Is Marriage Dying? & How Top Performers Build Confidence

Most people have heard of the "dark web," but what exactly is it? Is it really a hidden corner of the internet where criminals and bad actors operate beyond the reach of law enforcement? And what about the "deep web"—is that the same thing? These terms are often used interchangeably, but they mean very different things. Understanding the difference offers a fascinating glimpse into how the internet really works. https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/what-dark-web You often hear that fewer people are getting married, that younger generations have lost interest in marriage, or that marriage itself is slowly fading away. The reality is much more interesting. Marriage is not disappearing—it is evolving. People are marrying later, expecting different things from marriage than previous generations did, and redefining what a successful marriage looks like. At the same time, marriage remains one of the most important relationships in people's lives. So what is changing, what isn't, and what does the future of marriage look like? For some answers we turn to Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families and author of For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage (https://amzn.to/440TQpK). We've all seen people who seem to possess an extraordinary level of confidence. Elite athletes, military leaders, top executives, first responders—people who perform under enormous pressure yet appear calm, focused, and absolutely certain they can handle whatever comes next. According to Dr. Nate Zinsser, the kind of confidence is a skill that can be deliberately built, strengthened, and maintained. Drawing on decades of experience training soldiers, athletes, executives, and emergency personnel, Dr. Zinsser explains where genuine confidence comes from, and how anyone can develop the mental habits that lead to stronger performance under pressure. Dr. Zinsser is Director of the Performance Psychology Program at West Point and author of The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance (https://amzn.to/4xAOwqS) Most dog owners believe a hug is a universal sign of affection. Your dog may not agree. While dogs are often expressive about their emotions, humans frequently misread what those emotions mean. Understanding how dogs communicate—and how they interpret our behavior—can help prevent misunderstandings that sometimes lead to stress, anxiety, or even aggression. Source: Stanley Coren, author of How to Speak Dog (https://amzn.to/4e07aAL). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS POCKET HOSE: For a limited time, when you purchase a new Pocket Hose Ballistic, you'll get a FREE 360 degree rotating pocket pivot and a FREE thumb drive nozzle! Just text SYSK to 64000 AIR DOCTOR: Head to ⁠https://AirDoctorPro.com⁠ and use promo code SYSK to get $250 off select AirDoctor air purifiers, including the 3500, 4000, and 5500 models. Plus, you’ll receive a free 3year warranty! RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that’s actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 0:30Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know. What's the dark web or the deep web? And who's using it? Can you use it? Then, is marriage dying? Apparently not, but it is changing.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  Let's put it this way. Fewer than 10% of people say they don't want to get married. But what you have increasingly is quite a number of people who say they have no idea if they actually will get married.

• 0:57Mike Carruthers?

  Also, you may likely be misreading your dog's emotions. And one of the world's leading experts on how to build and maintain an unshakable belief in your abilities.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  The idea is to cultivate a sense of certainty about your ability that allows you to bypass or ignore a lot of conscious analytical thought and simply execute almost unconsciously.

• 1:25Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:29Mike Carruthers?

  Now here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in shop cash. But not to one person. 1,000 people will each win $1,000 in shop cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for,

• 2:14Mike Carruthers?

  and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000...

• 2:29Mike Carruthers?

  I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today. Something You Should Know. With Mike Carruthers.

• 3:08Mike Carruthers?

  You've probably heard of the dark web, or the deep web. But do you really know what those terms mean? I didn't. So that's what we're going to start this episode of Something You Should Know with. So when you hear the term "the dark web," it sounds like some sinister, underground version of the Internet where criminals are buying and selling illegal things. And while some of that does happen, the reality is a lot more interesting. First, the dark web is not the same thing as the deep web, even though people often use the terms interchangeably. The deep web is simply all of the online content that search engines don't index.

• 3:48Mike Carruthers?

  Your email inbox, online bank accounts, medical records, subscription content, and company databases are all part of the deep web. In fact, most of the Internet is deep web content. The dark web is a much smaller piece of it. It consists of websites that require special software, most commonly a browser called Tor, to access. Tor routes Internet traffic through multiple computers around the world to make it much harder to identify who is visiting a site and who is operating it. That anonymity attracts criminals, but it also attracts journalists, political dissidents, whistleblowers, and ordinary people who simply value privacy.

• 4:33Mike Carruthers?

