Navigating Leadership and Cultural Transformation in High-Stakes Professions with Michael Lopez

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Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge podcast.

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All right, welcome to Enduring the Badge podcast.

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My very special guest today is Michael Lopez.

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How you doing, michael?

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Doing great.

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Jerry, Thanks for having me.

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Yeah, thanks for coming on.

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I appreciate you taking the time.

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Michael, can you introduce the audience and yourself to the audience?

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Yeah, yeah, sorry.

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Yeah, absolutely Well.

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First let me say again thank you and just to say to all the men and women that do the work that you represent, I just want to say thank you.

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I've got friends, family and I've been the beneficiary of these really, really brave folks.

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And one of my good friends is the assistant chief of police in a little town called Salinas, california, and I always talk to him and say you've got the hardest job in the world and I just appreciate everyone.

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I'm Michael Lopez.

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I really kind of define myself as a coach and that really means a couple things, certainly to organizations and leaders and teams.

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I spent most of my career in consulting in different forms, helping organizations transform.

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But I'm a coach to executives, to teams.

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I coach sports.

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I played college football.

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I coach high school football.

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Every good thing I've learned about being a leader has come from either working with or in the military or coming from athletics.

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And so, you know, in that role I always say I believe I have three obligations.

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The first one is to help people move into uncomfortable but necessary conversations and experiences.

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The second is to help them through that process.

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And the third one is to lead by example.

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You know I try to live my life by the strategies and tactics that I talk about and and happy to share some of those with you and your audience today yeah, I'm excited because I you know, in the first responder world it's really getting hard to train and retain and you know people and to get into like law enforcement's really tough right now.

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Yeah, fire and EMS is still tough, but not as bad as law enforcement.

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And with your experience in like coaching and you know what kind of culture should that like when these departments create to have people want to be with them?

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Yeah, yeah create to have people want to be with them.

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Yeah, yeah, I had a speaking to my, my good friend who's the assistant chief of police, uh, at a dinner with him and the chief of police not too long ago and we we talked about this very conversation of of.

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You know, certainly, law enforcement has become a very uh, loaded conversation these days and and you know, I know you're, you and your audience are really well aware of that Um, and and people have strong opinions and, and I think anytime you have strong opinions, of course people have views about where things should, should migrate and and, and I'll I'll take a page out of my friend's book who's who's in this world every day.

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You know they're the shift away from sort of paramilitary style stereotypes, you know, and into a sort of a service led or orientation of of of which is what you all do and what, what law enforcement is is certainly a challenging transition and understanding that that migration from to.

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I help a lot of companies with what we call from two shifts.

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I need to go from one state to another state and I think you know certainly that migration of understanding that it is an act of service and as an act of service.

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You provide a really important structure in society and keeping people safe, serving the community, um, the important ways that that happens.

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And you know, of course, what's challenging, and this is true in companies, right, um, I, I do a lot of work in energy and and people have really strong feelings about energy.

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Right, it's also a very loaded environment these days, and I remember years ago, if you remember, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, right, there were whole segments of people who just said I'll never work in the energy industry because they're destroying the planet.

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And, of course, there's so many good things happening in the world of energy and green energy and sustainability and renewability that it's more than just that one moment.

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But we have a hard time the way our brains work, remembering really bad experiences, right, and, and you know so, so that shifts is important.

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I'd be interested in hearing from you, as you hear other guests like I see some pockets of progressive thinking in that regard about the need to change some folks that that sort of cling to you know, maybe past perceptions, um, about that.

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How's that shift going, uh, from your perspective?

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What do you hear from other people?

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I think it's going slow.

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I think there is a shift right as the younger generation start, you know, coming up through the ranks in the different departments.

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So I think there is a shift, because that's how they want to be led, Right.

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They don't, they don't like to be led.

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You know paramilitary military, you know they don't like that.

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Right.

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There's just a different culture.

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They want to know a lot more things.

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In paramilitary, Like, you get told what to do, you go do it.

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Like asking the why behind things is not really something that goes well.

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One of the things that, speaking of energy, one of my clients happens to be a nuclear fleet of stations, so you talk about an organization where safety is a really, really important dimension of performance, right, we don't want anything to go wrong in those places as a result.

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It also has heritage from the military.

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Many people who work in the nuclear industry now came from the Navy, which was sort of the origins of nuclear power in the United States in terms of transitioning people from the nuclear fleet there, and so there's a lot of Navy heritage that comes into that.

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As a result, you get a lot of top-down directive culture, right?

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Which is tell people what to do, and you've got a procedure for everything and you've got a structure for everything, and those things serve a purpose.

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But look, every strength is a weakness in the right circumstance.

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And what's happened is that people in the bottom of the organization and I say the bottom, I mean in the hierarchy of layers of ranks, the people that do most of the organization, and I say the bottom, I mean in the hierarchy of layers of ranks, the people that do most of the work there's a real lack of freedom in their minds about what they have the ability to do right, and that has all sorts of residual effects on innovation, creativity, engagement, happiness.

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Right.

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We like to feel we've got some domain over our lives right.

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Agency is a big piece of what makes people people.

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I want to feel like I can chart my own course, and when you remove that from people, it's a really disempowering experience.

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Um, and and so we, I I remember one of the first times we were together with this client.

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We had a little workshop and they had this procedure and and in the top of the procedure times.

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We were together with this client, we had a little workshop and they had this procedure and and in the top of the procedure it says when faced with uncertainty, we stop, and and.

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And I was like, can you explain what that means?

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And they said, well, it it.

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You know, this is a station where safety is important and if you don't know something you've got to stop and go ask.

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And I said, where do we apply that?

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And they said everywhere.

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And I said I mean, yeah, I get it when it's the reactor, but there's a lot of times where that behavior does not help you actually move forward.

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Right, and so so it's things like that.

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Right, changing culture is about understanding when does a behavior no longer serve me and when has it become an anchor or a drain on the organization, and what the what then do we replace it with, which is the really harder part of the conversation.

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Yeah, yeah yeah, sort of like what does the new thing look like?

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And honestly that's why I have a job is is helping people make that transitions very, very difficult yeah, you know we're.

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You're talking about the transitions and I think you know the leadership transitions in the first responder community.

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There's just a lot of people right.

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They've been in the first responder community, they just moved up through the ranks world.

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What are these big companies doing and creating such great cultures that we're not doing?

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You know, in the first responder world Like cause that would attract some people, I think.

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Yeah, well, I think um.

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Every culture has its own challenges, right, and?

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and I think certainly in the last several years.

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I mean it's important to recognize that some industries and some jobs are just unlike anything else, right, and I think the first responder community is one of those jobs.

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Right, like the military, like law enforcement, like firefighting.

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All of these things are so unique in the experience of not just what we do physically but the situations that people put themselves in Right.

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Right, I'm going to, I'm going to poke my own industry a bit in in the eye.

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We talk about uncomfortable conversations and experiences in the white collar world.

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I mean, come on, let's be let's, let's be real right they're, they're not.

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You know, having a having an argument with someone is not like all this other stuff that you all do, right.

