I feel we are at a time with a schizophrenic perspective of confidence. We would generally feel positive about a doctor who expresses confidence in their abilities before doing surgery on us, but if that same doctor was at a party and mentioned anything about their level of confidence in themselves we would likely feel some negativity. So do we want people to be confident, or not? And do we feel ok about being confident in ourselves, or not? My guest is Heather Monohan, host of the podcast, Creating Confidence. She has two books as well, Confidence Creator and Overcome Your Villains. Heather defines confidence as,”A feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities.” Another perspective from her that I feel is worthy of us really considering is, "Until we realize our value, no one else will either.” Consider it another way, if you don’t come across as confident and are unable to share some assurance of your abilities, why would anyone put faith in you? So how do you do this amongst the friction we seem to have about confidence? That’s the show.

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From the restaurant menu that has 10 pages of entre options, to trying to pick out a new set of ear buds on Amazon, to telling kids they can be “anything they want.” The anxiety around our seemingly unlimited world continues to increase. Tactically I think we must become more discerning. But conceptually I think it helps to understand that too many options are unhelpful, and why. So when a new book titled,  INSIDE THE BOX: How Constraints Make Us Better, came across my desk, I interested myself. The book is authored by David Epstein who is already the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Range and The Sports Gene, and has worked as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. The tagline for Range is Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. I like David’s questioning and relevantly contrarian approach and was eager to sit down and talk with him about how constraints make us better. David claims that total freedom is the enemy of creativity, and constraint its companion. He says, “Contrary to popular belief, the brain is not designed for thinking. It’s designed to save you from having to think.” And thus all the thinking that too many options gives us has a cost. I ultimately interested myself in going forth with decisions by first, vetting them not for what is possible, but what is most probable. And shifting my mindset from wanting no limits, to understanding that less options is actually helpful for my mindset, and my life. 

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I find almost everyone has some physical boundaries that they feel fine with. But emotionally I still find the culture, and historically myself, fairly uncomfortable and unclear on what emotional boundaries look like and what the purpose really is. It took so long for me to have some understanding that emotional boundaries are not just selfish and not against someone else. My barometer is now, simply my attitude. Meaning, if I am relating to another person in any way and I tune into myself and realize I’m feeling some negative emotions, that’s my red flag. My mindset is, “Whoa. You are exposing them to your negativity. Be it bitterness or any negative emotion, but I pull out bitterness because my issues, and I find many others, often have to do with giving to or serving someone in some way, that you are not truly ok with. The following conversation is one I helped myself with on my continuing journey to healthy, helpful boundaries. Terri Cole is a psychotherapist and renowned relationship expert. I think I’ve had her on this podcast three or four times now. In this episode we focus on the message in her book, Boundary Boss-The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen and (Finally) Live Free. I feel there are multiple ways to consider boundaries and in this conversation you will hear Terri’s guidance from working with thousands of people. You can find Terri everywhere, and easily find her in your podcast platform now with The Terri Cole Show.

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My focus here is not on being a hero in the fashion our culture uses the word, in regard to caretaking humanity and saving the world. A quick search for the hero’s journey says it is a universal story structure where a protagonist ventures out of their comfort zone, faces a major crisis, wins a victory, and returns home profoundly transformed, and in this I find a core of human desire. In author Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years he  takes a script writing course and is taught that a good story is about a character who wants something, and overcomes conflict to get it. We all seem to inherently desire deep, fulfilling experiences, and those by proxy tend to include an effort in order to achieve them. Making the effort and overcoming some challenges are part of what make the experience fulfilling. So my expert on the topic is Peter Bailey. Professionally Peter has worked as a leadership strategist for four decades in more than 50 countries. But my interest is Peter’s research and discoveries in “Developing Your Heroic Journey Mindset,” of which he has a TED talk by the same title. Recently he’s written a book, The Epic of You : Reframe Your Past To Navigate Your Future. As you will hear, at the heart of heroism is not what has happened to you, but how you have responded to life. Peter experienced a difficult childhood and in adulthood has traveled through many of the main trials of life and love. I wanted to dig into how we understand and navigate our lives as we face crisis and not let them dictate the outcomes of our lives. 

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I continue to find and place value in Emotional Intelligence. I spent much of my life misperceiving social intelligence as emotional intelligence. I felt I could read and cater to other’s emotions, but I was very ignorant and neglectful of my own emotions, which took a toll on myself, and others. In this episode I brought on an expert who cites that emotional intelligence as the single biggest predictor of our personal and professional success. Scott Allender is an expert in global leadership and organizational development. He regularly teaches Enneagram workshops and conducts emotional intelligence assessments for individuals and teams who seek to become more radically self-aware and cognizant of the impact they have on the world. Scott has a book titled, The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence: A Journey to Personal and Professional Success. This is another installment in my continual pursuit of understanding and owning my own emotions.

