Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #133: The BEST Way To Start Thinking Beyond Your Limitations with Dr. Mark Goulston

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

What is something impossible that would accelerate your career to where you want to be? This is the question that inspired me this week, got me to think big, and start really strategizing for the future. And I just HAD to talk to the guy who came up with it! Dr. Goulston has been a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer, consultant to the prosecution of the OJ Simplson trial, and now a coach for entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 businesses everywhere. He is the people hacker and is here to teach us how to coach ourselves, think like a visionary, and influence powerful people. So what are you waiting for? Click play! About The Guest: Originally a UCLA professor of psychiatry for over 25 years, and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer, Dr. Mark Goulston’s expertise has been forged and proven in the crucible of real-life, high stakes situations. An influencer who helps influencers become more influential, his unique background has made him an indispensable and sought after resource and change facilitator to Fortune 500 leaders, entrepreneurs and educators across the nation. He lives with his wife in Los Angeles, California.    Finding Dr. Mark Goulston: Website: https://markgoulston.com/  Listen to My Wakeup Call with Dr. Mark Goulston Read Why Cope When You Can Heal? Twitter: @MarkGoulston     Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!    To pre-order Overcome Your Villains NOW and get the bonus bundle click here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

So danger triggers adrenaline, and adrenaline insulates you from the thoughts and the feelings. So you don't think them and you don't feel them and you function. You know, an NBA player can play a whole quarter on a broken leg because the adrenaline insulates them from pain. The problem is you do that and you function amazingly well, but you know something's messed up inside. But the adrenaline insulates you from that. And then when the danger goes away, the adrenaline goes away and the insulation goes away. and everything you push down, it feels like they want to come up and rip you apart, and they invade your dreams as nightmares.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we're going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Well, I am incredibly excited and honored today to have Mark Gouldston, originally a UCLA professor of psychiatry, former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer, Dr. Mark Wilson, has for over 40 years been hacking into the minds of people to better understand them and how we can communicate better. He's helped CEOs, presidents, founders, entrepreneurs.

He's a TEDx speaker, international keynote speaker, and the author of more books than I can count, which we will get into today, Trauma to Triumph, his newest book, I'm really excited to talk about. also appears frequently as a human psychology and behavior subject area expert across all media, including ABC, NBC, CBS, and the mothership, Oprah. Mark, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Well, you know, one of the nicest things about people saying nice things about you is it gives you something to live up to. No pressure. No pressure here, but I know you can handle it. I wanted to start with how I found you, which I can't believe I didn't know who you were. It's so crazy. I'm teaching a class at Harvard. This is the first time that's ever happened to me, just started in January. And the professor that I work with called me out of the blue. I introduced him to Clubhouse and called me out of the blue. He's read all of your books and somehow finds you on Clubhouse. And he was so excited. And he said, Heather, you have to dive into Mark. His content. It's amazing. He said, I want to do an exercise with you that I learned from Mark. And I said, okay, let's do it. He's a wonderful person. So he said,

as you know, the speaking business was erratic over the last year and a lot of my income came from speaking. And we were on Zoom. He said, I'm going to ask you a question. Don't be put off by it. Just start thinking and brainstorming. I said, sure, what is it? He said, even if it sounds impossible, even if it's the craziest idea, what's the one thing that if you were able to achieve it with your speaking business will completely change your future? And I don't know if I botched that question up, but it was one of your original questions in Just Listen, I believe. Yeah, I'll share the anecdote, but it sounds like you weren't finished saying nice things about me, so I should be quiet.

I mean, he just took me down this exercise, which I never would have thought of, right? What are these unbelievably impossible things that if I actually could achieve them would change my life? We came up with two very specific stages that if I could get on would change my career, and then we built out from there. What are the specific steps that we need to take? who do we know in our network that we can tap to get help and assistance on? And we literally have two very specific, well-thought-out roadmaps now that I am pursuing that I'm super excited for. So I appreciate your work because it's impacting my life directly.