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So I think it's relative and it's important to acknowledge that right, context matters, but I do think there are some things that you can take away and figure out.

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How do we extrapolate these into strategies that might work in this community?

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The military certainly has had the same challenge for years.

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Right, of actually recruiting and retaining people.

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I think, certainly the idea that you are providing a service and that the mission matters.

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That is something that big companies struggle with, right.

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If you would go work at, you know, pick a big company I don't want to use a name because, like, I'm poking at them, but you know, pick any sort of professional industry.

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You know they talk about purpose.

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Right, and our purpose may be.

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Maybe you work in a you know place that does you know toothpaste or you know whatever, and you're like, hey, I'm keeping people healthy because this is what we build, and, right, there's, there's an attachment to that idea.

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Um, I think the mission of, of what the first responder community does, needs to play a huge role in amplifying the experience.

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But what needs to happen and I say needs, I'm going to be, I want to choose my words carefully is if, on the one hand, what you're saying is we have a great mission and we serve the community, but my experience as an everyday, on patrol or in dispatch or whatever it may be, is I've got a supervisor above me who's a jerk or who's pushing me too hard or doesn't appreciate my contributions.

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It's hard for me to be service oriented when I'm kind of getting hammered from the other side of the wall, Right, so that that's one of those things that I think other companies are starting to understand that the supervisory layer of the business has two responsibilities, and one of them is to run the business, but it's the other.

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But the other, and most important, is to help the people that run the business.

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Right, your job is not to manage a spreadsheet.

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Your job is to help the people below you be successful.

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And I think you know now that, now that the financial incentives of job switching are so fluid, right, it's the it's sort of the old phrase of like people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers.

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Right, it's the it's sort of the old phrase of like people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers, Right and and so because it's so easy to transition out of that, it's like why do I need to go put myself in these dangerous situations or stressful situations when I can go over here and and not have to deal with that, Right?

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So I think companies they struggle with that a little differently, but it's certainly part of it, right this?

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Idea that what is this middle layer of the business?

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Yeah, I think, oh sorry, go ahead.

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No, no, no please.

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I was thinking that you know, leaders don't often get trained right, they just come up through the ranks and they feel like that is training, but like that is a different type.

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That's kind of like training of job skills but maybe not people skills and leadership, other types of leadership skills.

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One of the most difficult transitions I did a post on this LinkedIn maybe several months ago, but is one of the most difficult transitions is from doer to leader, and because, right, every transition and again this is why I have a job is is moving from the old thing, which is my success, was governed by my ability to execute an action.

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Now my success is governed by my ability to teach others to execute that action with the same level of quality, and what stops people from doing that is giving up control in a way that then they just go.

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I'll do it myself.

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There's sort of a great example back to one of my clients is at a power station there's about one supervisor for every 12 to 15 maintenance people, and the problem they had was all of the supervisors had grown up as maintenance people and then they got the job of supervisor.

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Well, they were just glorified maintenance people doing all the work.

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They weren't teaching the techs, and so you'd show up in the morning, you'd see all these techs sitting in the you know kind of in the waiting room while the supervisor's running around, and you'd ask him why are you sitting there?

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Well, we don't.

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We didn't get our job orders today, or I don't know how to do this thing.

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Well, where's the supervisor out doing the work right?

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And?

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And so you have to think differently about your responsibility, and that's a very difficult transition for people to make.

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Yeah, any recommendations on how to make that transition?

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Well, first of all, I think it's important to understand what's required in the transition.

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So the first thing is time, and I think we expect too frequently people to change faster than they really should, right, yeah?

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The second thing, I think, is supporting and understanding what the new job is, right?

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So a lot of times, people aren't really getting an understanding of what's the next layer of responsibility and and what's required.

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So, so, time knowledge, which is the second thing, like what's the job?

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Has anyone really described this to me in a way that I understand, and what does that look like?

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Um, I think the third thing is support, right, and so a lot of times we'll, you know, you go to a training and maybe it's a two-month thing, you have a couple of classes.

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That's the beginning of the journey, right?

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Those aren't the.

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That's not the end.

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At the end of that process, you're still in a transitionary period, and so the support structures and I mean, I know a great example, I think, in in the law enforcement community, you know ride alongs and being in those experiences and watching others, right, there's a reason that the apprenticeship model works.

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Right.

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When you wanted to 200 years ago, you want to be a blacksmith, you know what you did.

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You worked with a blacksmith every day and you learned how to do that and you got feedback, you got coaching in the moment, right, and you got that experience.

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And so to me, I think that's, those three big pieces, are really important.

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Now, depending on the job, you know, each of those three things might show up a little differently, but but I think we have undervalued the importance of repetition and time and failure, right, and that's, I think, the other other part that is a real obstacle in transitions is you're going to mess it up, right, and the truth is our brain learns more when we mess up than when we succeed.

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And so, you know, there was a great study done, sort of throwing darts at a dartboard and that actually had people hooked up to electrodes.

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Sort of throwing darts at a dartboard, and, and that actually had people hooked up to electrodes, and, and the closer you got to the bullseye, the less reactive your brain was.

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Interesting, the farther away, the more reactive you were, which meant, oh, my body goes, I need to correct, I need to learn, I need to adjust, right.

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But we, we have fear of failure, right.

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Oh, they're not doing it.

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Maybe we promoted the wrong person.

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They're not cut out for this job.

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You know, pick your phrase.

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You know failure is required and and I don't know that we give ourselves enough freedom in those experiences, which is why coaching matters.

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Yeah, I think you're right and failure is part of the job.

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It's just risk in these type of jobs is so high, so failure is not looked at very, very well.

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I mean there's different types of you know levels of failure, but I mean if you feel like every time you're going to make a mistake or fail at something and you get hammered, like that creates an enormous amount of pressure on you and it's hard to perform under those conditions.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And it's back to that example of you know, when faced with uncertainty, we stop right.

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I mean, your whole job is uncertainty, right, Like that can't be the answer, Right?

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And so, yes, certainly there's.

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There are literally lives on the line and that is the ultimate risk that you know you all face.

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But there's degrees to it, right?

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And so the question is how do you learn how to operate at layers below that, so that you don't just take?

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You know, I have one tool in my toolkit.

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It's a hammer and everything is a nail and I just hit it with the hammer.

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And you know, life is a lot more nuanced than that, and you know it applies into our daily lives in all sorts of ways, right, the transitions we make in parenting, the transitions we make into adulthood, the transitions we make at different phases of our career, different age groups all of those things come with with a transitional journey that these concepts can be applied to, right?

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yeah, I mean, a friend told me today when I was talking to him um, we're speaking at mental health conference and he's talking about transitions.

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Transitions is the weak spot, like when you're transitioning from things.

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That's that you're.

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You're weak, you're and I get it like, I get what you're saying, like you're saying like, yeah, you're kind of open, like you're, you're vulnerable yeah, yeah, and one of my favorite I don't even remember where I heard this, it was years ago which is, um, if you look at a symphony of really, really accomplished musicians, right, pick the best symphony you can imagine.

