How Your Biases Are Used Against You & How Top Performers Think -SYSK Choice

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Today on something you should know, how to pick the best seat at a group table and why it matters.

Then, humans have biases.

But maybe you think you're smart, you're objective, you don't have biases.

You might think so, and many of your nurses might think,

why do these biases apply to me?

I'm a sensible, rational person.

Unfortunately, scientific evidence finds it's the opposite,

but more knowledgeable and more sophisticated people are more susceptible

to these biases.

Also, why you just might want to skip the toothpicks at the next party

and how developing mental toughness improves performance at just about anything.

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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 my carothers.

Hi there, welcome to something you should know.

And today we're going to start with some very practical advice for a situation I know you've probably been in.

And that is you walk into a room, maybe it's a restaurant or it's a meeting or something.

And there's a table in chairs and you wonder where should I sit?

Where's the best place to sit?

Well here is a strategy for choosing the best seat in a group situation.

At a circular table that has four seats around it, it doesn't really matter where you sit.

Any seat will do, you can't go wrong.

At a four person square table, sit opposite your least favorite person,

because conversations tend to work diagonally at that kind of table.

In a six seated situation, choose the middle of one side.

It may be harder to get in and out, but you'll have more conversational options that way.

For tables of eight or more, timings everything.

If you arrive first, you'll be expected to file to the end.

Maybe not so good.

If you're last, you'll probably get the least desirable seat that nobody wants to sit in.

Also not good.

So the best strategy is to just stand back and wait for the right moment to make your move and grab a seat.

And that is something you should know.

While you might think that you are or can be objective about a topic, people have biases.

They have beliefs that color their ability to be objective.

A lot of the time, it's fine, it doesn't matter, small stakes.

But other times, for big things, it can matter, it does matter.

And understanding these biases that are ingrained in all of us can be very illuminating.

Here to explain them is Alex Edmonds.

He is a professor of finance at London Business School.

He has a TED Talk called What to Trust in a Post-Truth World that's been viewed over two million times.

And he is author of a book called May Contain Lies.

How stories, statistics, and studies explored our biases and what we can do about it.

Hi, Alex. Welcome to something you should know.

Thanks, Mike. It's great to be here.

So in broad strokes here, let's start with your explanation of these biases that tend to steer our thinking.

Certainly. So there's two biases that cause us to make mistakes when we're interpreting information, data, and evidence.

So one of them is confirmation bias.

So this is the idea that we have a pre-existing view.

And if there's evidence that supports that view, we will latch onto it.

We will accept it uncritically, even if the evidence is flimsy.

And then in contrast, if there is some evidence that contradicts our view, we will close our ears to it.

We might not even read it, or we might read it, but with the view to try to tear it apart.

So this means we will only latch onto things that we like and dismiss things that we don't like.

Now confirmation bias, that does apply to questions where we have a pre-existing view.

So that might be climate change or immigration or gun control.

But what about the set of issues for which there is no pre-existing view?

That's where the second bias comes in, which is called black and white thinking.

So this is the idea that we view something as being always good or always bad.

There is no nuance.

So let's give an example.

So in the sphere of diet, we often think that protein is good.

We learn in school, this builds muscles and repairs you.

We also think that fat is bad.

It's called that way because it makes you fat.

But what about carbohydrates?

We might not have a pre-existing view on that.

But Robert Atkins, he went viral because of his Atkins diet, which gave the black and white conclusions that more carbs are always bad.

He had a diet saying let's avoid all carbs.

Not just simple carbs, and saying that complex carbs are fine.

He said avoid all carbs.

That played into black and white thinking.

That latched on it went viral because it was so simple.

But notice that if he had had completely the opposite conclusion,

if he had said have a diet to eat as many carbs as possible,

he might have equally gone viral because that also plays into black and white thinking.

We think something as either always good or always bad.

We're not predisposed to a particular direction.

Okay, so I get what you say about having these biases,

but doesn't a little knowledge fix that?

If I now know, if I know the truth about carbohydrates,

and then I know the Atkins diet is probably not too healthy, case closed.

You might think so, and many of your nurses might think,

why do these biases apply to me?

I'm a sensible rational person.

Can't I use my knowledge to overcome these biases?

Unfortunately, scientific evidence finds it's the opposite

that more knowledgeable and more sophisticated people

are more susceptible to these biases.

