Dr. Julie Gurner (Part 1): Caring Deeply, Challenging Directly

On the first of two special episodes, acclaimed executive performance coach and doctor of psychology Dr. Julie Gurner goes in-depth on a variety of strategies and actionable advice that will help you perform up to your potential. During this portion of her interview, Dr. Gurner discusses discipline, motivation, the imaginary rules we learned as children that hold us back today, setting boundaries, the advantages of caring deeply and challenging directly, and much more. Dr. Gurner has spent the past 14 years working with top percentile executives, talent, and teams operating in fast-paced, competitive environments. She specializes in improving personal productivity, focus, and decision-making strategies, as well as developing high performance cultures, teams, and executives emphasizing ownership and leadership. Check out Dr. Gurner's lecture on Mental Health for Kids in the Time of Coronovirus for The Kids Are In Charge, and you can sign up Dr. Gurner's Substack here. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We let life happen to us, right? And we don't decide that we are going to control the trajectory of it. And I think that that's true, whether it's in the small moments and sometimes even in the large ones. Like, people will stay unhappy at a job or stay unhappy in their role. And they'll just stay unhappy. But why does it have to get to that point? Early intervention in almost every case is worth the attention, the hassle, the time that it takes, because those are the moments that allow you to really gain ground, thinking about, you know, how you want your life to look and what you're willing to put up with.

• 0:55Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out so you can apply their insights into your life. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the podcast before public release, special episodes that don't appear anywhere else, hand-edited transcripts, or you just want to support the show you love, you can join at fs.blog/membership. Check out the show notes for a link.

• 1:25Shane Parrish?

  Today, my guest is Dr. Julie Gerner. Dr. Gerner is a performance coach for exceptional people. If you're like me, you constantly think about the delta between how you're performing and the potential for your performance. I worry about getting complacent, that I've plateaued or hit a wall, that I'm performing at a level less than the best I can do. Dr. Gerner has helped me with her Substack, her conversations, and more. In fact, she was kind enough to offer a lecture to the Kids Are in Charge, which was the homeschool I set up for my kids and some of their friends during the first part of COVID. We put all those lectures on YouTube, and we'll include a link in the show notes. This episode is full of actionable advice to unlock your peak performance.

• 2:09Shane Parrish?

  In fact, our recording had so much useful and practical insights that we decided to break it into two episodes so you can get the most out of each listen. This is the first episode, and we focus on discipline, motivation, the imaginary rules and behaviors that we learned as children that hold us back. Patterns of outliers, including a strong distaste for authority, the advantages of caring deeply and challenging directly, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn.

• 2:50Shane Parrish?

  Julie, I think we should just dive right in. Let's start with discipline and motivation. You've said that relying on discipline is the worst strategy you can use and suggest we replace it with something more powerful.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Yes, I mean, like, one of the things that I think about is that, you know, oftentimes, people get the advice that like, you have to rely on discipline. And from working with people who are at a very high caliber of operation, one of the things that I find, honestly, is that, you know, discipline requires a lot of push, right? Like, I'm going to be, I'm very disciplined about my workout. I'm really going to push it. Motivation is a pull. It is something that like is internal, that fuels you, that drives you. And a number of the people that I tend to work with are very obsessed. Like, you don't have to push them to go to a meeting. You don't have to say, hey, Ted, like, you have to go to the, you know, go to work today. And Ted's like, oh, hemming and hawing. You know, he's stoked to go to work.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  In fact, his wife is probably telling him to turn work off in at night at some point, to stop talking about work, to stop thinking about work on the weekends. So I think that oftentimes, you know, discipline is very useful. And I think it's useful in a few different cases, right? So like, if you want to get back on a, you know, a virtuous cycle, maybe you've fallen out of your exercise routine. And so you need to get back into it. And you really do have to push yourself that day to get back to the gym. Perhaps, you know, it's useful if you're doing something completely new. You know, you're going to really take a leap and, I really have to push myself. I know it's good for me. I don't want to take that chance, but I'm going to do it. And so you really push yourself. So I mean, and you know, sometimes people have off days, right?

• 4:30Speaker 00

  You don't feel like doing things and you just do them anyway. But I feel as though is the discipline is often really, I think it's talked about because it feels tough to do. Like, you know, we're doing the hard thing, we're slogging through. But when we are at our best, we're not slogging through. And great people are obsessed and they're not slogging through either. They are driven, they are motivated, they are deeply, deeply engaged. And so I find that oftentimes when we over rely on discipline, those are the times we start to see like Olympic athletes retiring, right? Like they don't wanna, if it starts to feel like a slog and you're pushing yourself every day. I mean, we all have periods of that, but too long and that really becomes laborious.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  And to me, it's often a flag that perhaps you shouldn't be in that area at all.

• 5:20Shane Parrish?

  I think that's fascinating. You, you mentioned off days, right? Like we all have these off days. And I think one of the differences that separates people is the fact that outliers, if you will, do it on the off days.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  I think that they do use discipline in those times, right? Like we all push through and I think that makes it, we feel a lot of gratification in that. In fact, you know, it's an interesting correlation that grit and happiness are actually correlated, right? So when we see ourselves pushing through things, we're proud of ourselves and we feel good about who we are. But we certainly don't use that as a primary strategy in, in life, or it makes life pretty unbearable.

• 6:01Shane Parrish?

  It seems like the people who are great at anything are obsessed with it and they have this innate drive. And I want to relate that to motivation because it seems when hiring, a lot of people talk or think that they can motivate other people. What's your take on that?