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The job of the conductor is not to manage the individual sections but to manage the transitions in the music, right, the shift from one part of the song to the next, and the integration of the groups, because any one group by itself can only do its part.

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Right, and so the role of someone in that, and it's just a.

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It's such a beautiful analogy to me.

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You know, particularly as a coach, right, we don't, we don't get to run the play.

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Right, my job is to teach you the play, and that you're like my time's over.

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Right, I'm 50 years old, I don't get to play anymore, so I have to stand and watch.

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Uh, but there's a formula for that, and, and the way I describe it, particularly in this apprenticeship model, but to help is sort of what I call teach, demonstrate, practice and apply.

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So, as a leader, if you're struggling to help your teams be successful, this is a really good model to think about.

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So teach is I'm teaching you the action, the play, the tactic, whatever it may be.

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Right, and that seems pretty normal.

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Right, we go to class and we pay attention.

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Maybe you're on a whiteboard, maybe you're in a simulation, whatever it may be.

00:20:44.315 --> 00:20:50.864
These are the steps of the process and, most importantly you said this earlier I'm teaching you why we're doing it right.

00:20:50.864 --> 00:20:51.748
What's the goal?

00:20:51.748 --> 00:20:56.363
Right, I don't want you to be a mindless person walking through these steps.

00:20:56.363 --> 00:20:59.492
I want you to think about it and understand what the outcome is.

00:20:59.492 --> 00:21:01.959
Then we're going to demonstrate it.

00:21:01.959 --> 00:21:05.682
Right, and again, this, I think particularly in the military, the first responder community.

00:21:05.703 --> 00:21:08.012
You know it's such a physically demanding job.

00:21:08.012 --> 00:21:09.297
You all do this really well.

00:21:09.297 --> 00:21:10.820
Right, we're going to demonstrate it.

00:21:10.820 --> 00:21:11.509
We're going to show you.

00:21:11.509 --> 00:21:13.075
Right, we're going to walk through it together.

00:21:13.075 --> 00:21:14.780
I do this with athletes on the field.

00:21:14.780 --> 00:21:16.882
Right, we're going to walk through the play.

00:21:16.882 --> 00:21:18.063
Nobody's running, we're just.

00:21:18.063 --> 00:21:19.743
You go here, you go here.

00:21:19.743 --> 00:21:21.525
Here's the timing right, you're getting feedback.

00:21:21.525 --> 00:21:22.965
Then you're going to practice that.

00:21:22.965 --> 00:21:26.192
Right, you're going to provide repetition to that experience.

00:21:26.192 --> 00:21:28.516
Right, and then you get to go do it.

00:21:29.577 --> 00:21:50.914
And the reason I think that is such an important framework is we only think about that in physical terms, but you can apply that same four-step process to an emotional interaction, a conversation, an argument, you know, a spousal interaction, whatever it is right.

00:21:50.914 --> 00:21:53.942
You can do that same thing, right, you can teach someone.

00:21:53.942 --> 00:21:57.558
Here's how to have a difficult conversation right.

00:21:57.558 --> 00:21:59.313
I'm going to demonstrate that to you.

00:21:59.313 --> 00:22:00.998
We're going to practice it right.

00:22:00.998 --> 00:22:02.832
We're going to argue about something Oops, excuse me.

00:22:02.832 --> 00:22:07.093
We're going to argue about something and then you're going to go off and do it right, but we don't extend.

00:22:07.093 --> 00:22:23.243
I think a mistake that we make, or a miss, is we don't think about the brain and our behavior and teaching that in the same way that we think about, oftentimes, teaching our bodies and the physical coordination of activities among groups.

00:22:24.164 --> 00:22:30.401
Yeah, I mean, we work so hard training our bodies, but I feel like our brains are often left out of that.

00:22:30.441 --> 00:22:41.673
Yes, yes, yes, and it's a very tough thing, because it's much easier also to see your physical progression happen much more rapidly.

00:22:42.375 --> 00:22:47.851
Right, something changes right yeah, it's, yeah, more, more obvious, more like you.

00:22:47.851 --> 00:22:52.121
You see that you and you feel like, when you look at yourself, like your body changes.

00:22:52.121 --> 00:23:13.897
You feel that but, right, when you're working on your whatever or working on things that above the neck, you know, it's difficult to see and sometimes it takes a different perspective, right, maybe a coach's perspective, to like I'm seeing these changes in you, like in your, in your behavior, like, oh well, I wasn't really noticing them because there might be so slight to you and over time, yeah, and over time.

00:23:13.917 --> 00:23:30.263
Yeah, one of the things I do a lot with with teams I work with is actually um, because those very perceptive on your part of like, it's very slight, it's very subtle um is we give a language to those shifts and we actually help people understand how to label.

00:23:30.263 --> 00:23:34.238
I'm being different right now, right so.

00:23:34.238 --> 00:23:41.080
So if I were going to take a physical action and apply a different tactic, it would be obvious by my physical movements that I'm doing something new.

00:23:41.080 --> 00:23:45.621
But in this case, if it's not obvious, we give it a language.

00:23:45.621 --> 00:23:51.843
So I've worked with a lot of companies and we will identify priority behaviors.

00:23:52.971 --> 00:24:08.836
I want to be more open to healthy conflict let's just use that phrase or embracing healthy conflict, and we would have people in meetings raise their hand and go I'm embracing healthy conflict right now and I have a question, and then they'd ask the question.

00:24:08.836 --> 00:24:18.957
And the importance of that signal is that I am actively committing to demonstrating the behavior that we all agreed to and I'm doing it in this moment.

00:24:18.957 --> 00:24:24.461
It also, by the way, allows me to ask a question much more assertively.

00:24:24.461 --> 00:24:29.054
I don't have to mince my words as much, right, because now I'm less.

00:24:29.054 --> 00:24:30.740
Oh well, jerry asked this question.

00:24:30.740 --> 00:24:37.962
He was kind of being a jerk, right, and someone may think that it's like no, jerry is actually executing an action we all agreed to do.

00:24:37.962 --> 00:24:45.858
So let's not worry if you picked a word that's maybe good or bad or not quite right, and let's think about the bigger picture, right?

00:24:45.858 --> 00:24:47.757
That's how you have to kind of do that.

00:24:48.809 --> 00:24:55.544
That would be amazing to see happen on a more often basis in the first responder world.

00:24:55.544 --> 00:25:00.500
That has not been like my experience.

00:25:00.500 --> 00:25:11.739
For the most part, yeah, it's very can be very judgmental, right, or very, like if you say the wrong thing or something like that, you know they think your perspective is this and so it's.

00:25:11.739 --> 00:25:14.151
Those conversations would go a lot better.

00:25:14.151 --> 00:25:18.040
I know some organization I've belonged to for a little while.

00:25:18.040 --> 00:25:30.490
They thought, yeah, let's do this, but then people still get butthurt about it things and it's like, okay, then we're not really doing this, and then the productivity of those meetings just kind of stall out.

