High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 162: See the World with "New Eyes" with Russ Rausch, Founder of Vision Pursue

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

Russ Rausch is the Founder of Vision Pursue or VP. VP helps individuals and organizations create a Performance Mindset through their training and mobile app. Before founding Vision Pursue, Russ was the COO at the hedge fund Emil van Essen. Before that he was part of the executive team that took the trading software firm, Trading Technologies, Inc. (TT), from a 20-person startup to a 650-person global company as CFO, CIO, and EVP of Global Buyside Sales. Russ lives in Chicago. In this interview, Russ and Cindra talk about: His motivation and pursue behind Vision Pursue The SEE Model (Separate, Embrace and Evaluate) What it means to “Expect the Expected” How “New Eyes” can help us see the world and our relationships with curiosity When and why we need to break the pattern How sport psychologists and other consultants can use Vision Pursue in their work You can contact Russ Rausch at [e-mail] or on twitter at @visionpursue and find more information about Vision Pursue at visionpursue.com.  You can find a full description of the Podcast and contact information for Russ at cindrakamphoff.com/russ. 

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 today, ready to listen to episode 162 with Russ Rauch. 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 our sport.

Now today before I introduce you to Russ, I'm going to head over to iTunes and read a rating and review over there. This one is from NRM2492 and he says, the best podcast on mindset and success. As an entrepreneur there are lots of ups and downs in business and this podcast gives me the mental fuel and edge I need to stay on top of my game.

Thank you so much NRM 2492 for heading over to iTunes and leaving a rating and review and if you like this podcast, if you tune in regularly, or if this is your first time and you enjoy today's interview, I'd encourage you to head over to iTunes or Stitcher Radio and leave us a rating and review.

That just helps us reach more and more people every single week. And the great thing about your iPhone, if you have one of those, is you can just click on the podcast link and scroll down and you can leave a rating and review there. All right, that'd be amazing. So let's turn our attention to Russ Rauch. So this is episode 162.

Russ Rauch is the founder of Vision Pursue or VP. And VP helps individuals and organizations create a performance mindset through their training and mobile app. Now before founding Vision Pursue, Russ was a COO at a hedge fund. And before that, he was part of an executive team that took the trading software firm Trading Technologies from a 20-person startup to a 650-person global company. And he served as their CFO, their CIO and EVP of Global Buy Side Sales. Russ lives in Chicago.

And one of the reasons that I had Russ on is because I've been using Vision Pursue, the app, and some of my clients have as well. And I wanted to talk with him specifically about his motivation and his purpose behind Vision Pursue and actually how people like myself, sports psychology consultants, or other professionals could use the app Vision Pursue as part of their training and part of their work with a client. One thing that really impressed me about this interview is the different concepts that we talked about. Here's a few that I really enjoyed. We talked about the C model, how we need to separate, embrace, and evaluate,

what it means to expect the expected, how new eyes can help us see the world and our relationship with curiosity, and when and why we need to break the pattern. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to head over to iTunes and search Radio Again and leave us a rating and review. And you can find the full podcast notes at cindracampoff.com slash Russ. And if you're interested in getting regular updates on the podcast and videos that I produce every couple of weeks, you can sign up at cindracampoff.com, or an easier way to find me is drcindra.com. All right, without further ado, let's bring on Russ.

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Cinder Campoff, and I'm excited today to have Russ Rausch join us from Vision Pursue. So, Russ, kind of give us a little insight in terms of your passion and what you do to start us off. Yeah, well, my passion has changed quite a bit. So, the concept of Vision Pursue is about mindset training or mental training, and I'm sure we'll get more into that, but that's really become my passion. I didn't start out that way at all. I started out with accounting degree as accountant work for big firm, and then really took off into a business career, ending up as a chief operating officer at a hedge fund, which I left five years ago to work on Vision Pursue. But it's really mental training to improve the way people are experiencing their day-to-day lives by impacting

the thought patterns and emotional systems, you know, internal systems that generate thoughts and emotions. And I'm really passionate about that. Yeah. So tell us, you know, what made you decide to pursue this? You know, I know that you're the first person to come, you know, to move forward with the idea of Vision Pursue, and then you brought other people on. But tell us just about, you know, what happened in your life to make you decide, like, this is the answer? Well, it took quite a while to figure out what the answer was, but I knew what the problem

was in my early 40s. I'm in my early 50s now, but I was a small town kid in Kansas, first one to go to college in my family. I went to K-State and graduated, and I was in my early 40s in Chicago, and I really had achieved more than I thought I would or could. Not that I'm saying I was doing something just unbelievable, but I'm just saying based on my limited perspective and coming out of where I came from, I'm sitting in my office in Chicago. I have a big office looking down the Chicago River. I'm making a good salary. I've got stock options. I have a nice house, a vacation home, really everything I thought I wanted and really the realization that I wasn't enjoying it,

