The Neuroresilient Leader: Staying Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

And like you said, you know, we're living in an era where AI market volatility, like is it the global complexity of it all? It's accelerating faster and faster and there's so much change and people are having a difficult time adapting. But the leaders that are trying to outwork the velocity are the ones that are suffering. They're pushing harder, they're grinding, like you said. And you can't outwork velocity if grinding harder isn't working anymore. You're not alone Today,

what's really breaking in the age of AI? This is Data Driven. Hello and welcome to Data Driven, the podcast where we explore the emerging field of data science, data engineering and artificial intelligence. Now with me today is not my favorite estate engineer in the world. He is unavailable. So I brought the most curious person I know. And I mean that. Not like curious strains, but someone who's actually inquisitive and

you're quantum curious. But I think you're also data curious and you've also done a lot of work with neuro diverse type things. I know you have a blog on that you're going to reactivate thanks to a little animal called the dingo. But that's for. That's a show for another day. I have with me Angus Nelson, who is. He was an author and fellow podcaster and we're part of a group, mastermind

type group called Podcasters Paradise. Shout out to you JLD and and you have a book that is about, I think, something that's very, very timely. It's stress and anxiety. And as I was kind of skimming through it, I realized like, you know, he's right about a lot of this here because grind culture, hustle culture, can only take you so far. And I kind of. Candace knows this because I had a kind of a come to Jesus moment last week with a lot of stress going on in my

life and things like that. And I kind of realized I was listening to a song by Pitbull. Yes, Pitbull. And he has a line, a lot of things in his lyrics I can't repeat, but one of them was interesting. He goes, you know, life is a gift and a curse. Which one do you figure out first? He goes, it's about what you leave behind because I've never seen a U haul behind a hearse. And then he goes into some Spanglish and some naughty words. But the lesson

there I think is very important. And as we're going through here, it really. We live in a very stressful time. Obviously, geopolitical events weigh on our minds kind of subconsciously, but also that 3am Slack message where you're up at 3 in the morning because you're thinking of something at work. So welcome to the show. The book is Neuro Resilient Leader, the Internal Operating System for Leading at the Speed of Change. Welcome to the show, Angus. Well, great to be here,

Frank. And like you said, we're living in an era where AI market volatility of the global complexity of it all, it's accelerating faster and faster and there's so much change and people are having a difficult time adapting. But the leaders that are trying to outwork the velocity are the ones that are suffering. They're pushing harder, they're grinding like you said. And you can't outwork velocity, you just simply

can't. And I believe that every single business problem that most people are facing right now isn't so much about, you know, the data sets, it isn't so much about the strategy and the tasks at hand as much as it is them finding themselves from an internal operating system that's,

that's flooding them or overwhelming them. So now they have analysis, paralysis, stalled innovation, they're hemorrhaging talent, losing people, people are disengaging, there's all sorts of stats and we can go into some of that if you want and get nerdy on the, the data of that particular piece. But what's actually happening is the internal operating system is what's breaking down in people. Things are changing and we're trying to run on Windows 2000 and it ain't working

anymore. So everybody's in this dysregulated nervous system and they're treating every daily challenge like it's a frickin life threatening emergency. No, exactly. And that's kind of how we evolved and that's what got us here. And there are a lot of good stuff messages in your book, right. Like what got you to where you are. And you know, your, your book is geared to what I can tell, towards a leadership level. But this happens I think even at the individual contributor

level. And certainly I think the people who are independent contractors, I know a lot of folks who you know, listen to show are independent contractors. Andy is one. Right. And there's always a lot of stress going on and I think there's a lot of stress that is induced by AI, but I also think there's opportunity induced by AI. But the thing that really struck me was I'm sitting there and I have

my best idea as drive in driving around. So I was driving Around I was listening to, you know, a notebook. Lm summary of your book because I don't think there's an audiobook yet. But, you know, it really got me thinking, like. And, and we think about the best business leaders of the 21st century thus far, right? The, the name that everyone, almost everyone will bring up is Steve Jobs. Right. And Steve Jobs, yes. Was he difficult to work with? People have said that. But he

also saw ahead. And I think part of his ability to see ahead because, remember, he disrupted not just Apple, Pixar, right. Filmmaking, music, you know, everything Apple has done. Mobile. I've been a victim of, of that when I was working on Windows Phone. I think that he has a background and I know we did a lot of meditation and kind of things like that. I wonder if he hadn't had that, would he have been able to see so far ahead into the future?

Right. And this is part of the piece of the whole book where we talk about clarity, capacity and composure. Those are the three core elements of the 3C or excuse me, C3 protocol. And what most people don't understand is that what we're facing as a dysregulated individual is an inability to be clear on what's actually happening. And most of us are focused

on everything around us. And it's easy to look at, you know, certain, you know, elections or political things, or we can look at, you know, the corporate, you know, change and Jack Dorsey saying all middle management is now going to be coach players. You know, like we're hearing all these things that can feel really, really scary, fearful, uncertain, et cetera.

