The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 198: Ian Robertson - The Winner Effect AND How Stress Can Make You Better

Episode Date: April 2, 2017

Episode 198: Ian Robertson - The Winner Effect AND How Stress Can Make You Better Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "Success breeds success.  The mere act of winning makes it more likely you'll win again." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Common themes of leaders who sustain excellence: Ability to set goals -- Not too big but not too easy Self belief -- Self Confidence Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic motivation There will always be someone better than you.  The focus should be on improving your own self Why Elon Musk and Steve Jobs transcend the norms "A lot of people suffered in Steve Jobs desire to build those products" Steve and Elon are anomalies, not the norm "To be #1 in the industry is NOT a good goal" What happens to lottery winners a year later? -- "Ashes in your mouth" How the brain is complex What it means to be a bad dad -- Pablo Picasso "Success conveys power... Power changes your brain.  It creates narcissism" Bad Dad's "hide the ladder."  They get up the tree, then do not show others how they got there. "Keep a ladder down for others" "They must see that it's not God Like... That they can do it" Study: Kids -- Those who believe they can do better and influence their IQ, do better in school. With fixed mindset, failure hurts the ego How can stress make you stronger? Tiger Woods example -- Being nervous before a competition is a good thing (with the right mindset) If you have a big presentation and you say to yourself, "I'm nervous." You'll do worse than if you say "I'm really excited." Adopting a challenge mindset, visualizing the reward "Create a challenge mindset" If you're nervous, don't say "I feel calm." That's not true and your brain knows it.  Instead, say "I'm excited."  Use that energy for good. Using the Joe Buck "So What" method -- It can help with irrational fear of disapproval Can too much happiness be bad for you? -- Yes, over protecting our children can be bad.  They need to experience adversity. "Leaders by definition have to have a vision." "Success conveys power... Power changes your brain." Continue Learning: Follow Ian on Twitter: @ihrobertson Read: The Winner Effect Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Ian Robertson on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by FreshBooks: FreshBooks is offering a 30 day, unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to FreshBooks.com/Learning and enter LEARNING LEADER in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section.

I think you're right. I do believe that, Ryan. You see, when, you know, Steve Jobs was in a, he grew up in a particular time when technology was just changing. And of course, he was an instrument of changing that technology as well. But there was a unique, every individual in the universe is completely unique. The brain is so complex. It's the most complex entity they know in universe. and the brain is also plastic, it's shaped by experience. And that combination of the complexity of the brain that's constantly changing and the uniqueness of the experiences people have, that guarantees that every single human brain is absolutely unique. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here.

My featured leader tonight is Ian Robertson. He's a clinical psychologist and neuroscientists with a unique ability to apply his research to the pressures of everyday life. His previous books called Mind Sculpture, The Mind's Eye, and my personal favorite, The Winner Effect. They've been translated in many languages. He's widely recognized as one of the world's leading researchers in neuro psychology. So smart. What a fun thought-provoking conversation.

A few of the topics we got into, why we should focus on intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. then how success can convey power and the impact that has on your brain, followed by how stress can make us stronger if we create the proper mindset. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Ian Robertson. Ian, thank you so much for being here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you, Ryan. It's pleasure to be here. Question.

You have done a great job of studying people who, are winners, why they win, the neuroscience of success and failure in that regard. And I'm curious from your perspective, when you look at the people who have sustained excellence, those winners in the world, what are some of the common themes they all share? I'd say that probably the most important one is the ability to set goals for yourself that are, that challenge you, but are not, you, who are neither two, big, no, too difficult, not too easy, that they're constantly setting goals for themselves. And in setting a goal for yourself, when you achieve that goal, that's a success experience.

And from my research, I know that there's something called the winner effect, which applies across all species, which means that if you win a competition, let's call that having success in achieving a goal, you're more than. likely to win a subsequent competition, in other words, to achieve success the next time. So the bottom line is success, breed success. That's a biological fact in nature. And so one of the best ways of achieving success is by having very, very clear and specific goals for yourself and achieving, achieving them. And the partner of that is a certain degree of self-belief and self-confidence to actually go for goals.