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Oh, that's such a good question. I think that internal drive is something you can't teach. And I'm very. You know, perhaps that goes against a current wisdom. I do think that as long as someone has that internal hunger and that internal drive. You know, there was a, there's an old saying that you should hire people who are PhDs, poor, hungry and driven. And while that may not always be the case, I think the internal drive aspect is something you really can't teach. I think you've got it or you don't. And I think that for other people, however, like, can you tap into that? Absolutely. So for example, you can have an incredibly internally motivated person who doesn't see the opportunity to really flex at the particular job that they have.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  And can you motivate that person and engage them with things that tap into their internal drivers? Absolutely. So knowing that person really well, you know, in your one to ones, figuring out what is this person's goals? What are their drivers? What are the things they want? And being able to tie your work and your opportunity to those things, I think can really pull people. I think it can get them really engaged. But you have to have kind of this baseline internal hunger to start with. And so that's kind of how I conceptualize that.

• 7:30Shane Parrish?

  That's interesting because a lot of organizations and a lot of people try to create motivation in other people when it sounds like in reality, we don't necessarily have the ability to create that drive, but we do have the ability to get in the way of drive.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  I agree. That's a great way to phrase it. And I think we have the ability to release it in our direction. If we can align it with like the company goals can align with your goals. If, you know, you can help them see that, that kind of overlay, I think it's amazing. I think it's also when you look at like equity, for example, in startups, you know, part of why equity is useful is because you can create, and you know, if you do it right, life-changing money for not just you, but for, you know, an entire team of people. And does that end up tapping into things that line them up and motivate them? Absolutely. People are pushing harder, or at least that's the theory, right? That they're pushing harder and they really want the company to win because not only,

• 8:29Speaker 00

  you know, do they want this company to succeed, but they have, you know, generational investment in making that happen for themselves and their families and, uh, and other people in their lives.

• 8:40Shane Parrish?

  I want to come back to drive again. There's two sort of like subcategories of this I want to get into. I think the first one is, do people sort of like have drive and then reach a certain level and become complacent?

• 8:54Speaker 00

  I don't see that in the people that I work with, but I imagine maybe it's out there. I haven't, I have not seen that. So, I mean, I think that the challenge with the people that I've worked with is that, you know, they'll reach a certain point. And, and I see this perhaps with people who get these large offers and they turn them down, right? They think I'm capable of more. I think one of the primary reasons that people engage with me to begin with is that, you know, deep down, they feel just like probably anyone else sitting in your audience probably feels like, hey, I'm capable of more than where I'm at. And so, you know, they're on a mission to really actualize that drive. And when they reach a certain point, you know, their companies are large, their, their state of

• 9:37Speaker 00

  affairs is fairly envious. I don't think that that goes away. And, you know, currently, I even have someone that I, I work with, and it's like a very large kind of family business. And the gentleman who is a chairperson is, I want to say he's in his mid 70s or so. And man, that guy is hungry as ever, even though he's just advising and he's a, but he is engaged. And you see that with Warren Buffett, and you see it with others, like, they just kind of don't lose that. And that's where I see, you know, when you talk about motivation, that's a pull that just, it is an endless source of fuel. And then when you tie that with something you're like obsessed by, you know, the researcher who can be in a lab and look at a peptide for 20 years, you know, it's just something

• 10:22Speaker 00

  that is very, very challenging to beat. And I think that's what really creates a lot of, you know, elite operators, because, you know, you can be interested casually in something, but someone who is obsessed and motivated and pulled and driven, you, you just can't beat that level of operation.

• 10:41Speaker 02

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• 11:11Speaker 03

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the

• 11:15Speaker 03

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• 11:41Shane Parrish?

  And where does that fire come from? It seems like a lot of outliers have a chip on their shoulder, if you will.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  It's interesting because there's a lot of people who talk about that chip. And there's a lot of controversy, I think I've read, around, you know, should you be using these negative things to fuel you? And, you know, I'm a big fan of using negative drivers as well as positive drivers. I think if you have deep rage, deep anger, deep resentment, it's how you channel that that will make it beneficial or detrimental. I mean, those things can be absolutely destructive and people can really kind of, you know, burn their own homes down with that kind of energy. But channeled properly, that energy is also a force to be reckoned with. And so I think that that chip on your shoulder can be a real motivational pull for a lot of people

• 12:34Speaker 00

  because there's nothing that they will ever reach that will fully prove it wrong, right? I mean, so that becomes that endless source, you know, that your third grade teacher told you you'd never amount to much and now you have, you know, 50 million bucks in the bank, but that's still not enough. I'm going to still show her, right? Like, I'm still going to push that forward. And it isn't so much about her, but proving it to yourself. And that's when it really becomes quite a motivator. And if you talk to people, you'll still hear these kind of echoes, as you've said, of people who have chips on their shoulders and they're still running hard.

• 13:08Shane Parrish?

  A friend of mine, Josh Wolfe, who says chips on shoulders put chips in pockets, right?

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. Josh is very famous for that one. I love it.

• 13:15Shane Parrish?

  And I think you you hit the key point there, which is harnessing that fire in the right direction. But it is a fire that never goes out. And if you can learn how to harness it, then it just becomes this perpetual sort of fuel source.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  It does. And I think that that is, I think that's really the key to a lot of things. You know, people are more adept to working against than oftentimes we give them credit for. So we often think of people working for things, but they often work against things too. They work against poverty. They work against their upbringing. They work against some of these things just as much as they're working for them. And, you know, some people are very fear driven. And we talk about fear as being very negative, but it also can be very positive. You know, like, there's Muhammad Ali and others. I think it was Mike Tyson who said, you know, Tyson would say that he is, he was afraid, you know, every single