And that lack of clarity for what's the next step, because we're faced on the outside, we're looking at everything external to translate to an internal state, and it never will.

And those that have always risen to other heights have taken their own sovereignty, their own agency, and then become whoever they became. Whether that's a Steve Jobs who went internal or whether that's, you know, name any, you know, great movement of individual from Jesus to Muhammad to, you know, Martin Luther King to Gandhi to Mother Teresa, they had an internal understanding and clarity of who they are and what they're for. And this is a state most people don't know how to connect to

anymore. We've forgotten our own personal value and we've instead let everything outside of us, whether it's through people pleasing or whether through accolades or through paychecks or the size of our house or the size of our body parts. We think that's what qualifies us or gives us value. And it's simply the lie. And we bought it for so long that in this now dysregulated state, everything within our decision making now is distorted.

Is what's keeping us from living a life that actually fulfills, that actually sustains, that actually gives meaning and contribution. So what part of our humanity, the human capabilities that we should try to be relying on more as we see, for example, AI reshaping workflows and expectations, you know, what, what can we reach inside ourselves for to that we're not gonna, you know, we're obviously not getting from the AI that's gonna help us.

So you've heard all the like soft skills type of stuff and people will say, oh you, you know, you need to improve your EQ or you have to, you know, work on your communication skills. And so many companies will focus on the symptom. Oh, you're a terrible communicator, you're not good with people, you lose your temper. We need you to be, you know, executive presence, blah, blah, blah. The other side is the question you're asking is how do you change

what's going on inside? And there's a couple of different things I'll give you just real quick. One is every one of us live our lives based on stories we tell ourselves in many ways were our own worst enemies. And we build those stories based on the experiences that we've had through life. And if we're going to stay to this kind of metaphor of our operating system, it's like our minds, our bodies are like supercomputers. And so all the

data that we've taken in based on that fifth grade little league coach that told me I never amount to anything, that parent who maybe challenged me on something, if there was that girlfriend that rejected me, that boyfriend who said I was fat or ugly or what, like all those different things that we just take off as part of life on some level, we built a story around that, right on top of that are the daily inputs, the news we're listening to, the people we hang out with, like the movies we

watch, the music we listen to, all of that will have some sort of agitation. If we're listening to stuff that is either detrimental, angry, bitter or, or blaming, that is all input. Now the supercomputer, our mind and our body is processing all of that. And now it wants to validate the information it is now consumed. And so subconsciously on a very deep level, we will seek to create or to attract the relationships, experiences or opportunities that reflect

that belief system. And if that belief is. I'm never going to amount to anything. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve. I'm not worthy. You will create opportunities to validate those beliefs. And that's where people suffer. That's what people get challenged. That's where they run into roadblocks in their careers or their relationships, vice versa. If now I create new stories that all of that was, you know, that that was training, that was

learning, that was me understanding who I am. The things that I went through, difficult, good, bad or ugly, were all shaping me and forming me. They were working for me. They weren't happening to me. Now that becomes all the different kinds of things that I've done for this new graduation. It's like the price that I paid of my tuition. Secondarily, I start to protect what I'm listening to. I start to protect. I'm turning off talk radio. I'm not listening to the news. I'm stay informed, but

I'm not staying inundated. I'm no longer associating with people who are critical or negative or bitchy. I'm no longer associating myself with environments that pull me down. Instead, I'm hanging out with environments that pull me up. Now all of a sudden, I've created new data. I'm reformatting the drive to a new operating system. And so now my subconscious goes to work you to now seek to attract or create a higher caliber of experiences,

relationships and opportunities. And that's when the game changes. You know, that's a good point. Cause I noticed that, you know, I think the best thing you could do for your mental health is not sleep in the same room as your phone. Yeah, right. Because what'll happen is before you even get out of bed, you check your feed. You can't help. But these things literally are, I think. I mean, there's a court case about this, right? They are incentivized to make them addictive.

