Afford Anything - The Hidden Cost of Playing It Safe With Money, with Dr. Margie Warrell

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

#578: Fear blocks smart money moves. Ask Harvard Business Review advisor Dr. Margie Warrell, who guides Fortune 500 companies through strategic risk-taking. Her client roster includes NASA, Morgan Stanley, and Google. Her understanding of courage started at home. Her 13-year-old daughter landed an Australian TV role. She flew to LA for acting classes. There, she learned the hard truth: Success meant waiting tables for 20 years. The daughter's verdict was clear: "Mum, I don't want it enough." This reveals what Dr. Warrell calls the courage gap. It's the space between your current life and the life you could create through brave action. For investors, this gap appears daily. It's the distance between dreaming of financial independence and taking concrete steps toward building wealth. Drawing on her doctoral research and Fortune 500 consulting experience, Dr. Warrell outlines five critical steps to bridge this gap: 1. Focus on what you want, not what you fear.  Our brains have a negativity bias — we're twice as sensitive to potential losses as potential gains. This explains why market downturns feel more intense than upswings.  2. Rewrite your story.  The narratives we tell ourselves shape our actions. Perhaps you see yourself as "too risk-averse" to start a business or "not smart enough" to understand investing. Reframe these stories so you can take smart financial risks. 3. Embody courage physically.  Fear lives in our bodies — whether it's anxiety about making your first investment or launching a side business. Try simple practices like deep breathing when facing big financial decisions. 4. Step into discomfort.  Growth and comfort can't coexist. Every successful investor and entrepreneur started as a beginner. Financial literacy and business acumen develops through consistent practice. 5. Find the treasure when you trip.  Market corrections, failed business ventures, and investment mistakes are learning opportunities.  Dr. Warrell emphasizes that courage isn't about waiting until you feel confident — it's about acting despite your fears.  This applies whether you're making your first stock purchase, buying your first rental property, or quitting your job to start a business. The takeaway: While you can't control market conditions or business outcomes, you can control your response to financial fears.  Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate. (0:00) Introduction (3:54) Fear's impact on financial decisions (6:13) Case study: Risk-reward in property investment decisions (10:28) Psychology of wealth decisions (14:21) How negativity bias affects investment choices (18:09) Five steps to bolder money moves (21:23) Navigating market uncertainty (26:52) Physical techniques for managing investment anxiety (31:28) Real example: Leading through market volatility (37:42) Finding clarity in financial goals (43:34) Why comfort zones limit wealth creation (47:59) Small steps toward investment confidence (53:11) Learning from market setbacks (58:38) Balanced approach to investment failures (1:02:51) Building long-term wealth resilience Resources Mentioned in the Episode: Website: Dr. Margie Warren Book: The Courage Gap Connect with Dr. Warrell on LinkedIn: Dr. Margie Warrell Follow Dr. Warrell on Instagram: Dr. Margie Warrell Interview with David Novak: Episode 534 For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode578 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As an investor, one of the most important things that you can do is learn how to manage fear and navigate risk. You don't want to be reckless, but you also don't want to be so risk-averse that you hamstring the performance of your own portfolio and prevent yourself from ever-reaching financial independence. Today, we're joined by Dr. Margie Warrell, who has dedicated her academic research to studying how to how to, to manage risk. She holds a PhD in human development and serves on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. She has advised numerous companies and organizations including Novartis, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Dell, Morgan Stanley, and NASA on the subject matter of how to navigate risk. She's also a columnist for Forbes, where she brings insight into how we can make braver decisions in uncertain times. She joins us to share those research-based insights. Welcome to the Afford Anything

podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off and that applies to your time, money, focus, and energy. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. It's double eye fire. Today's episode plays to that F, financial psychology, and the I of investing when it comes to risk management. I'm your host, Paula Pan. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, and I help you understand money and understand risk. Welcome, Dr. Margie Warrell. Hi, Dr. Margie. Welcome. It's good to see you. It's great to be with you. Can you define what is a courage gap? Paula, if you ever had one of those times where you knew there was something

you should do, you wanted to make a change, you wanted to take a chance, want to back yourself, maybe a new career or you wanted to do something, maybe have a tough conversation. And yet you did it. You held back. You're like, ah, what if I fail? What if I fall? What if it doesn't work out? Well, that gap between what you think and what you do, between what you truly know is the

right thing to do in your heart of hearts and the actions you take, that gap is created by our fear. And it takes courage to close that gap. So the courage gap is the distance between the life we're living and the life we could be living if we consistently acted with courage. I think everybody has a vision of the life that they could be living. And that manifests in a lot of different ways. You know, you could be more fit. You could get that promotion or you could make that career change.

You could take on that investment that is kind of scary but that you really are kind of also excited about. start a small business. There are a lot of different ways that that can manifest. Where does the courage to bridge that gap come from? Oh, well, of course, courage comes from within ourselves. We find our courage by being really anchored to want a vision and two to values. Like, what is it that we really, really want, like, really want versus, oh, I'd really like that pink jacket. Or, you know, what I really want is to have a deeply meaningful and authentic. life. One is getting that clarity of what you want and two is like what are the values that you want to define how you live your life. The more clear we are about that, the easier, not easy,

but easier it is to take that brave action, to take that risk, to put ourselves out there. Of course, often we don't because we're not sure, is it worth it? Is what I'm going to get worth what I risk having to give up? You know, we're always making a risk-reward assessment. I mean, all of us as we go through our day, it's like, ah, is what I'm going to get from taking this course of action worth the potential risk, like what I might give up? Like, is it worth it? And we're always deciding that. Do I share with this person how I really feel about something?

Do I call them out on something? Do I make the ask? Do I, whatever that is. And so there's a lot of reasons why we don't do these things. Sometimes we decide it's not worth the risk. I don't want it enough. I'll give you an example. Years ago, my daughter, Maddie, she landed herself in this television series, and she was only 13, 14.

We were living in Australia. You can tell from my accent, I'm an Aussie, and she landed in this TV show that was called Jemay Private School Girl. Anyway, it was sort of a mockumentary. It was a fun thing. But as a young girl, she landed there, and she was like, I think I want to be an actress. This is kind of fun. You know, you're on TV, and she was invited out to L.A. and she did this acting course.

By this stage, she's 14, 15. Over the course of her time there, she got to meet lots of people who were pursuing acting paths in Hollywood. She met among them many, many incredibly talented. They could sing. They could dance. They could act.