But actually, that confidence follows on from achieving goals. So that's probably secondary. The critical thing is goals and achieving them. I noticed you talked about that in your book, The Winner Effect. I believe it was around page 52, success, breed success, talking about Mike Tyson, for example, that he would fight weaker opponents in his return from jail to build his confidence. Can you share more about maybe other examples or ways that we could implement this into our lives to when you think of success, breeding success? Well, yeah, it wasn't just Mike Tyson.

The, you know, the U.S. boxing world has known about this phenomenon of you always try and get your champ, would-be champ to have a couple, a few matches against the so-called tomato cans. that is opponents who they're destined to beat because they're either older or they're weaker or they're just not as good. But the mere act of winning a contest actually makes it more likely you'll win a subsequent one. So they know that that act of winning actually has the effect of increasing subsequent chances of winning against the really big opponent like Mike Tyson when he finally fought for. rang Bruno and retook the World Championship from him. And that's, you know, the mechanism there is that actually winning actually changes your brain a little bit. And winning actually increases the receptors in the brain for critical hormones linked to first motivation and secondly aggression.

So the next time you're in a contest, you generate the hormone testosterone to prepare for the contest. and that has a bigger effect on your brain because there are more receiving stations for it. So that's the biological, the likely biological mechanism for the winner effect. But in our own daily, daily lives, it's important to realize that, you know, life is a bit of a competition.

And so we can get into a frame of mind where we want to always do better than the next person. That's probably a lesson. successful strategy than doing better than we did the last time ourselves. So that's a difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is where you want to be number one or you want to always be top. But the problem with that is there's always going to be someone better than you. So you're never going to be guaranteed to have the winner effect.

Whereas if you set your own goal vis-a-vis your own standards and your own aims, for instance, say in athletics, if your aim is not necessarily to come first in the race, but to improve your time, your own personal best, that's a, that goal is, that's a more guaranteed way of getting that biological boost of success that comes from the winner effect. So winning against your own standards is a more stable way of building the brain circuits associated with success. What about if you contrast? of this, and I'm thinking of people like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs who set what some would say

these moonshot goals or Steve Jobs had the reality distortion field, some would call it, where they would set these insane dates to have a rocket ready or an electric car ready or an iPhone ready that they themselves may not have even believed was possible. But they felt if I set these insane stretch goals, even if we come up a little bit short, we're still going to be far better than if we just set medium-sized goals. How do you, you know, if you look at their work versus your research, there seems to be some, a conflict there? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, with Elon Musk and for every Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, there are a thousand people that have set moonshot goals for themselves and, you know, have been frustrated and disappointed. with life. Yes, you know, in all of these, none of these laws are absolute or guaranteed. And there are remarkable personalities and remarkable attributes. I guess Steve Jobs had this remarkable combination. He wasn't a great technician, but he had a wonderful insight into design and had this vision of the beauty that I mean, I personally use, you know, Apple Mac products and I have a Mac Air here and I actually find it a beautiful object.

And that beauty was because he had a vision for beauty. He really had a vision and, you know, a lot of people suffered in his desire to implement that vision. Elon Musk is clearly an outstanding intellect, you know, a highly intelligent person, a product. a prodigy. So both of them in their way were geniuses with a vision. But most of us are not geniuses. That's the challenge. So what I would say this is, generally in life, I think that the problem is not getting

what you want. It's knowing what you want. And knowing what you want, if you're driven by a real, a passionate vision for something, that is an incredibly motivating, life-enhancing thing to have. But I do believe that both for Steve Jobs and for Elon Musk,

that wasn't, you know, Steve Jobs didn't want to be the richest guy in the world. He didn't want to be number one in Forbes or whatever. He wanted his biggest goal, as I understand it from reading his biography, was in producing something of beauty of just this incredible vision he had for how technology should be

and that is different in some ways that's almost like a that's almost like the overarching vision, the thing that gives you that sense of excitement in your stomach when you wake up in the morning but you know and I think that's

a treasure that anyone who manages to find it and life should really cherish and nurture. But then that's never enough. You need to find your Wozniak colleague, and you need to set goals for, you know, we will produce X by such and such a time. So I don't believe either of these people did not also have very, very clear sub-goals.