Right? And those little dopamine hits. And then before you get out of bed, you're taking on the world's problems. I forget to phrase it that way. And that's just not good for you because we weren't built for that. Right? If you think, I mean, you shouldn't at least. Should you take on all the world's problems? No, but you should at least do it after you've gotten out of bed and after you've had your first cup of coffee,

right? Whereas I think if people kind of lay, they doom scroll, right? Just that term doom scroll, I think, sets people up for failure. Right. And you're right if you think about it as a, you know, a data problem. Right. Garbage in, garbage out. Right. If you're consuming junk content, well, you know, don't be surprised if you start having junk thoughts. Yeah. Or even think about, you know, the people who are

just swiping left or right. Whether it's, you know, TikTok or whether it's Instagram or if it's dating apps or all that stuff is training your brain to be highly reactive and highly judgmental. And so you can't rest, you can't think, you have no critical thought. And the World Economic Forum released a 2026 report called the Human Advantage, which I think is just, again, uncanny with the timing of my book. And it highlights

that AI handles more cognitive task. Right. But the global disease that's kind of the burden of people is the brain health, and that is a rising increase in what they call brain capital. And that's the piece that people are not paying attention to is they don't understand that their proficiency for thinking, their proficiency for critical thought or decision making is being hijacked by an amygdala that is

operating in an absolute flooded state. Right. And so we start to, like, take our decision making and we off board it to, hey, what do you think? What do you think? Let's bring in the advisor, let's bring in a consultant. Because people have stopped trusting their gut or their own instinct or their own genius. And they don't want to subject themselves to possibly being criticized or, you know, making a mistake. And it's because of this heightened state that becoming hypersensitive.

Right. I think that's what's happening. I think that's what's happening to the baby boomers right now. I think that the information and the pace of life is just so quick that they have no idea how to relate to it, you know, as it's happening, you know, even from, like, the simple things of, like, okay, someone who's gonna go see a psychiatrist. Well, don't worry. Coming to my office, I'm gonna zoom you. What the hell is zoom? How do I find zoom? Do I have it on my phone?

How do I. Is that an app? Like, you know, and I have, I have these conversations with my mom all the time. She's 80, you know what I mean? And just her trying to make sure she has her place in the world still. Right? And, and you, you, you wonder, like, what are we risking? You know, what are. What Are we risking in our humanity and that people aren't paying enough attention to. Yeah,

yeah. What does it even mean? What does it even mean to be human anymore? Right? Because up until a few years ago, I had this debate with somebody recently. It was like, you know, up until a few years ago, we had the monopoly on creativity right up until, say, early 2021, right? Is when you started seeing a lot of the image generators kind of coming up. And

now we don't have the monopoly on that anymore, right? So, like whenever you go back and you watch like, you know, Star Trek Next Generation, which is pretty funny, some of the things they say now in regards to AI and one of their things was, you know, well, to be human is truly to be creative, right? And it's like, well, that's not necessarily. We don't have a monopoly on that anymore. Yeah, right. And I know someone's out there thinking,

well, you know, AI doesn't really create. It regurgitates what it's already seen. Like, how many people? How many people, you know, arguably, you know, creativity. Even the great artists that you can think of take what they've experienced and input themselves and then they output it in some new novel way. Right? There's still arguably a, you know, there hasn't been an original thought, so to speak, in, you

know, 10,000 years. That's one. One way to look at it. I don't totally agree with that, but I can, you know, the whole resting on the idea that only humans can be creative. Those. That's gone. I also think too, like in terms of what you said about data processing, right. You know, I don't care how hard you can hustle, right? A, you cannot process data faster than an AI can. Right. It's kind of like a bird trying to outfly, you know, a supersonic jet. You know,

that bird can only grind, but for so long. Yeah, yeah. And if you look at it from, you know, the creativity aspect, you know, we are still tastemakers. You know, it's one thing that AI cannot do yet is context how this is applied. What does this look like? I mean, I've been playing with AI. I've built my whole website using, you know, just. It's all hard coded, all from AI and thank you, Claude Code. And you know, I said, oh, you know what, I want to build

this assessment. And I used to use Score app. Well, I just saved 70 bucks because now I just coded it, you know, with cloud code. Oh, let's get rid of type form. I can build that into and it's like I'm saving 220 bucks a month just because I learned AI and I'm not even. I don't know. I don't know Python. I don't know JSON, I don't know any of this shit. I know. I know Ruby rails from like 2010 little course, but that's like

it, right? But for the context of this conversation is to understand that the AI is here and it's going to continue to be here. But the deeper question is, what you're asking is like, what does that mean for us? Who are we going to be in that time where AI is doing whatever utopian thing we're hoping it will do? I've heard some say it could take us back to the times of the Greek. Now, do we agree with why the Greek had the time on their hands? They had a lot of slaves. That's

not something that's very politically correct. And it's. So let's just say the AI is doing what the AI is doing. What did they have available to them? And remember, it was only, it was only upper echelon who had that. Right, right. You know, was, you know, somebody, you know, some. Somebody pointed this out. I'm sorry I cut you off. But like the Spartans, right? We think of. Spartans are all warriors, right? Well, a lot of them were. Those are the ones calling

the shots. But somebody had to forge the steel. Somebody had to be the blacksmith. Somebody had to make the shields, you know, the leather and things like that. Like, you know, there's kind of what we think of as, as. As the society and there's like, actually how it works. Right. I think Spartans are a good example of that. Right. Speaking. Well, I would say

there's two sides of this. So, yes, you're going to take me to the second side of this. But the first one is that creativity, philosophy, art, like all of that creative nature was how people filled their time. And then you get to the other side of the equation, and I think this is where the employee experiment is starting to change. Whereas the last 150, 200 years prior to that, we didn't have a lot of employees. Everybody, for the most part, on some degree, was an entrepreneur.

