The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action by Eduardo Briceño

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action by Eduardo Briceño https://amzn.to/44PzMow Discover how to balance learning and performing to bolster personal and team success with this revolutionary guide from a world-renowned expert on growth mindset. “An essential read for fostering learning, performance, and a growth mindset . . . I wholeheartedly recommend it.”—Carol Dweck, bestselling author of Mindset A Next Big Idea Club Must Read To succeed in a fast-changing world, individuals and companies know they must create a culture of growth, where experimentation and feedback are encouraged, and learning is integrated into the everyday. Yet we often get stuck in a well-worn pattern of habits that don’t move us forward. Why? Because many of us get trapped in the Performance Paradox: the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we focus only on performing, our performance suffers. How can we give ourselves the space to experiment and grow while also delivering high-level results? Fostering growth mindset to elevate performance is Eduardo Briceño’s specialty. As CEO of Mindset Works and in his work with Fortune 500 companies, he discovered that mastering growth—personal, organizational, and financial—hinges on navigating the crucial balance between learning and performing. In The Performance Paradox, Briceño reveals how to • avoid falling into the chronic performance trap that stagnates growth • identify when and how to unlock the power of mistakes • integrate learning into daily habits in ways that stick • lead teams that constantly improve and outperform their targets • grow your skill level and output simultaneously and for the long term We can achieve more tomorrow than we do today if we develop the belief that we can change and the competence for how to change. With Briceño’s innovative and refreshing framework of balancing learning and performing, individuals and companies can reach their boldest aspirations. About the Author Eduardo Briceño is a global keynote speaker, facilitator, and author who guides many of the world’s leading companies in developing cultures of learning and high performance. For over a decade he was the CEO of Mindset Works, the first company to offer growth mindset development services. His TED and TEDx talks have been viewed more than nine million times. Earlier in his career, he was a technology investor with Credit Suisse’s venture capital arm. He holds bachelor’s degrees in economics and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA and M.A. in education from Stanford. His book, The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action, published by Penguin Random House on September 5 2023, was selected as a "Must-Read" by the Next Big Idea Club.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show. Can I ever stop having to sing that, people? It's 14 years going on 1,500 episodes.

You know, I love it when you run up to me at events and go, the Chris Vashow, and you sing it back to me, and I go, security, please. But come on, man. Can we stop it after 50 years? Do I still have to do that? Anyway, I love you all, and we love your energy for the show and our audience that tunes in daily. We also appreciate the people who give us five-star reviews on iTunes.

Please go over there and give us five-star reviews. And also, for the show, your family, friends, and relatives, goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfuzz, youtube.com, 4chesschrissfuzz, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissfuzz, the big LinkedIn newsletter over there as well. Today, we have an amazing gentleman and speaker, author, you name it. He's been on the show or he's coming on the show. He'll hopefully be back on the show so I can say he's been on the show. But we're going to be talking about turning the power of mindset into action and team success, business, yada, yada, yada.

We're going to get into it all. So if you want to build a successful business, this is the show for you you don't well you know that you can still listen it's okay uh he is the author of the latest book this is coming out september 5th 2023 uh the performance paradox turning the power of mindset into action eduardo bris briseno is on the show with us today. Did I get that right, Eduardo? You got that right, Chris. There we go. There we go. There's a lot of energy in the show and the brain goes, right out the window. He is joining us in the show. He is a global keynote speaker, facilitator, and program provider who supports organizations in developing cultures of learning

and high performance. Early in his career, he was the co-founder and CEO of Mindset Works, the first company to offer growth mindset development services. Previously, he was a venture capital investor with the Sprout Group. His TED Talk, How to Get Better at the Things You Care About, and his prior TED Talk, The Power of Belief, have been viewed more than 9 million times. Holy crap-a-moly. And he's also a, I'm not even sure I'm going to get this right,

a Parara Aspen fellow. Parara Aspen fellow. Clearly I'm not in that club, so they haven't invited me because I can't even pronounce it right. He is a member of the Aspen Institute's Global Leadership Network and an inductee to the Happiness Hall of Fame. I'm an inductee to the Unhappiness Depressed Hall of Fame, but that's another story. Welcome to the show, Eduardo.