  In countries where governments censor the Internet or monitor citizens, the dark web can provide one of the few ways to communicate freely. So despite its spooky reputation, the dark web isn't inherently illegal. It's really just a privacy tool. What matters is what people do with it. And that is something you should know.

• 4:59Mike Carruthers?

  Marriage seems to have an image problem these days. Fewer people are getting married, many are waiting until much later in life. Birth rates are falling, and more people are choosing to remain single altogether. If you listen to some commentators, marriage is becoming obsolete, a relic from another era that is slowly disappearing. But is that really what's happening? Has marriage lost its relevance? Or is it simply evolving into something different than it used to be? Joining me to sort out the myths, the realities, and what the future may hold is Stephanie Koontz. She is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families.

• 5:40Mike Carruthers?

  She's written extensively for publications including The New York Times, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal. And she's author of a book called For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage. Hi Stephanie, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Thank you, Mike.

• 5:58Mike Carruthers?

  So despite what you hear people say, what is the state of marriage today? Is it going the way of the dinosaur? Is marriage dead? Is marriage very much alive? What is it?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Certainly, marriage is not dead. Yes, back in the 1950s, more people married. 94% of them married before they reached their 35th birthday. Only 5% of them never married at all. The average age of marriage was under 21 for a woman, and under 23 for a boy. So when you look at what's happening to now, you still get 80, 85% of Americans half-wed at some point, but that's not until they reach their 50s and 60s. So of course it looks like marriage is collapsing if you just say how many, you know, what's the rate of marriage per single people in the population. So I don't think marriage is collapsing.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  It's obviously more voluntary than it used to be. Divorce rates have been falling since 1980, since they hit their high point in 1980, but they're not going to disappear. What's Interesting to me, though, is that for all the talk about marriage being obsolete, most people still believe it is the most rigorous, highest commitment that they can enter into. Parents whose kids marry, respect them more than if the kids are living together, and that goes for the parents of same-sex couples and heterosexual couples. Most people still say they want to marry. Only eight to 10% say they definitely do not want to marry.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  But what we have seen that's interesting is a big increase in the number of people who say, "Well, I don't know if I actually will get married, even though I might like to." And that increase has been the greatest among young women. That's a real, a real turn, because it used to be that men were the ones who were saying, "Well, I don't know if I'll get married."

• 7:59Mike Carruthers?

  You had said that eighty-something percent of people still say they want to get married, but how does that break down by gender?

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Let's put it this way. Fewer than 10% of people say they don't want to get married. But what you have increasingly is quite a number of people who say they've no idea if they actually will get married. And what's interesting to me is that that also goes along with a lot fewer people are saying that they are absolutely confident they would be a good spouse. So I think what's going on here is we have much higher expectations of marriage, and people are not entirely sure that they're going to be able to make them. And one big reversal in history is that it's now women who are less certain that they will actually end up married, even though they don't necessarily want to stay single.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  They're much more likely than boys now to say, "Well, I have no idea if I'll actually end up married." And I think that's in large part because that women's expectations of marriage and their relationships to men are changing faster than men's relationships with women and their expectations of themselves and of women.

• 9:09Mike Carruthers?

  So how in this discussion, because a big part of marriage is parenting, how much is the desire to be a parent tied up in this desire or not desire to get married?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Well, that's a very interesting question because both young men and young women tend to want to have children, but young men want it much more than young women. And I think, again, it's not because women don't necessarily want them, but because they have higher expectations of sharing the work of childcare and the joys of childcare. So they are looking around at what's been happening to their parents and other people in the society, and they are saying, "I would love a marriage if it really involves a man who's going to completely share child raising with me, but if not, I can do without."

• 10:09Speaker 02

  And some are saying, "Well, I can do it alone," but many are saying, "Well, I just don't need to have children if it's just going to be the kind of hassle that I hear it is with so many older women complaining and leaving their husbands."

• 10:21Mike Carruthers?

