High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 125: The Keys to Peak Performance with Dr. Alan Zimmerman, Hall of Fame Speaker & Author

Episode Date: August 4, 2017

Dr. Alan Zimmerman is the author of two books: Pivot: How One Turn In Attitude Can Lead To Success and The Payoff Principle: Discover the 3 Secrets for Getting What You Want Out of Life and Work. He has delivered more than 2000 programs, in 49 states and 22 countries.  Recently, Alan was awarded the CSP by the National Speakers Association (NSA), an award given to the top 5% of all speakers nationwide. And in 2003 was awarded the CPAE (Council of Peers Award for Excellence) Speaker Hall of Fame - a designation that less than 1% of the NSA speakers hold. On the personal side, Alan Zimmerman is a husband, a father, a biker and a hiker who has explored everything from the jungles of Thailand to the cold chill of the Arctic Circle.  Get a full description and summary of the podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/alan.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to episode 125 with Dr. Alan Zimmerman. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport. Now in today's

episode I interviewed Dr. Alan Zimmerman and I heard about Alan's work many different ways. The first way is he used to teach at the same university where I teach now, Minnesota State University, and I also heard about his work through the National Speakers Association, where I'm a member, and he holds the highest designation within NSA. Now, let me tell you a little bit more about Dr. Zimmerman. At age 21, he was teaching at the University of Minnesota, and during the next 15 years, he was selected as Outstanding Faculty Member by two different universities.

At age 36, he retired from teaching and opened up his own speaking and training company. Now, this position has allowed him to deliver more than 2,000 programs in 49 states and 22 countries. Now, you might already be familiar with Dr. Zimmerman. He has been on CNN, CBS Morning Show, and you might have read his books called The Pivot and the Payoff Principle. Now, he was awarded the CSP by the National Speakers Association, which is an award given to the top 5% of all speakers nationwide.

And he also was awarded the CPAE, Speaker Hall of Fame Award, by the National Speakers Association. Now that's a designation that less than 1% of NSA speakers hold. So incredibly talented speaker. Now on the personal side, Alan is a husband, father, biker, and hiker. He's explored everything from the jungles of Thailand to the cold chill of the Arctic Circle. Now within this interview, Alan discusses six keys to personal peak performance, which was personally my favorite part of the interview. We talk about purpose, how to find your purpose,

and why purpose is like a three-legged stool. He talks about the risk between, or the relationship between risk and happiness, which I found super fascinating, how fear is our number one block, and various other topics. Now there are two quotes that are my favorite from this interview. The first one is, when your purpose is clear, your decisions are easy.

And my second favorite quote was this one, you perform exactly as you see yourself. If you enjoyed today's interview, I'd encourage you to head over to Twitter. And post a comment. Or perhaps there was a quote that you enjoyed from today's interview. Or maybe a topic that we talked about. You can tag Alan and I. So you can tag myself. Mentally underscore strong. And Alan at Dr. Underscore Zimmerman.

Now before we head into the interview. I'd like to read a review from iTunes. This is T.L. Sherman. T.L. Sherman said, This is the kind of show you would pay for. Listening is like having your own success coach to push you to the top. Everyone needs someone standing in their corner, cheering them on, and that is exactly what this podcast does.

Thank you so much, T.L. Sherman. I super appreciate your comment over there and rating on iTunes, and I love that this is the kind of show that's free, but it's so good you'd pay for. Now, if you enjoyed today's episode or if you enjoyed the podcast in general, I would ask you to do one of three things just to keep these interviews free. First, you could head over to social media and you could tag myself, Cyndra Campoff, or I'm on Twitter at Mentally at mentally underscore strong. You could also tell a friend about the podcast or you could head over to iTunes and leave a comment or rating like T. Sherman did. That would be awesome. Thank you so much

for joining me. Without further ado, let's bring on Alan. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm excited to welcome Dr. Alan Zimmerman. Welcome to the podcast. I'm glad to be here. Thank you much. Excellent. I look forward to diving into your work and your book pivot that I have on my table here on my desk. But to kind of get us started, Dr. Zimmerman, could you tell us a little bit about what you do right now and your passion? Well, I'm a full-time professional speaker. I've spoken in 49 states, 22 countries. I'm heading off tomorrow to speak in Europe next week. I'll be in London, Edinburgh, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

And I love sharing information, skills, strategies that transform lives. And the feedback has been positive, so that keeps me going. That's wonderful. And tell us about the transition in terms of when did you become a full-time speaker? And I know we were just chatting. I live in Mankato, Minnesota, and you're a professor here for many years. So just tell us about that transition. Yeah, I taught at Mankato State University and brought the interpersonal communication program there. I taught there for seven years. I was tenured. I was doing a lot of speaking on the side.