How are you? I'm doing great. Great to be here. Thanks, Chris. Great to have you as well. Congratulations on the new book. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. It's briceno.com, my last name, B-R-I-C-E-N-O.com.

There you go. And so is this your first book? It, my last name. B-R-I-C-E-N-O.com. There you go. And so, is this your first book? It is my first book. It might be my last book, because I've spent the last three years working incessantly in it. It's been an amazing experience. I'm so excited about it.

But I think I've said everything that I need to say, Chris. There you go. Well, let's just end the show there and wrap it up. Thank you. Good night, gentlemen. Well, let's just end the show there and wrap up. Thank you. Good night, gentlemen. No, I'm just teasing.

No, this isn't going to be your last book. I've taken a look at this thing. It's going to be great for business and yada, yada, yada. So let's get into what motivated you to write this book. Oh, it was a lot of things. But the biggest thing was a realization I had mid-career that I was working, working really hard, but doing it in an ineffective way. And so I realized that I was working hard to perform, to execute, to do everything as best as I knew how, trying to minimize mistakes. And what I hadn't realized is that in order to get better and improve and innovate and find new paths, I have to go beyond the known.

And that's what we call the learning zone as opposed to staying in the performance zone. And the performance paradox, which is the name of the book, is that if we only perform, our performance suffers. So this was a huge turning point for me, and I wanted to bring this idea to the world. So if we only perform, then our performance suffers. What's the alternative to the performing again? I think you tapped. Yes. The alternative is what I call the learning zone. So if you think about, for example, sports, say that you're playing sports, you're playing a championship final. This is a time to perform. You're doing what you know how to do best. You're trying to minimize mistakes. All you care about is winning that game. So if you are, for example, having, you're playing tennis, you're having trouble with

your top spin serve, you're going to avoid that move during that match. But then after the match, you go to your coach and say, coach, I have to work on my top spin serve. So it's a very different activity and area of focus than what we do during the game. And what we often do in work and life is that we're always just playing the game, just doing the best that we know how, trying to minimize mistakes. And that leads to stagnation. We have to do something different than that in order to get better. That, and is it possible that sometimes, you know, I've been known to, you know, do things a certain way, especially as an entrepreneur, you kind of operate from a toolbox and sometimes stuff,

stuff stops working. And you think, you know, sometimes it's you, but maybe you need to learn something new, or maybe you need to adjust your game. Your game is off or something. Maybe, you know, there's also performance systems that we want to put in place of what works. We want to put that in autopilot, right? And so we need to be mindful about what is working and how do we make that kind of automatic as individuals and as teams. And then what am I going to be working on to get better? We can't be working on everything to get better at the same time. So yes, both are really important in performance and learning are both really important. We have to be mindful about how we engage in each. So it's important to have a balance and constantly educating yourself and you know i was i was

listening to an audiobook last night i don't remember which one but they were talking about how a famous batter uh would uh videotape like all sorts of uh batting uh players and you know this is back in the day of vcrs but they would videotape and he would watch like just endless hours of people practicing batting and himself batting. And so he was clearly going through some sort of learning mindset when he wasn't a bat. So video is so great. And so for the great kind of sports teams and athletes,

they watch video of their games afterwards to figure out what I do well, what could I do differently. But this can also be something that we apply in our work and life. There's a company I talk about in the book called Clear Choice Dental. They do implants, dental implants. do is they provide videos in all of their consult rooms so that when their staff are interacting with patients if the patients consent to it the staff can watch the video later and think about okay i was working on this particular part of the meeting you know how did that go and they can also if they want they can share the feedback with colleagues or with coaches to get feedback on it and video one of the things that they say is that video always tells the truth you know when somebody's giving you feedback sometimes you can say this is not true or they don't really know me or they didn't see it the way I saw it. But when you're watching yourself on video, you're seeing the truth. There you go.

