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David, thanks for joining us today.
Well, thank you, Kwame.
Thank you so much for having me.
And after you being on my podcast, it's a pleasure to return the favor as well.
Yes, likewise. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure. So yeah, so I have Kwame on my podcast, which is called the Self -Belief Chief Podcast.
So I founded the business Self -Belief Chief, which looks at basically coaching high performers, but it's in many different areas.
so for me my personal struggle is it started from a very early age I remember a coach of mine I was a footballer coach of mine and he sat down and went through a report with me and he said David you really need to start believing in yourself anyway that was the end of the conversation he starts walking
off I said how and he said what do you mean I said well you told me I need to believe in myself more but I said but how and if you've ever had someone say to you just believe in yourself and it's that eye -rolling thing say to them how and have a listen to what they say and you'll find out it's all of a sudden
more difficult than solving a rubik's cube it's just no one actually has an answer to what is something that everyone wants to do and i built this obsession which is if everybody wants to believe in themselves why don't they but more importantly than that it's rather than just saying we want more confidences
well why do people want more confidence how does it affect our relationships how does it affect our sales our business our friendships every single thing and creating different programs under the kind of self -belief chief brand which specialize in different things because confidence in different areas
is a different language so there's no point trying to say confidence generally or whatever that's too vague it's the confidence to do something and that makes all the difference and so through that obsession of wanting to understand what changes the quality of people's lives but again if everybody wants
to believe in themselves why don't they i was obsessed with that question and once i could you know understand in terms of relationships then i thought okay now let's do it in sales okay let's do it with athletes let's do it with this let's do it with this and create as many different programs so that people
could go you know what that's the area i need confidence in because you're probably the same quality you know you're no doubt you've got unbelievable confidence when it comes to conflict negotiation but no doubt you've got other areas where like all of us you go actually i'm not quite as confident in that one
i'm not quite as confident in that one we all have those and so yes we might be a confident person yes we might have confidence at this or a good sense of self -belief but actually it's an environment where we know if i had confidence in that area that completely changes my life that changes the quality
of my life that gives my family the the finances they need it gives me the type of relationship I want.
It just changes everything.
It means I'm not lonely and isolated.
It changes so much.
And so yes, confidence is part of the equation, but really the self -belief sheet brand.
And what I do is how do we take action?
And that's what I loved about you on my podcast which was just that so much in terms of the practical steps, but really our life only changes when we take action.
And so we need to have the right mindset.
We need to break someone's pattern and i love you talk about breaking people's pattern with empathy i love the examples that you gave or you've given when we've had conversations of actually you can disarm people with empathy and it breaks someone's pattern then we can start taking action and move it
that way so that's been my life's obsession and uh and finding as many platforms as many ways to share that is uh it's something i i absolutely love to do this is fantastic david i'm so excited for this because when like like you said when i was on your show self -belief chief also everybody make sure
you check out that podcast fantastic show um when i was on the show after we were done i said no i need to have you on my show as soon as possible because i i don't think people recognize just how important confidence is and that's why my book is titled finding confidence in conflict because it doesn't
make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen.
You actually have to have that self -belief to actually take action.
So I'm really excited to get into that with you.
And so the three things we're going to talk about today, number one, the six sources of self -belief, number two, reliable peak pattern, and number three, the technique called scratching, how to overcome a previous disappointment.
This is exciting. So let's go ahead and start with the first one, the six sources of self -belief.
Tell us more about that yeah so in my in my desire to understand confidence and understand how to simplify this because you know the enemy to anything is complexity isn't it and confidence that it seems like a simple term but when anyone describes it it just gets too complex and convoluted and so I
I did a huge disappointment this is exciting so let's go ahead and start with the first one the six sources of self -belief tell us more about that yeah so in my in my desire to understand confidence and understand how to simplify this because you know the enemy to anything is complexity isn't it and confidence
that it seems like a simple term but when anyone describes it it just gets too complex and convoluted and so i i did a huge kind of piece of research to understand what is confidence at the simplest simplest level and for people listening this is something which you might want to grab a pen and paper
to actually just test this out for yourself so you can understand actually how this works so i looked at neurolinguistic programming game theory sports psychology just any any different field of human behavior and understood try to understand how they define how they describe confidence but also the people
i worked with wider research wider conversations to find all the terminology all the words all the phrases people use to describe confidence to then narrow them down and then i narrowed them down to just six things it's with these six things that when you score each of these out to 10 you can work out
why you lack confidence in particular areas so for example Kwame to use your your no doubt huge confidence in conflict negotiation if I run through the six things and we can have a sense of why it is we're confident in that area and then it can be compared to other areas where we lack confidence so let's
go through those six things so the first thing and these are the bits worth writing down of the six things that you need to be confident in an area the first thing you need is clarity clarity brings things closer when you have clarity it comes closer to you and having clarity in terms of why what when how
all of those things can you ever find clarity 10 out of 10 probably not it's an incredibly difficult thing to do but that is for a lot of people why they never take a first step because they have such poor clarity as to what is required i'll give an example i had someone who came to me and they said
david i want to be richer and i've got a pound out my back pocket and went here you go well you're richer now aren't you now of course that's probably not what they meant but if you get if you're so vague in terms of what you're asking for then of course you get vague results having more clarity in terms
of who your ideal you know your ideal audience is having clarity in terms of who who is it you're having a conversation with and actually what's required so that's clarity so the first thing is clarity the second thing is you can have that whole picture but you need focus if you cannot focus on the specific
target you need to the whole picture that's why we have clarity but then you need to know what the specific target is tony robbins said whatever you focus on you feel i think it's a fantastic fantastic saying you obviously focus on the problems what's not going well guess how you're going to feel focus
on what's going right and the target and the solution guess how you're going to feel so the first one we need clarity then we need focus the third thing is pain now people always look at me a bit strangely i'm sure people listening would have been like what what's that god what's that got anything to
do with my confidence the pain is ruining everything for me i want to avoid pain absolutely but if you know how to turn pain into power in the future if you understand that maybe through experience maybe through a strategy whatever that if this problem comes along, I'm going to know how to deal with it.
