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Jun 16
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1067: Better Decisions through Neuroscience with Emily Falk

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Emily Falk reveals the hidden science behind how we make decisions—and how we can harness that to make more fulfilling choices.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to make doing hard things easier
  2. The one belief that’s limiting your possibilities
  3. How to disarm resistance to change

About Emily

Emily Falk, author of the upcoming book What We Value, is a professor of communication, psychology, and marketing at the University of Pennsylvania and the vice dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, where she directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab and the Climate Communication Division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. 

Falk is an expert in the science of behavior change. Her award-winning research uses tools from psychology, neuroscience, and communication to examine what makes messages persuasive, why and how ideas spread, and what makes people effective communicators. 

In What We Value, Falk illustrates how we can transform our relationship with the daily decisions that define our lives—opening pathways to make more purposeful, fulfilling choices; more successfully change our behavior; and influence others to see differently—by thinking like neuroscientists.

Resources Mentioned

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Emily Falk Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Emily, welcome!

Emily Falk
Thanks so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I’m excited to hear some of your goods. So, then, tell us, with your book, What We Value, what’s the big idea or core message here?

Emily Falk
Well, the big idea in What We Value is that our brains shape what we value, and that happens in ways that we might not realize as they’re unfolding. And my hope is that if people can understand how their brains are calculating value that that has potentially a lot of benefits.

That one possibility is that we can feel more compassion for ourselves and for other people when we make decisions that don’t necessarily make sense to us. That it might also help us make choices a little bit differently or also communicate more effectively with one another.

So, the book is in three parts right there. The first part that explains how this all unfolds in the brain, then there’s a second part that focuses on what we might do if we want to change those kinds of processes, and then the third part focuses on how we connect with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you discussed the value calculation. What is that? And, ultimately, how are we generally going about making decisions?

Emily Falk
Well, your brain has a set of regions, a system that neuroscientists call the value system, and it takes inputs from lots of other brain regions, and integrates them into a subjective assessment of how rewarding each of any different possible options might be for you. And this kind of unfolds in three phases.

So, in the first phase, your brain identifies what the things are that you’re choosing between. And then in the second part of that, it assigns a subjective value to each of those possible options, which is really weighted towards things that are psychologically close, meaning things that are immediately relevant to you, like rewarding soon.

Geographically close to you, like, stuff that’s happening here in my community, as opposed to, like, across the world in Sudan. And, also, socially close, like, people who are similar to me or people who I know really well, as opposed to people who I think are really different from me or far away.

And in the brain, you can see that these kinds of psychological distance are computed similarly. So, like, future me is similar to a different person. So, in that second phase, your brain assigns a subjective value to how kind of immediately, presently rewarding things are likely to be. And then it connects to other systems that execute the choice.

So, we choose the one that we think can be most rewarding, and then keep track of how it went afterwards, like, “Was that actually as rewarding as I thought it would be?” And if it’s better than you thought it would be, like, let’s say, that you are at work and you sign up for an assignment that you’re willing to do, but it turns out that it’s like way more fun that you thought it would be, it generates what’s called a positive prediction error, and that makes it more likely that we’ll do that thing in the future.

Rather than something that you were really excited about, turns out to be worse than you thought it would be, it generates this negative prediction error, and we learn so that, in the future, it’s going to be an input to future value calculations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s what’s going on underneath the hood when we’re thinking about, “Do I do a thing?” And so then, if different people choose differently, I guess, what are the primary variables that explain it?

So, if someone says, “Hey, some guys are getting together for a fishing trip,” and then some people on the email say, “Yes, I’m in,” others say, “No, I’m not,” I’m sure there are all kinds of things that are happening externally in their life and their situations and their travel plans. But internally, what are the core things that might make the difference between folks saying, “Yes, I’m in,” versus, “No, I’m out”?

Emily Falk
Well, each of our choices that we’re making in a deliberate way like that are shaped by our past experiences, like we just talked about. Our current context, which can include a lot of different things.

Like I said, there are all these other brain systems that are feeding into our value calculations, which include what we think about ourselves, like, “Am I the kind of person who goes fishing?”

What we think other people around us might be thinking or doing, like, if many other people in the chain have already replied enthusiastically, then that signals that this is, like, maybe something that is going to be fun or beneficial. And those kinds of social influences are really powerful in shaping our value calculations.

Our current mood and our emotional states impact our decision-making, and there are lots of other things as well. So, there’s all of these different context cues that feed into our subjective value associations. And so, the difference between somebody making the choice of say yes to the fishing trip or no to the fishing trip is going to be dependent on all those different things.

But I think one of the things that’s really helpful to understand is that we can shift how we feel about it depending on what we pay attention to.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about shifts, can you tell us the tale of Ernie Grunfeld’s parents and how that brings this to life?

Emily Falk
Yeah, Ernie Grunfeld, for folks who don’t know, was a star NBA player and went on to become the general manager of several major NBA teams. So, he’s had a really star-studded career in basketball. But when he first came to the US, he immigrated from Eastern Europe, and his parents and he were Holocaust survivors.

And they ended up in New York, and his parents made all kinds of sacrifices to get the family to the US. And so, when they arrived, his parents set up a store, and Ernie would help out at the store on the weekends. He enrolled in school. His parents prioritized sort of higher-rent housing situation in order to be able to get him that education.

He came from this family that had a really strong core set of values related to those things. But, on the playground, it turned out that Ernie was amazing at basketball. And so, Ernie started to play on the playgrounds in New York, and then eventually, in high school, he got really, really good. But his parents were really busy working and they didn’t know that.

And so, his son, Dan, wrote a book where he describes the high school basketball coach calling up Mr. and Mrs. Grunfeld, and saying, “Your son is incredibly talented, and this is something that he could pursue as a ticket to college. Like, it’s going to be his ticket to getting scholarships. He’s going to be able to pursue this education,” in a way that really resonated with them.

And I’ll also add that Ernie’s dad, Alex, was an athlete himself. He had been a star ping-pong player, among other things. And so, the conditions were really right, where you could imagine some parents being in the situation where they’ve sacrificed so much for their kid to be able to be in this new place and pursue an education.

And if Coach Isser had focused on other things, like, for example, maybe how talented he was at basketball and what a gift it would be to the sport for him to play, like, I don’t know how that would’ve changed his parents’ calculations.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, good for basketball, that’s not our priority right now. Okay.

Emily Falk
Yeah. And so, the people who are receiving the message, his parents, have one set of things that’s really important to them, and through this conversation, Coach Isser was able to kind of highlight for them what an amazing opportunity this talent that Ernie had could afford. And so, there’s a really incredible story of them coming to the gym one night to watch him play basketball. They closed the store, which was something that they never typically did.

And they came in to the gym, and they didn’t even recognize him on the court in his uniform and playing, and so they were like, “Where’s our kid?” And then, it turned out that there he was, like, being amazing on the court. And after seeing that, I think that made it even more concrete and vivid for them, like what was possible.

And so then, they became really big supporters of him playing basketball. They released him from his duties working at the store. And he did go on to have a really incredible college career and, eventually, moved into the NBA.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you mentioned releasing duties from the store. So, whereas, before, it sounds like, was a bit more of a, “Okay, we tolerate this basketball thing because it’s a thing you like to do,” and then they got shifted over to, “Oh, wait a minute. This is the ticket to all the things that we’ve been trying to create for you, so now we’re all in on you and basketball.”

Emily Falk
Yeah, I’m not sure even how much they talked about it before Coach Isser brought it up, right? Like, this incredibly amazing story that highlights his parents not even recognizing him at the gym. I think it wasn’t on their radar that this was something he did. Like, he went to the playground, he played with his friends, he did whatever he did after school, and then the coach kind of brought that into their focus.

So, thinking about that first part of decision-making process of, like, “What possibilities are even available?” Coach Isser sort of foregrounded this as something that could be a path for their kid, where I don’t know how many conversations Ernie and his parents were having before that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s say that we’re to utilize to use this cool brain science to see some good results in our lives, and maybe there’s any number of behaviors that we would like to change, maybe, “I wish I could focus longer, or on difficult strategic high-impact career things, or exercise, or have some challenging conversations with folks.”

If we want to make a shift in what we’re doing to doing more of the things that we think we “should” or would be good for us to do, where do we start?

Emily Falk
Yeah, let’s stick with the Ernie example for a little bit longer there because I think, although we’ve been talking about sort of his parents’ decision-making process, thinking about that long-term future for him, which is often something that his parents or as managers are trying to do, Ernie had different motivations for playing basketball.

He was playing basketball because he loved it. It was a way to make friends. It was a way to do something that felt really joyful for him in the moment. And I think that is a really instructive path towards success.

So, in particular, we often focus so much on distant outcomes, and in doing the thing that we think is going to be the best for us that we disregard or down-weight the things that, actually, is going to make the process joyful.

And so, going back to that idea that our brain has this system for calculating psychological distance, like our self-relevant system calculates what’s me and what’s not me, and it prioritizes the things that are immediately rewarding, that are socially similar to me, that are geographically close to me.

And so, when we think about how we can make those choices that you’re describing easier, I think one of the things that we can do is try to being them psychologically closer, try to bring the rewards psychologically closer.

And so, just to be concrete about what I mean, so you’re talking about, like, networking as one example. Sometimes we think about how we can take advantage of a conference or a new situation or we’re going to meet people at work as an opportunity to network and to build relationships that are going to be useful in the future.

But I think when people think about it that way, it’s kind of obvious why you would dread that, it’s like, “I’m going to kind of muddle through these maybe awkward interactions in service of some payoff that’s in the distant future.”

Whereas, if we think about, like, the chance to get to know somebody now and to actually have fun with a few people that we care about, like our peers, I think that can be a more successful strategy because it’s fun in the moment. So, it’s rewarding now but it also is building those bridges to the future.

And what I would say about that also is when we think about research on conversation, that people often underestimate how fun conversations with strangers are going to be. And so, maybe we are dreading things unnecessarily. Like, when you actually start to ask people questions that you’re curious to know the answers to, rather than just kind of the trite small talk stuff, then it actually can be really fun.

We also tend to underestimate how much other people like us. And so, people sometimes avoid having conversations because they’re worried that other people don’t want to have them but then it turns out that they do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think you’re great, Emily, and I like you.

Emily Falk
I think you’re great, too, Pete. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we bring it close to us. And then I want to hear a bit about, when you say “like me” or “not like me,” my buddy, Scott, gave me a tip from somewhere about how it can actually be quite powerful to say, as we’re doing a thing that we want to do more of, it’s like, “Oh, it is so like me to wake up early and exercise.” And I was like, “Is that a real thing, Scott?” Tell us, Emily, is that a real thing?

Emily Falk
Yeah. Well, that is a good strategy in terms of thinking about the ways that the things that we want to do can be congruent with aspects of our personality or identity already. So, in the book, I talk a little bit about an experience that I had talking with my brother who is a real athlete. And when I was growing up, I didn’t really think of myself as specifically an athlete or a runner. I run to de-stress, I exercise for my mental health, but my siblings have always been much more athletic than I am.

And one day my brother came to me, and he said, “You know, if you did some targeted workouts, you could get much faster.” And initially I was like, “Why would I want to do that?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Speed? Who cares?”

Emily Falk
Yeah, right. Like, “Why do I need to run faster? Like, I have this other goal in mind.” And he was like, “Well, if you got faster, then you could hear the gossip on runs with me and Lily,” my sister. So, that was one motivation. But in terms of whether I was capable of it, he said to me, “Academics often make really good runners because they know how to plan and work hard towards a goal. And you already have all of these mental skills that you would need in order to be a really good runner.”

And so, he kind of reframed what I would think of as like a dichotomy previously of like nerd versus jock, like, “I’m really good at math and science, and I really like school.” And, instead, he said, “No, actually those things that make you really good at your job also could make you really good at this other thing.” And so, by connecting that aspect of my identity with this thing that he wanted me to do, he opened up that possibility.

And so, it’s not like, all of a sudden, I’m running marathons as quickly as he is but sometimes, I’ll add a few sprints to the end of my run now. And then there’s this kind of feed-forward cycle, where when we do do a thing that’s compatible with the longer-term goal, then that can become more a part of our identity. So, like, “I am a person who could run faster,” right? And so, then once I have that in mind, it makes it more motivating to do it in the future.

And underneath that, when we think about what’s happening in people’s brains, what we see is that self-relevance and value are really deeply intertwined. Like, there’s been research that Rob Chavez and Dylan Wagner did, where they showed that the same patterns of brain activity that can distinguish between whether somebody rates, say, a photo of a puppy as good or bad, positive or negative, that value calculation, can also distinguish whether somebody, that same person, will say that a given adjective, like boring or intelligent or messy, describes them.

And so, what that means is that, since the brain is kind of conflating self and value in these ways, that we tend to prioritize choices that immediately kind of feel like me and that sometimes we cut off or take off the table of possibilities for things in all different aspects of our life because they don’t necessarily immediately resonate as something that someone like me would do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking about Bob Cialdini’s work with, who’s on the show and he’s amazing, Pre-Suasion, where he asked folks, I think the study was they asked folks to check out a new energy drink or a new food or beverage of some sort. And most people are not interested, like, “Hey, I’m just trying to shop, like go away.”

But if he prefaced it with, “Would you consider yourself an adventurous person?” and most people are like, “Well, adventurous is good. And I guess kind of, yeah.” It’s like, well, that was the pre-question. And then he asked, “Well, would you like to then try this new product?” The response rates went up because I think, in so doing, he made kind of a bridge in terms of, “Oh, yeah, trying this new product is congruent with who I am. I am an adventurous person and, therefore, I try new foods and beverages. Why not?”

Emily Falk
And that’s a great example of sort of that second part of value calculation, where if you want to change the way that you’re responding to something, or the way somebody else is responding to something, that the context matters so much, right?

And so, in general, maybe you’re moving through a supermarket and you’re thinking about one set of factors, like, “Am I thirsty? Like, have I already had a cup of coffee today?” whatever, right? But, by focusing on this aspect of your identity, like, “Oh, actually, I’m an adventurous person,” that is shifting the spotlight onto a different part of, like, the choice space, right? And so, it’s making it easier for you to say yes to that thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, you also had some research showing that our brain activity in the value system predicts whether or not we’re going to do some stuff better than whether we, ourselves, say we’re going to do the thing, whether it’s about using sunscreen or reducing smoking or exercising more. Can you speak a bit more on this?

Emily Falk
Sure. And I would say that those sources of information complement each other. So, it’s not necessarily that the brain is better, but that sometimes it gives different information than when we ask people about things like their intentions to change their behavior or their confidence in their ability to do it or their attitudes, like about the behavior in question.

And so, just like you said, we found that when you look at what happens in people’s brains, as they’re being exposed to these messages about all different kinds of behaviors, it can help predict not only whether people are going to change their behavior, but also what kinds of messages are going to be effective in shifting people’s preferences or other kinds of things that they do.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, under the hood, is it that we can observe, I’m talking about, brain waves or activation energy? What is the thing we’re seeing? And what does it mean in terms of “activity” in the value system?

Emily Falk
There are a lot of different neuroimaging techniques that scientists use to measure brain activity. Most of the studies in what we value focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, which uses changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated blood as a proxy for brain activity. So, the way that MRI, magnetic resonance imaging technology works is that there’s a big magnet and a changing magnetic field, and all of your blood has hemoglobin, like little tiny bits of iron that are susceptible to that magnetic field.

And so, what we can do is we can follow the change in concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood that are going to fuel your brain cells. All of the cells in your body need oxygen and glucose in order to function. And so, that’s why when certain parts of your brain are firing a lot, then they’re consuming more of that energy, and so the blood flow changes in order to supply that.

And so, the fMRI tracks, over the course of seconds, how much is the blood oxygen level dependent signal shifting. And so, when we say that the activation within the value system is changing, what we mean is that certain neurons in your brain are firing in a way that is then changing how the blood is flowing and supplying them with energy, and that we can pick up on that proxy for brain activity.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. Because I’ve read that a lot, I was like, “Oh, FMRI studies show activation,” I was like, “How exactly does that even work?” So now we know. Thank you. That’s fun.

So, then, I guess I’m curious, it sounds like, as I’m imagining a person who’s hearing about a message about exercising more, and who ends up doing it, and then someone who doesn’t, the difference is that, in their brain, the parts associated with the value system are kind of they’re working it, they’re in it, they’re fired up, they’re doing the thing. And then someone else is, I guess, less so into it.

So, I’m curious, could you maybe venture to speculate, what are the kinds of things happening inside someone’s mind? What does it sound like when their value system activity is revved up versus what is it not? What is maybe a snippet of example illustrative internal dialogue sound like?

Emily Falk
Great. So, we started to talk a little bit before about some of the things that might make people more open to changing. So, one of them is feeling like there’s a more immediate reward.

In studies that we’ve run, looking at people who were relatively sedentary, and we’re trying to coach them to be more physically active, we may give them messages about how or why they would do that.

So, stuff like, “People who are at your level of physical inactivity are at increased risk for heart disease,” or, “The best parking spots are the ones that are farthest away. So, park at the edge of the parking lot and get some extra steps as you’re walking into your office.” And for a lot of us, when we get this kind of coaching that suggests that stuff we were doing in the past might not be optimal, one of the reactions that it triggers is defensiveness.

And that goes back to the idea that we conflate self and value, so stuff that I did in the past, we tend to be biased to think like, “Well, that was me, and so, ideally, that was a good decision.” And so, messages or coaching or feedback that suggests that what we were doing in the past isn’t optimal can be threatening to that sense of self.

And so, people, their internal dialogue might be something like, “Yeah. Well, okay, some people who are sedentary are at increased risk of heart disease. But I eat a pretty good diet and I try to keep my salt down, so it’s probably not that big of a deal for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, this is what low-value system activity kind of sounds like.

Emily Falk
Yeah. So, if it’s like coming up with reasons why this doesn’t really apply to me, or that this information, or advice isn’t particularly valuable, then we’d expect to see less activation within the value system. And so, in the study that I’m describing here, one of the ways that we tried to help people be more open to that information was a process called values affirmation.

Where before they got any of the coaching, half of the people are randomized to get these values affirmations where they choose a value that’s really important to them. And then we have them think about scenarios where that value is going to come into play. So, like, what’s a value that’s really important to you, Pete? Friends and family, creativity, spirituality?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s say learning.

Emily Falk
Okay, great. So, learning is a value that’s really important to you. So, we’d have you maybe vividly imagine situations where, like, what’s a time that you have learned something that was really amazing that helped you do your job better? Or what’s a time when you have learned something that changed the way that you interacted with other people? Or what’s a time in the future where learning is going to open new doors for you?

And so, we might have you reflect on these different kinds of scenarios and imagine them vividly. And that would be the values affirmation. People in the control group would do a similar kind of thing but we would give them a value that’s not important to them.

And what we saw was that then going into those coaching messages, which are literally the same for everybody in the study. The only thing that’s different is whether they’ve gotten to reflect on that value that means a lot to them or not beforehand.

The people who got to do that work of kind of zooming out and thinking about what actually matters to them, I think, could then see that, like, whether or not they parked in the farthest parking spot from their work, or actually we’re moving around as much as the federal guidelines recommend, that that doesn’t actually determine whether you’re a good person or not. It’s not the thing that determines your self-worth.

And so, that’s one possibility for why we would see more activation in the value system, more activation in the self-relevant system when they’re exposed to those coaching messages after getting that chance to zoom out.

And then the last piece of the puzzle was the more people showed increased activation in the value or self-relevant system as they were getting those coaching messages, the more they went on to actually change their behavior.

So, for the month afterwards, we sent them text message reminders that were kind of little boosters and measured their physical activity with accelerometers, like imagine a Fitbit that doesn’t give you feedback.

And so, it seemed like the intervention that we did, made people’s brains more receptive to the information. And then the more they were receptive to that information or the more they showed activation in these brain regions, the more likely they were to change their behavior afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool and actionable. Thank you. I guess I’m curious, if there’s many, many different values, it seems like some of them would seem to map better to exercise more than others. But just doing it, value affirming any one of your values, makes you more down to exercise kind of whatever the value, regardless of the value?