Well, I'm glad you're using it. So can I share the story that's in the book because it's kind of funny? Please. So it's called the impossibility question, which I learned from these sales trainers in Orange County, California, Dave and Marnell Hibbard. They have a company called Dial. Alexis. But it's a way of bypassing yes but because you bring up almost anything to someone. They say yes, but, or that's impossible. So you lead with that. And so the story I talk about is years ago I was on The View, you know, that morning show. And in those days, Barbara Walter was one of the co-creators and she was still on the show. And so the person who's getting me ready in the green room and whatnot and he looks sort of busy, but he's doing a good job. And I love to reward people

are doing a good job. So I look at him and he looks like in a rush and I say, hey, can I ask you a question? And he looks at me like I'm going to say, you know, can you promote my book? Can we hold it up? Can we sell it? Can we hawk it? And he looked at me kind of irritated. He said, what? I said, how long you've been at this job? He said, I've been doing these segments for about 10 years for various shows. I said, where do you want to be in five years? He said, I'd like to be an executive producer of a show like that. I said, good. What would be something that would be impossible for you to do? But if you could do it, it would accelerate your getting there. And then he said, why are you asking me questions? I said, I'm going to shrink. I ask questions. Just answer the question already. So he pauses and he says,

if I could find, and this will date all of us, he says, if I could find Chandra Levy alive, she was this intern who ended up dead. But if I could find her alive and get an exclusive with Barbara Walters, Barbara Walters would notice me. I said, good, good. And so, What would make that possible, because what you're saying is if I can be mindful of the stories that would get Barbara Walters' attention, she's going to say, who got us the stories? And then you'd get on her radar. He said, exactly. I said, good.

So now you know what you need to do. Goodbye. Goodbye. I'll see you on stage. And he leaves, you know, I'm adjusting the mic and whatnot. And he comes back in. He's much calmer. And he looks at me.

And he says, as I said, I've been doing this kind of job for 10 years. And nobody has ever asked me a question. question that would be that helpful in my career ever. So thank you. So it's a great way to help people think beyond their limitations. And offline, I'm going to do this with you about what would be something that would be impossible? What we can try it? Maybe you'll tell us, but what would be something that would be impossible for you to do but would greatly accelerate you're getting to that amazing place you want to be? Get on Tony Robbins stage, AP. So what would make that possible? Somehow I have to get in front of him to show him the value that I

could bring to his audience into him. What I would emphasize is something that would bring him value, because a lot of people, let's face it, they're listening with a filter of how is this going to help me? And I'll tell you, one of the ways that I've become, I think, influential to a lot of people is when you give them an insight into themselves that's relevant and connects them from where they are into their future that they didn't see, they want more of you. So I was an advisor in the O.J. Simpson trial to the prosecution. And how I got that was I knew the DA at the time, who was Gil Garcetti, his son is the mayor of Los Angeles. And I was running into him and I said, Gil, I don't know that much about juries, but if you're picking a largely black jury, a couple of questions I'd ask them

is, have you ever changed your mind about the way you feel about someone? Because if they didn't change their mind, they're about an abusive dad, they're not going to change their mind about O.J. Simpson. And then ask them, if you changed your mind, what made you change your mind? And if it's an emotional thing, you better have an emotional riveting case. And if it's facts, which it turned out not to be the case, you know, we know how it turned out. Then you got to have tons of evidence. And he went, spoke with Marsha. And then he came back to me, Marsha Clark. And he said, we never would have seen that ever. I mean, we just never would have seen that. So, you know, he said, we'd like you to just come to the trial, whatever you can make it and fax us your observations. And we don't want you in the strategy group because you're so off the wall, but you see things that nobody else sees.

Like, for instance, one thing they did use, a number of things they didn't use, is at the end, and this is how my mind thinks. I said, okay, it's the end of the trial. and so how do you influence a jury when it goes into deliberation? And so click, click, click, click, click. And I said, well, how do you influence someone that you're not in front of? And I went, ah, you haunt them. So I said in one of my faxes, one of my 220 pages that I didn't turn into a book

because it was a double murder and I don't do that. And I said, in your closing argument, make sure you play the 911 tapes where Nicole Brown Simpson is mentioning the name of the. person who killed her, you know, because at the end of the trial, you know, everybody's tired of hearing everybody's voice and OJ is not going to testify in the criminal trial. So make sure you put the 911 tapes in the closing argument somewhere because I think if they hear the voice of the person who was killed, naming the person who killed her, you know, that might have some influence. So she did them. So, and by the way, that's sort of what you want to do if you want to influence

people. And so if you want to influence Tony Robbins, and you and I will talk about this after the podcast, because if that's your wish, your wish is my command, we'll drill down and see something that's relevant to Tony Robbins that he doesn't see, that you're going to tee up for him. Mark, you are, number one, you're such a giver. And I mentioned to you before the show, I had gone through your website and looked at the testimonials. And I always pride myself that I have so many testimonials. I mean, I've never seen someone have as many testimonials as you have to your work. and I felt so proud for you, but now getting a chance to know you, I see exactly why that's the case. You're such a giver and I'm so grateful for you. And I know everyone listening is, I want to ask you