Why might that be?

It's because of something known as motivated reasoning.

The smarter we are, we can come up with arguments

to dismiss evidence that we don't like.

We can also come up with arguments to support evidence that we do like

even if that evidence happens to be flimsy.

As an example, it may well be that there's a study

which finds a correlation that we don't like.

So if we are a supporter of gun control,

we might not like a paper which finds that gun control

is associated with higher crime.

But we might say, well, correlation does not imply causation.

Maybe there's other factors at play here.

Maybe crime would have been even higher

had there not been gun control.

But we turn off those same critical thinking faculties

when we find something that we do like.

So we do have knowledge but we apply it only selectively

when it suits us.

Two things can be true at the same time.

So in some cases maybe gun control controls crime

and maybe in other cases gun control doesn't.

I don't think you can make the blanket statement

that gun control does or doesn't affect crime.

You absolutely cannot.

And this is the problem of black and white thinking.

So some of these issues may be nuanced.

It might be that gun control works in certain situations

but it doesn't work on others.

But if you were to give that message,

you're much less likely to be tweeted

in 280 characters and go viral.

So something which has a simple message

where we say X is true period.

That is what typically sells.

So it could be something that carbs are always bad for your health

or waking up at 5 a.m.

always improves your productivity.

If you give that simple message,

that's going to be far more powerful

than waking up at 5 a.m.

improves your productivity.

So long as you're also eating healthily

and exercising daily

and able to get in bed before 10 p.m.

So that more nuanced message

is probably going to be more accurate

but that's not the message that we want to hear

given our biases.

Right.

And it sounds like a miserable life too.

I don't want to go to bed at 10 and get up at 5

and just eat vegetables all day.

I mean, that would be difficult.

So if you take people who have a bias

and you explain it to them

and you say this is your bias,

does it change them?

Does knowing it change them?

Or does it do they say,

yeah, I have a bias and too bad?

It actually can.

So there are some nice studies

which look at trying to overcome this situation.

So not just studies highlighting the problem

but studies trying to solve this.

And so there were two sets of techniques that they tried.

So one set of techniques was just to say to people

be as unbiased as possible

when evaluating the information.

And that just didn't work.

That would be like trying to tell a baseball player

who's batting 200 tries to hit the ball more accurately.

So they just don't have the ability to do that.

That's just a limit to their physical ability.

But there was a second set of techniques

which was to give people specific bias

and counteracting thought processes.

So one of them was,

if you see a study who's findings that you like,

let's say it's gun control reduces crime,

they told you to imagine the opposite.

So imagine that the study instead found

that gun control increases crime.

How would you try to attack that study?

Well, you'd say is it correlation or is it causation?

Now that you have found some ways to attack that study,

then apply the same skepticism

even if the study finds the results that you do want.

So this idea of considering the opposite,

how would you react?

That is something which helps people to address their biases

and these studies were shown that that technique was in fact able

to reduce biases even though the first one

just generally telling people to be unbiased was ineffective.

I can imagine people listening to you going,

yeah, but I don't read studies.

It's not what I do.

For fun, sit around and read studies.

You read studies,

but the information I get doesn't come from a study,

at least when I read it,

I'm reading articles,

I'm reading blogs or watching television

or listening to a podcast.

I'm not analyzing studies.

I think this is a great question that's a really important one.

So somebody might look at me and say,

well, I am an academic researcher.

I spend my life evaluating academic papers.

What relevance does this have to the person on the street

who does not do this for your day job

and hopefully you don't do this for fun either?

But what I'm trying to stress is that you receive

the information from research in any form.

Whenever you pick up a magazine,

let's say this is Men's Health, Women's Health or Run as World,

you're reading about research.

You're reading, is it true that drinking more water improves

your athletic performance?

Should you be drinking caffeine before the workout?

What is the best recovery shake that is research?

If you read a blog saying,

waking up at 5 a.m. change my life,

is it that the act of waking up at 5 a.m.

caused you to change your life?

Or is it that somebody who chooses to wake up at 5 a.m.

is probably doing lots of other things

to get their act together.

And it's those other things that are leading

to the improvements and performance.

Before I had my first child,

I went to some parenting courses

and they said,

you need to breastfeed.