It gives you confidence in the present because we don't worry.
We don't fear. We don't get anxious about what might happen because we know what we will do.
So we need clarity.
We need focus and we need pain.
We need to go through those hard points and those experiences.
No doubt, Kwame, again, through your confidence in negotiation.
Part of all of that is the amount of experience.
You've learned the hard way.
You found out what didn't work you had those conversations where it's like oh man it just didn't work I'll ask you the question I presume that's the case yeah absolutely and I tell people all the time if you have somebody who's teaching you anything but of course in negotiation and conflict resolution and they
can't answer the question your biggest failure in a negotiation then they're they're probably not very good because if you if you can't if you're not failing that you're not really trying that hard.
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Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
So it makes perfect logical sense that that would be a part of the equation.
So we said clarity, number one, focus, number two, pain, number three, number four, energy.
okay energy emotion is created by them as well that affect our energy levels and so we have to get an understanding of what gets us to the right point in terms of energy energy is a really hard thing and when we're trying to get in the right headspace the right mindset the hardest way to change your
mind is to change your mind the easiest way to do it is through your body and through your energy so that's the easiest way you could have the right energy as well so clarity focus pain energy and what the last two the fifth one is momentum if you feel like you're starting from scratch that's a difficult
place but my belief is that we have momentum developing our entire lives we just often don't recognize it because the way the brain is designed we're supposed to spot the dangers the negatives the problems what's going wrong because it's great and thank god it does that because it's kept us alive but at the same
time that when we feel like we you know when we just feel like it's endless negative momentum it just feels like you have to scratch again i have to scratch again and you just don't feel qualified or comfortable or but we also recognize no doubt you felt this but you just feel like on fire we've got
this momentum i've done this i've done this i've done this i've done this and it just is it's just never ending it's just keep going keep going and keep moving forward you can write down you know a list of things whether it's something you're grateful for or things that you've achieved or things that done
or whatever you could build a huge huge list of things that build a sense of momentum for you without you even having to move all of a sudden you go what actually shit i've done a load of stuff here and actually i've achieved this and i've actually i've actually done this four or five times before i'm
not signing from scratch i've actually got a lot of momentum here so we all need that so clarity focus pain energy momentum and the last one growth we all need to have another level to go to we also all need to feel like we can go to another level if you say to anyone pretty much anyone if you're exactly
the same and nothing changed and nothing improved in 10 years time would you be happy no one would say yes to that question however good you've got it everyone wants just a little bit more and that's fine because progress equals happiness we all need to feel a sense of progress need to feel grateful
but we need progress as well and this is when you work with high performers maybe it's been you've recognized this as well karma when you work with high performers you know and whenever i've worked with say athletes and or you speak to you know a celebrity or something like that and they're stuck and they
they seemingly have everyone everything by societal standards and yet sometimes they're miserable why it's because they can't see what the next level to go to is or that they thought they would achieve that level and then that would be fine that would be it that would be enough and unfortunately because the way
the brain's designed it's not our fault the way the brain's designed it's not enough we have to keep moving improving growing so just to kind of sum all of that up so you look at clarity focus pain energy momentum growth those six things why get people to do that i work with is it i look at those things
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And now back to the show.
Out of 60, really, we want eight out of 10 in each of those six categories.
So we want a minimum score of 48 out of 60.
So I get people that have a score of 20 out of 60.
They go, you know what, I'm having a problem with my family, a sort of conflict with my family.
I'm not good at having these conversations or discussing it i don't really know what i'm going to say so we go through it okay how much clarity do you have in terms of what it is you're going to say or why you need to say this they say i've got a three okay what would get us to a five okay do this this okay
what would get us to six to seven part of that equation might be therefore working with someone like yourself depending on what the situation is don't have clarity okay now actually rather than us going five six seven maybe we need to find the right person an expert in this if this is such a high level
conversation that we're having maybe you need a kwame maybe you need someone that can actually take your clarity to a 10 maybe you do need to invest in something in that area so that's a point but also can you focus on the solution can you stay focused on the solution or is your mind drifting to what if this happens
and what if that happens and what if this happens you know do you know how to deal with the pain do you know how to turn it into a turn it it's power if if the conversation starts getting difficult what's your energy like beforehand are you in the right place are you are you feeling like quite meek
and shy or do you have your energy where your heads heads up your chest is back your chest is up your shoulders are back all of that and so on and so forth i won't go rattle through all of them but anyone listening i'll just finish by finish that point by saying do that with an area you feel great in your
confidence will be 48 and above do it in an area that you're not confident in it'll be lower but then you can start looking at ah why which areas do i need to improve in why is my confidence low not just my confidence is low why and the most important thing to say of all of it is everyone is different
we all need those six things but everyone prioritizes two some people need more clarity and focus as their top two for other people it's you know what energy is the most important thing probably followed by growth look at those six things and think which two of those are key to me and my performance
that is the thing that gives you an indication because you might not be able to remember all six all the time but if you know your top one if you go you know what actually if i take nothing away from this podcast i've realized that energy is david i feel like this is a therapy session right now this is fantastic
i i'm excited to go through this for myself and people that you've worked with, what would you think is the single biggest barrier to confidence based on this scale?
