S6E8 Brian Levenson: Preparation and Performance Mindset difference, Mentors in unlikely places, and Loneliness...

Start rattling these questions around in our brain to see if we can actually create a life that we wanna live. And then following that up with how we can overcome our limiting beliefs in our life and the incredible work done by Shirzad Chamine and positive intelligence and how we can use framework to overcome limiting beliefs and do the do the work necessary for that.

And then finishing up with an incredibly fascinating conversation with John Helliwell the editor of the World Happiness Report, which ranks different countries based on their life evaluations, their happiness, and then also the six main things that correlate 75% of the happiness on these scales. Super, super interesting. So check that out. So this month for September, All about the mind. So we're gonna have experts on productivity and how we can optimize it.

We're gonna have elite sports psychologist and looking at what is an elite performance mindset and how does that differ in performance and preparation. And then we'll have, you know, somebody you even spent six months in one of the most violent prisons in the UK, transformed it from the inside out and the incredible power that he had in his mindset going into that. It's just unbelievable story. So tons of really fun guests laid out for you. All right. Let's jump into the show.

I have the privilege of having Brian Levenson on. He's an executive and mental performance coach. He's worked with everyone from CEOs, professional athletes, teams, like the NBA, the NHL, the MLS, Division one athletic departments, federal reserve. I mean the list goes on and on. He's done a lot of really cool things, coached a lot of incredible people.

He's also the podcast host of Intentional Performers, where he interviews a diverse group of elite high performers and author of Shift your Mind. And we're gonna get into that because some of the information in that is fantastic around peak performance mindset. So welcome to the show here. Privilege to have you.

I feel like it's more value today than it was when I graduated, but I just studied classes that I was interested in. And as a result, when I graduated I raised my hand and said, who wanted to hire me? And no one really, grabbed my hand and said, here, come with me son. So I, I worked in sales for a few years and or I landed at a company, a local Washington DC company where I sold ice cream and candy wholesale.

So I would go to restaurants, grocery stores, country clubs, hotels, and I would have ice cream in the trunk of my car, in a freezer. And I'd walk out and try to get them to sample the goods. And they sample the goods. They usually would wanna buy it. People like ice cream. Even though I didn't like ice cream as a side note.

And so back to Julie, who you mentioned when I graduated as a lost puppy outta college, I just started calling people and saying, Hey, would you meet with me? And Julie was a family friend. So she actually reached out to me and said, Brian, I wanna take you out to lunch and tell you about what I do. I think you'd find it interesting. I was like, hell yeah, let's do it. So we went to the cheesecake factory. If you've ever been to a cheesecake factory, they give you way too much food.

So I was happy. That was lovely. yeah. As a 22 year old that's cold. And so I remember just sitting with her at the cheesecake factory and she asked me to close my eyes and she said, if I asked you to like, tell me what's going on in this room, would you be able to share? I was like, yeah, I could probably share a lot. She said, yeah, I've always thought that you're very perceptive. And, there are times in your life where you feel like someone sees you, that was one of those times.

And as someone who was pretty lost I would even say personally and professionally, I felt a little bit found in that moment. And she told me about what she did. So she basically worked in sports psychology. She worked with some of the best athletes in the world, and I always loved sports like a lot of people, but I also loved helping people. And so I was really drawn to the psychology side of sport and the sports side of psychology.

But at the time I'd been in school my whole life, I wanted to work and I wanted to earn a living. So. Even though we met pretty early on after I graduated. I didn't do anything with that conversation until I got to the ice cream company. And when I started to realize, all right, this probably isn't gonna work out. I met with her again. She said, Hey, why don't you come shadow me? I'm working with a golfer at a country club come out and walked nine holes with us. So I did that.

I started doing my research on the field. She started to help me look at online courses. I took an online course, and then I said, you know what? Let's do it. So I applied to a grad program. I went, did my master's in sports psychology. And it really set the table for what I'm doing today. But yeah, if it wasn't for that cheesecake factory lunch with Julie, I have no idea what I would be doing today.

But yeah, I'm really grateful, Julie, we're supposed to have lunch on Monday, so we are, we're still very much in touch and she's absolutely the first mentor in my life, but beyond my family and really grateful for her.

So, think of Mike as a mentor, even though he doesn't necessarily know that and that's okay. I've spent some time with him. We communicate every once in a while, but you know, he's a mentor and then there's a few others that are more formal mentors. So there's a guy named Neil stroll who actually passed away recently. He's more in the executive coaching world and he was a teacher of mine at Georgetown.