  That really surprises me and a lot of other people listening. I think that women are less likely to want to have children than men are, just because my sense is that the maternal instinct is stronger than the paternal instinct, but, you know, I don't know why I think that, but I do think that.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Well, I'm, you know, I don't deny that there are instincts, but I think so much is socially embedded in us, and I think that men and women both have the potential to want to be with babies, and it has remarkable effects that we can talk about at some point. Caring for babies actively, not just looking on while your wife changes diapers, has tremendous effects on men's hormones and their emotions.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  But I think the reason women are having trouble with it is because they are now expecting to play a role in the outside world much greater than we have been assigned for the past 200, 300 years. And so if they're going to play an equal role in the outside world, they're expecting that they want help, an equal help in the inside world and with kids. And so a lot of the young people I've talked to, a lot of my students over the years, have said to me, yes, I want kids. And when they find a guy who wants them to and who they think is really going to step up to the plate, they tend to have them.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  But they also tend to wait and see how the relationship is going. They watch other people whose relationship's founder. And in fact, having children, which used to be, you know, bragged about bringing parents closer, is now, it triggers a lot of extra conflicts in a marriage. And so when they see that, they begin to say, well, maybe not, maybe not.

• 12:18Mike Carruthers?

  When women say that, you know, now that I'm required to do more outside the house, I have a job and everything else, so I want a man who's going to share in the responsibility. In that conversation, are women saying that they would rather not have more responsibility outside the house and they would be content to be a wife and a mom? Or they like having the responsibility outside the house, they just want more help inside the house?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  There's a lot of variability in that. And of course, we're hearing a lot now from people who think that it's just too much trouble to get the men to help them out. But what I see most frequently, and I read about it in terms of people's complaints about marriage, is that women really do want, they have the same sort of aspirations to develop themselves and their talents, as men have always been encouraged to have. And when a child comes, they really want to dig in and help that child, but they really want more of their father to. And unfortunately, because of all the years that we have organized families differently, it's very hard for men to learn to do this.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  I mean, a lot, I, I'm, maybe I'm a softie on this, but a lot of women talk about how lazy men are and how they're not in tune. And I just think to talk to people, explain to people the kind of earworms that have been handed down to us, all of these traditions, assumptions about who likes what, who can do what. I call them earworms because they echo in our head and they kind of get in the way of building new melodies, new way, new rhythms to work together. So it may not always be that the men are intentionally not stepping up to the plate, but they and the whole way that society is organized means that, that they can't step up to the plate. Let me give you an example.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  It makes a lot of sense in a heterosexual marriage for the woman who bears the child to stay home in the early days. You know, you've got, you know, it was quite a physical thing, you may be nursing. And so it makes a lot of sense. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be that way forever. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to not be able to continue your work. But the longer it goes on, the more tempting it is for people to see the mother as the one who is the person in charge of the child. And if the man is out of the home, even with the best intentions, he doesn't understand just how much work and how urgently that work has to be done.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  So you begin to get into this pattern that may not be at all conscious on either people's part. But if you don't actually say, no, this is something that will happen to us, given the way our work is organized and the way childcare works in society, we have to actively fight against this happening. And that takes a lot of thought.

• 15:25Mike Carruthers?

  If I heard you right, you said that many single women fear that in marriage, men would take a backseat when it comes to housework and child rearing. And I want to explore that a little deeper in just a moment because I think, or I thought, that that had changed.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot, designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network. And no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 16:41Mike Carruthers?

  We're discussing the state of and the future of marriage with Stephanie Koontz. She's Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families and author of the book, For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage. So Stephanie, I want to explore more about this idea that women are concerned that men will leave most of the housework and the child-rearing chores to women. Is that still the case? Because it seems like that that has changed somewhat in the last 50 years, 60 years. Yes?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  The usual claim about men is that they often say, "Well, I'd like to do this, but I need teaching." You know, the learned helplessness. But, you know, we women also have a learned helpfulness. We, you know, get to be the experts in the early days of child rearing. And sometimes we think that everybody should do it our way. You know, it's called gatekeeping. You know, Mike, I've talked about this problem for years. And yet, just last, a couple of years ago, when my grandson started, fairly newborn grandson, started crying in the other room with my husband was there, I swooped into the room, took the baby out of his arms, you know,

• 18:03Speaker 02

  and he just looked at me with his jaw open, like, "What's wrong with you? What kind of feminist are you? That you wouldn't trust me to hold the baby." And I said, "Oh." So, you know, I sometimes reload the dishwasher. So, we're trying to do something that has not been done before. And we have to get out of the habits and assumptions and ways that society is organized that encourage men not to notice the little things that need doing, not to plan for them, not to do the emotional and planning work of family life, and that keep, you know,

• 18:44Speaker 02

  being earworms in women and making them do that even when they need to maybe walk away and let the man do it as best he can until he learns to do it.