So the way to answer that question, of course, firstly, depends on which things do they prioritize, right?
Everyone is different.
So I've got to work with the athlete where their energy isn't right.
I've got to work with the couple where they just, they can't stay focused on actually where they trying what where they're trying to get to rather than focusing on the problems got to deal with problems having said all of that i think the clarity not that it is the most important thing but whenever
i work with someone their clarity typically is so poor in that area if we have a good sense of what the picture is if we know the why and we know the when and the how if we get those down then a lot of people start to go oh actually right i can see the picture forming because all emotion is contained
in a picture in our mind now if we don't have the picture our brain starts drifting to what we don't want again because that's the way it's designed so if they get a good sense of designing a compelling future and getting a picture and it looks bright and it looks exciting it looks colorful and having
clarity in terms of where they're trying to what you know what good look what good looks like so if you're going to have that difficult conversation or if you're going to have that situation which is going to go one way or the other the clarity in terms of what's going to be required but the clarity
of actually where you're trying to get to because a lot of people don't really know what the end result they're trying to get to just to give a quick example on that is i had a i went skydiving probably a huge mistake but i went skydiving i'm obviously fine i'm obviously still here i went skydiving
and i was sat next to a girl shaking in the in the sort of the training room shaking like a leaf i turned to her i said are you okay probably the stupidest question i could possibly ask but and she goes well actually i got driven here by my family blindfolded for my birthday surprise i didn't know i
was actually gonna be skydiving today now that's the worst surprise i've ever heard ever and her her dad who was also with her and her kids are there but her dad who was with her was supposed to do it and he bottled it he clearly hadn't gone through the six sources of self -belief so anyway so i had
to say to her you know try to calm her down we had to change the change the energy thing first but just to kind of touch back onto what i was just saying which is she was worrying about what's you know if this happens if this happens if this happens i said forget that i said how will you feel once you've
done it because that's the picture we really need to build it's not just the picture of how it's going to go because that's only so kind of interesting oh it'd be really good if it went you know this person said this and then this happened this happened this happened but it's a thousand times more compelling
if we have this fantastic vision of what it's like when it's done when you have that conversation with someone you might be avoiding a conversation a difficult conversation with someone because you're worrying too much about the conversation itself you need to know and understand how that's going to
work but how do you feel once it's done that's the most important thing for me is building that vision where oh well actually so for this for this girl how will you feel once you've done it all of a sudden from this shaking you just stopped she doesn't notice she stopped shaking oh well I can imagine
it's an amazing feeling and actually it's something I can go to work and tell everyone that I did my kids must be so proud of me when I do this and there'll be a video and they'll get to watch it back and they'll we'll get to enjoy that as a family together and uh my partner will just you know we'll
think wow she's unbelievably brave and courageous and maybe even more respect for me i said to her so you did but you're not going to do it though so that's fine she's uh okay no uh no hang on no no i might i might do it i might do it and uh she she agreed to do it because you need the other elements
as well she agreed to do it only if she was in the same plane that I was but and then she went first in the plane I saw how quickly she fell out the plane and I thought oh I made a mistake I made a mistake this is not a good idea and but that was it she just needed to see the end result so I'm curious
Kwame for the work we did and we had a good conversation last time when when you talk have conversations with people how important is it for you to sort of build that picture for someone's it was here's the process but actually how do you feel once it's done?
Is that something you consider important?
Absolutely. I think about it in terms of regret.
And I say, well, who is the person that you think you'd respect the most?
When you look back on what you did or did not do in this part of your life, what is the decision that you would respect the most?
And that usually gets people to think with a different perspective and that's one thing that I never want to happen because I hate that feeling of regret like I could have done something and I didn't do it and for me I'd rather I'd rather take a shot and miss than not take the shot at all and usually
when you give somebody that type of deathbed perspective it kind of pulls them out of where they are in the moment and helps them to see the picture a little bit more holistically.
Absolutely and you use the deathbed thing which is I I you might well be familiar with Les Brown but um he he quoted one of Martin Luther King's writers I forgot I forgot the name of the writer um but he said his writer this writer said imagine on your deathbed seeing the ghosts of all the people around your deathbed
but those ghosts being your the decisions you didn't take the the dreams you didn't act upon the conversations you didn't have the people you didn't say I love you to all of those sorts of things so I it's interesting that you said that, because that's something I absolutely bear in mind, that type
of philosophy. Absolutely.
Absolutely. And I think, again, I really like this, because it gives you absolutely.