When I went back to school for executive coaching and on the first day of class, he said, Anyone that wants to connect with me. You're welcome to reach out and we can grab a cup of coffee. And I was like, hell yeah, I'm doing that. And I think I might have been the only one in my cohort of 32 people that took him up on that. And that led to, I would go and visit him monthly and we talk about what was going on.

And honestly, like most of that was him affirming that I was heading in the right direction, which felt really good. And then my uncle Bob is a psychotherapist. And so he's been a mentor ever since I got into psychology. And so I would say like formerly Neil, Bob and Julie have definitely been influences. And I think one of the things I've learned about mentorship is that a great mentor doesn't just tell you what to do. They also show you what not to do.

And I've learned something from all three of those people where they may have made mistakes along the way. And they've shared those with me and I've learned from them, or they're doing something today and I'm watching it and I'm saying. I don't think that's where I wanna be. And so I think we get mentors confused sometimes and thinking that we have to find like Michael Gervais for example, like the mentor, that's the top of our field.

And while Mike I'm sure is a great mentor, I think we can learn just as much from those who are willing to share their struggles or their challenges. And they don't have to be top of class, so to speak even though by the way, Julie, Bob and Neil are. So I shouldn't say that they're all three really successful. I don't know. We'll talk about success later, but yeah, I mean, they've been influences not just in peak performance, but just in, how do you run your practice? What do you do?

How do you wanna set this up for your family? And when I say set it up for your family, like to be there for your family, so those are things. And then, I mean, my parents have been the ultimate mentors all along the way, and I lean on them all the time. My wife has been a mentor in a lot of ways. So, there are formal mentors, there are informal mentors, and then there are people in your life that you just really value that you wanna lean on.

So when I say you I would say I, that I wanna lean on.

You can take, for somebody to write a book, you have to distill all of this stuff and take essentially the best of what you have put it into a format that's digestible and you can be quote unquote, mentored by these people. You can gain access to elite world class information from books, and then you have a tier, going up to different levels of that. But I really, I appreciate your thoughts and your insight on the things that you can take away

So I feel like in some ways I haven't been able to maximize my learning or my growth. And I'm like, dude, you don't have go through cancer to understand what it's like to overcome cancer and to have the resilience that someone that overcame cancer. Yes. Hard things, environments that are tough can help shape us, but I don't wanna go through life going toward toxicity or awful things. And I don't wanna wait for those things to happen, to learn and grow.

I wanna learn from Warren Buffet's mistakes and not make the same ones. Like why should I make that mistake go through the pain in order to learn? And I don't think we have to go through pain in order to learn. I think pain can expedite our learning and growth, but I don't believe we have to go through the pain. We can see what someone else experienced and say, all right, I'm not doing that.

Again, like I don't need to cheat on my wife to know the pain that it's gonna cause her or myself if I did. Like I can experience and observe what other people go through going through a divorce and going through some of the challenges that come with losing trust in a marriage. I don't want to like go experiment with that, to know what it feels like to then know that I don't want to cheat on her. Like that seems silly to me.

But I think about if I, if anything were to happen to them, would I miss that my two year old daughter comes into my room at 6:00 AM in the morning, like, absolutely. Did I have to go through it to learn that? No, but I can, I can learn it from my friend and I can apply it in a deep level to my life.

There's probably a part of me that does, but I also want my sleep and so it's interesting though, like those are, I think it is a metaphor for life in a lot of ways. Like those difficult things we do remember like we, our memory is drawn to those things and there is nostalgia that comes with. And how can we appreciate in the moment, but not want it to happen all the time is a interesting perspective as a parent that I experienced probably on a daily basis.

I saw something different modeled for me. So my norm is that you can strive and work really hard and, try to make an impact. And be home for dinner. And so success is that for me personally and professionally they intertwine. It's like, I wanna work really hard and I wanna be home for dinner as much as I possibly can. And obviously there's times when me and my wife go out or we have go out with friends and leave the kids home, which is also healthy.

But yeah, like generally speaking, I wanna just be home for dinner and, know, the pandemic. Changed me too, cuz I used to have an office and I wouldn't leave the office until six o'clock. Like that was it. I was there and sometimes six, 10. And, but I came home and during the pandemic, like yesterday, I didn't have any clients at four 30 and my son came up cuz I now work from home. I don't work from an office anymore. My son came up at four 30 and I was like, here take a seat and I'll just work.