And the university was very good. They allowed me to take a 10-week class and condense it to a five-day class. Wow. I would teach interpersonal communication from 2 o'clock Wednesday to midnight, Wednesday through Sunday, 50 hours and five days. I would take a week off and travel and speak, come back, teach a class, go and travel and speak. Did that for about seven years until I realized I had two full-time careers on my hands and I had to choose one or the other and couldn't do both, even though I loved both. What made you choose full-time public speaking?

Well, I loved the classroom, but quite honestly, it was a financial decision. That the money was so much better having my own business that I moved in that direction. Yeah, absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit about what you're speaking about right now. Well, I focus on three topics, attitude, communication, and leadership. I have five different programs that go from keynote length, 60, 90 minutes, up to two days in length. And in those areas of attitude, communication, leadership, I have the emphasis on what they can do differently to be more effective. I really am not too big on theory and models and things like that because I find

people don't tend to remember them and instantly tap into them. My customers keep telling me, just tell me how to do it. Tell me what to do. I want to get better. And so I'm really big on the how-to. Yes, I think you and I are similar in terms of that because I think we can talk about all this theory and research, but when you get to really figure out how to use it and, you know, how we can actually implement the skills. Well, that's the difference between the academic world where I taught and the business world where I live now. The academic world is pretty much descriptive. They describe what happens, but not how to do it. And my customers don't care about that. They want to know how. Yes, yes. Well, let's talk about how. So let's kind of dive into attitude first. And I know that's kind of the central part of your book.

And just kind of tell us a little bit about that, and I'll ask you some follow-up questions. Yeah, that was the second book I wrote called Pivot, How One-Turn Attitude Can Lead to Success. And the way I look at attitude is fuel. You can buy the best car in the business. Maybe it's a Rolls Royce, a Lamborghini. It can be a beautiful machine, but it won't go an inch without fuel. And I think people are the same way. You can give them degrees, high school degrees, bachelor's, master's, PhDs, but they don't go as far as they could without fuel. And attitude is what. You know, one of the studies that you mentioned in the attitude chapter that really stood out to me was, and maybe this is Marty Seligman's work, but this is the one study where you said, you know, in a one long-term study of 1,500 people, 83% of the people, group A, chose their particular jobs because they believe they could make a lot of

money. Whereas 17% of them chose their jobs because they had a positive attitude towards their job. Can you tell us a little bit about that and the impact that you think a positive attitude has? Well, in that research, which is interesting, most of the people chose the job to make more money. And following those people for a number of years, 101 millionaires came out of that group. Only one came from the group who chose the job to make a lot of money. A hundred millionaires got that way because of their attitude towards the job. And so Seligman says, and I say, attitude is a great deal more powerful than plain old aptitude. It sounds corny, but I often tell my clients, you cannot afford the luxury of a negative attitude.

Business, what do you see the impact of having a negative attitude? What do you see that as? Well, it comes up as more griping amongst the people, negative talk in the coffee room. One person says something negative, somebody else says that's nothing, let me tell you about. It's very contagious. It hurts morale tremendously, increases turnover, lowers productivity, hurts teamwork. It comes up in so many different ways. One of the things I discovered is what I call killer statements and thoughts. I think some of them might be in the book. The 50 most commonly heard negatives on the job. I talked about this with an audience and they'd laugh, but they recognize it's themselves. For example, people might say, that's not my job. We've never done it that way

before. We've always done it like this. You're right, but. And each of those comments has a subtle message that says, I don't believe in you, your idea, or your potential. It's very demotivating. And I challenge people. I give them the list of 50 to go to a meeting give everybody a copy and challenge them not to say one single one of those negative comments during the next hour discussion let's focus on what works instead of what doesn't work I've seen it transform meetings and organizations excellent excellent so that's one of the strategies that we can use is to have a better attitude in terms of noticing that, you know, when we're using these statements that are called killer statements, what are other sort of ways that we can choose to have a more positive attitude in your perspective? Be very careful who you hang around. Mom was right. Choose your friends carefully. The research, you know, in psychology is very clear that

negativity is contagious. If, for example, you're trying to maintain an upbeat attitude, productivity, and you're in a coffee room where everybody's griping, and it's tempting to get involved and share your two cents worth, I would advise people to avoid the coffee room, avoid those people. And if you happen to be stuck there, you might say something as simple as, excuse me, I need to really be at my best today, and I'm afraid the conversation is bringing me down right now. And just excuse yourself. That's a great strategy. Well, I find people come into two categories, toxic and nourishing. For example, you may know somebody at work or a relative that will call you five times a week griping about this and griping about