And I think, again, I really like this, because it gives you a little bit of clarity too, right?
Because sometimes just because of your emotional state, you develop a little bit of tunnel vision, not a little bit, a lot of tunnel vision.
And like you said, you focus on the thing that you don't want to happen.
And I remember, so I play tennis, I love playing tennis.
And in a lot of times, your head placement in sports in general, but tennis especially, will have an impact on the trajectory of the ball.
And so if you're hitting a serve, and you're missing the serve into the net a lot, usually it's because your head is coming down too soon.
You're not watching the ball long enough.
And a lot of times in life, your direction will follow your focus.
And if you keep on focusing on the negative, the negative, the negative, it's almost like that focus just manifests that negative outcome that you were afraid of the whole time, instead of like what you were suggesting, focusing on what's the good thing that could possibly happen.
It's almost like raising your perspective, so you're not going to miss low you're going to focus on something that's a lot more productive absolutely i love it and the thing you said about the tennis thing is it's interesting you bring when i work with athletes that's a common thing i talk to them about is when there
are when there are car crashes and but but when i say car crash you know someone hits a tree or a lamppost it's the only tree it's the only lamppost on that street and they hit it why it's because we immediately start to focus on what we don't want to hit and we look at that and we start going oh how
do i avoid that we look straight at it with actually you know when you talk to a formula one driver or a nascar driver or whatever when you're trying to come out of skid you've got to focus on where you want to go that's the only option you have you can't focus on the wall you can't focus on that car
you have to focus on exactly where you want to go and that's a really difficult thing by the way so i'm not i'm not here to trivialize it but like you said on the tennis serve absolutely when we start to you know understand the process and actually what we're focusing on but you're right taking the time
to actually consider what that is but actually write it down draw it out sometimes intellectually the things i just said about the six laws of self -belief i'm sure people listening will be kind of niting along go yeah yeah i get that i get that i kind of do that but a lot of people get that intellectually
do they actually implement do they actually practice do they implement do they take the time to work this stuff out and i think that's again taking action it's the difference a lot of people will nod along intellectually but until we actually take the time to work this stuff out so it's that small one
percent or whatever to go oh you know what when i was throwing that ball up in that serve my eyes come off the ball just half the second before it should do every single time and then i go through a process with someone in terms that tennis serve and of just understanding that your eyes they just stay
there but they always got to stay there what feels like a little bit too long because i love my tennis as well they've always always got to stay there just a bit longer than it feels normal and and that makes us you know it's just a little kind of habit or routine so that we you know success leaves
clues right so we it's not that we don't have the answers but it's really defining and understanding why why do we have the answers why do we know what to do already and that often is the one percent most people think the one percent is this new thing and it's not it's consistency it's predictability
routine we would much rather be able to perform consistently than perform at a 10 out of 10 a handful of times but the rest of the time is very average if we could just be consistent and it's the same you know in business if you knew how much money you're going to make each month we would rather have a very
good amount of money each month consistently than have this skyrocketing month knowing that the other 11 months are going to be quite low or up or down or whatever and it's going to cause stress in terms of our ability and anything we want predictability again similar in negotiation conflict anything
is to have a sense of predictability the hard thing about that is and the reason why the six source of self -life i find so useful is in interpersonal relationships you don't have control you have influence the best you never have control because there's more than one person so therefore in some cases
with the six sources of self -belief you want to build clarity a lot of people want to build clarity for control so you might have to accept you know what i can't get 10 out of 10 because i don't 100 know how the other person will react i might get to an eight or nine what does that mean maybe i've got
to build up the other five areas a hell of a lot more to kind of counterbalance it because in other cases energy we might for whatever reason have an injury or a physical problem or um there's a there's foods we can't or for a period of time or a phase of our life we can't do something so maybe for whatever
reason our energy we can only get to an eight so therefore the other five areas got to become stronger we might intellectually for example somebody likes energy know that energy really helps us but would you know the answer when energy was taken out of our life what would we do then We have to know
those other five areas exist because we have to believe that confidence can come from more than one place It's like an investment You wouldn't invest all your money in one place hoping that does well You'd invest it in three four five different places to make sure your money Hopefully it's the best
thing but also to safeguard it and that's the approach i take with confidence as well There are so many quotables here i'm struggling with with my notes.