Breastfeeding is correlated with superior performance

in terms of child IQ, child health,

mother, postpartum depression.

But was it that breast milk causes these outcomes?

Or is it that mothers with a more supportive home environment

were able to breastfeed because of how challenging it is?

And that support of home environment

is what caused those outcomes.

Because if so,

the illness is then on me as a father

to provide a more supportive home environment

rather than telling my wife she needs to breastfeed all the time.

So we get information in so many different contexts

and we need to think about,

is this information collolation or causation?

Is this information a unique hands-picked case?

Or is it generally true?

Maybe there is one person who woke up at 5am

and it did change their life

and they will blog about it and tell people.

If you were someone who woke up at 5am

and it had no effect,

you would keep that to yourself.

So what we might be seeing is a selected sample

of isolated anecdotes.

And again, this is a case

in which we need to be discerning

about the information that we see.

But it seems to me,

you're a research guy and academic guy,

you look at these things

in a much different way than most people.

And the fact is that

you can go on Google

and pretty much find evidence

to support whatever you want,

either side of the breastfeeding issue

or any other.

So then what do you do?

Yeah, and this is a huge challenge

in the information age.

So you might think, oh, it's great now.

That information is so easy to get.

When I was a kid,

I had to trek down to the library

and to look it up into the

encyclopedia.

Nowadays, we have easy access

to information and even academic research

which used to be behind paywalls.

This is now increasingly open access.

But this leads to challenges

as well as opportunities

is that you can always

corral information

to support whatever you want to support.

And this is particularly a problem

if you are biased, right?

So if I wanted

an excuse to drink a lot of red wine

after dinner this evening,

I would just Google

why red wine improves your health?

And I'm sure I could come up

with a lot of highly cited studies

and highly circulated studies

to support this.

So what this means

is that what matters is not just

whether there's a study.

We often hear the phrase

research shows that x.

Studies show that y.

But studies show nearly everything

you want them to show.

What matters is the quality of research.

And these issues we've discussed

such as correlation versus causation.

And that is critical

to finding out whether research

is of sufficient quality

for you to change your decisions

based on it.

Or is this just conventional wisdom?

Or to be unfair?

Is this just an old white style?

We're talking about human biases

and how they affect our thinking.

My guest is Alex Edmunds.

He's author of a book called

May Contain Lies.

How stories, statistics,

and studies exploit our biases

and what we can do about it.

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So Alex,

it seems to me that

it's kind of human nature

to want to believe

whatever you believe

and have some evidence

to believe.

And most things aren't life or death anyway.

And there's comfort in thinking

that what I believe

has got some sort of back up to it.

And that's kind of how people operate.

That is indeed kind of how most people off, right?

And then what I'm trying to highlight is,

well, how can you be different from most people?

So sometimes it might not be

life or death situations.

But it just affects our understanding of the world.

So you might think,

oh, why is inflation higher

in one country rather than another?

What causes an unemployment?

What causes economic success?

And I might not be a central banker

with the ability to directly cause inflation

or control inflation.

But I just want to understand the world better.

And I think to have a more discerning look at the data

just helps me having a richer understanding.

Even if there's no practical effect on decision making

is not my knowledge of the world,

just richer,

if it's a bit more informed.

But also the number of decisions

that we might take based on information

is just much wider

than one might think

if you thought of research as just scientific paper.

So nearly every decision that you take.

So after this recording,

I'm going to work out.

And so what is the worker

am I going to do?

Is it high-intensive interval training?

Is it low-intensity study state?

How is this matching with the other workouts

I've done this week?

Am I going to have some pre-workout supplement?

All of these decisions are based on evidence.

And you might think,

this sounds like a bit like a professor

who's trying to scientifically analyze every decision.

Is this not analysis paralysis?

No.

Because this information might make my life easier

rather than more complex.

Because if I can achieve the same outcome

with three workouts a week,

which are based on the science as I can

with six workouts a week,

then I actually don't have more time for myself.

And what I'm trying to highlight in the book

is the questions that we ask ourselves.

They don't think take a lot of analysis to do.

Simple questions like,

if this was the opposite,

how would I react?

That will only take a moment to reflect,

but in terms of our productivity and our effectiveness,

they can be large effects in terms of the outcome.

So here's an example of something

that we just discussed on this podcast

a few episodes ago.