Emily Falk
Well, there’s two different pathways that I think you’re pointing at. So, one is, in values affirmation, in that literature, mostly people focus on values that don’t have to do with the behavior that you’re trying to change, because the idea is you’re trying to get somebody to kind of zoom out and reduce the threat of the thing that you’re asking them to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so defensive reduction happens regardless.

Emily Falk
Exactly. So, you’re trying to reduce their defensiveness by anchoring them in something that kind of is bigger than themself, right, something that connects them to other people, ideally, like something that is self-transcendent.

And so, when they reflect on those kinds of things, then the logic is that it can help them see that, like, like I said, whether you exercise or not this week doesn’t make you a good or bad person, right? And that there could be useful information in this coaching, even if it means changing something about what you were doing in the past. So, that’s like one pathway.

You’re also kind of highlighting, though, with your question that, like when my brother tried to connect my identity as an academic with the possibility of running, that’s sort of a different way of tapping into a connection between something that we value and our identity, and tailoring a message in that way can also make it more effective. So, there are tons of studies that have shown that when messages are tailored to people’s values and to their lifestyle and to their demographics that it can make the messages more effective.

So, for example, in a study that Hannah Chua led at Michigan, looking at smokers, when smokers received messages that were tailored to their personal motivations, let’s say, it’s like they’re motivated to quit because smoking is really expensive, or they’re motivated to quit because they have kids and they’re really worried about the effects of secondhand smoke, that those messages both increased activation within parts of medial prefrontal cortex, which is core to several of the kinds of key systems that we’ve been talking about. And that those tailored messages are more effective in changing their behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now that you got me thinking about those tailored messages, do we tend to get better results stoking our fears or by amplifying a beautiful positive vision, or the combo?

Emily Falk
There have been meta-analyses that show that fear appeals can work. So, you can get people to change their behavior by highlighting the negative consequences of things that’ll come.

There’s also a set of research on what’s called mental contrasting with implementation intentions, where the idea is that it’s not enough to just fantasize about a future that you want, like the good things that would come. You have to identify what the gap is between where you are now and that future state. So, that’s the mental contrasting part.

And then once you’ve figured out, like, what are the things that are potentially in the way of you moving from where you are right now to where you want to be in the future, then you can use the second part of that MCII, mental contrasting with implementation intentions, the implementation intentions part, which is those if-then plans where you say, “If I’m in this situation, then I will do this.”

So, for example, this has been applied to voting, like making detailed plan of like, “When it’s Tuesday morning and if it’s raining out, I’m going to get my partner, get an umbrella, and go to our polling station anyway,” or, “I’m going to get a ride from my mom,” or whatever the thing is that’s going to help you overcome the obstacle that you’re perceiving.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Emily, in our final minutes here, can you share what are your top-top do’s and don’ts you recommend if we are looking to make a change? Do more of something or do less of something, we want to, if we could, as close as possible, flip the switch, wave the magic wand so that we’re now behaving the way we’d like to be?

Emily Falk
One is, I would say, do think about how you can make the process joyful now. Like, don’t just save all the rewards for later. So, if you’re trying to get more exercise and you really hate running, like, go dancing or choose something, which is gonna be…

Pete Mockaitis
Pickleball.

Emily Falk
Yeah, Pickleball. If you love pickleball, play pickleball, right? Do the thing that’s going to be fun now and also compatible with the longer-term goal. Or if you’re trying to eat healthier, like, choose things that are both tasty for you now and healthy. Like, surely there are things that are at the intersection of those rather than just, like, stomaching something that you are not going to want to do over and over again for the long term. So that’s one thing.

Another thing I would say is thinking about that defensiveness and making sure that when you go into a conversation or situation where you’re going to get feedback, that you don’t throw out helpful advice because it’s potentially threatening to your sense of self, right?

So, knowing that our brain’s default is to kind of conflate self and value, we can be aware and on guard for that kind of feeling. And instead, think about, like, “What are the things that we can learn from the feedback that we’re getting? What are the pieces of feedback that can help us grow and change and do what we want to do?”

And then the last thing that I would say, that we haven’t delved as deeply into, is that social rewards are incredibly powerful. And so, for all of these things, as we’re trying to think about, “How can we make something more rewarding now that the long-term payoff is far in the future?” We can do it with other people who also care about it.

In my lab, we often work together on tasks that are the least fun tasks, work on that thing you don’t want to work on. An acronym for that, that my grad school pal, Elliot Berkman, coined is wotty’d wot wot. And when you do it with other people who also value the goal and the work, then it’s more fun.

And, likewise, you can think about, like in this moment, looking around and trying to think about like, “What can I do to improve the situation that we’re all in?” like, that can feel vague and distant and in the future. But if you think about like, the most important thing is just to do something, right? Like, think about what you want to change, and then do it visibly with other people. That can also be a really powerful reward. So, those are a few for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, beautiful. Thank you, Emily. Well, now could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Emily Falk
Yeah. One of my favorites right now is the study that I talked about where they showed that the same brain patterns that can classify whether something is good or bad can also classify whether something is me or not me.

Because I find, personally, that that’s so useful to keep in mind, that those things are getting intertwined in our brains in ways that we may not necessarily be paying attention to, and then can have all of these knock-on effects in terms of making us feel defensive or on the other side, restricting the possibilities that we see for ourselves and others.

And that same research team has gone on to do a bunch of other interesting research about, like, how we represent our sense of self and relate to other people. So, that’s one of my favorites right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Emily Falk
One that I used as a foundation for the last chapter in the book is Maria Ressa’s autobiography, How to Stand Up to a Dictator. And one of the things that I really love about that story is that it highlights how the person that we become, and when we do big hard things like she did, that it’s really a series of these tiny little decisions.

And so, as we think about the choices that we’re making on a day-to-day basis, Maria Ressa went on to get a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in journalism, making all of these extraordinary and brave choices. But when she describes the process of growing up and the things that shaped her values and the things that shaped her daily decisions, it feels accessible and ordinary. So, that’s a book that I really loved recently.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Emily Falk
One of my favorite tools in the lab is what we call fast friends. And fast friends is a protocol where you can randomly assign people to have a friend in the lab. And sometimes you want that because the real history of people’s friendships comes with all kinds of baggage and different people have different kinds of friendships and so on.

So, psychologists develop this tool called fast friends, which starts out with surface-level questions, like, “If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be?” or, “What constitutes a perfect day for you?” And then the questions get increasingly intimate, building to things like, “If you were to die tonight, what’s one thing that you haven’t told anyone? And why not?” And asking your partner for advice.

And so, over the course of like an hour, you actually become friends with someone. So, that’s a favorite psychological tool for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is this the same questions to fall in love with anyone?

Emily Falk
Yeah. So, the media has often characterized this as, like, 36 questions to fall in love. And, yeah, great, use it for that. But also, I’ve done it with my grandmother. I’ve done it with my father-in-law. I’ve done it with my kids.

I’ve done it with, recently, I went to an experience potluck, which was super fun. People brought different experiences with them and then offered them to each other, kind of like a food potluck, and I brought fast friends, and I got to do it with a stranger who’s now my friend.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And a favorite habit?

Emily Falk
Making time to actually focus on quality time with my partner. So, a habit involves something where there’s a cue and then a thing that you repeat and then kind of a reward that you get at the end. And so, after our kids fall asleep, that’s the cue, and then there’s like half an hour to an hour where we hang out in the kitchen and try to actually focus on the present.

And the reward is getting to feel close to a person that I care about. I don’t always do that perfectly. So, I don’t know if it fully counts as a habit because the definition of a habit involves essentially doing it fully on automatic pilot, and that’s kind of the opposite.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you’re being quoted back to yourself often?

Emily Falk
That we’re not ever really making decisions alone.

So, we imagine that we’re making decisions independent of lots of other factors, but the data really bear out the idea that our brains value systems are deeply influenced by what other people are thinking and feeling and doing in so many different areas, ranging from what foods we like to who we think is attractive, to the art that we hang on our walls, to whether we vote.

And so, that idea that we’re not deciding alone and that it’s not just that we’re performing some kind of conformity, but that our value calculations are actually deeply shaped by the people around us. And so, I think that really kind of, like, complicates the idea of authenticity, right? That, like, often, sometimes people think that, when they’re conforming or when they’re following along with other people’s preferences, that that’s somehow inauthentic.

And actually, I think, the people that we choose to spend our time with are really deeply shaping who we are in so many important ways. And so, we want to be aware of that, both in terms of who we’re choosing as role models, and who we’re choosing to spend our time and energy with, and how we’re showing up for our kids and our friends and our colleagues because we’re shaping them also, right? So, the kind of future and the way that the world is going to unfold is starting also in our own minds.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Emily Falk
Well, my lab’s website, FalkLab.org, has all of our research papers for free. I also share research, both from our team and others on LinkedIn. And then our lab has a bunch of other social media channels that you can find on the website.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Emily Falk
Just like we know that other people influence us, we’re influencing other people. And so, when we look around and we see big challenges or hard things that we want to have be different in the world, then it’s not that we have to have a perfect plan, but that if we choose something and start to move towards it in a way that prioritizes doing it in a way that feels fun and joyful, and then we can bring other people in and show them what we’re doing, that I do think we have the capacity in aggregate to make big changes.

Pete Mockaitis
Emily, thank you.

Emily Falk
Thank you, Pete. So great to talk to you.

Jun 12
0

1066: How to Thrive When Your Resilience Runs Out with Dr. Tasha Eurich

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Tasha Eurich shares why pushing through sometimes isn’t enough–and how to bounce back stronger than ever.

You’ll Learn

  1. The hidden costs of “grit gaslighting”
  2. How to know when you’ve hit your “resilience ceiling”
  3. The three needs that unlocks the best version of yourself

About Tasha

Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times best-selling author (Shatterproof, Insight, Bankable Leadership).

She helps people thrive in a changing world by becoming the best of who they are and what they do. With a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Tasha is the principal of The Eurich Group, a boutique consultancy that helps successful executives succeed when the stakes are high.

As an author and sought-after speaker in the self-improvement space, Tasha is a candid yet compassionate voice. Pairing her scientific grounding with 20+ years of experience on the corporate front lines, she reveals the often-surprising secrets to success and fulfillment in the 21st century.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Tasha Eurich Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Tasha, welcome back.

Tasha Eurich
It’s so great to be back, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, it is great to be chatting with you. I am excited to talk about the insights of your book, Shatterproof. I listened to it in its entirety and then had to get the text as well. And there’s so much good stuff to get into. Maybe, could you orient us a little bit? You’ve mentioned that this is the book that you needed as well, and that’s the first time this has happened for you in your author journey. Can you expand a little bit about the health backstory and how that plays into this?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, I mean, I think my last book I needed. I needed to become more self-aware, even though I didn’t know it when I first started out. But when I say I needed this book, in the context of becoming shatterproof, it was literally, it felt like a matter of life and death. And I look back and I know that it was.

And basically, the very, very short story is I’ve had a lifetime of mysterious health ailments that nobody could diagnose, that nobody really thought was real, like all the tests would come back normal. And I did my best to manage, resiliently, to push through, to power through, to be the fifth-generation entrepreneur that I am, and suck it up and keep going.

And starting in early 2021, when the world was starting to recover from COVID, I started getting very, very sick. And within a couple of months, I was bed bound. I had 10 out of 10 pain every day. My resting heart rate was 150 beats per minute. I was fainting all the time. I couldn’t remember what I had done 10 minutes ago or even the names of my family or my longtime friends.

And the way I started to cope with this was what I’ve always done, right? Which is, you and I were joking about our resilience spreadsheets. I had my list of practices: gratitude, yoga as much as I could, social support, reaching out, telling my husband at the time what I felt and what I thought, trying to reframe challenges as opportunities, and active coping.

I went to every single specialist under the sun, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was having more anxiety than I’d ever had before. I was more depressed than I ever was before. And, eventually, I had the experience that I eventually uncovered, as a researcher, kind of along right around the same time, where I hit my resilience ceiling, which means I sort of lost all ability to cope, and the tools that I’ve been using my entire life stopped working.

And so, I was in a position where I knew there was an alternative because we had this in our data. Some people are able to take the hardest things that happen to them and become better, stronger, wiser. And finding that answer was so personal to me that, you know, I probably spent longer on it than I would have.

I think I was able to dig into, like, the complexity of the solution and tried to make it simple. So, simplicity on the other side of complexity. But the point there was, I think no matter what all of us are facing, we all need this book. We all need an alternative to resiliently powering through, being mentally tough. There’s a point at which that doesn’t help us anymore. And if we keep trying to do it, it hurts us.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Very well said. You had a lovely quote. It’s ascribed as a Chinese proverb. Can you give it to us about when the wind blows?

Tasha Eurich
“When the winds of change rage, some people build shelters and others build windmills.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that just viscerally paints a picture of what’s unique and fresh and lovely about your work here. Because we just recently had Dr. Aditi Nerurkar on sharing about the five resets, and that’s all very good. Yes, indeed, exercise is great. Breathing is good.

Tasha Eurich
And if it helps, yeah, keep doing it.

Pete Mockaitis
Gratitude journaling and such. Like, these are all great, great uses of things to do to feel better, to overcome some stuff. But that shift from shelter to windmill, I think really, really captures it. Because that’s how it can feel sometimes, like, “Oh, man, I’m getting battered. Well, I got to exercise more. I got to breathe more. I got to do some more yoga.” Yeah.

And as you identify, sometimes that just runs out, it’s like, “Oh,” and that’s a spooky feeling, just like, “Uh-oh.”

Tasha Eurich
It is. It is. And what I’ve found, in talking to high achieving-people, you know, of kind of all walks of life, is it is the most distressing for the strongest people because we look back, and we say, “Gosh, maybe this isn’t even the hardest thing I’ve ever been through,” which was the case for me. I’m like, “Why can’t I just show up with my gratitude journal and do my meditation and find some relief?”

And then you start to do something that I called grit gaslighting, right, which is where we blame ourselves for struggling under the weight of the very real difficulty of living in this world in the year 2025.

And so, yeah, I think, especially for high-achieving people like your listeners, part of what I want to do with this conversation is normalize that you are not failing at resilience. You are hitting your resilient ceiling, and everyone has one.

Pete Mockaitis
And, boy, the grit gaslighting is something sometimes I even do to myself, it’s like, “Oh, come on, Pete. Like, I mean, your business is like stellar. Compare this to, like, seven years ago, man. Like, this is great. You’ve got three wonderful children, a wonderful wife, a nice house.”

It’s like things seem like they’re rocking here, and I have been through some tough stuff, and then, throughout history, it seems like folks had it way tougher. You read about the folks fighting the Revolutionary Wars, like, “Oh, jeez.”

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, “What am I whining about, for God’s sake?”

Pete Mockaitis
And yet, and I don’t want to linger too much here because it’s kind of like the nonfiction, the obligatory nonfiction book intro, “Today is, like, so difficult and unprecedented, and that’s why this book is exactly what you must buy.” So, I mean, in a way, that’s quite obvious.

Tasha Eurich
And yet it is.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if we could maybe briefly hit us with, “Okay, why could we be okay with being not okay in the current climate? And why are we not just weenie babies who can’t tough it out? Like, the folks fighting the Revolutionary War or dealing with ‘real hardship’”?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, like Marvel characters and business casual, right? So, there is a thing, so I’m a scientist. I am a quantitative scientist at heart. And when I first started this research program five years ago, I wanted to answer that question. Because what I was seeing all around me, and I’ve been coaching CEOs for 20 years, was a completely new level of exhaustion, chaos, stress, demands, and not just professionally, personally, in all of their lives, and in my life, too.

And so, what I wanted to see was, like, empirically, was that true or did it just feel that way? And I stumbled upon this excellent, very, very sort of scientific metric called the World Uncertainty Index. And it uses a variety of factors to come up with every year, basically, and it plots the level of uncertainty.

And what I thought I would find was kind of crazy, like, after 9/11, it went down; went kind of crazy during the Great Recession, maybe went down; COVID, it spiked, went down. But what I found was, like, a pretty consistent high level of uncertainty until 2023, 2024, and it went like this, “Boop!” exponentially higher.

And when I show it, when I get to speak about this book, and I show it to audiences, people’s eyes get wide, and they go, “Oh, it’s not just me.” And so, I think you’re right. There is always the sort of drama of the beginning of a nonfiction book. But, for me, as a scientist, like, it’s real. You’re not imagining it. It’s real.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the Uncertainty Index, and it’s intriguing. So, 2023, 2024, it doesn’t seem like anything happened. Or, am I overlooking something that happened?

Tasha Eurich
Well, it’s worth going to their website to look. It really gets crazy this year, which is interesting, right?

Pete Mockaitis
With AI, that’s kind of wild.

Tasha Eurich
AI is pretty wild. In the business world or organizations, a lot of sectors are being disrupted that people never thought would be disrupted because of a lot of external factors, and the effects of COVID are still being felt. I think all of that together, along with just the pace of life. Like, think about right now, at this moment, the number of people that need something from you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, geez, I don’t want to.

Tasha Eurich
Right? Like, if I think about that too hard, I start to flip out because it’s like, “Oh, well, this thing I was supposed to have to them a month ago, and this other thing.” And so, even something as “simple” as the cumulative demands, they don’t stop. Like, nobody’s saying, “Well, I’m going to just really need all this stuff from you, and then I’ll go away, and you can go on vacation for three weeks.” So, that’s the piece of it, is the chronic compounding stress across multiple areas of our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
That really gets me. And I’m thinking about the email inbox, which I struggle with. My buddy, Brent, shout out, listener, sent me one of those Someecards, it said, “Congratulations on hitting inbox zero. Oh, sorry about that.”

Tasha Eurich
Brent for the win. That’s awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s how it is, like, “Oh, yeah. Oh, at this very moment, I am caught up. Oh!” And it lasted about nine   seconds.

Tasha Eurich
That is such a great example of this, right? It’s, like, this is Sisyphean, for anybody who’s into philosophy. We’re pushing that boulder up and the boulder rolls right down, and we’re back to zero.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I guess we got that in terms of modern humans. The folks who had their own challenges of poverty, starvation, war, extreme challenges, no doubt that is brutal. We, however, have our own flavor of brutality being waged upon us that they did not. And it’s so unprecedentedly high levels of uncertainty. And you mentioned in your book that we humans have a real hard time with a lot of uncertainty. What’s that about?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah. So, human beings were not designed for the world that we live in right now. If you think about it, our ancestors were, you know, their lives were difficult. They’re sort of hunting and gathering. They don’t have the comforts that we have now. But they were punctuated by danger, but things would sort of go back to normal.

So, you imagine you’re out hunting, and you see a tiger, and your stress system goes crazy, your cortisol goes up, all of your stress hormones, your fight or flight, and you’re able to escape the tiger. And then you go on with your day, and you go back home, and you have a nice night by the campfire. But the way that we are living now is our bodies actually are built to perceive a passive-aggressive email from our boss, for example, as that tiger running towards us.

And then if you multiply that email with all of the other emails just in your inbox, we have stress hormones coursing through our bodies all the time. So, we were sort of designed to have that danger, go back to normal, and our bodies can restore themselves. But what I say in the book is living in perpetual fight or flight mode isn’t just stressful, it drains the very resources we need to cope with stress.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s brutal. So, the traditional resilience practices are useful. They have their place and they do some things, and yet they can run out. And you reveal there is another path for us. What’s the path?

Tasha Eurich
So, the best way to think about it is to contrast it with resilience, okay? So, resilience is about putting our heads down, powering through so that we can bounce back. And that’s really important. So, resilience is the capacity to bounce back after hard things. That’s kind of the agreed upon consensus in, at least, for researchers.

What becoming shatterproof means is proactively channeling adversity to grow forward. And we don’t do that by powering through our pain. We do it actually by harnessing the broken parts of ourselves to access the best version of ourselves. And there’s a great analogy, like conceptually, and we’ll talk about what that looks like practically, but, conceptually, have you ever heard of the Japanese art of Kintsugi?