She didn't have the whole triple threat. She wasn't a dancer, for sure. She has a lovely voice, but she certainly wasn't a dancer. And she heard people saying, you know, if you really want to be an actress, actor, you have to be willing to wait tables for 20 years. You've got to want it so much that you don't care if you might wait tables for 20 years

because there's a lot of people in L.A. that wait tables. And she said afterwards, she said, you know what, Mom, I've realized I don't want it enough. I'm not willing to risk doing something I don't want to do for 20 years on the hope that maybe I would make it as a big time, you know, Jennifer Lawrence, who was sort of her icon at the time. She did that risk reward. She's like, it's not something I want enough. And then at other times there's things we do want enough

that we put ourselves out there and we're willing to risk our time, our money, our years. And so getting that clarity about what we want and why does it matter enough or not. But what strikes me when you talk about, getting clarity is clarity and values, those both exist in the cognitive realm. But when we talk about courage, and particularly when we talk about bridging this gap, there's cognition, there's psychology, and there's behavior. And it seems like there's a challenge in integrating the three. Yes. You're absolutely right. And those three different domains for behavioral change,

the cognitive behavioral and the psychological, they all work in concert with each other. There's not one that is going to do it for everyone. But I think getting clarity, you're right. You can't intellectualize your way to courage. How many times have you met someone who is very, very smart who did something that was a little daft? How many times have you met someone who knew intellectually it was the right thing for them to do something, and yet they didn't do it? They stayed in a relationship that they knew was sucking the life out of them and not helping them thrive in their lives and was actually leaving them in, incredibly kind of fractured sense of self-esteem. People who stay in jobs suck the joy from their living.

And they know, and before we started rolling, you were talking about people who are like, okay, now I've sold $3 million now. Can I pursue what I really want? Intellectually, they know it and that they still don't do it. And so we can't intellectualize our way to courage. There's a deep emotional element to it. There's a moment in which we have to lay our vulnerability on the line. Renee Brown says vulnerability is the biggest measure of courage.

That's a physical feeling too. Like our fear and vulnerability lives in our body. Fear shows up in our lives, in our thinking, in our feelings, and in our physiology. Can you talk about any data or any research around the management of that fear at a visceral level? Yes. Well, there's obviously a lot of stuff that's done. There's different fields, whether it's semantic coaching and body cognition. Therapists would say our issues live in our care.

tissues and anywhere we have tension is inviting attention. So there's work that's been done a lot of work in terms of trauma in the body and we can be this big anxious tangled ball of stress. You can feel it when you're feeling uptight. There's been studies that have found when we are in that state of our whole parasympic nervous system is on heightened alert. It literally constricts our thinking. Like we can't think as clearly. And it limits our creativity. We're not able to like think about all the options that are available to us. And it's called a nervous system because our system is a nervous system. It's wired into us beyond a plane that we can intellectually go, well, I shouldn't need to be this scared, but I damn that scared when people have phobias,

etc. A key way to regulate that is through the breath and breathing. And I'm happy to dive into that a little bit more as we kind of talk through the different elements in the five-step framework that I have in terms of how do we reset our bodies and get our physiology working for us and transform the psychology of fear into that physiology of courage. All right. Let's walk through then this five-step framework. And as we walk through it, I'd like to know about evidence, about research, about data, about the underpinnings of this. So the first step is to focusing on what we want and not on what we fear. It's easy. I mean, we all have what's called a negativity bias. The research shows that there's about 80% of our

attention goes into the deficits, like what we don't have, what we don't want. If you draw that all the way back to our cave dwelling days, we wouldn't be here today if the brain wasn't exquisitely wired to be on alert for potential threats to our survival. It's that these days, it's not about our survival. I'm not going to make it through the day and be eaten by line. It's our whole identity. Our brains are still kind of wired in a prehistoric sense, but they haven't caught up with the modern world where it's not our lives that

are being constantly threatened. It's our identity and we're living with devices that we hold in our phones that are constantly feeding us algorithms and posts, designed, engineered to make us feel insecure and afraid. And so much of the stuff, if you look at, and there's some great research around how much anxiety and insecurity is fed through being on social media. That wires up our risk phobia.

We tend to be constantly much more focused on what could go wrong, on potentially bad things. And I think in recent years with the pandemic, it's only heightened our perceptions of risk, too. So our brains are constantly looking for what's wrong, what could go wrong, what's lost. Daniel Carnahan, a behavioral economist. He wrote a book Thinking Fast and Slow, which you've probably read, that our brains are twice as sensitive to what could be lost versus what could be gained.

And so because we're constantly alert for that, whether or not we're meaning to be or not, it means that we tend to be super sensitive to potentially bad things happening. And often our attention is on those bad things. The money we could lose. What could go wrong? We tend to turn our forecast for the future into fear cuts. We catastrophes. And we're really, our brains are brilliant at that going into the future and having anxious thoughts. And that's why we have to continually be reeling in that anxious thinking and going, what is it I want? What is it I can do? What What is that I do have and not let that natural bias toward the negative take over our thinking? The fact that we do possess that negativity bias also means that when we get blindsided by

some type of black swan event, it becomes that much more traumatic and we often end up that much more scarred by it. Can you talk about how to grapple with that? That's interesting. As much as we may be constantly focused on risks, we tend to underprepare for unlikely events. But yes, we can be blindsided when really those Black Swan events happen. There's a term in psychology called an assumptive world. We all live with an assumptive world about how the world works. We have these mental maps.

So this is how the world works. And when an event happens that doesn't fit with our mental maps of how life is, it can really be extremely disorientating. Like we feel like not only has the rug been pulled out from beneath us, but the ground beneath that, and we can really lose our kind of sense of place and mooring. And so when that happens, one, it takes a little bit of time to kind of get our access back on an even keel. So when I think people find themselves really blindsided by one of these Black Swan events,

it's so important, one, to give ourselves a minute. Take a beat. Like, it's a lot that you've had to deal with. It takes a minute to get your bearings again. I know sometimes I came out of the subway to meet with you today. And as I stepped out, I was like, which way is north, south, east and west? Like, I need to give me a minute to figure out which street. Sometimes I walk one block in the wrong direction.

I go, oh, no, that's wrong direction. Okay, I'm going there literally sometimes the exact opposite way. You're literally emerging from a dark tunnel. Yeah. And I, okay. And every now and again, I'm. I mean, I definitely sometimes have completely had my mental map flipped over. And the same with when those things happen.