that I was pretty dissatisfied, unfulfilled. And that's what really started it. And that was about 10 years ago, but it took years to figure out what the problem was. And really the big shift was when I quit looking externally for the answers and I started looking internally, namely how is my brain functioning, which is really what caused most of my dissatisfaction. And tell us a little bit about your journey in terms of uncovering that, that it was really more, you know, your focus externally than internally. And then, you know, how did that make you decide like vision pursue was something you wanted to

pursue yourself? Yeah. So the big turning point for me is I read a book by Charles Honnold called The Master Key. And I don't necessarily tell people to go read that book because I think there are a lot better avenues to go than that. But it was a great book in that it really opened the door for me that this is an internal thing, not an external thing.

And in the book, he talked about automatic thoughts and these thoughts are happening all day, every day, and how you feel has a lot to do with a lot more to do with those and what's happening externally. And so that really was the big shift I was looking for. And then I really just got nerdy about brain science, neuroscience, and modern psychology and performance psychology. And I would spend really weekends looking at YouTubes, people like Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor or Dr. Kelly McGonigal and Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richie Davidson, other people like that, and really learning all this stuff about how the brain operates how we have

thought patterns and emotions and over a period of a couple of years I really changed myself I changed the way I was feeling about life in general my work home everything really transformed me and then I really just thought to myself this wasn't that difficult to do there's no reason why I can't come up with a process, a technology that help people do what I just did. And then maybe it'll be a business, maybe it won't. But if nothing else, I can give it to some people and maybe they can go through the same transformation I went through. So what happened in terms of, you know, for yourself and your fulfillment in your job and in your life when you really were more aware of, you know, for yourself and your fulfillment in your job and in your life when you really were more aware of, you know, your automatic negative thoughts and, you know, you're more in tune with

your emotions. Kind of just tell us about the impact of that. What did you see? Well, the impact was just major. And this really gets down to even talking a little bit about vision to pursue and what, how we measure our success because this is what happened to me personally. So here's how we go in. When we go in and talk to a person or a group, we like to ask the question, how do you experience a typical day from the time you get up to the time you go to bed? And we break it down 100% of that typical day into four categories. How much of it's stressful and annoying? How much of it's monotonous or a means to an end?

Third is how much do you participate in escape activities like watching TV, social media, drinking, things like that. We're not saying you shouldn't be doing any of those things. It's just a simple question. How much of your day do you spend with escape activities? Because you want to shut down from the stress and anxiety. And then the last category is I feel good, which is kind of a general way of saying it, but without doing escape activities.

And when I look back, I never asked myself that question, but it would have been 90%. 90% of my day is stressful, annoying, monotonous, or I'm escaping from it. Okay. Very little felt good. And what happened when I went through this transformation, my life experience changed in that I experienced a typical day, which the typical day didn't change much, just the way I experienced it changed to where that's, I wouldn't call it a complete flip-flop. It depends on what's going on in your life, but it's mainly feels good. I feel stress, annoyance, and monotony, and I do escape activities, but it's a minor part of my

typical day where it used to be a major part. And that's really what happened to me. And that's really our goal with our training. Absolutely. So you measure the success based on what percentage of the day you feel good versus stressful or annoying or just methodical. You're doing it without a purpose or it's escape. Yeah, that's it. Really, that's how we measure it. We look at other things like focus, you know, ability to focus and pay attention, the ability to be present at home, the ability to sleep and resiliency, like how do you respond when things go bad. But the thing I really always go back to is the slip-miss test of how you're experiencing a typical. I think, you know, people can relate to what you're saying in terms of, you know, maybe they're in a job where they have achieved what they want, but, you know, your life's changing for the good. You're feeling better more often.

You know, what made you decide to like, or what was your first step in terms of like starting Vision Pursue? I really just took all of this great thought leadership that I was studying and I've continued to study over the years and just said, you know, I'm going to take Jill Bolte-Taylor stuff. What can I glean from this and how could I teach somebody this very simply and easily, and I started to put it down in a program, which later became a website, you know, all of these bits and pieces that I was picking up. That's really how I started it, and then, you know, paid somebody to put the website together, and it was through trial and error built from there to what we have today, which is a mobile app at a full on training, in-person training. But really just started with that simple process of just writing down what I was learning and experiencing so other people could try to do the same thing I did. And we know, you know, mental skills training is used more often by top CEOs, people who have, you know, high amount of stress