that. They never do anything about their problem. They just gripe. And as long as you keep listening to them, they'll keep griping. It reinforces them. And so I recommend what I call creative neglect. Okay. And that might be something as simple as saying, gee, when they call, they're griping. Sorry to hear that. I do wish the best. I'm awfully busy right now. Have to catch you later and hang up. You do that two, three times and you teach them subtly that you're not the depository of their griping. If they're positive, you listen, you reinforce, you encourage. But if it's just plain griping with no action, pull out of that. Creative neglect. Creative neglect so that you're choosing not to be around that negative person and that toxicity that continues to impact us and our lack of fuel.

Absolutely. It's one thing if they want to solve a problem. Certainly talk about negative. There's discussion, there's debate, there's looking at solutions. But if just gripe for the sake of gripe, pull out of that. Yeah, absolutely. What's another way that we can improve our attitude? You know, as people are listening, they might, they might realize that attitude is really important, but you know, in terms of kind of our own psychology, what do you think, well, what's a choice that we can make or what's a strategy we can use to make sure that we have a more consistent positive attitude? I use the displacement principle. If I had a bucket of water and dropped in a stone, of course, I would displace some of the water. And our mind works in a similar sense. You put enough stones in the bucket, not much water left over. If you got a mind that's somewhat

negative programmed that way, keep putting in positive affirmations, positive material. The more you put in, the more negative you displace. It may take a few days. It may take a few months, depending how deep the negative programming is. But the more you put in, it does have an impact over time. Read positive materials. Hang around positive people. Say affirmations.

Keep displacing the negative. That's good. materials. Hang around positive people. Say affirmations. Keep displacing the negative. That's good. You know, yesterday when we were talking on the phone, you shared with me six secrets of personal peak performance. Can you kind of dive into that and tell us what those six are and maybe just choose one or two that we can kind of dive into a little bit more? One program that I do is called Up Your Attitude. Another one is Journey to the Extraordinary. It's a two-day program that has the 12 keys for extraordinary success. The first day is on personal peak performance. And my research tells me that those folks who are extremely successful, very happy, peak performers, they've mastered six skills. First one, self-esteem. A real sense of confidence,

belief in self. Has nothing to do with arrogance, conceit. That's a different thing. Number one, self-esteem. Secondly is purpose. Having a driving sense of purpose for my life, my work. I think a lot of folks have a job, they pay the bills, and that's about it, but not a driving sense of purpose. Number three is goal. having clear goals, written,

meaningful, specific goals. It could be affirmations, what you're telling yourself, what you write down. Number four is attitude. We're talking about that now. Number five is risk. Everybody has a comfort zone. And I tell my clients that if you want more of anything, you want a better marriage, happier life, better finances, you've got to leave your comfort zone. Anything you want more of is outside the comfort zone. It means take a risk. Number six is balance. Having some decent work-life balance. Almost everybody I talk to these days is crazy busy, feeling overwhelmed, and way too stressed. So those are the six that I would spend the day with people on. Which one of those are you most passionate about?

I'm passionate about all of them, but let's talk about self-esteem. Perfect. It's the beginning step. Most research says that most things that we do are consistent with our self image. If we change the self image, we change our performance. For example, a person might say, I always attract losers. That's their self image. And wouldn't you know, they attract five alcoholic husbands in a row or something along that line. A simple slogan I use is you perform exactly as you see yourself.

You see yourself as mediocre, nothing special. That's how you perform. You see yourself as gifted, confident, can make a contribution, perform at that level. So I work on how you change the self-esteem. And once you change it to become more positive, how do you keep it there? Because you can spend 20 years building up a great self-esteem? And once you change it to become more positive, how do you keep it there? Because you can spend 20 years building up a great self-esteem and some jerk can rip it apart in 20 minutes. So how do you keep it strong all the time? And I give people a seven point system

for that. Okay. That sounds great. Well, give us just a little bit of snapshot in terms of if people are thinking, yeah, that sounds like me. I really need to improve my self-image. What would you tell us in terms of the how-to to do that? One strategy for self-esteem is survey your strengths. We all have some gifts and talents. We may not recognize them. We may poo-poo them, but we all have gifts and talents. I encourage people to sit down with a piece of paper and write down 200 things they're good at. They may be a great mother, may have a good sense of humor. They're a great confidant. They can fix a broken faucet. At least 200 things. It may take them a long time. For some people, 20 minutes. Somebody else, three days. The longer the list, the stronger the confidence. And when