So one is, I think we've got to give ourselves a minute. But secondly, once we've done that, to reel in that emotion which can run away on itself and to go, okay, what is it I know for certain? Because a lot of uncertainty can be really ungrounding. And so to anchor ourselves in what we know to be true, that gives us a sense of self-rength. certainty. I'm okay. I've been through difficult times before. I haven't been in this situation, but I get to choose how I'll respond to it, looking around ourselves, sometimes connecting and with other people that can help to anchor us. And then, and also being really mindful, what are we putting

our attention on and practicing what I call deliberate optimism? I'm going to choose to believe that good things are going to come out the other side of this, even though I cannot figure out what it's going to be. I'm going to choose to lead myself based on my values, not by my emotions. What's the next best right thing to do right now? I don't know what's coming a week from now, a month from now, but what is the next best thing to do? And I think we have to also really prioritize whatever it is that will empower us and help us to bring our best self to the moment at hand. And the more that we have coming at us, the more pressure we feel, the more ungrounded we feel, the more that we feel like life has thrown us a curveball, I think that even the more important

it is to double down, to triple down on whatever will help us to reset and ground ourselves in what we know to be true, in who we are and who we really want to be. I had an interesting moment like this actually at the start of the pandemic. I was actually living in Singapore, and I had three children in the United States. I had one child living with me in Singapore. my husband had come out to the US in mid-March to see our kids. And while he was in New York, his restaurants were starting to close. Think of mid-March. He obviously picked up the virus.

He landed back in Singapore, had this cough, his eyes didn't look great, went off to find the one place that was doing tests. And he was basically, people came out in like a bowler suits kind of and took him off into a closed room. And he was locked up for 30 days. Wow. At that first day, They could see dark spots in his lungs.

They put an IV in him. We're watching these images coming out of Italy. I'm like, and he's texts me to say, I've got COVID. They've locked me up. They see something on my lungs. I got an IV. And I went into a pretty major overwhelm. In the meantime, I had children in the US that found themselves homeless.

As their dormitories closed, they didn't have anywhere to live. And I remember in those early days having these feeling like waves of overwhelm were washing over me and waves of anxiety. I had to literally sit down and take a breath regularly. I say breathe in courage, breathe out fear and reset. What do I know to be true? I know right now I'm okay. I know we'll get through this.

I know he's going to have a strong immune system. He's going to get through this. I know my kids will get through this. Someone's going to take them in, as they did, in those moments when we can find ourselves really overwhelmed to take a minute and get present to yourself and help to reel in that fearful thinking because our brains will go off the reservation, thinking of all the worst case scenarios.

So we've got to reel it in and then focus on what is it I want to do, what is it I can do right now and get really specific in the short term. And you talk about, you know, you said the first step was focusing on what you want rather than what you fear. What if you don't know what you want? I think a lot of people go through life not being really sure about what they want. It's like, what kind of job do I want? Do I want to continue pursuing a career in here?

Do I want that? It's great when you can be clear, but let's face it, often we can't. And I believe when you're not exactly sure what you want, go with the next best thing. Well, what is it right now you think you might want? And so, you know, as a coach over the years, I've said to someone, they're like, I don't know what I want. I'm like, okay, but if you had to kind of take a stab at it. And sometimes it's like, it would be like, well, what I know I don't want is this.

I'm like, great. Well, that's one less thing that you definitely don't want that. great, what else do you not want? Well, I don't want that. And so sometimes through a process of what we getting clarity about what we don't want, we can help to like narrow down, well, I'm not exactly sure if it's this or this or this, but I know for sure it's not that, that and that. So that in itself is valuable. I've had that experience, I'm sure you have too, where in a work situation where I'm like, I don't know exactly what I want to do professionally, but I know for sure it is not staying in this job in this organization, working in this culture, doing this with my time every day. So that can help.

But when it comes to what we want, getting that clarity of it, I always ask a few questions. It's like, what is it that you really enjoy doing? What is it where time disappears on you? Now, that's one thing. Some people might say, well, I love doing wordle. Well, you know, that might, great, wordle, great. You love words. You love being creative. Okay, that's not going to pay the bills. What is it you love to do? What is it that you care about? What is it? that you've enjoyed in the past? What things have you done in the past that you've found interesting? What is it that ignites your curiosity and you're curious about? And while there may not be a specific answer coming out of it, that's going to help to if somewhere in the intersection

of all those things are going to help give you some level of clarity. Many years ago, I started out my career in corporate marketing. In my later 20s, I was really clear I didn't want to stay in corporate marketing. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted, but I knew I didn't want that. And at the time, I'd had an eating disorder. I'd been processing and working through that. I found myself often people would confide to me what they were struggling with. I loved being the source of sort of a sounding board. I would try and give people guidance as much as, you know, a 28, 29-year-old could. And I decided, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I thought, you know what, I think I'd like to go back and do psychology and understand more about why we do what we do. And so I went back to school

part-time and started doing psychology. I didn't know exactly where that was going. I wasn't sure that I wanted to be a psychologist, but I thought, I know that learning in this area is going to move me in a direction, not an endpoint destination. So sometimes, when we're not clear about what we want, I would say, what's a general direction that feels right, even if it feeds some curiosity, have about something, whether or not you end up going fully down that path. Maybe you'll learn enough on that path to go, no, it isn't this, but you've learned something. The key is not standing still, but to be trying things, exploring, talking to people who you meet of doing something interesting. Tell me about what you're doing, getting there, understanding more about what

they're doing. And maybe it'll be like, okay, I like that part of it, but not that part of it. So there's a lot that we can do to help us over time get clear on what we want, but recognize for many of us through our own development as adults, often our preferences don't settle down until our 30s. We think we know what we want to do when we're 18. Most people change their mind on that. But I mean, I know a lot of people in their 40s and their 50s and I've met a few in their 60s that are going, I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do when I'm a grown-up. You know, so I would also say give yourself permission not to know for sure, but to be in curiosity and wonder about, well, let me figure it out. Let me.