00:25:31.070 --> 00:25:39.605
Yeah, and it's just more you know that that phrase it's a good phrase, this sort of butthurt idea, right?

00:25:39.605 --> 00:25:51.200
Which is one of the things we struggle with in behavior is I do this little exercise with teams in a workshop and it's all around conflict.

00:25:51.200 --> 00:25:58.810
Okay, and it's a simple exercise and you rate yourself on a one to five scale on how comfortable you are with conflict.

00:25:58.810 --> 00:26:02.839
Right, and it's a qualitative scale, but one is like I don't like it.

00:26:02.839 --> 00:26:05.592
Five is, you know, happy to do it?

00:26:05.592 --> 00:26:07.236
Let's go, I seek it out, right?

00:26:07.236 --> 00:26:32.474
Yeah, and one of the biggest things I always it happens every time and it's one of my favorite parts of the workshop is I ask different groups with different numbers to work together to build a strategy for how to interact, and invariably the fives tell the ones don't take this so personally, and I laugh just like you're laughing.

00:26:32.474 --> 00:26:35.321
You don't get to decide that for somebody else.

00:26:35.851 --> 00:26:36.112
Yeah.

00:26:36.952 --> 00:26:50.336
Your responsibility as a five is to understand how do I tailor my approach so that somebody who's not like me can have a productive interaction, because what happens if I don't?

00:26:50.336 --> 00:26:52.436
Oh well, michael's a one.

00:26:52.436 --> 00:26:54.196
He doesn't like engaging in conflict.

00:26:54.196 --> 00:26:57.278
Let's just shut it all down and go back to the way things were.

00:26:58.270 --> 00:27:30.211
Well, we're in this conversation because the way things were weren't working, so we have to adjust right, and so one of the greatest ways to learn about your own behavior is to interact with people who are not like you in very extreme ways, and the challenge we have look, we see this in politics, we see it in all sorts of places, right Is we get so stuck in our, the accuracy of our beliefs, that we actually stop observing it.

00:27:30.211 --> 00:27:35.000
It sort of becomes about winning, instead about observing the interaction.

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:49.278
And, and if we can get past that and I spend a lot of time with teams doing that, uh, helping them, no, just be less attached to your point of view and observe what's happening, and if you can do that, real growth starts to happen.

00:27:49.278 --> 00:27:51.855
Oh, wow, this is not an effective conversation, why?

00:27:51.855 --> 00:27:52.838
Right?

00:27:53.380 --> 00:27:53.641
Yeah.

00:27:53.730 --> 00:27:55.056
Struggling in this interaction.

00:27:55.056 --> 00:27:57.096
What, what may be happening with me.

00:27:57.096 --> 00:27:59.375
Why isn't this person not listening?

00:27:59.375 --> 00:28:00.398
Why am I not listening?

00:28:00.398 --> 00:28:02.893
Right, that's where real growth starts to take hold.

00:28:03.913 --> 00:28:10.864
Yeah, I think I mean perspective like you, like I think I'm big on perspective, like listen to someone else's perspective.

00:28:10.864 --> 00:28:16.853
I mean you may not be seeing the whole picture or they may, you know.

00:28:16.853 --> 00:28:18.637
They'll probably say something like oh crap, I didn't even think about that.

00:28:18.637 --> 00:28:22.213
You know, it's just good to get other people's perspective and listen, listen to them.

00:28:22.634 --> 00:28:38.638
Yeah, one of the things that happens, and we talked about this in our lead up to this conversation, not to get too brain science about it, but there's a great book that I would recommend your listeners read or listen to, called how Emotions Are Made.

00:28:38.638 --> 00:28:42.619
It's a book by a woman named Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett.

00:28:42.619 --> 00:28:47.275
It is quite simply one of the most transformative books I've ever read.

00:28:47.275 --> 00:29:06.981
It's very dense, it's very science oriented, but it has really turned on its head our understanding of how we experience emotions and how our brain works and I'll spoil some of it, but I won't spoil all of it which is our brains are prediction machines.

00:29:06.981 --> 00:29:08.064
Right?

00:29:08.064 --> 00:29:24.420
Our brains are constantly guessing what's about to happen next, and, if you think about it, our brains are just in this little black box called our skull and the only thing it can experience is what happens to us.

00:29:24.420 --> 00:29:31.394
Right, like I can never know what your experience is like, and vice versa.

00:29:32.978 --> 00:29:35.943
And so it stands to reason that two people can have the same.

00:29:35.943 --> 00:29:47.773
We can both go on the same rollercoaster, but maybe 10 years ago I had a terrible experience and just yesterday you had a great one, and we experienced, because what happened is our brain predicted.

00:29:47.773 --> 00:29:53.756
I'm about to get on this rollercoaster and it's either going to be terrifying or it's going to be the best time of my life.

00:29:53.756 --> 00:30:03.698
And where we get stuck is that our emotions are actually the result of how accurate those predictions are.

00:30:03.698 --> 00:30:19.821
So if I'm in a argument with my spouse and this argument has gone the same way every time for the last 10 times, well, my prediction, going into that argument is going to be the 11th time is going to be exactly the same.

00:30:19.821 --> 00:30:24.094
So I have to understand that that's what my brain's doing and I actually have to try to.

00:30:24.094 --> 00:30:29.144
So I have to understand that that's what my brain's doing and I actually have to try to intercept that process in the middle, right?

00:30:29.871 --> 00:30:46.396
And so that is a huge source of where we get stuck in sort of arguing with people and not being able to resolve issues you talked about at the beginning of this call the shift that law enforcement and the first responder community needs to make.

00:30:46.396 --> 00:30:56.450
Well, imagine everyone engaging in that discussion, right, we're all having a different experience based on what we've learned and what we're predicting, right?

00:30:56.450 --> 00:31:04.000
If you've ever heard someone say, well, that's never going to work, it's because, yeah, maybe in their past it didn't, but in mine it it.

00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:04.603
It did.

00:31:04.603 --> 00:31:05.996
So how do we get past that?

00:31:05.996 --> 00:31:06.851
Right, it's just it's.

00:31:06.851 --> 00:31:08.214
It's such a great book.

00:31:08.214 --> 00:31:10.359
I would just encourage people to to read it.

00:31:10.359 --> 00:31:17.723
It's a it's a fascinating rethink of what's happening inside our bodies when we experience the world.

00:31:18.410 --> 00:31:25.019
Is that a big key to having those difficult conversations not like predicting, you know what will happen.

00:31:25.759 --> 00:31:26.941
Well, yes.

00:31:26.941 --> 00:31:34.369
However, I would say that your body does a lot of that on its own Right.

00:31:34.369 --> 00:31:48.361
So and again I think in in the first responder community, your collective relationship with stress is so much higher than the average person because what you've been trained to do is walk into situations and look at cues and go what's about to happen for very important safety.

00:31:48.361 --> 00:31:51.069
You know, saving lives yourself, included.

00:31:51.069 --> 00:32:00.679
Situations, of course, like we talked about that, that can extend too far, because not every interaction is going to end up that way, but you have to strike this balance.