Pete Mockaitis
I have a couple of times. Why don’t you paint the picture?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, so it’s this beautiful art form where the artist repairs a broken piece of, usually, it’s like pottery or ceramic, with lacquer and precious metal. It’s usually gold. And, basically, like, mending broken objects with precious metal. What that does is it creates a whole new object that is stronger at its broken places.

And the question I always ask is, like, “Instead of powering through our pain and our cracks and our breaking points, what if those became fodder for us to identify what in our environment is tripping us up?” to understand, “What are the needs that we have that are going unmet? What are the self-limiting patterns that we’re showing up with that are making things worse for ourselves? And then how can we actually use that opportunity to pivot?”

And not change everything about who we are, but to try to find new ways of getting our needs met? That’s the idea, is kind of leaning into those cracks, not in a way where we’re pain shopping or anything of that nature, but to lean into those cracks as an opportunity for, you know, I say it’s self-awareness walking.

It’s finding those moments in our worst times where we can find unique insight about ourselves, how we interact with our environment, how we make our choices, how we live our life, so that we can access that best version of ourselves. And I think that’s what we all do, right?

All we want is to be happy and to enjoy our lives, and to find that version of us that we know is there, but that feels like it’s being, you know, it’s handcuffed to a furnace somewhere, and, like, locked up because of all the chaos that can’t come out.

So, that’s kind of the contrast between resilience and shatterproof is don’t just grit your teeth and push through to gain back a status quo that probably wasn’t that good anyway. Use this as fodder for self-examination and self-improvement. And that’s the contrast I make is it’s bouncing back for resilience. When you’re shatterproof, you grow forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say needs, you’ve identified the three to thrive. Can you share what are these needs? And how, of all the needs we might have, Tasha, do we know these are the three to thrive?

Tasha Eurich
Yes. Well, the good news is it is not I who has uncovered these needs. It is hundreds of researchers over more than a half century that have been researching this theory, that it’s actually my favorite theory in psychology. It always has been, and I’ve worked with it, gosh, 20 more years ago in grad school. It’s dating me. It’s called self-determination theory.

And the theory itself asks a really simple question that I think is so unbelievably practical, it’s, “What brings out the best in humans? And what brings out the beast in humans?” And what they’ve identified, and the main researchers are Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, is that there are three biologically programmed psychological needs that every single human existing on earth is programmed to seek.

I’ll tell you what they are, and then I’ll tell you what happens when we get them and when we don’t get them. So, the needs are, number one is confidence, and that’s the need to feel like we’re doing well and we’re getting better. We’re kind of showing up. We’re meeting challenges.

The second is choice. And what that’s about is feeling a sense of agency in our lives, as well as authenticity, “I can be who I am. I can be centered around my values. I don’t have to pretend or fake.” The third need is connection. And that’s a sense that we belong, and that we have close and mutually supportive relationships.

And what they found, these researchers in self-determination theory, is when these three needs are met, we are the best version of ourselves. No matter what is happening in our lives, no matter what fresh chaos is erupting around us, we can rise to the occasion.

But when any one of these needs are, especially, actively frustrated, not just unmet, but being frustrated by the situation we’re in, that’s what brings out the worst version of ourselves, the reactive version, the person that falls back into comfortable but self-limiting habits in the face of these sorts of triggers all around us.

And so, it’s so interesting because, when I was doing this research, it took me a couple of years. It took our research team of 12 people a couple of years to finally figure out that that was what separated shatterproof people from everyone else, was this idea that, “If I’m not getting my needs met in my environment, I need to find new ways of crafting them myself.”

And it sounds so simple. But if you think about the world we live in, that’s sometimes cast as selfish, right? Like, “Well, why are you meeting your own needs when everybody needs something from you?” And it’s the opposite, right? When our biologically programmed psychological needs are met, we become better for ourselves and better for everyone. We can be a better spouse, a better parent, a better employee, a better leader.

So, I think we sort of get it wrong. It’s like the idea that, “I’ll finally be happy when…” It’s like, “I can finally focus on my needs when…” But you have to reverse the equation. That’s where you have to start.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think this is so powerful, and I find it reassuring. It took y’all a couple of years to get into it. It’s because I think that many of us have probably dealt with that question, like, “Man, what’s my deal? Like, why can’t I just be awesome like I was last year or whenever?”

Tasha Eurich
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, it’s sort of like mysterious. And yet, when you just look very clearly, it’s like, “All right. Well, let’s see. Well, how well are my needs, these needs being met – my needs for confidence, my needs for choice, my needs for connection.” It’s, like, “Oh, well, that’s my deal. That is my deal. There it is, right there.”

Okay. And so then, I would love to hear, within the research, because I’ve heard different typologies for needs. So, we got Forrest Hanson and his resilience book, talking about safety, satisfaction, and connection. So, I see some overlap. And I remember my teenage idol, Tony Robbins, had a rundown of, like, six. Like, certainty, uncertainty, significance.

So, could you maybe expand a bit about, so self-determination theory, what’s some of the most compelling evidence that, “Yup, these are the three as opposed to not nine, not maybe this other thing over here. But, no, no, focus on these three”?

Tasha Eurich
So, I want to differentiate between self-determination theory and every other theory of human needs.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Tasha Eurich
Self-determination theory. The first paper was published the year I was born, 1980. And if you go to Google Scholar, and you type in self-determination theory, it is article after article after article where, and it’s, actually, it’s not even a theory. They call it a meta theory.

There are so many facets to it that have been rigorously empirically supported that it sort of rises above any theory of needs as a meta theory. So, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Everybody sees that as like the end all, be all, of human needs. There is almost no empirical research to back that up. So, it’s one thing to have a model. It’s another thing to have 50-plus years of rigorous empirical research being done by hundreds and hundreds of well-respected academicians.

And from my standpoint, there’s just no comparison. And, again, it doesn’t mean that we can’t pull from multiple theories. But I think about, you know, I talk about this in the book, a CEO I was coaching as I was writing the book, was leading his company through this massive organizational transformation. He and his wife were caring for aging parents. There was so much going on, and he didn’t have a sense of confidence.

His board was at his throat all the time. His employees were unhappy. Everyone was just saying, like, “Why can’t you be doing this better?” He had very little choice, which is strange as a CEO, but he was constrained by so many things. He was constrained by the health challenges that he was helping to manage.

And then connection, you know, it’s lonely at the top. It’s shockingly lonely. And he would always say, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine,” and I knew he wasn’t fine. And one day, he called me and, he was like, “Guess what happened? I just got on a call with my team and, like, through the most minor thing that just happened, I started screaming at them. So, I guess I’m not fine, right? I guess I’m not fine.”

And he said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” And my response is the response that I would give all of your listeners and that I try to remember myself, which is, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You are a human being whose biologically programmed needs are under threat. And what that’s telling your body is you’re being chased by a tiger.”

So, the good news is there are ways to move through that. But the way, one way to not move through that is to resiliently power through.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Thank you. You mentioned Nietzsche said, “Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” And you mentioned in Nietzsche’s, in fact, very own life, he disproved that shortly after writing it. Can you tell us that tale? And then unpack, well, what does determine whether or not an injury makes us stronger or weaker?

Tasha Eurich
I love that question. It really gets to the heart of it. So, this is probably my favorite story in the book. Nietzsche, what I tried to do is trace that expression, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” as early as I possibly could. And I found in one of his books that was published in the late 1800s

And so, he published “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” A month later, he was strolling through a square in Turin, and he came across a horrible scene, a man beating a horse. And for some reason, something snapped in Nietzsche at that moment. Something just snapped. He started hysterically crying. He rushed over.

He threw his arms around the horse. People started gathering. The crowd started gathering. The police were called. Someone was sent to, like, escort him home. And the next day, he was taken to what they called, at the time, an asylum and basically went mad, and he never emerged again. So, what I think is so powerful about that story is saying things, saying things that sound right or that sound good, doesn’t always make them true.

And I think we have to start pressure testing some of this commonly held wisdom about navigating adversity, “Does it sound good or is it actually the right advice?” And I think that, to answer the second part of your question, if I boil it down, the difference between resilient people and shatterproof people, the most fundamental difference is instead of powering through, they use that opportunity to proactively reinvent themselves.

In other words, pausing, observing, looking at some of the things within themselves that might not be the best things, and then intentionally pivoting to find, as we were talking about, new ways of meeting our needs. But I think it’s this orientation of, you know, “There’s got to be a better way. And even if I don’t know what it is, I’m going to set out on this path.”

And, by the way, I give four steps of the shatterproof roadmap in the book, “I’m going to set out on this path to build a better me and what might be one of my worst moments.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we love bettering here at How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Tasha Eurich
Better is great.

Pete Mockaitis
And you mentioned that personal growth, self-betterment, is just about the tops, a way that we can find positive psychological outcomes. Can you expand on that?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah. So, I talk about, I call it the shatterproof six. And there, in the book, is a list of empirically supported goals that if we start however small, like whatever small step we take, but if we start to pursue them, we’ll meet our deepest psychological needs. Those three to thrive needs that we talked about.

And self-development is one of them. Especially, if our need for confidence is being frustrated, if we commit to personal growth, to expanding our horizons, what the research in self-determination theory shows us is, just by pursuing that goal and by asking, “What’s one step I can take today to get a little bit closer to feeling confident and, like, the best version of myself?” that feeds our needs no matter what’s happening in the situation around us.

And I don’t say that lightly. There’s been research showing that three to thrive need satisfaction works for people who are living in extreme poverty or who are refugees. There’s one really compelling study that was done with Syrian refugees, that showed that a really simple intervention where they pursue these sorts of need-based goals, their entire lives get better. And not in a sort of toxic positivity way, but you start to feel real fulfillment that feeds you during these tough times.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s walk us through this four-part process.

Tasha Eurich
So, the first step is to probe your pain. And what that means, in a nutshell, is to pause and say, “Pushing through my pain or avoiding it is going to give me temporary relief, but there’s two problems.”

Number one is this thing researchers have called negativity rebounds, which means that when we sort of deny the emotional reality that we’re experiencing, especially when it’s really negative, we’re okay for a minute, and then it comes back in full force. So, that’s the first problem.

The second problem with not paying attention to our pain is we’re missing really valuable data, right? So, the question to ask is, well, there’s two. The first is, “In the last week, what are the negative emotions that I’ve been experiencing that are kind of higher than my baseline? So, maybe I’ve been feeling a lot more shame recently, or I’ve felt anger, or I felt sadness.”

And then the second question is, “What is that pain trying to tell me?” So, for me in my health journey, I sort of, I hit my resilience ceiling, I gave up for a couple months, it was not pretty. But one day, I kind of woke up and I started asking myself this question, like, “What am I feeling? I’m feeling helpless. I’m feeling powerless.”

And what I realized was my pain is trying to tell me that I have totally lost control over my life, right? There’s no cavalry that’s going to come save me. I have to save myself. So, that leads us to the second step, which there’s so much richness to this, but again, I’m going to try to boil it down, which is trace our triggers.

So, we look internally first at our pain. Then the next thing we have to do is say, “Okay, what is happening in the world around me that is sort of creating this internal state?” And sometimes we don’t help, but almost always there’s going to be some kind of external trigger. So, it might be, and there’s different triggers for different need frustration.

Someone might have criticized us, hurts our confidence. We might have a micromanaging boss, which hurts our choice. We might have recently ended a relationship, which kills our connection. And so, once we have that trigger, we’re not done. We don’t just get to blame it on everything external. We have to go back inside and say, “Okay, what need is that trigger getting in the way of?”

So, for me, what I realized was the trigger was sort of just being pushed through this healthcare system that is designed for patient volume and not patient helping, right, and being told over and over that what I was experiencing wasn’t real. And that was triggering my choice need. I was massively undernourished in the choice department, and I wasn’t helping myself.

So, that’s actually what leads us to step three, which is to spot your shadows. What happens in the face of triggers, what happens in the face of need frustration, is we have these instinctive responses that feel helpful, but that are actually pushing us further and further away from our need. So, in my example, I was, and I talk about different ways these shadows can show up in the book, but just as an example, I was giving up.

So, there’s some of them that are really counterintuitive. Like, “Why would I, when I’m totally powerless, when by the way, I make a living bossing around CEOs, why would I give up? It makes no sense.” But what I’m doing there is sort of, like, assuming that I’m not going to be able to fix it, and conserving energy, and saying, “I’m not a doctor, I can’t diagnose my rare disease, so I’m just going to sort of go along to get along.”

But what that shadow was doing was leading me further away from a solution. So, the question I always tell people to ask if you’re trying to spot your shadows is, “How is my behavior right now different from when I’m at my best?” And the example that I just gave is a good one, of like, “Normally I do this, but right now I’m doing this.”

So, that brings us to step four, which is pick your pivot. Pivoting means proactively moving away from these familiar shadows that make us feel better, and towards new paths to need fulfillment. And we do that through something called need crafting. And the good news, for step four, is we sort of already talked about this, right? These shatterproof six or the goals, where if we say, for me, like as an example, instead of letting myself give up, my number one goal in life is maximizing my physical health.

And that’s one of the goals that’s been shown that if we pursue, we will have greater need fulfillment, specifically in this case with choice. So, what did I start to do? I changed the way I was showing up. I changed the way I was engaging with doctors. I spent 30 minutes, this is pre-ChatGPT, I spent 30 minutes a day researching rare diseases.

And, eventually, it took me a minute, a couple months, but then I had a list of these are the diseases that I might have. And then I finally had like the one that I knew I had, and I started changing the way I engaged in doctor’s appointments. I would show up with a summary, with a list of objectives. And they would open their mouth and I would say, “Thank you so much for being a participant in my care. Here’s what I would like to accomplish in this appointment.”

And some of them didn’t like it and I had to find new doctors, but I had to become the CEO of my medical journey. And the beauty of this process, just to kind of put a period on the end of a sentence, is, it wasn’t right away, because I had to find the right specialist, but within a few months, I finally had the diagnosis that I knew that I had through my research, which is something called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is a genetic connective tissue disease where your body can’t produce the two proteins that are in every system of your body.

And so, it leads to these really kind of unrelated, confusing symptoms that usually show up as normal in diagnostics. And I can say with 100% certainty, that if I had not discovered this in our research, I certainly wouldn’t be here talking to you. I’m not sure I’d be here at all. And if I was here, I would be a shadow of my former self.

And so, when I tell people this works, there is no better way for me to share that than to say, “You know, I didn’t sort of find this as a dispassionate researcher. I found it as a human being whose life felt like it depended on these solutions.” So, that, my friend, is the shatterproof roadmap.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful.

Tasha Eurich
So, there are six kinds of overall objectives. And then, for each of them, there’s a couple of options. So, the first is to rise. And that is making myself better. We already talked about self-development. That’s a perfect example of a shatterproof goal. And those, again, are largely geared towards building confidence.

The second kind of category is to flourish. And that’s making my life better. The health goal that I mentioned is in that category. Something as simple as joy, like rediscovering the love of the game by immersing myself in something I like to do. The third is to activate. Oh, and by the way, sorry, flourish mainly focuses on rebuilding choice, as does the third, which is activate, and that’s kind of making things happen around us.

And I’ll give a couple of examples, because this kind of has different flavors. One of them is advocacy, right, speaking up for myself, making my needs known. Another one is agency, making my own choices, being my own person.

Then we’ve got another choice-based aim, which is to align. And that’s kind of making authentic choices. The best example of a goal under this is authenticity. It’s not going along to get along. It’s not sort of pretending to be something that I’m not. It’s expressing my values and showing up as who I really am.

And then the last two shift over to connection. So, if your connection is thwarted, you might decide to relate, which means that you’re making meaningful connections. I’ll give you a couple examples under this because I think it’s so rich.

One is closeness. So, that’s kind of deepening close relationships by giving and getting support. It might be reactivating a connection that you’ve kind of let slide because of your busy, stressed out, striver lifestyle. Or you might choose forgiveness. Letting go of old grudges, not for them, but for my own wellbeing.

And then another one I really like under this is spirituality. Whatever that looks like to you, religious or not religious, connecting to something greater than ourselves is kind of a powerful but underutilized way of maximizing connection.

The sixth, and final shatterproof kind of category, is contribute, making the world better. And when we engage in service, we’re actually powerfully meeting all three needs. So, you think about Adam Grant’s work when he wrote Give and Take, his first kind of big mega hit book.

There is so much behind that, where when we give, when we contribute to the greater good, when we try to make positive change, it’s satisfying our deepest fundamental human needs. So, when we give, we get. And I think that’s why it’s the one objective that meets all three needs.

Pete Mockaitis
And is it your recommendation that we pick a single goal?

Tasha Eurich
Yes. My goodness, yes. Sometimes people are shocked when I tell them that, in my job of coaching CEOs, we pick one behavior to work on, one high-impact behavior for an entire year. And everyone’s like, “Well, I mean, could that possibly be helpful? Why don’t you do more?” And the reason is, in my experience, if we have any more than one thing we’re trying to focus on developmentally, we’re not going to do it.

I’m coaching a CFO right now who brought me his development plan that we were going to kind of blow up and rethink, and he’s like, “It has five components.” And I covered up the paper, and I said, “Name them.” He couldn’t name a single one. And we both laughed. We said, “Uh-oh.” So, that’s why making your growth and development easy isn’t a crime. It’s a present to your future self.

So, one shatterproof goal, even break it down to one shatterproof habit. Like, for me, it was those 30 minutes a day researching rare diseases. Start there. Keep it something that you can regularly focus on. And that’s something that you go crazy on for a week and then get so overwhelmed that it becomes the last thing on your list.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you give us some more examples of a single behavior of a senior executive for a whole year, just so I get a sense for the scope of a “behavior”?

Tasha Eurich
So, I’ll give you one from someone I just got off the phone with who is doing an amazing job. He’s killing it. His CEO is thrilled, which is improve collaboration with open-mindedness and empathy.

And sometimes it’s even simpler than that. Sometimes it’s, “Listen better.” But if you think about it, if you’re a CEO and you’re not very good at listening and, all of a sudden, you start listening to people, the ripple effects are endless, right? So, I think it’s counterintuitive, but as long as you’re picking something that, in this case, like, your stakeholders are saying is limiting you, it can have a bigger impact than we think.

And I think we just try to overcomplicate development because we’re all type A overachievers, but that’s not how breakthroughs happen, in my experience.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And just to follow this through a little bit more, if we did pick listen better or whatever, what might that mean in terms of, is it a daily behavior that we settle in on next or what’s the very next step?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, so this is kind of getting away from the shatterproof framework, but I think this is a great way of operationalizing it. Usually, what we’ll do is we’ll come up with that development goal, and then we’ll have an action plan that is 10 to 12 specific behavioral elements that they’re going to try to do every day.

So, it might be specific to a certain relationship. It might be how to show up in meetings. Like, the executive I just mentioned, his goal of improving collaboration is asking a question before he provides his opinion. Like, that level of specificity. Or, “Making sure that I find something to agree with before I disagree with someone.” So, it’s 10 to 12 things like that, and then we actually track them.

Most of my clients have a checklist every day. And this is from the Marshall Goldsmith School, “Did I do my best to listen before I talk?” “Did I do my best to amplify others’ contributions?” So, yeah, breaking it down into that level of detail, I think is, again, it feels tedious. It feels something. But that’s how change happens.

And the data are there, like, that process on its own. There’s a reason I have a money back guarantee. If I’m coaching a senior executive and there isn’t quantitative improvement in their targeted behavior as rated by their stakeholders, theoretically, never had to do it, they get their money back. So, that is how serious I am about this process and how much it works.

I think there’s going to come a day when it’s going to happen, right? And that’s what it’s going to be, but I’ve been doing this for 20 years now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so then, when we were talking about the operationalizing, so if we’re zeroing in, it’s like, “Okay, betterment is the thing.” And then I’ll maybe take another step of specificity into, it could be fitness, it could be listening. You sort of, then, identify a sort of specific daily thing that you’re going to be getting after.