you're beating yourself up, putting yourself down, pull out the list, look at it again. Remind yourself, I'm not a bad person, just having a tough day. Yes. And I did that literally for 15 years. In my background, my parents couldn't give me self-esteem. My mother committed suicide. My dad's an alcoholic. My brother went to prison. So I grew up in a crazy family. So I know you can get it for yourself if you need to. That's part of the process. Wow. And how did you overcome just that in terms of the negative influence that you might have had growing up? I'm sure it was a process. Certainly a process, but it's also a decision. I think self-esteem comes from certain processes or activities you engage in, but also decisions you make. For example,

just a personal insight, the weekend my mom committed suicide, my wife came to the funeral to announce that she had a lover. She was leaving me for somebody else. Oh, my goodness. And my first reaction was, how tacky can you be? I'm at the depth of despair, and your wife says, I'm leaving, and I got a lover. I remember going home to an empty house and sitting there and telling myself, no, this is good. Why pretend that she cares when she doesn't? And then nine months from now,

when I've gone through the grief of my mother, she drops that bomb on me. I thought to myself, if it's going to happen, bring it on. Let's get it over with. I remember making that decision sitting in my living room. And so I think it's a lot of times a decision we make. I believe there's always something good in every situation. If you can focus on that positive, you'll keep the attitude. Yeah, that's great. Sometimes when I talk about difficulties, I say, difficulties happen for us and not to us, and for our benefit. I like that. Yeah, that you're able to switch it in that moment. But how long did that take you to do that in terms of how long have you been working on your mindset or implementing the strategies that you actually teach to be able to do that pretty quickly, despite all this difficulty happening to you personally with your mother?

I'm not sure how long it took. It's been a process. I think I felt I had it really together probably by age 30. I was working that in my 20s. Had a lot of success as a professor, a lot of success as a consultant, as a speaker, won all kinds of awards. So it's a process. Yeah, yeah, it's a process. Are you saying a process in terms of improving your self-esteem? Yeah, absolutely. And there were days I'd be speaking to an audience about this stuff that I thought to

myself, I need this too. I'm speaking to myself as well as the audience. Yeah, absolutely. That sounds similar to when I'm talking, you know, it's like, I need to use this today. Dr. Zimmerman, one of the things I want to ask you a little bit about, first of all, I just appreciate you telling that personal story for us. Talk a little bit about purpose. And that was your second point of personal peak performance. And, you know, I believe that we all have a purpose. Sometimes you're right that people

don't necessarily know what their purpose is. They're kind of just living day to day without this deep understanding of why they do what they do. So tell us a little about why that's important in your perspective. And then how do we kind of find this purpose? It's one of the most deeply powerful motivators there happens to be. And you're right. Most people don't think about it. When I teach a section on purpose with my audiences, they often say, wow, never thought about this stuff. I think most of us live on autopilot. You know, we find a person to marry, we raise some kids, we get a job, we pay the bills, and we retire. And nothing wrong with all of that stuff, but there's a deeper level of meaning that people sometimes don't even think about.

And so typically, I give people a diagram of a three-legged stool, how they can discover their purpose. And it's three questions. When you answer all three questions, you get the top of the stool, which is your purpose. The first question asks you, what are you good at? We just talked about that in terms of self-esteem. What are you good at? Secondly, what excites you? People will sometimes say, I'm afraid if I ask God, for example, for what my purpose is, he'll send me to Africa and I don't want to go to Africa. No, your purpose will be

something that excites you, not something you dread. Right. And thirdly, what difference do you want to make? When you find those three questions, their answers, when they intersect, you found your purpose. Can you give us some examples of people that maybe you've had in your audience or your clients of, you know, their understanding of their purpose, you know, answering these two questions? What was their, what were their answers? And then how did this impact their life? Well, I had one the other day that he was a blue collar worker, never thought about purpose, was on some financial difficulties, didn't have money for Christmas presents for his family, but his family was important to him. And he thought he had some talent at woodcarving. So he would make everybody a present that he would carve.