You had to bring something of value to the world, whether that was through farming or like you said, a blacksmith, leatherman, like all these different things had some kind of value that someone would trade, barter or buy. And now we're at this equation where if this does what we believe that is perspected to do, perspective, that's not even a word predicted to do is take jobs. Let's just say in whatever way or fashion, then what does that make me?

If my value and my identity was in my work and they take away your work, well, then how do you show up? How do you make a living? How do you. And I would say now you have to figure out how to actually bring meaning and contribution to the world on your own. What is your creativity? What is your gift

to the world? How are you leveraging your experience and your knowledge base in such a way that now that creativity is something of such value that people will exchange their dollars or by this time, Bitcoin, XRP or whatever else for your thing, whether it be a product or a service. And so people are going to have to bring an entrepreneurial spirit to the future of their career. And that's where I think a lot of people are choking, is they don't know

how to do that. Because again, if trust has been diminished from government, from corporate, from other people, from our teams follow the line of the continuum. And where trust is really eroding is in ourselves. Yeah. Is that because potentially, you know, AI can generate all these ideas, you know, instantly. And does that kind of affect how we feel about our own creative voice? Well, what do you do

to execute on that? So it's one thing for AI to be able to, you know, like, I mean, shoot some of this, like open claw and whatever is going to go in and spin up all of its own ads and set up all of its accounts and blah, blah, blah, and just do its thing, right? Cool, cool, cool. And if we're going to say that AI can do creative, or it can come up with concepts, ideas, whatever, the execution now is how do I interact with other human beings?

Full stop. Because if we look at AI, every person in every industry, not every person, let me reframe that. Every industry, the companies are going to be competing with one another, not on anything but the humanity, because they're going to have the same SOPs built into the same task, into the same copy, same sales mechanisms, because the AI is going to optimize it to such a degree that each industry is going to have a carbon copy. So then the differentiator becomes who's

behind it? What's the promise they're making to those that they deliver for? And do they back it up? And then secondarily, on a cultural standpoint, how do you treat your employees? What is their. Not just acumen, what is their temperature on their leadership with one another? Because that will also tell the customer base what the company's all for and then follow that up the chain is who's leading? Are they trusted? Are they human? Are they authentic?

Because that will be the differentiator of the future. Is that humanity? And in my book, I call that human success. Interesting. There's a lot to unpack there, because you're right, people do identify themselves with their career. Right? You know, this is the cocktail party question. What do you do? Right. It's a very American thing, by the way. I'd have to throw that out. Yeah, it probably is. Yeah.

No, it really, really is. Because when I moved to Canada, all of a sudden, I had no idea what anybody did for a living. You didn't ask people. You found out eventually because you got to know them. But in America, it's very like, who are you? What do you do? And that's like the definition, right? Well, I'm talking to you guys right now from Portugal. Okay. 100%. You're spot on. Like, nobody cares, you know, from the. It's the expats who are like, well, so what do you

do? What keeps you busy? Because they're looking for the normalcy of what they. What they're. What they're used to from. From home. Exactly. And the other thing is, like, people don't care about money here. Like, they. It's just. It's not so in the States, like, it's like taboo. Let's not talk about money or whatever. Or if we're talking about money, it's because of investments or crypto or whatever. And here they just don't care.

Like, you could be a surgeon or you could be, you know, a storekeeper, and they're all going to hang out and share a beautiful bottle of Portuguese wine, watching the sun go down over the Atlantic Ocean. It's really an amazing kind of culture. And it's why my family and I, we've been here for the last four years, is because we chose to change the dynamics of how we interacted with life.

And we created an existence that gave us the freedom to be able to work from where we are and which, you know, the power of being online and then secondarily is my kids made this transition being 10 and 12 year old when we first came here, and now they're 16 and 17 and they're speaking Portuguese. Their friends are from all over the world, so they're exposed to different languages, different foods, different ways. And for

us, and this is kind of my world, is. I think life is about expansion in Whatever way you want to define that. And so as we look at all this change and transformation, if you go to scarcity, to fear and to constriction, you're actually choking off life. But the whole premise of the neuroresilient leader. And by resilient, I define not as, like, white knuckling, not as pushing through, not as

surviving. But it is part of the expansion, which means as the pressure comes, the pressure only gives more power. You absorb it and you turn it into leverage, you turn it into opportunity. Because every challenge you face, one of two things. One is it's an invitation to a new reality, because the second piece is the universe has this uncanny ability to show you areas of your life where you are not yet free. And when you face a challenge, the challenge is not the

actual thing. It's the confrontation that that challenge brings you. What does this challenge say about me, and am I willing to face it for its truth? Or will I deny it? Will I ignore it? Will I try and push it off on somebody else? Or will I look at it and say, this is not the kind of person I want to be? Or this is calling me up to a different realm, or this is my opportunity to move from where I'm at, to go to where I should be.

