute obscurity how do the best of the best deal with that yeah so pressure is an interesting thing I don't let the idea of pressure live inside of my universe it's not gravity in this world pressure is everyone talks about it as if it's real and it's not pressure is something that you are somehow applying to yourself based on the moment and the story that you're wrapping up so like we can't have one without the other like we can't talk about how story and narrative is what human beings do and then we can't talk about how maybe something doesn't exist maybe pressure doesn't exist because pressure is what meaning that you're attaching to an event what if we were so deliberate and intentional about the meaning that we were always attaching to events that it didn't create pressure for ourselves but it created something else now I'm not saying pressure doesn't exist for other people hundred percent it does but I was their creation not my creation but yes there are moments that can be filled with stress and anxiety if you allow them to like if when I have a skier who is pointing their tips down the face of a slope that looks like a cliff and it's filled with ice basically based on the amount of athletes that already went in front of them and they've got to make tight turns around flags and the only thing stopping them is some orange plastic netting that's running along the side if you do not have 100% complete and utter trust Trust is the key that's what we're pursuing trust when you trust yourself when you trust your preparation when you trust your routines that's when you now opened up the doorway for a personal best to happen but the only way that we can get there is through us focusing on the process all the way down the hill the greatest example of someone in the in the final moment of a competition losing their focus on what they were doing and seeing if they won was the great race between Michael Phelps and I think it was the check swimmer at the at the Beijing Games when he was beating Phelps throughout the entire race dominating and the last last lap Phelps is making a comeback making a comeback making a comeback and it's gonna be like a photo finish at the end and they both come to the wall the guy is in front of Phelps and as he's coming to reach towards the wall he immediately pops his head up before he's hit the wall and when you pop your head up what happens shoulders come back when your shoulders come back while your arms are attached to your shoulders so what do they do they come back to and Phelps drove through the wall any beaten by I think it's two hundredths of a second that's the difference to your point about someone who gets the gold and someone who gets the silver who wins and someone who loses in that instant I thought it was and I use that example all the time and I play the video in in different presentations of just like and I my point about it is the difference of two and through because I love just getting people to think about words what would you tell that guy like how do you rebuild that guy the guy that loses that story is interesting to me do you know anything about him like where now what's he doing yeah how does he think of him so he can continue to compete and continue to compete at a high level okay but it's like you know you you you lost that race that version of you lost that race so like I'm always playing as like you know so we've got a we've got a we've got an opportunity in a decision right now that you get to make is is the current version of you that just lost that race because you did that like that's the you that showed up you lost that race are you to carry that identity forward or are you gonna take that because there's winners there's losers and there's learners which one are you gonna be yeah man like look I'm I am so with you I totally agree that's how I process life 1,000% when I see stuff like that happen it sounds like this guy's okay yeah yeah yeah great yeah man so many people end up allowing that loss to become the defining moment of their life yeah that should have scary I had Nastia Liukin on M night theory and she was I think was a qualifying round for the Olympics and she does move and literally misses the bar and just yes max flat and the thing I found so interesting about her was that that was what everybody was trying to make her story yes but she didn't like she didn't make it her story she was able to learn from it and move on I'm sure she was absolutely devastated but she just sort of picked herself up brush yourself off finished the routine got back up on the bar some nut there's no way to win now yeah yeah but she got back up on the bars finished the routine and so it was like there was something about being consistent with who she wanted to be even though she lost yeah that was like a bigger narrative than the falling there yeah well but again this gets back to the problem that we have again those those of us that will operate at an elite level we just we operate in a completely different set of rules than what the rest of society continuously perpetuates with the narratives of winning and losing or lost yeah so the the average folk out there are gonna look at that and say she lost but but that's not really how we process things at the elite level because there's practice there's there's process there's there's next like none of these things define you if you want to allow all of the wins and losses to define you then you're operating from an outcome orientated perspective the best of the best stay very much internal they're very much process orientated you know Jerry Rice great example like I was at a training session with Jerry Rice when he retired and there was young 22 23 year olds that were about to do the Jerry Rice famous practice none of them lasted he was retired and in some cases 25 years older than the other kids and they didn't last I've heard about his workouts being just absolutely legend there and in his just mindset was like you know to everyone else you don't have what it takes you can't was he's somebody like Kobe where it was like I need you to understand him in out work yes that was part of his big time I mean you know the you know if there was a knock against Jerry Jerry wasn't the team guy he's not like a locker room guy he's not someone that you can like laugh and joke around and have fun with I mean Deion Sanders talks about it quite a bit you know they didn't really get along when he was at the 49ers but you know if you're looking at just pure excellence on the field of play you know Jerry Jerry put in Jerry put in the work but but I do I want to get back to that that narrative that is just pervasive and it's so