• 14:12Speaker 00

  day that he was going to be humiliated in front of groups of people. And he would just be training and training and training out of fear that he was going to be, you know, just publicly humiliated. And he would notice in himself as he's walking to the boxing ring that like, that fear starts to go away. And he began, he says that he begins to feel like a god because he had trained so hard. And there's nobody on earth who could have trained as hard as he did. I see that sometimes with people who will tell themselves, you know, I will never be poor. I will never be X. And there is a certain type of driver even there that we can use something negative and really flip it to something positive if we have it in the right framework. And I think that's where you begin to see some

• 14:56Speaker 00

  discrepancies in psychology. There are these kind of inflection points in people's lives where they will choose to overcome, or they will choose to be kind of beaten by things. And you will, you will see over and over again, that there are groups of people who will always choose to overcome. And there will be people who choose, people can argue whether they choose it or not, but there are people who will be beaten by certain things. And then kind of this creates a cycle where they don't feel they are capable of overcoming. And that's a real challenge. That's a real cognitive setup that can defeat people for long periods of time. And it can be a really tragic end in that case.

• 15:40Shane Parrish?

  How do you shift that mindset where circumstances sort of like when you feel you're a victim, I mean effectively, you're a victim to circumstance. You feel like you have no control and you're powerless and there's nothing you can do. What would you say to somebody like that?

• 15:54Speaker 00

  That's a really great question. I think that there are two ways of looking at victim, things that have happened to you. You know, you can be a victim or you can be a survivor. And those are two very different cognitive positions. You know, you can't control what happens to you in either circumstance. But one is very powerful. You have overcome. One is, you know, you have had something happen to you and you are under that thing for quite some period of time. So for me, if I hear someone and I hear that kind of helplessness, one is that I want to reframe that experience. I want to tell a different

• 16:35Speaker 00

  story. I want them to tell a different narrative to themselves. I want them to rewrite that. And in some ways, you want them to rewrite that narrative to survivorship and overcoming and what it took. And you ask the right questions to get them to see, you know, that their own through way, in that case, is based on their strength and ability. And you want them to see those things rather than seeing the kind of helplessness and powerlessness. It's the reason why oftentimes, you know, like people engage with me and they think we're going to go back in time and talk about their, I don't know, inner child or something. But I am, I am someone who's going to start with who you are today. Because going back to the past is not really useful unless it informs who you are standing in this moment.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  We can't change it. We can't, you know, go back. And going back to times of powerlessness also, it puts you in a bad mindset. It sets you up in a negative way. So I oftentimes will go back and restructure some things around, you know, risk, for example, is a really good area where we'll do some discussion when people are hesitant to take risk. I want people to go back and say, hey, tell me about times you took risk and it really paid off. Like, Let's talk about that. I want people to understand what they're capable of and sometimes to see what they're capable of in ways that they that they quickly forget, right? I mean, negative things sometimes shadow our entire mindset and how we think about things and we end up tossing aside some of the good things, right?

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Like you'll have, you know, 20 compliments on your haircut and one person says, oh, what'd you do to your hair? And that's the person who gets all the attention. So you think about, I don't want them shoving aside those 20 compliments or those 20 times they took the chance or the 20 times that they overcame something really incredible that they kind of, you know, kind of shove off to the side. I want them to see those things very clearly and to see the minority of, yeah, you know, things happen periodically that aren't great for us and don't make us feel well and we make bad, some bad decisions, but so what? Everyone does.

• 18:37Shane Parrish?

  I think that that's really important. I mean, we all make bad decisions. It's what you do next that sort of matters. I want to go back to something you said about childhood, though, which is, I hear this a lot and I've always sort of wondered about it, which is like, when people are in therapy and they're talking about their childhood and then they do this sort of like destructive behavior and then it's, or self sabotaging behavior, and then they explain it away with, well, that's because of this when I was a child. And, you know, I'm always listening to this and I never comment, but in my head, I'm going, but you're an adult now, right? Like, at some point, you take control over your, your response and awareness of it is not the same as doing something about it.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  So this is, this is really fascinating to me, too. And I, I love hearing things like that when they come up because they're such clear, like, flags and clearly they are for you as well. Like, you hear that and you're like, oh, this is a problem, right? I mean, immediately. So I think about it like this. You could be sitting, and this is the example that I always think about because it pulls people away from some of the more emotional stuff, but you could be sitting in traffic and we've all sat in traffic, right? I mean, traffic as long as the eye can see. And there will be some people you'll look out and they'll be like beeping and dodging and you know, like they're all over the place and you can surmise how that person must be thinking, right? I mean, it's just like never gonna get there, can't believe this is happening.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Like, we could anticipate that these are coming from strong thought patterns and emotional places. But if you look to your right, I mean, there's probably also some guy or girl listening to a podcast, texting someone, windows are down, look as relaxed as could be. And so some people are going to say, you know, when you get home, like, why are you so upset? Oh, it's the traffic. The traffic makes me nuts, right?

• 20:24Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  But if the traffic really makes people nuts, it would make everyone nuts. And so it can't be that. It's how we're thinking about the traffic that really makes people be relaxed and productive, or it makes them be just absolutely enraged and out of control. So when people are telling me that like, you know, I'm doing this because of my childhood, I'm doing this because of this, I think, you know, you're, you know, you're giving up some amount of power. You're giving up a lot of power to something outside of yourself. And you're also, how you're interpreting that event is not useful to you.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  You know, it may be, there may be a lot of truth to the terrible things that have happened. But, you know, those terrible things, you have to shut the door at some point and say, you know, I am my own man or woman and I move forward. And, you know, working on those traumas is important if you go to a therapist and I think that that's really valuable stuff and it's worthwhile because it can change the course of your life. But if you're somebody who uses other events as a reason to self-destruct,

• 21:35Speaker 00

  You're ceding power and we see that even with, you know, in companies, right? Like, I'm doing this because so and so made me angry. I'm doing this because, you know, and you end up making some poor decisions. And ceding power because of someone else, you know, you're willing to make a poor decision. You're willing to give up. You know, sometimes people are willing to give up, you know, their entire future dreams because, you know, of X, Y, and Z, and it's a tragedy. So you want people to really understand the power they have to create their own lives at some point. And that they, that creation is not given to anyone else but you.

