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Okay, let's get into it.
Hello and welcome back to the show.
I have to thank you so much for joining me.
I have a very special episode here, one that I have been excited about for approximately a week, when I knew that this was going to happen.
I've got two friends of the show joining me today.
Got Chris Irwin, who's been on the show a bunch, creator of Rare Sense.
We did a very long, very good, detailed episode relatively recently called The Five Mind Killers, where I compiled four episodes into one.
So if you want a three and a half hour deep dive on Chris's concept of mind killers and countermeasures, I highly recommend you go check that out.
Hi, Chris.
How the heck are you?
Good, man.
Good to see you.
Thanks for having me back.
I'm doing enough here not to screw this up, so you keep inviting me back.
I keep bringing you back.
And then we've got Mark England, co-founder of Enlifted.
Mark was on not too long ago, actually, to talk about Kidlan's Law and about writing things down.
And we often have you here to talk about words and breath and abracadabras.
How are you doing, Mark?
I'm doing very well.
I'm really excited to get the two of you on an episode together.
You're kind of our mindset guys.
Chris, you focus on this idea of mental fitness, like I just alluded to, Mark.
You've got words and breath and stories.
And so I'm really excited to triangulate some ideas here.
And the idea that I wanted to talk to you both about and the idea that I'm really excited to talk to you about is actually was sparked by Chris.
And this, I think, Chris, was Ben's introduction to you to me was a story that he told.
And I don't know if he did it on an episode or it was just he and I were just chatting.
But at some point, this concept came into a little introduction we had to the episode.
And it's this idea of assets versus burdens or being an asset versus being a burden.
And so I want to tell the story that Ben told me that I think he got from you, but I want you to color it in and make sure I've got it right.
Okay.
I think the idea was Let's just imagine you're out with a buddy and you're hiking in the woods, you're going for a run or something happens.
You're out in the woods and a tree falls down and pins your buddy to the ground.
Being an asset means you're either strong enough to be able to lift that tree off of your buddy and carry him to safety, or it means being able to run far enough fast enough to go out, get help and get back to your friend there in the woods.
Am I getting that right?
Am I remembering that story correctly?
Yeah, I mean, I think so.
I think I used that example in like a blog post or something like that.
But I kind of had an old blog that I did.
I don't even know where it was.
Old website, old kind of blog.
This is before Substack.
I was trying to figure out exactly what lane I wanted to operate in and what I wanted to be saying.
And so I was talking about basically whatever came to mind for me.
And at some point I put out this thing about fitness in general.
And as you know, I've always appreciated the CrossFit.
They have a definition of fitness work capacity across broad time and modal domains, which I think is exactly right.
I think that the idea is like anything life throws at you physically is your ability to do.
That is what determines your fitness, your physical fitness.
And I was just kind of playing around with that concept.
I further reduced that to just capacity to respond.
That's how I define fitness.
I think it's the most the simplest definition I can come up with And because it applies both physically and mentally right.
So the example that you're giving there tree falls on somebody, can you pick up the tree and move it?
Can you run and get help?
Could you pick your friend up after you get the tree off of him and run him five miles, right?
Those are just challenges life has thrown your way.
What's your capacity to respond in any of those cases?
That to me is your level of fitness.
And mentally is exactly the same thing.
Like when something crazy happens in your life, when you have anxious thoughts, when you have whatever it may be, what's your capacity to respond right?
And what's your capacity to respond to your own emotions and your own thoughts?
So I really, that's how I've distilled that down.
But sometimes, like a lot of things that can be, it can be an abstraction instead of kind of like something concrete.
And so what does that look like in real life?
And at some point I was just I think it was on like a, like a shuttle bus that goes between the airport and a rental car center to get a rental car.
And I'm looking around the bus and I'm just thinking based on looking at people.
If this bus flipped over and caught on fire, who can actually do something at that moment to get themselves out, to get other people out?
And I think at that moment it just kind of came to be that idea of like, who's an asset and who's a burden in a scenario like that.
And I just liked that way of sort of making.
It was kind of reifying that idea of capacity to respond.
It's like when you're confronted with something, a scenario that involves people other than yourself.
Are you an asset in that case, or are you a burden?
Can you do something that to assist everybody else or do they have to assist you?
And so, yeah, I just wrote this kind of very, very brief article about that.
And I think that's where it spawned from.
So, and at some point, I don't know, Ben and I had a conversation, something like that.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark, I'd love for you to respond.
And the first thing I wanna I just wanna put out there, though is Mark.
One of the things you always talk about is how you and the team there at Enlifted have come up with a really simple, really effective definition of what mindset is.
And it strikes me as kind of elegant to match that with Chris's simple definition of capacity, which is this capacity to respond.
So I'd love for you to just kind of respond to what Chris just said, and please feel free to take it where you want.
When you all We're talking about assets and burdens.
I was thinking about what does it feel like to be an asset?
If I could speak for a guy, for guys, it feels good.
It feels good to be an asset.
How does it feel to be a burden?
It feels horrible.
That was my first thought on it.
Yeah, we do.
We have a simple definition of mindset.
It's the story that you tell yourself.