• 18:54Mike Carruthers?

  But it's not just necessarily until he learns to do it. And you just said a moment ago that you felt compelled to take the baby from your husband as if he didn't know how to do it. And then you also said you sometimes reload the dishwasher. And I infer from that that your husband loaded the dishwasher and you felt compelled to somehow fix that, that somehow the way he loaded it, the dishes wouldn't have gotten clean. So it isn't just a matter of men learning to do it, but it's also about women learning that men don't always do it their way or maybe up to the same standard. And that's important.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Well, yes, it is. I'm fortunate to have grown up so that I really don't care if the bed gets made every day. My husband does care, so he makes it. But it is also true that we need to have a little kind of negotiation about that. I think that there's a book called Fair Play that Haley Swenson from the Better Life Lab, who wrote a wonderful afterword for my book, talks about in her little piece about how you have to divide up the chores or redistribute them in ways that... The person doing it takes full responsibility for all of that chore. And you have to decide on the minimum standards for those chores. So that's a negotiation process.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  What are the minimum standards for cleaning up after dinner? If someone wants to go further than the minimum standards, fine. They can't pretend that you need to do that, too. If they want to do less, however, you did have an agreement and you gotta live up to that. So that's that important part of negotiation. I mean, I'll just use my own marriage as an example. I really don't care if the bed gets made. But I am an avid cook and I spend lots and lots of time on cooking and cooking preparation. And there was a period when I felt kind of resentful that my husband didn't come in and when I was cooking like a major meal that he didn't care about having

• 21:04Speaker 02

  and help along and do the grunt work for me. And then I realized, you can't do that. If he doesn't care and he doesn't want that, you're doing this mostly to give pleasure to yourself. You can't just assign the grunt work to him. It has to be, if you're gonna get pleasure out of this meal, you have to be able to say, I can do the grunt work as well as the fun fancy stuff and flame it at the end and get all the applause for it. So that's the kind of self-examination both partners need to do and the kind of negotiation and compromise they need to do when they're talking about chores. One thing that same-sex couples can really teach heterosexual couples

• 21:47Speaker 02

  is they don't have the same sort of expectation that one partner because he's a boy and one because she's a girl have certain kind of skills or interests. So they tend to divide chores much more thoughtfully.

• 22:03Mike Carruthers?

  You know what statistic I would love to hear? And I don't know if anyone's ever done this. But people talk about, and you've talked about, those who think they will get married, or they won't get married, or they wanna get married, or they don't wanna get married. But I wonder... Towards the end of a person's life, someone who did or maybe didn't get married, was there a regret?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  There's a lot of debate about that, and it depends what the reasons for for your choice. But there's actually very solid research that shows that people who choose not to get married because they want to, not because they've been rejected over and over again, or the kind of person that don't have friends, those people tend to build very wide friendship networks, wider than most married couples. And to the extent that they have done that, that's what counts. And in fact, I quote research in the book, that it's really by the time you get into old age, it's your friendship networks even more than your marriage partner that decides how you're doing.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  A good marriage partner will help you sustain good friendship networks. But many times, couples fall into this kind of isolating thing that can be quite bad for them because they are not reaching out and getting that feedback and revitalization from people with new ideas and different things to do.

• 23:32Mike Carruthers?

  So wrap this up, and just based on all the research you've done, what do you think of marriage today and maybe looking off into the future?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  I don't think that marriage is dead. Most people do continue to marry, though at much older ages. Two-thirds of people who divorce go on and marry again. But what we have to understand, and what so many of the family values promoters and, you know, the ones who are having hysteria about all the choices that are left, forget, marriage at this point is never again going to be the main institution that organizes people's lives, that society can count on to say, "Oh, I know what you're doing and what you need." It's not going to be the main institution in which all people's major life decisions are made.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Or their major personal responsibilities are carried out. So we have to adjust our thinking to a way of supporting marriages partnerships and recognizing that people will live longer lives outside of marriage and incur important social and personal obligations outside of marriage. And maybe we need to take responsibility and start thinking about how we serve all our people's needs, whether they're married or not.

• 25:01Mike Carruthers?