And I'm like, you can hang. It's all good. And so I've become more agile and more flexible in how I do that. But back to success, I think I also care about professional success and I care about parenting success. So professionally speaking, I really wanna do what I love when I want, while working with elite clients and, earning an elite income, which I've defined for me. It doesn't really matter what others have defined. I do think of income as being a part of success for me.

I think it's important for me to earn and to focus on that. It's certainly not the only piece. And then as a parent, I mean, it sounds so cliche, but I remember my son was born. I said, I really just want him to be the best version of him. And I try to come back to that with both of my kids. I have a daughter as well. Like I really just want them to be the best version of them.

And when I can say that it opens me up to not put whatever my shit is onto them and not to put any expectations or stress on them and try to listen and try to be open to what success means for them and be okay with that while imparting some wisdom along the way. So, yeah, I think of success as a parent very differently than I do for myself professionally.

I fill a lot of space with my professional life. I wrote a book, I have a podcast, I have a newsletter I'm on social media. I have 30 executives that I work with. I work with sports team. Like I like to do a lot of stuff. I don't feel overwhelmed by it, but yeah, I fill the space pretty good. And so it didn't, I needed more than 96, 90 seconds professionally to talk about my work.

But what I noticed when I did that was that I didn't have room and space for my family, for myself, for any sort of exploration, emotionally, maybe spiritually. And so I need to bring myself back when I often talk about success because I had a client once tell me, take care of your marriage first. And the kid's second. And that really stuck with me when I had kids, cuz about a year into our first kid, my wife looked at me and she said, Brian, how are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know.

I'm tired. Like I feel like I haven't really done much for myself. She's like, yeah, you haven't done much for yourself. But I think our marriage was pretty good. And I think the kid was pretty good, but my wife sort of imparted this wisdom in me. It's like, if I'm not good, then those two things are gonna fall apart. And so I think we get it backwards a lot as parents and I'm no different. I think sometimes we take care of the kid first, the marriage second and ourselves third.

And I've really focused on trying to reverse that as much as possible take care of myself first, take care of the marriage. Second, take care of the kids third. And I think we sometimes overvalue our value in our kids. Like our kids are gonna be them. They're gonna find their way. And they don't need us every step along the way, but we, at least for me, I feel like I need to be involved. And I think especially where we are in society today, like everything's organized for them.

Everything's involving adults. And I just had a conversation with my wife the other day. I'm like, we need to give them space to just play and let be kids. And. I think it's hard, it's becoming harder and harder to do that. We just have so many options when it comes to organized, structured activities. So back to me I really try to play golf. I, I exercise, I go on vacation.

Sometimes with my wife sometimes not I really try to take care of myself first And then my wife and I make sure to go out to dinner together to go to events, go to experiences. And we leave our kids behind and my wife is so great at this. I mean, a lot of women, especially after they have a kid early on, they feel attached to their kid three months in, I think we left and went skiing and we left our three month old at home. And we're fortunate. We've got, we live by our family.

And so we've got support that way. But yeah I think. For me, it's been a game changer. It's like, Hey, really focus on your own health. Cause if you don't have that, your marriage is gonna falter. And then if your marriage is gonna falter, then it's gonna impact the kids in a way as well. So yeah, I try to work backwards in that way.

Like you are focusing on improving yourself and then the aspect of performance is selfless. So you're preparing selfishly so that you can perform well as a father or in whatever role you want to insert for that peak performance. So talk to us about the foundations of the difference between the preparation and the performance and some of those categories that you can see almost a dichotomy between the different sides.

I was like, whoa, these are very different. And so what he would work on when he'd work on his golf game, what he needed was much more humility. He needed to focus on himself. He needed to really make sure that he was getting into uncomfortable positions and trying to hit balls out of tough positions and golf is actually hard to get uncomfortable because there's a driving range and the driving range makes things as easy and simple as possible. It's flat, it's on nice grass. It's big and wide.

You don't have to necessarily go at a target. So anyway we had all these things come up and then I started bringing that to the soccer player and the basketball player and the baseball player. And we just would do this exercise. And then I started to talk to executives about it and I was just blown away. I was like, wow, this is not talked about enough. And at the same time, Tom Coughlin, who was the head coach of the New York giants had a book come out that said, earn the right to win.