And simplicity and effectiveness, for me, go hand in hand.
When I think of being a burden or someone who is a burden not necessarily in a bus getting turned over situation, which is you absolutely want to be an asset there is when I think about people that are burdens in my normal life.
They're people that make things complicated.
Excess complication.
I don't meet many adults very often that go.
Yeah, I'd love to have some extra complicated people in my life.
I just need to go get, I need to go find some more complicated.
I want more complicated friends.
No, it's the exact opposite.
Most of the time people go out of their way to cut out complicated people because they're just a drain across the board.
And a lot of times complications like that come from complicated stories and complicated definitions.
Like we were talking about earlier, Patrick, and I can pull it up real quick.
I went to Austin to do a show and we were talking about complicated versus simple definitions.
And I gave the definition from the American Psychological Association.
I gave their definition of mindset, which is extremely complicated.
And I said, hey, folks, when you start with complication, guess what you get more of complication.
And I pulled out my copy of the DSM five.
So the diagnostic and statistical manual that is super thick and super complicated.
And yeah, we got a little bit conspiratorial on the whole thing, but I like being an asset, or more of an asset than I was.
You know, it's something that you can build upon.
Yeah, for sure.
Cool.
I want to get into that.
I like that we're talking about definitions, though.
And I want to introduce one more idea, one more spark to this conversation.
It's something I came across relatively recently.
There's a guy, his name is Scott Galloway.
He's an entrepreneur, a professor, an author, podcaster.
And he just came out with a book called On Being a Man, or Notes on Being a Man speaking of masculinity.
Mark
And in that book and in conversations he had around that book he introduced a concept to me called surplus value.
And it's one he actually borrowed from Richard Russo, I think is his name is who's the author of a similar book called On Boys and Men?
So again, we're kind of living in the world of masculinity here for a minute.
But this idea of surplus value is, I think, pretty simple, which is just are you adding more to the world?
Are you adding more to the relationships in your life than you are taking away?
And Scott Galloway's argument is that a lot of people, a lot of boys, may grow up, but they never grow up to be to create value, surplus value.
And so I started thinking about assets as being people who create surplus value, and burdens being the people or being people who create negative value.
How does that strike either of you or both of you as just a kind of a working definition of being an asset or being a burden?
Does this idea of surplus value resonate with you the way it did with me?
Chris, I'll go to you first.
Yeah, no, I think it does.
I mean, I think that that's a good way to think about it because again, the sort of bus flipping over scenario is probably a little extreme and not likely to happen.
But something like that where you're called upon to, there's a potential for you to do something outside of yourself.
If you think about the neutral line between surplus I would say surplus value and then those who take from that value right.
So like I mean, I guess you could call that negative value, but it's like someone's creating surplus value and someone else is actually then taking from that surplus value.
So like the neutral line there is, can you take care of yourself, right?
Some kind of extremist situation.
I can take care of myself.
Like I can get through this.
The surplus value situation is I can take care of myself, and I can take care of other people too, or at least one other person, right?
I can do something to help somebody else.
The negative value or the the sort of withdrawing from the bank of value is somebody that can't help themselves and needs someone else to help.
Right.
And look, this can get.
I'm not trying to.
None of this is meant to say there's people out there that need help.
Right.
And there's people out there that have conditions where they were to rely on other people.
It's not that we're talking about.
Is the stuff that's within your control to change about yourself, to create a sort of surplus value like you're talking about, like a bank of it, so to speak, that you can withdraw from when you need to, and the terms that i would throw into this.
I was thinking about this the other night as i was going to sleep.
Sometimes i do my best, thinking i think before i go to sleep, which is bad because it keeps me awake.
I'm very aware of that too, but I sometimes do it at three o'clock in the morning, which is even worse.
Yeah.
Well, on a different podcast I was saying how there's only like two places where these days, where we're forced to be alone with our thoughts.
One is right before we go to sleep.
Whenever you finally turn your phone off and you try to go to sleep, you're forced to be in your own thoughts.
And the other one is in the shower where almost nobody brings their phone.
There probably are people who bring their phone into the shower, but...
But for a lot of us, you're actually just by yourself in your own thoughts in the shower.
But anyway, I was thinking about this.
And there's another term that we all use a lot, which is agency, which we really like a lot, right?
Like establishing agency over your mental and physical well-being.
And I think agency and asset go hand in hand.
Like the more you sort of take ownership and agency, the more you become an asset.
So AA there.
And conversely, the more you blame your situation on outside events, I think, the more you become a bird right.
The more you say, oh, this is all about, I'm a victim of this and that and the other thing.
I think those two things are pretty closely correlated.
But anyway, getting back to your original question there.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
That surplus value idea.
How much can you extend that capacity outside of yourself?
Right.
That's a really cool way to think about it.
Yeah.
And I like you sort of embedded in your answer there Chris, was a bit of a spectrum where on one end of the spectrum, if you kind of think about it like as a less to more, is the individual who's a burden, who can't even take care of themselves.
And again, to your point, Chris, there are people who need help.
Yes.
But what I mean is the people who could, in theory, help themselves, but don't.
Right.
They're on the far left of it.