So it's not that you mustn't have the big picture, big, ambitious goals, but I would say they have to be, they really should be intrinsic. if they're extrinsic, if they're about being number one, that's more likely to turn to ashes in your mouth if by any chance you ever achieve it. But secondly, you're very unlikely to achieve extrinsic goals

because the emotional and motivational and cognitive energy that comes from having that kind of life-enhancing vision for what you want to achieve, without that energy, if you like, you probably won't achieve it. What was that phrase? used. Did you say ashes in your mouth? Yes, turn to ashes. Yeah. You know, I remember seeing in my book, the stress test, which I hope we can have a chance to talk about later. Yeah. I, I remember this man I saw as a patient many years ago, and he was, he was, he was something like 28, 29. And for his,

you know, he'd come from a relatively poor background and he left school at 16. And, but he had managed to, He developed a bar business, and he worked really long hours and really hard. And his driving goal, his kind of Steve Jobs goal was he wanted to be a millionaire by the time he was 30. Now, being a millionaire these days is different from what it was 30 years ago. So that was a big goal. And here he was at age 29. And I think he was clearly, he may have achieved his goal. He knew he was going to be a millionaire by the time he was 30.

But he was drinking too much and he was depressed, and he didn't know why he was depressed. And it was because this was an external goal. This was what we call an extrinsic goal. It wasn't a goal that was equivalent to achieving something that other people would also find great. This was a rather narrow and rather vulnerable goal to achieve, where when you achieve it, you're likely to think, oh, what now, so what? And the evidence is for, say, people winning lotteries. We know now that people who win even huge amounts of money in a lottery,

a year after the lottery win, in terms of their day-to-day life enjoyment, there's no higher than people who a year before were spinaily injured and are paralyzed. So money is a particular going for money for its own sake is a particularly extrinsic goal that turns to ash is very likely to turn to ashes in your mouth. Whereas, you know, being someone who wants to create a great new product who has a vision for changing the market in some area, that's a more robust goal. of the type that Steve Jobs or Elon Musk had.

Do you think the, maybe the, I don't know if this is the right word, but the glamorization of Steve Jobs has actually hurt, hurt us as a whole because then you've got every leader who read about how hard he was on his people and those leaders who read about it are not nearly at the intelligence slash genius level of Steve Jobs. feel like they need to be this tough reality distortion type leader. And then they, they, the way they manage people, uh, they basically, they bring all the bad qualities of Steve Jobs and none of the good. Do you think that could potentially as has had a negative effect on our leaders?

I think you're right. I do believe that, Ryan. You see, when, you know, Steve Jobs wasn't a, he grew up in a particular time. when technology was just changing. And of course, he was an instrument of changing that technology as well. But there was a unique, every individual in the universe is completely unique. The brain is so complex. It's the most complex entity in the own universe.

And the brain is also plastic. It's shaped by experience. And that combination of the complexity of the brain that's constantly changing and the uniqueness of the experiences people have, that guarantees that every single human brain is absolutely unique. And so it's difficult to, you can't really be sure of reproducing a particularly unique individual who's behaved in an unusual way, shall we say, a way that I can't think of any other great innovators and leaders who have behaved in quite the way that Steve Jobs did.

Now, I believe Elon Musk may have a similarly, tough style with his employees. But it's very, very, you have to be very careful before generalizing from extreme outliers. For every Steve Jobs, there is someone who has generated a really solid, excellent company that's doing really, really good work and possibly quite innovative, who don't have that kind of culture, that severe culture. And I guess you might want to think of Google. I don't know in detail about Google,

but that doesn't seem to have that kind of culture from its leadership, and yet it's been massively successful. And similarly, you know, similarly, now Tim Cook, I guess, and Apple has been criticized for not producing the kind of innovations that Steve Jobs has. But then, you know, he is not benefiting from that turning point in technology history in which Steve Jobs inhabited.