this, you think so differently. Obviously, people recognize that and there's something that you have an ability to do others don't. Is there anything that you can lend to us that we can try to have an ability to think differently the way that you do? Yeah, absolutely. So something that is my personal mission now, and as I get older, I'm going to spend more time on it, is I was a psychiatrist focused on suicide prevention, and for 25 years, none of my patients killed themselves. And I've been trying to figure out what the heck I did, and I finally figured it out. And I've actually called it in one of my books, Why I Cope When You Can Heal, Surgical Empathy. And Surgical Empathy is when you go in and you connect with people, and when they feel not just

understood but felt. Suicidal people feel felt by death. Death takes away their pain. It helps them feel better. And when you're cornered, and what suicidal people will say is they say, I don't want to kill myself, I just want the pain to go away. And the fact that suicide is like the sirens calling the sailors, I'll take your pain away. That's why they attach to it. But if they can feel felt by you, as opposed to figured out by you. And they feel less alone in hell. They'll latch on to that, like a drowning person latches on to a lifesaver.

They'll start to cry because they will feel less alone in hell. That's all they've felt is alone in hell. And what will happen is they start to cry. It's like a hopelessness abscess and a surgical empathy helps drain it by connecting with them in their feelings. But what happened is after I developed that skill to look at the world through their eyes and feel their feelings, that's how I got into the OJ trial,

because I could look at the courtroom through the eyes of the jury, and I could think, what would I need to see in order to, you know, favor the prosecution? So then I expand to this when I transition in addition to what I've always done into the corporate world, is I did a one-man show called Steve Jobs Returns from the Dead. And you can go on YouTube. You'll see the turtleneck and the glasses. And I was able to look at the world through his eyes. And so here are the takeaways. So if you're watching this or listening to this, you want to write this down. And I actually write for Newsweek in their expert forum. So there's actually an article on this. And it's called the three Ds of visionary thinking. They wrote up as visionary leadership. It shouldn't have been

leadership because Steve Jobs wasn't the best leader. He was a tyrant, but he was a visionary thinker, as is Elon Musk. So here are the three Ds. Define reality. Define reality. And Declare your intention to make it happen, decide the strategy and how you're going to do it. So Steve Jobs defined reality. He said, you know, we're geeks and, you know, we're more into Radio Shack than we are into dating and we don't take showers. But one day, everybody's going to have a little computer of their own. It's going to be right in front of them and they're going to have access to computers and technology and they're never going back. So he defined reality at a time when people still thought computers and technology was only for geeks. Elon must have the same thing with electric cars. You know, gasoline is really ruining the environment.

Let's see how these batteries work. You know, there must be some progress in the ever-ready bunny already. I mean, let's see where they are. Oh, let's do them pretty well. I think we can stick these in cars, make them go. So what you want to be able to do is to define reality beyond. what people even know they want or need. And then actually, when you can see it clearly,

like when the prosecution could see clearly that I could see the elephant in the room and address it with steps, what happens is you have a head start on everyone else. So what you really want to think of is think of your market, your customers, your clients. And you want to follow the example of one of my favorite companies, IDEO.

And IDEO is a design company in Silicon Valley, and they had designed a lot of the Apple products. And they have an interesting approach to design. What they have at IDO, and if you have young teens or young adults, have them to see if they can sign up for IDEO University. But their approach is they have psychologists, they have computer scientists, they have sociologists, they have all kinds of people. And basically they say, go out in the world,

and if this is you, go out in the world, see what frustrates people. Have a conversation with them. I couldn't help but notice, but you seem frustrated. What's frustrating you about this store, this company, whatever? Can you tell me what really ticks you off? Oh, wow. So that can help you identify what really makes people angry, then fix that. Or if you see someone as happy, you say, I couldn't help notice, but you seem really excited

about something. What would make it over the moon? And so what happens is IDEO sends out these little scouts. and they say, go out, go out, and find out what frustrates people, and let's see what we can find out that makes them really angry or what they like and what would really excite them, and then come back, and then they all report, and then they assemble it from all those different inputs,

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slash confidence-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www. northwest registered agent.com slash confidence-free. Wow. Yeah, it does.

I find today, given the times we're living in, and people being in different situations, I'm in Florida where it's much more open and obviously California is not as much so. So people have these heightened levels of frustration right now. I'm sure you see it where people are, they seem frustrated about everything.