• 22:14Shane Parrish?

  I, I love what you said there. I think it's these ordinary moments that really dictate the outcome of our life. For a lot of our big decisions, we know we're making a decision. We're well aware of it, but in these ordinary moments, when things like this happen, we sort of tend to react without reasoning. And when we do that, we put ourselves in an increasingly bad position, right? You go home, you yell at your spouse, well, now your whole weekend's wrecked. Your marriage might be wrecked, like all of these things sort of like compound. And then you can't be present at work because you're solving something at home. And we just don't realize how the, these innocent little moments can derail us and put us in a worse position.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  I agree. I think that like we let life happen to us, right? And we don't decide that we are going to control the trajectory of it. And I think that that's true, whether it's in the small moments and sometimes even in the large ones. Like people will stay unhappy at a job or stay unhappy in their role. And they'll just stay unhappy instead of just saying, hey, you know, like eventually they'll reach a point. And this is true for everyone, right? Like they're unhappy, they're unhappy, they're unhappy. And then finally, I've had enough. And all of those excuses they've used, there will come a point when none of them matter. And they're going to take that leap. But why does it have to get to that point? And why can't we kind of flag things earlier on?

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And I think early intervention, you know, I, I talk about that notion of like fighting up front. Early intervention in almost every case is worth, it's worth the attention, the hassle, the time that it takes. Because those are the moments that allow you to really gain ground. And to have a much more productive future, to have much more productive relationships, to be more productive at work. Is to really intervene early. And I think intentionality is really the key. Thinking about, you know, how you want your life to look. And what you're willing to put up with, you know, what kind of standards are you holding for yourself? And, and, you know, how do you value yourself?

• 24:18Speaker 00

  And a lot of those are around, you know, when you take action and, you know, how much you give and what you're waiting for and how much you're willing to take.

• 24:26Shane Parrish?

  There's so many things in that response that we're going to talk about later in this show, including fighting up front. And the standards you set for yourself and the people you allow around you. Before we get into that, I want to ground people in sort of imaginary rules, if you will. What are they and how do they work and how do they get in our way?

• 24:45Speaker 00

  I, the thing about imaginary rules that I think are really interesting. Is that, you know, we're all raised with rules and some of those rules are great, right? They teach us to be well mannered and not to get arrested and how to operate in society and all of those things. And I think those are fantastic. But we are also simultaneously ingesting other rules that are unspoken. And that are really unsubstantiated, right? Like what is possible for us? You know, what are the things that we can do? What are we capable of? You know, what are we capable of earning or doing or creating? And I think that those things are ingested and we don't talk about them.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  And then we end up becoming, kind of, we're raised in ecosystem, like echo chambers and, and kind of little systems of operation that are reinforcing these rules all the time. The rules that we don't challenge, the rules we don't talk about. And You know, unless you find a way to expand beyond yourself, and the internet makes that wonderful, by the way, but you know, unless you find ways to expand beyond yourself, these imaginary rules that you carry around often keep you very small. Because you will limit what you feel you can do. You will limit how much you feel you can earn. You will limit what you feel you're capable of because you've never seen it. And also because other people have reinforced it. You know, I don't know about you, but you know, when you grow up,

• 26:09Speaker 00

  sometimes you have a very limited world. You know, for me, growing up, I thought the wealthiest person you could be was a physician. Right? I mean, that's what I thought. And you know, my, they're imaginary rules that everybody lives by. You know, it shapes their world, what they try for and what they think. And then you start to see outside of those imaginary rules and all of a sudden they start to break. That is, those are incredibly important moments in people's lives. But many people, I, I would say that most people, if you ask them, most people will say, you know, you ask them, do you feel as though you are, you know, you're the author of your life, you are the person who is in charge. Everyone will say yes, I mean, of course. And then you ask them, well, what did you want to be when you grew up?

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Right? Like, what did you want to do? And they'll say, oh, I wanted to do this, or I wanted to do that. Most of the times, they haven't done it. And or you'll, you know, or I didn't know that was possible for me. Or, oh, I didn't even think I could do that. You'll hear them bumping up against these rules all the time. And I think people in everyday life are bumping up against them and they don't know what it is, but they're frustrated. And so then they begin to ascribe things to other people that aren't true. Like, the only people who make a million dollars a year, oh, those people, they must exploit other people. Those people must be born into money. Those people, I mean, all of these rules, you'll hear them. And they're not necessarily true, but there are ways in which we kind of figure out our own place and we're figuring out other people's place.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  And, you know, it's kind of what we tell ourselves. And I think that we could do a lot more. Most people are capable of far more than they imagine themselves to be. And You know, we stay small because we believe these imaginary rules to be true.

• 27:53Shane Parrish?