go on a journey here. And so be directionally pointed towards something interesting. Yeah, definitely it is a direction that you're heading versus the destination and end specific point. Because let's face it, some people might say, well, I want to be, insert something specific. Life's going to throw stuff at you. It could throw opportunities your way that you would never have imagined. It can also doors can close despite knocking on a lot of doors or working really hard. And so I think it's important to, there may be things about. that at a certain point in time that really appealed to you. And then over time, you learn other things and you meet other people. And sometimes the path that we want and we think, oh, this is all

getting in the way of the path that I'm supposed to forge, actually it can be revealing another path that may actually be a better path for you. Because who's to say that your idea of exactly what you should be doing is really the best path for you? So that focus on what you want, or at least directionally what you want, as opposed to that focusing on the negativity bias of what you fear. That's the first step in this five-step framework. And it's a five-step framework of plugging that courage gap, which is really the behavioral gap between what is and what could be. What's the second step? The second step is rescripting the narrative, the story that you're telling yourself about your ability to achieve what you want and to become who it is you'd

to be. And so all of us storymaking machines, we have stories about everything. People will be listening to this podcast right now and some will be going, oh, I love this podcast. I love this episode. Some might be going, oh, I don't really like it. I mean, there's going to be different ways of interpreting what they're hearing. And we all have our own interpretation and spin on what we're hearing, what we're seeing, on our lives. If you have multiple siblings, my guess is they probably have a different story about what it was like to grow up in your family. I know myself, there's seven kids in my family. I'm the big sister. My experience of my family was different than my baby sister's experience. She was like, mom was always so awesome. I'm like, mom was not always

awesome. But we all have our stories, but we have our stories about ourselves, which is the most important story of all. And we have the stories about what we can do with our lives and with our careers with our money. We also have our stories about the challenges we face, whether something's possible or not possible. And so often our stories hem us in and keep us from pursuing what is a path that's calling to us, from pursuing what it is we want or changing what it is we don't want. And so a key aspect of being able to close our courage gap is being able to take a step back and ask yourself, what's the story that I'm living in here? What's the story I'm telling myself about my ability to do this? And recognizing our stories are just stories. They're not the truth.

We treat them like they're the truth, but they're not. They're a story we're telling ourselves. And the more we can realize that our stories are the way we're putting life together to make sense of it, then the better we are at rewriting those stories. Now, some of the Some stories can keep us stuck in place, like, oh, I can't make a change. I can't possibly leave this town that I grew up in. I can't possibly change careers at my age. So sometimes there's stories that keep us sticking with the status quo. Sometimes our stories make us stressed.

I meet people who are constantly stressed because they live in stories that are feeding their stress all the time. They're focused on everything could go wrong. They're telling themselves, oh, I don't have what it takes. And so they're constantly anxious about things. Sometimes, though, the stories we're telling ourselves, air cover for not going and doing the very thing we'd really love to be doing. They keep us living too safely, living too comfortably, settling for what I've sometimes

seen as a life of immaculate mediocrity. It's really pretty. You look beautiful. Your house is gorgeous. Your life is beautiful on the outside, but you are not living the life that you're called to live. You're not honoring your gifts. You're not honoring your opportunities. You're not honoring the gift of life itself and what you're doing with it because you're sticking with what's comfortable and what looks good and what feels good in the short term. And so being able to peel back the layers of the

stories we tell ourselves because we create our stories, but our stories create us and recognizing that we can get caught in these stories. And recently I was talking to someone and she was frustrated in her job. And she'd been passed over for a couple of bigger roles. And other people around her were getting bigger roles. And she's like, I consistently deliver results. I work really hard. Everyone knows. I know the business really well. And how come this guy, he's got that role? And how come this person? And she's a little resentful. And I said, well, have you let the higher powers to be here and know what you want? She goes, no, because I'm not one of those people that's going to go and like jostle, I'm not egotistical. People should know what I want. And she said, that's not my

style. I don't do that. And I said, okay, everyone else is getting a role because they're going out and letting people know what they want and they're hustling for it. And you want to sit back and earn gold stars and wait for someone to come and offer it to you. And sometimes that happens. But these other people are showing that they're really hungry and they're going out there and they're being super assertive. She goes, well, I don't want to look like I'm too ambitious. because I don't really care. And I said, yeah, you do. She didn't like to be seen as anything other than a really humble person. She didn't want to be seen as egotistical. And yet, in not wanting to be seen as egotistical, that was egotistical. So I'm like, what's another story you could tell

yourself? And where she came out was that I'm fully deserving and wholly worthy of bigger roles, but I need to get out of my own way and I need to let people know what I want. And I said, yeah, And that's not because you're egotistical. It's also what's the value that you want to add? You want to be someone who adds a ton of value. And so by shifting her story and enabled her to have some pretty, some important, crucial conversations that she wouldn't have had otherwise because she was stuck in a story of, oh, I'm a really humble person.

That's not what I do. Even sometimes the labels we put on ourselves can hem us in. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in payments technology, built to evolve with your business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses of any size. But they also have the fintech hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine. That's what being a fifth third better is all about.

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Black Friday deals. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Sale ends December 7th. You mentioned a life of immaculate mediocrity, which is so sticky. It's so visually compelling. If someone who's listening to this recognizes that in themselves, if they heard that phrase and went, oh my goodness, I'm living that life where it's like Pleasantville. Everything's fine, but inside, I'm screaming. How do they even know which labels to shed? How do they know which stories to break? How do they begin that process of unraveling all of the multifaceted multi-layers that got them over the span of 30 or 40 or 50 years to that space.

Yeah. Obviously, it's rarely done in a moment. You've spent 30 or 40 or 50 years getting to that, so it's not going to be undone in a moment. But it could be, because in any moment, we can make a decision to live differently and to pursue a different path. But I would start with going back to that step one.

Sometimes I like a little play a little exercise with people. If I had a magic wand and I could create for you the most inspiring life that you could imagine, what would you be doing? Who would you be doing it with? What would people rely on you for? What would they admire you for? What would they be grateful to you for? And play with curiosity and wonder about what you would love to be doing if you weren't living

the life you are now. And it's not about throwing out all of our lives. It's not about selling everything and putting on a white robe and going to Africa or India or somewhere. It's about giving yourself permission to connect to a vision for your life that's different. Maybe it's not wholly different. It might be, well, I would travel more and I wouldn't be waiting for my husband to do it with me, or I wouldn't be waiting for my friends to do it with me, or I would go somewhere on my own. And so one is getting that vision, any vision.

But secondly, then, what story would you need to tell yourself for that to become a reality? What story would you need to believe that I have everything it takes to live a big, wild, inspiring life? I have everything it takes to pursue a whole new path for myself. I'm smart enough. Or I may not have been adventurous up until now, but I can become. more so, and I'm going to start today with one small thing. And so giving ourselves permission to connect to something new, but also, yeah, what story would you have to tell? Sometimes I think,

well, think of someone you know that's living a life that you find inspiring. If they could step into your body right now and they could take over and go, wow, and put their mindset into your life, what do you think they'd be thinking for you? All of the wild and wondrous possibilities for you. every story we tell creates emotions and our motions are what drive action. And so what other story could you tell? How does that shift the emotional state that you're in? And you know, when I've met people and counted people who are living lives of when I say immaculate mediocrity, they're outwardly beautiful, yes, but often shrinking.