frustrating for me because I see so many people you know they they consume media or they listen to the prognosticators on television when they're talking about sport and just 90 percent of the time that's not actually what any of the athletes are ever thinking it's it's like even what people get is getting to the Olympics is the win you are in you're not an Olympian you're or you're always an Olympian when you meet someone who is at the 1972 Olympics you refer to them as an Olympian it's present-tense always you will always be an Olympian okay and so but in order to draw viewers eyeballs in you've got to create stories around you know Nastia Liukin z' process of how she got there and the story of where she came from or simone biles or michael phelps or insert the name of anyone and anything but the reality is like we're there to create personal best and if your personal best is good enough to get you on the podium amazing but truly the athlete who goes there with the intention of just winning the medals the their focus is on the wrong thing and it sounds completely counterproductive to what everyone keeps on saying about how winners think you know like you know the Vince Lombardi quote of no it just left my left my mind but it's his famous quote around you know winning winning isn't everything it's the only thing well it's taken out of context there's actually a larger quote that's there do you remember because I would love to yeah it's it I'm I'm failing with my dad about why you think of it what's interesting to me is I think it probably has more to do with your perspective going into it so if your perspective going in is I've got a shot at the gold and you walk away in fifth place something tells me that that is gonna be utterly heartbreaking but if you think you're gonna be in ninth place and you end up in fifth place then it's gonna be like oh my god the greatest thing and for the rest of your life when somebody calls you an Olympian it's like yeah yeah yeah I did great so some of this I think you know there are so many stories of triumph and so many stories of just devastating loss that I've tied to the Olympics and if I had to guess you could do a pretty powerful expose on people who were ruined by the Olympics just emotionally that they never recover and obviously it comes down to the story it comes down to the values that they have around winning it comes down to the messy reality of what were their parents saying were they pushing them from an early age did did they accidentally allow themselves or forcefully in you know when you've get-get some of these young gymnasts where a parent is saying you're only valuable if you're winning mm-hmm and it becomes such an ingrained part of who you are like you were destined to win getting a gold is why you exist why you've spent ten years training this just ungodly pace giving up your childhood and when it doesn't pan out it's like man at some point like that should is gonna be really hard to get over and this is the same thing happens in business where people like a win is the only reason you're doing it you're doing it so that you can get the money mm-hmm and trust me as somebody who spent almost a decade doing that I fully understand but yeah the money's not guaranteed the struggle is and so if you aren't able to really love the struggle to get into it to push yourself yeah to have an identity that's around something other than the victory itself like one thing people should check themselves against is does the the thing that I love that can it be aimed at something else or is it the thing itself so for instance I was just at Tony Gonzalez's house one of the greatest football players of all time just inducted into the Hall of Fame [ __ ] super interesting guy loved that guy to death such a good dude yeah and part of his struggle was that what he was doing was aimed at the thing it was aimed at being a football player and for like three years after he finished playing he slid into a depression because he didn't know who he was without football exactly if on the other hand Mike because what he actually did something very interesting when he was in college I think he was far more interested in basketball than he was football but for whatever reason something happened and is in his words basketball was taken from me I don't know what happened but he ends up getting into football and he goes through this process of realizing I can fall in love with football I can actually fall in love with this the way that I fell in love with basketball I can because he said I used to love the smell the basketball the way I smelled my hands like dribbling the ball everywhere just like everything I was obsessed with it yeah and I was like wow that's so interesting that you could make the transition from basketball to football and you found a way to fall in love with football because he said four years in football he didn't love it yeah and it wasn't until he thought wait a second all the things that allowed me to love basketball and fall in love with it and be obsessed and all of that I could translate that over into football yeah and but when he got out he didn't do the same thing with broadcasting and so for the first few years that he was broadcasting said I didn't love it and it's only now that I'm realizing wait a second this is like a pattern and if I can find a way to love it sure then you know I can really enjoy this next phase of my life yeah but my heartbreak for people is you've you're never able to build a belief system a value structure identity that's bigger than the way it made you feel when you thought you were gonna get the gold when you thought you were gonna win when you thought you were gonna be valedictorian when you thought in my own case you thought you were gonna be the next Spielberg right like all these things and then what do you do when that's not how things play out like do you go in a dark place like do you become obsessed with who you could have been are you given the on the waterfront speech I could've been a contender like is that where you go or do you find a way to say okay hold on I recognize this as a value system I can no longer value those things like I thought a lot about like what would happen if I'm building impact theory and it doesn't fail to get off the ground worse it really starts to go somewhere and then it implodes mmm like what is my life look like then yeah how do I respond to that now the good news for me is that I don't allow even though I trust me it's like a black holes worth of center of gravity like it is so tempting it's so easy to just slip into that notion to be I am what I've accomplished yeah yeah but when you have