in their life, but also like elite athletes and teams. I know you've done some work with the Falcons and obviously this type of training is implemented at the Cubs, the Seahawks, you know, Golden State Warriors. So Russ, one of the things that when you guys talk about mental training on your website, you kind of describe like the focus on the process of this mindfulness in terms of staying in the present moment, meditation, and you kind of describe it as like this performance mindset. So tell us what you mean by that and how you're defining it there at Vision Pursue. Yeah, with performance mindset, the reason why we talk about it like that is really going back to this life experience. Even if you're performing at a high level,

if you're a professional athlete or a coach or an executive or a parent or whatever you're doing, if life primarily feels like a stressful annoying means to an end, you need to escape from, and you have trouble focusing. You have to read things two or three times. You have trouble sleeping. You're not resilient. When things go bad, you're replaying it over and over again the point is there's no way you can perform at your best if that's what's happening and so when we can make this shift you start performing at a higher level and we call it mindset because it's all based on the mind and the

things you talked about is where the mind can shift to, where an untrained mind is really trying to control a bunch of stuff that can't be controlled. Its expectations are completely out of line with the way the world is. It's wandering all over the place instead of being in the present moment. And so as you shift all these things and the brain starts to change, it starts to enjoy the present moment. And so as you shift all these things and the brain starts to change, it starts to enjoy the present moment. It starts to focus on what can be controlled instead of what can't be controlled. It starts to focus on expectations that aren't, you know, completely out of whack with reality. And so that's why we call it performance mindset, because then those

things really unlock the door. Not only do you feel better, you really open up to take your performance to the highest, take it really to a lot higher level than when these other things are happening. Absolutely. And I know since you started Vision Pursue, you brought in John McGrath, who played in the NFL for 10 years, obviously a sports psychology professional, Ian Canole, who is at Kansas State and now is in private practice. But tell us about like, you know, why bringing those these people on was important to you in terms of developing Vision Pursue? Yeah, so the first guy I brought on was Matt Andresis, who does our technology and is a

brilliant technologist, but also a great guy at understanding these concepts. But, you know, then I met John McGraw, who had played 10 years in the NFL at an event. And we just hit it off immediately. And we could see we're on the same page. He was kind of going down the same path I was. Totally different reason. Well, similar reason in terms of, you know,

he didn't really enjoy his experience living his dream in professional sports. And so he was investigating why that was. And so he was a natural fit for me because, you know, he's a smart, talented guy. And I really wanted this to be more about high performance as opposed to just stress reduction. Okay. And he really fit that. So that was a perfect match and an easy fit. And then Dr. Canole, Ian Canole, was somebody we started working with when we started working with Kansas State football. So we met him through that and, again, philosophically really lined up.

And so him joining us full-time recently has been fantastic. He's been an advisor for a few years now, but it's great to have him full time working with us with his expertise in performance psychology. Absolutely. So, you know, when you think about performance mindset, what do you think are the elements that change mindset? I think, you know, the elements that change the brain, at least that we focused on, you've mentioned part of them or some of them. Meditation, obviously, so you can start to focus the mind and create a focus, develop that focus. Mindfulness, the ability to bring your mind in the present moment, which is very difficult for most people to do, requires practice and time to do. That's a huge element. Another one for us is emotions, which I think is somewhat underserved in terms of looking at that. And the way we really approach that is really changing your relationship to emotions.

Most of us are trying to chase positive emotions, emotions that feel good, and we're trying to avoid negative emotions. I really teach people that emotions are trying to help you emotions, emotions that feel good, and we're trying to avoid negative emotions. I really teach people that emotions are trying to help you, so you're not trying to, you know, get lost in them. You're aware of them, but you also don't suppress them. And we teach a concept called C, which is separate, embrace, evaluate. Not to get too deep into that, but really changing your relationship to emotions is huge in terms of impacting, you know, the way the brain's going to produce emotion and thought patterns. And I'll stop there. There's other things we focus on as well, but I don't want to get too deep into all of this unless you want me to go a little further.

Sure. I'd like you to go a little further. And then, you know, maybe one way that you can go further is tell us a little bit more about the C, you know, separate, embrace, evaluate. I think people would really get a lot from that in terms of, you know, what's the best way to approach your emotions. Yeah, great. Love to. And before I do that, I want to tell you one other concept that really heads off emotions. Now, again, I think emotions are a good thing, but sometimes they don't end up being a good thing for a lot of us because we don't know how to respond to them. And so, but one of the things that helps people a lot is this concept of expectations before I get into C. Because the brain's trying to optimize all the time, it's looking for optimal situations,

it can create this expectation of a world that doesn't exist. An expectation where there's no traffic and everybody behaves a certain way and the weather's always good and my boss is always the way I want him and the spouse, my spouse is the way I want my spouse to be and my kids behave a certain way. And so this optimizing brain is creating this thing that if all these things aren't the way I think they should be, I'm going to be frustrated and disappointed. So we teach a concept called expect the expected, which is, hey, I'm talking about a professional athlete or a coach, or a CEO, I'm not going to perform great all the time. It's just not going

