SPEAKERS
Shade Zahrai, Dr Gabrielle Lyon

Shade Zahrai 00:00

Those who are the highest performers, they’ve understood that self image, this concept of who we are, comes down, actually, to four key drivers. The first one is the obvious one that we associate with, self doubt. It’s the belief that I am not enough, which comes down to what we call the attribute of acceptance, which is a learnable, trainable quality, the personality trait underscoring that is self esteem. So people who are able to achieve amazing things believe that they are inherently worthy. They’re not seeking the validation of other people. They don’t take feedback personally because they fundamentally accept that feedback is designed to make me better. They don’t fear failure because they’re not worried about what the failure is going to mean about them. They separate themselves from that the second one is the second element that we associate with self doubt, which is to do with our belief about our capacity and capability. Can I do this thing? Do I have the skills or the ability to learn how to do that? Third one is a very interesting one. Where do you place control in your life? Do you believe that you have some degree of control over the outcomes in your life, or do you feel like it’s completely out of your hand? Now the very fourth one is the psychological trait of emotional stability. We call it the trainable attribute of adaptability. So it’s your ability to understand your emotions, understand the emotions of other people, and then navigate between the tomb, because understanding your emotional state at any moment gives you incredible insight.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 01:26

If you wanted to give three daily habits, what would this be?

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 01:38

Dr shade zarayi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Now I have to say we just met, and this is amazing. You walked in and you are very confident. Thank you. You are most welcome. And I want to know what is the science behind either being and or appearing confident. I love

Shade Zahrai 02:01

that we’re starting with this one. So I like to think of confidence as having two elements. There is how you feel and then how you’re perceived. And so you just touched on the perception element of confidence. I may not have been feeling very confident, but you wouldn’t have known that. No, and that’s the power of making sure that we’re aligning our behaviors with how we want to be perceived. I’m going to take a step back, though, because when we think about confidence, we often think it’s something that we need before we get started. But let me ask you this question, what would you say is the opposite of self doubt? Because self doubt often holds us back. What is the opposite? Without thinking too hard about

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 02:36

it, the opposite of self doubt would be agency.

Shade Zahrai 02:41

Agency. I love it. I love that you said that. So we generally find 95% of people say confidence, and I tried to prime you with that, but well done for using the brain. So people think it’s confidence or even agency. There’s actually research that shows that confidence, that feeling that we’re waiting for, actually comes after we’ve taken action, after we’ve done something, because what’s happening is when you achieve something, in terms of doing the first step, achieving the task, you get the proof points. You get the evidence which increases what’s called your self efficacy, which is a personality trait that can be improved over time. And when that increases, you suddenly feel like you can do it. You’ve developed some additional competence. You’ve got some additional skills, and then the confidence follows. So when we’re waiting to feel confident, it’s the wrong goal entirely, because that’s the outcome or the result. Now when we then go, okay, so what needs to happen first, it’s self trust. You trust yourself to show up with courage, to show up with presence. You trust yourself to handle a conversation, a new meeting. You trust yourself to handle yourself in the presentation that you’re delivering, whatever it is. So when it comes to feeling confident, I wouldn’t even encourage people to search for that feeling. Otherwise, you’ll always be waiting and never take action. Lean into the self trust. How do I trust that when I walk through this door and meet you for the first time, I’m going to be able to bring the warmth that I wish to I’m going to be able to create an environment where both of us feel seen, and you do that so beautifully, so naturally. So that’s the feeling part. Trust yourself, back yourself. But then, of course, there is the perception part. And funny enough, we find people who have the feeling part they feel that they can back themselves, and yet it doesn’t come across in how they look. So what’s the first thing that you probably would have noticed when I when you saw me before I said a word?

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 04:32

Well, this doesn’t count, because height, okay, yes, you’re close to the same size, you know, which is unusual, by the way, if you’ve not met me in person, I’m 5’1″. How tall are you?

04:43

A 5’2″ I No, maybe a little bit more than that. But yes, it’s actually really comforting to me. You bought it.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 04:50

I was like, oh my gosh, I’m looking eye to eye with this person. This is amazing. Therefore it’s not quite accurate, probably the first thought.

04:58

But so height is related also to posture, because if I was slouching, I would have looked even shorter, but if I’m sitting upright or standing upright, I look a little bit taller. So posture is usually the first thing that you notice, and it could be related to height or other things, but posture is what we clock into to determine is this person projecting confidence? Because if they project confidence, we perceive them as being more competent. These two usually go hand in hand. If someone is more confident in who they are and how they speak and how they hold themselves, we perceive that they’re better at what they do. We trust their skills more without them even doing anything. So that’s the first thing you would have noticed. So in terms of exuding confidence, perceived confidence, check your posture. So everyone who’s listening or watching right now sit upright, little bit more upright, or stand a little bit more upright. Raise that gaze a little bit more first step. Second thing you probably would have noticed would have been something to do with my face, eye contact. Eye contact, exactly which is the second piece of confidence we know. Of course, this varies culturally, so know your cultures, but we know that eye contact is one of the strongest indicators of confidence, because when you are confident, when you are perceived to be confident, you can look someone in the eye and not feel uncomfortable and not dart around and not doubt yourself. You just maintain the eye contact, not for too long, because that can get creepy. They say two to three seconds. Blink. Hey, guys blink, look away, but come back to it, of course, again, does vary culturally. Some cultures you don’t make eye contact. So know your cultures, but that’s the second one eye contact, and a lot of people struggle. So the tip I give with eye contact is pay attention to the color of the person’s eye, as in their pupil. That’s enough time to determine, Okay, that’s That’s enough uninterrupted I can look away and come back. Third thing you would have noticed is my mouth. Was I scowling? Did I have a frown? Or was i Smiling? Smiling is an indicator of approachability and warmth, which can demonstrate this kind of magnetic quality. It makes people want to get to know us. Frowning and scowling repels people because of what it does to our brain. We feel like there’s some kind of a threat here. We don’t trust this person, and therefore we want to protect ourselves. We become defensive. We might withdraw in response to that, or just choose not to engage. So we’ve got posture, we’ve got eyes, we’ve got smile the next one potentially, I’m not sure if you would have noticed this, but what we pay attention to next is the pace of speech, which also includes tone. How is the person speaking? Are they rushing their words? Are they not allowing themselves to breathe? Are they not pausing, or are they more calm or measured in how they speak? Are they allowing those pauses? That’s an indicator of how confident someone appears, which then leads into how competent we think they are.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 07:41

Yeah, that’s really fascinating. Oh,

Shade Zahrai 07:43

there’s one more really quickly. You wouldn’t have seen this because we, I didn’t walk around too much, but walking pace is the other thing that people look out for.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 07:50

I’ve read that and you have spoken before that, if one slows down, though the is it the length of step or the Pace, pace,

Shade Zahrai 08:01

pace, which, I mean, it probably is a little bit of the two of them, because if you have smaller legs, like we do, we even if we slow down, we’re still taking more steps than the person next to us, but it’s actually your pace. So they’ve done studies in the realm of biological motion patterns, and they’re looking at how fast people walk, and they found when people have a slightly increased pace. So I’m not talking running through the office or running somewhere, but you walk with purpose, you’re perceived to have greater status, and that translates into confidence, perceived confidence. This is really interesting for us women who tend to wear high heels and often clothing that may not be as comfortable or maybe a little bit restrictive, and it means sometimes we have to walk a little bit slower. So just something for us to keep in mind, if we’re wanting to convey that confidence, make sure you’re maintaining a steady pace.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 08:50

And it also from a biological perspective, let’s say an individual sets their shoulders, back, smiles, walks at an appropriate confident speed, there is internal changes.

Shade Zahrai 09:06

Yes, that happened. So biological feedback loop. You’ll know this neuroscience probably of what’s happening, the brain and body are intricately connected. And so what typically happens when we’re doubting ourselves, when we’re fearful, when we’re insecure, our bodies reflect that, and so we will often want to so when we’re feeling those things, it’s because we have perceived some kind of threat in our environment. It’s not usually a physical threat. It’s a threat to our sense of identity, our sense of value, our sense of competence. It might be someone else. It might be that we don’t believe we’re good enough any of these things, and our body responds to protect us, which means withdrawing, which means taking up less space, and that reinforces how we feel. So then we end up feeling worse. Not only that, other studies have found that it can also impact your mental clarity and your recall, and so they’ve done these studies with students where they’ve had one group slouch and they’ve had another group sit. Upright with upright posture. The group that was sitting upright found that they were able to remember things easier, ended up performing better.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 10:07

Yeah, and I love that. And I’ve read certain research that those individuals that are more competent, believe it or not, there’s a hormonal footprint. They tend to have higher levels of testosterone, and I just think that this is it’s so fascinating from the hormonal perspective, but also from this biological perspective that we can control. Now, it doesn’t mean that sitting up and smiling more is going to necessarily increase your testosterone, but I think perhaps when your hormones are within a steady range, or even, let’s say female or male have higher testosterone, that those individuals, again, this is some of the research that I have been reading have more confidence.

Shade Zahrai 10:55

Fascinating, how the inner and the outer interact. It is completely

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 11:01

when we were chatting before we started, you had mentioned self doubt. I said, Okay, amazing. Your PhD. What was it in? And by the way, PhD is no joke. It takes thank you for acknowledging yes forever. And we were talking about the difference between qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative is, I would say, and please correct me, more subjective, whereas quantitative is, you’re looking at numbers and you’re printing data, and you did your PhD on self doubt. What was it exactly?

