The Saboteur: There's a Voice in Your Head That's Been Lying to You for Years | With Shirzad Chamine

You've been listening to the wrong voice in your head for years — and it's cost you more than you realize. Shirzad Chamine spent the first 30 years of his life in clinical depression — despite building a venture-backed company, attracting Silicon Valley's top investors, and landing Hewlett-Packard as his first customer. Then, at the height of his success, his own leadership team staged a coup and demoted him as CEO of the company he founded. That devastating moment forced him to ask a question most high achievers never stop to consider: if I'm this successful and this miserable, who am I really — and what's actually running my mind? Connect with Shirzad positiveintelligence.com/assessment positiveintelligence.com Connect with Kwame: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Request A Customized Workshop For Your Company⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Kwame Christian on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠negotiateanything.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to buy your copy of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @kwamenegotiates across all social platforms

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If you're watching on YouTube, you're seeing me do something interesting. But let me describe it to our audio listeners. I'm looking intently at my finger, my index finger and my thumb, and rubbing them together. Now, I know this looks very weird, but I promise you, this little thing that I'm doing right now, it has changed not just my life, not just my son's life, and not just the life of our guest, but the lives of millions of people around the world. And perhaps might be the most powerful takeaway of this episode.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Gently rub two fingertips against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertip bridges on both fingers. If he had your head under a functional MRI machine, you would have noticed that even with just this one pick your up, you ever so slightly quieted the saboteur region of the brain and ever so slightly energized the sage var the brain. You're going from a brain that's just running you to exercising self-command. So you're building your muscle of self-command. I am in command over my mind. My mind is not going to run the show with its saboteurs.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  And this is not pseudoscience. Two minutes after I was done with the interview, my son Dominic was having a meltdown and I taught him this trick, just absolutely melting down. Had him do this, 10 seconds later, done, meltdown over. This episode is going to blow your mind. Now, here's the thing, we have a legend in our midst. And the thing that's most surprising about this episode isn't the fact that he was formerly the CEO of the largest training organization in the world. It's not because he's trained more than 100,000 coaching. It's not because his saboteur assessment has been used by more than 2 million people.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  It is because this is one of the most accomplished people when it comes to positive psychology and mindset coaching. And he's coming back. He's coming back in the game. He didn't have to. And so I asked him, why are you coming back now?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  The reason for it is this, that AI is going to be generating a massive level of disruption at an exponential rate of change. The human mind is not wired for adjusting to exponential level of change. So I think what's going to happen is a profound level of fear and stress at an epidemic level. A lot of people are going to wonder, who am I? What is my contribution? What is my worth? What's my value? There's going to be an identity crisis and all sorts of fear-based reactions.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  If you're listening to a show like Big Swings Only, there is something inside of you that is driving you to be great. And the thing is, that thing inside of you, that voice that you hear, sometimes it's kind of dark. But let me tell you, it doesn't have to be.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  One way of looking at what the saboteur is doing is it's taking your original natural strengths and by overusing and abusing those strengths, it turns them into your greatest weakness.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  The person who's teaching us today is not a person who is doing this just from a research perspective. This is a person who was a CEO himself, who felt the pain of the inner saboteurs ruining his life and his relationships, used this science on himself to change his life, and now has changed the lives of millions across the world. My friends, you are in for a treat. This is the story of Dr. Shazad Shamin. Welcome to Big Swings Only.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify, Granola AI, Quince, and the Anxious Achiever Podcast. Stay present in your meetings. Get three months of Granola free at granola.ai/kwami. For your gift list, shopquince.com for free shipping and 365-day returns. And make sure to tell them that Kwami with Big Swings Only sent you. Subscribe to the Anxious Achiever today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Do you have an idea that you want live for the holidays? Launch before Black Friday at Shopify.com/kwami.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Can you tell us a bit about your background? What led you into this? And because once I hear your story and where you see where you are now, it will definitely give people a lot of hope.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have an interesting background. I grew up in poverty in the Middle East, in a ghetto with four siblings. My parents in a tiny little apartment. And my father was a terrifying man. He actually was, came, had a lot of rage and anger. And when I was growing up, I thought it was against me, but it turns out that he, we were part of a small ethnic minority persecuted for 13 centuries. So he was carrying 13 centuries of rage. And I didn't know that, of course, at the time, I took it personally. So I was in clinical depression as a kid, very, you know, as a way of protecting myself. Speaking of saboteurs, I had a victim saboteur.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  I felt really sorry for myself. It was a self-soothing kind of protection, protecting that I was doing of myself. And the thing that changed my life was this whisper that I, I don't know where it came from, but the whisper I've always trusted. And it was a whisper that said, Shirzad, your path is one day to play on the world stage. And like your heroes, Martin Luther King and Gandhi, changed millions of lives. Again, I have no idea where it came from. I always trusted, I've always been guided by it. And it was about having a life-changing impact, not incremental impact, but also massively scaled, millions of people, not fear. And it's not about my ego. It's not about me.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  I just have been following and trusting that voice. And the first person, the first life that I needed to transform was my own because I was in clinical depression. I was diagnosed in clinical depression for 30 years of my life. And so I was trying to figure out, well, how do I get, you know, heal myself? How do I go from somebody who is achieving a lot, but is absolutely miserable to somebody who can be happy, you know, while living my life and not destroying all my relationships like I was? And a very pivotal, and so what I, what I was doing is I did therapy and I did coaching and I did transformational workshops with some famous people.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  And all of these created temporary benefit, but it fizzled back to its old way. And I realized for some reason that all of these efforts were not treating the root cause. They were treating just symptoms and they weren't sustained in their impact. And then the most pivotal thing that happened that really shifted me to this, this work is, I had started the venture-backed software company after Stanford Business School where I went, got my MBA. And some, I had attracted some luminaries in Silicon Valley to be my investors, to be my board members. I'd attracted my business school classmates to be in the company with me as president, reporting to me. And all of those things were great.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Hewlett Packard was our first customer, agreeing to prepay for the rights to the app, to the software we were creating. So all was great. Two years into, so I was this visionary leader who had attracted all of this money and luminaries to my cause. Two years into the company, the product was late, the customer was unhappy, and I was under a lot of stress. And one day I went to get my lunch. Our offices were in downtown Palo Alto. I got my lunch, I came back to the office, second floor building in downtown Palo Alto. And as I stepped up to the second floor, my heart sank because I saw that in the boardroom,