It was,

is going barefoot a good idea.

And there is good evidence for both.

And it's good evidence for both.

And a lot of things have good evidence for both sides.

And you could,

and you just kind of have to pick one

if you want to go barefoot,

there's the evidence.

And it doesn't necessarily contradict

the evidence on the other side.

It's just different evidence.

I think that's fair.

And there could be good evidence for is,

is rock be better for you?

Or is football better for you?

Or should you study English or math?

So what I would like to then look at

is how tailored is the evidence for my particular situation?

So if going barefoot is generally good,

but the study is finding that going barefoot is bad,

if you've got a history of ankle weakness,

because that's when ankle strength is particularly important,

because you're not wearing shoes that could be supportive,

I might pay more attention to that.

And it might be that going barefoot is good

if in conjunction with a lot of other things,

if you're doing certain things with your diet,

if you're doing particular types of plyometric training.

And so I want to look up beyond the headlines study.

We like to believe the headlines going barefoot is good

or it's bad,

but it's often good or bad in conjunction

with other types of behavior,

and for certain types of people,

and therefore that would allow me to focus on particular studies

that matter for my particular situation

with the other behaviors that I'm doing alongside gang barefoot.

People seem to like,

whether they should or shouldn't,

people like recommendations,

which are basically anecdotes.

I had a good experience with this doctor.

I had a good experience with this company.

And so you should too.

And people find comfort in that.

And it's based on just one experience,

but there seems to be something in human nature

that that feels right.

Yes, this is known as a bias called familiarity bias,

where if something is familiar to you,

if it's a recommendation given by one person

who you're friends with,

that might outweigh all of the other negative recommendations

by lots of other people.

For example, after an earthquake,

people are much more likely to buy earthquake insurance,

even though scientifically,

after an earthquake, the plate tectonics are now resolved,

it's less likely that they'll be an earthquake in the near future.

So when something is particularly salient or familiar,

this has an outsize effect on our decisions.

So it may well be that a friend says,

hey, I breastfed my child,

and my child is doing well.

It could be that your child would have done well otherwise.

It could be that you were doing lots of other things

to help your child,

such as always being present,

like reading to your child and so on.

But if it is a particular example that we want to be true,

we will believe it,

and we will isolate this particular case

and generalize and extrapolate from it.

Well, it's interesting because it's,

everything you say makes perfect sense,

and yet it seems that we kind of fight it.

Or not fight it, but we do what we do

because of the biases we have,

and it makes people feel good.

So there's not a lot of reason to not,

and yet there is a lot of reason to not.

Yeah, so these biases,

they're often really ingrained with us.

They're quite difficult to fight.

So they go back to confirmation bias,

which we led this chat with.

This is the idea that we don't like evidence,

that contradicts our viewpoint.

This is so deeply ingrained in us,

and this has been evidence in the following way.

So if you take people,

you give them a statement that they know,

that you know they agree with,

and then you give them something

that contradicts that statement,

and you see what happens to their brain

by hooking them up to an MRI scanner.

If you give a political statement,

like Thomas Edison invented the light bulb,

you give them contradictory evidence,

nothing really happens.

But if it is a political statement,

like immigration is good for society,

you give them some contradictory evidence,

then the part of the brain that lights up

is the amygdala.

That is the same part of the brain that lights up

when the tiger attacks you.

You go on the defensive.

You respond to something that you don't like,

like a tiger attack.

So this is why it is difficult to overcome biases,

and therefore those who are able to do this,

be this in investment decisions as a shareholder,

be this in company decisions as an executive,

you are the people who are able to get out of sublime loans

before the crisis,

make different decisions and get ahead.

So really no matter how objective you think you are,

how able you are to critically evaluate something,

we all have these biases.

It's really, I think important for people to understand that,

and that you can't really escape it,

but you can try to fight it.

I have been speaking to Alex Edmunds.

He's an economist, a professor of finance at London Business School,

and he's author of a book called May Contain Lies,

How Stories, Statistics, and Studies exploit our biases

and what we can do about it.

He also has a TED Talk that's been viewed

over two million times called What to Trust in a Post-Trust World,

and there's a link to the TED Talk and a link to his book

at Amazon in the show notes.

Appreciate you coming on today. Thanks, Alex.