And in that book, he talked about being humble enough to prepare and confident enough to perform. And I was like, whoa that's. So I started bringing to my clients. Hey, what does humble in preparation look like? And what does confident in performance look like? And it led to this deeper conversation. So that's the backstory of it. And from there, I would just steal what my clients would write down. And we ended up having like 35 of these shifts, so to speak a preparation in performance.

And I was like, I think this could be a book. And so I ended up hiring an editor and a coach. We ended up distilling those 35 down to nine. And I wanna be really clear, like they are not the nine shifts. Like you can have your own shift and you can disagree with some of the shifts in the book, depending on what you're doing for performance. So a firefighter is different than an athlete is different than an actor is different than a doctor is different than a lawyer like it.

So I don't claim that these are one size fits all and you can just apply them to anything. However, I do think that the nine that we focused on are the most universal when it comes to preparation performance. So the one you were mentioning was selfish and selfless. A lot of these words, I think get a bad rap. So a few that we look down upon are selfish, perfect, arrogant. Like these are words that we often say, Don't be arrogant. Don't be perfect. Don't be selfish.

But when I would talk to my clients and we'd say like, what do you really need when you're performing? They would say, it's actually beyond confidence. I need this unshakeable belief in myself that I'm gonna find a way. And when we started to get toward it is like, that's actually not confidence. I need to be confident all the time. And actually great humility requires great confidence. It takes confidence to have someone say, I need to get better. I need help.

And it takes arrogance to be when the lights are on and things, aren't going the right way to have this unshakeable belief that you're gonna find a way think sometimes it's an exaggerated sense of self. It is. It goes against logic. It goes against what the noise of the fans or the audience's thinking. And I, when I studied elite performers, I noticed it and I just started to see it in documentaries and books I would read and podcasts I would listen to. So I went with arrogance.

It was a tricky word to put it in a book, cuz we've all had an arrogate jerk and I don't value arrogance all that much. I actually value humility way more. And I think a lot of people are afraid to step into arrogance. I think a lot of people are afraid to step into selfishness. I think a lot of people are afraid to step into perfectionism because there's a lot there. And if you overdose on any of those, it absolutely is toxic.

And by the way, if you're arrogant in preparation, you're not gonna learn anything and it's gonna hold you back completely. And by the way, if you are perfect in trying to be perfect in performance, it's gonna get in the way as well. And by the way, if you're selfish in a performance for a lot of team sports like that is death as well. So the reason why those words get bad labels is not unjust.

They deserve it because if it's used at the wrong time, it absolutely can get in the way of us getting to where we want to go. And so the book is really about when it's really about, it depends when I need to be this way and when I need to be that way. And that's ultimately what I wanted to leave people with is to think about, Hey, when do I need to be this way? And when do I need to be that way? And by the way, my authentic self has these sides of me.

And I need to be intentional and thoughtful about bringing them out at the right time. And so I hope that comes across in the book. That was the intention. But I think people get hijacked when they see those words. And sometimes. Can't get the message. So hopefully if you're listening to this, you stayed with me for long enough to get the punchline.

And like you mentioned, so many elite performance have the ability to switch on almost instantaneously, switch off almost instantaneously and change their state based on what they need to be in the current moment. And I find that so fascinating where your analysis of it says there's space for these different parts of yourself, depending on the situation. And then you work on your ability to be able to, bring them forward when you need them. I just think it's awesome.

The hype was real with Andrew Wiggins. And one of the things I think he struggled with was he struggled with arrogance in performance until he got to golden state. And they said, no, dude, like you got the green light. We got you like, go do your thing, go dunk on people, go shoot threes. And I think he shifted. And a lot of that environment in golden state helped him shift. Steve Kerr, their head coach has been open and talked about when he played with Michael Jordan and Steve Kerr.

As won multiple rings as a player, multiple rings as a coach, he had to shift his mind to get into this arrogant mindset. Steve Kerr has talked about Steph Curry and how he loves his arrogance. That's the word, but arrogance doesn't have to be outward. It doesn't have to be dream on green. It can be inward like Andrew Wiggins. Isn't flexing his muscles. He isn't talking trash, but you watch him play with a swagger that is different than what it was when he came into the league.

And that to me is key. And by the way, if you just have arrogance all the time, you don't earn it through humble preparation, then it's fake and it's false. So if you look at all those guys, they put the work in and they are humble in preparation, they learn and they grow and then they shift into this arrogant performance. So if we're talking about maximizing and really my book was about maximizing potential, it's not a book about being a great human.