Tasha Eurich
That’s it. And it is not a crime to make it simple, easy, and fast. For me, 30 minutes a day, that’s all I had to do. And I talk about other examples in the book of people who maybe had a little bit more, like, resources mentally and physically at the time. Like, I talk about one woman who had five sort of daily habits, but they were really simple.

It was, like, “Wake up.” She had just gotten out of a really toxic marriage. And one of the things on her list was, “Wake up every day, grateful for the freedom that I now have,” right? Or, “Make sure I ping one or both of my sons and tell them how much I love them.” And all these things to kind of reconnect with herself and her life beyond her ex. I think if we keep it simple, it’s even easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And that’s just the magic. I’m thinking now about the 80/20 Rule, in general. So, in terms of, if we have in the entire universe of what’s your malfunction, what’s your deal in life, it’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, hey, it’s within the zone of the psychological needs of confidence, choice, or connection.” It’s like, “Okay, we’re already eliminated a lot of noise.”

Tasha Eurich
We have.

Pete Mockaitis
But even further, we got, “Okay, hey, it’s choice. Choice is the thing.” And then we can get even, even further, it’s like, “By golly, I’m going to be renovating this house I hate,” or whatever.

Tasha Eurich
Whatever, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And that, in fact, can become transformational.

Tasha Eurich
Over time, like, think about it. If you get one percent closer every day to a full sense of confidence or choice or connection, and if you do that most days, I’m a realist, not all days, most days, you’re going to see some pretty significant improvement in a shorter amount of time than you think.

Pete Mockaitis
Fantastic! Well, Tasha, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about a few of your favorite things?

Tasha Eurich
Oh, one thing that I want to mention, because it’s very cool and it’s in service for your listeners, is if anybody is curious about that idea of my resilience ceiling and how close am I to my resilience ceiling, for the launch of Shatterproof, we put together, it’s a really cool tool. It takes about five minutes. It’s an online survey.

You actually have the option of sending it to someone who knows you well, if you want their perspective on how you are kind of showing up, and you get a report back showing you your overall, like, how close you are. You get dimension scores. You get tools. So, if anybody wants to take that, I’m sure you’ll put it in your show notes, but it’s totally free, no strings attached. It’s Resilience-Quiz.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now can you share a favorite quote that you find inspiring?

Tasha Eurich
“Whatever you do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” And I love this quote so much by Goethe, it is tattooed on my body. So, that’s my favorite quote.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study?

Tasha Eurich
Well, I would go, just because it’s fresh in my mind, but that study that I talked about with Syrian refugees and need crafting, this whole idea of crafting our own needs is so new in the research. It took a brilliant young woman named Nele Laporte to kind of introduce it in 2019. But there’s so much promising research around that. I just think it’s so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Tasha Eurich
I would say nonfiction is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s A Team of Rivals. And I would say fiction, without question, number one, The Great Gatsby.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Tasha Eurich
Favorite tool, ooh, we didn’t talk about this, the 222 tool. So, when you are super overwhelmed, you feel like you’re hitting your resilience ceiling, you take a deliberate time out. You ask yourself, “What do I need in the next two minutes, two hours, and two days?” So, the two minutes is psychological first aid. It’s breathing. It’s splashing cold water on your face. It’s saying out loud, like, “I am struggling and I feel overwhelmed.”

Two hours is something that is just for you, something that makes you happy, that relieves the pressure a little bit. Netflix marathon, happy hour with a friend, going to the gym. Two days is a deliberate pause on ruminating, analyzing, and problem-solving, as much as possible, with the thing that’s pushed you to this point.

I use this tool all the time and what I find is, because our subconscious mind is still working on it, but if we give ourselves the space to just relax and be, when we come back to it, not only have we helped a little bit with our need satisfaction, we usually have a better perspective on the problem. So, again, the 222 method, I use a shockingly large amount of days. I think I’m on, like, three by now, so. yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Tasha Eurich
My favorite habit is drinking water.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people really resonate with, they respond to, they retweet in your speeches and such?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, the grit gaslighting idea seems to be really resonating with people. It’s giving language and permission to experience something that, I think, we shame ourselves for.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Tasha Eurich
Oh, goodness, I’m everywhere. TashaEurich.com. Every social media. I’m trying to build my Instagram, so if anybody wants to come hop on there with me, that would be amazing. But, yes, very findable.

Pete Mockaitis
And a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to become awesome at their job?

Tasha Eurich
Two-part question, “What would the best version of you do? And what if you could be you, but better?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Tasha, thank you. This was fantastic.

Tasha Eurich
Thank you so much. Great to be here again with you.

Jun 09
0

1065: Harvard’s Stress Expert Shares Top Resilience Tools with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar discusses the neuroscience behind stress—and offers actionable tips for building your resilience.

You’ll Learn

  1. The major myth that leads to burnout
  2. The rule of two for building healthier habits
  3. How to feel less stressed in one minute

About Aditi

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar is a Harvard stress expert, internationally recognized speaker, and national television correspondent with an expertise in stress, burnout, resilience and mental health. Her book The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience is a “must read” by Adam Grant and Malcolm Gladwell’s Next Big Idea Club and “best new book” by the New York Post. Named “100 Women to Know in America,” her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Morning America, The Today Show and NPR. She is also a frequent keynote speaker with talks at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit and other events.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Aditi Nerurkar Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Aditi, welcome!

Aditi Nerurkar
Thanks for having me. It’s such a pleasure to join you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s a pleasure to be chatting. I listened to your entire book and I loved it. And there are so many fun alleys we can go down. But, first, I want to hear your hot take. You are a stress expert, doctor, looked at it closely for many years. Tell us, what is something you understand about stress that you think the vast majority of us just have wrong?

Aditi Nerurkar
I think the biggest misconception about stress is that all stress is bad. When you and I say, “Oh, it’s been a stressful week,” or stressful month, or, for many people, the past five years have been incredibly stressful. We use stress interchangeably with the quality of it being bad or difficult. When, in fact, there are two kinds of stress, there’s good stress and bad stress. And they’re not created equal and they affect your brain and body differently.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, how do I know what’s good and what’s bad?

Aditi Nerurkar
Good stress moves your life forward. It’s productive. It’s motivating. And it’s actually a driver for everything good in your life because everything good in your life was created because of a little bit of healthy stress. So, what is good, healthy stress? Scientifically, we call it adaptive stress. And this is like rooting for your favorite sports team, planning a beach vacation, falling in love, getting a promotion, a new job or a new home, things that move your life forward. And that is positive. This is good, healthy, productive stress.

But the other kind of stress, bad stress, unhealthy stress, that’s what we talk about, Pete, when we say, “Oh, it’s been a stressful week,” or a year or five years. That, in scientific terms, is called maladaptive stress. It’s dysfunctional and gets in the way of your everyday life. Bad stress is what causes all of the mental and physical health manifestations that you may be familiar with when you say that, you know, when you’re talking about stress, like anxiety, depression, insomnia, brain fog, irritability.

And so, the goal of life is not zero stress. It’s actually biologically impossible to do that. The goal of life is healthy, manageable stress that serves you rather than harms you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that’s handy there. And I’m thinking about, can I have too much good stress in terms of, “I am having awesome gains at the gym, and awesome opportunities at work, and an awesome newborn?” Somehow all those stress components are good, and yet I might end up in a bad spot. Is that a possibility as well?

Aditi Nerurkar
Good or bad stress is less about the actual event, but more about how it affects you and how you react to that event. So, some people with those three things that you mentioned might be okay, and others may not. I don’t actually think there is such a thing as too much good stress, meaning that when you experience a certain level of stress, we all have a threshold of when stress becomes healthy, productive, and then goes past that threshold to bad.

And when you’re giving me those examples, and it’s happening all at once to someone, you have to think about this idea of the rule of two, which is how your brain responds to change. So, even all of these positive things happening in your life can, in fact, cause you to have a lot of stress, which then veers into the bad unhealthy stress, because even positive experiences in your life can cause a lot of stress.

So, I think when you have a lot of stress in your life, you may think it’s good but, in fact, it’s causing some of the mental and physical health manifestations that bad stress causes.

And so, therefore, it’s less about the thing that is causing you stress and more about your response to it.

Pete Mockaitis
I see, yes. So, our interpretation or frame or reaction, I suppose, do we just know it when we see it in terms of, “I’m stoked and excited and growing,” versus, “Ahh!” and that’s how I know? And so, it sounds like it might be partially just the nature of the thing itself and how it jives with me. And it might partially just be the sheer quantity and my threshold for it.

Aditi Nerurkar
Exactly. It’s the actual event in your life. It is also the intensity that you are experiencing, whatever it is that you’re experiencing, and the frequency, how often is it happening. If you think about your baseline and then when this event is happening, how it makes you feel, is it getting in the way of your everyday functioning? Is it getting in the way of your sleep or your motivation or your day-to-day life? And if it is causing any bad results.

So, a classic example, having a baby, a newborn at home, right? It’s a very wonderful experience in many people’s lives, but it’s also incredibly challenging. And so that one event can be good stress because it’s moving your life forward. A baby is a blessing in the home, but it also brings about a whole host of challenges and mental and physical health manifestations for the parents.

And so, it’s less about the event and more about your experience of it bringing into account. There’s many factors to this. It’s not just like you feel happy and, therefore, it’s good stress, or you feel unhappy and, therefore, it’s bad stress. It’s nuanced and it’s on a spectrum.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, is there means of quantifying, measuring this stuff?

Aditi Nerurkar
A lot of my work, Pete, is focused on this idea that stress, we think of it as this vague nebulous entity, when, in fact, we do really need to think about stress as, you know, I would love one day for stress to be like blood pressure, something that we measure, monitor, and, therefore, can manage. And there is a stress quiz in my book, The Five Resets. You can also take the stress quiz for free on my website, DrAditi.com.

And it’s a way to measure and actually think about how to give yourself a stress number. You’ve got a personalized stress score at the end of the quiz. It’s five questions. And what you want to do when you’re measuring your stress is have a number and then do various strategies to rewire your brain for less stress, which we’ll talk about in this conversation.

And then you want to take that test again, the same test again in four weeks and see, “Is there a difference in your score?” And then four weeks again, “Is there a difference in your score?” Or you take the test every two months because it takes about eight weeks to build a habit for your brain and rewire your brain for less stress.

And so, what you want to do when you’re measuring stress is use the same, we call it a study instrument.Take the same test again and again. That’s one way.

The other way is, if you are thinking about a particular metric in your life, I call it the MOST goal, create some sort of metric in your life, the way to measure, maybe it’s your energy, maybe it’s your sleep, maybe it’s your feeling of being engaged in the world, something that you can tangibly measure every four weeks, every six weeks and see, “Hey, am I making progress in my stress?”

And so, what is your MOST goal? So, when you’re feeling a sense of stress, you often have that inner critic, that berating voice in your head saying, “What’s the matter with me?” You’re like you might not be feeling great. You might be asking yourself that question.

Instead, reframe and ask yourself, “What matters most to me?” And MOST is an acronym, M stands for motivating, O objective, S small enough to virtually guarantee your success, and T timely. Create a MOST goal using that framework. Give yourself a timeframe of two to three months ahead of time. In the next two to three months, you want to achieve this thing. Understand that it takes eight weeks to build a habit, falling off and getting back up is part of habit formation.

And then once you have your MOST goal, you try various strategies and techniques that we’ll talk about today, that can help you get towards your MOST goal. And then there’s that metric that you can use to say, “Oh, you know what? I am getting better sleep. I do have more energy. I feel more engaged with my life,” or whatever it is that you’ve created the MOST goal. And that is one way to really monitor and measure this big, huge, nebulous thing that we call stress.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it. And I would also like your quick hot take, since we’re talking measurements, on heart rate variability for all of our wearable enthusiasts. Are you a believer? Is it useful? Is it counterproductive? Should that be a measure you recommend we keep our eye on as we quantify stress?

Aditi Nerurkar
There’s a question mark on heart rate variability. And when I look at a lot of the science on various wearables and different things that you can use, I’m not entirely convinced, though there’s some data that’s compelling and others. I don’t think you can use one particular biometric, like one particular thing that’s saying, “This is my stress response.”

So, I, personally, I don’t really recommend any specific wearables or biometrics, simply because all of my strategies are cost free.

Though, if you feel like you want to use heart rate variability and you have a device and you have the disposable income for the device, that’s great. But personally, I am not convinced yet to recommend that as, like, the gold standard of stress monitoring.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you’ve got a great turn of a phrase. What is the resilience myth?

Aditi Nerurkar
The resilience myth is that resilient people don’t get burned out. And it’s something that I personally experienced. So, my stress story and my origin story is that I was a stressed patient before I became a doctor with an expertise in stress, and I was desperate for answers and really wanted a sense of change.  And I was living the resilience myth at the time.

And so, often you will hear people say, “I can’t be burned out. I can’t be stressed. I’m resilient.” Or, you hear people say that to you, “Oh, you’re not burned out. You’re resilient. You can’t have burnout. You’re resilient,” and that is the great resilience myth because we know, based on the science, that you, in fact, can be burned out and can experience stress, and also be resilient. They are not mutually exclusive.

Resilience is your innate biological ability to adapt, to recover, and grow in the face of life’s challenges. We all have an innate biological ability to be resilient. It’s part of us. It’s who we are as humans. But the resilience myth often will say that, “Oh, you can’t be burned out and stressed and also resilient.” That has been debunked.

In fact, the reason it has been debunked is because so many of us, again, this is not an individual failing, it’s a societal one, ascribed to the notion of toxic resilience, which is a warped definition of the true definition of resilience. And it’s this idea of mind over matter mindset, productivity at all costs, all systems go all the time.

It’s the Energizer bunny mentality, just keep going.  Or, in the UK, keep calm and carry on. And that is toxic resilience. And when you hear the word resilience, if you bristle, if you have a visceral response, I do when I hear the word resilience.

Pete Mockaitis
“Just be resilient.”

Aditi Nerurkar
“Just be more resilient.”

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, okay. Just like that, huh?”

Aditi Nerurkar
Or, “You must not be that resilient.” You hear it all the time. The reason you have that visceral response is because what that person is describing is toxic resilience. True resilience honors your boundaries, understands your human limitations, and leans into this idea of self-compassion, also recognizing that your human need for rest and recovery is paramount.

And so, in many ways, you want to lean into this idea of true resilience and reject the performative aspect of toxic resilience. Toxic resilience is a manifestation of hustle culture.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I think it almost feels a little bit like a fixed characteristic the way people describe it, it’s like, “Oh, she’s resilient, he’s not that resilient, you know?” And that gets me fired up because, in my own life, I have seen that my degree of resilience, which I’ll loosely define as the amount of bull crap that could be heaped on me before I freak out, really does fluctuate, and largely based on how well am I able to meet just basic needs.

Aditi Nerurkar
Yeah, I mean, your ability to be resilient fluctuates as does everything. And giving yourself a sense of grace and self-compassion is really important. And it’s also a part of true resilience, knowing your boundaries, knowing your limitations. And if you are continually just on the go, on the move, trying to be productive, trying to achieve, we know that that has its limitations.

So, based on the data, Pete, right now, 70% of people have at least one feature of stress and burnout. Now, of course, that figure varies across industry, but anywhere from 70 to 74% of people are struggling with some, one aspect of stress or burnout.

That’s not to say they’re not resilient. People are resilient. It’s the systems that burn us out: impossible demands of parenting, the expectations of work, and not as not as many resources but lots of time and energy spent to achieve the same or more at work. I mean, we see this all the time. So many examples of toxic resilience.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to dig into that a little bit. We had Dr. Tessa West on the show, sharing some perhaps lesser-known symptoms of stress and a delayed stress response. So, if there’s anyone listening and saying, “Oh, well, I’m fine and I’m resilient, and I don’t think I have any of these burnout things,” can you share perhaps some hidden or overlooked stress symptoms that might surprise folks like, “Oh, wait, that’s stress?”

Aditi Nerurkar
Right. In fact, one particular study, you know, stress and burnout are at unprecedented rates, and particularly when it comes to burnout, Pete, we’re seeing a new picture of burnout.

In one study, 60% of people with burnout had an inability to disconnect from work as their main feature.  So, when you think about classic typical features of burnout – apathy, feeling disengaged, unmotivated – you may not have any of those and say, “I’m not burned out. I don’t have any of those.” But you may be displaying atypical features of burnout, like an inability to disconnect from work.

So, this modern-day burnout is becoming very difficult to identify in ourselves and each other. The reason so many people are experiencing burnout is because of the way the human brain is designed.

The brain is expertly designed to handle short bursts of stress. And when you are feeling a sense of stress, you know, so let’s back up. Under normal circumstances, when you are calm, let’s say back in like 2018, right, like before everything started, the onslaught of stress and the tsunami of stress began with the pandemic and now clearly in the post pandemic era.

Back in 2018, you were living in resilient mode. You were governed by an area called the prefrontal cortex, which is right here. If you put your hand on your forehead, it’s the area right behind your forehead. It governs things like memory, planning, organization, complex problem-solving, strategic thinking. It’s what most of us are masters of. It’s adulting in pop culture terms.

But during periods of stress, your brain isn’t governed by the prefrontal cortex. It’s governed by your amygdala, which is a small almond-shaped structure deep in your brain whose sole purpose is survival and self-preservation. It’s cave person mode. Now, your brain can function for short periods of time in cave person mode.

The challenge is that, over the past several years, probably since 2019, maybe 2020 to today, we are not really coming back to baseline. It’s one onslaught after the other. So we went through the pandemic, then we had a racial reckoning, then we had climate disasters, and various humanitarian crises, and lots of political upheaval.

And there’s so much stuff happening in the world and we can access it all in the palm of our hand using our phones and just one onslaught after the other. By the way, your brain, your amygdala doesn’t know the difference between something happening in your backyard or something happening 5,000 miles away. It triggers your stress response no matter what.

And so, this constant onslaught over the past several years without a return to baseline, that stress response, your flight or flight response, stays on in the background. When it stays on in the background, it increases your risk of developing burnout, and that unhealthy stress, that runaway stress, maladaptive stress is that driver of what’s causing people to feel a sense of burnout.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Thank you. You mentioned the rule of two. What is that?

Aditi Nerurkar
The rule of two is really how your brain makes change possible, Pete. So, think back to New Year’s. You may have had a list of 10 things you want to achieve for this year. And now, several months past New Year’s, you’re probably doing one or maybe zero of those, the New Year’s Resolutions, right?

The reason it’s so difficult to do everything all at once when you’re talking about making changes, even positive change, is because change is a stress on your brain. And so, you could really only manage two small changes at a time if you want those changes to stick. Anything more in your system gets overloaded.

That is why New Year’s Resolutions don’t work. That is why I said, when you gave that question or that example of, like, “Can you have too much good stress?” stress, even if it’s good, if it’s too much, it starts veering towards the negative, unhealthy kind of stress because of the rule of two.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I like that’s really handy and it feels good in terms of it’s the right number. And I don’t think I realized it until I read your book that it feels so right. What is the underlying scientific evidence that says the number is two, not six, not nine?

Aditi Nerurkar
The basis of the rule of two is in science. It is a study done ages ago in the 1960s by two psychiatrists, Doctors Holmes and Rahe. And they did a study of 47 of the most common life conditions that can happen to people, both positive and negative. So, things like falling in love, having a child, graduating, a huge personal accomplishment, all these wonderful positive things.

Equally so, testing people for divorce, bereavement, tragedy, all sorts of things like that. So, they found that, as people move through life and experienced and accrued many active events, so both positive and negative, it had a predilection for worsening stress and worse health outcomes, like a greater likelihood of chronic medical conditions.

And so, the Holmes and Rahe study is the kind of scientific basis for the rule of two. But we, in clinical medicine, have been using the rule of two forever because that is how change happens. You focus on two things at a time.