And then kind of in the middle is you can take care of yourself, which is great, certainly a step forward.
And then all the way to the end of that spectrum is you can take care of others.
I think that's a really interesting way to, in the same way that the sick well fit continuum is a nice visual representation of health.
I think that's a really interesting visual representation of moving from burden to asset.
Mark, I'd love you to jump in though.
Just one other point on this.
Sorry, not to cut Mark off.
No, no, no, go.
But to that point, yeah.
I mean, everything's a spectrum, right?
Everything's a continuum, but yeah.
So it's like if you think about the fittest people, you know if you can take care of like one, like again, some extremist situation.
You take care of yourself and it's like I can pull one person out of this and then I'm toast.
Okay, you're fit or fitter, but then there's the fittest person is going to go back for the next person and go back for the next person, go back to that right like and can lift something that someone else couldn't lift and all of that kind of thing.
And i think the same thing is true again with the mental stuff.
It's like the people that are the most regulated and the most aware and the most well-read and all of that kind of thing can respond to the greatest number of situations with something to contribute.
Right,
So anyway, now I'll shut up so Mark can talk.
All good.
I'm thinking, I'm learning, whether it's over the target or a little bit off.
I was thinking about myself when you all were talking.
And as far as surplus value, the better.
I've got at what we do now within Lifted, and it's my only.
I turned 19 years old, professionally speaking, on the 17th, so last week.
And the better I've got at that, the more value I've added to whoever crosses our path from that, the more I've relaxed into the other areas and aspects of my life that I'm not all that good at.
And need some assistance with or have questions about.
And when I think back to definitely in high school, that changed when I was 21.
Before that, I wasn't good at anything and I was insecure about everything.
If that makes sense.
And so I had an opinion about everything.
Know-it-alls.
I'm thinking big picture about just general burdens.
Who have I come across that I've thought were just a burden, a waste of time, a headache, a drag.
And there are different flavors of that kind of person.
One of them is the know-it-all.
Mm-hmm. person that knows everything about everything.
They aren't particularly good at anything, but they've got an opinion about everything.
Definitely people that run a hot dumpster fire victim mentality.
Those people are, they'll suck the room mechanically speaking.
They'll suck the air out of the room as fast as anybody and anything.
That's definitely a burden.
Someone who's scared to go out there and make some mistakes, that kind of person.
They end up needing people to take care of themselves past the point of utility, people that run the perfection syndrome.
Perfection syndrome, that'll show up from time to time in the coaching space.
That's a sneaky form of imposter syndrome.
I mean, there's a lot of ways to be a burden.
I've never had this conversation before.
I've never unpacked it.
So, I mean, I'm real time.
I'm not 100% sure if I agree with what I'm saying.
I'm 90% there, so...
If I walk something back, please give me some grace.
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You kind of hinted at this idea of like the more I've gotten really good at this thing that I do right.
You're almost 20 years of coaching.
And the more value you provide to the world, to the individuals within that relatively narrow confines of who you are as a person, the more open you are and I'm putting words in your mouth a little bit, so fix them if they're not correct but the more open you are to accepting value from other people in places that you might actually be a quote-unquote deficit.
Now, I don't think you're such a burden to anybody that they're not happy to see you.
But we create a sort of level or a certain level of confidence in one area of our life and that opens us up to receive value, the surplus value of other people.
And I think that that's really interesting because I think it can be really easy to think, you know, listen to this conversation and think wrongly either you're an asset everywhere and in every context of your life, or you're a burden everywhere, in every context of your life.
But I love what you're bringing out, Mark is like there might just be an area of your life where you are an asset, and that's great.
And that allows you maybe to use your words, Mark that allows you to tell a story to yourself that you are not in fact a burden, which then opens you up to accepting other people's surplus.
Yeah.
And, to be clear, you brought up a really good point there Patrick, which is The whole intent of this is not to look around and assess other people.
As always, the point is to look internally and figure out too exactly what you're saying.
It's not an all or nothing all the time.
It's in this particular situation.
Do I possess the necessary skills and fitness to be an asset, or am I a burden?
I just think it's a really good assessment tool that makes it very concrete and actionable in the moment.
For example... hey, a friend of mine asked me if I want to go ice climbing.
I'm just throwing out theoreticals.
I don't know how to ice climb, but I might want to go because I want to learn.
But realizing like, okay, in this situation, I'm kind of a burden, right?
Because I don't know what I'm doing.
And they're an asset because they do.
And that's okay.
It's calculated.
It's like I'm going to learn something here to make myself more of an asset, if I'm ever ice climbing again, right.
With a group.
That's kind of like we're working together, we're using ropes and whatever else we're doing.
I don't know anything about ice climbing.
I love that you picked that.
I love that that was the example.
This is bullshit.
But it's or a discussion about something, some topic.
Do I know what I'm talking about or not, right?
Am I an asset to this conversation?
Meaning I'm bringing fresh perspectives and an open mind, or am i?
To mark's point?
No, i'm.
This is the dunning-kruger effect, right?
I know what i'm talking.
The less you know about something, more convinced you.
You know what you're talking about, right?
Am i that person in this scenario?