a narrative that you're telling yourself that is something different that keeps you from being sucked into that black hole that you're reminding yourself of constantly yeah which for me it's I'm the learner I'm the learner I'm the learner and as long as I love what I'm doing that I'm gonna keep doing in the second that I don't all happily change direction that's a core part of who I am and what I tell myself what I tell the people around me and so I'm reinforcing it as I articulate it out loud like doing all of that gives you some protection from that but I get like there is something about the human condition that makes that neurologically very difficult to fail publicly to fail at something that you've been moving towards your whole life that you gave yourself over to you allowed yourself to say I'm gonna win a gold medal yeah and then poof it's gone yeah well to your conversation around Tony I mean that's I mean that's no there was a became later in my career but that's that was like a bread and butter was like helping athletes transition out of you know what that next phase was gonna be because for the longest time we described as a football player or you know in the book in three and a chapter three I talked about the the tennis player who won the collegiate championship but just fundamentally burned out of tennis because when he was losing he felt like he was failing as a human being because everything all of his identity was wrapped up in being a tennis player and that's why I'm the message is so important for me because I want people to have a a way healthier mental health for themselves is seeing that know your many identities and when you when you realize that you're there's many roles that you're playing in life you we can start to separate these things so that when you've got one role that might not be going well for you right now entrepreneurship you're not failing as a human being and you know you're struggling right now in it but that doesn't mean you need to go and fail at being a father fail at being a husband and all these things super interesting do you know Robert Sapolsky no professor at Stanford this guy's [ __ ] interesting go watch every YouTube video has ever done this guy's so incredible so he researched baboons for like 20 years or something he said the baboons are they will kill you to your core with how much human behavior you will recognize in them yeah and the baboon troop that he followed they were a very successful troop they only had to work about three hours a day to get their food so they had something like eight hours worth of daylight and where they could just as he said be really shitty to each other yeah and he said they would just like develop these crazy hierarchies and where you fell in the hierarchy if it wasn't a stable hierarchy meaning from one day to the next you didn't know who you were above who you were below and there was like constant fighting over he said their stress levels were absolutely insane and you know I can't remember if he said they actually died of stress-related disease but he said they would dart them and then check their levels and he said it was they're just like their immune systems were really suppressed because they had so much stress and anxiety over where where they fell in the hierarchy they said you see the exact same thing in humans with one fascinating exception humans have multiple hierarchies so if you hate your [ __ ] job you're and you're low man on the totem pole at work but you're the Deacon of your church he said those people are gonna tell you all day long how the you know working from 9:00 to 5:00 is total [ __ ] you're just being taken advantage of it's garbage but if you were the Deacon of the church then it was like ah you had all these amazing things to say about being a deacon at the church that's a [ __ ] I never thought of that before the way that we are always looking to say okay much like we have different identities we belong to different different competence hierarchies yeah and based on what one feels good we're going to put all of our time and energy into that basket when you think about like nerds now take on a different context but when we were growing up if the 80s being a nerd was not cool but within its own ecosystem that was so like I was a band nerd but within band like then there's a whole different pecking order and so the rest of the world made me that you're you know super lame but in the band it's like hey I'm doing alright yeah it's really interesting and there's something about actually having the awareness of hey if things aren't going well in one or multiple areas finding an area where you can shine yeah and going engaging in that could have an immeasurably powerful impact on your overall well-being yeah and one thing that Sapolsky said is the key thing to understand is that you would think if I described to you the effects of being low in a hierarchy that you would want to be a high ranking high ranking baboon within the group but he said that actually isn't the thing that has the most well-being what has the most well-being is somebody that's in a stable hierarchy regardless of where they are and they have the most social relationships and when you're in a stable hierarchy even if you're low but you have a lot of social contacts then that actually has a greater impact on your well being than just being high-ranking mm-hm and I thought that was really interesting I'm glad you brought this up too because you brought up the social relationships I think's and we need and when you look at any of the the long-term studies that have been done on the quality of lives of people that when they get to the end of their lives and and they and they've had whether it's a lot of success or they grade themselves as having a successful life or what have you there's really only one out of all the different stories there's only really one consistent theme amongst the people that have had both a successful life had a high quality of life and you know are living what would be considered a joyful experience and that is the quality of their relationships yeah right and and so I want to bring that up because we're talking we're talking so much about someone making change happen and shifting and doing the work or whatever but I think the great mistake I did this early on and I am a huge byproduct of mentorship apprenticeship it's one thing that's massively lost nowadays is everyone's trying to race to the finish line of success so that they can have some sort of status and label on themselves as opposed to just going in and tucking yourself underneath the wing of someone who's doing the work that you want to go