Okay, so here's your tip. So that was a taste for your entrepreneurs. Here's a little taste for your people who are frustrated or scared. So something I shared with you before this is one of the things that I do when I get tweaked or upset by something. I have something I call the dead mentor society. I've had eight mentors. Unfortunately, they've all died. The last one was Larry King. And before him was this big leadership guy, Warren Venice. And so what happens is whenever I get tweaked or upset, I wake up one of my dead mentors and I let them talk me down in my head from DefCon 1 to DefCon 5. So I think we're doing okay in this podcast. You can tell me afterwards if I was a dud or I was good. But sometimes I'll get on a podcast and I'm just tangentially. I don't finish a story.

I don't answer a question. And so that happened not too long ago. So I wake up Larry King. And he has a Brooklyn accent. He says, what, what? Yeah, yeah. I'm hardly cold, Mark.

I mean, what's this about? Larry, I did it again. What did you do? I got on this podcast. I didn't finish a story. I didn't really answer and answer. Mark, Mark, yeah, get a hold of yourself. What the host think?

afterwards, she said, you can come back any time. Mark, back. There you go again. You know, can you take a deep breath? You know, you'll never be polished. Hey, look, I wasn't polished. I was just a guy from Brooklyn. I didn't do so bad, okay? Okay, and can you leave me alone already?

Put a sock in it and let me go RIP. You know, I've been waiting to RIP because I've been sick for a couple of years. I'm finally resting, Mark, okay? Give it a break, okay? And then what happens is I so appreciate him, and I'm grateful to him, and I was fortunate to be part of his little breakfast club for two years. We got together almost every morning to get all of us out of bed. And then the combination of being grateful and appreciative to that person who you let talk you down,

and in my case, missing them, I forget what I was upset about. That's amazing. It just reminded me while you were speaking about another doctor I interviewed a month or two ago, Dr. Krause, who specializes in, he's, I believe, University of Michigan, where he does a lot of work around when people are anxious or upset and how to talk them down, whether they're about to give a big speech or something. And the key piece of tactical advice that I took from that interview was he essentially says, step out of your body and coach yourself the way you would coach someone else and speak to yourself in a third person. And what's interesting,

what you just shared, it's essentially the same thing, however, you're channeling your mentor, but you're still stepping out of your body and having that two-way dialogue and conversation, and that is proven to work. That's a really powerful lesson. Yeah, and I'll tell you why it works neurologically, because when we're under stress, our cortisol goes up. And when our cortisol goes up, it tickles a part of our brain called the amygdala, which hijacks us so that we react. Instead of being able to think, we have this thing called an amygdala hijack because cortisol is just pumping at it. And in mindfulness and meditation can calm it down, but high oxytocin bonding between you and another person,

living or dead, a counter-axit. So what happens is when I call upon these dead mentors, and I think about them, I could get emotional right now, just thinking of them, I feel a surge of bonding, and that oxytocin, when it goes up, the cortisol goes down, the blood goes from my lower survival brain to my upper brain, and I can think clearly. But I got to share something with you from Larry King because one of the things he shared at one of the breakfast is he said, I've never been nervous on stage or in front of a microphone or a camera ever. And I said, what's the secret, Larry? He said, always be honest with your audience. If you are honest, they will be forgiving, especially if you have some talent. And he had this great story about when he first,

went on radio and he said, I always wanted to be on radio because when I grew up in Brooklyn, you know, I just, we didn't have television. I just like listening to the radio. And I always wanted to be on. He said, and I got my chance in Miami as a disc jockey. And it was finally my chance to be on. And I was a little bit nervous, but this is something I always wanted to do. And the station manager comes in and he says, Larry, you're going to be up. How are you going to introduce yourself? And he said, he said, I'll say, hi, you know, welcome. This is, Larry Ziger, you know, welcome to the show. And I guess because there was a certain, you know, anti-Semitism back then and, you know, it's still a problem in the world, you know, the manager said,

you can't say that. And so he looks at a liquor store ad and it says, King's Liquors Sale. So he gets on the microphone and he says, hello, this is Larry King. And that's the first time either you or I have ever heard that name. That's so good. And it's stuck. He did very well. And will you just share, not everybody is familiar with your breakfast club, what that means? Okay. So for 25 years, Larry King, you know, would have breakfast in Beverly Hills at a variety of delicatessons. The most famous is one called Nate Niles. And he'd have a group of, you know, four or five people.

Then it would shift. Some people would be in town, out of town. But there was a basic, there was always a basic four or five people, four or five people. And you just took turns who would pay for the day. Larry would pay for Nathan Allison Saturdays. And I think I was the last person invited to be part of the breakfast club. And so it basically got us all out of bed. And Larry would come there and he would hold court.