00:32:00.679 --> 00:32:05.383
But what happens is your body actually starts responding before you even realize it.

00:32:05.383 --> 00:32:22.417
Right, increased dopamine, increased cortisol, uh, you know our relationship with serotonin and oxytocin and all these things that actually prime the body for movement, and so the trick is to understand that that's what, what's happening, and not overreact to it.

00:32:22.417 --> 00:32:30.856
Right, if we were going to go do public speaking, we're kind of doing public speaking now- Right but back in the old days, right?

00:32:30.997 --> 00:32:34.934
People used to say public speaking is like scarier than death, right?

00:32:35.496 --> 00:32:36.057
Right yeah.

00:32:36.238 --> 00:32:36.980
Have this feeling Right.

00:32:36.980 --> 00:32:38.021
I do it all the time.

00:32:38.021 --> 00:32:40.296
You do it a lot for us.

00:32:40.296 --> 00:32:44.451
Our brains have learned public speaking Isn't the worst thing that could happen to us.

00:32:44.451 --> 00:32:55.840
So when we walk onto a stage, yeah, we're a little, we're a little primed, you're focused, but that focus is harnessing positive stress towards being in the moment, right or somebody else.

00:32:56.261 --> 00:32:59.917
It could be debilitating, right and and just I can't do it.

00:32:59.917 --> 00:33:06.097
I can't walk out there, because their brains have learned this is a really bad moment, right, and they start to shut down.

00:33:06.097 --> 00:33:15.592
And so, yes, those are extreme examples, but that is something that I think.

00:33:15.592 --> 00:33:21.769
If we all understood, a how it works and B that I can have some domain over that experience, well, now I can start to respond differently.

00:33:21.769 --> 00:33:25.563
I might not react differently because my body's deciding for me, but I can respond differently.

00:33:25.563 --> 00:33:28.310
I might not react differently because my body's deciding for me, but I can respond differently.

00:33:28.310 --> 00:33:37.435
And then, if I do that enough right doing hard things, then I'll learn over time that I've got a little bit more control over that, if that makes sense.

00:33:38.017 --> 00:33:40.762
Yeah, no, I was speaking today.

00:33:40.762 --> 00:33:42.051
And they're like are you ready?

00:33:42.051 --> 00:33:42.752
Are you prepared?

00:33:42.752 --> 00:33:45.596
Or you're like, yeah, I'm ready, I'm good to go.

00:33:45.596 --> 00:33:46.940
Like did you look at the questions?

00:33:46.940 --> 00:33:49.222
You know that the audience is going to ask.

00:33:49.222 --> 00:34:03.538
I'm like, yeah, I did, but I'm not like I didn't, like I've learned right to for me, like I just like I know what aware of them, but I'm not going to super focus in on and be like, oh crap, they're.

00:34:03.920 --> 00:34:04.079
Right.

00:34:04.079 --> 00:34:05.662
One of the things I spend on this.

00:34:05.662 --> 00:34:07.443
You use this word focus, which is really important.

00:34:07.443 --> 00:34:12.775
One of the things I one of the things I do is you can look on my website.

00:34:12.775 --> 00:34:16.391
Your readers or your, your listeners can can take a look at it.

00:34:16.391 --> 00:34:27.900
I talk about these six principles of human transformation, and if you want to change anything about yourself, you've got to take these six principles and kind of shake them up into your kind of perfect recipe.

00:34:27.900 --> 00:34:31.525
There's a formula for change, but it's not formulaic, right?

00:34:31.525 --> 00:34:42.001
So your blend of six might be a little different than mine and one might be more than another, but one of this idea is our relationship to stress and how we create focus, right.

00:34:42.001 --> 00:34:45.972
So we all know your community knows the fight or flight response, right.

00:34:45.972 --> 00:34:48.916
So we all know again, your community knows the fight or flight response, right.

00:34:48.916 --> 00:34:57.346
When we become prepared for an action, our bodies trigger a lot of dopamine and a lot of cortisol.

00:34:57.346 --> 00:35:06.215
Those things create focus, right, and most people in your community again.

00:35:06.235 --> 00:35:07.737
I played sports very different, but we talk about it.

00:35:07.737 --> 00:35:14.226
Right, it's the tunneling of your vision, it's the hyper-focus on something very specific, right, I think about when I played sports.

00:35:14.226 --> 00:35:16.375
The world goes quiet around you.

00:35:16.375 --> 00:35:18.219
You stop hearing anything, right?

00:35:18.219 --> 00:35:19.610
And I'm sure it happens in the same world.

00:35:19.610 --> 00:35:20.932
I didn't hear anything right?

00:35:20.992 --> 00:35:29.773
It's just the only thing I saw was me and the person or the crime or the opponent or whatever it is that experience.

00:35:29.773 --> 00:35:35.532
We don't actually leverage that enough in what I would say worlds that aren't this world.

00:35:35.532 --> 00:35:37.215
How to create?

00:35:37.215 --> 00:35:38.538
We're very distracted, right?

00:35:38.538 --> 00:35:40.643
How do I actually create focus?

00:35:40.643 --> 00:35:43.355
How do I rebuild my relationship to stress?

00:35:43.355 --> 00:35:45.039
Because stress, right.

00:35:45.039 --> 00:35:46.842
The human body was designed under stress.

00:35:46.842 --> 00:35:48.414
We perform under stress.

00:35:48.414 --> 00:35:49.817
Muscles grow, bones grow.

00:35:49.817 --> 00:35:53.190
You have to be stressed in order to learn, right?

00:35:53.190 --> 00:36:06.934
So when we're talking about this behavior modification, I actually can only do that if I'm just a little bit stressed and hyper-focused, but we we don't actually know how to train ourselves to do that outside of physical exercise, right?

00:36:07.016 --> 00:36:14.916
it's just a big part of you know it's, it's, it's just a big part of what I do is sort of helping recreate that experience for people.

00:36:14.916 --> 00:36:30.135
Um, one of my favorite phrases when I run workshops for teams is uh, at some point in the day, you all are going to be really upset with me and I love it and I'm here for it, and that's when you're going to be really upset with me and I love it and I'm here for it, and that's when you're going to learn the most right.

00:36:30.135 --> 00:36:32.271
So it's just, it's just sort of part of the process.

00:36:33.032 --> 00:36:34.074
Yeah, I think you're right.

00:36:34.074 --> 00:36:48.724
Focus has gotten really challenging, I think, for people, just all the distractions, the constant distractions, so people's focuses are so limited yeah, yeah, and.

00:36:48.983 --> 00:36:53.809
And when we focus and learn, right, so you have what's called an ultradian rhythm, about a 90 minute cycle.

00:36:53.809 --> 00:37:02.753
That is your optimal learning window and, uh, it's about the maximum length of time that you can hyper focus on something.

00:37:02.753 --> 00:37:14.536
At that point you need a break, and particularly in what I'd call the white-collar world but your world's probably similar in different ways right, we go from thing to thing to thing to thing all day.

00:37:14.536 --> 00:37:19.213
Right, I had two minutes between my last meeting I'm five minutes late to my next meeting.

