Speaker 1somebody who consistently performs at a high level rain or shine good day bad day they show up the exact same every single time those are your elite performers today's guest is kevin bailey the ceo of dreamfuel and he's coached over a thousand executives at companies like smartsheet greenlight guru and owner.com on the hard science of elite mental performance physiology impacts emotions emotions impact feelings feelings impact thoughts thoughts impact behaviors so if we can fix your physiology then we can fix your results and kevin knows what he's talking about he's completing his master's in applied neuroscience from king's college london he's a three-time inc 500 founder and his team includes coaches who have trained fighter pilots green berets and hedge fund managers and now they bring those high performance modalities to executives like you and if you're skeptical about performance coaches you should definitely give this episode a listen i was a skeptic too long before i learned all this stuff and the neuroscience is clear and that's what got me over it's like yes you can rewire your entire nervous system to show up there everyone welcome to the revenue leadership podcast momentum is a powerful tool for turning sales and customer conversations into go-to-market intelligence using gen ai it extracts analyzes and automates customer intelligence across your gtm org the best part it's not a new platform for your team to adopt it integrates seamlessly with your existing stack or it can straight up replace your conversational intelligence tool at owner we ripped out gong and went all in on momentum it writes back to our salesforce director it's a three-time inc 500 founder uh he brought a team of founders executives and sales teams on mental performance using applied neuroscience uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh he brought a team of founders executives and sales teams on mental performance using applied neuroscience uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh he brought a team of founders executives and sales teams on mental performance using applied neuroscience uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh he brought a team of founders executives and sales teams on mental performance using applied neuroscience uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder uh kevin is a three-time inc 500 founder and then went and got a master's in applied neuroscience from king's college london to understand why and he has coached over a thousand leaders at companies like greenlight guru linksquare smartsheet owner.com as well he's done a bunch with us and he's got some fascinating data on what happens when you can treat mental performance and mental fitness like a real business investment and any of my listeners know it is a topic of great interest for me personally and so we're going to dig into the science of executive performance and how you can take those skills from you as a leader scale them across an entire organization do it in a scalable manner make it a part of your identity so this is going to be a fun one i am particularly excited for this because it is a topic i care a lot about so kevin thanks for joining and excited for it excited to be on dial thank you yeah so what did i miss in your background that's important for for folks to know yeah i mean i think it's a pretty straightforward story i was a young founder i founded a company with a couple of my buddies you know we hit lightning in a bottle it grew really fast and by the time we got to 100 plus employees like you know i got into the business to buy fast cars and be a kid and have fun and realized there's a hell of a lot of pressure involved at that level a lot of money involved and i mean when i started to understand you know i had like a hundred families depending on this at 27 the pressure got really high um i was lucky enough to run into a neuroscientist at the time who coached athletes and she gave me some skills that i first started to execute with our sales team um this is like when i don't know breathwork was considered weird and unknown you know like wim hof you know this is like early days of this we started to do like breathwork before important meetings and things like that i started to notice that their performances changed we eventually hired a ceo for the company and i moved into just doing kind of enterprise sales on the west coast and i started implementing these tactics seriously as as an ae at that point doubled my own close rate and then my friends back in indianapolis when i came home uh started asking me if i could start working with their sales teams and that was those companies like uh you know max yoder from lesson lee you mentioned david duran from green light guru um santiago from amplify some of those companies had nice exits and that was kind of the genesis and then i met anna um anna roar who's now anna heine uh she's a notre dame uh neuroscience craft from notre dame hall of fame runner uh elite performer in all regards and then we really build the curriculum in the company very cool um quite a co-founder eight-time all-american athlete not not too heavy coolest person man yeah yeah and uh your whole team is is like former high-level athletes that have gone through this similar journey and i think it's a great thing to be a part of and i think that's one of the reasons why it's so important to be a part of and i think it's a great thing to be a part of and i think it's a great thing to be a part of and i think it's a great thing to be a part of and i think it's a great thing to be a part of and i think it's a great thing to be a part of and i think it's a great thing to be a part of yeah at this point that's our job is just we try and find people who work with high performers in other arenas so one of them like trains fighter pilots you know one of them uh you know alex worked with ufc he was actually did the hedge fund managers for a long time like wendy from billions of the guy that that you work with um uh we have a bunch that have coached different different professional professional sports one we just hired special forces train green berets and we take them and bring them through our curriculum to to take those high performance modalities to performance psychology and neuroscience and then adapt them for the executive function which really has no off season yeah that's cool so um i want to start by just laying out a framework for executives to think about this topic so you know many if not most people in these jobs um get consumed by their work it becomes everything uh a bunch of this other stuff falls by the wayside and and there's story after story of people either burning out or like having physical like health challenges and so i'm wondering if you could give us a framework to think about all right like i want to treat myself as a high performance corporate athlete what is the structure what is my mental model to to try to uh view that through personally well let's first talk about the goal and the outcome uh the goal of any elite performer so i guess the question you ask yourself is what's the difference between a high performer and an elite performer the very best performers like what's the hallmark of an elite performer and when i think about it and you know you think about the the research around it it's consistency somebody who consistently performs at a high level rain sun or shine good day bad day they show up the exact same every single time those are your elite performers those are your michael jordans who played phenomenally when he had before for example and the question is like how do you become an elite performer anybody who pursues mental performance that's their goal so maybe we could start there i can i can we can unpack that a little bit then maybe get into some of the frameworks we use yeah that is a really interesting framework and actually sort of surprising because and when i reflect on it yeah there are actually a lot of leaders who can have good weeks good months have a good quarter but but it's a little too much up and down and there's a little too many other inputs that can take somebody off of their game or even you know like going back to my mma days like when i was at my super ultimate best i was a very different athlete than when i was like only okay and maybe in my head a little bit or you know how to nag a injuries so the the difference between peak and valley like certainly is is is significant so all right so we want the outcome to be consistently have some of your best days eliminate the downs and so what's the approach like where how should i think about it raise that floor yeah just a tight bound of performance you know and the reason why i think people like us are are employed with professional athletes so much is because there's an audience all the time you know there isn't much of an audience in your boardroom when you when you get the yips so to speak psychologically and start breaking down you just have a couple maybe investors that are like oh this guy probably needs to get out um yeah but you know when you have an entire audience of 40 000 fans you know booing uh it becomes very obvious to everyone so i think that's why people like us work with athletes so much but yeah i mean they want to win the championship they got to show consistently their best so i think that the first so i think about when i think of frameworks i think of like let's start you know think of like physiology emotions your interpretation of those emotions which i call feelings then you have cognitive or your thoughts that really spawn off your physiology and emotions you change your physiology and emotions you know this with breath work you change the way you think rolling off your thoughts come your behaviors and off your behaviors come your results so if i think of that as the performance chain i like to start with physiology okay so physiology emotions feelings cognitive behaviors results yeah okay and and maybe just before we unpack each why it why are behaviors downstream of emotions and physiology maybe just unpack some of the neuroscience there because i think that's a good foundation yeah think of this like a chain it goes up and down so if you have great results obviously that's going to impact your thinking that's going to impact your behaviors it's going to impact your emotions the way you feel about those emotions your physiology and then all the way up you change your physiology and then you change your physiology you can change your emotions your thoughts about those emotions your feelings you can change the way you think and then you can change uh the way you behave and the way you perform your results so i think of it as a chain that goes up and down this is backed up in performance like oncology. But, um, yeah, I mean, think about it like this. Let's just start with a really basic example. So there's a lot, there's a big study on this. It's like, um, if I, if we were sitting next to each other and I just happened to have like a syringe and in that syringe was cortisol and adrenaline and Kyle, you're having the best day of your life. And you're like, all right, buddy, give me a shot of cortisol and adrenaline. And then you got a big shot of cortisol and adrenaline loaded up with cortisol and adrenaline. It doesn't matter if you're having the best day of your life, you will automatically go into the fight response or sorry, flight response. Yeah. Cortisol and adrenaline will be a flight response. And you're going to be thinking of all the reasons why this day sucks and why you want the hell out of this situation. Doesn't matter. It was the best day of your life. You're