Thanks, Mike. We really enjoyed the conversation.

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When I say the phrase mental toughness,

you probably think of certain people in the military

like the Navy SEALs or maybe elite top athletes,

people who have this ability to use their mind

to ignore distractions and to stay focused,

even under the most stressful conditions,

almost like a superpower.

But it can't be a superpower,

because superpowers aren't real,

so what is mental toughness?

And how can we all be more mentally tough?

Here to reveal those secrets is Eric Potterat,

who knows a thing or two about this.

Eric is a clinical and performance psychologist,

a retired commander from the US Navy after 20 years of service,

during which time he helped create

the mental toughness curriculum for the Navy SEALs.

Eric spent several years as the director

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He's worked with the US Women's National Soccer Team,

the Miami Heat,

and several other Olympic athletes,

first responders, business leaders, and NASA astronauts.

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from the World's Top Performers.

Hi, Eric, welcome to something you should know.

Hey, Michael, good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Sure.

Well, when most people hear the term mental toughness,

they have a sense of what it means,

but what does it mean to you?

What do you mean by mental toughness?

Boy, great question.

Look, there are a lot of definitions out there,

and I tend to be a relatively simple guy.

I think the easiest definition to wrap my head around

is the ability to control the human stress response

in multiple situations.

So regardless of the discipline that you practice,

whether it's military, first responder, sport, business,

I think it's really the ability to use certain tools and techniques

to control that human stress response

and be able to thrive and perform optimally in that discipline.

What sounds almost impossible?

It's very difficult.

It's very difficult.

And when I think of people who are mentally tough,

I think of them as that their mental toughness defines them,

that that's who they are, not just what they do.

I think we're a lot of people make a mistake,

is they assume that these are end states,

like when you look at favorite performer,

where there's an athlete,

a military and a businessman or woman,

whatever it may be,

and if you think of that person,

you probably think of a few things they do well,

their ability to focus, perform well under pressure,

limit distractions, be resilient,

and I think the difficulty with a lot of those terms,

is they're accurate, but they're end states.

What very few people are telling us,

or what are these individuals doing in order to execute that end state?

I know they're focused.

I know they're extremely disciplined.

I know they're resilient,

but this is why I think the better definition

is really looking at the tools and techniques

that they do to get to that end state.

Are they focused, disciplined and resilient all the time,

or this is something they work themselves into when they need to?

Look, you're talking to a guy who's extremely biased.

I've spent a career in this field,

and so my two answers to this is,

I think they can turn it off and on,

but I think more importantly, this ability is learned.

I don't think anyone's come out of the womb

with this ability to be mentally tough.

I haven't seen any data to support that,

whether it's on the neuropsychological side,

psychological side, et cetera.

I think that these men and women have navigated

through years of micro failures,

and years of coaching, good teachers,

parenting, difficult things,

and kind of hone this ability to leverage these techniques

and perform optimally.

When I think of somebody mentally tough,

for some reason I think of somebody who's physically tough,

like military guys, and is that,

is there a connection?

Yes and no.

I really like a computer metaphor as it were.

I mean, this is this software versus hardware.

I think as you just stated, when you think of military,

you think athlete, you think of,

these are physical outliers.

I'm telling you, I haven't been someone

who's worked 20 years in the military

with incredible physical performers,

and then I spent obviously the second half

of my career in professional sport.

Again, outlier physical specimens,

whether they're Olympians or professional,

pick your favorite sport.

But at the world class level,

everyone has the same hardware,

yet everyone isn't performing under pressure

very well all the time.

The best example I have is the Olympics.

At the Olympics every year, every country sends their best men

and women to perform, pick your favorite event.

Everyone generally has the same physical abilities.

The difference between no metal and A metal

is sometimes hundreds or thousands of a second.

So they're showing up with the same hardware,

but this is why back to that metaphor of the computer.

I think when you look at the best performers

who are sustaining excellence over time,

their ability is more along the lines

of how are they leveraging their software,

those mental techniques that makes the hardware work.

That's why I really like that metaphor a lot.

I mean, you and I can have the best computers money can buy,

but we're not going to leverage the power of that computer

without the updated operating system and applications

if it's a smartphone.

I'm sorry, I think with these men and women,

they're physically performing well,

but it's the software that's making everything work.

So how do I leverage my software?