00:37:19.213 --> 00:37:32.239
I've got 12 hours of sessions today, or whatever it may be, and if you want to learn something new, I need to block off 90 minutes and then I need about 10 to 20 minutes of of of silence.

00:37:32.239 --> 00:37:49.835
After that, take a walk, don't look at your phone, close your eyes, meditate, whatever it may be, and then I need to sleep seven to eight hours in order for that learning to actually embed itself in the neural pathways.

00:37:49.835 --> 00:37:51.641
That then I can actually recreate it.

00:37:51.740 --> 00:38:00.099
Right, and recovery is a big piece of this, and I know in your community with highly stressful, you know that's a big issue, right, do people have time to?

00:38:00.099 --> 00:38:02.166
Are they getting the support?

00:38:02.166 --> 00:38:04.353
Are they getting the physical recovery?

00:38:04.353 --> 00:38:06.096
Are they getting the emotional support Right?

00:38:06.096 --> 00:38:06.938
What does that look like?

00:38:06.938 --> 00:38:09.391
Or is it just I'm going to push through, right?

00:38:09.391 --> 00:38:14.391
I'm going to bite down on leather and I can suck it up and go, and the truth is your body doesn't work that way.

00:38:14.391 --> 00:38:17.298
Right, your brain just does not work that way.

00:38:17.298 --> 00:38:20.253
You can decide to try, but it doesn't really work that way.

00:38:21.494 --> 00:38:35.943
Well, I think that's commonly what people do, because, like they're just they are, they're just like they, like they're not sleeping, they're not exercising, like you know, this is a combination of things you know and and their training.

00:38:35.943 --> 00:38:41.802
So you know they can be, you know, short or they can go, like you know, half days, type of thing.

00:38:41.802 --> 00:38:57.097
So it's like hard to absorb the information and then retain it to use it again, right, and then, like when I feel like when people are in training, it's hard for them to be present, yeah, yeah and want to learn, right, do you?

00:38:57.619 --> 00:39:08.295
you have to be kind of in that inquisitive state, right, to learn yeah, one of the things I've, one of the things I've said again I did another post on this which is particularly as adults.

00:39:08.295 --> 00:39:11.956
It's not a hard and fast line, but over the age of about 25, right.

00:39:11.956 --> 00:39:15.659
So from zero to 25, we learn pretty organically.

00:39:15.659 --> 00:39:20.682
Right, it's through a process called neurogenesis, which is my brain just makes new neural pathways.

00:39:20.682 --> 00:39:21.663
Right, you want someone to learn a new language?

00:39:21.663 --> 00:39:22.563
Teach them between the ages of zero and six.

00:39:22.563 --> 00:39:22.784
Right, it's.

00:39:22.784 --> 00:39:25.626
You know you want to, uh, someone to learn a new language?

00:39:25.626 --> 00:39:27.507
Teach them between the ages of zero and six.

00:39:27.507 --> 00:39:31.210
Right, you ever try to learn German at 50 years old?

00:39:31.230 --> 00:39:32.813
It's really tough.

00:39:33.494 --> 00:39:34.277
It's really tough.

00:39:34.277 --> 00:39:42.157
Um, so as we get older, we have to be able to to decide that we actually have something to learn.

00:39:42.157 --> 00:39:44.704
It's not about whether or not we can.

00:39:44.704 --> 00:39:45.572
You'll learn.

00:39:45.572 --> 00:39:51.623
It'll happen a little bit more slowly, but again, maybe go back to the world of politics or other strongly held beliefs.

00:39:52.170 --> 00:39:58.510
What stops our learning journey is that I don't actually think I have anything to learn from this interaction.

00:39:58.510 --> 00:40:04.690
And once I've done that, I'm not moving anything into kind of long-term storage right.

00:40:04.690 --> 00:40:07.177
And so you have to decide.

00:40:07.177 --> 00:40:10.835
I don't just get to show up to class and magically have it soak in.

00:40:10.835 --> 00:40:21.454
I have to be intentional, I have to be focused, and then I have to follow a protocol of learning that then allows me to take that and sort of move it into long-term storage right.

00:40:21.454 --> 00:40:23.518
And again, the brain is the same as the body.

00:40:23.518 --> 00:40:34.331
If you trained for 12 hours a day, physically after about three days your body would shut down and you just physically could not perform the action.

00:40:34.331 --> 00:40:43.016
And yet we treat our brains as if it's this endless supply of energy that will never stop, and it's just not like that yeah, I think you're right.

00:40:43.317 --> 00:40:51.820
Well, and then there's you know that like, well, I'm tired or whatever, so I'm going to take caffeine or use these artificial things to, like, stimulate my brain.

00:40:51.820 --> 00:40:54.045
It's not really stimulate your brain, is it?

00:41:06.750 --> 00:41:06.849
Sleep.

00:41:06.849 --> 00:41:14.244
One of the things I do love about where we've gotten to as a, I think the science in our society is we appreciate the value of sleep much more than we ever did.

00:41:14.244 --> 00:41:20.963
If you want to perform, sleep is the foundation of just about everything that you do.

00:41:20.963 --> 00:41:21.692
And it's funny.

00:41:21.692 --> 00:41:22.856
I was thinking about this the other day.

00:41:22.856 --> 00:41:27.382
I was thinking about my back in my MBA program 20 years ago.

00:41:27.382 --> 00:41:29.728
For some reason I thought of this randomly.

00:41:29.728 --> 00:41:32.094
I was working on it was in my finance class.

00:41:32.094 --> 00:41:34.440
I was working on some problem in a spreadsheet.

00:41:34.440 --> 00:41:35.733
I was trying to build a formula.

00:41:35.733 --> 00:41:51.456
I don't even remember what it was, but it was very difficult and I was getting really frustrated and I had been at it for quite a while and I finally just shut my laptop and I went to sleep and it took me a while to get sleep because I was angry and frustrated and everything.

00:41:51.556 --> 00:41:54.213
I fell asleep at like three o'clock in the morning.

00:41:54.213 --> 00:41:57.340
I woke up and I had the answer.

00:41:57.340 --> 00:42:03.036
I walked downstairs and in 30 seconds I fixed my spreadsheet and I went back to bed.

00:42:03.036 --> 00:42:04.398
It was.

00:42:04.398 --> 00:42:06.623
It was and I didn't even know at the time.

00:42:06.623 --> 00:42:24.952
I thought it was just like kind of random, like serendipitous, but but that's actually what happens is that when you sleep, the things you learn when you're awake move into long-term storage, and in doing so, they become embedded behaviors, they become physical actions, they become reactions and respond.

00:42:24.952 --> 00:42:27.757
You know all that sort of stuff, and so it is.

00:42:27.757 --> 00:42:33.425
There is nothing more important to your performance as a human being than sleep.

00:42:34.550 --> 00:42:44.034
I think it's like often still the first thing that gets sacrificed is sleep, and then they feel like there's other ways that it can be.

00:42:44.034 --> 00:42:47.601
It can be made up, but you can't you can't.