And they were overwhelmed with the quality of what he produced, the labor of love and time put into that. And it so much impressed them that one person said, you need to make a business out of this. He's now got a successful business, wood carving and selling products in vast forays across the country. And it fit all three questions. He was good at woodworking, never thought he could make a living at it. It excited him. It was making people happy. And it was making a difference financially in his family's life, as well as the joy he brought to other people's lives. Yeah. So something as simple as that. And did he actually end up quitting his job? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has his own company now. He's the CEO. Wow, that's great. What do you tell people in terms of, because sometimes, you know,

I think people might be listening and they might be saying, well, you know, I don't know what my purpose is. And what if it's not with my current current job and I do have to make some of these decisions to go out on my own or, you know, or start my own company. What's your answer to that? Or what's your, how would you respond to that? Good questions. First of all, there may not be just one overwhelming purpose

for your entire life. You may have more than one purpose. I think that we're waiting for the heavens to open and God to speak and saying, this is your purpose in life. That doesn't happen to very many people. You may have a purpose that partly is raising kids that are financially independent with good morals, that you respect their behavior choices. You may have a purpose for your career, what you want to do with that, and how you impact your customers or coworkers. So maybe more than one purpose.

Secondly, even when you define your purpose or purposes, not every moment of life will be purpose-driven. We have to survive. You have to take the garbage out. You have to cut the grass. It may have nothing to do with your purpose. It's just survival stuff. So that's what I call functional.

You have to have functional activities. So purpose doesn't cover everything. And the third thing I tell people is write your purpose on a piece of paper or a whiteboard in your office. Your one, two, three purposes. And then write a list of what you're going to do for the day, your to-do list. I recommend having a six-pack. Your six priorities for the day. You may have a thousand things you want to do. I call them HVAs, high-valued activities. Each one may take 10 minutes. It may take an hour. But if you complete those six, you can say, I had a great day. Of those six, three of them should have something to do with your purpose so at least doing something every day that impacts your purpose

oh that's really good so that you're keeping your purpose in mind your your understanding of why you do what you do why you're here but that not everything on that to-do list right is is purpose-driven it might be taking out the garbage or going to the grocery store right right right yeah i think people mistake purpose. It's going to influence every motion, every decision, every detail. It doesn't work that way. It's a driving force, but not the only thing in life. The driving force. And what do you see the impact in terms of when people get clear on their purpose and then they organize their day in this way where three of their high value activities or actions are purpose-driven? What

do you see the impact? It removes tremendous amounts of stress. It makes life simple. When you know what your purpose is, easy to make decisions. When Walt Disney died, his brother, Roy Disney, took over the Disney Enterprises. And I love Roy Disney's comment. He said, when your values are clear, decisions are easy. The same thing applies to purpose. When your purpose is clear, decisions are easy. You right away, no. Does this fit with my values, with my purpose? Yes or no. And then you can decide if you're going to do it or not. Right. You don't sit there sweating all day long. I do this I do that some people all day long in turmoil try to make a decision this simplifies everything absolutely you know I was having a conversation about purpose with a good

friend of mine and she was talking about her husband and how her husband's purpose really is to coach but he does this on the side he's not a full-time coach. He coaches his kids' sporting activities, but that, you know, he doesn't really have, he doesn't see his purpose in his job, meaning that, you know, it's kind of like this day-to-day activity, but it doesn't really fuel him, but it pays the bills. What would you think about that, Dr. Zimmerman? Is that a good thing or not a good thing, or, you know, what would you, what advice would you give him? Well, there's market reality. Sometimes we have to take a job we don't like, doesn't have much purpose. It just pays the bills. And that may be all we have for the moment. That's not the end of the world. You can still fulfill your purpose on the side as he is in

coaching. At the same time, you keep your eyes open for something else that's a better fit for your purpose. Nice. Awesome. Awesome. Let's dive into risk-taking. I think that's really interesting. And I like what you said about, you know, when we're growing and learning, we have to get out of our comfort zone. We have to take risks and whatever we want to be changed needs to be risk involved with risk-taking. So tell us a little bit about your understanding of risk-taking and how that means getting out of our comfort zone. Well, I was deeply influenced by the research of Dr. Bruce Larson. He wrote a book called There's a Lot More to Health Than Not Being Sick. Okay. And he spent two years going to workshops, listening to the experts in our field

speak. And his job was to simply listen to all those experts, interview them afterwards, and ask what's one thing they all agree you got to have to be successful in this crazy world. And all the experts agreed risk was the factor they had in common. He was surprised by that, and he found all these amazing connections. There's a connection between those people who have an overdose of fear in their life and poor mental health. People say, well, I couldn't ever do that. I've always done it like this. Got too much fear, not much room for self-esteem, self-confidence, or change. He found the connection between those folks who don't take risks, don't experience love. And there are millions of people, even married folks, who have never in their lifetime experienced