Yeah, it's a great question.

I mean, I think that's what I've spent 30 years looking at.

I mean, literally 25,000 encounters

with the best performers in the world.

After time, after about 10 to 12 years of working with these people,

it became clear as day to me

that generally the best performers

are doing roughly the same things, plus or minus.

So we've been able to kind of consolidate what those are

and they kind of fall under bins of, you know,

adversity tolerance tactics

and everything from goal setting, visualization,

self-talk, breathing, compartmentalization.

So there's a number of,

I think, lessons and tools and tactics

that we can reverse engineer

to the general public, if you will.

All right.

Well, let's start reverse engineering

and put some of these things into practice.

You know, I think first and foremost,

I think one of the easiest things to do

is to really talk about mindset.

I think that's when you look at the best performers on Earth,

they are leveraging, catalyzing,

and optimizing a certain mindset

for the role that they're playing.

And I think my takeaway message to you

would be, you know, just keep in mind

that we all have different roles that we play in life.

Myself, I'm a father, I'm a husband,

I'm a performance psychologist, I'm a,

you know, avid pickleball player,

tennis player on the weekends.

And if I executed the same mindset

for every role that I play, research is pretty clear.

I'm not going to do many of those roles very well.

So I think one of the ways to catalyze

a certain mindset for a certain role

that we see these top performers do

is they have what we call pre-performance routines.

So I think that's one of the easiest ways

to think about transitioning into a certain mindset

to a high performance role.

So how would that look?

Yeah, the metaphor I really like is a dimmer switch.

So the most popular pre-performance routines

for humans to perform is probably music.

Think about, you know,

if you want to go perform something athletically

or a very important business presentation

to a client or to a boss or to a teammate.

You know, think about maybe a song

that might catalyze and get that juices

and the focus, get those juices and the focus going.

So pre-performance routines can be workouts,

they can be mantras,

they can be an article of clothing

that just starts to tell you,

hey, I'm ready to perform.

I think another technique that, you know,

there's about eight to 10 that we unpack

that we've learned from the best performers.

Another one that's extremely important

and low-hanging fruit as it were would be breathing.

We know that when human beings get into high-pressure,

high-performance situation,

let's call that leverage.

We know that when human beings are in leverage

or high-performance, high-pressure situations,

the breathing rates change.

They become very rapid and shallow.

In fact, they range from about 16 to 22 breaths a minute.

One of the ways to reverse engineer

that we see the top performers practicing

is they get their breathing rates

to about six breaths a minute.

So an easy way to think about that

is a four-second inhale,

just a natural pause at the top of that inhalation.

And then roughly a six-second exhale.

So it's a little bit longer of an exhale.

And that obviously is 10 seconds.

And that's about six breaths a minute.

So that is a very quick way

to physically and mentally be able to perform very, very well.

Because it does what to you.

Yeah, it actually reverses the human stress response.

Back to your initial question of my definition of mental toughness

is the ability to control the human stress response.

When we're stressed or put another way

when we're not practicing mental toughness,

there's something called vasoconstriction.

Muscles get tense,

the veins and arteries kind of constrict.

Blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up.

And those are the physical symptoms, if you will.

The mental effects are what we call executive functions,

our ability to problem solve,

the ability to think clearly on our feet.

So those really go by the wayside under pressure.

The fastest way to reverse that

is this theory of four, four seconds in,

four to six seconds out for roughly four minutes.

It reverses that.

And to put very candidly,

what it's going to do is it's going to vascularize

a certain area of the brain.

It's going to get a lot more blood to the frontal lobes of the brain

where you can execute better decision-making processes

as well as all the physical aspects

that we've talked about as well.

And that makes sense.

I think people have a sense that breathing,

well, we hear it from, you know,

in other areas of life,

that breathing is really important.

It calms you down.

It's part of meditation and all that.

And what else?

Because these are great.

I mean, I hadn't heard these talked about

in this topic.

So maybe a few more please.

You bet.

So obviously pre-performance routine.

So how do you get ready?

How do you catalyzer or, you know,

construct that mindset and then breathing?

I think next on that list would be,

and it sounds a little bit touchy-feely,

but just hear me out here is really self-talk

and thought management.

We know that when the non-elite performers

get into high-pressure situations,

again, pick your discipline.