and do like there's a reason why the Renaissance is still graded as the greatest history in art history and it was built off of apprenticeship you know with Michelangelo and Leonardo and da Vinci like all of these amazing names were within 10 years of each other do you know that those two hated each other no I didn't yeah oh it's [ __ ] fascinating the dock or documentary the biography that Walter Isaacson wrote about yeah Leonardo da Vinci he goes into that and how everybody [ __ ] hated Michelangelo and I guess he had a deformed nose because he was such a dick that someone just walked up and [ __ ] smash it in the face that's me and yeah his nose then healed funny weird yeah and that was it he was like a total loner and nobody wanted to be around about [ __ ] what a genius yeah but you're yeah dude I was gonna not I thought my head was gonna fall off I was nodding so hard I so agree my whole thing with I love social media I think it's actually super powerful it is very dangerous and it's a bit like a gun yeah if you use it inappropriately you're gonna [ __ ] kill yourself yeah but if you know how to use it it can be an incredible tool and one of the things that makes me very sad about social media despite it being so incredibly powerful is people want to be heard instead of getting good and I'll get people like I mean people every now and then and shout out to my boy at Avril here in Beverly Hills who I met and he was like dude I love the show I watched it all the time and I had this when I meet people like that out in the wild who are into the show I'm like [ __ ] okay I have like 30 seconds with this person I want to change their life right going back to what you said I want the six [ __ ] words that are like gonna change this person forever yeah and I'm like all right it all starts with your goals what are your goals and he was like I want to make videos that inspire people and that's like god damn it I'm like here's how you end up making videos that inspire people you go get good at something because here's the truth if you're just trying to pare it back all the things you've heard from people that have gone and got extraordinary something you're it just won't it it won't have the richness because here's lacking the nuance it has that depth you you have learned things that I have not learned in your experience you fought and struggled and all that and sort of on paper you could probably describe us as you know they essentially went to the same thing right trying to achieve greatness in a field coming out of nowhere blah blah and it's like in going through that process things occurred to you that didn't occur to me and vice versa yeah and so that's what makes it interesting I'm like until you've gone out into the wilderness and done your thing there's like nothing to bring back to the tribe yeah so it's like don't the videos are gonna take care of themselves either you're gonna get extraordinary at something and really learn some [ __ ] and then people are really gonna want to listen to you yeah or you're not like there are people out there that aren't necessarily super charismatic or dynamic but god damn it they've learned some mm-hmm and I want to listen to those [ __ ] all day because it's like whoa you've got some insights into things I've never of man yeah and what you've done in fact this is it when somebody writes a book or creates a video what they're trying to do is distill down everything they've learned over the last 20 30 years yeah and make it digestible for you if they haven't done anything for the last 20 or 30 years they have nothing to digest or give you to digest it's like which is a lot of books though there's a lot of books that's my problem with the leadership personal self up spaces you know there's a recipe how do you gain Authority gain influence you write a book and so someone who's a year and a half two years in because now it's a hell of a lot easier to write books with the amount of like writing services that are out there and ghost writers and this and that and so you've got people who read like the three contemporary or you know or past bestsellers on the topic and then they're gonna go and iterate on it and and give their viewpoint and it's just and people start propagating and permeating these same ideas and when you actually look at a lot that's why I've got such an issue with the industry is because there are very few books that have become mainstream that are written by practitioners the ones that have done the work and I'm not even talking researchers because standing on the sidelines and seeing how a football player is approaching their career or approaching and you take down your notes and maybe do a couple of interviews is way different then the person who's been working with thousands of them one on one and seeing well what they say in the press conference and what they actually do behind the scenes are two very different things the alter ego stuff this is the thing that people actually do to help go and achieve amazing things it's never been articulated because it's a private experience that people don't go and talk about Beyonce was rare in that she let it out and told people when people don't understand is she was crucified on blogs and many other things by whether it's evangelical right or even the the african-american community about being inauthentic and yeah why would she even need to go and do that couldn't she just be herself listen I get it beautiful idea be yourself gang how's that [ __ ] working for you it's not like enough with all these shitty platitudes that don't mean anything like inauthentic inauthenticity what a shitty term like I'm sick and tired of authenticity authentic self a there's no such thing as the authentic self because there is no self there is no you right leg was with you right till then no there's no I don't think there is something about there's a I'll call it the integrated self right where there's definitely like even my robot thing okay my robot thing well it's not quite an alter-ego it's but it's a totem and it reminds me of something it's it's very real and very true to myself even though I built in the meaning to that so like when you were giving me the Lynda Carter thing I thought you know it's actually really interesting as people people are revealing themselves in the thing that they choose yes so there is still to me authenticity I guess is like a trigger for me because I really I feel very grossed out when other people I can tell you're you're pandering you're presenting something that isn't real yeah and so I think that being who you are is is the only way to build a strong sense of self kid that didn't work let me