  You know, it's easy to view marriage through your own personal lens and assume that that's how it is in the world, but but clearly there's a lot of different ways marriage does and doesn't work. And I appreciate you exploring that with us with with some real research. Stephanie Kuntz has been my guest. She's Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families and author of the book For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Stephanie, thank you for being here.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks so much, Mike.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  Visible puts the ultimate wireless hack in the palm of your hand. With unlimited 5G wireless data and hotspot designed to keep you connected, powered by Verizon's 5G network, and no contract holding you back. Plans start at $25 a month, or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month when you use promo code HACK. Make the switch at visible.com. Terms apply. See visible.com for details.

• 26:37Mike Carruthers?

  There are people who seem to have an almost unshakable belief in themselves. They walk into a job interview, or give a presentation, compete in a sporting event, or face some other challenge, and somehow, they just seem certain they can handle it. Most of us look at those people and assume, they must have been born that way. But according to my guest, confidence isn't something you're born with, it's something you build. And there are specific ways to strengthen it and make it more reliable, when you need it most. Dr. Nate Zinser has spent decades teaching soldiers, athletes, executives, and first responders, how to develop confidence and mental toughness under pressure.

• 27:22Mike Carruthers?

  He's director of the Performance Psychology Program at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and has consulted with the FBI Academy, US Army Recruiting Command, and the New York City Fire Department. He's author of a book called, "The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance." Hey Nate, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Hello Mike, what a delight it is to be on with you.

• 27:47Mike Carruthers?

  So I don't know if it's human nature, or what, but I think it's a very common experience, for people to, if they have something to do, something important, the outcome matters, that one of the first things they do is think, "What could go wrong? How do I keep it from going wrong?" That the focus is on, "What could go wrong?" And I think people do that, I know I've done that many times. So I want to get your thoughts on that.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Here are my thoughts, I'll start out with the very first thing that you mentioned. We're about to do something, that has a certain degree of importance.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  And our default seems like it's, okay, what could go wrong? How can I prevent it from going wrong? We have this almost characteristic habit of anticipating difficulty. This is a very human thing to do. This is a certain degree of biology for us, Mike. We have lived on this planet as human beings for hundreds of thousands of years under somewhat precarious survival circumstances. Our primitive ancestors were constantly looking over their shoulder. Where's the fresh water? Where are the tracks that will lead us to something that we can eat?

• 29:13Speaker 03

  So, to a certain extent, imagine in what could go wrong? And what are the difficulties? And what do I have to be careful about? In a way, that's been wired into us biologically. Now, on the other hand, and this is the good news, we are also, to a degree, biologically wired to have a streak of optimism. We will find the pure water. We will find the tracks that will lead us to the prey. A degree of optimism is also part of the human condition.

• 29:48Mike Carruthers?

  So, rather than thinking about, or maybe not rather, but in addition to thinking about what might go wrong, thinking about, I have what it takes to make it go right.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  I have, indeed, I have some capabilities. There are possibilities. But rather than just telling yourself, oh, I've got it. I've got it locked up. I can do fine. Everything's great. No, I think you have to be a little more systematic about that and be able to take whatever time and energy is required to look back into your past and say, okay, I have accomplished this task, which is somewhat related to the task before me now. I accomplished this other task. I have to be able to look back into my personal history.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  And just like an attorney in a trial, come up with evidence that supports the conviction, "Yeah, I can do it." To simply tell yourself, "Yeah, I can do it, yeah, I can do it, yeah, I can do it," without a sense of some underlying rationale, that's not particularly effective. But if I've done a good job reflecting on my previous experience, creating a sort of psychological bank account of constructive memories, et cetera, et cetera, then I can approach this new, somewhat challenging, important situation with a sense of, "Okay, I've got reasons to believe in myself."

• 31:21Mike Carruthers?

  And what is the best mechanism for doing that? Because you could think of things that you've done in the past that were great, and there are thoughts that come in your head, and then they disappear, and then you're back to thinking, "What could go wrong again?" So what's the format for doing this so that it sticks?

• 31:38Speaker 03

  I think the format is being somewhat formal about it. I encourage all of my clients to do a fairly deep dive into their professional past and come up with a list of their top 10 moments of performance. Those top 10 moments in your career, and then be equally formal, day by day by day, reflecting for five minutes. That's all it takes, five minutes on your day. What little things did I get right?

• 32:21Speaker 03

  If you're formal in that discussion with yourself, you're kind of creating a larger, larger psychological bank account.