• 7:45Speaker 01

  seated were my chairman of the board and my president and my VPs. This was a palace coup where my president and VP had gone, VPs had gone to the chairman and the board and said, under stress, Shirzad has become such a micromanaging, controlling, judging, negative leader. We can't stand working for him anymore. It's either us or, it's either us or him as CEO of the company. So on that day, I was demoted as a CEO of the company that I had founded. And I couldn't walk away because I brought in all the investors and the clients and I couldn't just abandon them and leave.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  I had to stay, I had to keep going back to work and report to the people that I thought I had betrayed, that had betrayed me. You can imagine the pain. The pain was unbearable. I could barely breathe, barely breathe. And I was so ashamed, I didn't even share this with my wife. I didn't even disclose to her, this is what, this is what happened. So I was suffering alone. And I had to figure out what, how the hell do I get, do I stop feeling this devastating amount of pain? What's happening with me? Who am I? Am I the visionary leader who had attracted all these people to myself for these two years? Or am I a leader that nobody wants to work for? Who am I really? What's happening here?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And so in trying to figure all of that out, I eventually, you know, brought in my, my more scientific engineering background and realized that in order to answer these questions, I need to go to root cause. That all of these efforts, all of these attempts I had previously done to heal myself or grow myself weren't working because I wasn't working at the root level. And so root cause research is factor analysis research. You do figure out what's at the root of it all. And for, as an example, if you do factor analysis on colors, you realize that even though there seem to be thousands of colors, at the root of it all, there really are only three colors. All you need is a color palette of three.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  And so when we did factor analysis research with more than half a million participants from uh more than fifty countries, including a lot of CEOs, athletes, Stanford students and all. What we found is that the root of it all, and when you ask the question, what's at the root of optimizing or sabotaging our well-being and performance? What's at the root of optimizing or sabotaging our well-being and performance? There really are only ten negative root factors. It seems like we think there are hundreds of ways we screw ourselves up, but there really only ten ways. Those are the ten saboteurs. That's the good news. And that's where the saboteurs came from, the judge, controller, avoider, stickler, victim.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  These are restless, all of that. And then, very interestingly, on the positive side, what we find is that there are only five sage superpowers, five Jedi superpowers. So all you need is to be able to intercept your saboteurs that bring all your negativity and fear. Uh, and then energize, do these ten second exercises that quiets that region of your brain and energizes the Jedi region of your brain, the sage region of your brain. And then use one or more of these five Jedi powers, five sage powers. That's all you need. That's how

• 11:19Speaker 01

  massively simplified a life becomes in terms of growing yourself personally and professionally, optimizing your well-being and performance. And that completely worked for me. So that absolutely transformed my relationships. I saved my marriage. It absolutely transformed my parenting. It transformed my leadership. So right now in my company, I am considered a really awesome CEO. Not somebody that wants to, not somebody who wants, people want to ask one. And I've since coached hundreds of CEOs and uh because it works. I, but I first tried it on myself before I brought it to the world.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  You have been in this field for many years. You're very well known. You have the massive clients. And for me, I was very intrigued to see what was it that brought you back to share this message again with such urgency? Considering the fact that so many people are already familiar with your work?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, Kami, I, I feel that there is a, that while uh mental fitness and the work that I do has been important to the world, I think it has just become pivotal. And so I feel a real urgency to get the word out even more than before. And the reason for it is this. That AI is going to be generating a massive level of disruption at a uh exponential rate of change. The human mind is not uh wired for uh for uh adjusting to exponential level of change. So I think what's gonna happen is a profound level of fear and stress at an epidemic level. Uh, when AI is going to take over so much of what humans to do today, uh like the analytical and technical and

• 13:00Speaker 01

  uh those kinds of tasks, that a lot of people are gonna wonder, who am I? What is my contribution? Uh, what is my worth? What's my value? There's gonna be an identity crisis and all sorts of fear-based reactions. And what I know is that that becomes a contagious uh aspect uh in our brain. We call these uh saboteurs, agents of self-sabotage. So they will go on steroid. And so unfortunately, what I think we are looking at is a possibility of significant rise on uh on fear, stress, uh tribalism, hate, and all those things that come uh come with that territory. And what we do, mental fitness, is allow people to shift

• 13:42Speaker 01

  from the fear-based part of the brain to a part of the brain that's actually led by fear, not uh by love, not fear. Uh, and because we have those, both of those parts within ourselves. So how do we help people lead not from fear but love? And end up having a quite a different and profoundly more uh hopeful reaction to the challenges ahead.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Incredible. Yes, I, and I agree one hundred percent. Because we are, there are times where we are afraid of specific things, and that is scary enough. And what is really challenging about this time is the lack of specificity. Because we see AI looming, we see a lot of geopolitical turmoil and things like that, but we don't know with precision what the future is gonna look like. And that uncertainty that i- it can really amplify the amount of fear that we're having. And you're right, the, the emotions are contagious. If somebody is having it, other people are going to have it. The insecurities, the problems that we haven't solved within ourselves, they're going to be magnified and, and shared at scale. And one of the things that I, I love about you is that

• 14:51Speaker 00

  everything that you do is so rooted in the research, but then also it has instant practical value. And so I want to speak to the skeptics in the audience who heard you say shifting from love, fear to love, and they said, oh no, here we go, positive psychology, toxic positivity, those type of things. Let's, let's snipe some of these biases early so we could get deeper with the content.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  When, when I lecture on this at Stanford, the Stanford kids call this work Jedi mind training. And what, what, what they mean by that is, hey, what we are looking at is the war inside of our brain between our inner Darth Raiders and inner Jedi. Now, we, we give names to these inner Darth Raiders. We call them the saboteurs, agents of self-sabotage. And all, and so they have names like the controller, the avoider, the stickler, the victim, the restless, the pleaser. There are ten, our research has shown that there are ten ways we self-sabotage. And they, those saboteurs are all fear-based and they bring out all of our negative emotions. They lead