So, when you go to see your doctor, and if you have a long list of things that you want to focus on, you’ll often hear your doctor say, “Okay, let’s pick two of these that I want you to work on.” And then you work on those and you come back in three months, and then you focus on the next two. And that’s really how your brain works.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. We’ve got so much goodness within your five resets and, as you said, they’re science-based, they’re free, they’re actionable, simple. Cool. Cool. So, within that, we got get clear on what matters most, find quiet in a noisy world, sync your brain and your body, come up for air, and bring your best self forward, and then 15 techniques within those.

So, we can’t cover all 15, though that’d be fun. So, I want to share a couple that stuck out to me and then hear your hot take. One was about exercise and the all-or-nothing fallacy of exercise. I thought you nailed that so well, because I’ve fallen for this. And I was even in a UFC gym recently, and I was appalled, because I was listening to you maybe at the same time.

And there’s this giant poster which says, “If you’re not willing to go all the way, you won’t go anywhere.” And I was like, “I think that is exactly the wrong mindset for exercise that has kind of been problematic for me.” Aditi, what’s your hot take here?

Aditi Nerurkar
I agree with you. So often, we have this all-or-nothing fallacy when it comes to exercise. Like, either “I have to be ripped and have a six pack and eat a hundred grams of protein, and do all the things, or I should just be a couch potato and do nothing.” And we know that that’s not true. You would never have an all-or-nothing fallacy when it comes to sleep, right?

Like, sleep is an intervention that we do every day for our brains and our bodies and our health. And, yeah, some nights you don’t get great sleep. Some nights you sleep really well, but you go to sleep. You’re not like, “Eh, if you’re not going to get a good night’s sleep. What’s the point anyway?” And so, we have this all-or-nothing fallacy when it comes to exercise. And it’s something that we need to really shift away from.

Because often, when it comes to stress, burnout, when it comes to your mental health, it’s not about the physical promise. That’s very aspirational. When you see those taut bellies and all those muscles. Unfortunately, our society has really bulked up, pun intended, the promise of exercise to be a physical promise. When, really, there’s the mental promise of exercise.

I’ve had so many patients who have done wonderfully with their mental health while engaging in some sort of exercise program. And the benefits are the physical aspects. Yeah, it’s a nice by-product, but that’s not why people engage in it.

And so, I wish, you know, we need a rebrand for exercise first. The dreaded E word, and I think when people hear that word, if you’re not a regular exerciser, like it’s cringe worthy. And so, movement, some form of daily movement. So, the science shows that even a five-minute walk every day could make a difference.

And the all-or-nothing fallacy states that, like, “Oh, why bother walking for five minutes? It’s going to do nothing. I’m just going to sit home and I’m not going to exercise.” No, just go out for five minutes and walk. And what will happen is, over time, you’ll want to walk for 10 minutes. Then over time, you’ll say, “Oh, you know what? I want to walk every day for 15 minutes.”

There’s something called your sense of agency, meaning, “Can you do it?” It’s like your belief in yourself that you can actually make change happen. And when you’re feeling a sense of stress and you’re burnt out, it’s like wading through molasses when you’re making a new change. And so, if you were to tell yourself, “You know what, I’m going to just go to the gym.”

You may say to yourself, “I’m going to go to the gym three days a week. Every week, three days a week, this is the class I want to do. It’s going to be an hour.” The barrier to entry to actually do that, going from a sedentary lifestyle, like most people, again, this is not a gap in knowledge or information. We all know that exercise is good for us, but so few people actually engage in regular exercise.

It’s like 25%, I think the statistic is, of those who actually engage. So, this is not about a gap in knowledge or information. It’s about a gap in action. And so, how do you close that gap from where you are to where you want to be? Instead of telling yourself, “I’m going to go to the gym three days a week for an hour,” when you’re a non-exerciser, instead say to yourself, “I’m going to walk for five minutes a day.”

When you’re starting a new habit, it’s more important to do something every day rather than once in a while because you avoid decision fatigue. There was a time that I was a non-exerciser and I had lots of lofty dreams and goals of going to the gym, but then work took over, so I didn’t go that day.

Next day there’s a childcare conflict, you can’t make it. The next day, something happens, there’s an emergency. So, by the end of the week, you’ve gone maybe one time, possibly zero times. Then you feel like a failure. Instead, set the bar low and just say, “I’m going to walk every day for five minutes.” And then once you do that, you are essentially creating a habit. You’re rewiring your brain and you’re creating a habit for movement, for daily movement.

Over time, what happens, when you create a daily habit, is that you feel like, “Oh, I want to do it again tomorrow. I did five minutes. That felt good.” You remember the reward. You remember the mental benefits. You feel them. And so, you want to go again. And then you want to go again. And, over time, you start building daily movement into your life.

And then, once you are like, “Yeah, I created a habit of movement using the rule of two,” then you can start going to the gym and get that six pack that you’ve been looking for.

But often, we are lured by the physical benefits of exercise because we don’t see the mental benefits of exercise, right? Like, it’s normal. Of course, we’re all going to be lured by the physical promise of what exercise can do. But there is so much good data that shows that the mental promise of what daily physical activity can do, because your brain is a muscle just like your biceps, and what’s good for your body is good for your brain.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And you were sharing research that even one or two minutes of moving is helpful on those dimensions.

Aditi Nerurkar
Yes, it’s called ultrashort bursts of exercise. So, if you’re going to go for a walk, just think about what it would feel like to catch a bus. When you’re late for something, you’re trying to catch the bus, how quickly you walk. Yeah, studies show that even just ultrashort bursts of exercise can have a profound effect on your body, on lots of organ systems, decrease your risk of chronic disease, like cancer and stroke and heart disease and diabetes, all sorts of things.

So, a little bit of movement is better than no movement at all. And bringing that into your everyday can make, truly make all the difference for your brain and your body when it comes to stress, burnout, and also the physical benefits of doing that. By the way, there are studies that show that you don’t even have to lose any weight to feel, for exercise to benefit you, for your heart, your lungs, your brain, all these vital organs.

Pete Mockaitis
And sleep apnea, I’ve read those studies. Exercise with no weight change still improves sleep apnea scores.

Aditi Nerurkar
Yeah, it improves so many things. And so, I think so many of us, and I’m guilty of this as well, like standing on the scale, and you’re exercising every day, and you’re doing all the right things, and you’re like, “How come this, how come that, you know, the scale isn’t budging?” or, “How come I don’t have a six pack yet?”

There are so many invisible benefits to daily movement. Just keep going. Those benefits and those things will come, but you just have to keep going because you’re doing this for your body, for your brain, for your vital organs.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And even if all you’re moving is a pen on a journal, how’s that for segue, Aditi?

Aditi Nerurkar
Beautiful.

Pete Mockaitis
You say there’s some excellent science associated with gratitude and expressive writing practices. Can you share just what are the benefits of doing this and how do I do it?

Aditi Nerurkar
Yeah, so I love that segue, and so there’s the gratitude practice is very simple. This is not your teenagers’ journal. All it means is that you take a piece of paper, a notebook, and a pen, keep it by your bedside, and at night or first thing in morning, write down five things you’re grateful for and why.

You can put a date on it. This is like 60 seconds, 90 seconds of an exercise. And you want to do this every day. The studies have demonstrated benefits for mood, anxiety, depression, all sorts of things, when you practice daily gratitude. The reason you want to write it down, so one of the first questions I’m asked is like, “Can you type it? Can I just type in my note section?” There’s lots of apps also, right, for gratitude.

Whatever works for you, you do. But based on the science, the reason you want to write versus type is because your brain uses a different neural circuitry when you write than when you type. Like, when you go to the grocery store, and you write all the things that you need on a Post-it but you lose the Post-it, you’re more inclined to remember what was on the list versus when you’re typing something, it’s harder to remember just a different neural circuitry, different way your brain is wired.

And so, try to write down five things you’re grateful for every day. Some days you’ll think of three things. Some days you’ll have 10 things, but just keep writing down five things. If you’re feeling a sense of deep stress and burnout, you may say like, “I don’t really have much to be grateful for.” Well, do you have two arms and two legs? Can you breathe? Is your heart beating? Do you have food in the pantry? Do you have a roof over your head?

These may seem like basic to you but, in fact, there are many people who can’t say this, right? And so, being able to be grateful for things can actually change your brain for less stress through a process called cognitive retraining. It means that same amount of good and bad is happening to you at all times, but when you’re feeling a sense of stress, you start focusing on the negative experiences because when you’re feeling a sense of stress, the amygdala is acting up, the cave person mode, you’re scanning for danger, you’re wondering, “Am I safe? Is everything okay?” It’s self-preservation.

And so, these negative experiences, you’re more primed to notice them and you forget about the positives. And so, when you practice gratitude again and again, through this forum of five things every day and why, what you’re doing is you’re rewiring your brain. You’re training your brain to start focusing on the positive things, and it’s called cognitive retraining. So, you’re shifting that attention away from the negative back to the positive. And that, of course, has an effect on your amygdala, has an effect on your stress response. So that’s gratitude.

Pete Mockaitis
And if I may, so if this sort of practice is rewiring our brain in the gratitude direction, can we do the same thing for other emotional states? Like, gratitude practice sounds lofty. It’s, like, what if I wanted a hilarity practice? I’m going to write the most hilarious things that occur today. And in so doing, can I rewire my brain to find the humor in more stuff?

Aditi Nerurkar
Oh, I love that. I don’t know about the research to find humor and what that, you know, I’m sure that that releases all sorts of feel-good chemicals in the brain. We need a study on that. And there might be a study that I’m not aware of, but I love that, to find more humor in life and a sense of levity. We know that that’s so important, you know, a sense of joy and levity.

And so, if you were to write down five funny things that happen to you every day and find the humor in it, that sounds like a great practice. I’m going to try that. I like that. I’m going to look up whether there’s science behind it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. So, we don’t know if it’s been studied, but it would, is it fair to say from your professional opinion in neuroscience, like that seems like the kind of thing that might probably work perhaps.

Aditi Nerurkar
Well, I think it could potentially improve your well-being because laughter, levity, finding joy, that sense of lightheartedness, can be helpful in promoting well-being. And that we know based on the science, but I like this, you know, combining this hilarity practice is absolutely adorable, and I will get right on it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate it. The service here is wonderful. Okay, so then expressive writing, what’s that?

Aditi Nerurkar
Expressive writing is a technique coined by a psychologist named James Pennebaker at Vanderbilt, I believe. And so, if there’s something that’s bothering you.

So, if there’s like an event that’s happened in the past or an emotional event that’s currently happening, and you’re trying to work it out and it’s causing you a lot of stress and burnout, it works well for a discrete event or a discrete emotional state, like you’re angry about something, or you’re frustrated, or something’s happening, or you feel like someone wronged you, or there’s some actual thing. And if it’s intangible and you can’t pinpoint it, that’s okay, too.

You want to spend 20 to 25 minutes free-handwriting, again, writing, pen and paper, and you want to set a timer for 20 to 25 minutes and you want to write, and you want to do that for four consecutive days, 20 to 25 minutes. What happens is, on day three, you might notice an uptick in some negative emotions, and then by day four, you kind of work it out.

So, this has been studied, this technique called expressive writing, therapeutic writing, has been studied in countless populations. So, it’s been studied with college students and people who engage in expressive writing have demonstrated a higher GPA. It’s been studied in patients, and there’s been decreased readmission rates at the hospital.

There’s been data on expressive writing being helpful for anxiety and for depression, stress, burnout, bereavement, grief. I mean, the list of studies that have looked into expressive writing for various groups, it is so vast. And so, this is a really great technique to use for yourself when you’re going through something and you’re trying to work it out. And I use it all the time.

When I’m going through a difficult experience or some things going on that I’m trying to, that I have, it has to be something that’s emotionally charged. That’s when it works well. Like, when there’s a lot of emotions around something. And then the other thing to remember, when you do expressive writing is, you write on a piece of paper and then you throw it out. It’s not for anyone else to read.

It’s just you’re getting it out. You’re getting your thoughts out. It’s freehand, 20 to 25 minutes, consecutively for four days. And then you stop.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s as wild as 20 to 25 minutes consecutively for four days. And yet, as I peeked at some of these human random control trials, the impact for just that, like 100 minutes max, was substantial and lasting in follow-ups occurring weeks later.

Aditi Nerurkar
Isn’t it wild? And in some studies, months later? It’s unbelievable.

Pete Mockaitis
So, can you share with us, what are a prompt or two if folks are like, “Wow, that’s awesome. I want to do that now”? Like, what is the prompt that I should have in mind as I put pen to paper?

Aditi Nerurkar
Think of a particular idea or think about a particular event or a person or something where you feel emotional about, and this is a negative emotion. So, what are you feeling angry about? Who are you feeling angry about? Do you feel like someone wronged you? Do you feel like there was an experience that was traumatic in some capacity or someone causing you a sense of trauma?

Or, it might not even be directly something that happened to you, but we’re in a very charged climate in the state of the world right now. And so, is there something happening in the world that is really bothering you?

So, whatever it may be, sit down, set a timer, 20 to 25 minutes, and just write freehand. And then you rip it up. This is just for you, uninterrupted time, and then you do it for four consecutive days.

And what happens by the end, and I’ve done these many times, for lots of things, personal issues, professional issues. And then it, like, just, I don’t know, the charge that like negative charge and those emotions, it’s just like the volume just comes down, and you work it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Do we think the ripping up is an essential step in terms of the cathartic action or just for giving us license to really go wild? Or, we don’t know?

Aditi Nerurkar
Yeah, I don’t really know. I think the reason I say to rip it up is because ripping something up and throwing it away, it will help you become as true and authentic as you can during the act of writing. So, if you’re writing something, and you’re thinking, “Oh, my God, is anyone going to read this?” or, “I hope no one reads this,” that just makes you more inhibited in your writing.

And what you’re really trying to do is like, you want the writing to feel cathartic. You want to get out your deepest emotions and thoughts and feelings. You might not even know what they are right now. Chances are you don’t. And when you’re doing this practice, it just starts flowing out of you. You don’t even know where it’s coming from. And that’s the point.

And so, the reason you rip it up is simply because you want to be free in that 20 to 25 minutes. And you don’t want to think about like, “Who’s going to read it? And what is it going to mean?” Some people want to save the papers, they’re like, “I want to keep this and I want to know what I went through.” You can, if you wish, and if you feel safe, like psychologically safe, and you want to keep it, but chances are you’ll look back on it, and it really won’t make any sense.

It’s stream of consciousness, so you’re not necessarily like writing an essay. You are freehand writing, thoughts and emotions, expressions, and you’re just writing. You can write sentences. You cannot write sentences. But it’s not about what happens afterwards in terms of like what happens with the tangible paper. The important piece is the actual writing and getting all of that stuff out. It’s excavating all of those emotions, feelings, and thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Aditi, thank you.

Aditi Nerurkar
It was such a pleasure to join you, truly.

Jun 05
0

1064: Timeless Wisdom for Greater Success and and Meaning in Work–According to the Torah–with Mark Gerson

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Mark Gerson shares timeless, practical insights about work–sourced from the Bible and supported by modern social science.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why Bible has helpful gems for folks from all religion–or lack thereof
  2. The one question that leads to greater meaning
  3. The optimal number of hours to work in a week

About Mark

Mark Gerson, a New York–based entrepreneur and philanthropist, is the cofounder of Gerson Lehrman Group, 3I Members, United Hatzalah of Israel, and African Mission Healthcare—where he and his wife, Rabbi Erica Gerson, made the largest gift ever to Christian medical missionaries. 

A graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School, Mark is the author of the national bestseller The Telling: How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life. Mark’s articles and essays on subjects ranging from Frank Sinatra to the biblical Jonah to the Torah and science of clothing have been published in The New Republic, USA Today, Commentary, and Christian Broadcast Network. Mark lives with his wife and their four children.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Mark Gerson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mark, welcome!

Mark Gerson
Pete, great to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’ve been so excited to have this conversation with you for a while. One of my good friends and mentors, Mawi Asgedom, episode one guest, said you were one of the most unique, interesting people he has met in his life.

Mark Gerson
That’s so nice. Wow! I would say the same thing about him. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
So, no pressure, Mark, we’re just expecting uniquely interesting things to be falling out of your mouth, nonstop here.

Mark Gerson
We’ll see.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom here, and you’ve got an interesting book title that’s a little different than some of the book titles we’ve had on the show and I just want to set the stage a bit. Religiously speaking, our listeners come from all sorts of backgrounds – Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, the so-called nones from the Pew Research folks.

And you’ve got a provocative title, God Was Right: How Modern Social Science Proves the Torah Is True. Can you set the stage for us? Is the goal of this book to convert folks to Judaism?

Mark Gerson
No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, what are we doing here?

Mark Gerson
Okay. So, the first question to ask is, “What is the Torah?” So, the Torah is the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, what’s called The Five Books of Moses. What Christians call the Old Testament, we call the Torah, we Jews, or The Five Books of Moses. And then you have to ask, “What is the genre of the Torah? What kind of book is the Torah?” And that’s the first question you have to ask approaching any text.

If you’re reading a book of science fiction, and you think it’s science, you’ll say it’s not true, but then the answer is, “No, no, no, you’re reading science fiction. It’s not meant to be science.” So, the first thing we got to do is to get the genre right. What kind of book is the Torah? What kind of book is the Bible? The Bible, and I go in the book as to why it’s not the following things.

It’s not a history book. It’s not a science book. It’s not a cookbook. It’s exactly what Moses says in Deuteronomy 29 it is, it’s a guidebook. Moses says in Deuteronomy, “This book is for your benefit.” The Bible should not be in the religion section of bookstores. It should be in the self-help section of bookstores because it gives intensely practical guidance for everybody about how to live better lives, how to make better decisions, how to find meaning, how to find purpose, how to be healthy, how to negotiate any kind of challenges facing you, how to approach any kind of opportunity that you seek.

The Bible is the most relevant, eternally practical guidebook ever written. So, whatever anyone is thinking about, the Bible is likely to have the answer. And the Bible makes, in the course of being a guidebook, it makes hundreds, maybe thousands of psychological claims, sociological claims, all of which have intensely practical relevance to our daily lives in 2025, regardless of what faith tradition we come from.

And so, what I do in God Was Right, in several dozen chapters, on several dozen subjects, I go through, “Here’s what the Bible says. Here’s what modern social science says,” and then, “Do we see if they line up?” And they always do. And the reason why I approached it that way is because, for 3,000 years, people have asked, “Is the Torah true?”

And until now, we’ve only had faith and experience to go by. But in the 21st century, social scientists have, usually without knowing it, asked the same questions that the Biblical authors asked. So, now we can assess, with social scientific certitude, “Is the Bible true? Is it false? Or is it just a good book that’s right some places, wrong other places?”

And what I’ve discovered, in the course of doing this research, is that the Bible is true on every subject it touches, and it touches every subject relevant to our lives today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Mark, thank you. Well, I just want to set the scene, set the stage, in that folks of all stripes can appreciate this, and if listeners are thinking, “Well, hey, this book seems to be doing it for people for thousands of years, and some folks are finding wisdom in it to this day, and Mark has some extra layers, then there’s richness to be enjoyed here in this conversation.”

And I love it, like you’ve got dozens of chapters in 700 pages unpacking this with fun titles, like, “Why the Israelites Hated the Perfect Food,” and “IKEA Succeeds the Torah and Science of Effort,” so it’s really fun to dig into these pieces. So, lay it on us, Mark, here, we’re all about being awesome at our jobs, why don’t we dig into maybe three insights or so that are really rich?

And if I may be choosy to prioritize, I’d like you to think through what are some of the most transformational insights that can really just be game-changing for a career, and yet are often overlooked? They’re not common practice, so they’re rare but powerful and they point to this ancient wisdom text. No pressure, Mark, but lay it on us.

Mark Gerson
So, let’s just talk about one example. Let’s talk about the Biblical Joseph. So, Joseph is the only person in the Bible who’s called a success.