And you can just kind of like, keep going on and on with that kind of thing and i just think it's a very good assessment tool across the spectrum of possible scenarios out there that you find yourself in to evaluate again your capacity to respond in that lane right.
In this scenario that I'm presented with, am I a burden or an asset?
That pretty much tells me am I fit, so to speak, in that category.
I'm curious Chris, your training as SEAL strikes me as I mean I don't, I don't, I mean I don't know near enough to know for sure, but it strikes me that part of the training to become a Navy SEAL and obviously to be one is really one of being an asset.
Yeah.
How does that background color this conversation, do you think?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, I think that there's a lot of things these days that we do.
We approach as individuals and we do as individuals.
And when you come from a background like that, it is a team effort.
Like you're not doing anything by yourself, right?
So the idea of you're operating as a team in different levels too, at the unit level, at a larger kind of like group level for you
Like you can keep expanding these kinds of concentric circles out of how big this, this team is, but in no stage along the way is it one person doing something and that they're having all the impact there.
So you're, you're constantly thinking about, am I contributing to the team at this level?
Right.
Am I giving my absolute effort and am I skilled enough?
Have I done the work?
Have I trained enough? all of that kind of thing.
I was actually working on some stuff the other day some copy for a video and I was using the term each link along the way or each link in the chain.
And it made me think of When you go to the Naval Academy.
There's a bunch of stuff you have to.
I don't know if they still do this.
I'm assuming they do.
But you get this little book called Reef Points, and you have to memorize stuff during plebe summer.
And a lot of it's just stupid, but it's an exercise in like.
Will you take the time to actually learn this?
And then under pressure, when someone is like, say this thing, can you spit it out, right?
So it's an exercise in...
Are you going to do the work?
And how do you perform under pressure?
That's basically what's going on.
But there's one of these, I can't remember what it's called, but it's this like poem thing.
And it's on the strength of one link in the cable dependeth the might of the chain.
And then it goes on.
Basically, who knows when thou mayest be tested, so live that thou bearest the strain.
I think that's right.
It's all in this like old English stuff, you know kind of thing naval battles, old-timey naval battles.
But that idea of a chain is only as strong as every single link in that chain.
If there's one weak link, the chain breaks.
So that idea of you're in this unit and you need to be the strongest link.
You can possibly be same idea, right.
Are you an asset there?
So anyway, getting back to your question Yeah, I think if you operate in any kind of cohesive unit that relies on one another whether that's a special operations unit or a sports team or a company then it applies right.
It's like you're not just an island out there on your own.
You're part of a group.
Chris mentioned Old English.
Could you imagine someone yelling at you in Old English?
Like imagine getting in a fight with somebody.
I don't think they did that.
I feel like they wrote.
Yeah.
I feel like they wrote that way, but didn't talk.
Like somebody raising their voice at you in old English.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How dare they?
Yeah.
It'd be scary.
Anyway, that I had a brief.
That's okay.
Went that way.
That's great.
How about being a universal asset?
And when I think of the 30,000 foot view for me, about being an asset to my community.
It's showing up and being a good listener.
I might have one or two specialties where I will trust my opinion on something.
And then I'm going to most likely defer to whoever is not necessarily the most senior or someone who's got the most experience, the most weighted opinion.
And know-it-alls aren't good breathers, turns out.
They're just holding their breath, waiting to say something, waiting to have an opinion.
And we accidentally started our coaching community and coaching certifications, which we've talked about Patrick, on some of the other shows that we've been on for years.
And we have had exclusive podcasts on community building.
When it comes to something like that, when it comes to leadership being an asset, I know of no other.
The best foundation for me is being a good listener, which comes back to being a good breather, which comes back to the victim mentality and how that train wrecks people's ability to breathe and listen.
Mm-hmm.
That's interesting, the leader idea.
I hadn't thought about that, but in some ways, good leaders are, by virtue of them being good leaders, creating surplus value.
Yes, and they're also good followers.
So I forgot that one part in what I was just saying.
That's why it didn't come full circle.
If someone wants to be a good leader, then they're going to need to learn to be a good follower.
In my opinion, my experience,
Yep.
And again, that sort of echoes back to what you were saying before, which is, I think, a good leader.
If a good leader has the confidence, the domain-specific confidence, they can then also have the confidence to say in this room I actually am not the person that has the right answer.
That.
You just said it better than I did.
And...
They're going to be just a little bit better when they make mistakes.
I was thinking about.
I've been able to give myself more grace over the years as I've gotten better at a few things in my life.
Pick your lanes, everybody.
I'm not a big fan of dabbling.
Jack Welsh said that.
He said, whatever you do, don't dabble.
Pick a couple of things.
And go deep.
You'll get more value out of it.
And if I'm getting more value out of it, then I'm going to be able to give more value.
And then I also have more grace with myself because well, I went to the last time I made a legit good.
Can I cuss on here?
I think Chris already swore once.
The last good fuck up.
One of my best fuck ups of last year.
And I was always scared that I was going to do this.
Y'all ever fill up at a BP gas station?
Probably.
Probably at some point.
Yeah.
So I drive a diesel truck and they switched around.