• 16:01Speaker 01

  from fear and with negative emotions. And on the other side, what the Stanford kids call the inner Jedi, we call that the sage. And the sage is a positive part of your brain, and it is centered in uh in love, not fear. And what it, uh what it, what it does is it leads from empathy, curiosity, creativity. Uh, it's purpose-driven and it can lead into fear, uh lead with calm, fearless action. And those are all manifestations of love, of love for myself and others, love for discovery, love for invention, love for meaning and purpose, love for a purpose-driven action.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  So that's what I mean by fear versus love. And most people under stress, they go to their saboteurs and they're, they are pushing themselves through fear. And I want people to stop pushing themselves with fear and sta- and start being pulled by love. Because those are the two primary forces within us, inner Jedi versus inner Darth Raiders. This work is about Jedi training. I want you to discover the profound Jedi powers that you have and learn how to lead from that in facing the challenges that are ahead.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Brilliant. I, and I love the, the metaphor too, because it makes it very, very real. Because there is in, in a, in a very real sense, a metacognitive battle, battle that's happening in our head. And, and we can hear that tension. We can feel it.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  And, and Kami, there is a reason we love Star Wars. The reason we love Star Wars is that it is telling every human story. Is because we see our inner struggles projected on the screen and we want the inner, the Jedi to win because we want our inner Jedi to win, but they have no idea that's actually telling every human story. That's the archetypal story of humanity from day one. It has always been the case and it is the case. And in any given hour of any given day, there is a war raging inside each of us between our inner Darth Raiders and our Jedi. We just didn't know that. And now we put names to it. Very importantly, we put neuroscience behind it. And we show you that this is, that this is absolutely doable. There are mental muscles you wanna build. Inner Jedi has muscles that you can train

• 18:14Speaker 01

  and you can actually force atrophy in the muscles of your inner Darth Raiders. So it's actually work that's neuroscience-based and uh quite impactful very quickly when you start doing the work.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Okay, let's get nerdy now. I think this is where, for me, this is where it becomes really fun. Because when you think about the, the concepts that we discussed, the inner Darth Vader, the inner Jedi, fear versus love, you've been able to map this within the brain. And so can we give a brief overview on the, the brain structures that are going to be involved first of all? But then also going back to the plasticity argument that you brought up. Because we're familiar with the, the, the Hebb's law, neurons that wire together, fire together, all those things, right? So we can strengthen the brain in that type of way. But something that isn't appreciated or discussed enough is the ability to intentionally

• 19:08Speaker 00

  atrophy the connections that have been sabotaging our success and happiness over time.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Right, and that's the really important thing. What I, what I talk to people, people, a lot of people are resigned about being able to significantly improve themselves. The reason is, I mean, just think about it. How often have you read a book that you said, oh my God, this is life changing. I'm gonna be so much better now. And or did a workshop where you said, wow, I'm gonna be the transformed self now and feel so much happier, do so much better. And how long did that last? Chances are that all of that euphoria lasted days if you're lucky, weeks if you're, if you're really lucky. And within a few months, you were back to your old ways. The reason you are back to your old ways is that books and workshops and a lot of other

• 19:57Speaker 01

  things that we, we try to do to improve ourselves end up focusing just on insight. And insight does not create habits. Habits are about building new neural pathways that take an insight into a repeatable behavior. And so what I'm, so what I tell people, if you're serious about change, you need to realize that sustained change requires 20% insight, 80% muscle building. And by muscle, I mean mental muscles in the form of neural pathways that generate automatic habits. And the problem is your inner dark waiters have a lot of muscle power. Why? Because they have been exercising those muscles for, since your childhood.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  And so that's why our, our saboteur behavior, like the judge, the controller, the avoider, stickler, victim, whatever saboteur you have, they're automatic habits of your mind because they have, they have become neural pathways in your brain that immediately react in the way they are, that they're taught. You cannot fight the muscle of your saboteurs with just the insight of your sage, the counterpart to your saboteurs. You can't fight the muscles of the inner dark waiters with just insight of the Jedi. The Jedi actually practices every day to build those muscles. And so that's what we call mental fitness. In the brain, it shows up within eight weeks of this kind of practice that I'm going to be sharing with you, within eight weeks.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Our affiliate neuroscientist showed a while back that you can literally see increased gray matter in the regions of the brain where the inner Jedi lives and decreased gray matter, actual atrophy in the regions of the brain where the inner dark waiters live. So you literally rewire your brain with daily practices because you're shifting blood flow and oxygenation and all that stuff from one region of the brain to another. And it is how we end up being able to do automatic new responses that are more sage and positive rather than saboteurs.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Incredible, incredible. And I, I, I love the fact that all of this has been substantiated in all of these studies because that really makes it difficult for skeptical people to just brush this aside because it's so robust and peer reviewed and then tested at the highest levels. The, the largest organizations in the world have put this into practice, not because they wanted to make everybody feel good, it's because it drives results. And then it also happens to make people feel much better about themselves, their lives, their relationships and things like that. So where, where should we start?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to start with the judge saboteur because the judge saboteur is the only one that's universal. Everybody has a judge saboteur. This is, uh, this is the disposition to have, to amplify what's wrong and amplify what's negative. And it's the voice that wakes you up at three in the morning and says, you idiot, why did you make that stupid mistake? What's wrong with you? When are you ever gonna learn? Or it's the one that says, who are, who do you think you are? You're gonna, you're gonna absolutely fail tomorrow in that meeting. So it's constantly focuses on what's wrong with you, what's wrong. And but then also it focuses on what's wrong with other people. So it's not just judging you constantly, but it's also judging other human beings,