going to find everything wrong with it. A human in the flight response, physiologically, their thoughts are pinned down by their feelings, their emotions, and their physiology. Because their brain is seeking, their brain. Is like actively looking for threat. Yeah. It's getting me out of this situation. So the, the, the thoughts and remember your, your thoughts bubble up from the subconscious mind, conscious, conscious thoughts are like 5%, 95% of your thoughts are happening reflexively automatically in the nervous system. So they're kind of popping up and you're like, Oh boy. Um, yeah, I really got to get out of this situation. This sucks. You're not actually thinking that those thoughts are being fed to you. Like if you ever meditate, you sit there and you notice like, okay, there's all these thoughts. You're not trying to think those thoughts are spawned. Yeah. Off of your emotionality and your physiology. But physio physiology is at the very bottom of the chain. Physiology impacts emotions. Emotions impact feelings. Feelings impact thoughts, thoughts impact behaviors. So if we can fix your physiology, then we can fix your results. Yeah. And, and I think what a lot of people don't understand is you can practice your physiology. You can, you, there, your, your brain is plastic, like neuroplasticity. is is like a one of the most important concepts i learned in the last like decade plus where you can practice these things change your the patterns that your brain operates in and then change everything that's downstream of it or connected in that chain change your feelings change your your cognition and behaviors and then and and ultimately results through stuff like meditation gratitude like things that were very woo woo i consider to be very woo woo 15 years ago but but now i've certainly changed my tune on yeah and it's an infinite continuum you know like a lot of people i think about mental health it's like okay what is average mental i'm mentally healthy okay i'm okay you know i'm in i'm in okay shape but the question is you know that continuum okay in our society we only think about mental disorders okay you don't have a mental disorder well then you're mentally healthy the mental performance coach goes okay from the point of mentally healthy to elite performance like what is elite mental health like what is true mental fitness and it's a continuum and i think i told you at the beginning of the call like i do study um in my neuroscience masters my dissertation is on non-duality which is kind of like the furthest extent of mental health um where like you were talking about a feeling of okayness just sort of pervades in all situations and that is trained in the nervous system of somebody who meditates a lot and does other techniques because they're rewiring the way their default mode network of their brain works to where like mind wandering isn't always about the self and they're not always about the self and they're not always about the self and they're not always about the self which you know we could go deeper on that but the main point i'm trying to make is is a continuum and you can train the nervous system to show up a lot differently over time it's like working out it's like building a a big squat or bench press it takes time but yes you can rewire your entire nervous system to show up differently yeah can you just explain what the default mode network is and maybe maybe like so let's transition into understanding in this chain we'll unpack physiology but like what are the key parts of your brain or physiology that people need to understand that they might not like the default mode network the reticular activating system like some of these things that tend to crop up a lot and inform like i'd love to explain like how the brain how the brain uh in a way that is not not conscious affects everything downstream and maybe just like give us some of those concepts yeah so uh default mode network is a really good thing to understand so um the default mode network is the part of your brain that really flips on when you're at rest okay so in between calls when you're sitting there it's the part of your brain that's just firing mind wandering firing off thoughts okay those 95 of thoughts and in somebody who maybe has somewhat poor mental health that default mode network is going to be firing a lot of self-reflexive thoughts at them okay on that last call like what did i do wrong there oh i must have said something wrong to you know my team member johnny he's treating me differently like it's just constantly asking you questions about yourself it's having you question yourself constantly the default mode network um is important but it certainly can be hyperactive and that is one thing that meditation has been shown to calm down uh meditation over time uh lowers the default mode network activity in mind wandering self-reflexive thinking now think about when you're in flow state you know if you're doing something where you're really tuned in are you thinking about yourself the entire time no yeah so like people in non-dual states or people who have high mental health are actually thinking about themselves a lot less they're much more in tune to their environment they're playing to win they're not asking themselves every little thing they did wrong um so yeah default mode network is responsible for self-reflexive thinking the other part that's really important to understand as far as performance goes is the amygdala you know threat detection center so when that mind wandering turns into really bad negative thinking it's going to turn on the amygdala i think this is maybe a really good transition to talk about physiology the four states of the nervous system um if we're talking about the bottom of the chain you know you're really only in four states we just talked about the flight response so cortisol and adrenaline you know two of the primary um hormones and neurotransmitters associated with uh the flight response okay yeah so if you want to understand your physiology there's two things you want to think about you want to think about your heart rate and you want to think about emotional tonality so it's either a high heart rate a neutral heart rate or a low heart rate acetylcholine sorry acetylcholine slows the heart down adrenaline and noradrenaline speed the heart up okay so you think about this is like the the y-axis yeah all right so if you're like a doing science experiments as a kid and you put acetylcholine on a frog heart that that heart's going to beat a little slower okay so slow slow heart rate high heart rate and then on the x-axis emotional tonality so think of on one side you got cortisol yeah on the other side you got neurotransmitters like uh dopamine and serotonin so you got these these four areas you got so if you have high heart rate and negative emotional tonality cortisol you got the flight response run from an attacking predator okay executives spend a ton of time in that place all right i mean if people are honest with themselves like how often you think as executives are in a flight response 110 percent of the time yeah a lot and it's not a great place to be you know like your your blood's running out to your appendages to run away from a from a saber-toothed or whatever it's not trying to think of the next best thing to say in a meeting yeah your iq dips a little bit you're not significantly i saw yeah like you're burning a ton of energy it's just a bad place and also it's deteriorating your physical health over time you know and your mental health you know it's it's it's terrible on the hippocampus hippocampus on memory i'm really important brain functions if you're sitting there in the flight response all the time so that's a that's a maladaptive state for an executive for the most part i mean 99 of the time so let's go down so the heart rate's a little slower all right you still have cortisol running that's freeze you got a loss so that's low heart rate negative negative emotion yes negative emotional tonality so cortisol and acetylcholine freeze response okay and it's like everything it's a continuum so like if a polar bear happened to walk through my door right now i would go into the fetal position but you know i would i would do nothing my nervous system would totally shut down too much acetylcholine cortisol you're just you're you're you're playing dead play dead or something but procrastination feeling like you don't want you know feeling like i just don't want to get out of bed in the morning also a freeze response okay interesting also a really bad place for an executive to be yeah you know and frankly how often do executives get a freeze response how often you not want to go to the next meeting i'm not talking to you specifically but it's like it happens yeah not wanting to sit down and do that really hard thing that you know is going to have you know like a is going to be a negative experience exactly difficult experience yes you know that's why you know cold plunges and stuff like that are helpful uh so getting out of a freeze response so so think about literally freezing yourself so so so think about that the first step of this is like awareness it's like okay my heart rate's a little low i'm really not feeling this okay i'm in a freeze response if you can identify you're in a freeze response now we're talking now you have the to move out of that because most people aren't aware of it they go into their next meeting whether it's a sales call or a leadership meeting they're in a freeze response they botch the thing it's like why did that happen because my physiology was off which impacted my emotions which impacted my thinking which impacted my behaviors yeah yeah yeah okay and and so how can people start to build that awareness and we'll loop back to the four states i want to keep going there but like where do i what can i do in practice to start to become more aware of these states and where i'm actually at yeah um so one is obviously the most obvious place the biological oscillator that's that's most we're most aware of is the heart that's what i'm saying start there if your heart's racing and you want to get out of a situation you're in a flight response you know if you know think about like heartache like a breakup um that's kind of a that's kind of like an obvious freeze response in those cases it's like i don't even want to get out of bed you know like heart rate's low emotional tonality is really negative so it there's some somatic awareness there is what we call it somatic awareness breath work is a great way to get somatic awareness so somatic breath work specifically is breath work that helps you get awareness of your physiology um that's one of the things we do before that we did before the visualization with you guys right uh i want to come back to that because that was a wild experience i've done a lot of breath work and meditation but the one we did together i was like that was that was a whole new thing so somatic breath work is it's that rapid breathing that we were doing and that gives you more just explain like how that helps you like you're practicing the awareness or at the time that you're trying to gauge your state you do that something like somatic breath work or cold plunges helps you get in touch with your body state is better understood by having awareness of how your body's reacting that it is by really the mental chatter because the mental chatter is not going to tell you you're in a freeze response yeah it's going to try and keep you running from the predator or playing dead so it's going to kind of fight against you but your body always tells the story so when you go into a cold plunge you're