And can I share an anecdote about how he invited me to be part of the breakfast club because I came as a guest? So someone who was a member, a wonderful guy named Jeff Evans, he invites me because I met Jeff somewhere else. He said, oh, you know, I go to a part of this little club with Larry. Why don't you come? So picture this. There's six people at a table.

It's not a circular table. And I am diagonally the furthest from Larry. And Larry's talking to someone else in an animated way. And Jeff introduces us. And he sort of smiles politely. And I'm just listening. You know, I wrote a book called Just Listen. So I'm very curious.

And I say to him, you know, towards the end, I said, Larry, you're pretty curious, aren't you? And he looks at me, you know, kind of like, yeah. Yeah, so. I said, how long you've been curious? He said, all my life. So when I was young, I would ask the ice cream man how they made ice cream as opposed to I got to have ice cream. I was just always curious. I said, really? And then I said, I have an idea for you. And again, he's a little impatient. And I said, recently there was an interview with, I think, an MSNBC host, the one that follows Rachel Maddo. But anyway, he had Sully Sullenberger. And this is this happened. And this is during the Trump administration.

And Sully Sullenberger says, I find Trump to be incurious. I never heard that word. I loved it. And I don't know that he can learn things. And so I said that to Larry. And Larry says, yeah, so he still doesn't get the point of this. And I said, I have an idea for a show because you're so curious. And because Sully Sullenberger said them.

You have Sully Sullenberger on your show and you print up because he likes to wear, Larry like to wear Dodger hats. You print up two hats. and they each say, not Maga, but Maka, make America curious again. And what you do is you're talking to Sully Sullenberger about curiosity and whatever. And then at some point, you whip out a cap and you give it to him and you put one on and you say, Sully, why don't we make America curious again? Are you in? And I said, Sully Sullenberger would be all over that in an instant.

And so he's kind of looking at me and one of the people that he was talking. to looks at Larry, looks at me, looks at Larry, and says, do you have any idea how effing brilliant that idea was? And then Larry looks at me and he smiles, he said, you can come to breakfast every day. That is a very prestigious group that you were brought into. And it also reminds me, Mark, of proximity is power. And here are all these incredibly intelligent, successful people, but yet still surrounding themselves with people who might challenge their ideas or think differently like you do and how it takes him and everyone to the next level. Absolutely. So can I throw away some tips about how to win friends and influence powerful people

if anyone cares about that? Of course we care about that. Yes. Two tips. The first one, powerful people generally write books. And if you go to their books and there's a number of reviews, frequently there's no video review. You could be the first video review. And I can tell you, is the author or co-author of nine books. You know, you go to the site, see how it's doing. One of them I have 1,1,100 reviews, but if there's only one or two video reviews, you look at that. And here's what you want to say in the video review. You can't just be, you know, kissing up to them. But what would get through to me is if they could be very specific, you know, on page such and such, you share this. So there's something about specificity that

draws the, is going to draw the reader in when you mention a page and they mentioned something neat. But if you can identify the purpose, the why behind why that author wrote that book, and then you share that. And sometimes you can find that in the introduction. You know, when I will tell you as an author, when you can do those two things, you know, be very specific because that would be very helpful because that will cause people to be curious. but then when you could identify what the author's purpose is, they will feel grateful to you. So that's one way to stand out.

Second way to stand out is if you go to a conference, I can tell you as someone who's spoken at a number of conferences, when you finish speaking and they ask for questions, it's an awkward period. First of all, you hope people have questions, but what you're worried about is someone's going to ask some crazy question that just throws the whole thing, off. You know, and people are going to rubberneck, oh, how are you going to handle the crazy

question? So something you can do is if you're going to a conference and there's someone very powerful there, the week before, you contact that person's assistant and you say, I am so excited to see your boss at this conference. And I'm looking forward to hearing what he or she has to say. I also know it can be awkward in the question and answer period if someone asks a stupid question. So if your boss would tell me the question they would like someone to ask that would set the Q&A in the right direction, it would be my pleasure to ask it. And the assistant may come back and say, well, you know, he or she, they'll deal with it, or they might suggest something. And so then make sure you're the first person to ask the question. And I actually tried out my own advice because someone shared this with me a way to get through to people.