• 23:26Speaker 01

  focus on what's wrong versus what's right. And it's even worse than that because it's also focusing on what's wrong with any situation or circumstance. It's the voice in you, in you that says, you know what? I don't have what it takes to be happy. You know, I will be happy when something changes about the circumstance. I just don't like the circumstance of my life. So the judge brings all your negativity in terms of, in terms of responding to yourself, others and circumstances of life. And the reason it's universal is because that was helpful for your evolutionary survival for ancestors. The ancestor in the jungle who, when the tree started shaking, always assumed the worst,

• 24:08Speaker 01

  was negative, was paranoid and said, I bet you the tiger is gonna come out to eat me alive. And they ran. That negatively biased ancestor survived. They were wrong 99 out of, out of a hundred times, but the one time they were right, it saved their life. Now imagine if a distant ancestor was very positive and optimistic and said, you know what, the tree's shaking, somebody, I bet you it's a koala bear coming out to give me a big bear hug. How do you think that ancestor lasted? So negativity was helpful for our survival. And, and I bet you, you have a variation of the judge. Then the judge, once it said something is wrong and I don't like what's happening, it brings in one of the other nine saboteurs.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  They are the accomplices to the judge to come and deal with the situation. One saboteur is the avoider. Avoider is the one that basically says, you know, this is not pleasant. I don't want to deal with this task. I don't want to deal with this conflict. I'm just gonna avoid it altogether. So it comes with procrastination and avoidance. Another saboteur, quite different, is the controller. By the way, my son has the avoider and then my daughter has the controller. So controller is one where you basically want things, you want to impose your will. You're, you, you charge hard and you want to impose your will. You want to have your way regardless of other, other people want.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  They feel controlled. They're resentful that they are, that you're controlling them and, and pushing them towards your will and not really incorporating what it is they want. We are all familiar with the controller in ourselves or somebody else in our life.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  By the way, as I say these two things, these two examples, I want to also point to, uh, one way of looking at what the saboteur is doing is it's taking your, your original natural strengths and by overusing and abusing those strengths, it turns them into your greatest weakness. So for example, my daughter and son were born as very different people. My daughter was born with this just, you know, extroverted, energetic, goal orientation, you know, wanting to make stuff happen. That, that's wonderful, wonderful energy, which is a great strength that she brings. Taken too far, it becomes her controller.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  And so we don't want to get rid of the strength. We want to make sure the strength is used in the hands of your inner Jedi, in the hand of your sage, rather than in the hands of the saboteur. That's when it back, backfires. My son, on the other hand, was born as a very, you know, sensitive introvert. Life is a bowl of cherries. Life is pleasant and positive. Let's just be flexible and adaptable, even keel. Wonderful strength. Taken too far, it becomes the avoider. This is not pleasant, but interesting, I don't want to deal with it. So I have had very different conversations with my son and daughter as they were growing up, encouraging both of them to hang on to their strengths, but watch out when they're

• 27:20Speaker 01

  overusing that strength, which becomes their saboteur.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  So hopefully what I just described is how saboteurs are a universal tendency. It's not because you had a traumatic childhood necessarily. I mean, it, it, every human is born with some natural strengths and every human ends up overusing those strengths in their childhood in order to get more love, more attention, more security. And that becomes the, the habit of their mind, which is the saboteur.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Makes sense. That's great. So we have the judge as the universal one. And then we have two of the accomplices. We have the avoider and then we have the controller. What are the other accomplice? Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well made. And my first thought was, who else on my list needs one? Quince makes high quality staples with 100% Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather. And their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. All of it is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. As a negotiator, I know a great deal when I see one.

• 28:34Speaker 00

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• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yes, then we have the hyper achiever.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  It's good to be achievement oriented, but the hyper achiever makes your self acceptance and self love dependent on your achievements. So your self love is conditional and it's conditioned on your next achievement and you stress and stress and stress until you get that next achievement. But when you get that next achievement, how long will you celebrate? Minutes, hours, days, if you're lucky. And then that voice says, you're not enough, you're not enough, you're not worthy of my love, you've got to set this next achievement and I'm not going to love you until you make that next big achievement and so on and so on.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Tony Robbins is a big fan of my work a while back, had tweeted, I think, something from my work, which was every year, millions of people go to their graves, still trying to satisfy the last condition that's set for themselves, to be worthy and to be happy. So this is a very common saboteur amongst high achievers. I saw you laugh when I was talking about this, Kwame, is that one that you resonate with?

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh, it's, it is, oh my goodness, yes. I had to learn how to celebrate wins. And for me, I considered achievements kind of like breathing. That breath was delightful, but it means nothing because I'm suffocating now. And so it was very, very difficult. But the first time that I went into therapy actually was after my second alumni award, because I got one from the law school. And I said, okay, well, we can, maybe we could write that one off. And then, and then I got another one from the Glenn School, the Master of Public Policy in back to back years. And then I said, I don't, I don't know how to top this. I don't know what to do next.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  I am terrified because I always had this chip on my shoulder, hey, you're not good enough until you achieve this and then this and then this and then this. And then I got those two awards that really said, hey, well, you are the kind of the epitome of the alumni we want to highlight. And I was really very uncomfortable with it. I saw, I, I was practicing celebrating and I was able to celebrate for a minute, but once it let down, I said, there's a lot of life left to live and I don't even know what to do next. And so it, it's, it is haunting because a lot of times the, the most successful people are the ones who are most unfulfilled because they are trying to feed a beast that can't be satiated. And that's a scary place to be when you're on the top of the mountain, wondering where to go next.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And the fear that they have is if I don't get, if I, if I stop, you know, feeding this tendency that I will then not want to achieve anything. And that's a complete falsity. I talked to, I talked to people about, hey, you know, when you were a kid on, a kid on a, on a beach, what did you do? Say, you know, I built sandcastles. And then I'd say, why did you, why would you build sandcastles? Because somebody was looking for your achievement and, and all that stuff. They would say, no, it was fun. I wanted to build sandcastles because it was fun. And so that's what I, what I talk about, that the human, you can push yourself through