like damn that hurts you know maybe the first time all week you got out of your executive head and you got into a situation where you had to like actually feel your body and so you're practicing feeling your body so that late at a later point when you're going into a big meeting and you want to understand be like am i freezing am i fighting am i focused like that you'll you'll have done the work to have more awareness is that is that yeah you're practicing okay practicing being able to be aware being aware is really hard the the mind does not really it's not invested in helping you figure this stuff out the mind wants to be able to control the states you're in so you trying to learn how to take control of the mind to be like all right i don't want to be in a freeze response right now i'm gonna push myself into a fight response which by the way it's mischaracterized a lot it can be a very adaptive place to be um you know the leader is like we're gonna go take control of the mind and then we're gonna go take control of the mind and then we're gonna go take control of the mind and then we're gonna go take control of the mind take that hill that's you know a fight response um we're gonna win this quarter that's a fight response yeah um so so yeah the the brain will sabotage this a little bit so it's very hard to be self-aware in a really intense situation you know say a special forces operator who goes into a freeze response go on the field like they trained to be aware of that you know they do not want to be in a freeze response go not in the field so yeah the breath work so you'll i mean i think there's been articles written on this and stuff but seal teams will do breath work going out situation um to get them fully in so they understand where they're at physiologically yeah like box breath i think came out of the the seals yeah yeah yeah yeah which is which is really interesting you wouldn't think that they would like be the pioneers of of a breath work and meditation technique yeah so they're going into a tough situation where they have to perform yeah and instead of being up in their head thinking about every little detail they use visualization by the way but instead of being up in their head they're in their bodies working on focusing on their in-breath focusing on holding focusing on their outbreath they're sitting in their bodies regulating their emotional state regulating their physiological state before they go into battle you know their heart rate gets up too high they're going to bring it back down because that will allow them to have better cognition better behavior better results if we go back to your chain because of the chain what what is the evolutionary biology behind us being so poor at controlling these things like it's it's it seems like a uh misconfiguration well gosh i mean we're built to survive uh and we we came out of in terribly intense environments where you did have predators who were stalking you every day like um the brain was built so that if you needed to run away you were going to run away if you needed to play dead you were going to play dead um you know we whatever happens biologically but we gave our our nervous system the opportunity to completely control us so these were these were adaptive traits for a very different world and now those are maladaptive traits in the modern world because we can't turn it off and we interpret you know cortisol and adrenaline being chased by tiger but really it's coming when like we're getting uncomfortable questions in a in a board meeting and and so we're like triggering the that that like more ancient network that we really want today is that fair bingo yeah yeah i guess so that's negativity bias basically like are a bit like so that the evolutionary origins would be we're good at spotting negativity and spotting danger and spotting things that are bad because we're it's adaptive to spot predators but now our brain seeks out the worst crap on the internet because like your brain craves it even though it is purely maladaptive for us today yeah precisely and i think it's the studies i've seen approximately 70 percent of your automatic thinking again this is the 95 percent 70 percent of that is negative on your average person so it's like most people are fighting with themselves you know 70 percent of the 95 percent yeah that's a lot of a lot of negative thoughts yeah so if 95 percent of your thoughts are automatic and then 70 percent of those are negative they call those not mats negative automatic thinking um and people never just firing negative stuff at you you know most people you know most people never just firing negative stuff at you you know most people you gotta win the battle with yourself before you win the battle outside okay interesting and something else that i read like not too long ago that i thought was really uh informative was when you're in a flight response your body is actually recruiting blood and oxygen to its like physical like to your legs and arms and things that help you physically and away from your brain hence that you mentioned that your iq goes down but it makes sense it's like okay i i need to recruit every amount of energy blood oxygen to the parts of my body that will help me physically survive my legs and and therefore it's coming out of your cognitive system which which i think is fascinating so if you think about it like oh you going into that meeting being scared and overwhelmed uh it's it's not just a brain thing like your body is physically uh making it more challenging yeah that's why people claim that they're scared and overwhelmed and they get mad oh yeah interesting okay so then um awareness is that is the first part we've talked about like somatic breath work plunge i think is like one of the thing one of the takeaways that i think people should take from this i have a cold plunge at my house i bought it like plunge i highly recommend plunge they're awesome and uh like could not recommend this as like as highly as possible you go from trying to sit in a plunge for like 45 seconds at 45 degrees or whatever to two minutes to three minutes and you force yourself through that you just learn to understand it's like i my body was screaming to end this experience and now i can sit in a plunge i could sit in the plunge for way longer than three or five minutes if i needed to but it's just like purely a cognitive exercise for me to learn to like power through that and you take that everywhere and and you do build that awareness and also like an i feel like an understanding of like this is just a choice like it's literally a choice to be overwhelmed and plunge i think is cold exposure is such a good example for that you need to get a biological resilience or physical resilience is going to be correlated with psychological resilience i think it's worth mentioning too that for awareness it's obvious but it's worth saying the biggest investment i've made in my life is my meditation practice i've spent the most time of any hobby meditating i think if i told somebody for a total hours they'd probably like roll her eyes it's a lot um but it's given me the ability to observe my thoughts and for most people that is not an automatic ability like yeah it is it is a cultivated ability and if you are able to become aware of your thoughts you're able to kind of laugh at yourself and watch them um yeah that is the ultimate level of awareness and that's where you can really start to have that awareness and that's where you can really start to have that fun with this cool we're i'm going to come back to protocols i want to make sure we close off so four states of the nervous system flight high heart rate negative emotion uh fight uh fight we talked about but we haven't unpacked freeze low heart rate negative emotional tonality so let's get into fight fight and focus yeah yeah so fight and one thing i want to mention is i'm dumbing everything down as much as i can and it's such a these are such complex topics i do not have my phd i am finishing my master's in applied neuroscience so i do my very best with this but i want to be humble in the fact that like these are complex things um and we are we are using simple models so that people can wrap their heads around them but if i think about a fight response i'm thinking about noradrenaline which is like the cousin of adrenaline so adrenaline is like almost like they're both energy molecules give you energy adrenaline is kind of like uncomfortable energy noradrenaline is more like a little more comfortable energy okay i think so when i think of fight response i think of i think of dopamine the molecule of motivation and i think of i think of noradrenaline and noradrenaline is actually derived from dopamine so when you're running a lot of dopamine getting motivated and noradrenaline comes in and gives you the energy to go do it okay so when you're in a fight response again a continuum you know you're you're in the ufc you know the the great fighters are in a fight response obviously and that's good for them yeah like i said it's a continuum you know at the lower levels that is a leader who's inspired who wants to go do something big they're in a fight response they're they're running on dopamine it's you know they feel a little elevated you know heart rate's a little up you know and they're and they got a lot of energy a lot of passion okay so you don't want to be there all the time it is a sympathetic nervous system response and can be maladaptive over time you don't want to live there but highly adaptive in certain situations much more adaptive than a flight response so when people say fight or flight response flight response is the one to avoid fight response is the one to use mindfully use mindfully okay and that would be high heart rate positive emotional tonality yeah yeah so like dopamine which is associated with pleasure dopamine's not actually a pleasure molecule but it's associated with pleasure and then you have uh yeah adrenaline noradrenaline for the energy which is derived it's a seeking it's a seeking hormone yes the reason why human have been so successful is because you know yeah we're great dopamine reward system okay your top ae are highly motivated by the dopamine reward system it is a hedonic treadmill that never ends but yeah it's uh yeah why we can it's why why we are where we are we can definitely talk about the hedonic treadmill and maladaptive dopamine seeking because i think that is a important well it's about balance you know human talks about it a lot serotonin and dopamine which is i think a subject we should get into but just to cover the last one i i like to call it focus some people call it rest and digest it's pretty chill you think about like a steady or slower heart rate and then you think about serotonin which is really a molecule most associated with happiness if uh dopamine is associated with pleasure serotonin is associated with like the steady happiness those two molecules uh you know focus response you know nice kind of flowy sometimes you lose track of time relaxation um you know could also be boring could also be associated with like a fawn response where like you just don't don't go after something um but yeah so fight freeze flight focus okay and dictated by heart rate and emotional tonality and so let's talk about so the the states we want to be in to do high leverage activity is it always focus is it sometimes fight like how do how do you think about the ideal states for is it different tasks maybe maybe just unplug unpack that and then we'll talk about protocols to start to like develop your ability to stay in the states we want yeah as a mental performance coach i think