explain it another way it the second I start trying to act like I know something that I don't I get anxious yeah and so anxiety has become this amazing invisible fence that keeps me authentic and when I was younger I was prone to like trying to you know flex my muscles and like I be a little bit bigger than I really was and it made me feel gross and I was like yeah I'm not doing this anymore and so once I stopped doing that and I was like this is where I'm actually at this is what I actually understand this what I don't understand I try to call out like when I start like cuz there are things ideas I'm excited about but don't really understand yet yeah and so I'll try to flag them it's like [ __ ] this is so interesting to me but I'm now at the edge of what I understand and I'm just sort of yeah talking but being true to who you are like even this show so I'd real hesitation about doing the show but the thing about doing this show in particular was on impact Theory if I disagree with you then I'm just going to be quiet I'm let you say your piece and maybe it resonates with somebody else and that's that but on this I was like if I don't agree I'm gonna tell somebody I don't know yet because I wanted I want I want to evolve my own thinking in real time and I can if I'm just silent I have to push you and then you push me back yeah like we see where we settle out so I think that there I have a deep desire to be true to myself I love the word authentic I don't have the same reaction that you do yeah I think there is an authentic self that is a real thing but I also completely buy into all trees yes so like when I say when I'm talking about that it's like it's again understanding that we've got many identities that we have so you know if I am perceived by other people as being a challenge of personality which is very easy I mean of course I'm working with you know ambitious people or achievers and you know they're coming to me to get a specific skill set or a paradigm shift or something and I need to like sometimes you gotta take the battering-ram approach with and you're gonna crack through it and you got to be tough enough plus I can love to watch that plus I've got really big personalities coming my way like you know I'm working with the people that you're seeing on ESPN or Sky Sports on the highlight reels like you know those are big personalities and they have nothing but yes people around them well I'm not a yes person and so in especially sometimes working people who are just physically far larger than me as well and but it's not weird how that's the thing yeah yeah it's a hundred percent of thing oh yeah yeah ten percent you know but when I go home to my three little kids I got three beautiful little children six and a half five and a half right now or five and two and a half Molly Sophie and Charlie do they want the challenge you're walking through the door that is me that's the me that's in my work environment but I never wear my glasses around my kids and when I walk through the door I have this little bracelet about those I've got this little bracelet hanging on the hook at the front door and when we talked about we were talking earlier so much about meaning and how we as human beings we could to add a narrative and story to anything we can add meaning to anything that's why when we meet someone who like they've lost a coffee mug and they're just distraught it's cuz it meant something to them maybe someone gave it to them and it was in a moment where he was emotionally charged and you know is ever it is but when I before I walked through that door I make a very conscious intention that there is a different Tod different self that's walking through that door and when I open up the door I've got a hook with this with this bracelet hanging on it which Molly made for me and it's got their three initials my only Sophie and Charlie it's got only love and it's got my wife's name on it the original one which got lost just had my kids initials but when I put that on I am now inspired by the identity of mr. Rogers he's the person that I most want to embody for my kids that's interesting because if there is someone that embodies the characteristics and traits that I want my children to experience with me which is playfulness fun patience and a lot of clothes changing and a lot of clothes changing wonderful sweaters yes that's who I most want to activate the traits of right and so here's what I know is that's not me being fake that's not me pretending anything because what I know after 22 years of experience doing this all of those qualities and traits already exist inside of me patience lives inside inside of me it's just not flexed every single day when I'm in my entrepreneurial role playfulness or fun or goofiness doesn't necessarily have a place in my business the way that it is other businesses yeah playfulness could be a big part of it but when I go through the door I want to be that playful fun self and so when I put that on you know there is a state change and that's me being very intentional I'm creating a ritual so that I can be an absolute superstar I want to be excellent in that area I don't want to be average now because when I'm when I go away Molly always hands it to me so that I'm that they're with me when I'm right yeah but normally I wouldn't have it on kind of it but yeah because I'm in LA I'm not in New York City right we're in it right now I also knew that I'd be talking about it so my point about that cuz we talked about the authentic self what I want to extrapolate out for people is you've got many selves that you can be authentic with because the current kind of definition of authenticity or authentic is that there's one you and there isn't one you right and so that you were talking about being the most true to yourself as you can that's and I agree with that the most true the self that I that I can be is that I want to be as amazing for my kids and give them the same amount of energy that I've just given nine hours in my day at work because how many people that are watching this right now spend and give a whole bunch of other people in their day that they don't really even care about a bunch of energy and then they go home energy depleted and just sort of Slough through the rest of the evening despite the fact that the people that they love and care about the most that they would be most distraught over if they lost them they're not showing up for energy isn't this you know tank that gets depleted in your day you know if you want to believe that then 100% it is that's the paradigm that you're living through that's your gravitational pull then understand it is mine it's not I've got I've