Often there's a lot going on in their inner life. I think it's super important to just stop and look within ourselves and sometimes look at hard truths, sometimes ugly truths, sometimes inconvenient truths. We can easily be deceived, but the person that is the easiest to deceive is ourselves. And we often tell ourselves what we call vital lies. Daniel Goleman wrote about this and his book, Emotional Intelligence. We tell ourselves stories that make us feel better about our choices. Sometimes they're not wholly true.

So we tell ourselves these vital lies because when I tell myself, I can't do that. It gives me a get out of jail free card to try. I have four children, but I once, at one point in time, I had three children and I had moved from Australia to the United States. I didn't know anyone. I wanted to start a whole new career path in coaching. And I'd always thought I would love to have four children. And I remember telling people, oh, I can't have four children because you can't have four children and have a career. And I'm actually going to start a new career and a new country. I have zero networking. And so I definitely can't have four children and start a new career. And so I definitely can't have four children and start a new career. And I'm actually, in a new country. And I had one particular friend, Janet, and Janet cared more about me than she cared about me liking what she said, which is a sign of a really good friend. And she said, I call bullshit on that, Margie. You can have four kids and have a start a business.

Like, of course you can. Of course you can. And I was like, but I don't know anyone who's done it. She goes, well, I know people. Let me introduce you to it too. So she literally gave me some role models. I didn't know anyone, that it helped me realize what I was telling myself was not true. I was telling myself was true, but it was not true.

So go out and look for evidence to prove yourself wrong. Go out and find examples and evidence, and maybe it's people that are doing the very thing that you're saying can't be done. I mean, that was my example as a mom because I didn't know any women. I didn't grow up surrounded by professional women who had multiple kids. pursuing successful careers. I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Australia that didn't exist in my world. So I had to expand my horizons and look for that. But to anybody who's thinking, I want to live a bigger life, I know I want to do it. I would say one, sit on something in your future that's a

little inspiring, then ask yourself, what would I need to believe? Try that story on for the next 24 else, trying that story on. Notice how it makes you feel. Notice how if you believe that story, how it shifts not the emotions you're feeling, but what you see is possible. Maybe you're like, well, I could reach out to that person or I could join that group or it's going to expand what you see as possible for yourself. All right. So step one is to focus on what we want rather than what we're afraid of, rather than, you know, succumbing to negativity bias. Step two is the reframing of the stories that we tell ourselves and the labels that we assign to ourselves. It strikes me that both step one and step two are very cognitive.

What's step three? Step three is about embodying courage. In the book, it's titled Breathe in Courage. So now we're leaving cognition and we're going into the physiological aspect of it. So fear lives in our bodies, whether we would want it to or not. it lives in our tissues, our issues live in our tissues. Often we're carrying around anxiety from experiences that we may have had as children inside of us in ways we don't even realize. There's a lot of people, I've done a lot of work in executive coaching and I meet people who I say live from the

neck up. Like it's all intellect. They're very bright. They keep it all neck up. They don't express emotion very much. They're not very connected to their feelings. They intellectualize what they're feeling. Oh, I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling angry. I'm feeling versus like really feeling their feelings. And so connecting in with our physical presence is a gateway to resetting the fear that's in our bodies, to resetting our nervous system. So that's one part of this step. So for those who are listening right now. You might be thinking to yourself, you know, I don't, I don't think that's me. I'm cool. Well, I would just ask you to think about, is there anything in your life that causes you to feel any level of stress or anxiety? And then ask yourself, where do I feel that in my body?

I feel it sometimes in my chest, like I get a tight chest. So sometimes taking the deepest breath that I've taken all day can help to reset that anxiety. It mightn't be super anxious. I'm not having an anxiety attack, but just carrying a little bit of it through the day. So I sometimes say to people, take the deepest breath that you've taken all day right now. And take in a breath and notice that breath going in and out and doing that diaphragmatic breathing where it goes right into the bottom of your belly, allows a little bit more. oxygen to go up to your brain and can help to reset, but also noticing where you feel any tension in your body or even any tingling or any numbness or anything can help us to connect to where

fear lives in our bodies. Because it's not a one-way street where I think a fearful thought, to your point on the cognitive aspect of it, I think a fearful thought, and now I'm feeling anxious. Yes, that's true. It's a two-way street. We can feel things in our bodies before our brains have even kicked in. You know, a car comes racing towards you. Our bodies jump before our brains have even kicked into gear, recognizing that that's a two-way street. So that gives us a target for intervention in our own physiology. The research shows that how we hold ourselves, our posture, it sends a signal to the brain that says, oh, this is how we're feeling. If I hold myself all hunched over, or I've just say I'm depressed and I've got my

myself all hunched over like I'm feeling deflated and low self-esteem, that tells my brain like, oh, there's not a lot to look forward to. The future's not very bright. If I hold myself like, I've got this. I sit taller in my chair. I'm doing it right now talking to you. I lift my chin up. I look out ahead. I widen my eyes. That sends a signal to my brain. I got this. I can handle it. So holding yourself like you've got this. And so, you know, walking taller, sitting taller, talking taller, all of that sends these signals to our brain that are. And so our physiology impacts our psychology. And when we can really anchor in the presence of our physical being, it unlocks in us a power.

It empowers us in different ways. I started that chapter of the book talking about The Hucker. And in New Zealand, for anyone who's ever watched the All Blacks, New Zealand's famous rugby team, which is one of the most successful sporting teams on the planet. It's had an extraordinary winning streak. And they're famous for starting their games with this Hucker. And it is this traditional dance of the, originally a traditional war dance of the Polynesians, New Zealand and other Polynesian countries. It not only helps to ignite testosterone in the body, but it connects them to each other. well. And so we do that in our own physiology. You don't have to be practicing a war dance,

but in how we hold ourselves physically and connecting in with the people around us, which is another part of that. And that is the people that we talk to, that we hang out with, impact how we feel about ourselves and our ability to show up for life and bring our bravest self to life. So it's always important to also be guarding your energy, who are the people that you're spending time with? I mean, even listening to great podcasts that emboldened you, empower you, expand your thinking, that in itself is part of your environment that you create for yourself. So, you know, being really present in our bodies and being able to reset from our nervous self to our bravest self, Sometimes I say, close your eyes, put your hand on your heart, breathe in courage, breathe out fear, breathe in courage again, and connect to that bravest part of you. I think we all have a deep, brave self inside of us, but often our fear is louder. And so we have to reconnect to that part of us that transcends the physical domain. It's sort of a spiritual domain. We connect into something bigger than ourselves. And from that point,