Shade Zahrai 11:34

So it was specifically looking at the role that that internal voice plays in our mind when we’re under pressure. So there’s some stimulus the role that that inner voice, that inner criticism, that self doubt plays, and how it impacts our job performance and our career satisfaction. And we were looking specifically at, what are the drivers of that self doubt, and then specifically, what can we do to combat that? How do we elevate that sense of self belief or the opposite of self doubt. How do we reach that state? It was fascinating. It was long, but only how many years took me? Five years, five years. The hardest part is writing the thesis at the end. The research card is fun. It is fun. The analysis of the statistics is difficult. Not so fun, not so fun, but the actual insights are fascinating. And then you have to sit down and write this academic work.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 12:23

I’m so glad that you did, yeah, and that you’re here talking about Thank you. Humans have differences, but there seem to be a lot of similarities. And one of the things that I think you have studied uniquely from a different perspective, is what makes people successful versus those individuals that may put a lot of effort in but are not so successful. I would love for you to share those insights as to what makes an individual or group successful.

Shade Zahrai 12:56

There are two that I’d love to share here. The first one is the bigger piece that directly links into the research that I did. And to start this, I’m going to share a little example that comes from the world of Maxwell Maltz. So Dr maxwell maltz was a plastic surgeon in the 60s, 50s and 60s, and he published this incredible culture shifting book in the late 60s called Psycho Cybernetics. Essentially what he revealed in the book is that he had this repeated experience with patients where they would come to him to fix a physical flaw, maybe they didn’t like their nose or a protruding jaw line. There was something they didn’t like about themselves. They’d come to him to fix it, and he said that their logic was pretty rational. It was if I fix this thing, then I will feel better, look better, become more successful, make more money, get the man or woman of my dreams. They thought it would solve all of their problems. But what was happening is consistently, as you can imagine, this was not playing out that way. They would come in, be fixed esthetically, leave, maybe have a short burst of an increase in their sense of who they are, but then very shortly after, they would return to the same level of unhappiness in their lives, and they kept wondering, why is nothing changing now? Dr Maltz, he described it as the fact that they hadn’t upgraded their self image. Their self image had not changed so they still felt, thought and acted as if they did before they had the physical flaw improved, and he describes our self image, how we see ourselves, as the blueprint of our entire lives, because it’s creating these beliefs about ourselves, and we know through expectation bias, that the beliefs that we have become confirmed based on what we notice, based on the interactions that we have. You know, they say you don’t get what you want. You get what you believe. And do you believe that to be true? Yes, because I’ve seen it play out. I also believe, though, that you can change those beliefs, that then changes what you end up receiving. So the first piece is really the importance of how we see ourselves, and what we know is that. Those who are the highest performers. They have understood whether they’re aware of it or not. They’ve understood that self image, this concept of who we are, comes down, actually, to four key drivers, and these four drivers, you need to remember their perceptions. They’re not objective. These meaning that it’s entirely how we see ourselves. It’s not truth, it’s not what someone else would assess. It’s purely just what we’re telling ourselves. So perspective or perception. So these four things, they’ve tapped into them, the first one, and this is what a lot of my research was about, because also these four things that shape our self image determine whether we experience self doubt and what kind of self doubt we experience, because any of these that are depleted, that’s where self doubt attacks. So let me tell you what these four things are. The first one is the obvious one that we associate with self doubt. It’s the belief that I am not enough, which comes down to what we call the attribute of acceptance, which is a learnable, trainable quality, the personality trait underscoring that is self esteem. So people who are able to achieve amazing things believe that they are inherently worthy. They’re not seeking the validation of other people. They don’t take feedback personally because they fundamentally accept that feedback is designed to make me better. They don’t fear failure because they’re not worried about what the failure is going to mean about them, they separate themselves from that. So that’s the first pillar. If you struggle with self acceptance, that is when you are a people pleaser. That is when you don’t take risks because you’re afraid of failing. That’s when you are a perfectionist and you set impossibly high standards and then beat yourself up when you don’t achieve them. That’s our first pillar. The second one is the second element that we associate with self doubt, which is to do with our belief about our capacity and capability. Can I do this thing? Do I have the skills or the ability to learn how to do that? This is the personality trait of self efficacy, but we call it the trainable attribute of agency. So I love that you mentioned when I said what’s the opposite of self trust or self doubt? You said agency, because that’s one of the drivers of self image, which also shapes our self trust. So if you lack agency, and we see this all the time in high performers and leaders who are very competent, they’re very good at what they do, they have a high level of skill, but they feel like imposters. They don’t feel deserving, or they feel like other people think that they’re better than they are, or smarter than they are. They also compare themselves a lot to others, even though they’re highly competent, they’ll compare themselves to everyone else and say that person is better at this, that person’s better at that, and it plagues them. So that’s the second one agency. Third one is a very interesting one. Have you come across anyone Gabrielle who tends to complain a lot, tends to be resentful of other people, tends to rehash old wounds and hurts? Have you come across anyone like this in your life worse, but I will say, we don’t keep this people fantastic at all fantastic because they do suck you down. They suck the energy out. And that reflects so those behaviors reflect a lack of autonomy. What does that mean? The psychological trait relates to what’s called locus of control. Locus is the it comes from the Latin loci, which refers to location. So it’s where do you place control in your life? Do you believe that you have some degree of control over the outcomes in your life, or do you feel like it’s completely out of your hand? Because depending on your belief, that determines what you focus on, people who tend to complain a lot, who are resentful, who dwell on the past bad things that have happened. They focus on things outside of their control, rather than reminding themselves that, okay, there are things that I cannot control, but I’m going to bring it back to what is actually within my influence and take action there, because then we feel more empowered. So this is the third one, autonomy people who lack that stay in their comfort zones, they become or they embody this victim mentality. Why me? Life is so hard now. The very fourth one is the psychological trait of emotional stability, the opposite of neuroticism. We call it the trainable attribute of adaptability. So it’s your ability to understand your emotions, understand the emotions of other people, and then navigate between the two, because understanding your emotional state at any moment gives you incredible insight.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 19:23

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Shade Zahrai 20:41

to the no to know what to do with it. You know, we like to think that we’re rational beings, but we’re not. We’re emotional beings, rationalized.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 20:48

Who thinks that? I think a lot of people think that.

Shade Zahrai 20:51

So these are the four drivers of how we see ourselves. All of this for self image, for self image. Now, the cool thing is, there’s actually what we call a doubt profile, because we’ve discovered a doubt, a doubt profile, we

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 21:04

should, you know, we should put that in our medical clinic. Yes, as a why not? Yeah, well,

Shade Zahrai 21:09

it’s essentially, it’s very similar to a lot of these personality tests where you do, but in our case, we’ve, we’ve consolidated into just the 12 questions based on a psychometrically validated assessment that determines your self image. Because what we have also found is that your self trust entirely comes based on how you see yourselves across these four dimensions, self belief, capacity, autonomy, yes, and and so we go. Acceptance is the first one. Acceptance, self acceptance, then we have agency, then autonomy, and then adaptability, and then, depending on where you fall for each of these, it creates your doubt profile. And then your doubt profile gives us an indication of, okay, where are you going to struggle? Where are you held back the most? And what do you need to focus on to actually propel you forward?

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 21:58

And do we care about examining self doubt. Well, everyone should probably, again, I don’t want to make a blanket statement, but everyone should probably examine this so that they know how they operate in the world. Is that fair to say yes, and someone would want to understand their self doubt profile, rather than waiting till they don’t become as successful as they wish, or meet the dreams and the goals in their life, they would be able to address it early. Is that, is that why we would think about the self doubt profile?

Shade Zahrai 22:32

Yes, so we say that. I mean, it’s almost like basic psychological understanding and insight should be taught at schools. You know, imagine if we could teach kids to just become more self aware. The challenge with self awareness is that studies have estimated that around 80% of people think they’re self aware, only 10 to 15% of people

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 22:51

are actually self aware. Wait, but how do we define but how do we define self awareness?

Shade Zahrai 22:56

Self Awareness is essentially an awareness of your strengths and your gaps and an awareness of your triggers and your points, of the things that light you up, make you happy or make it worse, make you happy, make you happy or Yeah. So essentially, the things that make it better make it worse, the things that allow you to be your best or hold you back, and also an awareness of your personality, we are not very good at knowing that. Often we need other people to be that mirror to tell us what that is.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 23:25

Yeah, I think that’s really fascinating, because I would guess that unless you study the mind, or you find this deeply fascinating, that we wouldn’t think about, okay, well, what is my personality, or a loved one’s personality. I mean, we probably think more about other people’s personality than we do about our own.

Shade Zahrai 23:47

We do, and it’s because there’s this fallacy that a personality trait is stable and unchangeable throughout the lifespan, and for a very long time, that was a predominant belief in the world of research. It was that your personality traits are established very early on, a mix of nature and nurture, early life experiences, and then that’s just who you are. And so a lot of people think, well, that’s my personality. It’s just who I am. I can’t change it, so why bother focusing on it? That said, a lot of people do like doing personality assessments, because it gives them an insight we were. The downside of that, though, is that when you do one of these assessments, you develop what’s called an expectation bias, where you become attached to the assessment. If you feel like, Yeah, this is this is me, and then you don’t give yourself room to grow beyond that, because you start seeking out situations. Or I want to share with you a very quick story about the power of expectation, and then I’m going to link it back into what we were talking about with personality. So this comes from research from the 1970s so quite a long time ago, but it’s so incredibly powerful. I think it really helps to grasp the power of self image

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 24:52

and self trust. And besides, they were able to do studies back then that they can’t do that we can’t do exactly. We cannot shock people, no Exactly. Okay, thank you. I made you come over to my house. Maybe that’s coming up next.