I'm agnostic to what that discipline is.

That sometimes their self-talk starts to take over.

I can't do this or I've made a mistake

and therefore I start thinking about that mistake

and it just literally derails everything.

So when you look at the best performers in the world,

they are really much better at looking for evidence.

They may make a mistake.

They do make mistakes.

But their ability to put that into a box,

compartmentalize that,

and not let that lead to this,

you know, domino effect of thinking

that I'm more likely to make another,

or what are these people thinking of me?

Are they thinking I can't give this presentation, for example?

So I think, you know, my long story short here

is really look for evidence

and think, you know,

how make sure that self-talk is evidence-based

and more focused on the positive rather than the negative.

I think, you know, these performers

are definitely controlling those negative thoughts

and putting them by the wayside more times than not.

But when you say,

when we do a self-talk,

a lot of it is not reality-based.

We're like trying to imagine,

we're trying to make ourselves better by saying

how wonderful we are and how well we're going to do,

and it isn't reality-based.

It's much more future-based and wishful thinking.

Yeah.

I'm glad you mentioned that.

I mean, there's great studies

that really kind of talk about

how future-oriented we all are.

You know, I came across one that, you know,

60% of our thoughts are future-oriented.

And that's why people are successful.

They're thinking about the things

and the deadlines they have

and their future-based.

I get that.

But I think a lot of the elite performers,

they're really working much more in the present state.

Meaning, you know, if I use a sporting example,

let's say a wide receiver, you know,

drops a very easy touchdown pass

or a business person makes a hiccup

in a presentation,

and they misstate something

that they'd gone over repeatedly.

It's really important to be present

and to really make sure you're looking for evidence.

This doesn't mean I'm a failure.

This doesn't mean the client is going to, you know,

say, hey, this person isn't qualified

for whatever advice or whatever presentation they're given.

So I think interestingly,

when you look at the statistics

at the world-class level,

the only way that individuals are more likely

to make an additional mistake

after they've made a mistake

is if they focus on that mistake.

So if you think about it,

it makes intuitive sense, right?

If I'm taking my mental energy

and I just dropped that proverbial touchdown pass

or I dropped that proverbial presentation to a client,

I'm much more likely to fumble again

if I'm focusing on that

rather than kind of what my mission was

and what I pre-prepared for prior to that event.

So soft talk is really important.

But how do you do that when I think

it's the natural inclination

when you drop the ball

to think about the ball you dropped?

How do you not think about what you're thinking about?

Yeah, so think about this as, again,

I'm bringing up a lot of metaphors

or a lot of examples today.

Think about dominoes.

The whole idea of, you know,

if I lined up 100 dominoes in front of you and me today

and the first one falls,

we know what's gonna happen to the other 99.

The ability of controlling that self-talk

is watching the first three or four dominoes fall

and then grabbing that fifth domino

before it can affect this, you know, sixth or seventh.

So that's metaphorically speaking

what I'm trying to state is that

it's really important to put that mistake

and here's another technique, by the way,

we call it black boxing

or the fancy psychological term is compartmentalization.

When you make that proverbial mistake,

put it into a box and stay mission-minded.

Meaning, tell yourself, I need to put that away

for a moment or an hour or two.

I need to complete whatever the mission is,

whether it's a game, whether it's, you know,

combat, whether it's a business presentation.

And then at a future time,

when the mission is done,

we can unpack that, unpack the proverbial box

and take a look at what went wrong

and try to learn from that.

So what interesting statistics also,

we know that most negative consequences to self-talk.

So when I say negative consequence,

most of the time when I'm anxious,

when I'm irritated, when I'm bummed out,

94% of the time, that's due to what we call irrational thoughts.

So this ties directly to self-talk.

The elite performers don't have the 94% irrational talk, right?

Those irrational thoughts because they're looking for evidence.

They know, hey, this is just one pass that I've dropped.

That means I'm statistically going to catch, you know,

the next 30 in a row or something.

And is there a point where you find

and working with people that there is a plateau?

I mean, you can't continually get better

because your head will explode or something.

Yeah.

Respectfully, I just don't buy that narrative.

I do think, you know, one of my favorite quotes of all time

is a Roger Federer quote.

And he said, staying the same is going backwards.

And I do think when you look and obviously,

how many weeks, number one or how many years,

number one was this guy?