to happen. Everything is not going to be perfect, you know. And so once people align their expectations with the way the world is, that frees them up from a lot of anxiety and stress and anger that's just not necessary, getting your expectations in line. And then the concept of C is really no matter what you do, you're going to have emotions and that's a good thing. And so once I look at emotions as a good thing and let's use anxiety, you know, we all have anxiety at different levels. So I used to feel a lot of anxiety from public speaking, a ton of it, in fact, almost debilitating. And when I learned C, it really changed that because when I felt that anxiety, instead of suppressing it or getting lost in it, I would go, okay, my brain's producing a neurotransmitter that's causing me to feel

anxious. That's a separation. I'm not lost in it. That's what's happening. I create a little space. And what is that there for? Well, it's there to help me. It's trying to get me on my A game. So that's embracing it. So I'm going to open up to this feeling of anxiety. I'm going to totally let it in, feel it. How does it feel in my body?

What's it doing? And that's going to give it space to roll. It's a chemical that's been projected in your brain. Let the chemical do its thing. Let it have its way. That allows it to start to subside. And then I can evaluate. And in a public speaking case, if it's the day before, I might say, well, do I need to prepare more?

I may say, well, no, maybe I do, maybe I don't. And if I't if I don't when I go no I'm unprepared I'm going to trust in my preparation get back in the present moment what am I doing now so it allows me to get this clarity to evaluate what's the emotion telling me and then how do I respond and almost any emotion you come up with, you can go through that formula, separate, embrace or experience, let it do its thing and then evaluate. And you start making good decisions that are more based on your values and logic than based on the emotion. And Russ, what do you see in terms of maybe the set point or what people typically do instead of separate, embrace, and evaluate? Well, number one, most people have no awareness that they're even having emotion.

They're so attached to their emotion, there's no awareness. So if I get angry at you, let's say I feel like you disrespected me in some way. You don't bring any awareness to that. I just feel disrespected. I may feel resentful towards you. I may want to get you back in some way. You don't bring any awareness to that. I just feel disrespected. I may feel resentful towards you. I may want to get you back in some way or be passive aggressive. There's no awareness to it whatsoever. And I probably replay in my mind over and over these things you did to disrespect me. And then I build on it from there, all the other things maybe I don't like about you. And so it becomes this compounding thing that the brain's doing because there's absolutely no awareness that's brought to it.

It's just going crazy. That's one thing we do. We just, you know, we get lost in the emotion, no awareness. The second thing is I might be aware and say, I'm really upset at Cinder. She disrespected me. I'm just going to go have, I'm really upset at Cinder. She disrespected me. I'm just going to go have, I'm just going to go drink. I'm going to go have a beer and forget about it. For sure.

I'm not saying you should never go have a beer when you're having a bad day. But my point is I try to suppress it, push it away. I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to feel disrespected or I don't want to feel anxious about public speaking. And so I'm going to go watch TV or distract my mom, totally suppress that emotion. So that's typically what we do. We get lost in it or we suppress as opposed to bring awareness and then having a response that we've decided to employ. For sure. And if rest of people wanted to learn more about the kind of C acronym, do you

have a reference or a website or what would you tell us to do in terms of finding more information about it? You know, we're going to be posting more information kind of about our philosophy through blogging and stuff going forward. Right now, we don't really have that. I mean, we have a mobile app and our training, so people can get our mobile app and learn about all our concepts, or they can employ us to do group training at the organization. But right now, we don't have anything other than that. But we will soon as we start to get some of our philosophies out through blogging and social media, etc. And you know, when you think about culture today, you know, in terms of fast-paced culture, there's so many distractions. We got, you know, a distraction right in our pocket with our phone. You know, why do you think kind of this mindfulness training and just mindset training in general is really important right now for us to engage in and practice every day. Yeah. I mean, you really touched on it. The fast paced world, the technology,

the comparisons we have to everybody else, you know, the way I think about it, like we're, I'm living a blooper reel while I'm watching everybody else's highlights on social media. And so, and I do some work in some high schools. And I'll tell you what's amazing, Cinder, what I see there, which I think is symptomatic of what's happening everywhere. This stress and monotony, this inability to focus, all of this is going on. It's getting pushed down into middle schools and even elementary schools because of the way the world is. And we're not going to go out and change the world and get rid of smartphones and everything else.

Now, there are things we can do to manage it, but we're not going to get rid of these things. These things are here. They're here to stay. In a lot of ways, they're very good. It's really not the technology's not bad. It's our addiction to that, and it's the way our brain processes around it. So a real solution is to go out and train your mind. And so I can use my smartphone, which I do, and we have a mobile app.