Learning to release. That's when we start to connect to it. Exactly. No, that's it. No, I'm sorry. No, I just thinking, like, learning to release what's inside of you that is holding you back or causing you dread or trauma so that you can, like you said, live a life of expansion. Yeah. So. So let me. Let me unpack this just a little bit more. Remember, I said those. There's three things I threw out there real quick early in the conversation

where I said, I don't deserve. I'm not worthy. I don't have what it takes. And these are like three little gremlins in our heads. There's a lot to unpack there. In the book, I talk about the Guardian, which is like your overprotective parent. That's that inner voice, the inner critic. It's not there to be an enemy. It's actually there to try and keep you safe. Right? So when you step into something, it's going to be that overprotective parent or the auntie that's like, oh, who do you think you

are? What do you think you're doing? You know? And that's that voice where what it's really trying to do is say, hey, that other thing that you're seeing or facing looks scary. And I don't know if I want to go. I would rather stay here in my chaos

or complacency, because at least here I know what to expect, right? So now, as we're going towards this thing called success, you're going to be faced with those three questions. Do I deserve? Am I worthy? Do I have what it takes? So as I'm walking up, like, do I deserve this opportunity? Do I have what it takes to make this happen, to get this role, to work with these people? Like, those are the questions you get up to this thing you call success.

Whether it's the money, whether it's the role, whether it's the company, whatever, whatever. You come onto the other side and the exact same questions come up. Do I deserve to make this kind of money? My dad never made this kind of money. Am I worthy of this accolades, this visibility, this role, this corner office? Do I have what it takes? If I had an exit and I made all this money, I can't do the next thing, because what if people finally find out I'm a fraud? What if this next thing

doesn't go as successful as the other one? What if I screwed up? What if I lose it all? And really, the root. I'm sorry I cut you off. Is that really the root of imposter syndrome? You think so? Imposter syndrome, I think at its core is actually the distance between who you know you can be and who you're actually living as. Ooh. Oh, I really, really like that. We struggle to believe in our own greatness.

We've allowed whatever your circumstances, your environment or whatever, to impute upon us a belief that we are smaller and weaker than we are actually capable. And so the clients that I work with, the people that I walk these journeys with, will tell me moments where they feel like they're inauthentic because they see something great that they're doing, they're building, they're creating in some form and expressing. But right now, they can't see it, feel it, touch it, or taste it.

And so my question to them is, you know, twofold. One is,

are you waiting to be the beautiful butterfly? Because you're the squishy middle in the middle of your chrysalis, because this is the formation and it's a necessary part of the journey. And then number two is the reality is what you see out there, you have to possess and pull into now. And suddenly when you do that, your identity shifts. The way you carry yourself, the way you talk, the way you make Decisions is made in light of where you're going, not where you are or where you've been.

And that's the dislocation. We think where we are is truth. But what we're living right now is a product of the past. It's the decisions we made, the way that we acted, the chances we took, the challenges we faced, and we defined ourselves by that. So where we are right now is only an expression of the past. And if you want to change the future, you have to do it different. It's that thing where we say you're doing the same things over and over again,

expecting different results. That's that definition of insanity. So this neuroresilient leader is painting that picture emotionally, psychologically, and in some ways spiritually of an identity of who you know and see yourself to be. So suddenly now your eyes are open to all the promise, all the hope. And I challenge everybody, every conversation with what I call the Spice Girl principle. Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

Because the moment you get clear on that, your future has now a bridge because you finally gave yourself permission to become the greatness. And that's where most people are hung up. And all of this external stuff is keeping us distracted of the power and sovereignty and agency we already possess. Wow, I'm feeling very uplifted. No, for real. I mean, I mean, and I think it's good to hear that even successful, high performing leaders still feel stuck. Right. 100. You know, you see them,

you know, sometimes, you know, you mentioned crypto, right? Like you see the crypto bros. And you know, you see that kind of, you know, people flexing with the, whether it's luxury car, whether it's this. And I mean, I wonder what goes through their head. And you know, I think sometimes the more arrogant somebody comes across and maybe they're overcompensating to that. I don't know. Like, I mean, it's 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's just fascinating to kind of see. And I wonder how many people are kind of stuck in their own head. Probably all of us to some degree and not aware. Yeah, so most of my clients are high net worth. They're on some level of achievement that they got to a level where what they were doing no longer works. Right. And as I stated before, most people are operating from that path. So there's a, a chip on their shoulder.