if you talk to a lot of other mental performance coaches we're often trying to get athletes into equanimity we're executives in equanimity equanimity is a pretty zeroed out state pretty neutral so if you think about it as like you know you got the y-axis and x-axis think about like the dead center of that that's a pretty nice place to be for executing anything if you want to be highly motivating to like get a team to like go do something great then yeah move yourself a little bit into the fight continuum if you want to be like spreadsheet punch in and like enjoy yourself lose track of time get into a little bit of flow you know that focus response is kind of nice not burning much energy you're very focused in not much of that energy you're very focused in not much of that energy you're very focused in not much of that energy self-reflex the default mode network stuff going on you're tuned in uh nice serotonin just kind of chilling doing your thing so i think of fight response probably more like when you're with a team doing something hard focus response more like deep work you know trying to get something done or you're writing a book or something okay don't want very much energy that makes sense it's funny funny as you explain these things i i just like can't help for my brain to think about how i am as a podcast host because i'm like trying to make sure we can that i have like a the architecture for the podcast and i'm coming back to here what about this but but like ideally i just want to be tuned in and be able to listen fully so it's it's interesting to hear you talk about these concepts as i flip back between like a self-awareness self-critical default mode network and then just like a very like attentive listening listening mode i can like experience my body doing it as you're explaining these things that past twitching is hard i've i've i've run a podcast too i know yeah yeah it's interesting um so you're you're trying to get people to equanimity so um let's talk about the protocols so we talked about you know the benefits of cold plunging but like why maybe like it's called what category of experience is cold plunge that's a a practice exercise for awareness or like how would you how would you categorize that different than like going out for a hard run or like going out for a hard run or like going out or like doing something physically demanding are there buckets of protocols that we should think about i think it's a great warm-up so i think of mental performance exercises as warm-up hold form cool down cold punch to me as much as it kind of sounds like a cool down i think it's a warm-up joe rogan a lot of people do a cold plunge in the morning same yeah that's my protocol because you kind of wake up you know you might be in a flight response you know we actually the nervous system uses cortisol to wake us up so you get a nice spike of cortisol to start your day you know yeah so it's like cold plunge resets everything yes it teaches you some somatic awareness but it also increases dopamine so it's like that that try to get out there and go do it might put you into a fight response um yeah i think it's it's just a great warm-up and again it killed it does a lot one technique covers many bases so what other basis would a cold plunge cover resilience certainly we talked about that a little bit so you think about the uh your ability to psychologically bounce back from adversity i think critical executive skill cold plunge every morning it's definitely working on that so it's working on you at a psychological level it's working on you at an energy level again releasing dopamine which then turns into noradrenaline so you can get your day started further it's teaching you somatic awareness to be more um in your body and be able to notice maybe my heart rates got about to explode maybe i'm in a flight response probably should be able to notice maybe i'm in a should do something about that yeah i'd say those three main things yeah it's interesting as you learn to do it properly this is the thing i would encourage is like don't just do a cold plunge and then suffer with like a the fast breath like that's actually not helping you too much you have to like actually learn the the like a plunging technique because what you're trying to do is is like fight your body's urge to panic and and have that like uh rapid shallow breath and you're trying to fight your way to like a very smooth calm way of breathing and you can see this like the the the plunge that i use has an app it's just like the plunge app and so you can see your heart rate for that session and and watch yourself over time it's like your first bunch of plunges like you your heart rate's going to spike to like a hundred and then over time you learn to to like slow the exhale and then force yourself to breathe in through your nose and eventually like you can get your heart rate down into the like low 60s and that's yes like not a slow heart rate uh compared to resting but um when your body's going through that exposure certain certainly it is and yeah so you're talking about moving on that continuum you use your breath to move yourself down the y-axis yeah you bring your heart yeah yeah okay so you're more centered more zeroed out more in equanimity using your breath hence why the seals are doing box breathing going into a situation keeping our heart rate regulated yeah so what are the other like great warm-up exercises so it's warm-up hold form cool down in terms of like your performance events what are the other things we should protocols that we should think about when it comes to warming up i mean kyle you let me know if you think differently when i think about executives i feel like our performances are always meetings yeah so i like to think of that we're high performers at meetings you know yes we do a lot of prep work and things like that but at the end of the day no matter where a sales executive or a ceo or whatever like rubber meets the road in our meetings we're actually working with people and getting things done so i would say um if we think of that as the performance arena how am i performing in the meeting then i think it's a good context to think about warm-ups holding form and cooling down okay do it from that perspective yeah that's great i think okay so um yeah we just talked about a few simple tools at each stage so warming up for a meeting uh what do we do to get ourselves warmed up to crush a meeting whether it's a leadership meeting or or if it's you're an ae listening to this and want to crush a call like let's ask ourselves that question what do you think about well certainly breath work like we've already touched on box breath and the seals so for me , personally, like if i'm going into a high stakes environment that that's the thing i always come back to is is like checking in with my body feeling where i'm at and then being able to like use breath to change that state to regulate either up or or most of the time down i would say yeah perfect example okay so breath work is great for warming up now let's think about so you're moving yourself on the y-axis there right you're bringing your heart rate down a little bit so the blood's not rushing to your appendages to run away all right so you're getting yourself centered with breath work now how do we move ourselves on the x-axis how do we bring positive emotional uh tonality yeah definitely that's a great opportunity for go ahead sorry it's funny like what i used to do here which is not really like a uh proper technique i used to learn but like i would listen to stand-up comedy going into work if i was like not in the best of uh mind space because you can't help but be like in a uh better affect if you've like just laughed a bunch on your 20-minute walk in that's a great technique to move yourself on the x-axis you got to find what works for you i would say the most studied and most reliable to move yourself quickly is visualization yeah which you can compare with music if you want okay so so like explain if people are going to hear visualization and they'll think of like a million different things and be like well that's like either woo-woo or that's for like athletics how does that apply for how do you do that for uh meetings or like being an exec yeah a great great question um yeah visualization in in academia is called imagery rehearsal imagery is typical what athletes do and if you watch like there's so many netflix specials where they feature it f1 drivers blue angels quarterbacks talks about it a lot uh jordan michael jordan olympians they all talk about it oh yeah michael phelps did it like every day of his life when he go to bed um wait what was the academic term for it again imagery rehearsal imagery rehearsal imagery okay yeah okay so it's rehearsing a scene before it happens okay and when does it work yeah okay so we talked about the subconscious mind 95 of your thoughts 70 of them negative right yeah okay that's subconscious mind it's doing all the mind-wandering self-reflexive thinking okay uh has a difficult time really distinguishing between what's really happening and what's well imagined okay so probably some of the people on listening to this have heard of this before but like if you imagine yourself biting into a lemon really vividly like you're all your saliva glands will go off you'll feel your mouth kind of pucker up a little bit like when you imagine something well the whole nervous system reacts like it's happening tons of evidence on this you know uh there's stuff like the whole the central nervous system will actually build muscle if you imagine working out like that's how intense it is yeah i've seen a bunch of those studies and if you pair it if you pair actually lifting weights with also imagining like your your muscles getting bigger it works like this was the thing schwarzenegger did yes like it's it's in that pumping iron documentary and i never i never connected the two things until like much much later but he would he would talk about he would like he would like put his mind into the muscle he was working out so he could like feel it uh he probably didn't even know that that was like uh he was doing this thing it was just sort of natural but yeah it was fascinating so let's talk about you're getting ready for a big meeting we're gonna use these two modalities we're gonna use breath work and reuse visualization i'll talk about two different types of visualization i'll talk about kind of how i apply them and and how the leaders on this on this uh podcast can apply them so you got a big meeting coming up let's just say it's a big sales call okay um you know closing a multi-million dollar deal or something you got your aeon you're coming in as a closer or something you gotta you gotta come as your very best self you want to be in the in a perfect in a perfect state so i might use creative visualization in this case in fact i did that when i first learned this stuff i used creative visualization all the time with breath work so i would do a little breath work okay maybe i would do like um i call it mental reset breathing with you know 30 deep breaths followed by a little breath hold um you know when operating pretty much i would do that and then i would imagine when i was a founder of this company i would imagine the case study i'm jumping on a call i'm not thinking about closing the deal i'm thinking about that person on the call giving us an incredible case study so by the time i jump on that call so there's mirror neurons that we're mirroring each other constantly they're like boy this dude's got a lot of confidence you know not arrogance just deep-seated confidence in his product in this