So, Joseph has the most amazing career of anybody in the Bible. He goes from being an arrogant young man, and then he’s sold into slavery by his brothers, he becomes a slave, then he becomes a prisoner, and then he rises to become the number two man in Egypt, and the number two man in the world. So, he has an incredible career, and he’s the only person called a success.

So, then we have to ask, “When is he called a success?” He’s not called a success when he’s the number two man in Egypt, the pharaoh’s right-hand man. He’s called a success when he’s a slave in the home of Potiphar, and when he’s a prisoner in pharaoh’s jail. So, he achieved success in both these places. And the text goes through, not only that he’s called a success but that he receives promotions in both places.

He goes from being a lowly slave to the head slave. He goes from being a lowly prisoner to the head prisoner. He’s a success. He gets promotions. He achieves success in the same way that we would look at success. So, then we have to ask, “How does he achieve success?” So, what Joseph is, is the God-laden man in the Bible. He talks about God all the time.

So, what does that tell us? That tells us that Joseph is always finding meaning in his work. And when he’s always finding meaning in his work, when he thinks that God is with him everywhere, then he becomes a success. Okay, so how do we think about that in 21st century context? Well, in the 21st century, social scientists have identified a term called job crafting.

So, what is job crafting? Well, a great example of it was, and this story is attributed to both President Kennedy and President Johnson, but one of them visited the NASA headquarters, and they noticed how clean the premises were and they complimented the custodian on what a good job he was doing cleaning the floors.

And the custodian said, “I’m not cleaning the floors. I’m putting a man on the moon.” We see the same thing in a 2001 study from the University of Pennsylvania about hospital custodians, where certain hospital custodians view their jobs as cleaning the rooms, and other hospital custodians view the same job as creating a healthy healing environment for patients.

The people who find meaning in their work, the custodians who view their job as creating a healthy and healing environment for patients, end up getting far more promotions, making far more money than those who don’t. So, what does this teach us? It teaches us that success is not defined by the job you have but how well you do in that job.

So, Joseph is a success as a slave and as a prisoner, but he does very well in those jobs, therefore, he’s called a success. And by the virtue of being successful, he gets promotions. And what we see is exactly the same thing playing out in our day, it’s that those who find meaning in their work, those who can tell themselves a story about how they’re an integral part of creating something important, they get promotions and they make more money than those who don’t.

That’s job crafting. Joseph is the first job crafter. Now there’s a whole social science literature about it.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Mark, I like that a lot. We had Gary Burnison on the show, who’s the CEO of Korn Ferry, and I think, “Well, this guy probably knows a thing or two about advancement in career.” And I go back to this quote all the time, and he says, “I think you have to first start with purpose and start with happiness, because, if you’ve got that purpose and happiness, you’re probably motivated. If you’re motivated, you’re probably going to outperform and love what you’re doing.” And I think that that just resonates deeply right there.

Mark Gerson
Absolutely. The studies on job crafting just keeps showing how beneficial it is for one’s career. There was an analysis in 2019 of 122 independent studies that found that job crafting was associated with improved job performance, job satisfaction, and reduced burnout. And that’s in addition to the promotions and the financial benefits that accrue to people who job-craft.

So, I think what Gary said is exactly right, people who find meaning and purpose in their job, and people can find meaning and purpose in every job, because whatever job someone has is contributing to the production of a good or service that’s valued by others who are willing to part with their money for it.

So, there’s satisfaction, there’s meaning, there’s purpose to be found in every job. And people who find that meaning and purpose in their job, people who job-craft, just like the Biblical Joseph, end up getting that promotion and enjoying successful careers.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. And what you described are some roles that seem like they wouldn’t be the most fun or rewarding in terms of janitorial services or, in Joseph’s case, you know, being literally a slave.

Mark Gerson
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And yet they’re bringing this purpose, this perspective. When you say job crafting, how does one do that in practice?

Mark Gerson
So, one does it in practice by, first, asking oneself, “What job am I in?” And then recognizing that every job has an important function and a crucial purpose. And then they have to articulate what that purpose is. So, the perfect example, I think, is of the hospital custodian from the University of Pennsylvania study. Hospital custodians are creating a healthy, safe, and healing environment for their patients. All they have to do is tell themselves the truth. They’re doing that.

And by telling themselves that truth, they’re setting themselves up for not only to be awesome at their job, but to be successful in the ways that we conventionally define success. So, no matter what job somebody has, the person with the job should think, “What purpose am I serving? What function am I realizing?” And by asking those questions and giving the very truthful answers that will come out of those questions, they’re job crafting and they’re setting themselves up for success.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, just to get some reps in, could you share, let’s say someone works in the finance function of a content streaming organization, like Disney Plus or Paramount or something. Lay it on us the job crafting and the purpose.

Mark Gerson
Yeah, great example. So, if someone is in the accounts receivable department, they could say that, “Because of me, our company is able to get the revenues that it’s earned and, consequently, is able to pay all these employees, all my colleagues, and to create a life and a living for all of their families. If the finance function of the streaming department of a content studio did poorly, there would be a lot less revenue to go around. The company wouldn’t get what it earned, and lots of people would not be able to provide for their families.”

If that person in the finance function is in charge of, let’s say, audit or something like that, they can say, “Because of me and because I’m performing this role excellent, because I’m awesome at my job, the company’s books are going to be honest.”

And when a company’s books are honest, it’s the fundamental thing. It’s the foundation of any enterprise’s success. The company’s books have to be reconciled. They have to be honest. They have to be true and they have to be right. And without really good finance people, no organization can make that claim confidently.

So, if someone is doing audits in the finance section of a streaming company, they should tell themselves the absolutely truthful story that, “Because of me, my CEO, my colleagues, my shareholders, my vendors, every other stakeholder, can trust the numbers and, consequently, trust the business.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I like that pathway in terms of, because, in a way, we can point to multiple stakeholders. Because where I thought that we were going to go first was the end consumer or customers.  And so, in a way, if you’re in the finance function, you’re a bit more removed from the end consumers’ experience of actually streaming the stuff.  But I suppose that you might draw your purpose pathway connections along that vector instead.

Mark Gerson
Right. I mean, the customer is not going to have any music to listen to or films to watch if the company blows up because its books are wrong.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.

Mark Gerson
And who’s there to assure that the books are right? The person at the finance function of the streaming company.

Pete Mockaitis
Now it’s funny, Mark, I’ve done this sort of exercise, and when I do so, sometimes it’s really inspiring and motivating, like, “Heck, yeah, I do have this purpose, and it’s really meaningful and that’s cool.”

Mark Gerson
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And other times it’s just like, “Yeah, I guess.” It doesn’t have as much sort of emotional resonance for me. And maybe that’s just the human condition of moodiness that we all have. But do you have any pro tips for thinking through, getting the most motivational purpose juice force from the exercise?

Mark Gerson
Let’s just take your example of the finance person at the streaming company. Everything that I said that he should think is absolutely true, right? If the revenues aren’t collected, the company’s in trouble. If the costs aren’t reconciled, the company’s in trouble. There’s no customer experience if the company is in trouble. There’s no other employees being paid and their families being provided for if the company is in trouble.

So, the job crafter is telling the absolute truth. He just has to liberate himself to tell that truth and to give meaning to his work, all of which is completely right. I mean, take the hospital custodian, no one would want to be a patient in a dirty hospital.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve smelled the urine in medical facilities and it’s a real bummer. A real bummer.

Mark Gerson
It’s a real bummer in a lot of ways. So, how much do we appreciate the custodian who makes it smell like the clean establishment it should be, the clean hospital it should be? A lot. We should a lot. And that custodian should be the one who appreciates his work as much as anybody because patients can only have the kind of experience that leads to health if they’re in a clean and sanitary environment. And the environment can only be clean and sanitary if the custodian is awesome at his job.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what I like about this is the chains of logic feel unassailable, like, “Yeah, this is true and it is hard to argue the counter.”

Mark Gerson
Well, that’s exactly the gift of the Torah. The Torah’s chains of logic are unassailable, exactly as you said so beautifully. It’s exactly right. Which is why we said at the beginning of the conversation that the Torah is a book, it’s a guidebook that can be appreciated, learned from and lived by, by people of all faiths because its secular logic is unassailable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I think we got one really handy nugget here associated with job crafting and purpose and how that ties to the story of Joseph. Lay another one on us, Mark.

Mark Gerson
Okay. So, the Bible says, “Six days you shall work.” God says in the Bible, “Six days you shall work, and on the seventh you shall rest.” Okay. It’s interesting. He doesn’t say six days work shall be done. He says, “Six days you shall work,” teaching us that there’s something fundamentally important about work, independent of the output. That it’s important for the human soul to work. And there are lots of ways to work.

Someone who throws themselves into volunteering is absolutely working. Someone who’s home with her kids is absolutely working. There are lots of ways to work, but, “Six days you shall work, and on the seventh you shall rest.” Okay. So, let’s say someone follows that, and observant Jews follow it, Sabbath-observant Jews follow it, how many hours a week can you work if you follow that?

So, let’s say you can work 10 hours a day for five days a week. Now the sixth day, you really can’t work the whole day because part of the Sabbath is preparing for the Sabbath. So, you have to get home before the Sabbath and prepare for it so you’re ready for the Sabbath. So, let’s say you can work a half day on the sixth day. So, five days at 10 hours, one day at five hours, 55 hours a week. Someone who follows the Biblical formula for how much you should work and how much you should rest, and we can get into what rest is, it’s definitely not relaxing, can work 55 hours a week.

Social scientific studies of machinists in World War I and of Twitter employees in 2018 found that the optimal amounts of hours to work in a week is 55, the exact number. From 55 to 60, you have significantly-diminishing margin returns to your work. After 60, the work turns so bad that you start to compromise what you did in the previous 59.

So, the Bible gets it exactly right. The Bible’s telling us you should work 55 hours a week. And modern social science has completely, independently, the study of machinists from World War I and the Twitter study from 2018, they weren’t thinking about the laws of the Sabbath at all. But it turns out the Bible has exactly the number, to the number, of the amounts of hours that a week one should work to optimize production.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, 55 hours. That’s a good number to have in mind. And I’m thinking we had Morten Hansen on the show who had done a great deal of studying associated with high performers and what was the story there.

And I think he also landed in that zone. It’s, like, what they see when they study high performers, it’s somewhere between like 50 to 65-ish hours a week is the max. And beyond that, it’s sort of counterproductive. You’re better off just not doing that because it’s a negative. It’s harmful to push there.

Mark Gerson
Exactly, yeah. After 55, it goes to diminishing returns and then it quickly goes to negative returns. And the shocking thing is that’s exactly what the Bible says, “Six days you shall work,” 10 hours for five days, half a day on Friday, and that’s it, and then you have to rest. And what’s the rest? And this has also been proven by modern social science.

So, six days of work, the seventh day of rest. The rest is not relaxing. The rest is purposeful rest. So, what do we do on Shabbat? What we do on Shabbat is we inaugurate Shabbat on Friday night. We have a dinner with our family and friends. We pray. We have a great time. And then on Saturday, it’s not a day of sleeping as late as you can. Someone who sleeps as late as he can is considered a Sabbath violator. It’s a day of purposeful rest.

We play games with the kids. You might go to synagogue. You might study. You’re renewing the soul. And in that time of purposeful rest, what we’re effectively doing is preparing ourselves to be awesome at our job in the six days to come. So, if you want to be awesome at your job, what the Bible says is work six days and have purposeful rest on the seventh. And that purposeful rest will give you the mental and physical energy that you’re going to need to be great in the following six days.

So, if you want to be great at your job, keep the Sabbath. And, of course, someone could say, “I want to keep Saturday,” “I want to keep Sunday,” “I want to keep Wednesday,” whatever it is, but take one day and commit that day to purposeful rest.

Pete Mockaitis
And again, to the notion of work, a portion of that can be…it’s funny. If we count the childcare, Mark, then I’m blowing past my 55 hours, and maybe that’s why I’m so stressed and exhausted so often.

Mark Gerson
Right, yeah. Well, I mean, childcare can be, I guess some of it can be considered work and some of it can be considered purposeful rest. But let’s just take what we traditionally define as work. Like, more than 55 hours, people who brag about working 60, 80, 100 hours a week, they’re just wasting lots of hours and they shouldn’t brag about it. They shouldn’t do it. No boss should ask it. Why shouldn’t they ask it? Because modern social science is very clear that there will be limited productivity after 55 and negative productivity after 60.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I believe there’s also studies about video game developers will commonly enter a crazy busy season shortly before the release of the game. I don’t know if they call it crunch time. They have a name for it, but they see that exact phenomenon in terms of, actually, you’re just causing problems that you and others have to, now, undo.

Mark Gerson
Oh, very interesting. Yeah, I’m sure. Yeah, very interesting. I mean, it applies to everybody, and that’s kind of the point of the Bible. And why I wrote this book is because it doesn’t say, “Six days, you shall work, and seven days you shall rest for certain jobs.” It says it for everybody. So, the Biblical author might not have known about video game developers, but this formula certainly works for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And you brought up the point at the very beginning, like, “You shall work.” It’s not so much about output needs to unfold, but rather we, as humans, need to do work for our own benefit, the doing of the work is necessary. And even if AI makes universal basic income unlock for everyone effortlessly, it would be to our detriment to not be doing work.

Mark Gerson
Yeah, exactly. I remember, so Dr. Ruth was a very close friend of ours, and she would come over for Shabbat on most weeks. And I remember, I had a friend who was over and she said to him, “What do you do?” And he said, “Well, I just retired.” And we just saw this look on her face and she stares right at him, and she says, “You cannot retire. You can rewire but you cannot retire.” Dr. Ruth, as always, was exactly right.

And, Pete, getting to your point, we see this in the social science literature, too. This is the IKEA effect, which was discovered in 2011, which is that people value things more when they build the things themselves. People value the work of their hands. They value work independently of the thing. And the IKEA effect is so interesting because one would think that we would value pre-made furniture more than we would value furniture we have to make with our own hands.

Because everyone would say, “Well, I value my time at something. If I don’t spend my time on it, I should attribute that value to the thing, and I should value the pre-made thing more.” But we don’t. We value the things that we create with our hands more than those that we don’t. Now, why is this? It’s because the Bible was right when it says, “Six days you shall work.” Work has a psychic, spiritual benefit, independent of what the work is and even what the output is.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s just true. There are also studies associated with elderly folks, folks that maybe they don’t expect much from them because their health is poor and it’s hard to get around and they’re long retired. And yet, when they adopt real responsibilities associated with doing some mentorship and tutoring, for example, this is a good study, their stress levels increase because, okay, now they got some responsibilities on their plate, and yet their life satisfaction and joy increases all the more.

Mark Gerson
Totally right. And, exactly, the Bible says, “Six days you shall work, the seventh you shall rest.” It doesn’t say until age 65, in which case you should rest all the time. It could, but it doesn’t say that. It’s because it’s a fundamental human need. Now, of course, the job that one can do at 20 is probably not the job that one can do at 80, or it might not be. But the person at 80 or at 50, just find another job.

And again, it doesn’t have to be a paying job, but find something else that can be considered work. And your example, Pete, is great. A mentorship program that imposes responsibility. Not something you pop in and out of, but saying, “I have to be at this place to do mentorship, to do teaching, to do tutoring, to do counseling,” which people of all ages can do really well, that’s work.

And if someone hits a certain age when they can’t do the work they used to do anymore, totally fine. Just identify what skills, what gifts, what talents you have and see where else it can be applied, but the answer can’t be nothing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Mark, lay it on us a third timeless insight to help us be awesome at our jobs.

Mark Gerson
Okay. So, let’s start with the story of Rebecca.

So, you have Rebecca and her husband, Isaac. And the question becomes, “Which son gets the birthright?” In other words, “Which son gets the mantle of Jewish leadership?” And Isaac, who has the ability to bestow it, he’s going to give it to Esau. Rebecca wants to give it to Esau’s twin brother, Jacob. Rebecca is right. Esau has his strengths, they’re discussed in the text, but the qualities needed for leadership, to perpetuate the Jewish people into the future are not one of them. The birthright has to go to Jacob.

So, Rebecca engineers in the moment, she’s a brilliant woman, engineers in the moment this ruse where Jacob is going to trick his father into thinking that he, Jacob, is his twin brother, Esau. So, how does Rebecca tell him to do it? Rebekah tells Jacob, “Put on Esau’s best clothes.” Now that’s interesting because the old man, Isaac, he’s blind so what does it matter what Jacob is wearing? But she says put on his best clothes.

So, what do we learn from that, and the many other mentions of clothing in the Bible? Well, the reason why Rebecca tells Jacob to put on Esau’s best clothes is because of her insight, which is amplified throughout the Torah, which is that we are what we wear. So, she’s telling Jacob, “If you want to imitate Esau, if you want to be Esau, you have to wear his clothes,” because what we wear defines us.

Okay. So why is this relevant? Well, first, is it true and is it relevant? Well, there was a study out of Northwestern in 2012 where one group of participants was given a white coat. There were two groups of participants. They were given the same white coat.  One group was told it was a doctor’s coat. One group was told it was a painter’s coat. Then they were given tasks that required paying attention to detail.

Those who were told it was a doctor’s coat did much better. Just by thinking it was a doctor’s coat – it was the same coat – by thinking it was a doctor’s coat they did much better on attention-seeking tasks. There was another study out of Yale from 2014, which was a negotiation workshop. And the young men who wore suits made triple the profit of those who wore sweatpants. Same cohort of students, but those who dressed in a suit did vastly better than those who dressed in sweatpants.

And so, what does this teach us? It teaches us that what we wear is of fundamental importance for so many things, particularly being awesome at our job. Now, I think it’s a fortunate thing that this whole work from home culture is ending. But even if one were to work from home, what would be the lesson from the Bible, which has been validated by modern social science? Dress like you’re in the office.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, it’s funny, as we speak, and you’re looking so sharp, I’m looking at my blazer in the corner, I was like, “I should probably put that on right away.” So, thank you for that. And we have had that come up with Dr. Srini Pillay, what he calls psychological Halloween-ism.

Mark Gerson
Interesting. Great term.

Pete Mockaitis
When we dress the part, it psychologically impacts how you’re approaching things and showing up, so I could see that pathway with the suit. But could you actually give us some more detail on that study, the whole tale there?

Mark Gerson
Well, yeah, the two studies from Northwestern about just by wearing the same coat and being told it’s a doctor’s coat, you get attention-seeking tasks. And you have the Yale study, which showed that men wearing suits did three times better in the negotiation workshop than their colleagues from the same cohort of Yale students who were wearing sweatpants.

There was another study out of UNC from 1998 that said that female students who wore swimsuits scored worse on math tests than those who wore sweaters.

So, the lesson for being awesome at your job is no matter where you are, even if you’re working from home, just dress like you’re working from the office because, I love your term, psychic Halloween-ism, I would have used that in the book if I knew about it at the time, but it’s a great term and it says that we become what we wear, which is exactly what the Bible is telling us in so many different ways, in so many different places.

The canonical place is when Rebecca tells Jacob to put on Esau’s best clothes. Interestingly, not any clothes, “Put on his best clothes. You put on his best clothes; you’ll be Esau. And you got to be Esau to trick your father.” And it works. And, interestingly, there was another study that showed that much of the cure for female depression is in the woman’s closet.

Because when people are feeling depressed, you wake up in the morning, you’re feeling depressed, what will most people typically do? They’ll put on like baggy sweatpants, a big sweatshirt. That makes them more depressed.

So, what this study showed is that if you’re depressed, put on a flowery dress, mix up the colors, and then you feel the vitality that your clothing reflects. So, it’s such an easy hack right from the Bible, which is that if you want to be a certain way, dress that way. Don’t dress how you feel. Dress how you want to feel.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Mark, this is so good, and it’s funny. I mean, I’ve had years of working from home, and there was an era of my life in which I put a great deal of attention into my attire, and I had shirts made to my measurements, and it was when I was peak dating times, like, find a wife time. And I put serious time and money into my clothing, and I have not since my wedding day.