  I think the most powerful story is the one we tell ourselves. And I think these rules create our mindset, and our mindset shapes how we interpret all of the information and the world around us. When you were talking about imaginary rules, like, one of the ones that I was thinking of is, you know, what do we do as humans? We seek validation of others. Like, that is sort of like an imaginary rule, that your approval matters to me. We're sort of brought up with this in the notion of raising kids. I guess that's sort of implicit, right? You want to impress your parents, and your parents play on that as a way to get you to do certain things. But it creates this sort of barrier where it's like, it's serving you for a while, maybe as a child, but then it's serving you in some situations,

• 28:37Shane Parrish?

  but it's not serving you in all situations. And it can be very harmful.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  I agree. And, you know, you hear people say, you know, screw what everyone thinks, right? And I think that that's, you know, that's a quick way to become a jerk, because you don't want to do that. You want to care what some people think. And so you want to care what people think who are maybe, you know, your spouse, or your children, or, you know, some people around you. But that's where I think your social circle really matters, because, you know, these people are going to reinforce certain imaginary rules that will, or they'll help you break them. They'll say, hey, you're worth more than that. Why are you putting up with that at work? Or they'll say, man, yeah, we all got to deal with these terrible bosses, and like, we're all in it together. And those are very different groups of friends, right? I mean, there'd be people who are cheering you on to start

• 29:24Speaker 00

  something new, or maybe pushing you to start something new. And then there are the people who say, I wouldn't risk it. Like, why do you want to do that? You know, so these are people who, like, the people that surround you are going to really be important in, you know, how you think about those as well. So seeking validation, I think, is normal, and is natural. I think being in a, you know, social media world makes that really challenging. And I think that that makes that hard for a lot of people, being able to establish boundaries around that. But I think also, boundaries are very confusing generally for people, right? Like, how do you set the line on a lot of things in your life? But yeah, seeking validation, I think, can really be a double-edged sword.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  I think that we should seek it from the right people in our lives, but we certainly don't want to be seeking it outside of that. And I guess I'm of the belief that that circle of seeking validation should be incredibly small. I mean, a few people. You know, your spouse, your kids, maybe one other person in your life that you really trust and feel like has your absolute best interest at heart. But others, I mean, I remember there was a wonderful interview with Oprah, and she said, you know, "When I left my job to do, to start out on my own to do this talk show, every single person in my life told me I would fail, except for one." And, you know, it was, it was her best friend at the time, or I think still her best friend.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  But the point being that sometimes, you know, those, those areas, the people who will cheer you on will be few, and it doesn't mean that it's the wrong move.

• 30:58Speaker 04

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• 31:28Speaker 03

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• 31:58Shane Parrish?

  You mentioned setting boundaries. I'm curious how, how we learn to set boundaries, and the power of setting boundaries, and what it does for us in relation to performance.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  It frees us, right? I think that when we set boundaries around, you know, what we should be taking on and what we should not be taking on, we set boundaries around what is our optimum use of time and what is not. We set boundaries around, you know, how you operate and how you don't, what you make time for and what you don't, whether it's, you know, fitness. Fitness is hard for people to get in. I know that a lot of people talk about, you know, oh, I, you know, I get up and I do this and then I do that and, you know, but a lot of people I work with, you know, they get fit later and they kind of are really like not as fit perhaps always during the creation process of their businesses. It's hard to fit in and have a spouse or anyone else in their life.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  So, you know, boundaries are incredibly important, but boundaries do ultimately free us. As you're scaling, for example, as a CEO, or, you know, someone's starting a business, you'll notice you do everything at first and then, you know, you start to pull into your areas of highest and best use. And those shift over the course of your business and if you stay in the weeds, you're going to compromise on scale. You gotta set boundaries. If you get involved too much in, you know, product, which is something very typical for a lot of people, and you get your, you know, your tentacles in there too much, you're not paying attention to some of these other things. So, to me, boundaries are freedom. They allow us to move quickly, not overcommitting, not having too many open loops.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  You know, all of those things are ways in which we're not having the proper boundaries. And then even committing time for our personal life, right? Having a date night with your spouse once a week and holding to that, like actually holding to it and not saying, well, you know, a really important thing came up. So, boundaries do free us and they allow us to live our best life, but we have to really enforce them and we have to be really clear on what they are and we have to communicate that clarity sometimes to others in ways that sometimes make people uncomfortable because we like to make people happy. And setting boundaries makes very few people happy. It will make you happy eventually, but with other people, I think their tendency is to kind of push and test, but you have to really hold on to that so that you're able to operate

• 34:20Speaker 00

  in your highest use.

• 34:22Shane Parrish?

  I like the idea of boundaries a lot. You hit on, in that answer, you sort of hit on sleep and nutrition, relationships, and I sort of view those as the foundations of which you're building your house on.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:34Shane Parrish?

  And you know, you can neglect them, for lack of a better term, at any point in time, but it has huge consequences and ramifications. It seems like the first things that tend to go are sleep, eating healthy, and these tend to create like this doom loop, right? The less you sleep, the worse decisions you make, the worse you eat, the more unhealthy you are. I'm curious as to what you think of as the other foundations in life and what you've learned about these pillars and how you integrate them. Is it more of a balance or a mosaic, or how do you think about this?

• 35:08Speaker 00

  I think about it as that if you have only one leg of a stool, it's easy to kick out, right? So like if you say, hey, everything that I am is my business, and you put your identity in that, it's when your business does poorly or it collapses, it shakes you. If you have multiple legs of that stool, you're much more stable. And so I do think about creating stability and multiple prongs of success and multiple prongs of grounding in people's lives as foundation. So for example, like if your relationship is very conflictual or high conflict, that's going to eat into your headspace in your work. So take care