good, healthy, juicy relationships. Also found a connection between those folks who don't take enough risk, they actually die earlier, which of course is ultimate demotivation. For example, one of my clients, Honeywell, for many, many years, they have a horrible statistic. 50% of all their engineers are dead within two years of retirement age. 50%. I shared that stat with the IBM folks in Vermont. They brought me in 17 times one year. And they said, what are you complaining about? At IBM Vermont, not just engineers, half of all our employees are dead in 13 months. They don't get two years. And we began

asking, what's going on here? And we found out a couple connections. First of all, we're not created to retire at age 65, move to Arizona to play shuffleboard in Sun City. There's got to be some risk or purpose or challenge after retirement. And most of these folks who are dying, their whole life was their job. I'm an engineer. I'm a computer person. And most of these folks who are dying, their whole life was their job. I'm an engineer. I'm a computer person. And when the job disappeared, they lost their identity and they lost their life.

Because if you are what you do, who are you going to be if you're not doing what you did? Nobody and start dying. But the other thing we found out in my research is this applies more to men than women. In American culture, men still tend to base their self-esteem on their jobs. Men think their job, talk their job, breathe their job. They go on fishing trips to relax and talk about their job the whole time.

And so what Larson said, you want to up your self-esteem, up your success, up your happiness, up your risk level. Take more constructive risks. You want to up your self-esteem, up your success, up your happiness, up your risk level. Take more constructive risks. And I'm not saying you should do stupid things like jumping off of buildings and life-endangering things. Risk means constructive. It has some skill and some knowledge that you possess, putting that together. Super good. So up your happiness.

If you want to up your happiness, you have to up your risk level. Play it too safe and you can't be super happy. So let's apply it to our lives a little bit. Can you give us some examples maybe of your own personal life or maybe a client you've worked with in terms of ways that you get out of your comfort zone and take some risks so that you can be as happy as you can be? Yeah, my wife calls me Curious George, that little monkey character in the cartoon books. Yes, of course. I want to see everything, do everything, go everywhere. I just have unending curiosity. One risk, I went hunting caribou in the Arctic Circle

with Eskimos here a while ago. It was a risk for me. I'm not a big hunter, but it was a new adventure. I love that kind of thing. I was out here ballooning recently in Australia. I've not a big hunter, but it was a new adventure. I love that kind of thing. I was hot air ballooning recently in Australia. I've tried those kinds of things, hang gliding, you know, some of those adventure stuff. A risk for me was quitting my professorship. I was tenured. I had lifetime job security. Nobody could get rid of me. And nobody supported me. Every professor, every friend thought I was stupid.

You're giving up the golden goose, a steady paycheck. The only person that supported me was my stepmom. I met my first mom and committed suicide. My dad remarried and she'd seen me speak a couple of times to various audiences. I was speaking part-time on the side and I believe in you, you can do this, but otherwise I had zero support. And it was

scary. Even though I was making more money speaking part-time, if I gave up the for sure job, who knows the phone would keep ringing. Absolutely. So that was my biggest professional risk is leaving a secure job. And what did you do in terms of, you know, not listening to the critics and believing in your decision? What are the inner strategies you use to be confident in where you're going and believe that you could make this jump into becoming a, you know, world-class speaker? Well, it was partly external and internal. External, I took a leave of absence from the university for two years to give it a try. So I had a job to go back to. Actually, within three months, I quit. Yeah.

So I was going to work. But I had that little cushion. So I advise people, if they're looking at leaving their job for something that's more purpose-driven or fits better, see if you can do it gradually like that. Give yourself a little cushion. But internally, a lot of self-talk, a lot of affirmations. I'm well-researched. I'm well-reimbursed. I speak with excellence. My customers get great value. I kept reaffirming that

over and over and over again. And so to put the affirmations in to push out the doubt. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. I appreciate you just giving us some personal examples. You know, tell us a little bit about how you see fear holding people back from taking risks and staying in the comfort zone. Yeah, fear, of course, is the number one block. There's that old acronym, fear stands for false evidence appearing real. And yeah, I tell people, listen to the fear, because sometimes it's helpful. There may be a physical danger that you're taking that's just not worth the risk. But if it's simply a gut reaction with not a lot of evidence backing it up,

go for it. For example, constructive risk. I give people four questions that they ask themselves before they take the risk to make sure it's constructive. And I tell them they need at least two yeses to take the risk. One is, is it necessary? Will it work? Is it cost effective?