Shade Zahrai 25:03

Yeah. So, so back in the 1970s a psychology professor at Dartmouth by the name of Robert Kleck, conducted this fascinating experiment where he brought people together, split them into two groups, and with one group, he actually drew a scar on their face, on the right side of their face, from their ear to their mouth, this really gruesome looking scar, and he let them see themselves in a hand mirror so they could see, okay, I’ve got this scar on my face. He then sent both groups into conversations with strangers. Now, after the conversations with strangers, they then had to report how they found the conversation went the group that had the scar drawn on their face found, or rather reported that they felt that the conversation partner was distant, tense, they felt judged, and that’s because they had this thing on their face. But here’s where it gets really interesting. If we rewind a little bit after they had that scar applied and they saw themselves in that mirror, the researcher said, I’m going to apply some moisturizing cream so it doesn’t crack, and what the researcher actually did was remove the scar entirely. They now had no scar. They went into these conversations believing that they had a facial disfigurement and believing that they would be treated differently because of that, and that’s how they felt they were treated.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 26:20

Ah, so what you’re saying is they expected to be discriminated against because of the scar on their face Exactly. They had no idea that the scar was removed. They had no idea, and they still had the same experience, same experience. What’s even

Shade Zahrai 26:35

more wild is they had third parties watching on video, and they didn’t determine any difference between the two groups. No one was treating anyone differently. It was entirely in their heads, and it’s called expectation bias, and what it reveals to us is that the beliefs that we have about ourselves, physical or internal, shape how we perceive what’s going on, shapes how we show up in the world, shapes what’s going on within us. And so when we think about self trust and self image, it’s easy for someone to say, oh, that’s fluffy. Don’t need to focus on that. But actually, these things are fundamentally shaping how we experience life and the reality we’re creating. So once you and then bringing it back to personality, once you can uncover more about your personality, it gives you that insight. How am I recreating this in every experience I have. You know, if I tell myself I’m an introvert, does that mean that every time I go to a networking event, I’m going to be reminding myself, Oh, I’m an introvert. I’m not enjoying this. I’m going to leave early, totally, right? What if I’m not actually an introvert? But if I just change the story in my head and say, Oh, I’m really looking forward to meeting people, let me stay out. And then I do, and suddenly I realize, hold on, I’m not an introvert, but I’ve been telling myself that same story for so long. So that’s the beautiful thing about personality. For so long, we thought it was fixed, but what research in the last 10 or so years has found, and what mine has confirmed, is that you can fundamentally change your personality traits within as little as six weeks. That’s wild. It is wild. You just have to choose to focus on it, it’s called an intervention to specifically target that part of who you are.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 28:06

You know, we started the conversation about what makes someone successful, right? There are people with the same skill set, yet one person will become massively successful and the other person won’t. And what you’re saying is, and then again, you have these four drivers that are a component of this, that those are not fixed, right? These are adaptability and autonomy. Capacity.

Shade Zahrai 28:33

Is that what we call them, trainable attributes? Trainable capacities?

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 28:37

Yes. How, when you think about these two groups, when you meet someone, can you tell where they are going to fall on this successful scale?

Shade Zahrai 28:49

Do you think have 15 minutes with them, and I can ask them a series of questions, and if they’re totally honest with me, assuming they have some degree of self awareness, I can generally give them a pretty good indication of what their dat profile looks like, where their hang ups are, what they struggle most with, and what’s going to be the greatest investment of their energy to help them fundamentally change their situation. I love that. Yeah.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 29:12

Are there things and very specific things that you see with those that are able to reach their dreams and become successful versus those that aren’t.

Shade Zahrai 29:21

What are those? The very first thing that we see. So a lot of people who are able to achieve their dreams, they might still hear the voice of self doubt, but it doesn’t derail them. They recognize that they are not their doubts. So there’s this psychological separation between what’s going on in their heads and then how they feel

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 29:37

like it’s irrelevant. You can think all of these things, and it’s totally, completely.

Shade Zahrai 29:41

Again, we use this analogy of, let’s say we have these two, let’s say two glasses, like yours, two glasses of water full to the brim. If I put a table tennis ball, or a ping pong ball, as they call it here in the States, as like table tennis, yeah, ping pong. If I place that ping pong ball on top of one glass of water, what happens to it floats. It floats. If I take the golf ball and put. It in the other glass of water. What happens to it sinks? And what happens to the water gets higher? It gets higher or it overflows. This is the difference between two types of self doubt. The type that floats the ping pong ball is the kind of light self doubt. We hear it. We know it’s there. It’s the voice of caution. It’s making us aware of risks, but we don’t internalize it. And people who are able to be highly successful see doubt as a signal, not a verdict,

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 30:26

as a signal to do something about it, or just as noise.

Shade Zahrai 30:30

Could be either or sometimes it’s a signal, okay, maybe I do need to check the map again. Sometimes I, you know, maybe I should reach out to that person and just double check I understood what they were saying. Maybe I do need to work on myself a little bit more here, as opposed to I need to listen to that voice. It is truth, and it’s telling me I’m not ready. I’m going to hold back. That’s the difference between the sort of healthy voice of doubt versus the type of doubt that we completely internalize. And so those who are the most highly successful generally are able to detach themselves from the voice of doubt. They rather than saying things like, I am a failure, they use the process of cognitive diffusion to say I’m having a thought that I’m a failure. Okay, what do I need to do about that? So it’s always separation from the thought. And then what action can I take? Is this giving me some actionable direction that I should follow, or do I get stuck in it. So that’s something that we see. Now, the third thing that we often see relates to visibility. Relates to visibility. What does that mean? People who are highly successful are often visible. Either they are visible online, they are in the media, they are in front of their organizations, or they’re able to actually draw attention to their work and the value that they’re adding and what they’re contributing, because they don’t shy away from some people call it self promotion. Adam Grant calls it idea promotion. I call it value promotion. They don’t shy away from the value that they’re creating and then sharing that with other people. And this can be the hardest part for a lot of people who struggle the visibility completely, or if they don’t feel inherently like their acceptance is low, they don’t believe that they’re worthy, so they don’t feel deserving of visibility, so they shrink. Or if they doubt their capability and their skills, which is agency, they are worried about visibility, because then someone might find out that if they don’t maintain that standard, then they don’t deserve to be where they are. So they keep themselves silent. The flip though, is we have people who are highly competent doing the work and just not able to get the visibility because they’re not in the right circles. The people that we’re around influence us so much more than we realize. There’s the Pygmalion effect, which you might have heard of. If you’re around people who genuinely believe in you, your abilities, your skills, your potential, you are more likely to live up to their expectations. If you’re around people who do not believe in you, who keep trying to pull you down, who tell you that your dreams are too far out there, you are more likely to dim your light and live down to their expectations. It’s called the golem effect, and we know these are validated completely. And we see this happening a lot in schools. So this has been documented for years. It happens in schools. It happens in military environments. It happens with even in families and especially in workplaces. And this is why mentorship groups are so important. Being part of communities is so important, and why? If you have people in your life who are not supporters of you, try and cut them out of your life or limit contact as much as you possibly can, sometimes we can’t cut a family member out, or, you know, good friend out. It’s like you can, yeah, bye, but you do need to limit the contact that you have with them.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 33:40

That makes sense. Yeah. And those are the three components to this sector. In terms of when we think about self doubt and success,

Shade Zahrai 33:51

it would be understanding self image and the four genres of success, then recognizing the importance of visibility. I can’t remember the third one.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 34:00

Maybe there was only two. Which is the easiest to change in terms of the four drivers? Yeah, good

Shade Zahrai 34:10

question. I think there are little tools you can use for each of them, but I think the two easiest to change are the last two, which relates to your ability to manage your emotions, because there are simple things we can do in the moment to help us take a break, to pause, to breathe. Breathing is one of the quickest ways to calm our internal state, and yet, when we’re stressed, what do we do? We almost hyperventilate. We do not get that breath in. So there’s simple practices around managing your state. Getting more exercise is one of the greatest hacks to managing your state. The other one is, you’re a locus of control at any moment in any point of time. You can ask yourself, What can I control here? Let me bring my attention back to what is within my realm of influence, and then I’m going to take a step. And those two things help you build that sense of, okay, I can do this. I’ve got a handle on these things. Interestingly, those two. Attributes tend to rise and fall with each other. So if you’re strong with one, you tend to be strong with the other. And the first two, which is acceptance and agency, which is worthiness and belief in your capabilities, they tend to rise and fall with each other as well.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 35:13

And how much of this? And you know, as you’re talking, I’m thinking, obviously reflecting. You think about my kids, and I’m thinking about these drivers, for example, acceptance and agency. This seems as if these are learned skills. Is that Is that accurate?