You might see where this is going.
They switched around.
So in everybody else, except for BP, The gasoline is green and the diesel is black.
And they switched it around to match their branding.
So I'm driving back from Burning Man with a bunch of stuff on my mind.
And I get off of a phone call and I go into a BP gas station at Radford University.
Exit 109, not like I was counting on 81.
And I fill up my diesel truck with gasoline.
And I figure it out about 10 miles later on the interstate.
You're not supposed to do that.
So apparently diesel is a lubricant and gasoline is a solvent.
So I run a solvent through the entirety of my fuel system.
And the guy.
I pull off and get a call a wrecker, and the guy shows up and I'm just sitting there having a conversation with him.
He goes, you're quite calm about this.
He goes, you know, this could be a $12,000 bill.
And I go, it's over, it's done.
Complaining about it, I mean, really, it's not going to make it any better.
If me getting in a bad mood about this would help, I would.
And then that to me brings up another aspect of being an asset.
What's your psychological and emotional immunity to fuck-ups in general, especially your own?
Most people have an allergic reaction to the slightest thing that they do quote unquote wrong in their life.
That's not a fun way to live.
And guess what?
Other people that are around you are subjected to your emotional status and how you're breathing.
So bring good breathing to the table in your family and your professional endeavors and you'll be a baseline asset across the board.
Can you talk about the breathing a little bit more?
Cause I think that that's, I think it's really important.
And I think people it's one of those things that people like yeah, of course I'm a good breather, but I don't know that I always understand what a good breather is versus somebody who's just managing not to die.
Most people are not good breathers.
Most people are chest breathers in that upregulated stress state.
It's a little bit bigger of a word than I like to normally use, because I know my lane in these conversations.
It's called amygdala hijack.
Someone goes into a stress response, breath gets trapped in the chest and there's a mechanical cascade of events.
You know we get tunnel vision.
That's where tunnel vision comes from.
Breath trapped in the chest, zoom in.
You're looking at shit through a straw and it's very rarely the good stuff.
Hyper focused on the problem, listening skills tank, We physically lose access to our peripheral vision and creative faculties.
And so when someone goes into a stress response, they're inherently.
You know what I'm trying to say.
Thank you.
A burden.
I mean, who's going to prevail when the bus flips and everything's on fire?
The person that can think.
Yeah.
OK, the person that can think.
And if you can breathe well, you can think well, because they go hand in hand.
And so, you know, to keep things very simple, learn to breathe low and slow and watch what happens.
I mean, I can talk about that exclusively when it comes to coaching.
I can talk about it in every other aspect.
I mean, go on a date and hold your breath.
See how things go.
Curl up with somebody for netflix and it's, it's netflix, and chill everybody it's not netflix and stress out and be a ball of stress and like you're all tense and tight and like that doesn't go anywhere.
Well chris, we've talked to you about breath a little bit.
Do you have anything to add there, especially as it relates to maybe your own training and and what role breath plays in Being an asset, especially in circumstances where there's a lot of uncertainty or things are happening really fast or you're not in control.
Yes, that.
Yeah, I mean, I would agree with everything that Mark's saying there.
I mean certainly.
Actually, I was just given a talk about this in part, but the first thing you need to do when you talk about being mentally fit is create space, so to speak, to work with.
And that comes.
A lot of that comes from slowing down, single tasking and kind of regulating the energy of your body, right.
And so the way you regulate the energy of your body is through the easiest way to do it is through breathing.
Because it's the.
I mean, I'm sure we've talked about this before, but I'm sure it's what Mark says too.
It's this one thing that you do automatically, but you can consciously change it.
It's sort of an indirect, it's like i always call it a keyboard.
It's like a keyboard into the computer of of the rest of you, right?
So it's like you can't, i can't slow my heart rate down directly.
I can indirectly do it by controlling my breathing.
I can't just say nervous system relax, but i can consciously direct parts of my body to relax and i can consciously alter my breathing to impact my autonomic nervous system.
Right?
And so I think we skip over that a lot of times when we talk about how to action some of these things.
We sort of get to the exercise before staging the area.
It's kind of like you set the gym up before you do a workout.
You put the box in the right spot and you put the barbell and you you kind of warm up and you do all that kind of stuff.
And we can like launch right into a meditative practice or just kind of different exercises without, I think, setting the stage appropriately.
And to me, that comes down to those things.
It's just, it's open.
It's chilling out, getting parasympathetic, creating space, stop doing so many things.
All of that kind of stuff is so critical.
Would you both agree that breath is, is mostly always overlooked for just about everybody.
I still feel like breath is not something that enough people talk about in the context of how we're looking at it here, in terms of a stress response, in terms of a leadership skill.
Breath to me still feels like it gets a lot of lip service, but not a lot of attention.
Yeah.
I mean, I would say that people are like a lot of things they're largely unaware of.
So, the same way that you're unaware of, most people are unaware of what their thoughts are doing at any given moment, or they're unaware of what their emotional energy truly feels like and where it is and how that's impacting them.
They're just unaware of what they're doing with their breathing.
They don't realize they're holding their breath while they're doing work.