got just an absolute abundance of energy that I get to walk through in the threshold of our apartment back in New York City that when I do I look forward to it I can't wait to walk through that and put on that so I can be phenomenal for my kids now and phenomenal for my wife that's my existence you know and it can be for anybody else and if you imagine mr. Rogers for your kids who do you imagine for your wife well that's but I'll give you another example here because yeah so I've done a lot of media around the book fortunate 132 podcast now yeah 914 is you know done like NBC and CBS PBS did a spot on it and like you know back in the motherland of Canada you know everyone jumped on board to support the the Canadian Sun kind of thing which was great but on a lot of those interviews like I kind of have a uniform is like a blazer and a pocket square and all that and the glasses and my wife she was always giving birth time she's like you know the person that I fell in love with is this like super funny like you're a big jokester like you love giving people a hard time you're like always laughing but that doesn't necessarily come out as much with you when you're doing your interviews so I was on The Today Show just last month with it was gonna be with Hoda copy and Jenna Bush but Hoda took some leave and so then it was Holly Robinson Peete and Jennifer Nettles the lead singer for Sugar Land and you know it's a you know it's kind of that it's that daytime talk type of thing and they like the more playful thing so when I was going on there I was like you know what who would I most want to show up as so I can have that more playful fun personality that's there because it's there I've got it and it was Ryan Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman I love them in their interviews like they're funny they're jokey and so that's what I showed up as this time I didn't wear the uniform of a blazer I actually wore something very similar to this mhm and yeah you look at that interview versus the other ones just a different part of me was showing up in it and you know as soon as it got done it went amazing and immediately the producers like we gotta get you back we want to talk about like more this more and stuff so that's my point about like this whole there's a lot of people are getting trapped by this idea of authenticity authentic self and I think people need to be really careful be a lot more choosy about what they allow these definitions to be because I love the idea I I don't think that people are intentionally trying to deceive people around these words by any stretch the imagination sure but I think that they're being co-opted by a really bad idea that is trapping many people because the reality is when you're just starting out like you you have this taste and this flavor of something that's better than what you are right now and so there's this internal resistance and this struggle around that and and then people don't take the action and so my advice to that is like [ __ ] that don't I'm not so concerned about you being authentic because you thinking about calling your mom and telling her that you love her but then not doing it that makes you feel good picking up the phone and calling your mom and for some people saying the tough words of I love you if you're not in a in a family that says that often it creates two totally different possibilities right like that that's whatever it takes for you to pick up the phone and say those words I like that person whatever it takes for someone to actually launch the video or you know launch the business whatever it took for you on the inside whether you were being fake and pretending to be someone else or not I don't care because you toppled the Domino everyone's so concerned about the perceptions of other people I just don't care and I'm coming out from the experience of people who've done it like you know what the greatest soccer player will be in the rankings of one of the top three soccer players of all time thinks when he's on the soccer field this is not in press conferences what player are we talking about I can't say because I don't let people know who my clients are but he fundamentally believes that no one deserves to be on the pitch with him he's personally offended that people are sharing the blades of grass with him and so at fie he feels like it's his personal responsibility to destroy you and embarrass and humiliate you out there because of you don't put in the amount of work that I do you do not put in the amount of work that I do to become this great and it offends me that you're even on my team sometimes and so now I've got to show you up and show you just how much it's gonna take for you to even sniff my cleats Wow now some people think well that's an egotistical jerk it's egotistical jerk if he was saying that in a press conference that's what he's not saying it but think about that from a healthy internal super-ego standpoint if that helps you be the greatest player or competitor in your genre then what does it matter you know it's actually super interesting and I don't know where I come down on that so my thing is here's my thing I'm a servant to greatness mm-hmm that's what I've chosen to value so if they're going to leverage the darkness that hard you get good I will say hey it might work be a little bit careful watch Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech and you'll see the toll that only relying on anger in the darkness you know that it does extract a toll yeah but it is it is an extraordinary tool for some people to leverage and I think the light in the dark both have massive utility yeah I just think people have to be really careful about if you're always in that dark energy sure then now if he were having to choose between its to be the greatest I must be in the dark energy all the time then yeah I would have no beef with it I just think it's probably a false dichotomy he probably doesn't have to only rely on the dark and the hate and the you're not good enough and so I worry like as a social animal that he'd probably have more fun if he found a way to elevate and inspire those around him and still outwork them like here here's the truth and some people god I'm about to turn some people off I'm gonna miss you when you unsubscribe here's the truth of me I outwork everyone on this team and I know the people right now are listening to this so my team is healing me say right now yeah but this is not this is not a bad thing it's not a dark energy thing it's like I want my team to know they can count on me yeah to outwork them they can count on me to carry a load that's heavier than anyone else yeah that I want that