They're trying to prove something to someone. You know, there's some kind of dark energy, you know, that's empowering. Them to move mountains and change, you know, the face of life until they get to a point where that stops being the fuel, that fuel no longer works, right? And so they need a new translation. So

that's one piece for some of the people I work with. The second piece is, if you notice every high performer, every great orator speaker, every great politician, every great athlete, every great actor, all had coaches. Some mentor, some. Someone was given permission to hold a mirror up to him and says, see this? This is your bullshit. And how would you like to fix this?

Right? Let me show you the way. Because to your point, what divides us from where we are to where we want to be is the friction of the belief, the permission, and that qualification that we've defined for ourselves. And that's the problem is we set the bar too small for what we deserve, what we're worthy, or what we have. Do we have what it

takes. But now you have some outsider come and start showing you a different perspective, starts helping you reframe, reshape the stories, all of a sudden, the shackles have been set free, right? And every one of us do that. I have coaches. I've spent over a hundred grand on people to help me get out of my own way. I went through a season where I blew up my business. I went through addiction, I went through a divorce, I was an alcoholic,

I blew up my life, something royal. And then I started seeing a counselor, and I learned about human behavior and psychology and emotional intelligence and all this stuff. I had no idea what that stuff was. And once you see, you can't unsee it anymore. That's true. And it's kind of funny. We talked about this a little bit in the virtual green room. You know, I'm a survivor. Listeners know this. I'm a survivor of the World Trade Center. And, you know, I was late for work, right? And horrible

thing, horrible thing. That day was bad. The following two, three years was really bad. But it wasn't until I kind of did get counseling and kind of, like, did realize, like, there's a gift here that I was inadvertently given was, you know, the ability to just stop and pause and kind of step outside myself,

Like. And that's helped me in a lot of ways because I think there's a lot of biochemistry that happens that we're not consciously aware of, even to the point where some philosophers are wondering, do we really have free will? And that's a whole other thing, right? But like you mentioned the amygdala. The amygdala will process signals kind of like BIOS in a computer. Right. Like before, before the CPU even sees anything. Right. So to speak. We like

to think that we live in our heads. We are the masters of our domain. Clearly that's not true. But the amygdala will process things before you even are consciously aware. One story I give was we were on a cruise ship and it's the first time we went cruising. All of a sudden we were at dinner. I feel incredibly anxious and I'm like, sometimes I'm good at it, sometimes I'm so good at it, not so good at it. But this time I really was self aw aware to the point where I had a Fitbit I was tracking.

I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I'm like, we're at dinner on a cruise. Like why am I, why am I freaking out? And I kind of like took a couple deep breaths, kind of realized assassin might in imminent danger. Right. I'm not. And I kind of realized it was the way that the engine was thumping the waves or something like that was exactly the same tone, pitch, everything, cadence as when the towers fell. Yeah. And I felt that in my

feet. And I kind of, once I realized that like, oh well, one, I'm not going crazy, so yay me. And two, I was able to kind of walk back and get my heart rate back down to like normal and enjoy the rest of the meal. Right to the point where my wife knew that something was definitely up with me and my kids were there. I had to time. I only had the two kids. But then I realized like, this is what this is, so I can kind of like walk it back. And I was able to like

rejoin. But that level of self awareness didn't, did not come easy. You know, you talked about blowing up your life. Been there, done that. But like, you know, just in a strange roundabout way, it's kind of a gift. Yeah. Yeah, I treat it as that too. Is, is, you know, when you go through stuff, right. This shapes and forms you. And in some I say that, you know, it made me fearless because when you lose everything,

you're not afraid to lose it again. Right. Most people have again hung up their identity on all these, these different factors. Thank you so much for sharing that the story. And I think, you know, there's so many people who probably still walk around with a lot of the weight, you know, from, from going through that. And part of, you know, this concept of this clarity and capacity is that element of reframing those stories.

In my book, I talk about when I Went to work with a buddy of mine, Jeremiah, and we built a company together called Crowd Companies. It was a Fortune 500 brands coming together in an innovation association. And when I first started with him, I didn't know anything about the industry of, like, Airbnb, Uber Lyft. We were tracking all the investments coming into this peer to peer space, and then that spun into crypto, then autonomous vehicles and drone

delivery and just crazy innovation. Cool stuff.