Shade Zahrai 35:30

Mostly, mostly so there are certain personality traits that might gear someone to be. For example, when we talk about agency, someone who, like a kid, who is higher on an openness scale, my one of the big five personality traits, they might be more inclined to go off and explore, as opposed to their brother or sister, who might be lower on that and might need more reassurance. So you have certain personality elements, however, your environment plays a huge role early on. So when it comes to acceptance, some of the things that we often see with young children, or school age children, is that they’ll bring their report card home, and it’s A’s and maybe 1b and the parent will focus on the B, or the parents are very busy, and the only way the kids can get their attention is if they do something really big, like a dance recital, or look at this. And so they start to learn that I’m only worthy if I’m doing something that they’re interested in I’m only worthy if I’m performing, and they start to internalize that they don’t feel that they can accept themselves unless they are pleasing, perfecting performing. So that’s how acceptance can develop. When it comes to agency, a big part of this is the ability to explore, to try things, to fail and to keep going.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 36:40

Do you think it’s possible to learn these things later on? Yes, 100% okay, because the first it’s again, this is what I read. The first seven years are so critical for being able to build these skills. And listen, I’m thinking about my four year old, who I was doing a mohawk this morning. And listen, my son wears a mullet, and the Mohawk, obviously, is not going to stand straight up full blown meltdown. And I’m thinking, Okay, we’ve got three more years to go for him to be able to develop some of these attributes that you’re talking about.

Shade Zahrai 37:14

And it’s interesting you mentioned the meltdown, because that relates to the fourth attribute and also the third one. So the fourth one is the ability to manage emotions. Children are still learning that skill. So as a parent, the environment you provide them when they have their meltdown teaches them how to process those emotions, how to process those meaning, mirroring it to them, mirroring it to them, creating the space for them to process themselves, giving them the space that they need to work through that because the other thing that kids around the ages of two to four are learning is their sense of internal locus of control. I want to make decisions. I want to choose what I’m eating. I don’t want that cup. They’re asserting their sense of autonomy. And this can be really challenging for them, when suddenly they realize I’m telling my parents what I want to do, and they’re saying, No, I have to drink from that cup. No, I have to. So a really simple thing, and you’ll hear this from a lot of child psychologists. If you need a child to do something, give them a choice, do you want to brush your teeth now or after the show? As opposed to, you need to brush your teeth? No, I don’t want to brush my teeth. So they feel like they’re making a choice. They feel like they’re elevating their autonomy, and you’re still getting them to do what you need

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 38:19

them to. I’m going to try that, right? And I’m going to call you, I’m going to report back, I will tell you my kids have very healthy dentition, so they’re doing well, human beings. Obviously, we all process things differently, and we’re clearly never taught any of this in school. I’m assuming, again, this is my experience, that there are consistent things that really affect people, and that perhaps, you know, for there even to be a self doubt profile, when I’m thinking about what you’ve seen from those individuals that have all the potential in the world, does something really stand out to you, that just across The board that you’ve seen. You know, there’s 7 million people that have taken your courses. Is there one thing that really stands out?

Shade Zahrai 39:09

The one thing that stands out in those that struggle versus those that absolutely thrive, even if their competence level is the same, something that we see repeatedly, which is unexpected, we didn’t expect to see this is those who succeed, they are able to think about things that may go wrong, and then what they will do if that happens. So they’re very good on being very clear on, okay, this is what I want to achieve. These are all the things that could get in my way. And here’s what I’ll do if each of these happen, they have what’s called an if then plan. It’s like a conditional thinking,

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 39:40

which is totally opposite, so that that’s what those that succeed do, which is totally opposite, opposite.

Shade Zahrai 39:46

Because what they do the other group, they do the first step. I’m going to think about everything like, I know where I want to go, and I’m going to think about everything that could go wrong and they get stuck because they’re they’re not thinking about, Okay, what am I going to do if these happen? Things because these what could go wrong. It also ties back into those four drivers of self image and self belief, or self trust, these things that could go wrong, all they’re focused on is Oh no. That means I’m worthless if I fail. Oh, if that happens, that means I’m not very good at my Oh no. The failure means I’m a failure. They’re making it about them. As soon as we take that additional step to say, what would I do if

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 40:22

these things happen? If it didn’t work

Shade Zahrai 40:23

out, if it didn’t work out, you’re shrinking the fear to its normal size, because the brain is wired. Look, the brain is designed to help us survive, right? It’s not necessarily there to help us succeed. You can gear it and you can guide it to get us to succeed.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 40:36

You know? I haven’t I never really thought about that. It’s tricky

Shade Zahrai 40:39

to think about that, because we like to think that our brain is on our side. On our side all the time, and we can take the steps to get there, but from an instinctual perspective, its role is to keep us alive and to protect us. And so what we do when we think about all the things that could go wrong is the brain is going through this process of all the what ifs and it’s catastrophizing, and it’s thinking of worst case scenarios and creating what’s called a confabulation, which is a made up mental story that is not based in reality. But the brain is a prediction machine, and it prefers certainty over accuracy.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 41:14

The Brain prefers certainty over accuracy. It does how, which is fascinating. How does that relate to catastrophizing?

Shade Zahrai 41:26

So when we catastrophize, we’re thinking about the possible worst case scenario, and the brain will lock on to that, because its role is to protect us. It generally, of its own accord, won’t go well. Is this really accurate? Well, okay, the prefrontal cortex will but you need to guide your prefrontal cortex to do that, otherwise it’s perceiving all these worst case scenarios. The emotive centers of the brain are firing wanting to keep you safe, and so you’re not going to actively, rationally process these things. You’re going to lock in and say, that’s what’s going to happen. I can’t do it. I can’t go to that event, I can’t say yes to that opportunity. I can’t speak in that meeting, and then you get stuck in these ruminative thoughts about all the things that

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 42:05

are happening, and then that becomes very distracting completely, and would take people off course from taking the next right step

Shade Zahrai 42:13

exactly, and because they allow it to become internalized. This is who I am. I’m not the kind of person who does that. I can’t do that, and it’s interesting when we talk about this, because the other thing that these highly accomplished people do very well is they visualize, but they don’t just visualize their end goal. Let me tell you a story about Michael Phelps. So Michael Phelps is one of the greatest swimmers of all time, multiple world record holder, Olympic champion. His coach said that he had this really fascinating habit where he would visualize, now, that’s not particularly fascinating. A lot of athletes do that, but it was what he said next. He doesn’t just visualize success. He visualizes everything that could go wrong, everything that could go wrong, goggles, snapping, slipping on the starting block, cramping mid race. And then he’d take it the next step. He would visualize what he would do if that happened, what is his recovery plan? And he would visualize it so clearly in his mind that he says he embedded it into his nervous system so if it happened, he wouldn’t be distracted or overwhelmed. He could just default to his training. Now this played out really well for him in 2008 when he was in the finals of the Olympics. It was a 200 meter butterfly finals. So he dives into the pool. He said, dove in, or dive in. I’ve never, I’ve always got that one wrong. Dovin dived in. He’s in. He’s in the pool, and then his goggles fill up with water within about 15 or 20 meters. He cannot see a thing. But he had been there before he’d anticipated that happening, and so in an interview, he said, I swam blind for 175 meters out of a 200 fly won gold and broke the world record. Oh my gosh. What an incredible story. Yeah, about the power of anticipating the things that could go wrong, and then what you’ll do if that happens.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 44:02

You know, we don’t typically do that culturally, because people will say, you’re going to manifest something

Shade Zahrai 44:08

completely, completely, and this is a misconception around manifesting and manifestation. And a lot of people think, yes, only plan for Plan A. Don’t even allow for a Plan B, because then you’re allowing space for it. But we need to be very rational very practical and pragmatic about things. And what we know from the literature and the research is that this process of what could go wrong and what will I do is called an implementation intention. It is incredibly powerful. It also increases your likelihood of achieving the goal, because you also feel a sense of control. No matter what happens, I’ll be okay, even if I fail, I’ve planned what I’ll do, what my next step will be, so it allows you to have that level of pragmatism. In the project management world, they call it a pre mortem, and many business thinkers and strategists call it inversion thinking. We shouldn’t shy away from it.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 44:56

I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I. One hand, it totally empowers the person and improves their capacity or their belief in themselves,

Shade Zahrai 45:07

the trust, the self, trust they have that

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 45:10

I think that people should try that. Do you recommend that people

Shade Zahrai 45:13

try a percent? I do. I do think, though, that you need to remember. So we had a student in one of our programs, a leader working at a big tech company, and we shared this with him, and he went away and he tried it, and he came back the next week and he said, Charlie, this is terrible. Now I can’t stop ruminating on everything that could go wrong. I said, Thank you for sharing that. Did you do step two? And he said, what you want to step two? How are you going to handle it when all those things go wrong? He goes, Oh, I forgot. Let me go off and do that. And then he came back and said, Oh, wow, that was amazing. I’ve got my list. He wrote it all down. What will I do if this happens? And and then he was able to go and achieve what he wanted to achieve because he’d planned. So you have to remember the second piece. And the reason why I think this is powerful is the mind and the brain are going to do what they’re going to do. Sometimes you can try and resist it, but what you resist often persists, and so rather than having to address the doubts associated with this, just be really rational, write down everything on your mind, all of your worries. In fact, there is a really great little tool that I discovered in the research, and I use it, and we share with all our students. It’s called stimulus control for worry. What does that mean? Do you ever worry?

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 46:23

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Shade Zahrai 48:01

How about things, okay, do you find yourself worrying at night, maybe waking up in the middle of the night, worrying or doesn’t go I,

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 48:08

you know, I haven’t up until recently, I would say probably the last month. Interesting.