that I want to be out front I want the first slings and arrows to hit me yeah I want them to be able to file him behind me now at the same time I [ __ ] love it when somebody wants to make me sweat mmm yeah I'm gonna play it your love yeah I'm gonna step out then it's like I'm gonna bury you yeah with love yeah love in my heart yet but I'm [ __ ] coming for you will ya will Vuh your name is on my lips right now and I could hear the team laughing so that [ __ ] is gunning for my position in no uncertain terms he said his goal in five years is to be co-ceo which secretly means in five years he wants to be CEO he's just trying to be kind yeah so I'm gonna bury will but I'm gonna do it in a way that uplifts him lets him know that I [ __ ] want to sweat and God if he can overtake me I will be very impressed yeah so it's like it you can get the same result without sliding so permanently and yes so when I'm describing what's going on in his head I'm obviously saying it I'm saying it in a very intense way but there is an attitude of playfulness behind what he's also saying as well so he's playing with dark and light and I mean I as someone who's now you know worked worked with him for a very long time I've seen this huge evolution in his in his change but what I just like what you just did though was see that what you just did that's what I would call as being authentic because I think what's really important for people that watch whether it's consuming little tidbits of you know snackable is on social media is that they get the real and true story of what it's like and what it like that that's your mindset that I'm going to bury you with love right like oh yeah and that's for me it's like no I you know coming into our orbit as clients but I'll win because we have this thing as we out care we all care everybody else you can't out care me because I care more and mine comes from a very challenging place from a kid you know like I have this the reason I can get challenged or not get challenged but the reason I can get frustrated with some of the you know platitudes that are out there that are just not true is because I care a lot that people get the truth like the real truth like our our company is based on you know scientific research right that's why in the book yeah everyone gets the concept immediately but what I want to get people to understand is know there's a lot of science behind why all these things work in the methodology that we put into using you know and shaping other people's identities and stuff but I have a straw R Denari level of compassion and and that comes from you know I grew up on a farm and ranch amazing parents two older brothers that are great and my younger sister went off to a church camp when I was 12 years old because I just I was an I just needed you around people as much as I can so if there was a Catholic camp this weekend as a Catholic if there was a Protestant when the next weekend I was a Protestant if there was a you know a Baptist one I was a Baptist didn't matter I just want to be around people and went away to a camp and over the course two men singled me out over the course of a couple of days you know sexually abused and raped me in a pretty bad way right when we were 12 years old that's a that's not that's not an easy thing to deal with immediately when I got home from that you know you're dealing with so much shame so much humiliation so much you know guilt embarrassment didn't want anyone to find out about it Plus on top of all of the you know you know story and kind of you know stuff that they put inside my head dropped off my duffle bag at the front door and we just put in a pool in our backyard went to the garage changed into a swimming my swimming trunks and proceeded to try to drown myself whoa so struggled with you know didn't obviously happen but struggled with like suicide throughout my teens in my 20s because I was trying to get away from that and that's why I know I am world class at mental game coaching because you know I know that some of the things that drive people to do the things that they do come from dark places you know but there is another side to that that like that gift that I got from that experience was that I've got extraordinary level of compassion for the challenges that some people have gone through which can be tough but what I want people to know is that that doesn't mean need to be your story forever that doesn't need to define you by any stretch of the imagination how did you build back from that I don't know like I went I did a a went internal with a lot of stuff definitely changed my personality kind of in a flash I was always a I was always a kind of a serious kid in that I just loved ruminating on ideas as a youngster but I was far more kind of like playful definitely turned me probably into a little bit more of a Cheever because I wanted to get away from my province really there just kind of everywhere I went I just saw reminders of things for me that's probably explains why I've done so much travel and lived in so many is not the only thing that explains it but consumed as much information as I could which was tough because I'm a huge dyslexic and so reading was always a challenge for me until I got diagnosed at 21 I went through all through school without getting diagnosed with dyslexia I just thought I was you know you know I kept it I was very good at hiding it but you know that didn't I never thought of myself as stupid or something like that but I always felt like you know there's something about books that I'm drawn towards but man do these things ever challenge me it's like the the hero's journey process of like entering the cave I kept on going back to the cave to try to enter it and read but you know I got into reading about the mind so that I could try and master it because it was a dark place for me all the time to go to you know like battled with I mean I still do sometimes battle with night terrors not as not anywhere near as much anymore but night terrors was something I battled for a really really really long time so sleeping was tough I kind of dreaded the idea of going to sleep and you know what I mean sleep is like the number one thing I mean the first thing I work with people on for performance whether it's a executive an entrepreneur leader anyone is like anyone that's here you know getting your sleep and you're protecting that time is so important and here I was maybe sleeping four hours a night it sounds like this may not be a need anymore but have you looked at the studies on MDMA and I was in the largest MDMA stuff oh [ __ ] the one at Bellevue Hospital in New York City did it help yes so yeah it's uh and you