So it's very, very difficult to compare someone when the historical times are so different. Another example that you use, a couple examples are when it comes to the children of ultra-successful people. Pablo Picasso is used as an example, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and maybe you could describe the differences

in how a parent, I think a lot of people, Ian, who listen to this show, they're more affluent, they're thoughtful, their leaders, their learners. And so they're more apt to be more successful, probably be higher earners. And so they think about the effect this is going to have on their kids and how they could not potentially let, you know, if we can all provide everything for our kids, we think a lot about, well, how do we still develop grit? how do we develop resilience in our children, despite the fact that maybe we're able to provide financially everything they could ever want and need.

And so you talked about how Pachaso just did such a terrible job of this and how Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are working to not let this happen to their kids. Maybe you could share a little bit deeper when it comes to the difference between solid parenting when you're ultra successful versus the opposite. it. Yeah, so one of the great risks of being successful as a parent, and one of the great risks of success generally is success conveys power, particularly financial success gives you a sense of power. Power changes your brain physically and changes the way you think and feel. and one of the things it does is to, in extreme forms it creates fosters narcissism

and where you know you really become excessively high self-esteem where you take personal credit for all your success, which is understandable in a way. So some very successful business people really do come to believe and successful politicians as well successful artists successful celebrities

who are by definition successful they come to believe that they are special even godlike that's gone back thousands of years Julius Caesar had himself deified

became a demigod when he was still alive, and J. Paul Getty firmly believed that he was a reincarnation of the emperor Hadrian. So great success creates this hunger in people to believe that it is something God-given, something so special in them that has made them successful. They want to feel utterly unique.

And what they hate to think is that there are ordinary factors playing out in the success. Like, you know, for every successful business person, you know, there's a hundred business failures who were equally talented, who were equally hardworking, who were equally innovative, but just chance plays out in the market so much, just having your idea at the right time at the right place. I mean, I'm sure anyone who's had a failed business listing here will recognize this, that success is not necessarily the reward of virtue. There's so much randomness. But there's also other factors like sheer, sheer hard work persisting through failure. And yes,

of course, there's talent as well. But what you have to be careful of is that you don't personalize your success too much and to the point that you start to feel that the finger of God is pointing at you. Because if you do succumb to that kind of narcissism, then that has a terribly potentially damaging effect on your children. Why? Because if they see, if they join with this vision that somehow, you know, God has anointed you. You're so special and this is what Picasso felt. He, in fact, His staff referred to him as he called him the son, and he called himself El Ray, the king. And he regarded himself as this deity almost.

And his poor son, Paolo, he just felt this was an unattainable goal. He was an artist himself. But his goals, he could never say goals for himself, because in comparison to this deity that he was constantly interacting with, everything he did seemed paltry and, earthbound and useless. And this phenomenon that very successful people have of a kind of narcissistic self-preoccupation and incredible smugness about their success, that can do what I call in the book the

winner effect. I call hiding the ladder. They hide the ladder of mundane chance randomness in business, persist through failure, try and try again, sheer hard work, sheer luck, all of these things which are inevitably are part of success. If they are concealed because of the narcissism of the very successful person, then that can hugely demotivate the children of successful people. And, you know, Bill Gates has recognized this, I'm assuming, I don't know in detail,

but he really he gave his, you know, he didn't leave his children to expect a huge amount of money. Now, it was big by ordinary people's standards, but compared to his fortune, it was very small. And Warren Buffett has, I believe, maintained a very modest lifestyle, not this grandiose palace lifestyle that magnates is part of the trappings of magnets who start to believe in their own kingly great or queenly greatness. And so it's very successful people have to be careful that they let, keep a ladder, keep a ladder down for their children. So their children don't feel, I can never aspire to that because he or she is so special.