They don't realize that their shoulders are hunched up like they're a turtle.
I mean, That's why you know, in my content, awareness is the number one thing you have to do before you do anything.
You have to be aware of these kinds of things.
You have to develop the ability to be aware of it.
I'm right there with you.
It's a long play conversation.
I've never met anyone, myself included that, let's say, went to a breathwork class or workshop over the weekend, and that did it.
Right.
As in it created the awareness of their breath and maintained that awareness of their breath.
And that conversation about the value, the tremendous value value, of getting your breath low and slow, being in parasympathetic nervous system response normally happens for people in their adult life and I mean, I didn't have, I've got a degree in education.
I didn't have any courses, classes or even conversations in any of my public schooling, being on the receiving end or learning how to enforce that particular system on breathing.
It never came up one time and there's an education component to that conversation.
And then there's also an inheritance conversation at components of that conversation.
We inherit our parents' breeding patterns.
And we like to think that inheritance is hopefully some money when they croak.
No, there's way more to it than that.
There's way more to it than that.
We through something called entrainment.
You know, which was first noted in the West, in Swiss clock shops in the 1600s, is that the largest clock in the shop all the other smaller clocks would come into resonance with the clock.
And so the clock with the strongest vibe, so to speak, sets the tone.
Parents are stronger, energetically speaking, then their children and oh, by the way, children are hardwired to mimic their parents' behavior.
So we inherit their language.
We inherit the words they use.
We inherit, you get a little bit woo, and the feelings and emotions they create.
Of course, parents' feelings and emotions imprint their children.
And then their breathing patterns and all those things are rolled into one.
And you can test this out, everybody.
Next time I know we just got through the holidays and next time you're around your family And somebody talks about that thing that no one's supposed to talk about and everybody goes like what is that?
That you could cut it with a knife vibe?
Those are the words we use.
You could hear a pin drop.
That's everybody holding their breath.
And take a few deep, long, smooth, slow breaths and watch what happens.
You'll extricate yourself out of that entanglement and everyone else will unravel from it soon or then.
If you're participating in the let's hold our breath about the aunt that no one can talk about anymore game, so it show up and be a good breather everybody, and so that for me right now that's my main value add to this conversation, the.
The easiest way to be a baseline asset is to breathe well around your people.
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That does harken back a little bit to what we talked about leadership.
And I think that that, you know, I think what the word used was entrainment.
I think that's what leaders do really well.
And I think part of this conversation is an interesting part of this conversation that I didn't anticipate is leadership, the mechanism through which a person can be an effective leader and therefore create the surplus value that the rest of the links in the chain need to remain strong.
And I think that that is something, whether we are formally a leader, or informally, in our family, in our friend group whatever, I think that is a skill that is of value to all of us, whether or not we have a formal title or not.
Leadership for me is listening.
Good leadership for me is listening.
To circle back to the community component, We didn't set out to create a community and we've had a lot of feedback over the years.
And my business partner, Adam and I.
We have done a good job of staying zoomed out and we've had relatively few bumps in the road and a lot of successes.
And a lot of that is because we've chosen to breathe well listen, consider things and not want to be right about stuff.
We just, we want to do a good job instead of being right.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I think that there's- For me, there's definitely a difference.
I absolutely feel the difference.
I know when I'm being an asshole and I want to be right about stuff.
Just for the sake of me being right so I can have the right answer so I can say I was right.
Put me up here and put them down here.
And then I also, it's a very different version of me when I'm breathing and I'm considering.
One zoomed in, one zoomed out.
Chris, any thoughts to that leadership end of things, the entrainment, the better breath?
I mean, look, I think it applies across No matter where you are, right?
I mean certainly if you're in a leadership position.
Yeah, I mean, all this stuff absolutely applies because you're the head of whatever group you are and it matters what the figurehead is doing and it's going to set the tone and the course for whatever that that group is.
So I mean I think you need to make, when you're in a kind of a leadership position, I just think you need to pay a little more attention to your impact on the group, even more so than anybody else.
Right.
Cause you're the person in charge.
So, like your decisions matter, you determine the direction you're going and kind of all that kind of stuff.
But yeah, of course it applies there, all that stuff.
I would love to move towards any actionable advice you guys might have, as it relates to this concept of creating surplus value being an asset versus a burden.
And I think through this conversation we've kind of had two branches involved that we've talked through or talked around a little bit right.
There's the physical branch, right?
It started with your story, Chris, of tree falls in the woods, right?
And so there's the physical end of things, and then there's the mental mentality, mental fitness side of things.
And I think both of those probably play well with each other.
But I'm curious, just as a first question to move into maybe a more actionable advice.
Part of the conversation is in your experience, is it that the mental comes first or leads the physical, or is it that the physical comes first or leads the mental in terms of creating the conditions under which you can become or develop into an asset?
Any sense of that?
Well, I mean, I always think mental comes first.
I mean, it just, it has to, like you can't do something physically without a mental impulse.
You know, it may be an unconscious mental impulse, but it's still a mental impulse.
You're like, Your brain is driving all of your behavior, right?
And the way you experience it is mental too.