And I always believed that I got lucky, that in 2013, Jeremiah gave me a shot. And I'm writing this book last year, and I was going through that story in my head as I was writing it, and I got this revelation that I didn't just get lucky, that he didn't just choose me, but he needed someone with my skill set and I was just the right person for the job. And he was the vehicle to help me get in front of the right people to deliver

my gift to the world. And it completely shifted my identity because the story changed. And so as I'm sitting here in front of my laptop, I'm bawling in the middle of fricking Starbucks as I'm writing my book. And I just felt this huge release. And it was, you know, yeah, I was invigorating, yes, it was liberating, but it was the shift of identity. And as I tell people, as I wrote this book, this book wrote me. And I could not have released this book six years ago or five years ago

because Angus wasn't ready. Right. And

I had to be shaped so that I could articulate this world, this. This book, into a world from a place that I could not just say, hey, here's some intellectual, you know, pontification. Like, this is a lived reality and the authenticity. And I'm going to go back to what you were saying before when you felt that thing on the cruise ship, right? There is a legitimacy to an energetic exchange. When you talk to someone and you're looking them straight in the eyes, they're talking, you're like,

you are full of shit. You don't say that because you're polite, but you just know something's not right. Or you're in line with somebody and you suddenly feel like everything inside you is like, oh, God, I just feel stressed. And you're like, this person in front of you has some weird vibe and energy they're giving off. They're just agitated and it's coming off, it's slopping on you. So we are communicating on these different levels that

are beyond just our conscious thought. And the more that we start paying attention. I'm not saying this to be woo. I'm not saying this to be all New Agey and we're not going to like, you know, talk to our ancestral whatever peoples. I'm saying this is real science, that the more that we know about this, the more brain capital we possess. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, and, and you know, there's a. There's a tendency to kind of dismiss this. And maybe this is people's inner, inner

ante, I think, is the word you used, right? You know, like, oh, this is just hocus pocus, right? You know, this, you know, we're not talking about going to Peru and smoking ayahuasca or whatever and singing Kumbaya. This is very real. One phrase I kind of came to terms with in the last decade or two was like, no matter what happens to you, what happens to you to the day you die, you're stuck with you. What happens to you after

that, I mean, that's up for the interpretation. But as long as I'm on this earth and I'm breathing, I am stuck with me. I might as well make me someone I want to spend time with. And you know, I haven't quite gone so far down the personal coaching path as you. Although I do aspire to that. Because, you know, ultimately, if you invest in yourself, that's an, that's an investment that you are going to benefit from for as long as you're alive, right? At least

that. Who knows after that, maybe, maybe you'll come back and you'll benefit. I don't know. But people, I think, underestimate that, right? I think we live in a very empirical society, right, where only the physical exists. And I think there used to be a rich esoteric tradition, right? You talk about ancestors. My grandmother, my great grandmother would always tell these kind of weird, kind of crazy folk tales and things like that. We kind of

thrown that all out. We thrown the baby out with the bathwater. And we live in a very empirical, very physical world. And I think that once you get to a certain point, that's very empty right now. Obviously the good thing is we don't burn people at the stake for witchcraft anymore, you know? You know, generally that doesn't happen. That's good. But I think we also lost a certain amount of flavor and soul to that.

I agree with that. And I'm listening to everything you're saying. And I'm saying I'm an adult and I can take in this information and I can Think about, you know, trying to, you know, really listen to my intuition, to what I feel is right for me. But what I keep on coming back to in my mind is Generation Z. And these children, I have, two of them were raised in such a traumatic experience with COVID that they're all walking around with PTSD and nobody is

doing anything about it. Like, and. And they're. And they're suffering and their children who are trying to understand all this when there are adults that don't even understand it. Right, because you've seen. I mean, because you said you, you know, you moved. It was right. Right around, I believe, when the pandemic happened. Right. And you said, I'm getting the hell out of Dodge,

you know, And. And that wasn't a bad idea, you know, and it was like the first time since I'd moved to Canada where everybody stopped saying, why? Yeah. Every time. Because I'm from New York. New York is amazing. You know, I'm saying I'm in New York. Right. But no one, no one, no one questioned me once. Once Covid hit. And then you have all these children who, like, couldn't go to school and didn't learn how to properly

socialize. Right. And completely addicted to their phones because that was their only outlet. Right. Well, we had kids going to school on Zoom. They had kindergarten in our old school district on Zoom, which sounds like the punchline to a Saturday Night Live skit. Oh, yeah. Right. So think about, you know, the human side of this. And this is why I believe this work is so critical and so important, is we're having to retrain people into a way that's always been. That has become so foreign and

to your point. Yeah, we were actually. Our vision board to move to Portugal was. Well, actually just to move to Europe. Portugal wasn't even on the map. In our brain was 2024. And

in the middle of COVID we're like, what are we waiting for? Let's just go. And we lived here for a year. That was the plan. And then we turned to the kids, said, what do you think my kids are like? Why would we go back? Because the level of safety and independence they have here, etc. Etc. But that point that you just made about children not knowing how to connect, but at the same time, the adults not knowing how to bridge that,