This is really really great and and for the sake of time let's move on to the next one which is the reliable peak pattern so what is this as it relates to confidence sure so the thing that i call i call it that because people want peak performance but one i always talk about confidence as pattern and the other
bit is how do we find it reliably and again it's not a new thing it's it's understanding what already works and utilizing that so what I do with people for example let's say two of those six sources let's take for example clarity and focus because they're just the first two on that list if I know someone's
got clarity and focus I go okay and they want to build their confidence let's say an athlete that I work with if I want to build someone you wouldn't invest all your money in one place hoping that does well you'd invest it in three four five different places to make sure your money hopefully it's the best
thing but also to safeguard it and that's the approach i take with confidence as well there are so many quotables here i'm struggling with with my notes this is really really great and and for the sake of time let's move on to the next one which is the reliable peak pattern so what is this as it relates
to confidence sure so the thing i call i call it that because people want peak performance but one i always talk about confidence as pattern and the other bit is how do we find it reliably and again it's not a new thing it's it's understanding what already works and utilizing that so what i do with people
for example let's say two of those six sources let's take for example clarity and focus because they're just the first two on that list if i know someone's got clarity and focus i go okay and they want to build their confidence let's say an athlete that i work with if i want to build their confidence
and their performance performance right when have you performed let's look at five ten examples of that and they go through those examples okay yeah and this one in this occasion of i played so well in this occasion i performed unbelievably here okay we look at those 10 examples right what were you
focusing on in each of those examples in each of those situations so then we define it actually let's take focus and energy because that might be no focus energy let's take those two so and go back to a tennis example because there was someone i worked with a while back and it's for his forehand he
just he lost this confidence forehand so we looked at 10 examples of when that forehand was perfect and he mentioned all these different things and i said what's the common denominator so the reliable peak pattern is really about what is the common denominator it's not about complicating it's about simplifying
so with the forehand he says you know what every time with the forehand my left hand moves in this particular shape i've forgotten that my left hand before you know being a right -handed tennis player my left hand would move like this to almost guide myself first to almost almost be pointing at the ball
and then it would bounce and i just completely forgot and actually the other common denominator is that when i focus on that forehand as it bounces up I hit through the ball and my eyes just stay there just stay locked in that space I don't look at you know anything else I just look at that ball because I
want to make sure I hit that specific spot on the ball and the other thing he says you know what I used to I can't believe I forgot to do this I used to practice that forehand in my mind a hundred times a day why did he stop I don't know the but the beauty of doing this is that when you try and teach
someone something new they might go it might work maybe it'll work do i totally trust it would i try in a high in a high high pressure situation maybe i would maybe i wouldn't that little bit of lack of trust or that hesitancy means that people won't follow through they won't perform but remind someone
of what already works for them their belief goes through the roof because they go oh my god yeah i performed so well on these occasions i have done it i know this works i'm not telling them something that works they're telling themselves what works that is a lot more believable to them people want to
find out their own answers and so we look at then we do the same thing with energy so it's cross -referencing those examples look at the energy how did we get ourselves ready beforehand in those occasions oh you know what i always i can see i always did this I haven't done that for years and I actually
you know maybe these occasions have been like two or three years apart and he'll just find out that randomly he didn't do these things that was just a random thing that he did on those occasions but actually it did help it did create a sort of a peak performance and that's their peak pattern and that's
how we find the reliability is not by creating something new but by finding what already works and then with that conviction believing that oh I know this works because I've seen it happen already rather than trying to teach them something new they're gonna have to try for the first time do something
and do what already works that is a great way to get them to perform through their best filter rather than me trying to pretend that i am the expert because i'm not i'm not the expert they are the expert of what they do this is incredible because as it relates to difficult conversations and negotiation i
can't think of anybody i've worked with who says i've never been able to have a good conversation I've never worked with anybody at that point.
There can always be an instance where it did work out well, where you did have the conversation and it was successful.
And it makes a lot of sense trying to figure out those common tactics, those common tools, the common approach between those victories that they've had in the past so they can actually be more intentional about revisiting those tools and using them in a way that's authentic for them.
absolutely and so you know with sales for when i work with people in sales i mean there's just infinite information on sales isn't there but but one of the best things i find is that especially people who do have the experience that you know at the beginning you've got to learn these things but when you're
having these conversations with people and when we get into that rut or pattern where we just we don't know we're not building rapport in the same way we don't feel empathy or or what just whatever's going on that just stop creates this stumbling block and we go why have i not sold or created you know
made sales for 10 15 20 now we'll look back at what works but in doing it we can save ourselves years of trying to go you know just do more do more do more see what works and experience of course is incredibly important but you can spend half an hour looking back at the best not just average occasions
the times you performed at your best and i promise you there is a common denominator And that is your reliable peak pattern.
Makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. And again, you're not reinventing the wheel.
You're already going to what that one.
So scratching. Okay.
So if we think of, you can either think of a record player or a DJ or something like that, right?
So you have a, for people who are too young, your vinyl discs or whatever might be too young, but you've got your vinyl discs.
When you scratch it whilst it's playing, the sound changes.
Okay. why does any of that matter we have conversations arguments frustrations but we don't perform or just a bad situation or just something and it just builds this picture in our mind and we go into future situations or occasions and that's there and it's there and we know it's there it's the back
of our mind and that creates a bit of the what if this happens again feeling That picture holds all the emotion.