And so you've targeted the book to not only personal performance or personal success, but also like teams for business, et cetera, et cetera, that can be used for both. Absolutely. So in order for us to be motivated and effective learners, a couple of things need to be true. One is we need to believe that we can change and learn. That's what we call a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset, which is when we think that we're natural set things. So that's the belief part. Second is how to grow and improve. We have to understand the distinction between the learning zone and the performance zone, how to balance the two and how to integrate them. Now, third, we have to have a purpose, right? We need to have a reason why we want to work hard in the performance zone and the learning zone.

And the fourth thing is we need to feel like we're part of a learning community because the people around us, they influence us so much, right? And so we can't have the belief that we can change and have great learning zone strategies and systems if the people around us are not interested in learning as well and providing feedback we can learn from. So the working on creating learning teams and learning organizations goes hand in hand with creating learning individuals and advancing ourselves as individuals. Because when we collaborate, when we bring more brains together, we can both learn and perform better. There you go.

And I totally agree with that. Years ago, before I really got successful in my companies, I read the book, The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. And an organization, you brought up how, you know, if an organization learns, they can perform better and how teams can perform better if they're learning. And I suppose this is why a lot of companies, you know, they hire speakers, they bring them in, they, you know, they're doing, you know, they'll do like retreats and other sort of workshops and stuff and seminars they might send people on because you constantly want to be learning and improving your game. And, you know, I was talking, someone who's on the show, I think last week we were talking about the topic of leadership. I don't think it's gone public yet.

It's on hold for the book release. And we talked about how they were kind of joking. They're like, oh yeah, we did another book on leadership. And I was like, you know, I read a lot of books on leadership and business and sometimes they are redundant, but sometimes there's that little thing that you'll find that it's like something new or it's a different spin that an author will provide in an angle. And you're like, oh, I didn't see things from that angle. That makes more sense.

It connects more dots. Yeah. The mental models that we have in our mind are so powerful and creating those shared mental models, kind of creating the framing that's going to help us figure out how we want to behave with each other. So, for example, a leader might solicit feedback to model the way, right? Because if everybody's soliciting feedback, we're getting tons of great information we can learn from, we can accelerate, and we can achieve higher results. So if the leader starts doing that so that other people solicit feedback too, other people might interpret that as,

oh, this person is not confident or is not competent. That's why they're soliciting feedback, because they have an idea of feedback that, you know, the people who solicit feedback are people who are not competent or not confident or is not competent. That's why they're soliciting feedback because they have, they have an idea of feedback that, you know, the people who solicit feedback are people who are not competent or not confident. So along with the behaviors, we also have to frame and build the mental models of no feedback is something that Olympic gold medalists do to get even better the next day. That's what we all want to be doing and why. And so that our behavior matches kind of what it is that we're trying to do. Most definitely. I mean, anybody I know that's really successful, especially on a, you know, an athletic performance basis. And I suppose, you know, in business, we give ourselves

numbers and stats and, and results, you know, revenue and all that to try and give us some sort of feedback. But I think personally, you're right, we need a lot of feedback. I try and read 100 books a year. This is my first year trying to read 100 books. But I think personally you're right. We need a lot of feedback. I try and read a hundred books a year. Uh, this is my first year trying to read a hundred books. So I'm just shooting for a hundred and I think we're on track pretty good, but constantly learning. You see people like Bill Gates.

I'm always stunned. Like I saw Bill Gates on a boat, uh, a little while ago and he had a book with him, like a physical book. He was reading on the boat and I've been on a boat. So I'm like, that's gotta be a little hard to do,

but that's how committed and it's probably going to get wet on the boat and i've been on a boat so i'm like that's gotta be a little hard to do but that's how committed and it's probably gonna get wet on the boat um but i was like that's pretty cool he's that committed to reading books and expanding his mind and and and last time i checked he's got a couple bucks so you know i mean he he doesn't have to read if he doesn't want to he's probably going to be okay paying the bills or at least you know for the next month or two i think it's gonna be okay yeah you know or at least, you know, for the next month or two. I think it's going to be okay. Yeah. You know, but the thing is, and what I think Bill Gates realizes is that the learning zone, when we combine these two zones, we don't only change the destination, we also change the journey. So, you know, he already has everything he needs, but if he stops learning, life is going to be a lot more boring than if he continues to explore and discover and be amazed with the awe that is true in the world.