that's the problem we're talking about. This is such a massive issue. And I'm going to say this, too, if you're still listening to us, like, pontificating here right now is More important to me that you get this movement than you buy my frickin book. I would love for you to buy my book. And then when we have the audio, buy my audiobook. Cool, cool, cool. But

go to Freebook VIP and download the PDF for free. My gift to you because I want you to wrap your brain around this. It's this important. The first five chapters, you will immediately know what we're talking about. Because I was very intentional not to make this psychobabble, very intentional not to make it academic and use all fancy terms, but your nervous system is driving the car right now. And I opened the book to imagine yourself as the driver of an F1 vehicle with a $15 million engine in

your chassis. And everything's clocking, everything's going great, except there's a rattle in your dashboard and you don't know why, and the rattle is keeping you distracted and suddenly you're missing your lines, you're not taking your turns, you're hitting your brake too early, you're not punching when you should, and therefore you're not performing in the way that you are capable. And this book, this mission is not to fix the car, it's to fix the driver. Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, I love that

analogy. I think it, it sums it up perfectly, right? There's a, there's a he since passed away, but there was a guy who was a, like an industrial designer type guy at Microsoft and named Bill Hill. And he would, he would say like, you know, when you're writing apps, you're not writing it for Windows, you're not writing it for the Mac,

you're not writing it for iPhone, you're writing it for the human operating system. And anything I've done since I heard that, and it was a stupid, like little five minute video that he gave talk that he gave in 2004. I still think of that to this day. When I build something, I still think about whether it's a book, a slide deck, a podcast. I think about that, right? Because the human operating system is something we're stuck with. There's no update in sight. Best we could do is patch

it, but we have to work around it. And I do want to. I could talk for another hour or two because there's a lot of stuff we didn't cover. But I definitely recommend. Folks, it's Freebook vip. Yep, I have gone. I skimmed the book and I had AI kind of process the summary for me, but I'm definitely going to read it now. I eagerly await the audiobook But I want to be respectful of your time. I could talk for another hour, but.

And as a fellow podcaster, you know who's going to be doing the audiobook. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I like writing. I, you know, even though I do augment my stuff with AI, writing is very cathartic. Right. It helps you process things. Right. It takes a lot of that, like your experience. Right. It takes a lot of that stuff that's in the undertow of the subconscious. Kind of brings it up and you wash it off and you kind of like, huh, I can learn something

from that. You know, it's a very cathartic process. I write for therapy. Literally, I write a lot. Even before AI, I love that. And somebody taught me this. I wrote a, two other books before this one. I released one just sitting on a hard drive. And my, my coach, my writing coach said, get it written, then get it right. Because what you just said, like, get it all out, flow, right? And then you can go. And that's when you shape it, that's when you

make it what it needs to be. But if you don't go through that process, you'll never get to the end now. Exactly. I like that. Well, we could talk for another hour. I want to be respectful of your time. Any final thoughts, Candace? I'm just blown away. I've already gone to the website I'm downloading as

we speak. I, I, I found this to be not just intellectually stimulating, but like soulful, you know, hopeful, really hopeful, which I think is something that people aren't having right now and they're struggling with. And so I think that you have really, you've really, your fingers on the pulse of something just vitally important for us all, all to investigate and understand better than you. 100%. Thank you. This is, this is where you have to leave your role and attach to

your soul. Oh. Because that's the important piece. And we've forgotten that part of our society. Everybody is so agitated and so irritable and so reactive, so fearful. Yes, because they're operating from some role that they think they're supposed to play. And my ambition is to get people to reconnect with their soul. Right. The, the market is not rewarding your effort anymore. It's only going to reward when you stay regulated, when you stay human.

Right. And the AI is just going to get faster and faster. It's going to do more. But can you be calm? Can you be conscious? Can you be present? Because your humanity, when it's properly regulated, like that's the competitive advantage. And I think when increasingly more so. Sorry I cut you off recently.

More. Right. And so when we get to that stage and we get to connect with ourselves, to give ourselves permission to step into our power, to give ourselves agency, to take on our sovereignty, then we're actually going to step that last piece, which is the composure. And in that composure, the power that we possess in that moment is that person who has nothing, nothing to gain, nothing to prove, nothing to lose. And it's the most

powerful person in any room. And my hope is that you, as the listener, learn to connect to that. Wow, that's powerful. I can't come up with a better ending thing than that. Thank you, Angus, for coming on the show. It's freebook vip, definitely check it out. I'm going to load it on my Kindle as soon as this call ends, actually.

Well, thank you, Frank. Thank you, Candice, especially Frank. Just reaching out and just saying, hey, want to be my show. I just love your generosity and your spontaneity. So thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much. And with that, we'll play the outro music.