• 33:24Speaker 01

  the fear of the saboteurs, like the hyper achiever saying, you've got to do better, you've got to do better, you've got to do better, because otherwise you're not worthy. That's, that's pushing yourself by fear. On the other hand, the sage pulls you through love, love for yourself and others, love for discovery, love for invention, love for action, love for purpose. And so, so if you let go of the fear based saboteurs, you don't become a couch potato. You don't sit on a couch and just watch TV. If you're led by your sage, you are pulled by love constantly, love, passion, joy. You're not going to just sit there doing nothing. And actually you achieve more. Why do you achieve more?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Because when your, when your hyper achiever is driving you, you're always terrified. The moment that you set this big goal for yourself and then as you're trying to make your way towards that big goal, we always know, things go wrong. Things, a lot of things go wrong before you achieve your goal. The problem is if your hyper achiever is, is pushing you towards that achievement, you just freak out every time that there's a glitch because your whole identity is on the line, oh my God, what happens if I don't achieve this thing? So you overreact, you waste a ton of mental, emotional energy in dealing with your stress related to achievement and the glitches that happen.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Now, if you are, so what I tell people is, okay, I don't want you to set any less ambitious of goals, absolutely set ambitious goals, but I want you to love yourself unconditionally, as the sage would, and then do, try to achieve this goal out of joy and passion and fun. So that then when a glitch starts happening, you don't freak out, it's like, okay, there's a glitch here, how do I get back to a calm, clear that mind and figure out how to, how I get back on the, on track? So you're more likely to achieve that target. And by the way, you're more likely to, to set higher targets. Why are you willing to set higher targets if you're in sage mode?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Because when you're so terrified about your identity being challenged, if you fail at something, you actually preemptively don't set a big enough target for yourself because you're terrified about setting a target at which you will fail. And, and that's going to be devastating to your identity. So you don't dare sometimes set a high enough target for yourself. So if you shift from hyper achiever to, to your sage achievement orientation, you will first of all, potentially set even higher targets for yourself and you're more likely to achieve the target. And more importantly, you're going to have fun along the way, a lot more fun along the way. You're not going to wait for the final destination to feel a little bit of fun.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  You are enjoying every step of the way along the way.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Brilliant. You're, you're so right. You're so right. And I know you're right because you've studied this and demonstrated millions of times. So that's one reason you're right. And then also I've, it, it was really scary to try this, but I, I treated it like a little test. I said, Kwame, you don't need to change yourself completely, just do an experiment. Try it for a week, be happy, be the happy achiever. Can you do that? Okay, that, that week, you, did you die? You didn't, okay. And things still got done amazing. Why don't we try a month? And then now it's just the stated way of being and it is utterly delightful. Because again, I, I, just like you said, I was afraid that if this, this dark energy was what was driving me.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  And, but that was the Darth Vader and being more of a Jedi still allows you to be effective and truly driven by love. And I feel deeper connections with my family, my team, myself. And it doesn't feel like everything is an existential threat to my identity.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  And, and Kwame, the, you know, the, the thing you're saying is so common. I can't tell you how many heads of sales or CEOs I've talked to who say that they think stress gives them their performance edge. And the fear gives them their whole edge and they are terrified about letting, of letting that go because again, they think I'm no longer going to achieve. Now, we do want to acknowledge that a lot of high achievers are pushed there through their fears, right? We know that. But we also know that sage leadership is far more profound and is capable of the, when people ask me for, you know, one of, who is my model for sage achievement, I, I

• 38:07Speaker 01

  mention Nelson Mandela, who in every way embodied what we are talking about. He was always coming from love, never ever, ever let go of very, very lofty achievement orientation and goal orientation. But it always was coming from love, which meant, for example, that when he was in jail, instead of feeling hate towards his jailers, he bring in, he brought in the sage empathy, power, empathize, what, let me understand this jailer, what is it in them that has me, has them do what, what it is that they're doing? By, and by that, understanding the other side, that was a huge part of his leadership

• 38:51Speaker 01

  and strategy to liberate his whole country. And after he liberated his country, that there was a truth and reconciliation modality of again, really living to, coexisting together, right? And try to, to kill the other side. And it just was so much of what's possible with sage leadership, rather than the, the traditional modes of leadership that we know.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, so true. Powerful example, powerful. So for the people listening, I hope that changed your mind when, when it comes to the way that you operate and also gave you hope. And also if you listened and you said, hey, I haven't heard my saboteur, that's because we haven't finished it yet. So we have the judge, the avoider, controller, hyper achiever, and then what's next?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  It's another hyper, it's a hyper rational. Again, is rational mind a good thing? It's absolutely an awesome, awesome, awesome tool. Hyper rational means you're overusing the rational mind in times and places where it actually isn't the right tool, it backfires. As an example, when you are, I can't tell, I was, you know, coaching the CEO who was hyper rational, he invited me to help him with his marriage. So I, he was there with his wife and she went on for like five minutes, really frustrated, very emotional, talking about what had been very helpful to, very hurtful to her. And in this hyper rational mode, at the end of all of that, he said with his arms crossed,

• 40:24Speaker 01

  yeah, I hear you, there are these three ways we can fix the problem. I mean, with that level of coldness and analysis, and she wanted to reach out and strangle him because. In his rational mode, he was not able to hear, to empathize, to have the other person feel cared for. The rational mind is absolutely a horrible place to lead with. When it comes to things such as conflict, because in conflict, the other party wants to feel heard and seen in their emotions first and foremost. And I know Kwame, in your even negotiation work, that was the first step that you had in your compassionate negotiation work is hear the other person's emotion, feel their emotion, acknowledge their emotion.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  That's all the empathy card of the sage. So the hyper rational destroys relationships, destroys trust, destroys loyalty. All of these important things in leadership and in relationships are matters of the heart, not matters of the rational mind. Inspiration, motivation, trust.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  All of these are matters of the heart, not the mind. And they require a different part of you, the empathic part of you, not the rational part of you. So the hyper rational basically does a lot of damage to relationships as a leader and as a human.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  Try this, pull up your notes from a meeting last week. Do they still make sense? Or do they just seem like random notes that only the old version of you could decode? That used to be me. And as a negotiator, that's a real problem because my job is to listen, not type or write notes. That's why Granola has been one of my favorite tools, period. It's an AI powered notepad. I jot my usual rough notes and then Granola securely transcribes the meeting in the background. And when it ends, I get clean, structured notes that still make sense a week later. Decisions, owners, next steps, everything that I would need to feel good about going forward. And it works through your device's audio too. So there's no additional setup or any annoying AI joining your call. Just your normal meeting, but with superpowers.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just go to granola.ai/kwami. That's granola.ai/kwami to get your time back. Get three months free at granola.ai/kwami. Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well made. And my first thought was, who else on my list needs one? Quince makes high quality staples with 100% Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather. And their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. All of it is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen.