So to me physical anything is just an extension and a byproduct really of mental action and mental fitness, as far as I'm concerned.
So I just get back to – and look any of those scenarios too.
We sort of couch it or frame it within a physical construct.
But it's like if you're in an extremist situation – your ability to keep it together and think clearly, like kind of mark was talking about before that all comes into play too right.
So i just think you know i go back to that initial circumstance i had where, at least this is how i remember it, you know who knows if it's true or if i'm just kind of making this up at this point in my head.
But that bus example Ultimately, the question isn't.
It's not a judgment on other people.
Again, it's an internal assessment of myself.
It's a litmus test of what about me in this scenario, right?
And in what ways too.
And I think that the exercise we want to get to with this is an application of it in any scenario you find yourself in life, as an assessment of your holistic fitness is in this circumstance, right now.
Am I an asset or a burden?
And in what ways too, right?
Because it could be split.
It could be like I'm a physical asset but I'm a mental burden, or I'm a mental asset but I'm a physical burden, right?
Like I may be able to help think our way out of this, but I can't help pick somebody up through a hole in the ceiling or something, whatever it may be.
And again, these are sort of like dire consequence types of things.
But I just think in regular meetings you have coming onto this podcast, Am I an asset to this podcast?
Like, do I have something to say or am I just like taking up space with what I'm saying?
And the audience can be the judge of that.
Right.
But like I should be doing the assessment as I go away from this and thinking did I have enough to contribute to that?
Where are there holes in this argument?
What else should I think about with this, right?
So the next time I have a conversation that revolves around this topic, I'm more of an asset to it, right?
That to me is ultimately what we're trying to do and turn this into something actionable, right?
That can improve ourselves.
And to your point, ultimately, develop surplus value that extends beyond ourselves.
I just like that idea of my fitness, my capacity to respond across any potential channel that I'm talking about mentally physically both, whatever.
How can I extend that beyond me?
How can that capacity permeate from me to impact others?
Mark, same question to you.
And if it makes sense, I'd love for some thoughts on where stories fit into all of this.
We usually talk to you about stories.
I don't know that we have today.
So if there's anything in there in terms of what comes first or what should be the lead domino, if there's anything in there as it relates to the stories we tell ourselves and how we can tell ourselves better stories in pursuit of this being an asset, in pursuit of creating surplus value, I'd love to hear it.
What Chris said.
One thing that comes to mind is so I'm a third of the way through the show that you all did with Chris, that you sent me.
Yep.
Mind killers.
Yep.
Mind killers.
It's a good one.
Everybody listened to it.
And Chris was talking about learning to observe your thoughts as opposed to having them, which is passive.
I have all these negative.
We had a guy say that in a workshop once.
He said, I have all these negative thoughts.
I said, cool, write that down.
And I asked him how it made him feel.
And he said, well, overwhelmed, powerless is what Chris talks about directly.
And I said, scratch out the word have and put in the words observe.
Because no one, I mean, no one ever told me that in school.
Hey, little Mark, guess what?
All those sounds that you hear in your head that sound like your own voice.
Mm-hmm.
You don't have to believe those.
You can observe them.
That's a direct value add, because I'll be the first one to raise my hand that I observed some bizarre thoughts in my head.
Some of them are sinister.
And the way I approach things is I'm only responsible for the thoughts that I believe and then act upon.
All the other ones, it's just like watching them.
That's a good skill to develop, everybody.
And what we're talking about here, there's no universal, immediate, eternal fix for it.
It's like same thing with physical fitness.
No one's going to work out once and be in shape forever for the rest of their life.
Because they worked out, because they did a Murph five years ago.
It's not going to keep your abs until you're 60, right?
You've got to have a consistency to developing the skill set.
Another thing that's practical when it comes to again adding value listening, being a team player, So adding value, being a team player.
When it's time to have important conversations, slow down your rate of speech by about 5.
And what that's going to do.
When someone slows down their rate of speech, the breath loosens up which, like Dr Broken Record over here, it's going to help you breathe better.
It's going to help you listen better.
It's also going to make you easier to listen to, and you will be more economical with your words.
You'll have better word choice.
And I'm going to noodle on this afterwards.
All the flavors, the flavors of or types of burdens.
I'm thinking about one person in general, and he's one of my least favorite people to talk to.
Mm-hmm.
This guy just shares every single detail about every single thing.
We call them transcriptors.
It's just they talk.
You just talk too much.
People can talk too much.
And people usually don't like listening to people that talk too much.
So I would consider that a particular flavor of burden too.
There's a lot of types of burdens.
Mm-hmm.
For me now that I'm thinking about this.
I've never thought about assets and burdens with two other gentlemen, professionally speaking, for an hour that other people are going to listen to and consider what we're saying.
I mean, this is unique for me.
So, I mean, we're thinking out loud here, workshopping.
Yep.
Sometimes that's the right way to do it.
It's fun.
Yeah.
It makes things new.
I enjoy it.
Maybe we'll do kind of a last question, which is, Chris, I know that you're a father.
Mark, you don't have kids, right, Mark?
No.
Okay.
As far as you know, anyways.
It's one of the things I was thinking about on the way back from Burning Man.