place, we often get enormous sense of clarity. I call it our true self. But, you know, if you have a spiritual belief system and you believe in some force that's greater than yourself, by taking a moment through the breath to connect to that, it can reset you and help right-size your fear and put it into proportion to what's going on around you. Because often our fear is disproportional to what's going on around us. In addition to profiling the New Zealand rugby team, you've also profiled a Navy SEAL, and they also use breathing techniques as a major part of psychosomatic fear mitigation and fear management. Can you talk about that? Yes, absolutely. Well, of course, people who are in

situations where there is legitimate high risk, and let's face it, seals voluntarily put themselves in some of the most dangerous situations that exist. And so they have to be able to manage that fear response really well. It's the same, do you think of a bomb disposal expert as well? They've got to be able to regulate that fear response in their body. They've got to keep their breathing so modulated. You've got a device there that could go off, like they have to be so calm. So one of the ways that they do that, I mean, there's something called the mere exposure effect.

so they expose themselves to increasingly graduated amounts of danger over time, and they get normalized. Normalized, absolutely. And they get better able of what's called effect tolerance, their ability to tolerate what might for other people be an extraordinarily stressful situation where they'd fall to pieces. Alex Peace. As an extraordinary man, his story was one that I was really honored to share, because it spoke to the different dimensions of courage.

And when we think of Navy SEALs, we think of men who, I don't think there's any women, maybe there are, but largely men, who have an extraordinary courage in that they go into places that are highly risky. They lay their life on the line. And yet it's not about laying our life on the line. It isn't sometimes about laying our pride on the line, our vulnerability on the line.

And his story of being on the edge of what was one of the most treacherous waterfalls in the world, was a dam in Venezuela. And his fear of being perceived as a coward in front of his other fellow seals kept him from speaking up and expressing a concern. And so it was easier, I'm not saying easy, for him to go off that interoperable, into that treacherous, incredibly tumultuous water, than it was for him to say, I have concerns about this being too dangerous. And so I won't share all of the story,

but what happened, what unfolded, was an extraordinary set of circumstances in which someone lost their life. For him, courage is about being willing to look to be very, very vulnerable, to be perceived very negatively by others, to be perceived in that situation as being cowardly, as not being brave.

He didn't want to be perceived that way. But yes, that's psychosomatic, that physical aspect to it. I mean, that's something, obviously, anyone who is putting themselves in those situations has to be able to manage really well and get trained at that and normalized at that.

And we can do that. I mean, I want to say here, something I haven't touched on yet, there's two core dimensions of courage. One is the management of, fear. And the second is the willingness to act in the presence of it and in the presence of risk. And so one, we have to be able to manage that fear as our fear response so that it's proportionate, not disproportionate, but secondly, is being anchored as something that's more important than

what we're trying to avoid, that our mission is bigger than our fear. Obviously, anyone who wants to live a big life has to continually making sure their mission, what they want, transcends what they're afraid of. It's notable that you brought up the courage to look cowardly. There's another book. It's called The Courage to Be Disliked, which is a staple, I think, for anybody who's in leadership. It's a must read. Yeah. We all like to be liked. We are wired for belonging. We want to be included. Alex, he really wanted the approval of his fellow seals who were much more seasoned than him. But all of us want to be liked. We want people to think well of us. We want to be included. We don't want to be taken off the invite list for things. And yet, sometimes being true to ourselves

requires being willing to be disliked, being willing to be taken off the invite list, being willing to speak up and say something that we know is not going to be popular, to make a decision that we know there might be people who are actively going to work against and may say things about us that we don't like, will be criticized, may be vilified. I look at the political arena right now, and we don't always agree with people who have different political ideologies than us, but there is something to be said when people have the courage to stand by what they believe in even when others don't agree, and they might be marginalized by the party they belong to, you know, and they pay a price for it, but we go, you know what?

I know that's my response when I see people that are really so values, so the anchored, it in their values, they're willing to risk losing their power because of what they believe in. And I'd like to see more of that. I think we have a deficit of courage in many of the senior leadership ranks. We want to see people who are driven by character and principle versus pursuit and the retention of their power. Right. The willingness to go against your own party, which is sort of a microcosm of the broader human experience of the willingness to go against the tribe, your village. Yeah, well, I mean, it's easy to get pulled into ideological echo chambers that make us feel safe and that common enemy intimacy. Courage comes in many different shapes and forms.

One is that management of fear, but two, is that willingness to take action, even though we're afraid of what might happen if we do. And you know what, if there was no risk involved, it really wouldn't require courage a lot of the time. There is sometimes a risk. People mightn't like it. Your venture mightn't work out. It mightn't land exactly the way you want, but you're willing to do it anyway because you believe in what you're pursuing. Let's go to the fourth step. So we've talked so far about first focusing on what you want rather than what you fear. Second, on re-scripting the stories that you tell yourself and the labels you give yourself. And then third, on breathing and on embodying courage. Emboddy and courage. Let's go to the fourth

step. Yes. The four steps where the rubber hits the road, Paula, that is up until now, it's about getting our focus in the right place. It's about having the right mindset, the story we're telling ourselves, and physically getting ready to take brave action and step into our courage gap. And this step four is where we do. And that requires embracing discomfort. Step four is step into discomfort. Our lives expand with our willingness to get uncomfortable. and anyone I've met who's living a big life is regularly breaking ranks with their comfort zone and has found some semblance of truce with being uncomfortable. They're not sticking with what is safe and familiar and comfortable.

They're willing to actively do things that are uncomfortable. They'll have difficult conversations. They'll risk rejection. They'll put themselves out there in ways that other people go, oh, I don't want to do that. So as I think about what it means to step into discomfort, I often share a story about growing up on my dad's dairy farm and getting my first horse. And every morning before school and afternoon after school, I would go out and I'd bridle him up and I'd saddle him up.

I was 10 at the time. I didn't really know what I was doing. In the beginning, I had this wave of kind of nervous nausea as I would walk out because the horse seemed so much bigger than me and I didn't have a lot of skill. but every day I would go out there and I would bridle him up and I would saddle him up and day after day, week after week, my discomfort grew less and my confidence grew more. And I also grew more competent. And what that experience taught me was that growth and comfort can't ride the same horse.