Does it relate to my purpose? So listen to the fear. And a slogan I use, but I think it's real. I tell people, your feelings get a voice, but not a veto. Tell us a bit more about what that means. Maybe you're afraid. Listen to that. Pay attention to it.

Listen to your feelings. Maybe it's anxiety, frustration, anger, whatever the feeling might be. They get a voice in making your decision, but they don't get the final word. They're a part of the evidence, not the whole package. So it gets a voice in the decision, not a veto. And some people live totally by feelings. That's the way children live. They feel angry, they hit somebody.

They feel happy, they hug somebody. Well, adults are hopefully more mature. There's feeling plus thinking and then decision. Super good, Dr. Zimmerman. So these four things to think about if we're going to take that risk. I want to make sure I got those down and I heard them right. So is it necessary was the first one. Number two, will it work?

Number three, is it cost effective? And then the last one, does it serve my purpose? Right. And can you give us an example of kind of going through those and all those could help us choose, you know, this kind of being more courageous versus our comfort zone. For example, will it work? You do a little research. Ask friends who have tried the risk you're contemplating. What have they learned? What advice could they give you? So you

gather your information, but you also rely on your gut. You have some knowledge, you have some intuition. Will it work? Is it cost effective? Some of the things you see, I can pull this off, but it might be so expensive financially, it's not worth it. It may be so expensive, you hurt your relationship, you ruin your marriage, not worth it. So what's the cost of taking that risk? And I was saying, you don't take a risk just for the heck of it. It has to be related to some purpose. What's the bigger good here? Okay. Now let's dive into the last six of the secrets of personal performance, work-life balance.

I'm thinking that people who are listening can really relate to that and maybe don't have necessarily a very balanced work-life ratio. So what would you tell us in terms of that? Can you just dive into that a little bit in terms of what you talk about? Yeah, a lot of research says that one of every three people right now is stressed out, burnt out, or has a life badly out of balance. I think that's true. When I do my intake interviews for my two-day coaching program, Journey to the Extraordinary, I ask them why they're coming. Probably the number one reason they list, life is out of balance. They're working all the time. Their husband, wife, kids, relationships get second or third place, and they feel badly about that. So I think there's a tremendous need. Part of the problem is that corporate America does not reward work-life balance. They talk

about it all the time. They want a culture filled with work-life balance. A few of them are good at it. Most are not. Most are better at talking about it. They may push their employees. You need more work-life balance as the leaders themselves work 80 hours a week and never leave the office. So you need to do a few little things for yourself. I use a pie chart with eight slices, eight dimensions of life, physical, recreational, financial, occupational, emotional, mental, relational, and spiritual. And when people say, Dr. Zimmerman, what's your definition of success? I tell them it's very simple. It's having something positive and effective in every dimension of life. To me, it's not work-life balance

to physically have your body in great shape and mentally be stupid. It's not success to occupationally hate your job but financially make a good income. It's not success to spiritually quote the Bible frontwards and backwards and relationally can't get along with anybody. You have to have something positive in every dimension of life.

And so I take them through that and give them strategies for each of those. One that has been helpful to me is to recognize I'll never be finished, and that's okay. Give ourself permission to be human. No matter how hard we work, there'll still be a few things left in our inbox the day we die. Absolutely. And most of us were raised, I know, by my father. Most of our fathers and mothers would say, get all your work done, then you can play. Well, if we took that advice literally, we would never play.

I could go to my office as you could. I could sit here at the computer for six days, six months, never sleep, never eat, and never be finished. There's always more to do. I sometimes say time out, got to put juice back in the batteries. Yeah, and the play helps us have the juice in our batteries. So, you know, it gives us purpose as well. Yeah. See, recreation really means a recreation.

You're recreating yourself, recreating your energy. I give people a simple test. If you go home at the end of the day is work. You sit on the couch for 30 minutes to relax and watch some stupid sitcom, but you get up four hours later and say, oh, what a stupid waste of time. Didn't do this, didn't do that. Programs are no good. That will not re-energize you. That'll give you more stress. You got to feel recreated afterwards. Nice. Awesome. Recreated afterwards. So Dr. Zimmerman, I have two questions that I ask everyone. So we'll wrap up the interview with this. First of all, could you tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from it and

what we can learn from your experience? And the reason I ask you that is something that you've really talked about here is that you can't be perfect, right? And that we're always growing and learning. And so just tell us a little bit about an example of a time that didn't go so great for you. Yes. When I left my professorship, opened my own company as a full-time professional speaker, a Fortune 500 company hired me to do a two-day program for them. I hadn't spoken more than maybe an hour of the first hour of the two-day program.