So to bring back in the record player, someone has a picture of a disappointment and let's take a difficult conversation at work and you thought you knew how to handle it and it just, it went past you, it went beyond you, it just escalated, the temperature went up and you've now created this unbelievable
friction with someone and maybe now as a manager or a CEO or whatever, you're now in a place where you go, ah do i know how to handle it the next time or is this going to come back in my mind am i simply just not good at this is this picture just going to keep coming back up at the wrong points in my
mind it's just going to be there as soon as i go for that conversation or that discussion or even with that same person where the temperature rose that that picture is in my mind and it's i can't focus i can't concentrate okay so that picture that you have in your mind and people listening again you
might have a picture in your mind right now something that is a dis has been a disappointment a setback a trauma a bad situation you have a picture that picture has lots of emotion inside of it sadness frustration anger jealousy whatever it might be to change the emotional feel that that picture has we
need to scratch it again the record player we scratch it changes the sound so if we scratch the picture scratch the picture change the emotion so what i do to explain it's like a 20 minute exercise I do with people where they've gone through unbelievable setbacks or disappointments and I'll just explain it
in short which is we have to create a disassociation I get people to put that picture up on a cinema screen and they do this from a subconscious place so as I said just in the interest of time I won't go through the exercise but just explain it in a little bit of detail that subconscious plays rather
than a conscious mind getting in the way is they have their eyes closed they get in a state of REM they put this picture up on the cinema screen and i ask them what's the predominant emotion they might go anxiety i feel anxiety how much anxiety do you feel out of 10 this is a 10 i can i can feel it
it's like i'm there right now okay change the characters in the picture to cartoons or change it to animals or give them kind of weird voices or silly voices or whatever and make it playful or even put like a theme tune in the background it'll just make people laughing or something just change the picture
and we get in that place in that headspace and then they'll play it forwards and backwards they'll play the situation forwards and backwards okay great scratch the picture now move three seats back the screen has now got smaller so you're now moving away which creates a bit of disassociation they do
the same thing play the picture forwards and backwards and backwards we might even bring in a new picture which bursts through the cinema screen that completely overwhelms the old picture a new picture which creates a sense of exactly what we want if we if we achieve if we've performed if life was beautiful
all of that stuff and play that forwards and backwards the essence of it is we keep moving them further and further back the screen gets smaller they become more disassociated with this painful image it's the same thing you'd use for a phobia as well but it connects a new picture that bursts through
the screen that any time they think of this old picture in the future immediately this new picture comes into their mind there is no way that those two aren't joined forever now and the beauty of that is if every time the old picture exists you then dwell on it you think of it for 10 15 20 minutes an hour
whatever two hours 10 hours you think about two days after a bad conversation it just in your relationship you avoid each other for three or four days because that picture just overwhelming you so the problem isn't the emotion the problem how long it lasts sadness frustration anger they're all fine
sometimes they're good things but does it last for 10 minutes or for 10 hours the scratching exercise when you change that picture and it forms a new picture and it's and you know it becomes this thing where it's not something you have to try it's this old picture comes in and this new picture comes
in and it just immediately short circuits the emotion okay you're going to feel sadness anger frustration observation i had to do this with a woman who'd lost her husband and yeah does she still feel pain absolutely but it takes her to a different place and it takes her to a place where she could let
go and move on and she's actually dating again and so again when i do it with people who have these you know they're panicking about this they'd had a conversation with their sister and it just went terribly it went awful and they know they've got to have to broach it at some point but they're so worried
because the picture in their head is presenting itself.
It's stopping them working out what they need to do.
We scratch that picture so that that emotion doesn't last.
If the emotion doesn't last, that then gives us a bit of freedom and space and work and time to work out what we need to do.
It's the pictures in our mind that prevent us from taking action moving forward.
So if you scratch those pictures, you can change the emotion forever.
This is a phenomenal approach.
And for me, as a psychology nerd, I'm really in love with this.
And one of the things I am obsessed with is memory.
Because I'm trying to teach people I want to help.
This is a phenomenal approach.
And for me, as a psychology nerd, I'm really in love with this.
And one of the things I'm obsessed with is memory.
Because I'm trying to teach people, I want to help people retain the knowledge.
And one of the things that's interesting about memory is that everybody focuses about how to make it stronger, how to learn more, how to retain more.
But could you imagine the psychological benefits of being able to spot erase memories too, sometimes, if you went through something traumatic, there's nothing out there that can help you to completely forget.
But what you've provided us with, though, is a way to take that same memory that we might want to get rid of, but we can't get rid of, and turning it into something empowering.
I think this is an incredibly powerful approach.
And so if you go through this, when do you think it's the best time to go through it?
Once you first experience it?