And when we're only doing what's comfortable, we're never going to do what's possible. We deprive ourselves of realizing how much we can do. We deprive everyone else of the value we could bring, the gifts that we have to share in the world. And so embracing discomfort is there is no shortcut to courage. We have to be willing to get uncomfortable, but acting anyway. And that's where I distinguish confidence and courage. A lot of people say, I wished I had the confidence. I wished I was as confident as you.

I wished I felt more confident. I wished I knew I could do this and I wouldn't mess up. And I'm like, if you're waiting for confidence, you could be 100 years old and you're still waiting for confidence. You have to act with the confidence that you wished you had. That requires courage. That means doing it even though you're afraid. I mean, courage is fear walking.

Courage is speaking up despite the nervousness in your belly that this person's not going to like what I say. Courage is quitting something that you dislike doing and starting down a new path. Courage is saying, I'm going to write a book. It's sharing publicly something you'd love to do. And even though you're not 100% sure you're going to succeed at it, that's what courage is. And that's not comfortable. But it is a muscle.

And courage is a learnable skill. And so the more every time we consciously choose to step forward amid the unknowns, amid the uncertainty, we actually strengthen the neural pathways in our brain. So part of the kind of the neurology of that, I mean, I'm sure you've heard of that saying that neurons that fire together, wire together. You know, the pathways in our brain, when we are doing that thing, we're a little bit afraid, we haven't done it before. You're not a master because you haven't done it.

Of course, it's a little scary. But every time we do that, we strengthen those neural pathways. And it gets a little bit easier. We build that effect tolerance. And it's why when people look back at what they were doing at 21 starting out in their job and they had to give a presentation to their team and they were terrified, now you don't think twice about it. It's the same thing. It's why we have to train the brave.

Courage is a muscle like going to the gym. When you practice it often, even in little ways, it makes it easier for the future. For a person listening, they currently work a 9 to 5 job. They feel meh about. They have some ideas for different things that they might want. want to do. They're not quite ready to take a big leap yet, but what are some small day-to-day things that they can do? Yes, there are many things that we can do every day. Often, they're not as obvious to us in the moment. But if you think about your day-to-day, think about the people

that you might interact with, think about when someone frustrates you or you're feeling a little resentful of something. Take a point. ask yourself, what might I do or say right now if I was being really brave? So whenever we're feeling resentment, resentment is a symptom of a request that we haven't made. We're resentful that we're not getting something. We're resentful. We've been passed over. What is the request that you haven't made of an unmade request? That's going to take courage. Maybe you're resentful it someone's using your time up too much, okay, there's an opportunity. Sometimes it's saying no. We say yes to too many things and actually we need to say no. And if someone ever cancels something

on you and you have what's Jomo, the joy of missing out because they've cancelled, then ask yourself, why did I say yes in the first place? If you're committed to anything right now and you're like, oh, I would love it if someone canceled that. Think about what is it that you're committing to today that's actually a silent invitation for you to practice courage. If you have said something that you know is maybe being a little hurtful or insensitive to someone else, maybe courage for you today is saying, you know what, I'm sorry I said that. I apologize. That was a little thoughtless.

Or maybe it's sharing what's really going on with you as someone and saying, you know what, I'm struggling a little bit right now. Not sure about what I want to do and I feel like things aren't going the way I want. and sharing a little of your own vulnerability with someone, there's an act of courage. But outside of that, it could be go and eat a cuisine that you never have. Try a different, try something that you haven't done before. Someone invite, you know, go off and do a Zumba class. I don't know.

Like, do something that's new that's going to put you in a new environment that you go, well, you mightn't choose to do it again, but do it anyway. Because that, sometimes trying something new can help us realize, you know what? I can do that. And that encourages you for the next thing to come. And what is that fifth and final step? The fifth and final step is titled, Find the Treasure when you trip. And it's probably the one that is the most personally relevant for me and my own growth in recent years. So there's two aspects to it. It's about finding the treasure in our failure. We're not always going to get everything right. We're going to trip up as we go through life. We're all, I call us human becomings, that's distinct

from human beings. We're all on a path trying to figure it out. None of us have got it all figured out. We might for three and a half nanoseconds and then something happens and we realize we haven't got it figured out. It doesn't matter how successful you are. It doesn't matter what you've achieved. None of us have got it fully figured out. And another level, another devil. So when you get, you know, behind every mountain, there's another mountain. And so as we go through life, we're either going to have moments where we try something and we fail or where we fail to try. And each of those moments hold opportunities for us to learn. Yet often we don't learn the lessons because we're so hard on ourselves about our failures. We don't look at them and go,

what is the gift in this failure for me? What is the nugget of gold that will help? We'll help me be a little more wise, that will teach me something that will help me move forward in a smarter, more intelligent way, that will help me be a little more humble, that may help me connect more deeply with others because I'm human too and I'm fallible. And one of the key aspects to this final step is forgiving ourselves for our own fellibility. We will all mess up. We will all fall down. Sometimes in those moments when we know we should say something, we'll wimp out. And so extending a little grace inward to yourself and forgiving yourself for being the human that you are, but knowing that you are wholly worthy regardless of whether

you achieve some big goal or not, you're worthy innately, period. I mean, each of us, by virtue of our birth is innately worthy. And I think when we can embrace our full humanity with love and compassion and forgive our faults and our flaws and our fears because we're human, it actually enables us to rise faster when we fall and it emboldens us to be braver more often. Because we're not going to risk being brave if we don't know how to get back up when we fall. And so making peace with,

our fallibility, but also resetting our relationship with failure. If you knew that failure didn't define you, that you were never defined by an outcome of your actions, it would actually enable you you to learn more. And we cannot ever control the output of our actions. None of us control the output of our actions. We can try. You can have the most meticulous, brilliant plan, but you cannot fully control the output. You can only ever control the input. And so when you can make peace with failure, when you can reset your relationship with it so that you can learn all that it has to teach you, it actually helps you upgrade the input so that you can get better outcomes. But if when you fail, you're like, I don't want to tell anyone about it. I'm going to

blame someone else. I'm going to brush it under the covers. I'm going to beat up on myself as a total loser. We miss that on the lessons. And actually, that misses, then we deprive ourselves of being able to step forward that little bit more to quote Henry Ford, intelligence. I've seen when, with failure, two very polar ends of the extreme. There are those who place all the blame externally and will blame all of these other people or circumstances or various external factors. And then there are the ones who have adopted a mindset of taking radical responsibility for everything. You know, they have a very strong internal locus of control. But where that can become dysfunctional is when it crosses into excessive self-flagellation.