I can use that for good to connect to people and do all kinds of good things with that that are productive and not be a slave to it. I don't have to pick it up every time I have a free second. I don't have to check my social feeds and all these other things like I'm in control. It's not a control, but you really have to do the mental work to be able to do that. I think too. And so to answer your question, I think all of this stuff, the stress and anxiety that's increasing in our world today, you know, that's not changing. And

so really what you have to do, you have to gird yourself up mentally to be able to handle it. For sure. You know, and I know you've done some work in the NFL. I think the NFL can be incredibly high stressful environment, but also an environment where you have to perform, right? Or you usually don't stay very long. And I know you've done some work with the Falcons. Dan Quinn said, you know, I was always looking for something else, you know, I'll be better win. But now I don't think in those terms. Tell us, you know, why you think, you know, just mindset training, mental training, and then, you know, the app you're offering, why is that so important within the NFL culture? Yeah, I think professional sports, as you know, since you're heavily, heavily involved, is that very high stress, high

performance. Most of us can't comprehend what it would be like to be under that much pressure and that much scrutiny. Can you imagine somebody following you around at work every day and filming it and breaking down all your mistakes all the time? And so, yeah, certainly a high stress world and the mental training that's going on there. And you're certainly a part of it. You know, I think it's fantastic. And I look at what Coach Quinn's doing in Atlanta and what Coach Carroll's doing at Seattle and many other places, it, you know, it's because this stuff works. If you can train the mind to focus, to be present, to focus on the controllable, to focus on the process, which is the controllable, you know, great results come out of that.

And it's cool when you see NFL teams succeed with this because like you said, they really don't have a bunch of time to mess around on with something that maybe feels good, but doesn't get results. And so I think the mental training that you do and that others do, and hopefully that we do can do both of those. It can improve performance, but also improve, you know, mental and physical well-being. Yeah, so Russ, I completely agree with you. Tell us about like how it's worked with the

Atlanta Falcons and your relationship with Dan Quinn. I think people would just be interested in learning more about how they might implement Vision Pursue and an app like this. So just give us that as like a case study or an example. Yeah, so it's just crazy story how I even met Dan Quinn. I actually worked with his sister at a technology firm about 15 years ago. And so she made the introduction to me when he was with the Seahawks as the defensive coordinator early on in VP. So I've known Dan early on with my concept of VP and he's, you know, my relationship with him has been a big reason, you know, for our success. But when he got the head coaching job in Atlanta, so he brought us down and it's been a process of three years now of working with them. And so it really is just starting with, you know, how's the brain working? Like we teach

the, we start really like to go top down, coaches to players. And in corporate environments, we're trying to do the same thing more top down, but we could do it either way. But really just start with, hey, what's going on with your brain? What are the basics of thought patterns and emotional patterns? What's causing those? So it's not so mysterious to people. And then we train, how can you change those things? And then we try to teach them techniques that will change those things. And again, our mobile app then supports that. So we want to take something a little bit like physical training.

You can't just talk about physical training. You have to actually go out and apply it and do things, lift weights and run, et cetera. And so that's what our app does. It allows them to take what they've learned in the classroom to apply it on a daily basis to actually do the things that are going to impact these changes. of working with Dan, his coaching staff, and his players over the last three years of training, implementing, and improvement, just like everything else they do. You know, looking at the mental game, what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? What results are we getting? And working at improving the messaging, how we deliver it, all of that all the time. So it's been a great, you know, three years there of trying to get as good as we can at delivering this. And of course,

they're not our only client. We mainly do corporate customers and they're not our only professional sports team either, but that's been a key primary relationship for me, for sure. And Russ, you know, besides like the C acronym, can you give us another example of a technique or tool that you might teach within your training or within the app, just to give people an idea of kind of your philosophy and where you're going with it? Yeah, I already mentioned Expect the expected. I'll mention that one again, because that can help a lot of people when they quit expecting the world to be different from it is the way it is. Traffic's a great example. Like you shouldn't be know, I also just love the simplicity of control the controllable. Always thinking about when you get in a situation, you're feeling emotion, what can I control? What's out of my control?