So years ago, the founder of Staples, his name was Tom Stemberg. He passed away too young a few years ago. But he was coming to L.A. with the Small Business Bureau people from Washington, and they were going to be in a Staples store. And so my whole MO was to test this hypothesis. So I go to the Staples store, and, I mean, I got nutty about it because there it was, you know, there was all these chairs. and I said, I'm going to position myself. I'm going to ask the first question. I'm going to position myself so that there are boxes behind me

because if there's people behind me and one's an attractive person and it catches his eye, he'll be distracted. So I picked the chair in front of a pile of boxes so there was no one behind me. I mean, I told you, I got nutty with this. And my whole purpose in being there was to ask the first question. So the tables are, the panel is lying. up like a V, and he's in the corner. And they're each finishing their comments. And I see the MC is in the audience, and he has a handheld microphone, and I can see he's clicking it on.

And before he says, are there any questions? I raised my hands. I have a question before he even gets it out. You know, right there, and he walks over to me. Now, I didn't have a question in mind, but I've trained FBI and police hostage negotiators, so I'm kind of quick on my feet. And so I had about four seconds, which is one second more than I need. So he comes over with a handheld microphone. And by the way, I'm going to give you the question that people love to answer if you can't come up. And I said, Tom, what is something that if you had to do over again, you would have done differently and it would have saved you a lot of hassles later on? People love to answer that question because it shows humility and lessons learn. And Tom is like an absent mind of professor.

You know, his tie is a little bit to the side. It's a little crumpled. And I will tell you, it's like someone put a battery in his neck. And his head sits up and his eyes sparkle. And he says, we would have done home and office delivery sooner than we did. And office depot beat us to it. And we pride ourselves on it. But we'll catch up to them.

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I mean, as soon as you saw his eyes laid up, you knew that you had it. And like you said, this wasn't your first rodeo. You've been training a hostage negotiator. So you knew exactly what you were doing. Well done, Mark. I want to jump into, you have two new books out. And the first one I wanted to talk about, why cope when you can heal? This is something that's so relevant to today with the pandemic.

And I was wondering, Mark, if you could just share some of the key takeaways. I will not only give you takeaways, but I'm going to give you a lesson in something I learned from one of the co-designers of Disney, Tokyo, and Disney Paras. Tony Baxter. And the takeaway is a term he shared with me called mental real estate. And mental real estate means when you're naming something, a title or your company, come up with something that's familiar which people lean towards. Even people who are cautious, they lean towards what's familiar. And then you tweak it.

And as he told me, Pirates of the Caribbean owns the word pirates in the minds of kids. So Disney owns pirates. So when I have shared with people who have been deeply traumatized, especially women, especially from domestic violence, when I said, I'm thinking of writing a book called Why Cope When You Can Heal? Even with some of the men, but a lot of the women who have been traumatized, they start to tear up. I said, what are you tearing up about? They say, if only, if only what? They say, I cope, but I haven't healed.

I'm not the same. I'm tentative, cautious. and if only I could heal, I could feel fully alive. So that's mental real estate, if that makes sense to you. Yeah, that certainly does. So in Y-Cope and you can heal, and my co-author is amazing, and you have to check her out because she is a future leader of the world. Her name is Diana Handel.

She has a, I found her because she was on my podcast, and she had a book called Responsible, a memoir, and she was the CEO of a hospital and our, our 100th day as CEO, and she grew up in the hospital, started as a student there. An employee of the month came in and killed as two supervisors and himself, and she led the hospital through that. And so why Copen You Can Heal talks about organizational and individual trauma. So my specialty area is how do you help people to heal from trauma, not just recover? And what we introduced to the world is an approach that I used for 25 years with my patients

who were suicidal and none of them died by suicide. And we call that surgical empathy. And so what surgical empathy is, is what you have to realize with deeply traumatized people is they're locked down sometimes. And you give them solutions and you wonder why they're not doing it. Well, they can't move. They can't come to where you're at. Now, some of them will follow through and they'll recover enough to function, but they're not healed. And what surgical empathy does is it goes into the core of the trauma. It's something we introduce in the book called the 12 phases emotional algorithm. Terrible title, but it's very descriptive. And what happens is when you can go back and safely go through the steps you went through, but you didn't have the luxury of thinking thoughts or

feeling feelings because you had to function, you go back and you share what happened when the trauma happened. And here are some of the steps. You became horrified by what you saw. You know, the storage trucks that held bodies because the morgue is full, when you couldn't get to that dying patient to do a face time with their person on the outside, when you had to make a decision, who should get the ventilator and who shouldn't. So you feel horror. You know, when you go back to where you live, you feel terrified. I don't know how I can do this. You know, you feel fragile, but you're duty-bound. And this works for police officers, firefighters, military.