Shade Zahrai 48:12

Okay, so there’s something going on in your life that is causing you to ruminate on that, something that is really valuable if you are a warrior, because worrying is distracting. There is no greater distraction in our lives than the distraction that is up here. So if you can find a way in the moment when the worry comes into your mind, rather than pushing it away or trying to process it in the moment, because you’re going to be emotionally charged, grab your notebook and a pen and write it down. Create a worry list. Now the second part of that is you then need to allocate worry time each day. You want to allocate maybe five or 10 minutes at the end of the day, not too close to bed. You don’t want your brain to be going, but maybe after dinner or just before dinner, to actually pull out your worry list that’ll be full of all your worries, and you allow yourself to worry about it you’re controlling. So it’s stimulus control, because you’re setting a timer for 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes of the worry is over, you then ask yourself, Okay, what from here, can I actually control circle them, and then from the circled things, what am I going to take action on? What am I actually going to do? And then you commit to taking action, and you implement this process every day, and what the researchers found, and what I have found, and what all our students have found who implemented this, is they start worrying less. Firstly, yeah, except to get up and write it down exactly because you’re distracted. It’s almost like a pattern. Interrupt in the moment you write it down, you also tell yourself, okay, I’m not worrying about you now. I’m going to worry about you at 5pm during worry time or 7pm you tell it what’s going to happen. Again, this creates psychological separation between you and the thought, which can help reactivate the prefrontal center of the brain and then quieten the emotion centers. And then by allowing yourself to worry when you’re not in the emotion charged state, you can more rationally assess what’s on that list, and again, gives you a sense of power.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 50:00

How do you distinguish between healthy self improvement, focusing on getting better, perfectionism and then burnout? How or if they are all

Shade Zahrai 50:11

related, they’re absolutely related. Of course, very nuanced. It differs person to person. But if we were to provide a bit of an overarching view so the difference between perfectionism and healthy striving. So we call it striving for excellence, because a lot of high performers will say, but I have high standards, is that perfectionism is that bad, and it’s not bad, so long as the reason why you do it is to do with wanting to grow and wanting to be better, as opposed to the reason you’re doing it is because you don’t want to deal with failure. You want other people to perceive you in a positive light. You want to validate that you’re of value because you’re achieving these things. So it entirely comes down to why you’re doing it, and then how you approach it when you fall short. Those who have a healthy striving for excellence set high standards. Enjoy it when they achieve it. If they don’t achieve a goal, they don’t beat themselves up, they don’t ruminate on it. Sure they can be disappointed, sure they can wish they did something differently. But they’re able to shift that into Okay, what did I learn? And how can I shift that into action? Those who are perfectionists, one of two things happen, either they don’t try because they know they’ll fall short, or they try, they fall short, and then they become self attacking. And then so perfectionism often relates to acceptance, a lack of acceptance. They don’t accept who they are, and if they fall short, they see that as a personal verdict, I failed, therefore I am a failure. I fell short, therefore I am not as good as I need to be. I’m worthless. I’m not worthy. So it’s the approach why you’re doing it, and then how you treat yourself if you don’t maintain that. So that’s the difference between the two. What’s then the next step is the burnout. So people who typically experience a high degree of perfectionism, who beat themselves up end up being fueled by this relentless we call it a ring master, which is a inner critical archetype in the brain that we identified through years of research and assessing client notes. You know, we have this inner critic, and we found four different archetypes. One of them is the ring master. It’s that relentless push

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 52:19

for inner critics, you know? Yeah, we call them inner deceivers. Okay, got it? The inner deceivers,

Shade Zahrai 52:23

inner deceivers, because they’re trying to deceive you. And I take you through them, for sure. Okay, for sure. So we’ll pause on the ringmaster, which is number

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 52:30

four, because I want to finish this, but you can’t drop something so soul. As for inner deceivers that house with us are, I’ll tell

Shade Zahrai 52:39

you what they are. See if you resonate. You may not, but I’m sure people listening will with one of them. So essentially, how we came across them, as we were doing there were a lot of interviews, a lot of client sessions, and everyone who came to me for help had some kind of inner, critical voice. And as I was analyzing the data, I found that actually it’s not just one voice. They take on different roles depending on who it is and what they’re dealing with in their circumstances. So the first voice is what we call the classic judge. It’s just the relentless default voice of self criticism. It judges what you did, what you didn’t do, what you should have done, that relentless self talk, which is negative. The second voice is what we call the misguided protector. The role of the misguided protector is to keep us safe, as the name suggests, and what that means is by highlighting everything that could go wrong, magnifying risks, and then leading us to make a decision to stay safe. So yeah, we’re safe, but we’re stuck and stagnant. So that’s the role of the protector. The third one is what we call the neglecter. The neglecter is that voice within us that tells us that we’re only of value if other people think we’re of value, we’re only worthy if other people validate us, if we’re making everyone else happy, it prioritizes the needs of everyone around us and then allows us to neglect what we need. We don’t set boundaries, we don’t advocate for what we need in a moment, because we think that we’re not worthy of that. So it essentially gets us to neglect ourselves, and then we have the ringmaster. And the ringmaster is fueled by what researcher Robert valorant calls obsessive passion. So a lot of high performers are fueled by the ringmaster, and sometimes this looks like not being able to take a break because you feel guilty and you feel like you should be working. It’s that voice that says you haven’t done enough, you’re falling behind. Everyone else is ahead of you, and it leads to what’s called the arrival fallacy, which is where we think that achieving this goal will finally make us feel worthy, like we have achieved something, like we got there. But as we were talking about before, we know that you reach a goal, and then, for many people, they might feel a momentary burst of happiness, shot of dopamine, serotonin, and then it’s very short lived, and they’re wondering why that sense of satisfaction has. Not come, because what they’re actually seeking is a sense of worthiness, because they don’t accept themselves, and that can never come from something external, and that’s why they just set the next goal and the next goal, and they get to the end of their lives, often as highly successful people, and they look back and think, what was it all for? Why haven’t I led that fulfilling life that I craved,

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 55:21

and that and that you would say is the ultimate in burnout.

Shade Zahrai 55:24

Yes, burnout is often driven largely by that relentless voice that is telling you you must keep, keep, keep pushing. Burnout can also be driven though by pure load. Let me. Let me explain this idea of load. So something I write about in the book. So the book is essentially structured to help people determine my book, yes, it’s called Big trust. Rewire self doubt, find your confidence, fuel success, and I work through So first there’s a self diagnostic to determine what your doubt profile is. And then we take people through the four attributes and how to develop them. At the end in the adaptability chapter, I talk about this idea of loads, okay, so let’s say we have a glass of water. There’s a story that comes with this. So a psychology professor is standing in front of his classroom, lecture room, and he’s holding a glass of water, and he asks them, how heavy Do you think this glass water is? And they’re throwing out their answers, this many ounces, that many ounces. And he’s looking at the water, and he says, you know, the absolute weight of the glass doesn’t matter in terms of how heavy it is. If I pick it up for a moment and put it down, it wasn’t very heavy. If I pick it up for an hour or two, it’s going to start to feel really heavy. If I hold it for the whole day, my arm is going to cramp and I’m going to drop it. So the weight, or the heaviness of the glass, to me, is based on how long I hold it for, and I need to remind myself I can put it down at any time. When we think about the loads that we carry throughout our lives, there are four general loads we have, cognitive load, which is the amount of thoughts that are running through our mind. Some people have incessant self talk, which can feel overwhelming and extremely draining because they don’t feel like they get a break from it. We have stimulation load, which relates to the amount of stimulation in our lives.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 57:09

Is also caffeine, or just external, exactly, or what? What I mean by external, I mean visual, sound,

Shade Zahrai 57:16

even people noise, but

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 57:19

not necessarily. For example, you’re having four cups of coffee, asking for a friend, not over there, something that’s not, maybe

Shade Zahrai 57:27

depending, I think, depending on the person. Because, again, that can lead to all sorts of internal changes within you that can cause you to exactly which can then again, have these, these other impacts. Then we have what’s called, so we have the first one, gosh, I have to try and remove what these loads are. What these loads are, you know what? I won’t go into detail, okay, because I actually can’t remember the other two. I mean, there’s a lot, this is a lot of, a lot of terms, yes, yeah, yeah. Let’s scrub the load. But I’ll go

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 57:54

back to the story so like, it’s alive.

Shade Zahrai 57:58

Okay, so you put the thing, yeah, I love this time, and this story is a great reminder for us about the load that we carry throughout our lives. What is that load? It could be cognitive load, the amount of thoughts, the rumination, the over thinking. It could be stimulation load, which is the amount of time we’re spending on our devices, or the noise or the sensory inputs. If you’re an introvert, it’s going to be the noise from being around other people. It could be environmental, just where you are. It could be anything that’s making you feel like you can’t function at your peak. These loads are heavy, and when we don’t address them, when we don’t put them down for a moment, when we don’t take that rest or that break, it feels like we’re carrying that glass. And we could just drop the whole lot in those moments, any kind of self doubt is magnified. Any self doubt is magnified. And so we need to acknowledge that we can put it down. And that’s a form of burnout. When you haven’t acknowledged that you are maxed out. You have nothing left. Physically, you’re exhausted. Mentally, you’re exhausted emotionally, you’re drained, and then it all just crumbles.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 58:57

Do you find that those that are highly successful are the ones that are suffering from burnout.