know tucker tucker's a really close friend is yes and so yeah MDMA what MDMA did for me was it it created an anchor place where I could see that that amazing level of self-love which is something that you struggle with when you know you attach yourself to these stories that you know because self-worth becomes a real big issue for people who've gone through things like this especially when you know the abusers are telling you that you're not worth it and that how can your family love you when they're not here to you no no one's here you know so how much can anyone really love you you know and they're just beating down and they did a very good systematic process of it over the course of those days and but when when I had MDMA for the first time that anchor place that it gave me because it just it was like floating in a place of just just pure it was like dropping into like an ocean of like just pure self-love or bliss like it's really hard to describe to people I was like when I came out of it I was like okay like I know that that that's a place that I can get to which then really started the kind of journey towards really kind of facing it finally because I never told anyone about this until just two years ago where I finally kind of was frayed at the edges because if it bunch of other circumstances that were happening around me a business lawsuit and and stuff where I was suing someone and and you know we had a tough child and you know my wife had a really tough go and so I was sort of holding as much things up as I possibly could it's the idea of like you know trying to keep all these different beach balls below the surface of the water you know there's only so much you can do and finally this thing came to the surface because I hadn't necessarily dealt with it and you know but steamrolled towards it and and worked through it but that that that study I'm not gonna say that it's because it's not a magic bullet for everybody but you'd say that it did help start 100% and I mean just because right now the statistics on that I was in the third trial phase the which was the final trial phase of it and the third trial phase they kind of reserved for like the worst case scenario people people who have been living with trauma and PTSD for an exorbitant amount of time but I think the the lightest stat don't quote me exactly on it but it's I think it's an 86 percent cure rate on the recurrence of PTSD which if you know anything about other possible treatments for PTSD and trauma is an insane number so I can't wait for it to be you know legalized for people because it's been really hard for Congress to say no to a group of people that are former veterans of the United States you know military and say no to it's because it's been phenomena so the work that the maps Institute has done a champion s and other people behind the scenes underground for a long time giving people semblances of hope that you know there is a pathway to the other side has been amazing so you know that's all me kind of coming back around to like you know that incident you know in some ways it really shaped kind of the direction that I took with getting into the mental game stuff I needed it for myself say like man I can imagine like talk about pieces clicking into place so having gone through abuse like that yeah and needing a version of yourself that's like the best of everything that maybe is somehow outside of that and hasn't been touched by that 1% walkman yeah makes sense yeah and but in the end like now that I know so much more about it what I was tapping into to kind of avoid or not yeah in some ways it was avoiding but no you know getting away from that identity that was wounded was tapping into that playful side you know that you know when I went on the football field or whatever which was a safe haven in some ways and sport was big time for me allowed me to truly connect to this amazing superpower that we have that's why I'm so passionate about getting people introduced to this phenomenon that everyone that's watching has already used you've used it because we use it when we're in our formative years between the age of 1 and 7 when we're always you know you're pretending to be Batman jumping off the sofa or you're pretending to be your favorite you know athlete on the front driveway to see and it's all answering the question what could I do if what could I do if I you know was LeBron James in this moment what could I do if I was Wayne Gretzky what could I do if I was Batman or Superman and you play with that idea and and and when you take a look at that that section of your other child's or of a person's life that's where almost all of our development happens 1 2 7 and then when you look at it from a brain wave perspective children that are operating between the ages of one and seven are living in the ages of one to seven or operating in the theta brainwave state consistently they haven't developed into the beta which is when frontal lobe starts to kick in right the development of the brain and you know now our higher reasoning and thinking and judgment skill starts to kick in and so that should be telling people that there's a there's something about that that era of our lives that we can reconnect to and how we can reconnect to it is our creative imagination creative imagination operates inside the theta brain wave state where we can suspend so many things and see ourselves in a different way and an alter ego is that was that kind of magical key to help unlock all of these possibilities that exist inside of you know clients and other people now it's [ __ ] an interesting dude interesting concept the book is out now where can people get it everywhere Airport bookstores Amazon and regulation yeah yeah Amazon Barnes and Noble you know find it you know it's all around the globe you know and we're getting it you know sold the rights into a whole bunch of different language is already with it so amazing yeah and you know if people want to connect with me they you know Todd Herman dot me is my home base on the interwebs and you know all my activity on Instagram or social as well to you know where I share some behind-the-scenes of things that we're doing so I love it yeah Todd thank you for joining us on the show this was amazing we we may have set a record here so thank you thank you for the time an awesome absolutely thanks alright peace out everybody until next time be legendary later we only get one emotion at a time the tower brain works one emotion so our job is to really find the right state that we want to be in the right emotional place and use that rather than let the brain win and if that is untrained and unconditioned it will win