partnership yeah so i do the i do the breath work to regulate myself then i do the visualization i'm imagining a video you know literally i'm watching a video of this person i'm about to meet with just gushing about how effective our product was for them cool so that's how i'm warming up for the call it takes me five minutes three minutes for the breath work two minutes for the creative visualization jump on the other form of visualization rehearsal visualization would be me going through anything that could go wrong with that and me adapting so like when michael phelps talks about visualization he goes in the olympics i think about what happens if my goggles yeah all that stuff you know my daughter's a swimmer like that stuff's terrible if it happens but he was thinking okay how do i react in that situation not lose up not lose a millisecond so i'm thinking what could go wrong in this call and i'm seeing myself i'm not thinking what would i do i'm seeing myself respond to that objection i'm seeing myself hold my nervous system steady when they say uh you know over x y or z reason like to punt in another quarter or whatever like i'm going through that stuff before the call so rehearsal visualization versus the creative one where i'm just trying to get myself in a really positive state by thinking about the case study would you do both can yeah sometimes i would depending on how you know it's like how much time do you have like for the most important meetings i give myself 10 minutes i'll do more than just visualization and breath work but i'm trying to give you the top ones okay makes sense and so i want to give people like a really actionable protocol to take away so uh just unpack the breath work that you would do like and how would somebody actually just go away and do that uh yeah let's let's get super practical okay so um again i hate to say wim hof reading because they're all trademarky about it take 30 deep breaths no make 30 deep breaths on the 30th one just hold it out air so breathe out all the way hold your breath for like 15 20 seconds that'll kind of reset your nervous system i call it mental reset breathing the the breaths need to be super deep 30 of the deepest breaths you can take really push let your stomach drop and and this deals with the vagus nerve but it's like let your stomach drop like buddha belly like a gorilla like go tighten your stomach relax it this relaxes the nervous system so relax your stomach breathe deep 30 reps on the 30th one breathe out all the way hold your breath for 15 you will the timing matter of like how many seconds in out the whole time i wouldn't worry about that breathe deep as you can okay but yeah i mean it's good you know like you you're talking yeah about a second don't do it yeah that's actually so not a slow deep breath like a like a forceful deep breath so yeah you're right great great point do deep breaths second ish second and a half let the air rebound out of your lungs you breathe in all the way your body wants to release it just let it release so it's like that for 30 breaths okay on the 30th read out all the way hold your breath for 15 seconds you will feel your nervous system shift you're going to feel yourself jumping into a different state of consciousness at that point initiate the visualization so so once you feel your nervous system start to calm down now you visualize the case study video or you visualize yourself reacting to various situations that you want to stay cool in on the meeting okay and does is that breath work making you more receptive to that imagery or like why do it first versus second well let's so physiology first i think right i think the visualization is kind of like moving on working on the emotions and stuff like that so cool your physiology out all right get it centered get an equanimity on the physiology now work on now work on visualization and stuff that works on the emotions works on the thoughts all right so work on the chain here the whole chain right is that somatic breath work or is that something different wim hof breathing um the somatic breath work is kind of like doing a lot of wim hof breathing in a row so it's like think of it as like we're just talking about 30 breaths somatic breath work is probably 200 300 breaths yeah so so the there's a a good part to like sort of talk about the experience we did together so we've had you in to do stuff with the whole team but you and i did one or uh alex and i did one that was just me and him and he interviewed me ahead of time and maybe you can unpack why this worked but he interviewed me ahead of time not just like oh what are your goals what do you want to accomplish but he was like he's like well like if you accomplish that then like where would you celebrate or how would that look i was like well it'd be like on an all hands and we like we do a lot of stuff in slack maybe and he was like really trying to tease out like if this were to come like exactly how would that show up in our in in the real world and so then we did the breathwork we did was wild i've done a lot of breathwork and like different meditations and whatever and that was the craziest physical sensation i've had like ever and uh like my whole body was vibrating like like like this a very acute like high frequency like like but i could feel it everywhere especially my hands my hands were tingling and vibrating for like honestly hours after we did it and and but that seemed long i don't know how long we did it for but it seemed like a really long time yep and then yeah like it seemed like an eternity to the point where my my wife came down and like opened the door to be like are you okay what's going on down here and realized i was doing something like in her mind's really really weird and just closed the door uh and uh and then did the visualization and the but the visualization he did was like super detailed and like all of these little flourishes that that made it seem real but that wasn't before a meeting that was just like a thing and i but i sort of carried that for days if not weeks it felt like i had this weird reset and so maybe just explain how the hell that worked because uh it was crazy i like that's the thing that i've been doing for a long time and that's one of the craziest physical experiences i've had in my life for sure no that's cool yeah that's a fantastic technique uh that we did there um and that is somatic breath work yeah somatic breath work mixed with visualization so he wanted to get you very zeroed out like he wanted to get you to where you were basically fully immersed in the breath work like there was not another thing on your mind you were there so when he dropped the visualization you get as much neuroplasticity as humanly possible okay it was hard like it was hard to get you to where you were basically fully immersed in the breath work physically i was it was physically challenging for me to continue the cadence that he wanted of breathing i was like oh my god this is like a difficult workout all i'm doing is huffing and puffing in here oh yeah somatic breath work is a workout no question yeah so when you got to the end of that did you if you felt almost like a little bit of bliss come over the nervous system you were just like there at peace fully present i was vibing on a whole different like plane of existence it felt like yeah okay and that's the perfect setup for visualization so what he was doing was he was like i'm going to do this and i'm going to do this and i'm going to do this and there that that's creative visualization like i talked about before the meeting just you know we're talking about a very abridged version now with alex we're talking about a you know a pretty sophisticated version of it he's narrating it you're not doing it yourself so it's like all the variables are set his goal there was to drop a vision of your future in such vivid detail that your nervous system barely could tell the difference between what it was really happening and you know imaginary he's using a bunch of triggers somatic triggers the senses sensory probably went into a lot of detail on things like what you were seeing feeling touching tasting hearing all that stuff the whole point was to install a memory of the future that was so specific and so compelling that when things got really hard for you down the road as it always does for executives that there was a part of your subconscious mind that goes oh yeah whatever i don't know exactly the visualization was but a year from now two years from now that's going to be sweet and i'm going to keep pushing so he was working on resilience with you giving you a memory of the future that was so strong that when things got really tough for you you reflected back on subconsciously probably you probably weren't even aware of it sometimes you know you become aware of it but it's like it's there building confidence building resilience building focus building discipline when you need it it's one technique that just like can help you for like a like some of the ones i've done i still think about from the beginning of dream fuel beginning of my company like i reflect back on them as like yeah nervous system thinks they're going to happen way more powerfully than if you don't do that work it is a very very strong and vivid memory like i could like feel myself sitting in this like lying in this position during that thing and i like i still have very concrete memory of of all of the components of the visualization we did then we did one is it i i was so compelled by that we did one across the organization so part of it we like attached people to this concept of the kyle number at owner there's always like the financial target and there's always like some number beyond that that's the kyle number like that's the thing that i actually think is possible and i want to push people to and it can be like a little bit above the target or a lot above the target depending on what's going on and uh one of the messages i got after was like be like thanks for booking that dreamfield session for our team that was like absolutely insane and then she said the kyle number isn't a question of if but how soon i'm so ready to get after it and i got like 10 messages from people just being like i feel out of my mind right now and i'm so fired up to like get after it and and it was funny that that that um that momentum like really care we did it at a point where where things were getting tough like for us and and we had like grit and it was like a grit and grind time where marketing had slowed down a little bit we uh the number went up and and so it gave people that that like that shot of confidence and energy and and uh it was really cool to see how like long lasting it was um and you know it feels like that is like a more macro warm-up that's not the warm-up for a meeting that was like the the warm-up for like a period of time and i think that's a really cool thing to see yeah it's like warming up the quarter it's like a it's like a professional sports team getting ready for the playoffs like that's what a mental performance coach would do getting ready to go in the playoffs yeah so we can think about warm-up in in in those in warming up for a specific thing versus warming up for like maybe a period yeah exactly you warmed up for i don't know again i don't know exactly what you visualize with alex but you were like an hour it was long yeah and you were but you were warming up for a big long long push you know like something really important to your future yeah yeah it was like shortly before i was like i was like i was like i was like i was shortly before a fundraise we were going into like like leave it all out