Shade Zahrai 59:03

We often find it’s those who are extremely conscientious who suffer from burnout. So it could be those who are highly successful, if they’re conscientious, or those who are on their way that are conscientious. It’s because you care. You care, and that’s why you often can’t take your foot off the brake. You’re worried that if you take your foot off the brake, everything will crumble. I’m worried that if I put the glass down, the glass will shatter, but actually the glass will shatter if you keep holding it. So it’s really around conscientiousness and caring, and some people often have found, a lot of the research studies in the space have found that burnout can be also linked to a lack of motivation that stems from know why, when people don’t know the purpose, if they’re working for a company, and they’re working so hard, putting in the extra hours, they don’t even believe in the values of the company,

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 59:50

it’s a lot of cognitive processing to really, you know, think about all these things, and we probably should learn about it in school. Yeah. So that way, when you’re in your 20s and beyond, we don’t have to go back and kind of reorient ourselves to this. It’s very helpful to think about self improvement, perfectionism, and then this idea of burnout, because as you were talking just personally, I’m thinking, I know I will never feel like I’ve arrived. I know that there is no arrival the job and the mission will never be complete. And I’ve kind of come to peace with that, however I feel that is my responsibility, that if I have the ability to help support, because I believe that the world can be stronger and more resilient, I have an obligation to do that. And so just thinking about, how would I balance? Because I don’t necessarily feel burnt out, but I recognize that I’ll never arrive yet. I’ll always push right. That is in my DNA. It is how I’ve always been, and there’s probably a healthy way to do that with a level of cadence for a lifetime.

Shade Zahrai 1:01:14

Would you say that the never feeling like you’ve arrived is because you don’t feel like you are worthy yet, oh, no, no, exactly. So that’s the difference. So in your case, you have such an enduring purpose. Yeah, it’s all about purpose. It’s not Yeah, which is beautiful. That can itself, though, if you’re feeling like your purpose is still I mean, and it’s great, because it gives you that drive for the rest of your life. It means that the work is never done.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:01:41

I don’t know. You might ask my team. They might think I lost them off. They might not agree.

Shade Zahrai 1:01:45

You just have to remember, because you obviously get a lot of satisfaction from what you do as well. So there’s this teetering piece around this obsessive passion, where you can become so passionate about what you do that it becomes obsessive to the point that you neglect the important people in your life. You neglect the important things, like the sleep and the exercise. I think

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:04

that’s true, not the exercise, but the sleep, some of those other things. Yeah.

Shade Zahrai 1:02:08

And so a really great way to think about it is, how do I convert this from obsessive passion into what’s called a harmonious passion? How can this passion be harmonious with the other things that I need in my life? That’s a term from Robert rowlaran that we look that we touched on earlier, and that is essentially the solution to feeling this constant pressure to achieve

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:27

and to push. Is there, and if someone was listening to this, because I can imagine many people feel that way, that they have a mission and a responsibility to do whatever it is that they need to do. Is there a way to just put in that piece,

Shade Zahrai 1:02:42

there are two things that I’d recommend, one from research and one from experience. One of them would be, if you’re that way inclined, you will often be focusing on what’s next to do, the next mile and the next way we serve the next way we help people, and you forget everything you’ve already done. So I think it’s really important. Firstly, I’m going to share a very quick story that comes from Paula Schur, the legendary graphic designer. So it’s in a different industry, but it relates. I’ll tell you how at the end. So in 1998 she was hired by Citibank, or Citigroup. They were merging with Travelers Insurance, and she was hired to redesign their logo. So she’s sitting at the meeting room table in the boardroom, and they’re discussing what they want for this logo, what they want it to look like and feel like. She grabs a napkin, and she starts scribbling on the napkin. Few seconds later, she slides it across the table, and she says, Here’s your logo. The room was stunned. Someone said, How is it possible that you designed our logo in a matter of seconds? She sat there and she smiled and she said, it took a second. And 34 years, it took a second in every experience I’ve ever had, and they ended up paying her $1.5 million for that logo. And so the Citibank logo that you see around with that little umbrella over the top, that’s the logo she designed. So what this lesson is telling us is a lot of people will be in that situation and focus just on the here and now, and think I have to do all the work to demonstrate that this is a value forgetting that actually there’s 34 years. There’s so much that came before the napkin. And so those who are driven by a strong sense of purpose will often constantly be focused on what’s next. How do we continue to serve how do we have an even bigger impact? Just take stock of what you’ve done so far, which might involve a regular hey, let’s look back and think about the impact we had here. Or let’s reach out to someone that we worked with a couple of years ago, see what’s happening their life and how we positively impacted them, just to have those moments, those touch point moments of, okay, I am having an impact. So that’s one thing. Now the other thing is going to be a little bit unusual and a bit counterintuitive, and that’s if you want to separate your sense of satisfaction from what you do, even if what you do is fantastic and it’s aligned behind service and purpose, get a hobby. Why am I saying get a hobby? There was a study conducted where they looked at about five. 500 Nobel Prize winning scientists, and they found that these 500 prize winning scientists that won the Nobel Prize, they were three times more likely than regular scientists to have a creative hobby, and they were 22 times more likely to have a hobby in the performing arts, dancing drama there

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:05:19

22 times Okay, more likely so the hobby that they would pick were creative

Shade Zahrai 1:05:24

expression Exactly. And what many of them found is that having that hobby helped them create connections that other people missed, connect the dots, think about things in a new way. It also reminded them that when things weren’t necessarily working out in their professional pursuits, they had something else fun that didn’t define who they were, but that they enjoyed. Now the research on Hobbies shows us that hobbies can increase your sense of self worth, your self esteem, your self efficacy, and it can be anything. It can be taking a cooking class. It can be watching something on YouTube and learning how to do a new stretch. It can be a dance class. It can be whatever is going to help give you something. And this is difficult. You have to be ready to copy. No, okay, not at all. You do not have to be good. And in fact, learning to embrace the imperfection and the messiness that comes from being a beginner helps boost your agency as well.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:06:16

Okay, that’s easy, and that what would you do? I was just thinking, would I try cooking? And then I was thinking, drawing. Yeah, I think I would probably paint beautiful.

Shade Zahrai 1:06:27

What would you paint? Abstract? Okay, how do we hold you accountable to this? Oh, I’ll do it.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:06:32

Do it. I’m I’m good at those things. I love that. I’m good at saying, Okay, well, I’ll do this and I’ll get it done. Brilliant. What about peak performance. How do we define peak performance realistically?

Shade Zahrai 1:06:45

So peak performance has a lot of definitions, especially from people in performance psychology. I have a slightly different definition, which I think is more accessible for all of us. And we found people resonate with it. The ordinary person tends to resonate with it much more, because peak performance seems like it’s reserved for the elite few. The way I define, yeah, I like that. Okay, the and look, there’s a place for that, and some people are really motivated by that, but some people find it so outside of their realm of what they think is possible for them that it doesn’t motivate them, it scares them. So the way that I define peak performance is showing up in your peak state no matter where you are in life, whether you’re at home with the children, whether you’re running that team meeting, whether you’re starting that business, whether you’re at the gym. And your peak state is going to differ day by day. Some days we have 100% to give, and we give that 100% some days we have 60% to give. And if we’re able to give the 60% that was your peak on that day, the goal is continual self improvement, doing what you need to do to try and hit those 100 days. But importantly, when we then define, okay, well, what does peak state mean? In my realm of expertise, that is, when you back yourself fully. No matter which environment you’re in, you back yourself when it counts. Which is what we call Big trust, trust, which is the idea of self trust. I trust myself, is

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:08:09

that where the name of the book came, that is where the name of the book came. And it’s in order to get what I’m hearing you say is that in order to reach peak at any moment, any day, anywhere that or even success we talk we’re talking about success, self doubt, harmonious, Miss with you know your relationship with your work. It comes down to big trust. How do we know the difference between confidence and big trust.

Shade Zahrai 1:08:42

So confidence is that state that you experience after you’ve done something. So you do something, you get a boost in self efficacy. You’ve seen yourself do it. You’ve got the action point, you’ve got the evidence, the proof, and then you feel the confidence that I can do this again. I’ve I’ve got that proof point, I can do it again. Create your own momentum. Big trust is what you feel before. Big trust is what you feel, even if you don’t know how to do something, even if you don’t know how it’ll turn out at the end, but you trust that you’ll be able to handle it, no matter what. Fascinatingly, when we look at the definition of confidence. So we think confidence is a feeling, it’s a state, but it’s not an emotion we know that much. And when we look at the actual original definition, or the the origin of the word confident, it comes from the Latin con and fidere, meaning with trust. And so the true meaning of confidence that has been lost is actually the self trust, the big trust that we need to show up with, and you don’t have to wait until you’ve strengthened each of these four drivers, each of these four elements of self trust. The beautiful part about it is that we all have in our experience, no one is high across all four, like at the highest levels, there’s always a lull somewhere. But people who succeed. Rely on their other attributes to help them. So if someone struggles with acceptance, deep down, a lot of people struggle with accepting who they are. They’re always doubting whether they’re good enough, whether they’re doing enough, whether they’re a good enough parent. They don’t acknowledge it to themselves, and we can’t even get that through the data, because when we’re trying to assess someone’s self doubt, it relies on someone’s willingness to be open and honest and how self aware they are, and people are not particularly self aware, so we’re relying on that. But even still, we do find that there are these lulls people who are super high performers. Even if they lack one, they compensate with another. They might compensate with their agency and say, Okay, I don’t feel worthy, but I’m gonna do it anyway. I’ll focus on what I know I bring. I will be resourceful and ask other people to fill my gaps. They focus on their autonomy. I’m going to focus on what I can control. I’m going to take action based on what is within my realm of influence. And so that way you again, you don’t have to wait for this state to arrive. You just channel that. We call it Big trust energy. Show up with big trust energy, exude that back yourself in the moments that really matter.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:11:06