• 35:51Speaker 00

  of that, like make it a priority and be good about it if you're going to invest in that. I mean, there are some people who will say, look, maybe this isn't the right time for you to be in a relationship at all. That's fine. But have some stability in that and know who you are in that space and take care of it. If you're going to be somebody who, you know, in other foundational items, as you've mentioned, like with sleep and eating and nutrition and all of those things, you know, be good enough that it provides a level of stability and foundational elements. I think about medical needs, too. I'll have people who will put off like a nagging shoulder pain for like You know, oh, I don't want to address this now. It's physical therapy. Oh, my God. You know, like, who has time for that? Address it, right? Like, address those nagging medical things.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  Get yourself up to par. So it isn't eating headspace. It isn't eating into your energy. It isn't something you have to worry about. So basically, what I'm trying to do is say, hey, like, let's build a lot of different legs to that stool. Maybe you're someone who's in the spirituality, or you're somebody who's in, like, have some foundational things in your life that you take care of. But also, don't have things that you're not taking care of that are going to tap into that energy source and actually pull you and distract you away. Um, so what you're going to have in your life, be intentional, include it, nurture it, make sure that it's stable. Uh, because the things that are not are going to pull at you everywhere. Like, if you think about it, we bring our, we bring ourselves everywhere we go.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  And so those things that pull at us or who, that take from us, you know, that is also going to be reducing our effectiveness or our mood stability and some of those other things, um, in our work. We think we're good at compartmentalization, and often, we're not as good as we think.

• 37:33Shane Parrish?

  Well, we think we just, we're not talking about it, so it doesn't affect us. That's very different than, you know, sort of like compartmentalizing the whole thing, because it does seep into you. You can't be good at work if you're not good at home.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  I think that we, a lot of times, people will use being good at work as an escape if they're bad at home. So like, for example, you'll see that sometimes people who reach pretty great heights aren't always the best dads. They're not always the best husbands. Um, sometimes they are. They're phenomenal. So I don't want to make that a generalization. But I think that it's also very easy to be pulled into areas where we feel competent and good, and where we feel rewarded, and where we feel, um, that we're winning. And it's hard to go into areas where we might be falling down, we might be dropping the ball, we might need to do some work. Um, so I do think sometimes that can also reinforce a very bad cycle where, oh, things are really crappy at home. I'm going to stay at work for an extra two hours.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  And, you know, I'm, I'm really going to get, you know, set the company up for this big win, and you feel good, and everyone pats you on the back. Um, and you're all, you're creative and you're, uh, productive. And then you go home and you just, you feel like, you know, you're losing. And life isn't going quite as well as you'd hope.

• 38:44Shane Parrish?

  I wonder in those cases, you know, in the moment, we're not thinking in the future, but I wonder what the hindsight is in 20 years for for people who choose that, right? If they feel like that trade off was worth it, if they consciously even made that trade off, right, versus unconsciously making that trade off.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  I don't know. That's a really good question. I mean, the whole notion of regret minimization, I think, hits us when we're already at the point where we're regretting. But I would hope that people are thinking about those types of things. You know, there was a guy that I was able to speak with in the past at some point, and he said he'd always bring a note card with him. And he would write on that note card, you know, how am I going to be the best? Like, one thing I can do to be the best, like, husband today, dad today, CEO today. And he just like had one thing that like, you know, and maybe it was something really stupid for his kids, like, he's going to swing by the store and bring home some candy, or he's going to like, take everyone out for ice cream after, or maybe it's just watching a movie or playing a video game with them, with his wife. Maybe it was just like, hey,

• 39:49Speaker 00

  I'm going to make sure that I'm, you know, affectionate, or I'm going to do something, you know, whatever it is. But he would always have one intentional thing. And I always thought that was really interesting, that he had something to make it intentional, to be better in multiple spheres of his life. You know, you're not going to hit 100 all the time, but it was still a really nice, I think, way of moving forward.

• 40:10Shane Parrish?

  What are the common sort of patterns, at the risk of generalizing, common patterns that you see in sort of outliers that you deal with?

• 40:18Speaker 00

  I love when I deal with people who are outliers because they are resolutely like themselves. I think that they tend to be very quirky people as individuals. And I think it almost is a forcing function to pushing them where they end up going, right? Like, if you're somebody who easily, I often wonder, and this is just my own theory, right? Like, if you're somebody who easily fits in the crowd, and you're somebody who's very much like the people. I think it's easy to kind of tampon other areas of your life to be a part of those people and to be a part of those communities and to be socializing and doing all those things. And these are often people who are a little quirky and maybe aren't the most popular person in high school.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  But they are all smart and they are all, you know, really focused. They have an ability to like risk and they like winning. And it's a, they enjoy it, right? Like they enjoy setting up things that they can win at. And I think they don't really care much about what other people think about how they operate. I also think there are people who make really big bets and are willing to take really big losses. A guy who's gonna spend, you know, eight million bucks on a machine and then buy a few anticipating that, you know, his company's going to catch up. Those are big bets.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  You know, people who are, you know, deciding that they're gonna hire people in advance or that they're gonna, you know, do something that's pretty close to the edge as far as, you know, in regulations. You take big chances. And I think that they enjoy those kind of big swings.

• 42:04Shane Parrish?

  I think part of the enjoyment, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you go all in on something. So you're sort of like, you've burned the ships, you've landed on the island, you've made a bet and you've had the courage to take that risk. And then you've cut off all of your exit paths. And my theory on this is that that forces 100% focus. And we can do amazing things when we're fully focused on one thing.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  I think that there's, there's a truth and a non-truth in that, if I can push back on some of it.

• 42:38Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, please do.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  So I think that like, there's a truth in that there's a lot of power in focusing on one thing. I don't think that they see themselves burning boats because I think that they see that no matter what happens, they'll figure it out.

• 42:51Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 42:51Speaker 00

  I don't think that they're gonna say like, oh, I'm gonna lose it all if this happens. I think they'll say, well, I'll figure out another way, right? Like, and I think that that is a common trait that they'll say. There's not just confidence in in taking on the task. There's confidence that like, no matter what happens in uncertainty, that they'll figure it out. And a lot of times, they're often people who are learning new skills all the time. So I don't think the boats are always ever entirely burned. I think they see that there's probably a dinghy out there they can take somewhere. But it's it's fascinating because they do go all in. And I think that's a that is a and they'll take do things that are just ridiculous and audacious. And I think that that is fun to to watch and be a part of that kind of, well, why not?