But you're so duty-bound that what happens is you have to go back and the danger triggers adrenaline. So danger triggers adrenaline. And adrenaline insulates you from the thoughts and the feelings. So you don't think them and you don't feel them and you function. You know, an NBA player can play a whole quarter on a broken leg because the adrenaline insulates them from pain. The problem is you do that and you function amazingly well,

but you know something's messed up inside, but the adrenaline insulates you from that. And this is true also for veterans and law enforcement and firefighters. And then when the danger goes away, the adrenaline goes away and the insulation goes away. And everything you push down, all the things you saw, all the things you thought, all the things you felt, it feels like they want to come up and rip you apart and they invade

your dreams as nightmares. And so the whole approach in the book is that when you can go through all those steps and what we're trying, what we're attempting to do is is put together teams. Once we turn the corner on this with people who are traumatized and they're exhausted, is put together teams of first responders or healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, and then have them share, what was the first moment that was horrifying to you? And then we have ways if they get retrigured to help calm them down, breathe it through, but they're with other people going through it, sharing the story, sharing the thoughts and feelings safely, and it gets up and out. So could you follow that, Heather? Yes. No, I'm so grateful for you bringing this book to light

at the time that you're doing it with so many healthcare workers specifically needing this. It's such an amazing tool. I'm so glad that you found your co-author, too, with her amazing story that she's bringing to life. She is unbelievable. And I have a podcast called My Wake Up Call. Wake-up is one word. But if you look at my wake-up call, Diana Hendell, she didn't know that I was vetting her to be my co-author. Because when Harper Collins said, we'd like you to write two books, at this stage of my life, I want to identify and find the people that can save our future. And Diana is one of them. And so she didn't know when I interviewed her.

In my mind, I said, she's the one. And so the more recent book, Trauma to Triumph, is as a leader, how do you lead your people through crisis and then into thriving? And she shares a lot of what she's learned. I'll share one thing to sort of wet your appetite. that I thought is wonderful. One of the thing we go into, and there's actually a toolkit that goes along with it,

we gave it away for free when the book came up. But here's just something to wet your appetite. She talks about something called polarity thinking that was a concept created by a fellow name Barry Johnson. And she said, either or thinking is a false choice. Either we focus on health or we focus on business, either or. And so polarity thinking introduces both and thinking. It's good to focus on health.

It's good to focus on business growth. But what you do is you make a commitment to both of them, but then you look at the downside. So what's the downside? And then what you do is you put into practice the things that take care of the downside if you focus on health or the things that the downside if you focus exclusively on business. So polarity thinking is allows you to have a both and approach to things that people now think are just either or. I'll tell you, Washington could use this because it's not either Republican or Democrat. It's both and. So I learned that lesson when I took a stand-up comedy class, Mark, how crazy is this?

One of the things that you learn as a rookie in stand-up comedy is the yes-and exercises. You're not able to say but or no or end discussion. It's yes and we can make that work by connecting and joining. And I actually, I use that methodology in my TEDx talk. I agree with you 100% that finding ways to bridge things together is that's the answer. Absolutely. And there's other things in trauma to triumph. So I think people will check that out also.

One of the other things we lay out are our concern is people are just going to be running away from, they're so eager to get away from it. This is a great opportunity to learn all the things to have in place for the next crisis, whatever it is. Like, do you have a rapid response process in place? Do people know who to talk to? Where to get information from? Where to get warnings. Where to get procedures. So this is a great opportunity. And we lay it out so clearly with a checklist. This is a time to check the boxes so you'll be able to handle any crisis. And then if you can do these things and there's many more, you not only get through the crisis and the trauma, you can land in growth and thriving.

And if you do this and your competition doesn't, you're going to be way ahead of them. Oh, that's a game changer. And I love that you include in this book really fundamental keys of leadership, clearly defining roles, communicating when difficulty hits and over-communicating, but not disappearing, which so many people got wrong during the pandemic. And like you said, this is all an opportunity now to dive into this material, understand it, and prep yourself today for what is to come tomorrow. Because as we all know, the future is, there's no way for any of us to know what's going to happen next. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm a little disappointed for all of us about the

troubles Governor Cuomo is having. Because his briefings were a great example in leadership. Agreed. And look, I'm not a student of New York or Governor Cuomo, but when I watched his briefings compared to briefings from Washington, he covered everything that a leader should do to get people through it. And I just find it extremely sad that as we find out various things, it's going to take away from all the great lessons to be learned about how to lead through crisis.