I was at a call, a close call.
I had the call this year.
Okay.
That's a different talk show.
We'll have you back to talk about that.
But I bring it up, though.
I bring it up because I've got two boys of my own.
I think they're younger than yours, Chris.
And you know.
Again back to this the original spark to this was not only your story Chris, but was Scott Galloway's book and this idea of creating surplus value and this idea that a lot of people grow up and become men, they become women, but they never get to the stage where they are actually creating surplus value for other people.
I would love to just kind of final thoughts on advice to folks out there in terms of how do you set the conditions for thinking clearly about becoming an asset versus a burden?
What ingredients is there, whether it's as a parent, or whether it's as somebody who's got young people in their lives, or a teacher, whatever it might be.
I think thinking about how do we mold...
How do we mold young people into such that they've got the material when they are ready to become, to create surplus value and not continue forever to create negative value?
Any thoughts, just based on just this conversation and obviously your own life experience, as to like how might you do that better?
How much you do that with some some amount of intention?
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's a little bit hard to develop metrics around things like this, right?
Grading or measuring awareness is a tricky thing to do.
Yes.
But again, I would break it down into individual instances in any given day.
A meeting, a sporting event, a podcast recording something that I'm working on.
I'm working with a group.
Those...
Moments are moments where you can have a little bit of self-reflection along this line.
And figuring out exactly where you fall.
I don't think is as important as just having the wherewithal to sort of look internally and say okay, am I an asset or a burden or some flavor of those things in this circumstance?
And if I'm a burden of some sort, okay, that can be fine.
And it's not like to pass judgment on yourself, but it's like okay well, what can I do to kind of flip the switch a little bit there and create some value?
And to me again, that comes down to what's my capacity to respond to this thing.
I'm talking about right.
This this metric, whatever it may be, where I'm saying, I'm a little bit more of a burden.
Okay, what's my capacity to respond?
How do I increase that capacity?
That to me is the question to be asking.
That's a great question.
And it makes me think of, Mark, what you said about leaders being good listeners.
I think, especially when it's any sort of interpersonal context, if you feel like you're a burden, if you're reflecting upon that, the answer probably was if you were a better listener, you would have added more value.
If you were a better listener, if you were a better breather, you would have given yourself the space to perhaps add value in a way that you didn't, because you weren't listening or because you were telling yourself stories, or because you were believing the thoughts in your own head.
Yeah.
And that leadership position, that also comes down to making decisions.
Mm-hmm.
And if there are other people involved in those decisions and you listened to them and they feel like you listened to them because there's a feeling to it, even if it's going against what they thought was right, they're way more likely to be at least okay with the direction things are going if they know that their position was considered, which comes right back to listening.
Yep.
As far as adding value, my advice is to get good at something and then to get really good at that something and then see how far you can take that, because you'll have the skill that some people will find valuable or maybe even extremely valuable.
And then you'll also be the example of someone that gets good at something.
That's priceless.
You're the example of somebody that goes after things.
And also, if you're someone that can focus and see how far you can take something, then you're probably also pretty good at underthinking peripheral stuff.
Simplifying yourself.
This is, I find the name interesting, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual.
Mm-hmm.
From World War II.
Is that a book or is that a pamphlet?
The OSS.
Okay.
It's a little booklet.
Got it.
And the summation of this, if you want to fuck stuff up, make it complicated.
If you want to go wreck some kind of operation on a covert level, go in there and make things complicated.
It talks about how to specifically complicate meetings.
Hmm.
Love it.
Simplify your life.
Simplify.
Get good at things.
Breathe well.
Listen.
And I really like the simple question Chris, that you brought up, which is just reflecting back in that meeting, in that podcast was I more asset than burden?
And if I was on the negative ledger, what could I have done to nudge me a little bit closer, right?
And I think if you do that time and time again, if you get into the habit of doing that, if you open yourself up to, perhaps the uncomfortable feelings are like yeah, you know what?
I was a burden today.
I was a burden in that meeting.
I was a burden in that conversation with my wife.
I was a burden at that thing, whatever it might be.
If you can start to recognize that and not judge yourself by it.
I think that's the way you sort of begin to nudge yourself in various contexts towards the surplus value side of the ledger.
Agreed.
I love that.
This was really fun.
Thank you both.
I was really excited to get you guys on a call together.
I wanted to introduce the two of you.
Maybe we can do this again soon, but thank you both so much.
Chris, raresense.com.
How's the book coming?
Do you have a sense of when it's coming out?
The book is with the editors.
Nice.
It's making progress.
It should be out.
I'm telling people early April.
I think that's a pretty good estimate of when it should be out.
That's great.
Okay.
We'll have you back on when that comes out.
Yes.
Yeah, please.
A little bit more.
And markinlifted.me for folks who want to learn more.
Anything coming out there that you want to make sure people know about?
Our certs.
We have a cert or two open on the calendar most of the time.
That's what we do.
We certify coaches.
Thank you both very much.
I appreciate you both.
Yeah.
Mark, nice to meet you, my man.
Very nice to meet you, Chris.
Thanks.
Thank you so very much for tuning into the show this week.
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