• 32:30Mike Carruthers?

  A lot of what you talk about, and a lot of the work that you do, is with athletes. And I think what you're talking about seems to be more accepted in the sports world in terms of, you know, individual performance, team play, that kind of thing, less so in the non-sports world, where people think that, well, I think they've, I don't know what they think, but it's less accepted that that's not the way to do it. Maybe it is to improve your sprint time, but that's not the way to do it at the office.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Well, it's funny that you mention that, Mike, because thirty years ago, it wasn't well-accepted as a practice to improve, as you put it, your hundred-yard sprint time. When I began work with Eli Manning in 2007, we had to keep it quiet. There are very few people in the New York Giant pro football organization who knew that I was advising this rising star in these kinds of cognitive skills. But in the last twenty years, there's been an explosion,

• 33:45Speaker 03

  especially in the competitive sports world, in applied sports psychology. So there's been a dramatic increase of acceptance of this kind of practice in that world. To your question, though, is it less acceptable in the business world? That is rapidly changing, even as we speak. I have dozens of clients who are venture capitalists, sales managers, VPs of engineering, and the very same process is extremely valuable to these people in their, I call them "white-collar athletes."

• 34:27Mike Carruthers?

  Mention some of the people that you have worked with.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Certainly. I spent twelve seasons mentoring Eli Manning of the New York Giants. I spent twelve seasons mentoring various members of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey program. I am currently mentoring celebrity chefs, orthopedic surgeons, ophthalmologic surgeons, other professional football players, hockey players, basketball players. The list is very, very broad.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  And some of these people have been working with me for years and years just to maintain that competitive edge, to maintain that little bit of confidence and ease of being that often spells the difference between smashing success and an also-run performance.

• 35:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it is the title of your book, and we haven't really talked about the word "confidence." We've been talking about, you know, getting better at something or not sabotaging yourself. But where's the confidence? What are we trying to do with that?

• 35:39Speaker 03

  We're trying to establish a sense of certainty about our various abilities so that we can perform those tasks, we can execute those skills, we can show what we are able to do with a absolute minimum of self-consciousness, fear, doubt, worry. The idea is to cultivate a sense of certainty about your ability that allows you to sort of bypass or ignore a lot of conscious, discursive, analytical thought and simply execute almost unconsciously.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  I have yet to meet someone who says that in the moments when I know I was absolutely at my best, there was this paradoxical sense of ease and energy. I didn't have to think about my next step. It kind of just happened, and I was almost a passive witness to something, yet I was completely engaged. So there's this wonderful paradox about being absolutely certain to the point where you are almost unconscious about what you're doing when you're doing it.

• 37:04Mike Carruthers?

  There is a point, and you write about this, and I found this particularly helpful for me, is that you get to a point where you have to stop trying, that when it's time to, when it's time to perform, when it's time to go run your sprints, whatever it is, you don't, you stop the analyzing and you just do it. And I think that's so hard for people to, to stop saying, what's wrong now? What could go wrong now? What's, it's just so hard to turn that off.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  It's a, it can, indeed, might be a challenge to turn that off, which is why, when, again, we're just, we'll use the sprinting analogy, if you're a high school or a college sprinter, well, you better practice turning it off in practice, so that you will have had the experience of doing it before you arrive at a competition, before you attempt to do so in a track meet, okay? Yes, by all means, be somewhat analytical and judgmental and

• 38:20Speaker 03

  even self-critical in practice, for part of the practice, but you better also practice stepping up to the starting line, kicking yourself back into those sprinter blocks, taking your ready position with the thought, I'm just gonna burn this up, I'm gonna see how good I am, let's see how fast I can be. And you approach several repetitions in practice with that. Let's just see what I got. Let's just see what I got. Let's just see what I got.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  And by doing so, you give yourself practice and rehearsal in trusting the level of fitness and skill and competence that you have. And that's what you get to rely on when it's time to perform in a competition, or a meet, or a important discussion in the workplace.

• 39:23Mike Carruthers?