And the director stood up and said, you're terrible. This is not at all what we want to hear. And he fired me on the spot. Oh, my goodness. In front of the audience. And he put me in the background and said, listen to me. I'll teach this class. You can learn from me.

He said he taught. I felt so humiliated. Did I make a bad choice becoming a professional speaker? I was really beating myself up until about three months later. The same company called me to hire me. And I said, yes, you need to know. First of all, I worked there once before and I got fired. And he said, oh, yeah, I heard about that.

That guy's a jerk. He just mistreats everybody. We want to talk to you because we're here. You're really good. That's awesome. It could have really torpedoed my self-esteem. You could have easily just given up on your career and said, I'm going to go back to being a professor. But there was a lesson there, too.

And that is I did not interview him thoroughly enough in the beginning before I spoke to know exactly what he wanted me to say. I assumed way too much. And so I was a little bit off target of what he wanted to hear. And so I've learned to really know what my customer wants before I speak. That was the lesson. Oh, excellent. Excellent. That's a great story.

But also, you know, just a really powerful story in terms of not letting something like that impact your self-esteem and you could be successful in this career. Yeah. And then, Alan, tell us a little bit about your purpose and your why. Why do you do this? And, you know, why professional speaking? What do you get from it? And how do you see your life's purpose? I've been so blessed. I've had a great education. I've learned a lot of things the hard way. Met millions of people, it seems like. And I get emails constantly from people saying, thanks, it changed my life, it saved my marriage, it turned our company around, blah, blah, blah. And so the purpose for me is to use what I've learned over the years to make people's lives, relationships, careers more effective. I surveyed 100,000 people for my latest book, The Payoff Principle, and I asked them,

what do you want out of life? And by far, number one answer was, I just want to be happy. Number two, I want to be successful. Well, they're broad, generic terms, but if I can help them be more successful, personally, professionally, a bit happier, I'm delighted. Excellent, excellent. And what advice would you have for people who are listening that say, gosh, you know, that professional speaking sounds really interesting and you get to travel all over the world. What advice would you give familiar with them. There's chapters in every state. It's the only place you'll learn about the business of speaking. Toastmasters, if you don't know how to speak. But if you already have some speaking skills and some expertise, but they have no idea how to make it into a business, go to National Speakers Association. Find them on the internet. Go to some chapter meetings. There's everybody from those who are newbies who are looking at that as a profession to those who are making millions.

And I've never found a place where people share everything. They don't hide anything, no secrets, willing to help. And you'll know quickly whether you fit in or not. Yeah, excellent, excellent. That's actually how I first heard about your work is through the National Speakers Association. So here we go. You see, it ends up being this great podcast interview. So tell us a little bit about where we can find your books. I have pivot, how one turn and attitude can lead to success, and then your new book, The Payoff Principle. Where can we find more information about those books?

I come to our website, which is drzimmerman.com. You'll find all my books, materials there, but also they might like to get my weekly newsletter, Dr. Zimmerman's Tuesday Tip. I've been writing an article every week for 18 years, some 890 issues, never missed a Tuesday. We've got several hundred thousand subscribers. People love it. So that's my free gift to everybody, drzimmerman.com. That sounds amazing. And for those people who are listening, who'd like to hire you as a speaker, how would they, you know, reach out to you? Same place. You'll find on that website, DrZimmerman.com, my telephone number. There's a contact form and I'll respond or my assistant will respond immediately. Okay, excellent. Excellent. And are you on social media anywhere

that we could reach out or follow? Yeah, I'm on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, you'll find me in all those places. And just search Alan Zimmerman? Yeah, for Twitter, it's Dr. underscore Zimmerman. It's Alan R. Zimmerman at Facebook and Alan R. Zimmerman at LinkedIn. Okay, excellent. Well, Dr. Zimmerman, first of all, I just want to thank you so much for providing us so much value today and helping us be better people and peak performers. There's a few things that I really enjoyed that you talked about. First, I like your idea of the killer statements, bringing those killer statements to your job and then just working to avoid those killer statements so you can work to have the best

attitude that you can to help other people and serve other people. I enjoyed our conversation about four of your six secrets of personal peak performance. We talked about self-esteem. We talked about purpose. Enjoyed what you suggested about how to find our purpose with your three-legged stool. And then I enjoyed our discussion about risk-taking, getting out of your comfort zone. And then you suggested four questions that we can ask ourselves so we know if we should follow that fear or not. So I just really

appreciate your time and your energy and providing so much value to our audience and the amazing work that you do all over this world. I appreciate that. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.