00:42:47.822 --> 00:42:48.931
No, you can't, it's just.

00:42:48.931 --> 00:42:50.815
It's so important that it's just.

00:42:50.815 --> 00:42:51.717
It's just.

00:42:51.717 --> 00:42:52.942
I've gotten better at it.

00:42:52.942 --> 00:42:53.853
I mean over time.

00:42:53.853 --> 00:42:56.664
I was the same in my thirties and forties.

00:42:56.664 --> 00:42:59.195
You know, I'm going to, I'm going to just push through.

00:42:59.195 --> 00:43:00.641
Right, I'll sleep when I'm dead.

00:43:01.184 --> 00:43:02.190
Right, that phrase right.

00:43:02.190 --> 00:43:07.960
Stop sleeping and watch how much more quickly death comes, because it is just so important.

00:43:07.960 --> 00:43:10.322
So, yeah, I would encourage everyone.

00:43:10.322 --> 00:43:15.097
If you're not getting sleep, you want to change your life, you want to make a change.

00:43:15.097 --> 00:43:18.672
Don't do anything else and just work on that right.

00:43:18.813 --> 00:43:30.190
And there's real strategies around how to sleep better, and we don't always have the opportunity to do that right, and so that and I there's real constraints and people in particularly in your world that work at nights.

00:43:30.190 --> 00:43:34.327
It's really hard, you know there's there's a lot of stuff around that, but it's always.

00:43:34.327 --> 00:43:39.135
I tell people you want to perform better, start there, and then we'll work on the rest after you've gotten that locked down.

00:43:39.735 --> 00:43:40.876
Yeah, I really like that.

00:43:40.876 --> 00:43:44.762
I have one last question for you, sure and this.

00:43:44.762 --> 00:43:47.625
So, like I'm in, we're going to shift gears a little bit here.

00:43:47.625 --> 00:43:55.065
Okay, I'm in a culture that I don't like, I'm just going to leave it.

00:43:55.065 --> 00:43:58.597
What do I do?

00:43:58.597 --> 00:43:59.958
Wow, okay, I just threw that.

00:43:59.958 --> 00:44:00.840
It's really open.

00:44:00.840 --> 00:44:02.043
I know it's a good one.

00:44:02.043 --> 00:44:03.130
Yeah.

00:44:06.018 --> 00:44:07.782
Well, so I'm having two.

00:44:07.782 --> 00:44:13.920
There's, there's two, I think there's two paths, and each path has a couple of branches on it.

00:44:13.920 --> 00:44:36.211
I think one of the best lessons I've learned in my life is that, uh and I learned this the hard way, by the way, as most good lessons are learned you cannot change a system without being a part of it.

00:44:36.211 --> 00:44:37.514
So your first choice is do I stay or do I leave?

00:44:37.514 --> 00:44:56.097
Right now, for most of us, if you're talking about employment, we all have a choice, right, some people may have more different choices than others, but you know most people in today's society that these are all at will arrangements, uh, and so you, you have some freedom of movement.

00:44:57.981 --> 00:45:01.009
But I'll use my, my friend, my lifelong.

00:45:01.009 --> 00:45:02.634
We have friends since we were like eight years old.

00:45:02.634 --> 00:45:23.612
Um, he, he was going through this conversation about shifting culture, kind of holding on to the old ways, putting his name in the hat for the assistant chief of police job, sort of wanting to, to turn his back and be like, well, you know, stick it to them and be like, well, I'm just gonna leave, sort of thing.

00:45:23.612 --> 00:45:37.190
And I told him um, if you want it to them and be like, well, I'm just going to leave, sort of thing, and I told him if you want it to change, then you're the kind of person that needs to stay and lead by example and be you know it's very Gandhi kind of statement and be the change that you want to see in the world.

00:45:38.112 --> 00:45:39.253
I like it, I will tell you.

00:45:39.853 --> 00:45:45.280
Yeah, I look, I you know you should never take lightly that decision.

00:45:45.280 --> 00:45:49.146
It's very, very difficult right Now.

00:45:49.146 --> 00:46:04.353
You may still decide to stay and try to change it, and it doesn't, and that's okay, but but, but I think if you're, if you're in a culture that you don't like, you have to decide if you want to be part of the solution or not.

00:46:04.353 --> 00:46:11.391
And if you're going to be part of the solution, you have to be all in and understand what that means to try to change culture.

00:46:11.391 --> 00:46:16.943
Changing culture is it's, you know, it's sort of like like the spread of religion.

00:46:16.943 --> 00:46:22.402
Right, there's a reason that when religion spreads, it spreads slowly but it sticks.

00:46:22.402 --> 00:46:27.831
Right, it's town by town, street by street, block by block, house by house, person by person.

00:46:27.831 --> 00:46:37.121
Right, you got to get into those discussions of beliefs and values and discomfort and arguments and you got to get everything we've talked about right.

00:46:37.121 --> 00:46:42.699
On the other side of that is this is this new world, but but people, people don't.

00:46:42.699 --> 00:46:59.481
They will imitate what they see, right, and so you know, oftentimes I love this phrase about kids, particularly with kids are the ultimate reflective surface, right, they'll give you back exactly what you give them, which is children particularly.

00:46:59.541 --> 00:47:01.396
They're wonderful observers.

00:47:01.396 --> 00:47:12.311
They're terrible interpreters, yeah, they know when there's something wrong at home, uh, and they know when things are pretty good, right, and they'll mimic the behavior of their parents.

00:47:12.311 --> 00:47:17.202
Right, you want your kids to grow up to be good people, be good people, right?

00:47:17.202 --> 00:47:18.431
This is not like this.

00:47:18.431 --> 00:47:19.596
It's not rocket science, right?

00:47:19.596 --> 00:47:21.242
I mean, it's pretty straightforward stuff.

00:47:21.885 --> 00:47:28.733
And so if you don't like the culture you're in, then be an example of the kind of culture you want to create and help other.

00:47:28.835 --> 00:47:32.442
Help bring others into that experience, and it'll change.

00:47:32.442 --> 00:47:38.121
It won't change as quickly as you want, and it sometimes it can be a lonely road, right, but I?

00:47:38.121 --> 00:47:49.742
But I think that's the decision that you have to make, and, and the thing I was going to say about leaving every culture, you find there'll be something about it you don't like, yeah, right.

00:47:49.742 --> 00:47:55.463
And so you have to decide what are your non-negotiables, right?

00:47:55.463 --> 00:48:12.577
I've been a part of a couple cultures where there were some ethical breaches that I just decided that that's not something I can be a part of, right, and when you move on, you move on and you make that decision and you learn a lesson, and you have to be okay with that too, um, but, but everywhere you go.

00:48:12.577 --> 00:48:23.637
There'll be something about it that you don't like, which I think, and I know we're getting to time, but I think part of that then tracks all the way back to this idea of your own individual purpose, right, why?

00:48:23.717 --> 00:48:26.704
are you there and that's a decision that only you can make.

00:48:26.704 --> 00:48:32.931
Right, and if it means enough to you, you'll withstand the struggle to change it, to get on the other side.