in the field we're gonna go like crank the number as high as we possibly can and we needed every ounce of it that certainly helped okay so real quick um so salesforce bought exact target in my hometown indianapolis benny up on stage talked about how and this was like when i was just getting into this stuff benny i've talked about how steve jobs would do visualization with him about the future sales got cool yeah yeah there's these like little pockets of this stuff that have existed for a long time for for thousands of years but it's it's really cool to see it now coming into the zeitgeist uh in in this in this way so i have covered so little of the docket and we've only got 20 minutes left so i want to get through a couple things and then ask some some like rapid fire so now so we got into like protocols for warm-up like let's talk about how we hold form what are the ways that we can like best hold form in these in these situations yeah so you're in the meeting it's happening you know they say so so you know let's let's just say in this situation it's a um a meeting with your team big meeting kicking a quarter off something you know and you're getting everybody ready uh one of your team members says something off the wall that really would throw you off typically okay all right so this is about holding form you don't want to react and like fire back at him real hard like you want to be you know yeah the cool the cool head in the room right so let's talk about how you regulate your physiology in that first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to relax my stomach and physiology impacts okay the vagus nerve is down there which is you want to be in your parasympathetic nervous system so when you relax your stomach tight stomach think of that as like protective relaxed stomach think of that as like loose open so i'm going to relax my stomach okay and then i might tell myself a cognitive reframe so a cognitive reframe is is where you're telling yourself something that helps you turn the spigot of cortisol off okay so an easy one that i coach people on sometimes is just best thing that could have happened so best thing that could have happened now immediately you're saying that about that about the thing that they said okay they say that somebody says something crazy something that normally would throw you off your game entirely i relax my stomach and i say to myself best thing that could have happened similar to an athlete does a bad play on the field has to go into the next play calm best thing that could happen leave it behind you for a minute you know right so i like best thing that could happen that's something i do if i get pulled over or whatever i like best so i'm you know nice to the police officer um but i like the reframe because it it immediately forces the subconscious into thinking positively about it it's like okay and then why is it the best thing yeah yeah why is it the best thing so you start immediately you primed the brain to start thinking of positive responses okay it's like oh i can show my i can show my kids how to respond in a in front of a police officer i can like your your the brain is so wired to complete to to complete yeah We are LLMs, the same way LLMs just create the next thing. So if you just say, best thing that could happen, your brain wants to naturally complete that sentence. That's cool. Yeah, so let's say you're on a big sales call and the buyer's like, hey, we were all in on this, brought it up to our private equity. The private equity shot it down. They said we had to hit some KPI before we can do this program with you. So it's like, okay, best thing that could have happened. So instead of being like, okay, well, let's schedule a check-in. Okay, well, how much money are you really working with? How much money do you have under your budget? Can we do a pilot? Can we start with that? You're thinking of positive responses rather than just going into a flight response and getting off the call. Yeah. Yeah, and it's funny because that narrative completion thing, it's the best thing that could have ever happened. It's on the PEs. It's on the PEs. It's on the PEs radar now. So when it goes well, we can get the whole PE portfolio. And your brain just naturally goes into that. It's funny. I have my language for that is amor fati. It's the stoic phrase. And I keep these coins from Ryan Holiday, these daily stoic coins. And one of them is amor fati, which just means like, and I love it. Or it means like love your fate, basically. Yeah. And so like for me. It's like, okay. And I love that. It's like, oh, somebody just quit. Somebody just did whatever this, like we lost this deal. Okay. I love it because, and then you just have to do it in like physical frame. Yeah. And I find physical tokens help. Like, you know, I, I think a lot about environmental design because of the book atomic habits. And so like having these, these like visual representations, like one of the reasons I have this like caricature of my kids in the background, even though it's like not quite the best background. Like for calls, it's when I see it, it's like my constant reminder of like, that's why I do this. That's why I'm committed. That's why I'm, that's why I'm, I work like I work. It's like, it's, it's always for them and the life I can give for them. And so I, I like, you know, having these things physically in your environment or, you know, leaders or reps can listen to this and just put a note on their computer that, that says best thing that could have happened. And what will be this, like this, this trigger. Yeah. Two things, you know, notes on computer are great. I'd put up best thing could have happened to remind you to do that reframe because the subconscious actually sees it, even though the conscious mind doesn't see it. And obviously you're dealing with the Nats, those negative automatic thoughts, put that up there and put your quarterly number, your stretch goal on your, see it every day, the, the, whatever the 400,000 or whatever that number is constantly be programming your brain that that's the number to program again, to do whatever behaviors and actions need to do to get that done. So yeah, the, the, the subconscious. The subconscious sees everything in your environment. Those triggers or cues as you're talking about atomic habits are great. Yeah. I gotta do, we're moving into a new office in, uh, in a couple of weeks. And so I'm thinking a lot about like, what are the, what is the messaging I want to put in this space to be, to constantly remind people of like those, those triggers and cues that are important to me. It's like, you know, the, the, it seems some of these things seem cliche, but they're, they're so not. You know, the, you know, the, it's the thing again, the mind sabotaging when it's like, oh, it's cliche, it's stupid. I'm not gonna do it. It's dumb. It's woo. It's like, okay, well you'll just lose it. The person who does mindset always wins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, okay. So now cooling down, we, we've talked about warming up, holding form or unless there's any other techniques in there that you wanna, wanna hit on and then start cooling down next. Yeah, I, I definitely, I wanna say too. Yeah. That, you know, that comment I just made, neuroscience is nice. I was a skeptic too long before I learned all this stuff and the neuroscience is clear and that's what, that's what got me over it. So if you are having trouble with any of these techniques, just goo, just going to Google scholar and Google neuroscience and the technique and you can read the literature. Um, yeah, thank, thank God it become clear. The book search inside yourself was the tipping point for me. Uh, you know, like meditation had started to become a thing in tech. This was maybe 10. 10 plus, 10ish years ago. And so it started to be a thing, but I was like, ah, it's a little weird. And then search inside yourself is the meditation book, uh, written by the guy who started the Google program for meditation and, and mindfulness and EQ. And it's written by an engineer for engineers. That's Google's an engineering centric organization. And, uh, so for me, like that was the thing that was the convincing that I, that I needed. It's like, oh, cuz they, they talk about how. Practicing. Meditation is like, like lifting a weight. Like you are, you are the, I still remember this, this, uh, analogy, like, cuz I would meditate and I'd be so frustrated. My mind was still like, bing, bing, bing, bing. And it'd be like, oh my God, it was wandering. My mind was wandering again. I suck at meditation. That was my narrative. And then, uh, chade maintain the, the, the author, he would talk about like every time your mind wanders and you pull it and you pull it back from where it was, that is like one repetition. That is like one bicep curl. And so every time your mind wanders. Yeah. You pull it back, you've practiced coming back to being centered and focused on yourself. And it's like, oh yeah, that is that like, that does make sense. And then over time you're able to see it wandering faster, bring it back more easily. And then eventually it like will stop to wander in that way. Yeah. I thought default mode, never dampening. Yeah. And it all, it all sort of clicked. So anything else on hold form that you wanna touch on before we get to cooling down? Physiological size worth mentioning at the physiology level. So like, you know. Yeah. If, if you're really like, I can't get my heart rate down, but the spick of cortisol is not turned off from the cognitive refrain, the relaxed stomach thing isn't helping. Um, you can take a nice deep breath in and then to breathe at the top, another, another like little fast breath and then just breathe out that, um, that can regulate it. It's almost like yawning, but like with a little, little, uh, inhale at the top. Yeah. Um, that can kind of, that'll, I can feel it right now. Like I just regulated it. I just regulated my own nervous system. Yeah. The, the, uh, place I use this the most is my children. It's like, they're just being like out of their minds, doing something, whatever, not listening. And like, that's, that's the mindset. I was like, before you do anything, it's like, oh, and then we're like, okay, now I can deal with this. It's like, now I can try to be the parent, the parent I wanna be. Yeah. So that's first aid for folding form. First aid for holding. I like that. That's a good saying. Uh, okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. This is a fun one. Um, a lot of people talk about gratitude journaling and I love gratitude journaling. This is kind of the opposite of it. Um, you know, you're gonna have like all these stressful things happen on a call meeting, whatever. Gonna, you're gonna use your free frames. You're gonna do your best, but you're gonna still come out a little head trash. Good to take the trash out. Good to take the trash out to move on to the next meeting. Clear. So some people will suppress, you know? I mean, it's like, I don't know. It's like, ah, I'm just gonna not think about that right now. I'm gonna push it down. Maybe I'll never think about it. And then it'll come up in a meditation and I'll close that tab in the browser of my mind so to speak. Right. So what I like to do is if it was a tough call and I know I got another one coming up like we all do, it's like, yeah, five minutes from the call, you know, hit the restroom and get back into it. Um, I will do a very quick, like venting session into a journal. This is a journal I will burn when it's done with, but I will, and I will just let my mind just do whatever it's gonna do. I will get this out of my