  So there's a point that people hit sometimes. And maybe a good analogy, or a good example of this, is like in a tennis match, where you're playing tennis and you miss a shot that you should have gotten, and you can't let it go. You just beat yourself up, and it screws up your play for the rest of the game. And it's really hard not to do that for a lot of people. But you'll notice that the real, the real great tennis players don't do that. They move on, and they don't sit and pout about the shot they missed. And it's hard to do.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  It's hard to do because they practice that, okay? In a most revealing interview a couple of years ago, Novak Djokovic, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, stunned the 60 Minutes interviewer when he said, "No, no, no, no, no. My mental strength is not a gift. It's something that I work on." And the interviewer said, "You mean you work on it, like you work on your serve and your forehand?" And Djokovic said, "Yes, absolutely."

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Djokovic and the other great players take significant pride in being able to acknowledge a mistake, feel a little bit pissed off about it.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  For less than five seconds. And then they reset themselves and they go on. Okay. And that is a skill that they practice. So that when they are playing at the US Open or playing in Wimbledon, they have had the experience of acknowledging a goof, even a significant goof, taking a breath and then resetting themselves. And there are as many different ways to reset oneself as there are human beings on the planet. You just have to be willing to do the work to establish for yourself a proper resetting sequence.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  One, two, three, now I'm back. Everybody's got to be able, everybody can do that. If you're willing to put the work in and do this kind of self-reflection and admission and examination of your own mental habits. If you're willing to do that, then you can cultivate considerable mental strength, the likes of which we see from the Novak Djokovic's of the world.

• 42:03Mike Carruthers?

  It is, I think, very hard for people to imagine, if you're someone who tends to dwell on your mistakes or worry about what's going to go wrong, to hear that there are people who can just say, "Let's see what I got. Let me go for it and not think about the negative." But, boy, those are two very different ways to approach anything. And clearly, one is better than the other, it would seem.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  Yes, you're quite correct. Clearly, one is more effective. We have to face the reality that much of our social conditioning, much of the messaging that we are subject to in elementary school and middle school, much of that messaging is, "Be careful. Think about your mistakes. Always be questioning yourself." And it almost encourages this overall vibe, this overall sense of oneself that, "I'm never good enough." And we've got to be careful about that kind of socialization.

• 43:09Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, that is so valuable. You know, speaking for myself, I mean, I was raised that way. I mean, you know, fit in, don't make waves, watch yourself, learn from your mistakes. Rather than, as you write about in your book, like Deion Sanders, who is so not that. He's so...

• 43:31Speaker 03

  He's so, so not that, indeed. And when he comes across as this outspoken, really enthusiastic, uber-confident individual, a lot of people listen to him and go, "Oh, my God, this guy's crazy." But if you ask Deion and you go a little deeper, you'll realize that he reserves this uber-confident attitude for when he's on the playing field. But he is a careful, somewhat respectful, somewhat modest gentleman off the field.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  He's a great example of some of the attitudes and thought processes that are very, very useful for folks in this day and age. But they are, as you point out, Mike, a little bit unusual.

• 44:26Mike Carruthers?

  Well, anyone who's looking for some more confidence, some more certainty in their ability, could certainly benefit from your advice today. I've been talking with Dr. Nate Zinsser. He is Director of the Performance Psychology Program at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and he's author of the book, "The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance." And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Nate, thanks for sharing this.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  It was a delight working with you, Mike. I look forward to the release of this podcast, and my best wishes to all your listeners.

• 45:05Mike Carruthers?

  Most dog owners think they're pretty good at reading their pets' emotions. But research suggests we're often wrong. Especially when we think a dog is enjoying something that it is actually just tolerating. A good example is hugging. Humans love hugs because they signal affection and closeness. Dogs don't see it that way. Animal behavior experts point out that when dogs feel uncomfortable, their natural instinct is to often move away or run away. A hug takes that option away, which may increase the dog's stress and anxiety and could even lead to a dog bite. In one study examining hundreds of online photos of people hugging their dogs,

• 45:50Mike Carruthers?

  researchers found that most of the dogs displayed at least one sign of discomfort. Things like turning their head away, showing the whites of their eyes, flattening their ears, or licking their lips. Yet the people in the photo almost always believe their dog was happy. The lesson isn't that your dog doesn't love you. It's that dogs express affection differently than humans do. A scratch behind the ears, a belly rub, a game of fetch, or simply sitting beside you may be much more appreciated than a big bear hug. And that is something you should know. Our podcast is produced by Jeff Havison, Jennifer Brennan. Executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 46:37Speaker 00

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• 47:05Speaker 06

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