But it doesn't have to. And I couldn't agree more that he brought a sense of combat. And I would tune in to watch him. I don't live in New York. Right. I'm not a fan of his. But I like that sense of, okay, I'm understanding what's actually happening. And I was on your site earlier today. And I saw the recent article that you written and I was applauding it because it was so interesting to be a bystand. and watch this person who had really shown up well as a strong leader and now watch that unraveling. And then you're giving insight as to why, which I thought was really powerful. Thank you. Thank you. Just, you know, why I'm so excited to launch a Diana on the world is, you know, I think there's a real ache for leaders that don't let us down or turn out to have feet of clay. And I'm not anti-male to a certain extent I am. But,

One of the differences I see with the women leaders I know, and think of the countries, Jacinda Ardern from New Zealand, Angela Merkel, and just think of how they get, and tell me if you think I'm wrong. I think women, probably because they have children and they have to deal with all kinds of things, they're more focused on just getting stuff done. You know, women don't like to lose, but they don't have to win so much. I think, you know, sports are great, teaches you about how to deal with loss. competition. But I think it can also corrupt some of the male mind into it turns out to be,

I got a win is more important than even what you're playing. I just have to win. And I think it runs the risk of not thinking about the people you're serving. I mean, I don't want to get into it, but we see that in Washington. I mean, who are you serving? It's so true. Real leaders are not concerned so much about how they look and appear in their win as the people they're they're serving and the outcomes for them. And that's so incredibly true today and always. Absolutely. So we're in such agreement. Can we get into a fight about something? It's very unlikely, Mark, but I know everyone's going to want to know how can they find you, where can they go to get more from you? So Markgoolston.com. I have a case of bloggeria,

so you'll find all kinds of stuff there. I have a podcast called My Wake Up Call. and I've had Larry King on, Estu O'Jickey, Tom Steyer, who ran for president, Secretary David Shulkin, who was the head of the VA, Ken Blanchard, Margaret Heffernan. You may not know her, but she's got 10 million TEDx views on her TED performances. And how I use those appearances is I bring out the humanity in people. I say, my listeners are listening for people that they get. have trust in, confidence, respect, and like. And I get requests to be on it, probably eight to ten a week.

And I'll say, my listeners are looking for that. It's a deal breaker if your client is not trustworthy, doesn't engender confidence, doesn't engender respect, and is not likable. I mean, at least you're up front with them. And I'm doing well. But every now and then, you know, this hard driving PR agency will come back and they'll say, never mind. Yeah, I'm sure that you're able to take that with a grain of salt.

I will include all of those links in our show notes so everyone can find you and we can find you on Clubhouse too, correct? On Clubhouse. Oh, and also I'm one of Marshall Goldsmiths 100 coaches and he inspired a LinkedIn live program that I do and it's called No Strings Attached. And I and my guests and I just give away nuggets that you can use. use today. They're doable by you, hidden in plain sight type of things, and you can use them today to make your life better, no strings attached. You can monetize them, you can make courses out of them,

you don't owe me or my guest anything. That's why it's called no strings attached. Can I share one snippet from someone that I had on his recent guest? Of course. So I had Marshall Goldsmith on. He was my first guest. And then my second guest is a fellow named Ivan Meisner. He's the founder BNI, big networking company. And one of the things I'm a big fan of is he had a book called Who's in Your Room. You're going to love this together. And it's a short book, but it's a game changer. Basically, he sends this. He says, imagine that your life is a single room and there is an entryway, but no exit door. So whoever you led into that room, you are stuck with the life. You're not going to be able to get rid of them. And by the way,

way, the people you've already led in, they could have died. It could have been some crazy, you know, relative. You're stuck with them for life. But he basically says, if you knew that whoever you led into your room in your life, you are stuck with forever, wouldn't you be a little more selective? I thought that was just delicious. Wow. It's so the visual that I just had of me guarding that entryway. I mean, the only person that came to mind right away was my son. But after that, I don't know who else I would allow in. It really gets you to be thoughtful around who would you really want to be willing to spend the rest of your life with. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So you mean you wouldn't let me in? Mark, I don't know. It's looking pretty good for you right now. I'm going to have to tell you, after all the wisdom that you dropped today, I am so grateful for you. And I'm so grateful to have met you, so grateful for your time. And thank you for all the work you're doing for everyone. Well, thank you for the energy you bring to the world.

If viewers, you got to check your TEDx talk, it's a real keeper. And I saw your interview with Gary V. That's a keeper, too. You're a keeper. I'd keep you in my room. All right, that's for the ultimate win. I'm so grateful for that one. Mark, thank you so much.

Continued success to you. Thank you.