And so that's what the last chapter of the book is about, is about how this is a process that makes life and work better. It's not just getting higher results. There you go. And in the book, you talk about growing your skill level and output simultaneously for the long term. You want to give us a little bit more depth on that? Sure. So, you know, like somebody like a batter that you talked about, baseball batter, they have the privilege of spending a couple hours every day if they want to, engaging in the learning zone, in deliberate practice, in watching videos, for example, or doing things. Most of us, we're really busy. We have so much to do. And so we might not have the benefit of, okay, I'm going to spend 30 minutes working on X. And so the biggest opportunity for most of us is to change the way

we get things done so that we do it in a way that's also going to lead to improvement, so that we're both getting things done and getting better and learning at the same time. So that means it's not, we can't do that if we're doing the same thing every day in the same way, right? We have to change something in order to try whether that works better or not. We have to ask questions. We have to solicit feedback. When mistakes happen, we don't just brush them under the rug. We have to think about them and think about what can I learn from this? What can I do differently going forward? And so when we get things done in that way, which I call instead of learning by doing, because I don't think we just learn if we just do, I call it learning while doing. And that means we need to be deliberate

about how we engage in both zones together. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there

at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. Now you talk about how to identify how and when to unlock the power of mistakes. Let's delve into that a little bit because I think that plays into what you're saying. How do I identify it? Like, let's say, you know, I'm not maybe happy with my

business prospects, or maybe I don't know some things that might help me move from, I don't work for anybody, so I don't know what people think in this space, where maybe I'm a job X, and I want to maybe move up the corporate ladder, maybe i need to expand maybe my knowledge could be an mba or uh maybe a master's degree or maybe some sort of specific thing how to be a better ceo or something that can get me to that next level um how do i identify what those things are or or what can really help me or is it more necessarily about internal tuning like my personal mindset my personal attitudes my personal axioms of how i behave and the way i look at things well there's a lot there so um first a couple things you mentioned when somebody wants to progress in

their career right uh sometimes people see that as just a performance goal. My goal is to get a promotion. And so therefore, you talked about getting an MBA as an example. Therefore, what I need is to get an MBA. So what I need is a piece of paper that says that I have an MBA. That's not how you spoke about it. You said, I have to increase my knowledge. So let me go get an MBA. Those are two different ways to think about it. The credential, the credential, I need to get a stamp. And which is I think school teaches us that it's just about grades and getting the stamp and the diploma rather than the learning. Right. But you talked about something that I think is really important for everybody to keep in mind, which is how do I grow my skills, not just the credentials? And then to your point,

what skills do I need to work on? And so in terms of what skills we need to work on, feedback is so important for us to be kind of getting information about from the people we work with, from our customers, from our boss, from the people that report to us, getting information about what we're doing that's helpful and getting information about what is not or what could be more helpful, right? And then once we get all that information, then we can make assessments about what we want to work on and then how we go about it. So that's part of the answer to your question. I can address other parts, but that's kind of a big loaded question. I threw a few different parts there. So, you know, one thing you identify too in your book is how to integrate learning into daily habits that stick.