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Why can't I do this? And it pushes against those, you know, imaginary rules that we talked about earlier, where people would say, oh, you can't do that. And yeah, some yeah, some random guy is doing it. And it's it's working out. And I think that that's it's a it's a fun game for them.

• 43:54Shane Parrish?

  You you mentioned confidence. There's an interesting thing that I see with people, which is a lot of people who don't do things and they talk about them. And this is anecdotal, of course, and you maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong here. They tend to not have the confidence to get to the outcome. Whereas people that I see that do things have the confidence to take the first step and then confidence that they'll be able to figure out, wiggle out, hustle, like whatever they need to do to get to the next step.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that there is a very strong link, more than we think, with like hesitancy and self-esteem. So, for example, I think the more you hesitate, you see other people doing things, you watch, right? And like, if you don't take the chance and you watch other people taking the chances and doing well, now you're one step behind. And then you you watch them continue to take chances. Now you're three steps behind. And you watch them just continue over the course of a year, you're watching someone blow up and do great, and you know that person well, like. Man, that guy's doing it. And here I am, still thinking about that idea I had, and I didn't do it.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  And it's an erosion of confidence, just over and over and over again, that hesitancy. And so I do think that even if that bias to action and the ability of people to make those moves, as you said, you know, you watch them do it and they do it over and over and over again. They know they can figure it out because the first leap, just taking that leap is like a shot in the arm. And it makes you feel a little bit more confident because you made that leap. Nothing went wrong. And now you can figure out, can you do the next one? Can you figure out the next step? It like confidence stacks as you begin to continue to take risks. But I also think that hesitancy pulls you into this kind of negative loop where, you know, it builds on itself too.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  And you really have to be cautious that things don't kind of set on the table and you just kind of look at them as you come in and out. Because that will keep happening and you'll keep looking at it and it will keep bothering you. And then eventually you just feel like you'll make up some rationalization why it didn't happen. Like, ah, you know, I'm so glad I didn't do that because I didn't really have the time. Or I got to spend a lot of extra time doing this, or whatever it is. But you'll find a reason to rationalize it and eventually it will go to the place where dreams die and there will be a lot of other things that will set in that bucket with it. And it will be unfortunate for you because you never got to see what would happen.

• 46:30Shane Parrish?

  I think confidence comes from how we talk to ourselves. Would you sort of agree with that?

• 46:35Speaker 00

  I would. I think that that it definitely comes from how we speak to ourselves, but also just how we think about ourselves as, and those are two distinct things, right? Like how we, how we talk to ourselves, how we think about ourselves,

• 46:53Speaker 00

  how we conceptualize ourselves, who we see ourselves being in the larger space. And I think that that is a really important thing. And it's also why I, I really dislike sometimes when people will say, you know, like never forget where you come from, right? Like Yeah, I mean, I guess there's some value, but like if you're evolving, you shouldn't be the same. So someone saying, oh, you've changed. Yes, consider that a compliment, right? Like, you want to change, you want to be different, you want to grow. And I always feel like when people say things like, don't forget where you come from. Sometimes it's a way of saying, well, you know, remember, you're not that great, right? Like, remember that you're still that person from X. So I do think

• 47:35Speaker 00

  that sometimes, you know, if you, if you're ever on Twitter, it's what's really fascinating is that you put something big and bold out there, you'll always get people underneath, though you get a lot of cheering folks, but you'll get people underneath who will try to like, set you straight, right? Of why things won't work, why things won't happen. And I always like, every time I see a response like that, I always think, oh, wow, like, I am so sorry. Like, this is a framework that is going to, it's going to keep that person small. And I always hope that there is a way in which they can see that like, this isn't the only way to look at it. Like, keep following along, like, keep being a part of things. And, and don't give up on reading some of this stuff, because it'll hit eventually, hopefully, as you watch people doing some of the things that they talk about doing.

• 48:20Shane Parrish?

  Have you ever noticed that nobody, like, trying to knock you down, or tell you, no, that's not how it works, has ever actually done the thing, or, you know, done anything, for that matter, that sort of would give them the credibility to say that? It's, it's never an outlier who's like, trying to knock you down.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  You're right. I mean, it isn't like Sam Altman swoops down from the, wherever he's, he's at and says, you know, you're never going to do this. You're right. I mean, I think that that's a, it's an interesting observation, because you have people who are struggling themselves, who want you to see that, like, that's the struggle we all should have. And it just, it just isn't, right? And I think that there are different ways to react to people who are doing very well, or who think differently than us. We can say, for example, when someone is really focused on doing big things, you know, some people will be envious, some people will see it as inspiration. And I always think that that's, every now and again, I'll throw out that I'll say something like,

• 49:22Speaker 00

  I guess this is controversial, but I'll say, oh, you know, Kris Jenner's really done some amazing things, right? She's built multiple billion-dollar companies. And people tend to overlook that. And I'll say, oh, you know, she did it because of a, you know, this on her kids, or, you know, they'll find a way to kind of discredit things. And, and I always think it's fascinating that it's, we will find ways to discredit things that we want to, that we, that we don't like, or that we, we don't think is possible for us. And it's harder to say, oh, yeah, she was a, you know, she was an airline stewardess. And now she has like, multiple billion-dollar companies under her belt. Like, that's pretty amazing.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Why aren't we kind of focusing on, we always focus on like, oh, but this person did this, or this person did that. And, and so it's, it's amazing, our tendency to try to tear others down, rather than to see them as inspiration and say, oh, my God, like, how does someone who's an airline stewardess get to that point? What a brilliant move, or series of moves, to be able to capitalize on what, what they had in front of them.