That is very powerful for the brain. And then when it comes to relationships, and really many things, but I'll tie it exactly to relationships, is the concept of new eyes or curiosity. Because what tends to happen, the brain thinks it already knows everything about a person, and it stops really paying attention to them. Like, I already know who Cinder is. I've got you all figured out. And so, of course, that's not true. We don't know each other that well. But if we got to know each other, the brain would automatically, I would start paying

less attention to you. Familiarity breeds contempt. So once we get to know somebody really well, we quit paying attention. So that concept of new eyes really allows you to interrupt this pattern of judgment and to be fully present with people. And this is extremely helpful to the people that we love the most at home, to people at work, and people that are the most difficult in our lives, these difficult people that we live with. it is interrupt all these patterns of what you think you know about a person and just be fully present new eyes curious like they're brand new to you and notice what that experience is like that's another thing we teach that you could start to implement that i think is very powerful but give some insight into our philosophy um that's really good i think people are going to really

take something from that you know if we kind of break it down, Russ, to like, how do you do that? You know, do you have any sort of tools or strategies in terms of how to kind of live with these new eyes or more of a curious perspective? You know, or maybe you can give us an example of how you've actually done that. And, and maybe even the things that you've said to the person, you know, just to kind of show more curiosity? Yeah, well, number one, it's really difficult to do. Yes. And I want people to realize that a lot of times people fail at meditation, mindfulness, mental training, because they have unrealistic expectations. It's kind of like I don't walk up to a piano and think I can play it in a week. Now, mental training, you get, you know, advancement and improvement a lot faster than playing a piano, but it didn't happen overnight. And so, number one, I would say, like, realize this isn't easy. But specifically to answer your question with the new eyes, I think it's number one, it's just awareness that, hey,

I'm around a person. I want to get out of this automatic thinking mode I'm in, this program I'm playing in my head, kind of scratch the record, interrupt, be present, focus on your breath, get present. And then when I talk to you, Cinder, just think Cinder's brand new to me. Like she's, I'm just completely interested in everything she has to say. And you just make that mental shift. And really that's as simple as it is. And then realizing that you're going to fail at it a lot and you're not trying to be perfect at it, but just keep bringing awareness. Okay. I'm going to talk to somebody I'm going to use new eyes or, Hey, I just had an interaction with my daughter and I completely did not have new eyes. And so next time I'm going to try to do better at that.

So it's, you keep bringing awareness and you keep finding your way to interrupt the pattern. And a lot of this is just getting it in front of you. So remember, Hey, I need to be doing these things, and, you know, that's why our app, that's, you know, that's a big reason why we have that app, is that repetition, that reminding us, because we're really changing lifelong patterns, you know, for some of us, we've been doing this for 30, 40 years, and so it's going to take some interrupting of the pattern. Absolutely, and, you know, when you see maybe yourself, you know, approaching a person or interaction

with new eyes, like tell us how that changes relationships or, you know, what if you've done this more with your family, like how does it strengthen relationships within your family? Yeah, it's night and day because, you know, the problem we have with our loved ones usually is we go home and you want to be with them and yet your mind's doing anything but that. So your mind's wandering back to work, you know, especially the bad things that happened or could happen. And so what that communicates to everyone around you is that they're not important. Obviously, when you talk to someone, you can tell they're not paying attention to you. It communicates you're not important. So unintentionally,

we go home and do that. We communicate my job's more important than you are, because obviously that's where my attention is. And so when you can start to shift that even a little bit, it really makes an impact on your relationships at home or anywhere for that matter when people go, wow, this person's listening to me, really paying attention to me. They care about me. Obviously, that's a turn on for all of us. And it's a turn off when you can tell people aren't listening. And so it's a total game changer.

And when you think about difficult people that we're all dealing with, we have a whole formula for that. But it really is a simple thing of keep going at them with new eyes instead of going at them like, oh, okay, I know this person's a jerk and here's what they're going to do. I'm going to look at them like a brand new person to me. First of all, I'm going to expect the expected. I'm not going to be surprised if they do the things they usually do.

I'm going to apply C to all my emotions because people are going to cause you to moat. And I'm going to look at them with new eyes, like they're new to me. When you do this with a difficult person or a person that you love at home, that little formula, it's a game changer. Yeah, I could see that. I'm thinking about how this applies to my life. So thank you, Russ. And, you know, I think one important thing to kind of reemphasize is that, you know, mental training and even, you know, using these practices more often, it is a practice. It's not something that you just like turn on the light switch and you got. It's not like riding a bike that once you learn it, you're always going to remember how to do it. You know, it's like, it's a continual practice every single day. And I think what you're talking about is that we are changing our, you know, our, these lifelong patterns. And so it's a recommitment to using these practices every day. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. It's, this is not, it sounds easy when we're talking about it. Absolutely. Relatively simple, like a 10 year old could understand what we're talking about, but it

requires repetition and practice and training. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, one thing Russ that I thought was pretty cool is I interviewed Catherine Reuter, who is a USA speed skater, Olympic medalist. And she talked about like using the app. And that's what made me decide to have you on the podcast. And she talked about how she used it actually

while working with a sports psychology professional. So I think sometimes like as professionals, we can see these apps as maybe like taking over our job, you know, but kind of what you're saying. And I liked that the way that she used it was as a way to practice in between the work that she was doing one-on-one with someone. So kind of tell us how a sports psychology professional could use the app and how you see that working, you know, with somebody who might be doing individual one-on-one training