You know that feeling after a really hard training session where the last thing you want to do is sit down and eat a full meal? Yeah, I get it, and I’m not about forcing down a steak when my body just isn’t ready for it. But here’s the thing, intense exercise and really all exercise is catabolic, meaning it increases muscle breakdown. So to protect my muscle and build new muscle and recover, I consume essential amino acids around my workout. This helps with the recovery body health. Perfect amino helps me hit the protein threshold I need to stimulate muscle with minimal calories and not a huge digestive burden like a large sink. The workout was the hard part, but the recovery doesn’t have to be head to bodyhealth.com and use the code lion 20 to get 20% off your first order. That’s a body health.com and use the code lion 20. What I love, what you’re saying is that, you know, we think a lot about motivation. From a health standpoint, people will say, Well, I’m not motivated to go to the gym, or I’m not motivated to this. And we make it so that you can’t rely on motivation. Motivate. And what you are talking about is that you can’t rely on confidence to feel confident, to do something that a you’ve never done, or even process it in the way that it is about a feeling you do it before, and you prove to yourself that it can be done by trusting yourself

Shade Zahrai 1:12:43

absolutely, because that’s the core of discipline. Yes, core of discipline is actually self trust, nothing else. How do we get better at self trust? Well, read the book. But how do you better self dress? So the first thing, I think, is acknowledging that you are not your doubts. Doubts don’t mean that you’re broken. They mean you’re human. Doubts are not a verdict that you shouldn’t try. They’re just data to interpret, and everyone has the capacity to improve their relationship with self doubt, and it starts with de identifying from the doubt. Don’t say I’m a failure. Say I’m noticing the thought that I’m a failure. Don’t say I can’t do this. I’m noticing a thought that I can’t do this. It sounds weird and robotic, but that’s kind of the point

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:13:25

you’re detaching yourself from. You know, for example, when we parent, we don’t say, Oh, you’re bad or you you know, you’re being bad. We don’t shame our kids. Yes, it’s the behavior, the behavior, which

Shade Zahrai 1:13:38

is wonderful because then also, and I also apply this to other people. When it comes to dealing with difficult people, we often associate the difficult behavior and the person, and we conflate them. And so I like to say, no, no, there are people and then there are difficult behaviors. How do we address the difficult behaviors? That is very kind of perception. Words. It’s all a matter of perception and words.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:13:58

What are you hoping that this book does for people, I want

Shade Zahrai 1:14:03

it to fundamentally change the way people see themselves, fundamentally change the way that they have been interpreting that voice in their head, the doubts that hold them back and help them recognize that there is a path forward that is science based, that is not going to happen overnight. There are no quick hacks, but there is a path. If you choose to step onto that path and back yourself, and you don’t have to keep waiting, you can start with the trust and start now.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:14:29

You know, I think it’s really valuable, if I were to think about, okay, so what is super valuable? Well, I think obviously having a strong body, but I’m learning that if we pull the lever of a strong mind. It this again, I haven’t really thought about this concept of self trust. I think that it’s probably been subconscious for me, or maybe it’s played out differently. And I think if the listener or viewer, if you guys are watching this on YouTube, could challenge. Themselves for 30 days to just trust that whatever comes your way you

Shade Zahrai 1:15:08

got this, and ask yourself, what would this look like if I just trusted myself? How would I show up differently? What action would I take? And it’s powerful. What that can do is because it

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:15:19

alleviates doubt and also alleviates this idea of, if you are focused on the positive, it’s kind of the rest of it is irrelevant. And I think, I think that that’s really meaningful. There’s something here that you’ve said, and you’ve said, how we communicate our ideas can change others’ perception of our intelligence, absolutely.

Shade Zahrai 1:15:45

So something that we don’t cover in the book, but is very relevant, is the fact that big trust shapes how you show up in the world, and then how you show up in the world shapes how other people respond to you, which then reinforces how you feel it can either confirm it or invalidate it. So let me give an example. So we’ve worked with incredibly senior leaders within organizations. So most of our work is with Fortune five hundreds. So we have a lot of experience working with leadership teams in various companies around the world. And something that we’ve seen quite often happen is you’ll have a senior leader who has reached a point where they’re not able to progress and they’re not entirely sure why. They’re very competent. They’re very good at what they do. Objectively, they’ve got a track record of success. They’ve got wins on the board. People view them as a reliable part of the team and a valuable part of the team, but there’s something that’s preventing them from moving to the next level and getting the influence they need, and it’s because they don’t realize firstly, their doubt profiles coming into it so their self image about what they can and cannot do, but also remember how at the beginning, we started talking about perceptions of confidence and how we make assumptions about people based on how they look and how they speak and how they walk and whether they look at us with their eyes and their smiles. The same thing can happen in these business environments based on what we say, and this is from relationships that are not new. It’s not a first impression. But these are people. Maybe you’ve worked with leadership teams, maybe you’ve worked with for a long time, and for some reason, you’re not able to gain that credibility and that influence to move to the next level. And it almost always comes down to the words that you’re using and how you’re choosing to communicate. Communication is one of the most incredible skills in terms of value adding to yourself to then how people respond to you, which then reinforces how you feel. So these leaders we were working with, the reason they were blocked, they used common communication credibility killers. I think they’d say, I think, before any idea, and it’s not just what they’d say, it’s how they’d say it. I think there was no confidence in their voice. They would use things like just, oh, I just want to say, I’m just not ready. I just don’t know. I was completely undermining their message or prefacing. This might be a silly idea. I haven’t really thought this through. Again, undermining their message before they share it, once we made them aware of it. Firstly, they then realized how often they did it. And then the second step was, how do they just eliminate that and say what they want to say without undermining, prefacing, softening. Many of them said, Oh, but I don’t want to damage relationships. I don’t want to come across as to come across as bossy, I don’t want to come across as aggressive. So we had to work through this process because that was reflecting a lack of acceptance. They didn’t accept themselves, so they wanted other people to like them, and that’s why they defaulted to these habits. Once we helped them recognize that and help them understand that, changing the way you say something is not going to make people fundamentally dislike you. Tone matters. You can say it in a kind respectful tone, but ditch the softeners. Ditch the just, instead of, I’m just checking in, I’m checking in. Instead of, I just want to say, I want to say, instead of, this might be a silly idea. Just share the idea. When you do that, people respond a little bit differently. They pay attention, they listen. And then how do you feel more valuable? So you then have that rebound effect, these simple things. The other thing that often happens is what’s called up talk where you’re nervous, and this happens a lot. In fact, I do it sometimes too. I had a segment once recently, when I was in Dubai TV news segment, and it was all very kind of last minute. It was wonderful to be on there, but I was watching it back, and I’m like, Wow, I’m doing that up talk a lot, where I end my sentences or my statements with what sounds like a question, as you’re doing now, as I’m doing now, to demonstrate that is not helpful for gravitas and for that perceived confidence. So but we do it when we’re nervous. And I was pretty nervous my first time on TV, so actually second time, but the first time was virtual. So we fall into these habits, becoming aware of what you’re saying, how you’re saying it could be one of the most valuable things you do if you’re finding that you’re being blocked. Or they could just try it anyway. Try it anyway. Do it, especially in emails, write your email, then read it back and delete any. Just release any, I think, delete any. This might be a silly idea. Try it on.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:20:15

That is really good advice. Do it.

Shade Zahrai 1:20:19

One more, oh, that just came to me. Now, one more sorry, the over apology. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I’m late. I’m sorry I hadn’t done this in time. I’m sorry about that. Stories are important when they’re warranted. Overusing sorrys Suddenly strips them of any meaning and undermines your status and your position. So I always say, save an apology for when you mean it and when you need it. If I dropped my pen right now five years ago, I say, oh, sorry, and I’d bend down. Why? Who am I apologizing to just bend down and pick it up if you’re late, if it’s like a minute, thank you so much for your patience. I apologize for the inconvenience, as opposed to sorry I’m late, you’re instantly positioning yourself as someone who has caused the inconvenience. Rather than owning it, thanking them for something positive and then acknowledging what would you say? You would you? I would say, thank you so much for your patience. I apologize for any inconvenience. You might put that at the end. But we also see this, especially with women, not only women, but we tend to see it frequently with women where it’s sorry I’m talking too much. I’m sorry. I’m so emotional. I’m sorry that I haven’t thought this through, as opposed to flipping it into gratitude. Thank you for listening instead of sorry I’m talking too much. Thank you for listening so intently, you’re communicating the same thing, but see how one lowers your perceived status and the other one actually elevates it and makes the other person feel good, because you’re expressing gratitude or instead of sorry, I’m so emotional. Thank you for bearing with me. I’m really passionate about this quick little tip on the passion emotion piece. There was a study published that found that if you tend to find that you’re emotional at work, never say I’m sorry. I’m a bit emotional, and don’t allow anyone else to say to you, you’re emotional. Reframe it immediately. I’m really passionate about this. I’m very committed to this. I care about it. Tell me why that matters. It’s entirely to do with perception. Unfortunately, in the workplace, emotionality is seen as a negative and it’s something associated with women. It’s a highly negative trait. What Some studies have found is that men are also quite emotional in the workplace, but they demonstrate more anger, stress and frustration. Yet it’s not perceived as a negative when it comes from them. And so the idea here is if you can move it away from emotional and into something positive that is typically associated with more male behavior, like commitment, passion, perseverance, really caring deeply about something. It changes how people perceive you, and it also changes how you feel. You stop apologizing for feeling things, and then instead, you turn it into, yeah, I feel this way because I’m really passionate about this, and then that helps you have more of an action orientation, rather than apologizing for how you are, and

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:23:02

this is probably something that you practice outside of the moment.