This is some God-given talent that they have or abilities that they have. And if it's God given, then, you know, there's nothing I can do to achieve that. And so that's why it's not at all uncommon to have offspring of very successful people who themselves, whose lives don't go that well at all themselves. And you also write about the fact that there's a study of kids, those who believe they can influence IQ did better in school than those who thought IQ is static, which goes hand in hand with Carol Dweck's work in the book, mindset, but basically having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. There are leaders out there who, whether they believe they have it all figured out and that there's nothing more to learn, which is insane to me, obviously, knowing the title of the show.

And then there are those who have a growth mindset who know they will never have it all figured out and are in this constant journey, this striving up the mountain to acquire and gain knowledge and to implement so they can better execute. And it was interesting that you wrote about this in relation to kids too and building this framework of a mindset in children to believe that they can influence their IQ for them to do better. Yes. And that's for sure. That's, you know, Carl Decks Dweck's work has been fantastic in that. And she showed that, you know, the theories we hold about our own abilities, about what the origins of our own abilities or our own personality or our own personality or our.

our own emotional competence. The theories we hold about them affects the extent to which we believe we can control them. And so a fix so if I, one of the worst things you can do to a child is to tell them

they're really bright or they're really clever because that's implicitly conveying to them, giving them a fixed mindset about their intelligence. So that becomes something they have rather than something they do. The evidence is that people, children like that, even though they may be very smart, once they find something difficult in school, they're much more likely to give up if they, you know, if they get marked wrong,

graded wrong in the test on some items, they're less likely to persist through it if they hold a fixed mindset. Why? Because failure comes a threat to their ego. Because they have this notion that they have been endowed with brightness in the way that the magnet feels endowed with success and then any evidence of lack of success or lack of cleverness

becomes a threat to their ego maybe I'm not bright and so they tend to shy away from it and they end up not progressing as well for instance in a subject like math compared to someone who sees their abilities their intelligence or their person

as being an outcome, maybe a bit of genetic endowed capacity, but also a lot to do with persistence and curiosity and hard work and luck and trial and error. Yeah, it's really interesting. I was in the car with one of my daughters yesterday having that conversation. She does quite well in school. And I tried to have the conversation. I do understand why you do well in school. Why do you think you do well in school?

her first and then sharing my thoughts. And it's all around the fact of that we spend time together working hard on her homework, working hard reading, doing all of the online extra credit work, all of that additional work, the repetition is what's delivering the good grades, not the fact that she's just a smart kid. And I think it's it's behooves me as a parent and all parents listening to really have that open dialogue with children to explain and to have conversations about why your children do well or do not do well when it comes to school. Because if it just becomes about the grades and say, wow, you're so smart. And people say it all the time, all the time. Oh, you're so smart

because they see straight A's when they don't realize how damaging that could be for a kid because then they fear not getting straight A's and they fear being creative or trying new things or maybe stretching a little bit and going for the higher math class when they're as they grow up. And I think it's so important to have that open dialogue and to explain why somebody is being successful versus just stating the fact that they're really smart. No, I couldn't agree more with that. Yeah. So, Ian, I'd like to transition to some of your most recent work when you're talking about

stress. And I just took the stress test on your website as well as, And your latest book is titled The Stress says how pressure and performance can make you stronger and sharper. And so I was, you know, looking through it, I have a few bullet points. I'd love to maybe share some of the topics and then you could expand on some of the points in that book. Does that sound good? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah.

So how can stress make us smarter? Well, let me quote. Now, Tiger Woods isn't having such a great time just because of his back injury. but he says the day I'm not nervous when I go out to play is the day I give up so Tiger Woods like all top sports people is a genius of mastering his mind and part of mastering your mind is dealing with the bodily response to being tested in situations. you know, performing where there's a possibility of success or failure. So in such a situation, our body prepares for, if you like, that event by generating what is called the fight or flight system in the body. And that's the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic autonomic nervous system, the peripheral

nervous system of the body, increases hard rate, makes the skin slightly more sweaty. And the reason it does this is to prepare to cool the body in case for either fighting or running away. It takes blood supply away from the internal organs. So that's why your stomach is all a bit tight because it doesn't want to waste energy in digesting and wants to make sure there's a maximum amount of energy given to the muscles. It takes away blood supply from your skin, which is why you might go have a pallor or be pale. It makes your breathing faster because, again, to oxygenate your blood to prepare for this.