Absolutely. We are tougher on ourselves than men, which is ironic because women are generally known for being very compassionate. It's a kind of a feminine strength as we're so compassionate, we're empathetic. But we're not very compassionate on ourselves. We're tough on ourselves. But that doesn't mean we can't learn to be more compassionate. Kirsten Neff is the leading researcher in self-compassion. And as she said, anyone can learn to become better at self-compassion. But this excess flagellation, there's a lot of shame associated with it. Like, I'm such a loser. We're over-personalizing what we did.

The fact is, failure is an event, not a person. I may have failed in selling a million books. It doesn't mean I'm a failure. It means I didn't get the outcome A that I would have liked to have got. So for all of us to recognize that who you are is not defined by your failures. and it's also not defined by your successes as well if we get overly identified with our accomplishment period one way or another. But on the other side of it is, you know, blaming everyone else. Obviously, it's two sides of the same dysfunctional coin. Neither of them serve you,

neither of them serve anyone else. And so for people who go into a lot of blame and really, they're telling themselves a victim story, by the way. One of the stories, back to step two, rescript what keeps you stuck and scared and living too safe is when we tell ourselves victim stories and villain stories. It's all your fault, Paula, that, you know, this didn't work out or it's all, I'm the victim, I'm the powerless person here. Either of them don't serve us. So I think recognizing neither of those ends of it work, it's like, okay, what's that, I need to take responsibility for my part in this. What did I do or not do? But don't over-personalize that. I'm not a failure. I failed to plan enough. I failed to get enough stakeholder engagement. I failed to

understand the market enough and research it. Maybe I should have done a small pilot before I launched it, too big a scale. Learn the lessons. You know, I spoke to Richard Branson a few years ago. He launched Virgin Cola. Some people may remember that. Massive big launch campaign. And it was a huge publicity fail and a huge loss of money. But he did a full-blown. audit, like, what did we do wrong? And he said, I didn't want to lose the value that that failure held. Like, what was it? We totally missed. And he said, we realized we got too far away from our mission, which was always to make what is existing better. How do we make a better, you know, flight service or a cell phone or whatever it is? And I think that holds a lesson for all of us.

Don't fail to learn from your failures. When you do, you're failing twice, but make peace, you're going to, you're going to fail. It's okay to fail, but don't fail to learn from your failure. And when you can embrace your failure as a prerequisite for what it takes for you to succeed, then it's actually going to allow you to put yourself out there way more often. I do a lot of speaking and I'll speak at sales conferences. I'm like, if you'd reinterpreted every rejection as, okay, what's the learning? Maybe I didn't pitch it as well as I could have. Maybe they're not interested. Take the learning, move forward, but don't be defined by the rejection. that's going to free you, liberate you to put yourself out there a whole lot more.

And ultimately, you're going to be much more successful. Thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? Thank you for asking. Yes, I would encourage people. You can find me on social media at Margie Wurall. And you can also head over to my website at Margie Wurall.com. On my website, you'll find there's a whole lot of information about the courage gap,

as well as the workbook, things you can download and a quiz. Of course, it's available wherever you like to buy your books. Well, thank you. Thanks, Paula. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Dr. Worell. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, loss aversion, blocks, wealth creation.

Understanding how your brain processes the idea of financial risk can help you make smarter money moves because your brain is hardwired to be twice as sensitive to potential losses as it is to potential gains. This means that you are hardwired to be too conservative when it comes to investing, career growth, entrepreneurship, and overall risk-taking. Daniel Carnahan, a behavioral economist. He wrote a book, Thinking Fast and Slow, that our brains are twice as sensitive to what could be lost versus what could be lost versus what. could be gained. And so because we're constantly alert for that, whether or not we're meaning to be or not, it means that we tend to be super sensitive to potentially bad things happening. And often our attention is on those bad things. The money we could lose, what could go wrong,

we tend to turn our forecast for the future into fear cuts. That is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, false humility costs you career growth. many professionals mistake passive competence for humility. They wait to be noticed rather than actively advocate for themselves. And that includes actively advocating for raises and promotions, which is, as you know, a major focus of mine and the reason that I'm building a course on how to get a raise, which is currently still under development, still in beta.

But the reason for that is because it's essential. It's essential to actively advocate for raises, for promotions, for that growth, because you can't just sit around hoping that somebody else going to notice you. They're not. They're busy. So if you shift your mindset, you can accelerate your career advancement while staying true to yourself. Recently I was talking to someone and she was frustrated in her job and she'd been passed over for a couple of bigger roles and other people around her were getting bigger roles. and she's like, I consistently deliver results. I work really hard.

Everyone knows I know the business really well. And how come? And I said, well, have you let the higher powers to be here and know what you want? She goes, no, because I'm not one of those people that's going to go and jostle. I'm not egotistical. People should know what I want. Finally, key takeaway number three, convert failures into strategic insights. Every business setback or investment loss contains really valuable lessons.

Like there's a lesson every time that you F up. And I know that the naysayers are going to be like, well, isn't that a cliche? Oh, Pollyanna, silver lining. Sure, you can find a lesson out of anything. That's a great coping mechanism. But what we know is that the most successful investors and entrepreneurs, We're talking centa millionaires, billionaires. They rigorously analyze their failures.

You remember last summer here on this podcast, we did an interview with the co-founder and CEO of the parent company of Taco Bell KFC Pizza Hut Habit Burger Grill. The company is called Yom Brands. We talked to its co-founder and former CEO. And the first thing that we talked about were all of his failures. He launched Crystal Pepsi and it flopped. It flopped with a big Super Bowl ad campaign. We talked about that for the first 20 minutes. We'll link to that interview in the show notes if you want to hear it.

But the broader point is that the most successful people are diligent about analyzing their failures. You know, I spoke to Richard Branson a few years ago. He launched Virgin Cola. Some people may remember that massive. big launch campaign, and it was a huge publicity fail and a huge loss of money. But he did a full-blown audit, like what did we do wrong? And he said, I didn't want to lose the value that that failure held. And he said, we realized we got too far away from our mission, which was always to make

what is existing better. Don't fail to learn from your failures. When you do, you're failing twice. So convert failures into strategic insights and then take action on those insights. That's the third and final key takeaway from this conversation with Dr. Margie Warrel. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. Share it with your friends and family.

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