We can name countless, you know,

the Roger Federer's of the world in their disciplines.

I do think that that's also in something we see

with the world's best performers is they're constantly trying

to incrementally improve.

The mistake that I think a lot of people make, Mike,

is that they try to do too much too soon.

And that proverbial head will then explode, right?

Rather than, okay, how can I continue to work incrementally

out of my comfort zone and keep pushing

what I believe the limits are?

Because I actually think those limits are self-imposed.

But isn't it true that, well, I think everybody knows it's true

that you only get better if you go beyond your comfort level.

To play tennis, to get better at tennis,

you got to play people who are better than you,

not worse than you.

Yeah, 100% agree.

And this is where I can certainly create some hate mail

and some naysayers out there as well.

And I have to say this very carefully.

Do I want people to fail?

Of course not.

None of us want to watch someone fail.

But these micro failures or iterations are really important.

The other quote I really like is, you know,

if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.

You're not moving outside of that comfort zone.

But there's a very fine area there, right?

If you think of the comfort zone as this circle in the middle,

and then there's this buffer zone where that growth happens.

If you go too far out, then it's catastrophic failure, right?

And embarrassment.

And that's when people kind of pull back into their shell

and they're like, see, I told you so.

I'll never try that as opposed to being very incremental

and progressive about how you're trying to hone that craft,

whatever it may be.

I think when, well, for me,

when I think of somebody who's mentally tough,

somehow in that mix of that definition

is somebody who's not very emotional,

that they can keep emotions out of it,

that they don't cry when they lose.

They're tough, they're mentally tough.

But can you turn it off and go have a good cry?

Yeah, I think so the Navy, as you know,

I was 20 years in the military.

Ten of those years I was the head performance psychologist

for the Navy SEALs.

I retired as a commander.

And one of the terms that the SEALs used,

I'm not a SEAL, I was their psychologist,

was calm is contagious.

And it's a very interesting term.

I went one step further related to your question.

I think emotion is contagious.

So I do think there's a time and place to emote

and to have that, you know, as you say,

cry or really get upset.

But keep in mind that if you're doing that around people,

around teammates, around coworkers,

it is literally a contagion.

I know when I'm around people who are irritated,

I find myself getting more irritated.

When I'm around angry people,

I find myself getting defensive and upset as well.

So it's a really interesting concept

to think about emotions as a contagion.

Do the best performers in the world have emotion?

Of course they do.

But when it comes time to perform,

they are really, I think, exercise

that we call more of a neutral detached mindset.

For I'm not going to go too high or too low,

I'm just going to execute my plan and my blueprint

and I'm going to do it without emotion.

Well, I think there's a fascination.

Well, I've always had a fascination

with how people who are mentally tough

have that ability to focus and zero in

and block the rest of the world out.

And it's really interesting to hear how it's done

and maybe try to do it yourself.

My guest has been Eric Potterat.

He is a clinical and performance psychologist.

He is a retired commander from the US Navy

where he helped develop the mental toughness curriculum

used by the Navy Seals.

He is author of a book called Learned Excellence.

Mental disciplines for leading and winning

from the world's top performers.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on today, Eric.

Thank you so much for having me, Mike.

It's been fantastic.

Toothpicks.

They sound like a pretty benign, small,

little piece of wood.

How much harm can they do?

Well, they can do a lot of harm.

Serving food with toothpicks might seem like a

handy and harmless way to serve food.

But if people bite into a hidden toothpick,

it can do some serious damage to the mouth.

And if a portion of the toothpick is swallowed,

it can perforate the intestine with life-threatening

or even deadly results.

Sometimes people don't even realize they've swallowed

a piece of toothpick, which can make the diagnosis extremely difficult.

In addition, a lot of toothpick users tend to chew on it,

well, past its prime.

And that can cause premature wear and tear on tooth-enamel.

Toothpicks can also damage existing dental restorations

like crowns, veneers, and fillings

and cause them to dislodge or fall off.

In general, serving food with a toothpick

might not be worth the trouble.

And that is something you should know.

Oh, I would really like it.

If you would just take a moment and leave a rating

and review on Apple Podcast Spotify,

whatever platform you listen on,

it would really help us a lot.

A lot.

I'm Mike Herruthers.

Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

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