And it generates certain chemical hormones, chemical messengers in the body and in the brain, particularly cortisol, which is a hormone that actually temporarily can actually improve mental and physical functioning. And another one called nor epinephrine, which helps your brains, changes what your brain's paying attention to and makes them, in certain dosages, makes your brain different parts of the brain communicate with each other better. So that's the, that whole fight or flight system is, is activated. in any situation where we feel challenged or threatened. And the thing, if we just take the example of the nor epine system, now this is a neurotransmitter in the brain

that any time we see something frightening or interesting or attractive, you will get more of that nor epine generated. And like many, of the brain's chemical messengers, it has an inverted U-shaped function. That is too little in our brain underperforms and too much in our brain underperforms. And there's a sweet spot in the middle where you've optimal brain performance. And a moderate amount of stress, if you like, can take us from having not enough

nor epinephrine up to the sweet spot in the middle where we've got optimal performance. we can actually perform better because the challenge and all this activation of the fight or flight system actually pushes our brain up into a state where it actually pays better attention, thinks faster and remembers better. So that's why moderate amounts of stress can actually improve our performance. But I'd say finally, how do we define stress? stress is defined as where we feel that the demands made upon us exceed our ability to cope with these demands. And that in turn, that gap, if you like, between what we think we can do and what's been expected of us, that also depends on our perceptions. And in the context, so actually we, by the way we conceive of or the way we think about threatening situations,

it's possible to change them from threat into challenge. And if we do that, we can actually control to some extent where we are on that upside down, inverted U-shaped function of nor epinephrine. So we can actually control our brain chemistry by the way we think about situations, such as to produce better performance. You use the example of if somebody says to themselves, Let's say you have a big presentation or a speech, which just happens to me quite often. And you'll say something like, I'm really nervous or anxious.

If you say that to yourself, you're going to perform much worse than if you say, I am really excited about, about this opportunity to get up on stage and give a speech. Talk to me about the science behind saying that to yourself. Yeah. Well, the thing about the beating heart and the sweaty skin and the tight stomach and the dry mouth, if I have these symptoms and I ask you, what emotion am I experiencing? Most people will say anxiety or stress. But I may say to you, no, actually, I've just opened an email which told me I've just won $10,000 in the lottery. So that's excitement.

So actually the bodily symptoms of excitement are exactly the same as the bodily symptoms of anxiety. So how then do we know which emotion we're experiencing? Well, we only know which emotion we're experiencing by context. So it's only because I've opened the envelope and I've seen the email and seen that I've won $10,000. That tells me my mind says, oh, this beating heart and dry mouth must be excitement. not anxiety. So that's an example of us of the context creating the emotion. So one way of us creating our own context is by exactly how you've described it there.

If you're waiting to give a big presentation and you're feeling quite anxious about the outcome of that presentation, if you say to yourself, I feel anxious, you're creating a context that's interpreting these symptoms as anxiety. and that's more likely to tip you over the sweet spot into the far side of the nor epinephrine curve where your brain won't function as well because it's too much nor epinephrine. Whereas if you say to yourself, I feel excited, then your mind is then interpreting that same set of symptoms as something positive. And when you do that, that can actually serve to push your, mind your brain into that sweet spot because you're adopting what's called a challenge mindset.

You're saying, I'm excited. I'm anticipating success here. I am going to transcend these difficulties. I'm visualizing reward the end of it. Whereas when you say I feel anxious, you're anticipating threat. You're anticipating punishment. And therefore you're increasing the anxiety. So that's the challenge might by saying I feel.

excited, you're creating the challenge mindset, you're creating, if you like, the internal mental context to interpret these bodily symptoms as a challenge. And when you say, I feel anxious, you're creating the threat context where you're anticipating punishment. And our brains and our bodies react in fundamental ways to these two different mindsets. And so it is possible to, So saying the words to yourself, if you're standing, waiting for that big challenging presentation, if you say to yourself, I feel calm, that's not going to work with the brain. Because, why? Because the symptoms of feeling calm, that is, you know, slow, heartbeat, dry skin, stomach feels quite normal.