Mark Gerson
Well, it’s interesting. We can talk about the secrets of the top performers, too. So, Deion Sanders, of course, the NFL Hall of Famer, great quote from Dion Sanders, “If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good. If you play good, they pay good.” I mean, Tiger Woods, he always wore red on tournament Sundays because red, he said, is his power color.

Michael Jordan. So, Michael Jordan started the trend of wearing baggy shorts in the NBA. Why? He was wearing his UNC shorts under his bull shorts. Why was he wearing his UNC shorts? Because, to him, it channeled his beloved coach, Dean Smith.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Well, boy, there’s so much there in terms of the garments. And then, well, now as we talk about these athletes, it feels sort of like in terms of, like, ritual and memory and – what is it – embodied cognition.

Mark Gerson
Embodied cognition, that’s a term, yeah. Or enclothed cognition.

Pete Mockaitis
Or, sit in this place or with these things or see these reminders, that’s triggering an emotional, physiological state of being, and some physiological states of being are way more conducive to having smart, creative thoughts that are useful, versus just the opposite.

Mark Gerson
Right. And so, what it teaches, you want to be awesome at your job? What you wear matters. That doesn’t dictate what you should wear, but it does dictate that you should be intentional about what you wear.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Whether it’s your UNC shorts or a sharp orange jacket, whatever it may be.

Mark Gerson
Exactly. And so, why do I wear this orange jacket? Because I co-founded the charity United Hatzalah of Israel, which is the country’s crowdsourced system of volunteer first responders. We have 8,000 volunteers throughout the country. All EMTs are paramedics. And our goal is to get to a 911 call within the 90 seconds that separate life from death. We do about 2,300 calls a day.

Well, orange is our color because orange is the safest color at night. And we have a thousand volunteers on motorcycles, and so we have to have the safest color at night. So, I wear this jacket every day to channel United Hatzalah and the love I have for the organization, the respect I have for the volunteers and the purpose that I have with being the chairman of this great organization.

So, I have one of our board members sold his fabric company, and I asked him to make me an orange jacket, and I did. I started wearing it every day. He said, “Well, you can’t wear the same jacket every day.” So, he made me five of them. And I have our logo right here.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is perfect. I remember, I got this suit made to my measurements. It felt amazing. It was delightful in terms of, like, how I felt ready for anything.

Mark Gerson
Exactly, yep. Exactly. You totally nailed it, exactly. By wearing that suit, you felt ready for anything and everything. And what the social science suggests is you were probably more awesome at your job because you felt that way, and you felt that way because of what you’re wearing. It’s one of hundreds of great practical life hacks right from the Bible.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Mark, tell me any final things you want to share before we hear about a couple of your favorite things?

Mark Gerson
Well, first, what a great conversation. So, I so appreciate it. But, no, I mean, I’d love to share anything and everything in the book. And “God Was Right” will be out in June. And you talked before about, before you were married, you paid great attention to your clothing.

Well, clothing is a separate chapter, but the Biblical formula for dating, romance, and marriage is totally fascinating and it’s been proven absolutely right by modern social science, and it’s unfortunately not practiced today nearly as much as it should be.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is not a dating show but we can’t just let that lie. Mark, can you give us the two-minute version of that we need to know?

Mark Gerson
Okay. Okay. Now I’m so glad you asked. Okay, so, the happiest marriage in the Bible is between Isaac and Rebecca, which leads us to ask, “Well, how did they decide to marry each other?” So, Abraham sends his servant, Eliezer, to find a wife for Isaac. So, Eliezer sees this young woman, and he only knows three things, and this is key, only three things about the young woman.

He knows she’s from Haran, which is important because Abraham had made souls in Haran. He knows she’s very fair to look upon, and she’s exceedingly generous. She brings water for him and all of his camels. On the basis of those three and only three things, Eliezer says, “She’s the woman for my man, Isaac.”

Then this young woman, Rebecca, is given the choice, “Do you want to go with Eliezer and marry Isaac?” She has never met Isaac, but she knows only two things about him. One, that he’s rich, so he’s a good provider, and, two, that he loves God. So, on the basis of knowing only two or three things, they decide to get married.

Then the text tells us in Genesis 24:67, he married her, she became his wife, and he loved her, in that order, teaching us that the Biblical formula for finding your spouse is identify two or three characteristics, no more. Whether his friends are funny, or whether she likes to ski, or go to the beach, they’re not in there.

Identify two or three genuinely important characteristics, and there aren’t that many to choose from, then just get married. Then start doing spouse-like things, probably iterative acts of giving, and then love will follow. The opposite of that is what people in secular society do now, which is they date for years, often the same person for years. eHarmony said the average dating before marriage is 2.6 years.

In the process, they’re looking for all kinds of characteristics which are completely irrelevant to a happy marriage. In so doing, passing up perfectly good people for no good reason and they eventually decide to get married when they fall in love because, as I said in the book, you can’t fall in love. Love is something you have to cultivate. Love is saying it’s intentional.

You might fall on your face, you might fall down, but you don’t fall in love. What the Bible tells us is that love follows commitment. First, they get married, then she became his wife, they’re two different things. So, marriage is obviously a legal process, then becoming a wife is a much more substantial process, iterative acts of giving, and then love follows.

And the social science demonstrates that the Bible, as usual, totally gets it right. So, the lesson for young people is identify two or three characteristics, then just get married, then start doing spouse-like things, and then you’ll experience love.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, if I may, now I’m curious about hiring in terms of do the same principles of having a very short list of critical factors in a candidate apply there too?

Mark Gerson
Yes. As long as those characteristics are the right characteristics, and that’s true in dating too, that two or three characteristics have to be the right characteristics. In hiring, it’s going to be two or three characteristics. And then, of course, you have to do background checks and references and all that.

Pete Mockaitis
May I ask for, I mean, you’ve hired a lot of people in your day, what are your top characteristics?

Mark Gerson
Well, I think one of the underrated characteristics is “What’s the character of the man or woman?”

Pete Mockaitis
Character.

Mark Gerson
Yeah, because if you can find, if you can identify, you can do tests or look to experience for technical capabilities, but you want to work with people of good character. You can trust them when there are, inevitably, adversity and challenges. You can have the confidence that they’re going to stick through it and work through it and be with you. That they’re going to be really concerned about customer problems, they’re going to be really good colleagues. So, yeah, I think character is a very important trait to look for in someone you hire.

Pete Mockaitis
So, character, in a way, can encompass many, many different virtues. Here it sounds like you’re talking about honesty, integrity, and, like, discipline or fortitude. So, when you say character, is that kind of what you mean by that?

Mark Gerson
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Character is encompassing. It’s honesty, integrity, diligence, rigorousness, taking responsibility.

So, I would say, look for people who have it within their character to take responsibility because problems are going to happen, mistakes are going to be made, and someone who takes responsibility for them, that’s the kind of person that you want to work with.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there another key factor in addition to character?

Mark Gerson
Character, I would say, is the most important thing, and it is the encompassing thing. But also, problem-solving ability and resilience. And I have a chapter in the book on anti-fragility, which the Bible asserts in Exodus. And then modern social science has completely validated it as something that is both possible and very positive for people.

So, in Exodus, we’re told the more they were, talking about the Jews in the early days of the slave experience, the more they were afflicted, the stronger they became. Now, one would normally think the point of afflicting somebody is to weaken them. But the Bible says the more they were afflicted, the stronger they became.

So, teaching us that afflictions can be strengthening and modern social science has totally validated that, for instance, scientists who’ve had their first paper rejected have more successful careers than scientists who had their first paper accepted, so long as they stay in the profession, showing us that these setbacks, these challenges, these rejections can be a real impetus for growth.

So, I think, when looking for someone to hire, when looking for a vendor to work with, that’s a really important thing. What’s going to happen when things go bad? Are they going to take responsibility? Are they going to complain? Are they going to seek a solution? These are not easily detectable in interviews, but it’s something that every employer should consider and try to ascertain as best as he can.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mark Gerson
Well, I’ll just go with my favorite from the Bible, which I think it was Leviticus 19:2, which is very simple, “Be holy.” Holiness is something that’s available to everybody of every faith in every time, at every strata of society. We can all be holy.

And what does that mean? It means that when confronted with the decision to do the right thing. And it’s such an inspiring piece of wisdom from the Bible because it’s telling us that holiness is completely accessible.

Everybody, anybody can be holy, should be holy. We can understand what holiness is because the Bible wouldn’t tell us to be holy if it were inscrutable. So, we can understand what holiness is and we can do it. And it’s just a great piece of Biblical wisdom to live by.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Mark Gerson
So, there was one study in the early 2000s, it’s a fascinating study, which is available for anybody to look up on YouTube, just go to Gorilla Experiment, where you have a bunch of girls throwing a basketball to each other. And then this big guy in a gorilla costume comes in the middle of the game and starts beating his chest. And then he goes off screen. He’s there for like 10 seconds out of the 60.

And then the question is, “How many people noticed there was a gorilla interrupting the game?” And the answer was fewer than half. So, you have this one-minute game of girls throwing the ball, a guy comes in with a gorilla, but because noticing is so hard and so counterintuitive, very few people actually noticed.

Then there was another study out of an Irish insurance company on this that says, “Who are the best drivers?” And this class of people are the best drivers to such an extent that this insurance company, Carole Nash, gives them lower rates. They’re motorcyclists. So, why are motorcyclists the best car drivers?

Well, let’s look at the cause of motorcycle accidents. The bulk of motorcycle accidents are caused by what the traffic experts have named “Look but failed to see.”

In other words, the driver, he looks at the motorcycle in front of him, but he doesn’t see it. So, it’s in his eyesight, the motorcycle, but because he’s not used to seeing motorcycles on the road, because his brain is conditioned only to see cars, he doesn’t actually see the motorcycle right in front of him, he crashes right into it.

So, that’s how important noticing is, is that car drivers very often don’t even notice the motorcyclist right in front of them, even though they can physically see him. That shows how hard noticing is. So, who are the best car drivers? They’re motorcyclists. So, why are they the best car drivers? Because if you’re a motorcyclist, you better be a really good noticer because there are all kinds of perils on the road.

So, motorcyclists become really good noticers and, consequently, they become really good car drivers. And this is the inspiring thing about it, it’s a skill that can be cultivated. The motorcyclists have cultivated the skill of noticing and, consequently, it helps them as car drivers and elsewhere in life.

And then we have to ask, “Well, why is this relevant in my life?” Well, the answer is motorcyclists know. And lots of accidents, and not just car accidents, lots of mistakes that we make in all endeavors of life just come because we’re not noticing things. I mean, maybe you don’t notice that someone in your life is having problems that you can help with. You just don’t notice it. And you just think it’s a normal course of things, but if you notice it, you’d see there’s something different, and you can step in and help that person.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Mark Gerson
Probably the most important part of my routine is I run six miles a day, I’ve not missed a day in over 20 years. I have an addiction to exercise. I need to run. And I do my Bible study on the treadmill.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And, Mark, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Mark Gerson
They can go to GodWasRight.com or email me at Mark@GodWasRight.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mark Gerson
Realize that what you’re doing is important. What you’re doing is, if someone is parting with his or her money for a good or service that you’re involved with creating or producing, what you’re doing is really important.

And you should just understand the importance of it and properly define the importance of it, just like we talked about with the hospital custodian who said, “I’m not just cleaning the floors. I’m creating a healthy environment for patients.” And there’s so much wisdom in that hospital custodian. And I think everyone who wants to be awesome at his job and to find meaning and happiness in his work should take that to heart and be like the Biblical Joseph and job craft.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Mark, this is beautiful. Thank you.

Mark Gerson
Thank you so much, Pete. What a great conversation.

Jun 02
0

1063: Getting Meetings with Unreachable People with Stu Heinecke

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Stu Heinecke shares fun and unconventional methods to reach VIPs.

You’ll Learn

  1. The secret behind Stu’s 100% response rate
  2. The master key to grabbing people’s attention
  3. What AI can and can’t do for your outreach

About Stu

Stu Heinecke is a Wall Street Journal cartoonist, Hall of Fame-nominated marketer and author. Heinecke discovered the magic of “Contact Marketing” early in his career, when he launched a Contact Campaign to just two dozen Vice Presidents and Directors of Circulation at the big Manhattan-based magazine publishers. That tiny $100 investment resulted in a 100% response rate, launched his enterprise and brought in millions of dollars worth of business.

Heinecke is the host and author of the How To Get A Meeting with Anyone podcast and blog, and founder and president of Contact, a Contact Marketing agency, and cofounder of Cartoonists.org, a coalition of famed cartoonists dedicated to raising funds for charity, while raising the profile of the cartooning art form. He lives on an island in the pristine Pacific Northwest with his wife, Charlotte, and their dog, Bo.

Resources Mentioned

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Stu Heinecke Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Stu, welcome back!

Stu Heinecke
I am so glad to be back. I don’t know where I was, but I’m glad to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re going to find out, you know, what both of us have been up to in six years.

Stu Heinecke
We will.

Pete Mockaitis
I had so much fun chatting with you last time about “How to Get a Meeting with Anyone,” and you’ve got an updated edition coming out here. And so, I think it’s worth talking about this at least every six years, so let’s do it.

Stu Heinecke
It’s actually more like nine years.

Pete Mockaitis
Was it, really?

Stu Heinecke
Since it came out, that’s why there’s an Updated Edition.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, six years since we talked, nine years since the update.

Stu Heinecke
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. Well, so for those of us who weren’t with us in our last conversation, can you refresh us to your origin story and how you became a guru of getting meetings with anyone?

Stu Heinecke
Well, early in my career, I wanted to create direct mail for magazine publishers, and I ended up producing this little campaign to reach out to the VPs of circulation and consumer marketing at the publishers like Time Inc. and Conde Nast, and so forth. And I wanted to break through to that industry. And what it meant was I just needed to reach about two dozen people. That’s all it was. And that covered the entire publishing industry.

And so, I put together a campaign. It referenced a couple of test campaigns that I’d just done, just completed for Rolling Stone and Bon Appétit. And both of those beat their controls, meaning both of those set new records for response, like all-time records. And so, okay, well, that was my entree to put this campaign out.

Pete Mockaitis
And if I may, with beating the controls, just so we can visualize, when you say campaign, what are we talking about here?

Stu Heinecke
We’re talking about a direct mail campaign to send through the mail, to ask people to subscribe to the magazines. But the kicker was I was using cartoons with personalization, and no one was doing that, so I knew that that was a winning combination because I knew that readership surveys were showing that cartoons were almost always the best read and remembered parts of magazines or newspapers. They were going to show up and people were going to pay attention to them. And they did.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it was like, “Hey, Pete, I’m in a cartoon.” It’s like, “Whoa, I’m in cartoon.”

Stu Heinecke
Yeah, kind of. Yeah, it’s just they’re talking. One of the characters is talking about you or mentioning you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like it.

Stu Heinecke
And you come out on top in the humor, generally, yeah. So, I created those two campaigns, and then I thought, “Okay, that’s my entree to reach out to the rest of the publishing industry.” And as I mentioned, I put together a little campaign, called it a contact campaign.

And it consisted of a little 8×10 print of a cartoon, each one’s personalized to each recipient. And then a note saying, “This is the device I just used to beat the controls for Rolling Stone and Bon Appetit, and I think we should put these to the test for your titles.”

Pete Mockaitis
Bam!

Stu Heinecke
Now, I don’t know if you remember the story, because I guess I might quiz you there. What do you think I got for a response rate to that?

Pete Mockaitis
If we’re thinking about the same story, I deliberately didn’t read the whole transcript to keep it a little fresh.

Stu Heinecke
Good. Good.

Pete Mockaitis
I believe you told me your response rate was over 100%. I said, “Stu, how is that even possible?” And you said, “Some of them referred me extra work on top of it.”

Stu Heinecke
Okay. Well, it was 100% but we’re mixing other campaigns that have done that. But it was 100%. All of them, first of all, just responded. All of them then agreed to meet, so 100% meeting rate. And then all of them became clients, 100% conversion rate. And what it did was it took me from being an unknown. I was just 24, I think, 23 or 24. It took me from being an unknown to suddenly being one of the top creatives in that market almost overnight from a campaign that went to 24 people and cost me about a hundred bucks. So, that was my first time using contact marketing. Yeah, and what an eye-opener that was.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s so beautiful and it’s winning on so many levels. And I guess you’ve had some time to think about how and why did this work. But it seems of, well, one, that your actual offer at root is awesome in terms of, “Hey, I can make you more money for your business. And, oh, by the way, you know, some of your peers that you really respect and value in the industry, they have seen it happen.” So, it’s like that core offer and message, in and of itself, is phenomenal.

If we’re offering them a home warranty renewal, you know, we wouldn’t see that no matter how amazing your cartoon was. And then next up, you straight up got their attention with a novel, physical medium packaging, right? Like, “Huh, what’s this?”

Stu Heinecke
Yeah. And I thought, “Well, gee, aren’t I cool? I can use cartoons and I can reach almost anyone.” I’m like, “Who could I reach?” And I thought, “You know, I’ve got to try this. How far can I go with this?” I’m kind of a mischievous person. So, I started reaching out to presidents and prime ministers and celebrities and lots of C-level executives and top decision-makers, and I was getting through.

I can’t say I got through to all of them, but I’ve gotten through to several presidents, a prime minister, or a number of celebrities. You know, it’s really interesting because I’ve been thinking all along, “Wow, I’m able to put myself in contact with people I should never be able to reach.”

And then I thought, “Why should you never be able to reach them? Why should anybody not be able to reach whoever it is that they want to reach?” I mean, that’s kind of the whole premise behind the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I think that this is a big idea and it’s exciting. Can you give us some more stories of this in action so we can marinate on it a little bit, and say, “Hmm, how might I apply this in my world and my meeting that I want to get?”

Stu Heinecke
Here’s one really interesting. I can’t say the name of the company, but there was this sales rep who was calling. If you’ve seen the movie “Forrest Gump,” then you’ll understand my reference to a certain fruit company. Otherwise, you won’t.

But he was calling on the fruit company’s engineering department, and they loved his software solution, they said, “But we don’t control budget, so you’re going to have to talk to purchasing.” So, he thought, “Oh, man, great. This is great. I’ve got a sale.” But purchasing wouldn’t talk to him. And so, he thought, “Oh, what am I going to do? Well, I know, I’ll go around him. I’ll go around them to the CEO of this fruit company,” who happened to be at the time the most famous CEO in the world.

He was not going to be easy to reach. And the sales rep discovered that because he was sending faxes and letters and leaving messages and doing anything he could think of and nothing was happening. So, one day, this plywood box shows up at the front counter with air holes drilled into it and a handwritten note. And the note was addressed to the CEO.

And the rep said, “I’ve been calling on your engineering department. They love my solution. They told me to talk to purchasing. They won’t talk to me. I’ve been trying everything I can think of, otherwise than to reach you and nothing has worked. So, this is my final attempt. So, if you would, open the box carefully. And inside the box is a pigeon. And on the pigeon’s leg is a little capsule with a slip of paper inside.”

“So, if you’ll take that slip of paper out, write the name of your favorite restaurant, a date and a time, put it back in the capsule and release the pigeon, I’ll meet you there. And I wouldn’t be telling the story if the pigeon didn’t come back, right?” So, the pigeon came back. There was a name of a restaurant, a date, the time, and they got together. They met and he walked out of that with a $250,000 deal.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much because, okay, it’s clever, it’s fun, it’s novel, and I’m learning something that the pigeon stuff still works today, huh, in terms of, like, pigeons are capable of returning to their original destination. Because I imagine that if I were the CEO, pardon me, I’ll give him respect, some props, like, “Okay, that’s very cool. That’s very clever. That’s interesting. You’re committed. You’re creative. All right, cool, cool.” But, I’m also curious, like, “Hmm, does this pigeon thing even work? Let’s take a crack at it.”

Stu Heinecke
Yeah, you got to try it.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m motivated there, too.