I can hear people saying, you know, hey, I'm stuck in performance mode because, you know, I'm not at home, you know, taking care of the kids and the spouses. You know, I'm at work and, you know, I don't have time to and the spouses uh you know i'm at work and you know i don't have time to learn how do i fit all that in yeah so time is the biggest there's two biggest challenge that people voice when engaging in the learning zone one is time and the other one is fear that they feel like other people will think less of them if they if they don't make do things flawlessly if they make mistakes so with regards to time um the so the the best way to handle the time thing is to change the way we get things done rather than devote blocks of time to learning right so a couple you thought you brought about habits the question of habits a couple of habits that don't take any time and they're really, really quick. One that I think is super, super powerful is just reminding yourself every morning of what you're working to improve. And so when I every morning I review a document that tells me it reminds me like what are my highest strategic priorities? What am I trying to accomplish? Identify what I'm going to try to do today.

What are my goals for today? And one of those things that I'm reminding myself on is what am I working on? Because then I am priming a growth mindset. I am priming the learning zone and I am on the lookout for opportunities to improve at that thing as I go about my day. So that's, for example, a very simple, quick habit. Another quick habit is just soliciting feedback, just asking for feedback all the time. That doesn't take time and it's super, super powerful. In meetings, kind of what is in the agenda?

Do we have an agenda item that is about sharing what we're learning or what questions we have for each other? If we change the agenda, we change the conversation. So those are some of the things that people can do. But thinking about, sometimes people think about learning as a reactive thing. You know, if you make a mistake, then you need to learn from that mistake. And the greatest, most powerful learning is when we do it proactively, when we are thinking, I am changing myself every day. And this is a system and the habit that i have in order to do that there you go uh you know i one of the ways i consume and learn more

is i take advantage of of technically i don't know you call it downtime so i play audiobooks when i'm in the car anytime i go for a drive in the car and usually it's usually the gym, I play audio books and then the gym, I play audio books. Uh, and I can usually cram in, you know, I usually listen to him fairly fast. Um, sometimes I'll listen to him around the house if I'm between stuff and nothing's going on. I try not to get caught up in the news and Twitters and the stuff, although it's, you know, it's good to follow that to kind of go, what's going on in the world today. Um, but, uh, you know, trying to do that. And then I started another thing recently, a couple of months ago where in the mornings before I turn on my computers, I go make my coffee and I go sit in the sun and I get my 20 minutes of vitamin D soak, if you will. And, uh, during

that time, I'll, uh, either sit quietly and peacefully and just kind of enjoy my two ducks, my huskies, and kind of just have a little bit of gratitude session. Just kind of think about whatever's going on and just try and maintain some peace. Or I'll read Seneca or some other Stoic, Emerson. I'll read Marcus Aurelius um and that kind of kind of helps put me in a place to approach the uh to approach my life to where i don't feel getting whipped around it's kind of a mindset set down where i set a frame that i have control before i turn on my computers and i get lost in all the madness that seems to really give me a base to work from and not only learning and educating myself but just just taking that little

bit of time to get centered and present. Awesome. I love that, Chris. And I do something similar. The first thing I do every morning when I'm still in bed, and this is what I consider my most important habit, is I just give thanks. I give thanks for life, love, health, and peace. Those things that are in my life and in the world, because if I didn't do that, my mind would go, yeah, to that Twitter and news that are a lot of negative things, right? I would be thinking about the hate and the war and the disease. And so being for what is, and the amazing thing that life is, um, and the most important things, putting things in perspective that sets me up for the day. And then the other thing that you, that you brought up is kind of the proactive piece is that,

that, that document that I review every morning, I do it before I check email or the social media or, or put my phone off of airplane mode because then i'm identifying how i want to live proactively right and you know responding to things that come my way there you go yeah it it it being able to you know take time recognize downtime because i think everyone you know they they commute or maybe there's some time that they're doing stuff and so many people people you, you look at like, I have friends and they'll post about how many movies they watch on Netflix or whatever.

And I'm like, Jesus, you have a lot of time on your, on your hands, man. Like listen to an audio book. Like the car is great. Like I can consume a lot of an audio book driving back and forth and doing

things in the car. And it actually brings a little bit of peace and mental state to, you know, whatever sort of BS is on the road and some idiots driving around. What have we touched on you want to tease out about your book? Sure. You know, one thing that connects to what you were just saying, and you said a little like just before, is that I do very similar things to what you do in terms of audio books and listening to, you know to your podcast or other podcasts.