So you have none of the symptoms. So if you say, I feel calm, it's much less easy to trick the brain into an, interpreting these symptoms as ones of calmness because the heart is pumping and you're breathing fast and your skin is sweaty. It's just not a credible jiu-jitsu move, if you like, to reinterpret these bodily symptoms of arousal as calmness as opposed to excitement, whereas excitement and anxiety, they're very, very close to each other. So it's quite easy to trick the brain into interpreting them as excitement rather than anxiety. And if you do that, you're going to get better.

The evidence is you'll get better performance. Why? Because you're nearer the sweet spot of nor epinephrine activation in your brain. This might be kind of out there, Ian, but bear with me. So I was reading a book by Joe Buck. He actually just was the play-by-play announcer of the Super Bowl here in the States. And so he'd say that, at times he'd get nervous about the feedback he would get from people who are viewing his broadcast

and they would speak negatively about him and it would really get him down. And it would bother him a great deal. He writes extensively about this in his most recent book. And I've heard other interviews too. And I'd love to have him on the show, by the way. But in addition to that, so what he did is he got this saying and it's very basic. And I wonder what the science is behind this, if you could add to this. And he actually tattooed it on his body.

And the saying is very basic. and it says, so what? And I actually have implemented this after reading it because it's so unlike me, I think, to say so what to anything. Typically, I'm the opposite to where I'm saying, you know, this is the most important thing in the world. I try to use the, you know, I'm excited instead of I'm nervous. But at times before a big moment, I've said, you know, so what?

Like, what's the worst that's going to happen if I blow this? And in a way, it's calm me down or made me feel better. What do you think to people who would take that approach to big moments? And Joe does this when he does a game. He says, you know what? If people hate me, so what? I'm going to do what I do. It's my broadcast.

I'm going to, you know, it's my stage. So what? And he's actually become much better, more loose. He's funnier. Seems to at times say things that are maybe outrageous, but nothing crazy because he's implemented this. So what? What do you think about that from a science perspective?

Well, I think it's completely compatible with the I feel excited. thing because I feel excited is putting yourself into the challenge mindset where you're anticipating you're anticipating good response to what you're doing a good outcome rewards. So what is you're taking on the threat, the downside. And the greatest stress that human beings, the evidence is the greatest stress that we experience is the negative evaluation of other people. We're a social, we're a social tribal species and being expelled from the group usually in evolutionary times meant death. And so social disapproval and negative evaluation is a great source of stress for us.

And if you're a public figure with millions of people listening to you, it's very, and you're getting some really negative comments, which is pretty normal these days on social media, that can really stress you a lot. because it activates these primitive fears about essentially the awful things that can happen if you're kicked out of the group. But of course, that's irrational because, you know, who are the important people to? The important people to are your family and your immediate colleagues. And, okay, if they start saying bad things about you, yes, then you really have to worry. But if it's someone you don't know a stranger or someone listening to your broadcast saying terrible things about you, so what is the most really excellent way of, if you like, short circuit or breaking that irrational link, that irrational fear of disapproval or negative evaluation by other people, which actually makes you anxious because of irrational fears of really unlikely consequences. that you're going to somehow suffer. And it's really primitive fears of exclusion is what being activated.