with somebody in terms of, you know, developing their high performance mindset. Yeah, so we're huge believers in sports psychology, obviously, and sports psychologists. So, you know, one of our clients is Seattle Mariners, and Darren McMains is there. Has a role similar to what you have, I think, with the Vikings. And we work great with him. And of course, that's how we met Dr. Canole. He was the sports logistic case state. And so we work really well with him. So dealing with especially hundreds of athletes, but even if it's, you know, 50, 60 athletes, like an NFL football team and coaches and everything else, like, it's good to have something to help them when you're not there, something for them to work on. And I find that we're very aligned with a lot of what's going

on in sports psychology, focusing on what the controllable, focusing on the process, being in the present moment, etc. So I think it's very very congruent and yeah, I don't think there's any conflict there whatsoever. I think it's very congruent and we prefer to go into organizations that have someone like you for sure, because we're much better. Cause we're going to come, our, our, our model isn't to come and stay. It's to come and go. But in an organization, that's all about performance. they need a professional there. I think that's they're working on these concepts all the time. So I think they're very congruent,

work very well together. That's our perspective. And, you know, I think one thing that has impressed me, Ross, is like the first time I looked at the app, gosh, maybe it was like six months ago. I remember it was during football season or maybe at the beginning of the season. And even when I looked at it, you know, again, and I've been diving into it deeply now, it has changed and you've made it more like interactive, more videos. So kind of just kind of give us a snapshot of like what people can expect on the app. Yeah, we work very hard on the app and it is definitely something, we just did a full rewrite of everything. We basically did two and a half, three years of

work and said, let's start over. We're going to start from scratch. How would we do this if we were starting today? But the beauty of the app, I think, is the simplicity. We have something called daily practices. It starts with a quote of the day where you will see a quote on a full page screen with a picture of the person. And that will line you up with what the theme of the day is. And then there'll be a message, the first practice item, you open it up, it's a message, something for you to read or a video to watch that's going to be a message, something to learn. The second item of the day then is a meditative type practice, which could be active like walking or driving or commuting, or it could be where you're sitting and meditating. So some kind of contemplative meditative practice. Then the third activity on the app is an action item. So for example, we talked about the concept of new eyes.

So the action item for the day might be to type a person's name in specifically that you want to go approach with new eyes. So you're trying to bring the concept that you've learned to life through action during the day. So when you complete all three of the items and four with the quote that you read, the program will move you to the next day and so on. And so we're trying to get through 60 days in the initial program which creates the foundational change in your mind or mindset and then there's

programming after that for continued growth. But that's the simplicity of the app. It's three items a day with a quote to make it four. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes a day. So simple, not super time consuming, but we hope and believe transformational in terms of getting this life experience change that we talked about. And when you think about, you know, best practices in terms of people who've used it daily, you know, what do you think the, what would you tell us in terms of how long we should do it? Or what are the benefits? Like, do you see, for example,

you know, after 20 days of doing this, that's the time where you see kind of a real impact? You know, what do you, what are your results telling us? You know, we talked about how we measure. So we measure this life experience know, we talked about how we measure. So we measure this life experience. And I talked about, I don't think I told you my life experience, but let me tell you the average. For the average person in all the people that we've surveyed, which has been, I don't know, 2,000, 3,000, 80% of a typical day is either stressful, annoying, monotonous, or I'm escaping from it. So it leaves 20% that you feel good. And so what our results have been, it's astounding how similar it is in almost every organization we go into on average, that it's almost always

that statistic I just gave you. But what happens after 30 to 60 days on our app is they double the amount of time they feel good. So going from 20% of a typical day to 40. And that's pretty typical. And so big reduction and stress and monotony escape doesn't change too much, but stress and monotony goes down quite a bit. So if you can get through again, 30 days for sure, but really 60 days on our new foundational program, those are the results that we consistently see over and over again. So I always tell people, you know, get through 60 days on the foundational program, and then you can decide if you want to go on and do more from

there. But I would say at least do the 60 day program. Okay. That's really helpful. You know, when you think about people who have implemented mental training that, you know, that you've seen, if it's through the app or, you know, in various ways that, you know, you kind of, you've seen this from the inside, what do you think the differences are or similarities between people who like are athletes, business people, coaches who've implemented this? What do you see the differences being? You know, there's just a lot more peace and enjoyment in what you're doing. You know, that goes across the board. So people, I think people are always surprised, you won't be,