• 50:26Shane Parrish?

  I think that's so interesting. You hit on something there that, and I'm thinking out loud here, so apologies if this comes out wrong. But like, we tend to discredit things in other people, maybe that we're envious of, or that could have, we could have seen ourselves, you know, follow a similar path, or we, we didn't get lucky, so we want to discount their.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we have to put it on luck, right? Like, oh, they got lucky. I think that's a really good observation. Or that like, we see things that other people have done, and we'll have to find immediately a reason why they did it and we didn't. Like, maybe they're a bad person and we're not. Or, you know, they are not as immoral as we are, or they are not as something as we are. Like, I often hear that people who are very wealthy exploit other people. And, you know, like, that's certainly, you know, if we want to look at where bad people are, I mean, there are so many people who are abusive parents. And, I mean, it doesn't always have to do with wealth, whether you're a good or bad person. There are bad people everywhere, there are great people everywhere. And I think that-

• 51:30Speaker 00

  We always have to find reasons to to make ourselves feel better. We're telling ourselves certain messages to keep us comfortable with where we're at. And I think that's a really important point that like, should we really be as comfortable where we're at? I don't think that we should be uncomfortable, but I think that we should be grateful for what we have and where we're where we're at. But always feel like, hey, could we do more? Would we be happier if we were able to do this other thing? And sometimes, you know, the end goal is not what people think you're gonna. I have certainly worked with people who want to build these massive companies. And they're doing it because they want to be able to give back in some other way or to have influence in some other way.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Or to build wealth in some way that is beneficial far beyond themselves. But those are often not the stories that are told. Or the things we don't focus on, we focus on the very, you know, loud, bombastic, radical actions of some people that capture headlines. And we forget that there are thousands of people who are not represented. Because we, you know, good stories aren't always the headline grabbing stories we'd like to read.

• 52:39Shane Parrish?

  It's almost like we focus on things that keep us in place, keep us with our current mindset.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  Oh, that is so true. That is so true. I think we like to reinforce ourselves in ways that we in ways that we can and make sense in the world that we've constructed for ourselves.

• 52:55Shane Parrish?

  So given that backdrop of sort of confidence and all that we've just talked about, how do we learn to take risks?

• 53:03Speaker 00

  I think that we learn to take risks and I would I would have anyone who is hesitant around that to take risks in low stakes places first, right? Like, go sign up for a 5K if you've never run a race and you are physically capable of doing it. And sign up for a 5K in like five months, which gives you a lot of time. Download the, you know, Couch to 5K app, not affiliated with them in any way. And just say, I'm gonna try to do something here, like, I'm gonna give it a shot. And nobody has to know, it's not about your work, there's no kind of public anything about it. It's just you and you and do something small for yourself and like nail it. And I think that if you can do small things, even if it's just smaller than that, right?

• 53:47Speaker 00

  But, you know, challenge yourself to build something in your garage. Challenge yourself to be able to lift a certain amount of weight. Challenge yourself in some small way where you're gonna take a risk and go outside of yourself. It translates. And what you start to notice is that when you start having some wins outside, you will start to pull that mindset in your work and your business. And you know, you get a little bit of a swagger to you that I think is really healthy.

• 54:11Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, definitely. I think swagger enables a lot of things in life. Well, it's interesting that you said, you know, you don't have to tell anybody about it. It used to be common wisdom that we would sort of like state your goals publicly because that's going to make you. And now it's so maybe that happened before. It was so easy to share our goals publicly. And now I feel like people get as much validation from sharing them as actually doing them. But all the time that you spend talking about these things you want to do comes at the expense of doing the thing you want to do.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And you know, research in psychology shows that when you share your goals and people give you praise, it actually pulls from motivation to achieve them. So it's, you know, it's why, you know, vision boards aren't really all that great for you because you look at it and you tell your friend like, you know, hey Ted, look like I'm going to buy that Ferrari one day. And he goes, oh, that's so cool. That's so amazing. And you get that that reward center hit. And now like, you know, it's a little, your motivation's a little bit different. I think that oftentimes if you wanted to do something like that, instead of doing like a vision board, do something like a progress board, right? Like have things that you're going to, you can watch yourself getting closer along the way, rather than just like, this is the end goal. This is amazing. Because, you know, you don't want

• 55:26Speaker 00

  to hit that reward center, just like on social media. I know everyone's a big fan of like building in public and I'm not, I'm absolutely opposite of that. And I'm much more of the Sun Tzu, like let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night. And when you fall, fall like a thunderbolt, right? Like, that's my, that's more how I would think about operating. You get yourself together. You know what you're going to do. You put your head down, you do it. And then when you fall, I mean, like, pull back the curtain and let people see, and you can get the praise if you want it then, or get the criticism then. But when you're talking about your goals online, oftentimes you get people who give you feedback, people who say certain things, people get in your head, people give you suggestions, and unless you want those things, like, I don't know how useful it is, and

• 56:10Speaker 00

  I feel like it's often a detractor. And I don't see that as being common with other people. Google doesn't say, "Hey, we're really thinking about doing X, everyone." You know, not only does it flag all of its competitors at that point, but it's because it's really not useful to the build of what you want to do. And that's true for individuals, too. That's why I say, you know, don't help other people if you're going to do this thing. Just make it you versus you, and do the thing that you want to do, and make it personal, and make yourself proud.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  You see, again, with that grit and happiness correlation, and then you're accomplishing a goal, so that's building confidence. All the research really stacks in your favor when you start to do these little things, and they make, they lead to big changes.

• 57:14Shane Parrish?

  Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog/podcast, or just Google The Knowledge Project. Until next time.