or when what's your opinion on that great question it's it's it's one i've thought about a few times because you work with people since no doubt with the same with you you come into people at different stages of the conflict right you've got the people at the beginning and so there might be slight adjustments
that you need to make i think it depends what it is if you talk about trauma it's too it's probably too much too soon and it's something that people need time you know if i could wipe away grief in five minutes or a conversation i'd be earning millions every month so we obviously can't do that right
but at the same time after a while after a period of time now conflict and that's if that's not trauma right so i think there's no reason why the sooner the better because the longer that picture the longer that picture's in your mind the more it develops and you like memory and so for example when you
think about i i forget that there was some study that was done which proved that they did one of those studies where it's eyewitness testimony type of things and then you know and you no doubt love those things i can see the smiley face that you do you enjoy those and just the fact that memory is so poor in that but what they
found was with people like a year later their their account is 75 percent of it is not even what happened and so if memory is that poor and that difficult what it meaning is we we build a picture in our mind initially and then it keeps developing and it keeps forming it keeps building and it goes bigger
and bigger and bigger that leads me to think that the sooner we can deal with that the easier it becomes you can do it at any point right if you've been suffering with something for 10 20 years even if it's a phobia or whatever you've had your whole life you can still deal with it but i love that you've
made a great point i think it's absolutely worth making is people have the expectation to get rid of the memory forever if that's the expectation that's often a game we can't win but there are plenty of things where we actually go you know it might have been like a a conversation at the end of a relationship
or something uh and it might be that you never want to think you think you never want to think of the relationship again but actually at some point wouldn't it be nice to remember that you didn't feel like you wasted years that actually that was a good experience that actually that relationship was good
and that you learned a lot from it and that it really did help you in the future and actually rather than trying to go let's pretend that part of my life didn't happen and try and try and act as if we wasted part of our life is we can't control the events but we can control what they mean and scratching
allows us to change that meaning and i found for me personally because someone much more intelligent than i am put some of those ideas in my head so i could start forming that idea of what what you could do with someone is actually i don't want to forget these things i want to learn i want to grow from these
experiences and the last thing i'll say on that because i think it's such a good point that you've made is when you look back at an event you never look back at the event itself you look back at how you saw the event right so how we define it in that first moment is how we're gonna remember in the future
that's another thing i do in terms of i use 60 seconds as much as possible if a setback disappointment happens 60 seconds to not not rubbish it or pretend it wasn't bad to define it in such a way in a positive way what am I learning what am I growing what am I accepting what I'm taking because that is what I'm
going to remember in the future so with that 60 seconds yeah you might still have pain in the future it might still be disappointing setback but you know you might have a difficult conversation you come out of that conversation give yourself 60 seconds not to pretend oh it was fine it was easy that's
it didn't really happen and pretend all of that stuff off the back of a difficult conversation that was a difficult conversation but you know what I maybe like maybe I let me think about it from their point of view they're probably thinking this okay i can build some empathy because i can maybe in the conversation i
wasn't thinking this maybe i can understand it from their point of view and maybe this needs to happen so that we can get that tension out the way so it allows us to have a better conversation next time what else could i take from it you know what actually it's an experience which i can learn and grow
from if things were easy all the time then i wouldn't ever be improving and i'll get caught out in a much bigger scenario much bigger situation so maybe i need this little bit of conflict here that allows me to do things that are 10 times harder in the future now when we go back to thinking about it
all of those definitions are part of the memory and i think that's really important so i think that's a really good point kwame that you made so as a psych as a fellow psychology nerd i mean how do you use memory in terms of when you look at conflict resolution what's what's your process or thoughts
in terms of how memory plays a role in it?
Well, it depends on how we're looking at memory.
If we're thinking about memory in terms of difficult conversations in the past that didn't go well and how that impacts the way that we we navigate future types of conversations, I think we have to go through a process like this one.
We have to think about ways to think differently about it and find a way to learn from it and change and evolve.
Now if we're talking about memory with regard to the specifics within a difficult conversation, my recognition is that memory is incredibly fallible and vehemently over their imaginations.
This is my imagination and this is yours.
And the conversation becomes predictably unproductive.
And so I encourage people to use what I call future focused problem solving, where we just acknowledge how the person is feeling about the situation, validate it and say, yeah, it makes sense that you feel that way.
And then we look to the future.
So we ask questions to orient the focus of the people in question to the future.
I don't want you to focus on the negative things.
We can focus on the problem that you're perceiving and then what we can do together to avoid that problem in the future or rectify the situation.
But as far as the details of what happened in the past, I'm not going to spend much time going back and forth on that i'll just listen summarize so they feel heard and then reorient the conversation to the future i love that you're right it's yeah you're just just in the conversations they're just just
negotiational conflict there's just so many intricacies which is just impossible to recall build as again we're just interpreting it in different ways we look at the same every human being on earth i find it so interesting that we could we could all look at the same thing and yet we're seeing something
completely different.
And that for me is just, you know, aside from the memory aspect of it, we're just, it's the definition of everything that we're doing is different.
And yeah, absolutely.
I, you just, you just can't trust your mind.
Not at all. Not at all.
And, and when you, when we're talking about scratching the three things that came to mind for me were number one, cognitive reappraisal, number two, positive associations and number three, neuroplasticity.
And so when we think about cognitive reappraisal, we're acknowledging how we're feeling emotionally, but then we're reinterpreting the definition that we give for the feeling.
So for instance, our heart rate might be elevating, our palms might get sweaty, you could either say, I'm afraid, or you could say, I'm excited.
And that's something that I had to do a lot when it came to public speaking, because I was terrified of public speaking.
The funny thing is I still feel the exact same way every time, but now instead of saying I'm afraid, I say I'm excited.
And so there's a little bit of that involved in scratching that I can see.
And then also associations, you think back to Pavlov's dogs, how we're all constantly associating things, we're pairing things together.
So we're pairing this event in the past with a negative interpretation.
And so then what we're doing here is we are pairing this same instance in the past with a completely different interpretation.
So instead of seeing it as something that was detrimental, we're seeing it as a necessary part of our development.
There's some value to it.
And so by going over it in your head in this new, more positive and empowering way, we're pairing it with something that's more positive.
And then with neuroplasticity, we think about, I think it's Hebb's law, where neurons that fire together wire together.
And every time we think about these things, we create these patterns of thought, and these connections become stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger.
And I've had to think back about times in my life where I started to feel negative.
And so we have to think about, okay, I'm angry now.
But anger prolonged into the future becomes resentment.
And anger right now is how I feel.
But then resentment is closer to who you are, because of that constant firing together over and over and over again.
And so again, when I think about how we are interpreting these negative instances in our life, I think about who I want, who I want to be.