But sometimes my brain feels like it's going to explode. And like what I want is just to like have downtime or let my mind wander. So rest is also really important. Play, connection. You know, there are other things that are important in life um but when when we connect with the amazing thing that learning is then that drive can be that much more enjoyable like you're saying because you're listening to that audiobook that's just awesome uh so that's that's one you also uh earlier talked about mistakes and or ask about mistakes mistakes some some people kind of present mistakes as mistakes are great because we can learn from them.

But really, sometimes mistakes are really bad. Like they create bad consequences. We want to avoid them. They decrease our performance. And so chapter five of the book is about different kinds of mistakes and what kinds of mistakes we want to do more of and how, which is going to go in beyond what we know and trying new things, experimenting, doing things that may or may not work. I call those stretch mistakes. We want to do a lot of those. Avoiding high stakes mistakes, which are mistakes that could have huge consequences of trying to minimize those. Really treasuring aha moment mistakes, which is when we are doing something and we're

surprised and we realize it was the wrong thing to do. That's an amazing, we can't proactively create aha moment mistakes, but when they happen, we need to notice them and treasure them and learn from them. And then there's sloppy mistakes, which are mistakes of things that we already know how to do the thing we should have known better. And usually when we think about why did I do this sloppy mistake? We often think about how to change our systems and habits to foster more focus and trying to not be thinking about two things at the same time.

Because you talked about driving while listening to an audio book. That's a wonderful thing, two things to do at the same time, which is wonderful. That works because you're driving, as you know, relatively non-consciously. It doesn't require a lot of attention. But a lot of people might try to join a meeting online while checking email or while checking social media. And those are two

conversations that the brain just can't have two conversations in parallel. And so we think that we're getting two things done at the same time, but we're not. We are not. And our IQ literally decreases near zero at that point. So thinking about and so when we are trying to multitask like that, trying to do two conscious things at once, we generate a lot of sloppy mistakes. And so but being clear about what are the different types of mistakes and how can we learn from them best? There you go. So basically learn from your mistakes.

Don't beat yourself up so much. I'm trying to think of something I read in the Stoicism recently about this, but basically learn from your mistakes. Go, hey, I screwed up. How can I make this better? And mistakes are the greatest learning lesson I think anyone can have in your life if you take them as something you learn from, whether it's personal or business, right? Absolutely.

You know, the mistakes are actually the number one way that we can learn, especially after we are about 25 years old. Like when we're before 25 years old, the neuroplasticity of our brain. So how the brain changes happens not just from mistakes, but also from experience. So if we just walk around and listen to somebody and see something, our brain is literally reconfiguring when we're kids. But when we turn about 25 years old, the neuroplasticity starts working differently. And the most effective way that it works is when we make a prediction and that prediction turns out not to be true. So when we make mistakes, that's the most effective way to become better and smarter as adults. There you go.

Learning from your mistakes, a lot of people shun from them or they ignore them. They're like, let's pretend like that didn't happen. And instead, you know, doing that. And so basically turning the power of mindset into action. Anything more we want to tease on the book before we go? Absolutely. So part one is about these ideas, these frameworks, and how to drive individual growth as individuals. Part two of the book is about teams and organizations. How do we build amazing learning teams and performing teams? And how do we create systems in organizations so that learning and performing is the easy default? And then part three of the book is about how do we do, how do we perform? What systems do we set up in place to perform at our best and how this process makes life and work better

not only leads us to better outcomes but also changes the journey there you go the performance paradox turning the power of mindset into action and so it goes it goes kind of hand in hand with the idea of a growth mindset right that belief that we can change this is about how to change and how to grow and the difference between the learning zone and the performance zone. How can we make those part of our lives and our work? There you go. It's all about the mindset you apply to it. I love it. This is going to be great for people to look at and kind of understand the difference because we all get stuck in performance mode. I mean, even I do. Okay, wake up, do the thing, do the dancing monkey thing for everybody,

entertain, blah, blah, blah. Go to bed, wake up, do it again. And, you know, if it wasn't for the fact that I had this habit of just turning on the audio books and then I go to the gym and, you know, I'm usually at the gym for an hour or two. And so I can sit and listen to the audio book. I can even sit in the sauna or jacuzzi. I'll put the phone outside of the sauna and I've got some old earplugs.