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I appreciate people who help us paradigm shifts. I have viewed life as progressing to the next goal. The next destination. Focused on what I can add to my achievements. And yet as I’ve gotten older and dealt with more things that have humbled and tempered me, I’ve started wondering if there is as much or more growth, not from adding, but subtracting. Not from learning new things, but unlearning old things. In a similar concept, my guest today says, “Transformation is the power of departure.” DR. ROSENNA BAKARI is a psychologist, empowerment expert, and educator who has just published a book titled, Seven Exits: Leave Behind What No Longer Serves You. Rosenna had a childhood seizure at age seven and was misdiagnosed as “mildly retarded.” She went on however to be identified as mentally gifted. At age 17 she entered Cornell University and by age 22 earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. For more than 25 years, Dr. Bakari taught psychology to graduate and undergraduate students, published peer-reviewed articles, and delivered presentations across the country with a focus on empowerment, healing, and transformation. Here is a quote I tuned into from Rosenna, “High-quality mental well-being displays positive characteristics, such as managing stress and recovering from adversity. It also includes emotional regulation, self-awareness, and cognitive flexibility. However, individuals with high mental functioning can still be disempowered.” I feel we have a culture that feels tremendously disempowered, even amongst the so-called, “successful.” So I dug into the issue with Rosenna.

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My guest is Dandapani. He became an ordained Hindu monk under the guidance of one of Hinduism’s foremost spiritual leaders of our time. For 10 years he lived a life of serious personal discipline and training at his guru’s cloistered monastery in Hawaii. Here he learned to control his mind. He learned to focus. And he believes this is the key to finding one’s purpose. We would probably all agree that it is easier to focus when you live in a monastery in Hawaii. Dandapani readily agrees. Yet he believed the teachings would work in the outside world as well, and now he’s proved it. He left the monastery and moved to New York where he started a business, got married, and became a father. Today he is a highly sought-after international speaker and leading expert on leveraging the human mind and the power of focus to create a life of purpose and joy. I just attended an event in LA with 5,000 attendees and spoke onstage along with Dandapani. I inspire myself to see him remaining centered and at peace, even as he endures the busyness of travel, work, and family like the rest of us. He has a book, The Power of Unwavering Focus. One concept from his message has changed my life. That of the mind being a vast space with many different areas and our awareness is a glowing orb of our focus that can only light up one room at a time. I invite you to settle into this discussion.

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“Could we really reduce your conscious mind to a set of underlying processes that, when composed, create the feeling of you, the view of right now?” This is what my guest questions and proposes. David Sussillo is a world-renowned neuroscientist, an adjunct professor at Stanford University and has been a scientist at the Google Brain group and Meta Reality Labs. In his professional pursuits, David researches brain-machine interfaces to develop the next generation of computers. He works to understand the ghost in the machine – how cells in our brain collectively give rise to the computations that determine behavior. But David is not just a researcher. He’s his own test subject. He had a difficult childhood, to put it mildly. He spent five years living in the Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home. A home for children who were basically abandoned. They had unfit parents, but weren’t up for adoption. This was near to my heart, as my family and I served at a similar children’s home in Gallup, NM, and I understand much of the heartbreak associated with such a place. My core interest was how David came from such a traumatic childhood, to be the high achieving adult he is today. His sister, who experienced much of the same lifestyle, killed herself. So again, what was different about David? And the point here is not David and his story. But you and me and our stories, and understanding how we imprison, and free ourselves. David discusses his journey in his new book, EMERGENCE: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of Mind.

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We have made anxiety a bad term. But anxiety is a normal response of the body to a worry or concern or perceived threat. Your anxiety in and of itself isn’t doing anything wrong. We just seem to be responding inappropriately. Britt Frank is a licensed neuropsychotherapist and trauma expert who is trained in IFS (Internal Family Systems) and SE (Somatic Experiencing). She is a speaker and an award-winning adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas where she’s taught classes on ethics, addiction, and clinical social work. She has a book, The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia To Find Your Path Forward. I brought her to us to discuss her research on anxiety and body based feeling vs thought based therapy. Britt ultimately points to anxiety as a cue from your body. Think of it as a dashboard light in your car saying something is not quite right. Like the “check engine” light. But instead of giving the light attention, our culture has primarily normalized anxiety, as it has many pathologies, and decided to just live with the check engine light on. I think what you will hear is some paradigm shifting information that will change how you view your anxiety and get you paying attention to your body's responses in order to better manage your mental state.

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We are more sensitive than ever to our differences. Most people I know are really striving to be aware, kind, considerate, and inclusive. But is this sensitivity also increasing our cultural anxiety around the issue? My guest in this episode is social psychologist Claude M Steele, and he feels this is the case. Claude is the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Over a decade ago Claude authored the book, Whistling Vivaldi, which became a groundbreaking resource on stereotypes and identity. His new book is, Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How To Overcome It. Claude lays out that we all, inherently, are more comfortable with people like us. Which by proxy means we discomfort ourselves with people who are different. Many of us try to be "color blind" and pretend there is not difference, but we all feel the elephant in the room. Claude says, "Prejudice doesn't survive proximity. As you will hear, Claude has a primary solution. If someone is different, and if you really care, be curious. And seek to connect. This sounds simple, and I'm not sure it is, which is why I offer you the following conversation.

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