• 43:14Speaker 00

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• 43:59Speaker 00

  hyper rational, the example that you gave is perfect. People are, again, it's led with fear. The fear of what? It seems like in that, in that case, it's the fear of deep connection and also vulnerability. See, being able to be seen on a deep level with such clarity. Because there might be a concern that if I connect with somebody with that level of depth and vulnerability and give legitimacy to that vulnerability in them, then they might want that from me and I'm not comfortable doing that. So it's easier to hide back, hide behind the hyper rational mindset and optimize, just focus on optimization and outcome oriented perspective instead of actually connecting.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot there Kwame, and it's different from person to person. But I can give you my own example. I had the hyper rational, that's one of my highest ones. In my case, how did it become my tendency?

• 44:57Speaker 01

  The, I was living in an environment where my feelings were all painful feelings. Feeling sad, feeling rejected, feeling depressed, all of those things, feeling unwanted. So emotions were not the safe place for me to go to. On the other hand, the rational place was a place where I could control the outcome, where I could be the smart kid in class and the teachers would love me as a smart kid in the class. I would get acknowledgement and all that stuff. So the rational mind got me goodies. It got me respect. It got me attention and it got me a place where I could control the outcome, not have to be with these nasty things called emotion that are too often painful.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  And I had to learn and it, and as a hyper rational adult, I destroyed quite a few relationships before I realized, oh, that was helpful as a defense as a child. But right now it's destroying my relationships. And, and then back to your point, being willing to actually come from emotion, connect with somebody else and being the messiness, emotions are a messy thing. We can't control them. So if you go into that, that territory, then you got to be willing to actually remain present with somebody and allow this to go where it wants to go rather than trying to control things with a rational outcome.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  So true, so true. Okay, nice. Next, number six.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  It's my third and final hyper, it's hyper vigilant. So again, is it good to be vigilant? It's absolutely great to be vigilant. The problem with hyper vigilant is that it finds risks and danger in everything. And it's always anxious about so many things that could go wrong. And as you worry about everything being able to go wrong and trying to protect yourself against them, your focus is diluted. So you actually don't have enough focus on the few things where you do need to be vigilant. So in being hyper vigilant, you actually are not vigilant enough about the few things where true danger exists because you're wasting too much time on things where you really should let go and not worry so much and know that you can manage things even if they did go wrong.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Would it be possible for somebody to live a life where they, they have their, their typical saboteurs, they have their go to, whatever it happens to be, but then something shifts and then boom, something else becomes a dominant saboteur for a long and pervasive time?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  We typically have people work on the judge plus a couple of other saboteurs. So, so typically we don't focus on one saboteur. We focus on a couple, sometimes top three. And sometimes people have different saboteurs at work versus home, like somebody who is very controlling at work, that takes so much energy out of them that they go home and say, I don't want to deal with anything. I'm just going to be avoider here and I, I just want to have a job because I have just exhausted myself being a controller. So they end up being an avoider at, at, at home, which is a very different thing, right? And, and so we have people focus on two or three.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  The beauty of the work is that when you focus on the judge plus one or two other saboteurs, the impact rewires your whole brain so much that all of your saboteurs lose power because you're just shifting brain activation from saboteur to sage. So all of your other saboteurs also begin to lose power. One other answer to your question is that as you work on a top saboteur, it ends up no longer being your top saboteur after a while. So for example, victim was one of my top saboteurs, again, in clinical depression for 30 years. And now, since I worked on my victim, it's, it's absolutely my lowest bottom saboteur. I barely noticed the victim in her.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  And so saboteurs do change in response to your question. Their top ones, as you weaken the top one, then something else becomes your top one.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And again, that gives us a lot of hope as well that we can make that shift. And then I know for me, the reason I ask is because I was not hyper vigilant before. I'm very relaxed. I even asked Simone, when it comes to work, I'm very chill. But it was when I had kids that I became hyper vigilant. I became just obsessive. I bought this, this baby helmet for the baby. They didn't, they didn't need it, but I'm like, no. Giving the baby's helmet, cutting their berries into like six pieces. And I'm like, who, who have I become? It became, I got insomnia. It was very hard to just relax. I'm getting, I'm better at it now, but that, that one caught me off guard because it wasn't