nervous system. I'm not gonna suppress. I'm not gonna let it get stuck. I'm just gonna vent in there. So I might write a page or two. It just like, what the hell was that? What the F was that? I can't believe that happened. You know, like just get it on the page and then I'm, as I'm doing it, I'm, I am, I'm letting myself get emotional a little bit, but I'm watching it almost like I'm meditating. I'm kind of watching it. That's a skill. If you don't have that skill nailed, just read it after you're done with it and be like, okay, well that's a cognitive distortion. That's not true. Boy, that's funny. Yeah. Like, and you just kind of laugh at yourself a little bit or maybe, you know, some it's true and it's like, okay, I acknowledge this happened and I can move on. So like venting in a journal, sometimes I call it anger journaling. Um, it's just a good way to clear, cool down, reset the table so you can go into the next meeting without the same energy that came in. You could also do breath work again. That would help clear it. Um, but I do like the, just quickly journaling about the stuff that frustrated you and just getting it out of you instead of suppressing and suppressing, it can be really rough on the nervous system over time. Exactly. Yeah. It's not suppressing. Okay. Um, and then just keep your paper shredder next to you and just place it directly. Funny aside, my mom sent me a, she's like, she moved houses and found my journal from high school. She's like, I sent you your journal. Like I thought you would want to have it. I was like, I actually don't want to have it. And I read one page and I immediately just started ripping every page. I was like, I cannot like that was a venting journal. That was like, that's good. It's not, it's not talked about enough, but the gratitude is beautiful and it's so well studied that you have to be able to get suppressions bad. You gotta be able to get it out of you and into a journal is a lot better than, than like venting to your kids or something like that. You know, it's like, get it out in the journal. It's done. Burn it. Um, you know, I, I write so sloppy, nobody could read it anyway. Yeah. That's it. That's interesting. I, I'm, I am a suppressor for sure. Like if something happens, I'll be like, ah, whatever. Like I'm our FATI. On to the next one, but this might be something that I want to introduce. you can block up the nervous system over time you want real mental freedom and you got to learn how to express the the negative stuff too yeah just in a healthy way people are going to be listening to this and be like wow there's a lot here and uh where do they start like what is like of all the techniques of all the things where should i go as an executive who has like okay mental health but i want to be or of any state but i want to move myself from wherever i am today towards elite uh physiology and mental performance uh like where would i begin that journey great question um so i think of a framework act awareness choose to be in a different state and then use a transition technique awareness choose transition it starts with an a because that's so important awareness so if you want to get started awareness is a precursor for any mental performance technique so you start with awareness start to develop an ability to watch your thoughts as cliche again as it may sound meditation practice yeah um there's apps there's all kinds of you pick your thing um eventually meditation becomes so you have focal meditation you have open monitoring meditation or two different categories um focal meditation is like focusing on your breath a mantra things like that open monitoring is focusing on nothing and just allowing everything to arise and not get attached to any of it that's the second stage and that's where real awareness comes in that's associated with like non-duality and some of the higher states of consciousness and that's monitoring meditation or open monitoring open monitoring and that's again an academic term um so you can go in google scholar and research open monitoring um but yeah uh focal meditation is where you start and there's so many good programs i would be remiss if i didn't do that but i would be remiss if i didn't do that but i would be remiss if i didn't mention that i got my start meditation with trans and dental meditation one of the many it's very good form of just learning how to watch your thoughts it's auditory it's mantra focused you're just focusing on a word like over and over and over again a billion times but yeah i mean is that a good place for people to start oh yeah they've been doing it since the gosh i mean the beatles were the first people to like really introduce and that they're the person they did it with maharishi introduced meditation in the united states um so it's one that's been around forever and um yeah and so if i go into if i go into the calm app or i use insight timer like you just if you search transcend transcendental i don't think you can get that through palm uh transcendental you'd have to like go get a teacher it's good to have a teacher again this is an old school so this is like you actually have a teacher who holds you accountable this isn't the app um but yeah i think um yeah the apps the apps are great too another way to go okay i like teachers i don't forget but is there like a thing to search for in the app like a type of meditation because there's so many different ones in in in all i don't use the apps i'm assuming they built the protocol to first start on focal breath work stuff where you're actually focusing on your breath that's probably where you start so i would start with i would start with focusing on your breath meditations okay watch your breath go in watch your breath go out so awareness choosing and what's what's in the choosing protocol okay like i'm in a freeze response i'm aware of it i'm gonna choose to be in a fight response which is pretty much the opposite of a freeze response so i'm gonna choose to go into a fight response um and then i'm gonna pick a tool to transition there so we talked about a few tools there's 52 of them that we teach you know it's like have you published any of that stuff like the tool the list of tools or anything so we've written two books on them um i think about publishing them more on like a youtube channel or something like that so i'm gonna choose to be in a some of them are actually starting a youtube channel so we'll get more stuff out there but yeah like not public domain yet um although obviously yeah anyway okay on the soon soon to be created youtube channel and then the actually launching like today so oh good timing all right cool we'll link it and do a bunch of stuff so awareness choosing and then t is transition transit oh that so that's part of choosing is the transition you choose it then you use the technique to transit so if you think of a technique as well so it's like become aware of it be like i can't be here for this meeting i'm gonna i'm gonna choose to go to this next place okay now i want to be in a fight response okay i'd be five techniques i could use okay that's the right one for the situation i'll use that technique okay cool um all right i want to hit non-duality because it's a fun topic and i only have like limited exposure to it just to explain like what non-duality is and and like what the the pursuit okay so like i said this is this is the topic of the dissertation i'm doing for my master's in applied neuroscience uh and i'm studying the lived experience qualitatively so there's not a ton of quantitative research done on non-duality yet like this is a gap in the literature so to speak um it's been worked on for millennia but it's something that is new to the scientific community so um i want to know because i'm a performance coach how does how do people in non-duality which by the way is the academic word for like enlightenment um which is a super loaded subject yeah i was gonna ask how do you how do you define it so it's a continuum um so i want to know how does how does non-duality impact the way you the way you perform at work your relationships and your basically your ability to handle stress so those are the three things i'm i'm looking into you at this point you gotta talk to people who are on the continuum and kind of like ask them questions about how it impacts and there are people that are super successful that are on this spectrum um but yeah it's it's it's a continuum going from the call i like the the there's the researcher dr martin talks about locations there's different locations on the continuum um the first four like 95 ish of people are in the first four and like five percent go beyond it is that martin seligman is that who it is no no no um it's like yeah but the best way to think about it what is non-duality it's somebody whose self-reflexive thinking is low enough that their nervous system doesn't really distinguish between internal processes and their external environment very much to where they almost feel like maybe they are part of their environment hard to wrap your head around so they start to lose their sense of self which could sound like a bad thing um they don't think about themselves very much and down that continuum it does get to a point where they and even if this can be studied quantitatively they look at the way um auto correlation windows which is like they look at how um they they process internal stimulus thoughts versus external and it and it's the same amount of time they they sit on those two things so like there's they don't distinguish between external and internal environment um but once that happens the benefit is the nervous system really relaxes and almost feel like you have like a light buzz to be crude all the time which is just a like a perpetual sense of okayness even in heart adversity it's kind of like ah you don't got to think about it you've habituated the risk the basically this situation will be fine so pretty unflappable as far as stress goes flow state you know non-duality is most commonly experienced by people during high flow so probably as a fighter you'd experience and sometimes we're in a situation where you're totally immersed in with your environment you're not thinking about yourself at all you're just on the task at hand that's being in the zone so that yeah i probably should have started there it's being in the zone all the time okay that makes that makes a lot of sense yeah i've certainly that was the best part of of martial arts and wrestling and boxing like you cannot be thinking about anything else your body just doesn't really allow for it and it's it's uh one of the few thing one of the few activities that i can do and actually like not be in my head thinking about something anything i have a active mind that likes to you know despite the meditation or whatever cannot help but think ahead or think behind it and uh that's why it was such a great sport um that's cool and so so people pursuing non-duality a lot like most of the tools that you talked about would be like a roadmap to that yeah and to give a real practical example of what it really is um when you were born you were basically a non-duality a baby when you hold a baby and you look into their eyes you can just see they're just totally immersed in their environment they're not it's not a whole lot of self-reflexive thinking going on there um we're born into kind of a non-dual non-dual state they call it pure awareness you're just aware of what's happening around you that's what open meditation is You're just aware of what's around you. some point they go oh your name's kevin and by the way here's all the traits we see in you and here's all the societal