Shade Zahrai 1:23:05

You can do it in the moment. You can even do it in the moment. So the beauty with our words and reframing is they are powerful to use in the moment. What I’d recommend is two steps in the moment. The first step is to yourself in your head when you’re feeling a strong emotion, don’t say to yourself, Oh, I’m so emotional. Practice what’s called Emotional granularity. What does that mean? Emotional granularity, emotional granularity. So what is it actually that you’re feeling stress? Is this big umbrella term that people often use that doesn’t really mean much. There is usually a source. Why are you stressed? I’m feeling overwhelmed by my workload. I’m feeling misunderstood at work. I don’t know how to target this or tackle this task, right? There’s something identify what that is, and then the emotion associated disappointment, the uncertainty, the frustration. Mention that. So naming emotions has been found to reduce the emotional activity in the amygdala. There’s this beautiful quote that comes from Matthew Lieberman from UCLA, and he says, when you name an emotion, it’s like, what happens when you’re driving and you see an orange or amber light, you bring the car to a stop, at least you’re supposed to, you’re supposed to, yes, very true. Some people that’s true. Yeah, you slowly bring the car to a stop, but then eventually you put eventually you pause. The same thing he describes, he says, The same thing is almost happening in our minds when we name the emotion. It’s like seeing the amber light, and we can slowly see that emotion start to dissipate, because you’re re engaging the frontal part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, when you consciously control your thought in a moment. Re engaging this part here. When you let it run on autopilot, it’s usually driven by the emotion centers in the brain, so you name it in your head. Then the next step is, if anyone is around you and they saw whatever that emotion was, however that looks to the person, don’t apologize for it. Just say, I’m really passionate. Passionate, but thank you for bearing with me. I’m very passionate about this. I’m sorry I broke all your dishes. I’m so sorry that there are dishes all over the floor

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:25:07

broken, but you would say thank you for understanding that the dishes are broken Exactly.

Shade Zahrai 1:25:11

Thank you for understanding I had a moment we can fix it well, we can clean it up now, but it’s really powerful, really powerful reframe

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:25:18

it is because it allows you control, as opposed to being unconscious of whatever is happening. So much of our lives were on autopilot and unconscious. And there’s an antidote to that which I love and you’re bringing if you wanted to give three daily habits to improve big trust, what would those be? Oh, three daily habits. So I

Shade Zahrai 1:25:44

saw something that you posted recently on Instagram about how protein start your day with protein, and you’ll experience less cravings throughout the day. And I love that, because I always start my day with protein. And I was actually thinking I would say gratitude is the equivalent of that when it comes to our minds. So the mind is wired to magnify what you focus on. It’s just the way that it is. There are certain parts of the brain, so I should actually say the brain is wired to magnify what you focus on. There are parts of the brain that lock into any beliefs that you have or things that you’re telling yourself, and then you notice more of them around you. So when you start your day with gratitude, consciously reminding yourself of what you have to be grateful for now. Some people say, but this is really hard. I have nothing to be grateful for right now. And so I heard a beautiful reframe. It goes, Okay, well, what are you grateful that you don’t have right now? What are you grateful that you don’t have in your life? Acknowledge that, because life could always get worse, and that helps people go, Oh, okay, okay. I know what to focus on now. So start your day with gratitude. That just primes you to notice more of what’s good in your life.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:26:46

And is this just waking up thinking, Okay, I’m grateful for the sunshine or the kids or anything,

Shade Zahrai 1:26:54

anything at all. It can even, I think a lot of people feel very uncomfortable doing this initially, because they don’t feel the gratitude. It doesn’t matter. Just verbally state it, because again, even if you state something, you’re absorbing some element of that where you’re stating it, and then you’ll start to pick up more of it, and it’ll just get easier the more you do it. So the first one is gratitude. The second thing to be aware of is your thoughts. What are you telling yourself? De identify from the thoughts. You don’t have to believe everything you think, thoughts are not facts. The third one is going to be physicality. So there’s something called opposite action, where we were talking about it earlier. If you’re feeling insecure, your body is going to want to slouch. Opposite action suggests that you can hijack your state by doing the opposite of what your body is telling to do you to do. So if you’re feeling insecure or anxious and you feel like withdrawing, allow that to be your trigger, your pattern interrupt. Okay, I’m going to sit at the end of my seat, upright, neck raised, I’m going to allow air in. I’m doing the opposite. And because of the behavioral feedback loop, what happens is you reinforce actually, I’m more in control than I thought. Actually, I don’t feel as stressed or anxious anymore. So that’s the third one. I’m going to throw in a fourth. I’m thrilled because I can’t I can’t end with the third without touching on the fourth, which is, audit your circle. What do I mean by that? Social contagion tells us that we are influenced by the people around us. When I met you for the first time today, Gabrielle, I was happy. I was joyful, because I felt that from you, the people that we were around are contagious in terms of their emotional states, as are we. Not only that their belief in US can reinforce our belief in ourself, or their lack of belief in US can undermine our belief in ourself. So if you don’t have a circle around you are people who believe in you and encourage you to show up with that big trust energy. You need to find yourself a new circle.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:28:49

You don’t need a committee, a ton of people.

Shade Zahrai 1:28:52

He just got it can be one other person, like a line, just a few committed Yeah, and you need to first be

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:28:58

that person for yourself. Really, really good advice. I have one more question for you, of course, now I think, I’m not going to say, I think now

Shade Zahrai 1:29:08

Good, well, you can, in this case, because you’re just, you’re thinking about an idea. Is that true? Yes. So okay, so this, all of these communication tactics, they’re actually only relevant if your credibility is in question or uncertain. So if you’re already someone who has credibility, and in this case, you do, you don’t really need to worry about it. If you’re in a room of people who don’t know who you are, and you need to convince them of your credibility, then perhaps you can strip these out. But in this situation, is totally fine.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:29:36

And the reason I’m just going to give you my rationale for the little phrase, I think, is because I’m not sure if you think this way. From my perspective, in medicine, in my profession, I’ve changed the way I’ve thought over the years. Over the last year, I’ve really had some big changes into my belief system. And. So my question would be, I was gonna say, I think that we all do, but is there something that you’ve really changed your mind on in the personal growth space, or from the mental or neurobiology perspective, in the last year?

Shade Zahrai 1:30:17

Yes, two, and I’ll share them quickly. The first one is I so our business influencia global, which I run with my husband, we work with Fortune five hundreds organizations of all sizes, and our role is to go in there and provide them with training to work with their leaders, speak at their events. Something that comes up a lot is they invest a lot of money in training, confidence, training, communication, training, performance, training, and what we see. So we communicate this with them, but they’re like, We don’t have budget for the second part. The first part is the training. So a lot of people invest in the training, and then they wonder why it’s not having the effect it’s meant to. And it goes back to what you were saying, Gabrielle, about how you know when people have beliefs about their health efficacy or their health worthiness. It shakes whether they follow through, if a leader or if a professional or if an entrepreneur does all the training, they know the tools and the techniques and the strategies, but they haven’t fundamentally shifted their self image. That blueprint is still running on old software, and they’re still carrying those metaphorical scars with them into every meaning, a meeting or every situation or every opportunity, and they’re going to sabotage. So one thing I’ve learned is that organizations need to shift their focus away from just pure training and actually focus on implementation, implementation and building the capacity of belief in those people. You can do this. You’re worthy of this. It’s one of the reasons why have you heard of the term psychological safety? I have not so. Psychological safety is a term thrown around in the organizational space. A lot of teams and leaders have been trained on how to create this, and it comes from Amy edmondson’s work. Essentially what it means. Okay, so it’s almost as the name suggests, you feel psychologically safe to share anything and not be judged by others. At its core, that’s what it is. It’s freedom from interpersonal fear. So I don’t fear that that person will judge me, or that person will criticize me if I contribute or share here. And again, companies have invested a huge amount of money to train people on how to create this. Why is it still not working? Because you can have a really safe environment, but if that person doesn’t believe that their ideas are valuable because they struggle with acceptance, they’re still not going to share it. So it comes down to that self image. Now, the second thing that I’ve learned is that you can teach a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that the desire is going to be there. So something that we’ve seen is a lot of people who develop big trust, and they show up with that big trust energy, and they maybe achieve that next step for them, and then they realize, actually, I don’t want this, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want this leadership opportunity, I don’t want to be running this business, and so that’s the other thing, that big trust gives you the opportunity to pursue what it is that you want, but then you have to make the decision is that actually aligned with what’s important to you in the life that you want to lead. And that’s why I loved when you were sharing about how passionate you are about the purpose that you have and the impact that you’re creating. Because if we can tap into that, if we can figure out what that is, but you’re never going to know, unless you back yourself to try. So that’s the other thing I’ve discovered

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:33:28

really good human exploration. And it’s it’s so great to be able to sit down and think about how we show up, because that ultimately moves the needle, and I really feel like life is so short. And you know, one of my best friends actually sent me a message yesterday, because I still actually see patients, and sometimes the news isn’t always great. And I was talking to Alana about this. She’s up for chaplaincy, which is helping people not just live well, but die well. Oh, beautiful. And what she says was, you live each day with no regrets, dignity and just greatness. Each individual day, it’s each moment, and in part, that’s what you’re teaching us to do.

Shade Zahrai 1:34:21

So thank you beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being such a gracious host. I’ve had such a good time.

Dr Gabrielle Lyon 1:34:26

Well, I cannot wait to share your book with everybody. Thank you, and we will, of course, make it available, guys, if you are listening, I know that you love this podcast, and if you are viewing it, you can check out the beautiful Shah day, named after one of my favorite singers, but all kidding aside, big trust is a big deal. Thank you for having me.