If I project my feelings into the future, and I don't resolve this feeling, if I don't change the way I'm thinking about it, who are these thought patterns creating in me?
And so when you think about it that way, we recognize their consequences to the continuations of these negative thought patterns.
And again, I think this is where scratching is so powerful.
Because when you think about how our thought patterns shape our brain and who we are, we're taking control of how this particular instance impacts who we want to become in the future.
You've described it better than I did.
The anger resentment thing you said is, it's a perfect example of a pattern.
And you have patterns of behavior, but like in terms of neurons and those sorts of associations we have it at a biological level as well those types of patterns so absolutely uh in terms of the way our you know our synapses fire off to all the different signals so absolutely on both sides i think that's
quite a good description of what's going on and what i really like about scratching is a lot of things when i work with people a lot of things people don't like to have to try what i mean by that is you give people a strategy or something to to kind of deal with a pain or emotion people want to they
don't want to have to go right i've got to remember to do this and remember to do this remember so oh well you know i thought of this right i've got to do this thing i've got to do this thing and to have to feel like doing that now if they had the discipline to do it yeah great they would turn it into
a habit where it doesn't feel like effort anymore and those things are fantastic there's some really great strategies and tools that do that what i like about strategy scratching is whilst i don't believe in quick fixes at all especially in the types of areas that i coach in what scratching does do
is it creates something where the person never has to try because when the memory comes into the head a signal goes off exactly how you described it a different signal goes off so they don't have to put in the effort so it immediately does something where it's actually when i work with people they go
how but how does that work how have you done that because i can't i can't think of anything different i did this with someone who um i they wanted to lose weight i said what's your favorite food they told me their favorite food we did exactly the same thing i ruined pizza for them now that was different
i love pizza so that was heartbreaking for me but i had to ruin pizza that every time i think of pizza this new and i weren't even emotions were different they didn't associate any of the same emotions a piece is now ruined for them now it's exactly the same thing is when we're going when we're in a difficult
situation or has a difficult situation is that we don't want and we have to go into another high pressure environment that actually different signals are being sent to us not because we're trying to send different signals to us but because we went through this exercise it now sends different signals
and now i go into it and just to use your example of public speaking i had someone deathly afraid of public speaking and we went through a similar exercise and they started changing the things in the picture to what was one of the things they did they they imagined i had no idea why imagined a snake
making the sound of a pigeon right i cannot tell you for the life of me why but they said oh in this picture i have i turned this person to a snake and they made the sound of a pigeon now i have no input into the picture so before you think i'm crazy it's not my fault this is what this person came up
with but it made them laugh they thought how stupid is that but when they go into their going to an arena or whatever to speak when they think of the fear as soon as the fear goes the snake making the sound of a pigeon which for whatever reason makes them laugh well if you're laughing like you are you
just everything goes the tension everything goes in them and it's just that fear doesn't stick around and like you said you redefining fear you know uh i think anxiety and excitement biologically the exact same thing is happening in the body no doubt why you do it because you just redefine it it's the same
thing now similarly just that that sense of fear fear being a good thing and now it's defined in a better way it now connects to something that makes them feel relaxed and laugh and everything else which is exactly what you want when you're going to speak in front of however many thousand people so i
i i thank you for your description i've written some of your description down of it because it was it was it was pretty spot on and um yeah and i certainly hope for people listening if you've had a setback um you know it's a 20 minute exercise to do you can't do it at a conscious level you can't because the conscious
mind just you know if you said someone believe in yourself but you just said it's someone's face you'd go screw you what you're talking about but you do it at a subconscious level at a deeper level and did this sort of stuff it tends to go in so you have to do it at a different level.
But, but yeah, but for people listening, I mean, it's, it's, it's a simple exercise, which I've just, you know, again, someone much, much more intelligent than I am gave me the ideas around it.
And I just think it's a really, really helpful thing.
It's made a huge difference in my life.
I hope for people listening at some point, maybe, maybe it'll be make a big difference in theirs as well.
Absolutely, David, this has been fantastic.
But before you go, let them know about the podcast let them know how they can get in touch with you and um give one one key takeaway for for the audience too so well firstly so thank you very much i really really enjoyed having you on my podcast and um listening to the episode listening to your podcast
it's been fantastic so it's a real privilege for me to be on yours so thank you for that for the people who want to listen a bit more about kind of these crazy stories with snakes making the sound of pigeons or whatever else if you had if you heard something today that you think actually you know what i'd
like to understand a little bit more about that you can find all my stuff at self -belief chief .com that you'll find the podcast there as well where i interview different guests and who've got different expertise in different areas so i'd love for you to tune in to that on the self -belief chief .com site
there's a lot of loads and loads hours worth of free content on there for different areas of life so if it's you know you're coming out of a relationship with suffering from heartbreak think it's more specifically for this audience.
If you're struggling with sales and you want to have an understanding of what already works for you and understanding that process of having even stronger conversations through your own filter in an authentic way, then please, by all means, get in touch.
You'll be able to find that detail on the website as well.
But by all means, just visit the website.
I'm sure there'll be something for you.
But otherwise, if there's something different, then please feel free to get in contact with me.
And I'd love to hear from you as well.
Fantastic. David, a pleasure, my friend.
Thank you. You're welcome.
Thank you. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
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