• 49:46Speaker 00

  one that I had before, but just boom, instantly changed me.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  You're mentioning, mentioning the classical biggest shift in saboteur, which is exactly in hyper vigilant, happening to a lot of parents. That's exactly the thing we notice the most.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Clearly, again, where does that come from? From survival over millions of years of evolution, it had, it had an evolutionary survival. And imagine the opposite of hyper vigilant, the complete opposite is a parent that's just too cool and doesn't pay attention to any of the dangers. And also does that do to their kid's survival chances? So it's an overuse of a helpful thing called vigilance.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  This is magical. Thank you. I'm loving this. Okay. So we have six and now seven.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Okay, then we have the pleaser. And once again, the question is, what is the strength that's taken too far to become the pleaser? I have this one.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  I was born with this natural tendency to be very kind of giving and kind and sensitive, which is an obviously awesome strength, which is something that has been incredibly helpful for me, being effective as a coach and as a leader. Taken too far, it becomes a pleaser saboteur where I won't say no to requests, where I don't hold enough boundaries, where I don't push back, where I don't give somebody challenging feedback about their performance or whatever. And I, and the problem with the pleaser is that, you know, you do these things in order for people to like you. And at some point you get very resentful because you keep giving and giving and giving and they're not giving back enough to you because you don't even ask for what you need.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  And at some point you just blow up and get resentful that you just give and give and give and give and people are taking advantage. Well, you, you've set it all up as a pleaser and then people are surprised by you get so frustrated and upset sometimes when you don't want to give anymore. So that's the pleaser.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  Yep, I, and I think a lot of folks, especially the negotiate, any, anything, audience can relate to that, too. Because people pleasing is one of the things that holds people back. You would think about people pleasing in conjunction with the avoider, potentially. You got, have that, that fear of engaging in meaningful, productive conflict.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You don't ask for your, your side and then you feel resentful for it.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  Yep, yep. And then what's after the pleaser?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  After that, we got the restless and restless is also a relatively universal saboteur where we all have a restless mind to some extent. The Buddhists call the mind the monkey brain because it jumps from branch to branch to branch. And the problem with restless is that, yeah, it takes it even too far, far and the restless has this fear of missing out. And no matter what's, where you are and what's in front of you, you think the next thing is going to be more interesting. So you're never fully present for what's in front of you. Uh, the restless claims that this is the way to make sure by jumping from one thing to another, to another, to another.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  This is how you're gonna maximize the joy and benefits of life. The problem is it does exactly the opposite because you're never really present for what's in front of you. So you're minimizing the joy and what it is you can get out of life, not maximizing. And it's, it's just, uh, it's just, uh, also very devastating for relationships because people don't feel you're really present with them. And also for performance, because you don't finish too often. You start too many things. You don't finish them. Uh, enough of them. And so people come to not quite rely on your ability to, for follow through and things like that.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Wow. Yeah, but how do you get over that? That, that, that one seems like particularly challenging.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, uh, for all of the saboteurs, uh, we have a three-step process. The first step is

• 54:05Speaker 01

  intercept your saboteurs, acknowledge that you're in saboteur mode. And say to yourself, oh, that's my saboteur talking. I'm not gonna listen to it. So that's the intercepting your saboteur. The second thing that we do then is do these 10-second exercises that quiet the saboteur brain and energize your sage brain. The third step is, well, now that you've energized your sage brain and you can access, uh, those five sage powers and respond with the sage power. Uh, the, the Jedi power, so to speak. So, so let's talk about that second step, which is how do you, how do you energize the sage brain?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  And, uh, there are these 10-second exercises we call PQ reps. PQ is an abbreviation of positive intelligence quotient. So, uh, positive intelligence is the body of work and this research. PQ stands for positive intelligence quotient. And a PQ rap is these 10-second exercises that quiet the saboteur region, energize the sage brain region. And it's, they're particularly helpful for the restless. They're helpful for all the saboteurs, but really, really, really helpful for the restless. And so we can practice some of this with, uh, you know, with your audience right now. So, um, if you take two fingertips, gently

• 55:28Speaker 01

  take two fingertips and gently rub two fingertips against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertip ridges on both fingers. Gently rub two fingertips against each other with such attention that you can feel the fingertip ridges on both fingers.

• 55:48Speaker 00

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• 56:30Speaker 00

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• 57:44Speaker 01

  Great. So that was like 10 second, uh, one PQ rap. And if we had your head under functional MRI machine, we would have noticed that even with just this one PQ rap, you ever so slightly quieted the saboteur region of the brain and ever so slightly energized the sage power of the brain. And, and, and you also brought, uh, calm to your mind, rather the opposite of restlessness. Uh, and the, the impact is that you're going from a brain that's just running you to exercising self-command. So you're building your muscle of self-command. I am in command over my mind. My mind is not gonna run the show with its saboteurs.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Now, one, uh, one PQ rap is not gonna change your life, world. But imagine if you did a lot of them, just like one Dumbo rap for the muscle of your bicep is not gonna build that muscle. But what if you did 50 of them a day? There's no way that in a few months you will not have significant muscle. Same exact thing for your brain. So if you did a bunch of these PQ reps and we have people do a bunch of them throughout their life, throughout their day. And we just did one as we're interacting with each other. I just did one with you and I was doing it myself. You can, so you can really spread them throughout the day. There's no way that your brain will not be rewired in a way that your, all of your sage muscles are more accessible and your saboteurs start atrophying.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  This is brilliant. I was, I was actually taken aback by how in-depth I started to get with this, with this exercise. I really, it was almost as if I forgot I was here doing a podcast and then your voice, when you brought me back, interrupted. I was like, what am I, who said that? I got really.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, because your focus went, that's exactly it, right? You became incredibly focused.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  And, uh, and that's the whole idea, self-command. You exercise self-command. Your mind was kind of running its thing with chatter and then you commanded your mind to become that present. And so it builds the muscle of self-command. It's, it activates part of your middle prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of that self-command activity of the sage. And we end up, one of the interesting things that might be interesting for your audience is your brain produces somewhere within 10,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. That's how restless it is. 10,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. That's how restless our mind is.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  And most of those thoughts are, are useless and many of those thoughts are actually harmful. And how many of those thoughts are very useful?

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Such a good point. Let's do nine and 10 with the sabote, saboteurs.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yes. Two more saboteurs left. Uh, the, uh, next one is stickler. So stickler is a, is a, uh, is taking, uh, perfectionism too far. And where everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be neat and organized. And that's a lot of stress for the person who has a sticker saboteur and also those around them. Things are never good enough. And the problem is when you try to make everything perfect, you just spread yourself thin. So the few things that were perfection is important are gonna suffer. And so instead of that, we have, you know, people of the sticker saboteur come up with an 80/20

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  box and say, what's the 20% of things where things really do need to be almost perfect? And what's the other 80% category where good enough is good enough? Good enough is good enough. Relax. Don't torment yourself and others all the time because everything has to be in perfect order. Life, otherwise will be very stressful. And so that, so sticker is perfectionism taken too far. Uh, and finally, the victim saboteur?