Stu Heinecke
A lot of these stories, they really contain a huge measure of audacity. So, I mean, really taking a risk, it’s just way out of left field. It’s just crazy. So, I think one of the things that people are responding to is, if you do something that gives them a story to tell, then they love it. Of course, they get engaged with it, but they love it because they want to tell a story. And there are lots of these where there’s a story and you’re just, “Oh, my God, that’s just astonishing.”

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s a great takeaway in terms of it gives them a story to share, it’s valuable in and of its own right, and it just takes so much effort, you can’t help but respect it in terms of, because it takes zero effort to have a cold email, automated cold email. Some can be very thoughtful and well researched, but you can’t mass blast pigeons.

Stu Heinecke
No. And, you know, when you’re on LinkedIn and you get a message, a request for a connection, and it says, “Hey…” because the pitches, they’re always generic. So, it’s just, “Hey, I read your profile, and I know a lot of people just like you.” I’m thinking you’ve missed the mark. Don’t say that to someone because you don’t know anything about me.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m a unique person.”

Stu Heinecke
I wouldn’t be able to look at my profile and know much about me. So, how are you? Obviously, you’re spraying this out to, who knows, hundreds, thousands of people. I’m not going to waste my time. So, yeah, the pigeon, but audacity, I don’t think you can do that at a great quantity level.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Stu Heinecke
I mean, you just got to be one-on-one. And, really, ultimately, the goal we’re seeking is we want people to receive this, Dale Dupree calls it an experience. I think that’s a good way of describing it, but receive this thing that you’ve sent or done and just say, “Wow, who is this?” Like, going from, “Who is this?” to, “My God, who is this? I got to meet this person. This is hilarious.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Stu Heinecke
So, if you do that, then if you’ve opened the conversation together, or really the relationship together in that way, then you’ve given them a story.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it. I dig it. Let’s hear more stories.

Stu Heinecke
All right. There’s one that involves two singers. So, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I’m talking to you from Hendersonville, Tennessee, so Johnny Cash is…

Stu Heinecke
Oh, my God, then you know all about him. Well, so Kris, much younger man than Johnny, Johnny was one of his heroes, Kris was in the army stationed in Germany, flying helicopters, and he was trying to figure out what is the next steps were in his life. And he thought, “Well, I know, I want to become a singer-songwriter. I want to move to Nashville. And you know what? I want to meet Johnny Cash and I want to collaborate with him. I want to be his best friend.” Those were his goals.

So, he finished his tour of duty in Germany and moved to Nashville. And one of his friends knew that he wanted to meet Johnny Cash. So, he had a backstage pass. Got him in. There was Johnny. He was just about to go on. And he said, “Hey, Johnny, I just wanted to introduce a friend of mine. This is Kris.”

And Johnny turns and looks and he goes, “Hey, how you doing?” And then turns away because he’s going on stage. That was it. There was no impression whatsoever. Well, then Kris thought, “Okay, then I’ll get a job at the studio where Johnny records,” Columbia Studio in Nashville, I believe.

So, the only job they had was a janitor. And Kris was a Rhodes scholar. This was a real sacrifice to do this. But, anyway, he took the job as a janitor. They were all told, by the way, if you slip a demo tape to Johnny, you’re fired. So, he slipped them to June instead, his wife. It still didn’t work. So, one day, he thought, “God, I’ve got to do something. I got to make something happen here.”

So, one day, he was still flying helicopters as well. So, he was out on a flight, I don’t know what he was doing, going to an oil rig or something, but finishing up, and he thought, “I know what I’m going to. I have my demo tape. I’m going to stop by.” And he said that’s what he did. He flew over, and he landed on Johnny’s front lawn.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, nice.

Stu Heinecke
And handed off a demo tape that way. Now, Johnny and Kris remember the story differently, because Johnny said, “Yeah, so then here’s Kris. I’ve known him for a couple of years from the studio. But here he was, he comes over, lands a helicopter, steps out from the helicopter with a beer in one hand and a demo tape in the other.” And Kris was always saying, “I can’t fly a helicopter. I need both hands. There’s no way I was flying with a beer.”

But what was happening was Johnny was already full force. He was just into that story. I mean, I think we know him. They became, from that point on, they became collaborators. Kris wrote a lot of songs, and Johnny recorded a lot of those, introduced to him to a lot, his career just exploded from that one helicopter flight, but he landed a helicopter on his front lawn to get his attention.

And until he did that, until he showed, I don’t know, kind of the audacity, till he showed the audacity to do that, I don’t think you would even get on Johnny’s radar. He wasn’t.

Pete Mockaitis
So, Stu, I’m thinking, “Can I even legally charter a helicopter flight to land in someone’s yard? Was there like a flight plans or FAA things that are going to stop me?”

Stu Heinecke
I don’t know. You know, I’m amazed he wasn’t arrested for it. I don’t know. I never heard anything about that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you said they’re taking a risk. I was like, “Oh, you know, you’re risking time and money and embarrassment, but you might also be risking law enforcement action in some contexts.”

Stu Heinecke
You might go to jail. You might lose your license. All kinds of stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I like this. I want more reps of the stories because I think it starts to spark other ideas. Let’s hear the sword story.

Stu Heinecke
Oh, yeah. Well, that is, so Dan Waldschmidt is the man behind that story. And Dan, he’s a blogger, he’s one of the top sales bloggers, and an author. And his branding is around, well, it is edgy conversation, so sort of knife’s edge, ultra competitiveness. Dan runs, he trains a lot, and he runs 100-mile races and he wins these things. He’s in great shape. He’s an amazing competitor.

And so, he brings all of that to bear in his sort of, let’s say, personal branding. But what he really is, he’s a turnaround specialist. And so, he shared with me his process for reaching the CEOs of companies that are in trouble. And what he does is he scans the business news every day for stories of missed earnings estimates. And when he finds one, he has a sword made by the prop maker who made the sword for the movie “Gladiator.”

But they’re great swords. They’re not sharpened. Thankfully, that’s a great feature if you’re going to send someone something like that. The blade has an inscription, “If you’re not all in, you’re not in at all,” and then it has the CEO’s name engraved on it as well. And it comes in a beautiful wooden box, felt line, with a handwritten note. And handwritten notes tend to show up a lot in these. And I think one of the reasons that that’s also relevant now is that that’s not something AI does.

So, the note says something to the effect that “A business is war. I noticed you lost a battle recently. I just wanted to let you know, if you ever need a few extra hands in battle, we’ve got your back.” And what he’s saying is, “We’ll stand side by side with you and go to battle with you, for you, to win this battle.”

And so, he is getting 100% response rate to that so far. I want to say it costs him about $1,000 every time he puts one of those out. And by 100% response rate, I mean that all of those CEOs will take his call. All of them will talk to him. Not all of them do business with him, but that’s the next step. When he does business with them, and when he has an assignment, a turnaround assignment, it’s worth, generally, a million dollars and up. So, if you spend $1,000 on the sword, it’s worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, so let’s say we’ve got a job seeker who’s thinking, “Boy, you know what, my dream would just be to work for…” fill in the blank, “Oh, it’d be the coolest thing ever if I could work for Netflix…” or, “…for Pete Mockaitis…” or, “…the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.”

Stu Heinecke
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ll just put it on the same level, if I may, yeah. And so, if someone has that idea, but was like, “But I can’t get their attention, there are these AI resume screeners. I apply and it goes nowhere. Stu, how do I use this?”

And so, it seems like a sword or a carrier pigeon or a helicopter, it’s interesting because there are economic considerations in terms of, if we don’t have a million-dollar size of prize, but rather we might see like a $20,000 raise, is the size of the prize, you know, who knows what percent of success we’re going to get.

So, I’d say, let’s just say, I’ll challenge you a little bit, under 200 bucks total cash budget per contact. I’m trying to get my dream job at Netflix, or with Pete Mockaitis, how might I play this game?

Stu Heinecke
One of the techniques that I think is really interesting is, I call it deep personalization in “Get the Meetings,” the later book after “How to Get a Meeting with Anyone.”

But it’s doing a profile scrape. And now with AI, my God, we can get some really crazy-level profile scrapes because you can find out a lot about who they are, what they like to do, what they’re talking about. AI will just go scrape it for you, and it’s amazing, really amazing.

So, when you find out something about someone, that they love maybe Korean War fighters, and they love flying in jets. Well, actually, you said under 200. You could show them the jet. I don’t think you could get them a ride for two. I don’t know if you can get it for a 200.

But certainly, you can come up with a gift that reflects that, and it doesn’t have to be an expensive gift. I guess it just depends. And it probably shouldn’t be because gifting is often restricted by companies. They can’t accept a gift over $20.

So, I don’t know, it might be, let’s say, a rare book or an old book about MiGs or something like that. Go to eBay and search around and find something on that subject and send it to them. And it comes across as a very thoughtful gift. Just tell them, “I was doing research.” This is actually the basis of something called a wow mailer.

But just say in the note that, “I was doing research because I wanted to meet you. And I discovered that you were really, really interested in MiGs, MiG fighters,” let’s stick with that theme here. “And I thought you’d enjoy this book that I found on MiGs. And I hope it will actually, perhaps it will earn me the opportunity to speak with you.” So, that’s a nice way to do it.

Well, you know I’m a cartoonist as well. I’m one of the Wall Street Journal cartoonists. And so, I would probably send them a card or maybe a larger piece, but a cartoon about themselves. Oh, especially if it also then backed into the research, the scrapes. So, suddenly I know that they’re interested in MiGs, then I’ll work that into the cartoon. So, that might be a way.

But I really think just doing something with a profile scrape and discovering something about them that they really, really treasure in life, and then fashion a gift around it. It’d be a great way to do it. But here’s another one. A lot of people have sent their resumes, or dropped their resumes off, taped to a donut box, or a box full of donuts. I mean, that’s kind of like a Trojan horse, I think.

And then my friend, Dale Dupree, also does something interesting. He has empty donut boxes delivered. I mean, you can see sort of the detritus from the donuts that were in there, but there’s a note inside saying, in his case, he was saying, “I was waiting to meet you, or to do our deal, but it took so long. I ended up eating all the donuts,” and then there’s a donut card inside and it’s something like that. Just something that gives someone, as I’ve said, an experience or a story to tell.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I remember, I shared the story with you last time we spoke. There was a coaching client I had, he wanted to work at McKinsey and Company, you know, get in a competitive consulting organization. He was in a Target recruiting school. On his own birthday, he sent birthday cake to the office, and said, “All I want for my birthday is an interview with McKinsey.”

Stu Heinecke
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And it worked out. It worked out.

Stu Heinecke
Look at that.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, so sweet treats, combined with resumes and/or a request.

So, AI is really cool for scraping and getting the details on what they might be into. I’m curious, fundamental question, how do I just get the mailing address?

Stu Heinecke
Well, yeah, so a little bit. So, you don’t have to send something physical. That also should be said. But you have to be careful about sending things to their home address. And I know people are working from home, so that’s their address.

I would suggest something different, though. You could find their address, their home address, and I think if you sent them something, and they don’t know you and they haven’t given permission, or just said, “Yeah, please send it. That sounds interesting,” you’re going to come off like a stalker. So,

Call ahead and find out, “I’m sending something to you,” or, “I’m sending something to your boss,” if they have assistants, “And I just want to know, if I send it to the office, is that the best place to send it?” And then they’ll say, “Yes, it’ll get to them,” or, “No, why don’t you send it to their home address?” and then they’ll give the address.

I think you want to have some kind of clearance from it, so that if you send something to someone at their home, and they’re saying, “How did you get my address?” “Well, I got it from your assistant. And they said, send it to you there.” “Oh, okay.” It’s diffused. But I do think if you’re sending it to someone’s home address, it can get creepy really quickly. So, you’ve got to be careful.

But AI is giving us all kinds of options, not only for finding addresses, but also, of course, picking up on buyer intent signals and trigger events.

So, if you know your ideal customer profile, you can find people who are not only fitting that profile, but also fitting in terms of timing based on trigger events and interest, expressed interest because that’s based on their search patterns. So, if they’re suddenly searching for what you sell, man, that’s a good time to be talking to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is this just like standard Google Ads, or is there some software magic you like under the hood?

Stu Heinecke
Well, there are several platforms. You know, Seamless and Zoominfo and Apollo.io and so on. They are all doing that. They all have, now, buyer intent signals built into it. I think the first platform that did it was 6sense. One thing I don’t like from some of the platforms after that is, then, they’re set up to send email sequences.

And I think email sequences are, I guess, I hesitate to call them dead, but we see them, we know what they look like. And if you’re getting email after email, and each email is a page-long copy, it has page-long copy, you’re not going to read that.

And, also, that it has the slogan at the bottom, “This was sent to you by such-and-such. If you want to opt out…” or rather unsubscribe, do this with all those links at the bottom of those broadcast emails. All of that is just a cue to the person on the other end, “This is not personal.” They’ve just put you into a mill and they’re taking up your time with automation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s funny how I’ve had a number of businesses, maybe this is even your experience appearing on podcasts. It’s, like, some of the emails are from the podcaster, and those are real, and you may wish to reply to them. And others are automations from the calendar software. And I would hope that you would go ahead and read the guest prep materials, but you know that those are not real.

So, in a world where we have too many emails, and unless you’re just absolutely desperately in need of the thing that is being mentioned, yeah, that’s one of our top filters, I think. It’s like, “Not a real person. Not actually for me personally.”

Stu Heinecke
If it comes across that way, you just dump it. And so, that’s what I was saying at the outset. Our mission is to create human-to-human connections. AI is magical, I think. It’s miraculous. But when we’re talking about, then, getting meetings with people and making connections with people, well, that’s what we’re doing, human-to-human connections. It’s not machine-to-human connections.

And as soon as the human gets any sort of inkling that that’s what’s happening, then you are persona non grata. You’re not going to get through. You will never get through. You’ll be blocked.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, speaking of not getting through and getting blocked, I guess, what’s so exciting about your book and your concept, “How to Get a Meeting with Anyone,” and then just like the zone of creativity is like, “Oh, if I discover a really cool personalized thing, then that’ll do the trick.” But I think what’s hard here is, “I need to have the permission for the home address.” So, it feels like you can get blocked there pretty easily.

Stu Heinecke
Yeah, I always advocate calling the assistant. If you’re going to someone at the level that has an assistant, but calling ahead and just saying, “Hi, my name is such and such. I’m calling because I’m sending a print of a cartoon by one of the New Yorker or Wall Street Journal cartoonists, and it’s about your boss.” Well, I call that a VIP statement in the book. That is a statement that causes the person on the other end of the line to say, “Oh, whoa, okay. Well, cool. Oh, I got to listen to this.”

So, then there’s a script that goes with it, “So, yeah, it is about your boss. I’d love to send you an email just so I can confirm the details, and I’ll give you my contact information. And then as soon as I have the FedEx tracking number, I will send that to you as well.” So, it’s actually still in production when you do that, or it could be pre-production. So, if they say no, then you don’t send them one. But I think it makes a lot of sense to call ahead and to start.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I certainly do. I guess, if you’re addressing what I was worried about, it’s like, “Well, they might just shut you down now.” It’s like, “We don’t know you. We don’t want your stuff.”

Stu Heinecke
Maybe. But I think that the line, that VIP statement helps a lot. You know, I’m in the middle of writing a new book, and I wanted to reach Bjorn Ulvaeus from ABBA. Well, ABBA is still one of the biggest bands in the world, and it’s not going to be easy to reach him. And so, I used one of my new devices. It’s a FedEx piece, a really cool piece. And I have to reach his publicist, and I wasn’t even sure I was going to reach her, but I did reach her just yesterday.

So, there’s the rest of the context and the whole gag. You can reach out to just about anybody. And when you do, magic can happen. And it’s pretty amazing. So, certainly, magic can happen in your job search as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Stu, tell me, if someone’s listening and they think, “I could use AI to make a cartoon,” what do you say to them?

Stu Heinecke
I just put the finger across the throat. Here’s the thing. Here’s the deal. And, actually, it’s a really interesting question because, as things become more automated and artificial through AI, I think that people are going to clamor for things that are uniquely human, things that only humans can do. And I would say cartoons are one of those.

So, I’ve watched it very carefully. I’m on a few of the text-to-image platforms, and I’ve prompted, every once in a while, to come up with just a…it’s a really tough thing to do to come up with a funny, something that’s funny. And AI is getting better at that. But then also the cartoon drawings so far, they’re really, I mean, they don’t look like…there’s this rawness to a Roz Chast cartoon, or I don’t know, Peter Steiner, any of them. There’s a rawness to it that is utterly human.

And when you ask an AI to produce a cartoon, well, first of all, it’s generally, it’s just a drawing. Yeah, it’s just a drawing or whatever it is. It’s just an image. And it’s more like a Saturday…how do I put it? Almost like a Saturday morning, 3D Saturday morning kiddies cartoon kind of thing. It’s not sophisticated. It’s not something you’d look at and go, “Oh, gosh, what is this? This looks hilarious.” It just looks like characters on a TV show, 3D animation TV show.

So, there’s still, so far, it’s not something that AI can do. It should be good enough that the person on the other end says, “Wow, you actually sat down and wrote this to me. Who is this?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. All right. Well, Stu, tell me, anything else you want to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Stu Heinecke
Well, I guess I should hold up the book because I just got a copy of it. There it is, “How to Get a Meeting with Anyone,” the new edition. It’s purple, this time. But it has new chapters dealing with those things that we’ve just talked about, AI, and how AI, work from home, and just the dearth of digital spam everywhere, every channel is changing the way we get meetings.

But still, it’s not changing them because, on the other hand, we’re still using things that are audacious and clever, and they open a conversation with someone in a pretty magical way. And it only happens when it’s human to human.

So, I would advise you, if I was in the middle of a job search, I would be using this stuff for sure because I wouldn’t want to rely on the AI algorithms to pick my resume out of all, I don’t know, the thousands. I wouldn’t want to even rest my fate in the hands of HR. I wouldn’t. I would feel like they don’t even understand what I’m talking about.

And so, I would be reaching out to the CEO, and letting them know that I’m interested in working with them. I mean, not even apply. Maybe just reach out to CEOs anyway. I think CEOs, you know, if you impress them, then their job is to build a team. And so, if you impress them enough, I think you end up in a situation where they’re saying, “God, we need someone like this on our team.” And that will happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, now can you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Stu Heinecke
What comes to mind is I did another book, I wrote another book called “How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed” that came after, and I got some great, great quotes from all sorts of sources. But my favorite quote out of there is, “Give a weed an inch and it’ll take a yard.” So, I love that one. And I guess maybe Winston Churchill’s, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Stu Heinecke
I like some of the sales books by Jeb Blount and Mark Hunter. You’ve probably had them on.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, could make the scheduling work. I’d love to get Jeb on.

Stu Heinecke
Oh, yeah, he’s great. He’s great. He writes a lot of great, great books. He’s prolific. And he and Anthony Iannarino teamed up to write a book about AI and sales. I think that’s really interesting. So, anything by Jeb Blount, anything by Mark Hunter, anything by Victor Antonio, anything by Anthony Iannarino, lots of great, great stuff coming out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Stu Heinecke
I’m working out like a fiend. The real habit, though, is going in four or five times a week and working out an hour and half to two hours, and it does pay dividends. It’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to resonate with folks, you hear them quoting it back you often?

Stu Heinecke
“If you can’t get meetings, you can’t sell.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more again or get in touch, where would you point them?

Stu Heinecke
You can mention that you saw or heard me on your podcast. Let’s just go to LinkedIn and connect with me there. Or you can go to StuHeinecke.com, my name is S-T-U H-E-I-N-E-C-K-E.com, and that’s my author site. And you’ll find offers and all sorts of interesting things there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Stu Heinecke
If you’re looking for a job, man, if you’re going through the usual channels, the channels that everyone else is going, if you’re using best practices, the things that everyone else is doing, keep in mind you’re not standing out. That’s not the way you stand out. You heard stories about Kris Kristofferson landing a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s front lawn, you’ve heard stories of dropping pigeons off, and so on. That’s how you stand out. You got to take risks.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Stu, thank you.

Stu Heinecke
You’re very welcome. Thank you for having me on.