00:48:32.931 --> 00:48:40.199
If it doesn't, then you won't right, and that's an oversimplification, of course, but I think that's the big piece.

00:48:40.199 --> 00:48:48.581
Right, You've got to commit to changing something and leading people through that experience, which kind of goes back to my opening.

00:48:48.581 --> 00:48:55.023
Right, my job is to help lead people into those conversations, to support them on the journey and then lead by example.

00:48:55.023 --> 00:49:06.963
Right, you know it's a lonely road trying to change things for the better, but it's a journey that's worthwhile and, you know, one that I think everyone in their own lives should find a way to take.

00:49:07.929 --> 00:49:14.563
Yeah, I think the real hard part comes is it doesn't come as fast as we want it to.

00:49:14.563 --> 00:49:19.461
We're in such an era of just like everything is so fast.

00:49:19.461 --> 00:49:23.789
Everything's on our phone, we get deliveries the same day.

00:49:23.789 --> 00:49:27.192
It's just like everything's boom, it's there, deliveries, you know it's same day.

00:49:27.192 --> 00:49:28.313
You know it's just like everything's boom, it's there.

00:49:28.313 --> 00:49:31.722
And then in our lives, though, things just don't change like that.

00:49:31.822 --> 00:49:40.760
it takes a lot longer our, our, our technology has outstripped our physiology, right, and so it's just uh that that can be.

00:49:40.760 --> 00:49:51.239
Uh, there's a joke I make about you know, if you've ever fixed anything in your house, right, there's kind of the three-two rule, right, it's going to take three times longer twice, as much money as you thought.

00:49:53.032 --> 00:50:05.172
It's just a good way to set your expectations right, which really means you sort of have to love the process, right, you have to love the process of going through change, of going through change.

00:50:05.172 --> 00:50:15.443
If you enjoy the process, you're less worried about the speed of the outcome and you're less focused on the magnitude of the outcome.

00:50:15.443 --> 00:50:19.960
Right, Like you know, we all make kind of resolutions at the beginning of the year.

00:50:19.960 --> 00:50:22.695
Right, and you know, maybe you've got a health one, I'm gonna lose 30 pounds or whatever.

00:50:22.695 --> 00:50:31.217
You have to love the process of pursuing that goal, because you don't lose 30 pounds in one hour long workout.

00:50:31.217 --> 00:50:41.472
Right, it takes time and it takes repetition, and so you have to I always tell my clients, companies and otherwise is is fall in love with the verbs and not the nouns.

00:50:41.472 --> 00:50:43.577
Fall in love with the actions.

00:50:43.577 --> 00:50:50.293
Right, 30 minute run, the struggle, the stress, the sweat, the challenging conversation.

00:50:50.293 --> 00:50:58.731
The outcomes will happen, right, If you do it long enough and you just have to fall in love with that process and then you're not worried about if it's happening quickly enough.

00:50:59.753 --> 00:51:05.503
Yeah, I like that, yeah, yeah and it and that can be challenging too, right?

00:51:05.503 --> 00:51:07.550
All these things like to fall in love with the process.

00:51:07.550 --> 00:51:11.893
You know, that's like it's more difficult when it's not your process.

00:51:11.893 --> 00:51:16.117
So when it is your process it's a little more to fall in love with and do.

00:51:16.217 --> 00:51:24.923
But I mean, there's just a all of this is available to everyone.

00:51:24.923 --> 00:51:33.079
And certainly, you know, what I do is help individuals and teams and companies go what's your perfect recipe, right?

00:51:33.079 --> 00:51:34.396
What works with your culture?

00:51:34.396 --> 00:51:36.235
How do we want to design this?

00:51:36.235 --> 00:51:39.655
How do you want to put it into practice and what does that look like?

00:51:39.655 --> 00:51:47.259
And you know, I think it's easy to watch a couple reels and go, hey, I'm going to cold plunge every day and all of a sudden all my problems will be gone.

00:51:47.259 --> 00:51:50.409
No, no, that'll help a little bit, but you know there's more to it, right.

00:51:50.409 --> 00:51:53.983
So we've got to do that work to kind of figure out what's my perfect formula.

00:51:53.983 --> 00:51:58.036
But it's all available to all of us, no matter what world you're in.

00:51:58.036 --> 00:52:11.659
You know, whether it's high stress stakes of the first responder community or I'm you know, I'm a middle manager at at you know a tech company, right, we're still people, right, and those processes, those mechanisms are still available.

00:52:11.659 --> 00:52:13.503
Uh, it's just context driven.

00:52:14.150 --> 00:52:15.856
Yeah, yeah, definitely Michael.

00:52:15.856 --> 00:52:20.612
Where can people follow you and find this information out of all the good things that you're doing?

00:52:21.152 --> 00:52:23.815
Yeah, uh, so best place to start is my website.

00:52:23.815 --> 00:52:34.777
Uh, michaeljlopezcoachcoach, which is a fun, suffix to put at the end of my website, but it is a real thing, so all my socials and everything you can find me on there.

00:52:34.777 --> 00:52:48.510
A little bit more about some of the principles we've talked about, and that'd be a great place to start and, you know, happy to connect with anyone that's interested to learn more or talk about anything else to connect with anyone that's interested to learn more or talk about anything else.

00:52:51.969 --> 00:52:52.552
Yeah, I love your, your take on.

00:52:52.552 --> 00:52:54.378
You know the culture and the change and what you need to do and take on as a as a person.

00:52:54.378 --> 00:53:01.701
Right, sometimes we just like maybe leave those things up to other people to do, but sometimes we have to take some accountability to do some of that yourselves.

00:53:02.269 --> 00:53:03.333
Well, that's.

00:53:03.333 --> 00:53:11.619
It's a great phrase and maybe leave you with this comment is um, the only person you can change is yourself.

00:53:11.619 --> 00:53:18.514
You have no dominion over any other person on planet earth except for you.

00:53:18.514 --> 00:53:29.202
You can influence, but the only person you can change is you, and so we get stuck, I think, a lot on what other people are doing or what other people should be doing.

00:53:29.202 --> 00:53:36.215
The best thing you can do is to change in the ways that you want to live and, again, leading by example.

00:53:36.215 --> 00:53:37.438
Other people will follow it.

00:53:37.438 --> 00:53:47.038
But we often get stuck in the shoulds and the days, and it's important to be what about I and me?

00:53:47.038 --> 00:53:49.083
And what can I do?

00:53:49.083 --> 00:53:53.146
And and start, there is a great place to start yeah, that's perfect.

00:53:53.206 --> 00:53:55.293
I'm gonna leave it right there at the for the ending.

00:53:55.293 --> 00:53:57.277
Appreciate it thanks, jerry.

00:53:57.277 --> 00:53:59.711
Yeah, thank you, michael thanks again for listening.

00:54:00.293 --> 00:54:04.309
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00:54:04.309 --> 00:54:31.724
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00:54:31.724 --> 00:54:41.418
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00:54:41.418 --> 00:54:41.498
Yes.