So it's really so what is a rather elegant antidote to irrational primal fears of exclusion from the group. And it goes hand in hand with I'm excited. So you activate the challenge system by saying I am excited. And you reduce the power of the threat system by saying so what. how about happiness can too much of it be bad for you yes um so that's why we we shouldn't molly coddle our children the evidence is was that word you used by the way molly molly coddle perhaps that's i love using that's why i love having people from all over the world on this podcast by the way where are you located right now dublin ireland okay yeah all right cool anyway go ahead sorry

Yeah. So overprotecting our children is not a good idea and doing everything for them and, you know, just making sure they have no bad emotional experiences. Because the evidence is that if a child and an adolescent has had little or no adversity in their lives, they will end up more emotionally vulnerable as a young adult. Why is that? Well, It's because they've never had the experience of dealing with failure, with anxiety, with feeling low, with having to deal with a tough situation where maybe where people are not being very nice to them. So you have this rather precious ego that has never ever known or very seldom known the downside of. of failure, of feeling bruised, the ego being bruised, or feeling anxious. But you cannot go through life, never experiencing these emotions, because life is just not like that. So you end up as a 30-year-old working in some big corporation

or working in the real world, and people are not very nice sometimes to you. And you make it a bad evaluation. You may get made redundant. and you may, you know, you just may have tough times. And if you've never in your past life or very seldom had very little experience of the downside like that, these feelings of anxiety and of low mood can really feel alien and terrifying.

So you get kind of fear of fear and fear of negative emotions. And then, you know, the tendency to go and seek professional help and then to feel out of control. Whereas children and adolescents who have had not severe but moderate levels of adversity, they have learned, yeah, sometimes you fail. Yeah, sometimes you're excluded. Yeah, sometimes you know, you feel anxious. But because they've experienced these emotions in the past,

they know from past experience that they don't last. Eventually, you don't feel anxious. forever. You don't feel depressed forever. You know, these things pass. And so, and so, and, and, and, and, and so, there's a resilience. So it's a bit like being vaccinated against measles. You, you, you, you, you, you have a little bit of the, the disease injected into you in order to boost your immune system so that when the disease comes big time, you've got a defense against it. Well, inoculation works that way to do with stress. But even more interestingly, if you have the adults who suffer back pain, for example,

as adults, the ones who have had very little experience of adversity in their lives are much more likely to be disabled with a back pain, much more likely to be on severe pain-killing medication, and much more likely to be off work long term, than people with the same amount of back pain but who have suffered moderate levels of adversity in their lives. And finally, people in the 70s who experience moderate degrees of adversity

maintain their cognitive function at higher levels than those who have no adversity. And that's because challenging stressful situations like, for instance, your spouse suffering a serious, like a stroke or cancer, that forces you, that's a challenge for you that can actually push your brain up into that sweet spot of functioning. So moderate degrees of adversity and stress can generate positive effects, not just cognitively, but also emotionally can benefit us in these ways. This is fascinating, Ian. I really appreciate the fact that you, I, uh, I, uh,

have really invested your time from across the pond and join me today here over Skype. When you, I question, one more question. When you saw that somebody who hosts a podcast called The Learning Leader Show reached out to you, what was the first thought that came to mind when you saw the phrase learning leader? I guess, well, I didn't, I can't remember what my first response, But my response to it as we talk now is that leaders, by definition, have to have to have to have to have to have a vision for where they're leading people to. And that requires them to to have an optimism that something can be achieved. And that absolutely depends on the challenge mindset.

And it's it's very hard to be a leader if you're dominating. by the threat mindset. So I guess the other thing is to say that, you know, to be a leader, you have to learn not only to do the process that you're trying to lead in, but you also have to learn to control your own mind to try and maintain that vision, I would guess. I love it. Thanks again, Ian, for being here. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online?

So my website is Ian Robertson.org. That's IANrobertson.org and people can go and take, there's a, I'm glad you took the attitudes to stress test question there. There's a short question there to assess your own, one's own approach to stress, whether you, so it's not about how much stress you have, but what your attitudes to stress are. And there's also information about my, latest book, which is, thank you for mentioning the stress test, how pressure can make you stronger and sharper. And I'd be delighted to hear from people who love them to sign up to my newsletter on the website. Great. Well, thanks again for being here. Ian, I certainly want to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Thank you very much, Ryan. It's a pleasure talking to you. All right. Thank you. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time.

Head over to learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show. Pump for our new sponsor this year, it's Fresh Books. The working world has changed. With the growth of the Internet, there's never been more opportunities for the self-employed. To meet this end, FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting software.

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