but people who aren't involved in professional sports are surprised at the stress levels athletes are under. They think they're living this great life that they love living all the time. And of course there are great parts of it. But a lot of guys and gals in professional sports, you know, I think Catherine shared that with you, aren't really enjoying it like we think they are. And so enjoying what you're doing is a common thing that happens. And the ability to focus, the ability to change your relationships at work and at home, of course, are huge. When you can focus and pay attention, those are the common benefits I hear all the time of people saying, wow, I can go home and actually be present with my family. And what a game changer that is. And so those are the common

elements. I think it's the stress reduction, it's more peace, it's more enjoyment, it's more focused, being able to sleep. Those are common things that every human being desires. And for a lot of people, that's the benefits they get when their brain gets changed. Absolutely. You know, Russ, one question that I ask everybody. So as we wrap up, I want to make sure I ask you this. And I think, you know, in terms of mental training and mindfulness, I think the way that people approach failures or adversity, you know, changes, right? That you don't get upset when things don't go perfectly or that you can kind of rebound from failures or mistakes quicker when you've done this kind of work. So can you tell us about a time where, you know,

maybe you failed, like things didn't go perfectly for you and how you rebounded and what you learned from it. And perhaps it's related to the app, because I know, you know, the, you know, just even pursuing Vision Pursue hasn't always gone perfectly, right? So just tell us a story, you know, about yourself as we can conclude the interview here. Yeah, it's crazy. You're totally right, Cinder, in that your relationship towards failure changes dramatically. In fact, that word doesn't even make a lot of sense anymore after your brain changes. It's just really all part of the process. And you're right. Building Vision Pursue has

been one failure after another, if you want to call it a failure. And before Vision Pursue, I would have quit for sure. I wouldn't have survived what I've had to survive in terms of, you know, I walked out of my, you know, a good paying hedge fund job in my late forties, my prime earning years to really spend money and invest money to do this and to start over and to have to do all things I've had to do and so it's constant failure it's constant not doing things good enough learning adjusting going back but with the right mental training that just feels completely differently that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt or you don't get frustrated. It's just the

intensity of all that is way down. And this repetitive voice in your head is just not talking at you all the time. And so the voice in your head is a good thing. Otherwise, you're just oblivious and you're delusional. And so I feel my failures. I feel stress and anxiety, but I would say it's at the right level. You should feel that. You should feel like, hey, I need to feed my family. I need to pay my mortgage. I need to do a good job for my customers. All those sort of things, I feel those, but I would call them in the right proportion,

the right intensity, the right frequency. Let's call it a more productive woman. So that's really how I relate to failure now is that, hey, it's part of the process. It doesn't feel good, but I can get past it very quickly, learn from it, and adjust. And if you want me to, I could talk about, I didn't really talk about a specific one I'm talking, generalizing, but that's,

it's happening all the time. Let's put it that way. Yeah. I think that's a good reason for people to do more of this mental training and mindset training is so, you know, they, they don't get so low, you know, or beat themselves up after things that don't go perfectly because you're right that it's, you know, really high performance is all about, you know, adjusting and learning from what just happened, but moving forward. So, you know, Russ, I just really appreciate your time and your energy and sharing with us more about your passion and, you know, what you've developed to really help people live more in the present and reduce the stress in their lives. So tell us how we could, you know, learn more about Vision Pursue and download the app. Yeah, great. Well, first of all,

thanks for having me. I really appreciate you, Sindra, and the work you, the great work you do, your book, your podcast, it's all great stuff. Thank you. But yeah, visionpursue.com is our website and Vision Pursue is the app. It's on the Apple and Android app stores. And so those are the best ways to get information. And anybody can reach out to me with Russ at visionpursue.com is my email. Or just go to the website and hit the feedback button and we'll get your email as well if you have an inquiry about, like corporate training or team training or anything that's not to do with the individual stuff with the app.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Russ, so much for the awesome work you're doing and the positive impact I know you're making in people's lives and just helping us live more in the present. And you know, when I look at what I really enjoyed from this interview, I love the C, you know, separate, embrace and evaluate your emotions. And I think we could all practice that more often. Also, what you talked about, like expect the expected and not getting so upset when things don't go perfectly. Your example of traffic, that's probably my trigger. When I drive to Minneapolis, like it's so frustrating, the traffic, but I know I can't control it, right? But I should

just expect the traffic. So I enjoyed that. And then the last thing that, you know, I thought that you really added a lot of value in terms of like this new eyes perspective and living more with a curious perspective, especially with those that, you know, we love like our family and being more present with them. So thank you so much just for providing a lot of value today. And I definitely would encourage people to check out Vision Pursue and download the app

and just learn more about what they're doing and start with the 60-day challenge. How would we call it that, Russ? And looking into doing this mindset training for 60 days and using the app to help you do that. So thanks again so much for being here, Russ, and sharing your perspective with us today. Yeah, thank you, Cyd. I really appreciate it. 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 Cinder's free weekly videos, check out DrCindra.com.