norms we're going to dump on you we're going to turn you into this person who operates in duality where everything is compared the brain does you know three things really well compares things chooses a preference and then creates momentum to get the preference so like conflict you know people in a non-dual state are in that pure baby awareness more or less and they're able to watch the mind kind of laugh at it a little bit as it compares creates preferences and creates conflict they're able to kind of watch it they engage the mind like a tool so it's like think of it as putting a car in drive most the time they got their car in neutral they're just open monitoring they're just observing the things around them they're in a state of peace running a ton of ferritone and it feels like bliss people explain it as like this incredible amount of bliss and then a challenge comes up okay i'll put the brain in gear for a little while and i will work on that problem so they can engage their brain well like michael singer was in non-duality he's a written a bunch of books um you know like put his brain in gear and he built a billion dollar company you know he's a solid problem or whatever um but then he backs it back off into neutral and he's watching again he's in watcher um yeah everybody has that baby awareness everybody has the capability of being a non-dual awareness they just have to realize that the brain you can turn it on and off you can live in the awareness you were born with most people are so in their heads they never experience pure awareness unless it's a beautiful sunset on the perfect day with their partner on the perfect beach they're like ah or after an achievement right okay so right i worked my i worked real hard hard hard i hit my number and for like one day i'm in bliss because i let myself be in pure awareness i didn't have anything i'm going after no seeking so they say non-dual non-dual is the end of the seeking you find it no longer seeking you don't know spiritually seeking you're not doing any of that you're just resting in it so yeah i mean non-duality certainly a subject i'm passionate about and learning more about i'd love to do more research on it you know in the future at some point but it's it's uh what's the one book if people are like i i want to explore that is the untethered soul like singer or what would be the first book what's the gateway drug for people you know man this is gonna sound pretty uh pretty silly but um so the secret is a book about law of attraction yeah popular a lot of people feel all kind of different ways about the concept i'm not going to tell you my thoughts about it um that same author went through a journey of like 20 years of research and her own experiences after writing that book and then she wrote a book called the greatest secret that book is about non-duality and it's at a level that you know anybody would understand it and she did a great job it's not even her writing much she's compiling a lot of subject matter experts and she's compiling a lot of experts in it and i think puts it together really well so greatest secret probably what i would recommend um david bingham who is one of the primary people in that book who kind of helped her realize the early levels of continuum he's a he's a guy and you google his name david bingham non-duality who you could go a step deeper with and he's a genuine teacher of this who i would say i i interviewed him once he's i'd say he's certainly on that spectrum deep in it and he's but he's a he's a british dude who takes care of his mom who has alzheimer's and that's what he does but he that guy is certainly a non-duality and he can definitely teach a lot of people he wrote a book i think called effortless being effortless being okay cool and it looks like he has a youtube channel too with some stuff that's awesome um all right we can wrap it there uh this was great we did not get at all to how to scale this across your team which i should have anticipated given the subject matter but i think this was a really cool foundation we'll get you back a second time to talk about how do you structure this i think is it fair to say the step one is if you want your team to operate with this mindset like you guys start with yourself yeah we always start with the leader yeah okay a leader can't be like hey i want you guys all to have great mental performance and i'm just going to continue doing my thing um you got a model of behavior do you extremely passionate about this that we've woven this into like our team all sorts of different places like a bunch of our onboarding program when people start at owner is is like this type of content of how to think about structuring there's like a lot of atomic habits in there there's a lot of they take like a gratitude journal during uh this this onboarding program and and i get asked a lot like oh like you know how could i build that how like how can i do this like do you like you have to be you have to live it every day if you want anybody to follow you on it you have to be the role model and it even like it it really impacts how i think about hiring and promotion like i don't i can't really trust somebody to to manage the career which is like the livelihoods of others if they don't um prioritize and practice these things like if they're a total mess and you know like can't control their own emotions and interstate like it's really difficult to to trust you with the with the state of others well yeah you're in a high growth company like yeah fire every day big time big time for your game you know you're that's not a person you can trust yeah and and so and and there's so much intern like and then you just start to develop this internal language and and like things that you always say so like we have rituals like chop wood carry water so it's like the first three hours of the day where like nobody's allowed to have any internal meetings there's no bs it's just like managers with their teams coaching ripping calls and and like that language is obviously borrowed from the book chop wood carry water but there's like so much atomic habits so much ryan holiday so many of these things that are woven in that like it just it won't you won't really get traction unless you can live it uh on your own i think like i think bringing in companies like green fuel helps but like the leader has to be on that same journey maybe you can concurrently do it you know the leader can be like learning these things at the same yeah that's a pumping the beer to concurrently do it because you're learning together and that shows that you care about it and you're on the journey yeah yeah i i think that the feedback for people listening is like you know start to you know go down this path and and the basics give me some feedback here the basics i tell people to start with is like gratitude and it doesn't need to be written you don't have to journal for an hour every day you can like literally just do a gratitude practice when you wake up in the morning or whatever it is you're made of rain waves it's easy to program it's a great time to do gratitude yeah just like lying down thinking that going through some like set list of things that you like to to think about it's like what am i grateful for proud of excited about like what i want to accomplish that like that's like the four things for me um and then meditation like building a meditation uh practice and then something physical like i find myself recommending more and more cold plunge uh as like a as a practice thing or just like you know challenging yourself every week physically going on a hard run doing a hard workout getting uncomfortable because like we don't really spend the time being uncomfortable in our bodies would that be like a decent baseline or and like in what would you add yeah i first of all i applaud you that's a great list um and i think physical it's a lab physical um challenges are a lab for your mindset at work so it's like go do something really we call them the sogies or it's like you got a 50 chance of failure go be talking about sogies a lot yeah yeah but go to like half of my bdr team is apparently doing a not just the like normal 10k spartan race they all signed up for the beast which is 20k i did the 10k version of this and i was like it was really tough and i was in great shape so i i was and this is that this is their misogi because my director of bdr is like a big michael eastman michael eastman easton guy um the comfort crisis is the book for anybody who wants to read it um but yeah i think yeah so give yourself a misogi that's your lab to work on your mindset all of that will translate back over to work so i'd say yeah that's that's a huge one meditation definitely for the awareness aspects gratitude is a great way to learn how to program so you become a programmer of your mind yeah it's not like writing code it's a lot more biological but yeah i think gratitude is a great way to learn how to program so you become a it's a lot like training in llm like now like the the that's actually a good analogy the corollary between the brain and llms and obviously like they're they build llms to try to mimic the brain in many ways with neural networks but like this if you give a whole bunch of content to an llm just like flood it with a certain type of thing the llm will spit that out like unannounced unintentionally and that that's the same as your brain oh the other advice i give is delete all the stuff on your instagram unfollow the sarcastic like well yeah no i mean i so we're on or just don't use instagram that might be like every land we just do no devices um oh you want to really recover drop your devices drop social media rebuild you'll notice your motivation to go because you're actually not wasting dopamine on your devices so you want to upgrade your whole mindset just drop all the stuff that wastes dopamine on your devices this is my thing i guess drop dopamine wasters like drop social media drop gambling yeah i do some of these things drop drinking for a little while like uh the things that anything that's like gives you high pleasure and it's super easy to do is a dopamine waster so drop the things that like you just love doing that like take no effort and then you'll be able to take all that motivation apply it toward your job and you'll be elite like so i'd say like take one thing and drop it we drop screens for all of lent it's a great reset for the entire family's nervous system so i would say uh yeah that'd be like one addition i'd add learn how to recover well oh yeah yeah yeah no people suck at recovery like oh i'm gonna stay home and look at social media all day you didn't recover at all huh that's a good one you got to rebuild i'm adding this to my initial recommendation list the the uh dopamine waster uh feedback that's awesome uh okay let's call it there you I think we've given people a bunch of stuff to start with get on the journey we'll do part two and we'll talk about how to scale this across across an organization but uh i knew this would be a good one i had very high uh high expectations and it's i feel like this lived up to it so thanks for doing it kevin this this was a blast i love it i really appreciate you invite me on man it's it's an honor cool appreciate it thank you for listening to the revenue leadership podcast if you enjoyed it don't forget to subscribe and you can find a link in the show notes and be sure to leave a like and subscribe to the show notes and i'll see you in the next one bye five-star review share it with your network and please join me next wednesday for another great conversation
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