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  And the victim saboteur, this is one where people tend to understand that, well, because we all have somebody who prays victim all the time. And it's victim saboteur is about constantly finding that life or others are treating you particularly unfairly. And that you're always complaining about what's being done to you by life or others. And, uh, either bringing yourself pity or asking for others to bring pity and attention to you. And I know that this, well, this saboteur was my number one. And I now know exactly why I had it. Or the reason I had it is I wasn't getting a lot of love and attention from my parents.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  And so in the absence of love, uh, the victim saboteur actually brought me, uh, that pity, which I found very soothing. So what I find is that pity is actually really soothing in the absence of love. There's a soothing, uh, thing that, that happens with that self-pity. And at some point as an adult, I realized, you know what? I actually deserve love, not pity. And so I, I stopped saying, I stopped just asking for pity for, for myself or from others. And said, I actually deserve love, not pity. So that's when I stopped really, uh, believing that I needed the victim saboteur to soothe myself.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Very interesting, this especially the nexus between pity and love. And it's almost as if we, we know we want to nourish ourselves with something and we pick something that it's almost like artificial sweetener versus sugar.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  Right? This is, it seems, and tell me if I'm off on this because it seems that with the person who is the victim, sometimes if you play the victim role very well, you can almost get a, a sense of status from the constant attention you're getting, being seen as a victim. And then other people, I mean, everybody's brain is plastic in some kind of way. And so they get used to seeing you as the victim and they get used to interacting with you with pity, because that's what you want and that's what they give. And so it sounds like with the victim saboteur in particular, this could be particularly difficult because

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  you have to not just renegotiate your relationship with yourself and become the Jedi, but at the same time, you have to renegotiate your relationship with others. Because in many ways, they might have gotten used to, familiar with, and maybe even comforted by you having a consistently subordinate position. And now you're fueled by love, you have more self-love and you can see yourself at a higher level. They might not be comfortable with that.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Actually, Kwame, what you're saying is relatively universal. Wisdom applied to all of the saboteurs. And every saboteur becomes part of our identity. And then people interact with us with that identity. And what gets very interesting is how that works within relationships. So for example, very often, the person who has the controller saboteur doesn't marry another controller because somebody's gonna kill somebody. So people who have a very strong charging controller saboteur tend to marry people who have softer saboteurs, such as avoider or pleaser.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Because then there is a complementary nature of what's happening. And the reason that that happens, by the way, is not, if you're not attracted to and fall in love with the other person's saboteur, you're actually attracted to and falling in love with the other person's natural strengths. And like I was saying before, the person who has a controller saboteur has a very different natural strength than the person who has the avoider saboteur. We get drawn to the other person for those strengths and fall in love with that, and that's a sage strength. At some point, because that person is overusing those strengths in the form of their saboteurs, then we start really getting pissed at seeing that saboteur and what happened here. You know, what you changed, the person didn't change.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Previously, you were bringing out the sage in each other. And now you're bringing out the saboteur in each other, which is the overuse of those natural strengths that draws to somebody.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Wow, incredible, incredible. I could talk to you about this forever, my friend. This is so helpful and I know you already know this. You've helped millions of people. I'm so glad that you stopped by our show to, to help our audience. Before you go, let's, let's end with something a little bit visionary here. Because we talked about what brought you back into this, sharing this at, at scale. And I appreciate that you did. Hypothetically, if the, if people were to listen to this and put it into their life and meaningfully incorporate that. And we get to that magical Pareto principle where eighty percent of the people in the world have, are, are being led by love, not fear.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  Eighty percent of the people in the world have mastered that Jedi mind. What changes in the world?

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  On our website, we even have this as a statement of our vision. I invite people to imagine what happens to our world where every child is brought up with mental fitness, where they learn that they cannot trust every voice in their head, that some of those are saboteur voices. And they learn that they have an inner Jedi, inner sage, and that they can build those muscles. What happens to that kid's ability to withstand bullying, withstand, you know, bad teaching or potentially even flawed parenting? What kind of relationships were those kids form with, with their, with, with their peers? What kind of community do they get to build?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  When they become adults, what kind of politicians will they vote for? So just imagine what happens to our planet if mental fitness becomes as widespread as physical fitness is today. With our educators, with our parents, with our kids, with our politicians, with our leaders. It will absolutely transform our world. There will not, not be these wars. There will not be all of the toxic politics that we have. And there will be a very different approach to, to, to life. So that's, that will fundamentally change our planet. And we don't need to get to eighty percent of people. Actually, Malcolm Gladwell has the, has the idea of tipping point.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  So it needs to be a critical mass that causes a tipping point. Because sage can be quite profoundly contagious. And the reason is, again, the reason we love Star Wars is because we have a longing for the Jedi to win. And that's not just for Star Wars, that's just also we have a longing for our inner Jedi to step in and to take charge of our lives. So this work, the sage stepping into sage becomes contagious for those around us. When they see it happening with us, they want some of that too. That's how this has become, you know, contagious within my family, with my kids. They have, this has become the biggest part of my parenting. Because my kid saw me do this work and said, I want some of that too. How are you doing it, right?

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  And my company and everywhere I go. So I hope we're gonna create a sage contagion, the Jedi contagion that the world needs so much with this work. And, and Kwame, as, as just the one step of what can people do? The most important, simple first step is just become aware of your saboteurs. How do you do that? There's, just do the five-minute online saboteur assessment. It's free. Five-minute online saboteur assessment. The place to find it is posimturs.com/assessment. Posimturs.com/assessment. And that's where you get to find out who your saboteurs are. And that awareness alone is gonna begin the shift for you.

• 1:10:04Speaker 00

  Yes. Oh, and a quick thing too, because I've, I did it today. And I, I've done it years in the past. And it was very interesting to see how things shifted. I said, oh, I did work on that. Oh, no, this is, this is bad. I gotta work on that. So we're, we're constantly growing and evolving here. So I appreciate that. So definitely check, take the quiz and we will link to that in the description.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Awesome, awesome. Pleasure, pleasure getting to meet you, Kwame.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  Yes, likewise. Oh, my gosh, this is so great.