I don't care if they get fried in the sauna. So I'll listen to those. So I try and just use any sort of downtime I can. Sometimes if I'm making a meal, I'll play an audio book. I've just always got it on the ready. And so there you go. And people should do that with your book as well. What's that? People should do that with your book as well. What's that?

People should do that with your book as well. Listen to the audio book and the play. Thank you. Well, you know, but it's obvious to any listener of your podcast that you love to learn and it's something that you champion on all your episodes. You're talking about how important it is to be learning all the time. So thank you for that because we hear that and it inspires us to learn. And you're also giving us a ton of awesome content to learn from. So thank you for that because we hear that and it inspires us to learn and you're also giving us a ton of awesome content to learn from so thank you for all you do there you go thank you go learn damn it that's the name of the next podcast more learning we're going to spell it like something weird uh we'll misspell on purpose do more learning uh anyway it's learning right

it's like sometimes so learning first has like a bad rap because we in school we learn that learning is irrelevant it sucks it's useless and so i think for me school did more damage than than anything right but it's learning for whatever we care about and it's thinking about what matters most to each of us and how can we continue to foster that and get better at that whether it's, connection with other people, contribution, whatever we care about, how can we do more of that and do more of it over our lives? There you go. You know, I wrote a letter to my,

my niece and nephew when they were graduating high school. And I said, I said a few things. I had set myself down and said, what lifeless is when I want to try and impart to a bunch of teenagers who don't give a shit what I say? And it was kind of a nice exercise for me, self-reflective. What do they say? The teacher learns more from the students. And so I'm sure they appreciate it.

They're good kids. But I wrote them and I said, listen, there's three things in life that are really important. And take time to look around as you go through life because it's a quick ride. It's quicker than you think it'll be. But I said, there's three things. There's the things you know. There's things you know you know.

There's the things you know you don't know. And there are things that you don't know that you don't know. And that third thing is one of the most important damn things, because it will be the train that comes through that tunnel. When you think there's a bright light coming, uh, it will be the thing that always gets you, you know, that's the stuff you really want to delve into. And you want to, you want to do the stuff you know, you don't know, maybe, you know, educate yourself on that, but trying to expand your mind to figure out what don't I know that I should know? And then I know that I don't know, I don't know, maybe learning physics is cool.

I've learned a lot of stuff that you didn't know would be applied for something else. Steve Jobs learned about topography in college. Never thought he would use it. He loved it. Turns out it was one of the foundational successes and important things for the Mac when he launched it. He had no idea at the time that, you know, it would be utilized in that way or be so important. So, you know, people need to keep that in mind. I think that's what your book speaks to in this mindset of trying to learn from mistakes,

but also trying to learn about what you don't know. Absolutely. Exploring when we connected. So, you know, first, so when we connect the disconnected, you know, we, we, we innovate. So that's one reason to explore the distant and the things that we've never been exposed to before, but also cause it's, it's fun. I mean, it's amazing to, to, to learn things that, that, that we've never been exposed to. There's also in that category, there's a lot of blind spots, right? Things that we're doing that are creating harm

in other people around us, for example, just as one example. And so in discovering what those things are, we can make life better for ourselves and others. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show, Eduardo. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Sure.

I'm at briceño.com, B-R-I-C-E-N-O. And I'm also very active on LinkedIn, Eduardo Briceño. Thanks for coming on again. Thanks, Chris. This is great. There you go. Thanks for my audience for tuning in. Go to wherever fine books are sold, order up the performance paradox,

turning the power of mindset into action available September 5th, 2023. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.