I actually don't even think it's a book about being a great leader. Although some of the shifts would apply to leadership. Really as well as maximizing performance. And that's what I studied for the last decade. That's what I was like compelled to write about. And so that to me is so, so important. If you wanna try to find a way to perform better, hopefully the book will be helpful. And I think you just need to do a deep dive into yourself and figure out, all right, what's holding me back.

The last thing I'll say my clients in sports, they mostly were college or professional or elite high school athletes who had aspirations of playing at those two levels. They almost always were good on the preparation side. Like if you went through and asked them, where are you on the preparation side, where are you on performance and score yourself outta 10?

They're good at experimenting in preparation, being comfortable with the uncomfortable analyzing, working perfectionist combo, all these shifts on the preparation side, they're good at, they were hiring me mostly because they would struggle on shifting in the performance side. And the reason they were often struggling was because they were bringing this preparation mind into their performance and it was getting in the way for them. So my job was often to help on that performance side.

And that does not necessarily mean that their life is good. Their relationship's good. Like there is no correlation there. It might be. But there's a lot of instances where it's not as well. And I, like, I

They learn how to execute and do a job, but they struggle when they come home with connecting with their kids or their spouse. I've worked with a lot of military. I think that's a very real thing. That's a challenge for them because what's required to connect with our spouse is very different than what's required to. Kill someone right. Or to be at war. Like those are very different things. And I think it's the same in sports.

It's like what's required to execute in the focus and what's needed to handle that pressure is very different than what's needed to look your spouse in the eyes and really care about how their day was. and so, and by the way, leadership and performance, we also screw up all the time. So we think the salesperson can become a great sales manager and they are just very different skill sets and we lump 'em all together and just say, this person's great.

So I'm actually amazed at the people who have the capacity to do all of that. And my dad, for example I look up to, because I think he was able to really be great as a performer and execute. He was able to be a great leader and he was able to be a great father and husband. And that is admirable to me. I don't know if I have that potential I'm still working on it, but yeah, those are things that I think about quite often that we mix these things together and we just say, oh, they're great.

They'll be great at anything. I'm not buying it. And if you look at our history, whether it's the presidents of the United States or, people that change the world or CEOs who are inventing dings and changing our world that way you look at their family, or you look at their leadership skills or, it, it doesn't always equate. And so I think like there is something there that actually goes against how we think about it. Yes.

Like they are working hard and that performance is actually feels like play that's where all the flow states and things like that come into, preparation is a focus on the future. They're looking at how do I improve their future? Where performance is a focus on the present which again is a dichotomy that really stuck out to me as well. And then preparation, you have perfection perfectionistic, basically attention to detail in preparation, and then very adaptable. In performance.

Analysis in preparation, and then instinct for performance, experimenting for prep, trusting the process that you've built in all your preparation that you've done, your uncomfortable in preparation, and very comfortable in performance, fear and fearlessness. Fear for preparation, fearlessness for performance, and then selfish and selfless. So phenomenal read his book, cuz he obviously goes into so much more than that before we get into the leadership stuff though, I do wanna talk about fear.

So this is an important one. This is, what keeps everybody back from whatever they want in life. Like it hinges around fear. Can you talk about how you go about approaching fear in preparation and also in performance as well?

And once again, I don't really think anything is bad and anything is necessarily good. I think it depends on when we're using it and if we overdose or over index on a thing, so fear is just concern or apprehension of loss. And when you study lead performers, they absolutely use fear of failure in preparation. And they leverage that to put a little more work in this morning.

I worked out my trainer, like part of my working outta the trainer is that I wanna be able to walk my kids down the aisle at their wedding. And I, I wanna have a little bit of fear that I might not, if I keep eating or not exercising, like I think that fear helps me get my shoes on and go exercise. And so I think fear can absolutely be a motivator.

I think if it's the only motivator, that's where you can run into some issues and some trouble, if we're led by fear, I think that can run into some trouble. But I think like having a fear of failure and understanding fear helps us go to the doctor it, and it allows us to give our keys to somebody when we're at the bar and say, Hey I might be able to drive, but I don't wanna get a DUI. I don't wanna, Hit somebody, like I think that fear and preparation helps us.

And then fearlessness is the other side of the coin, where when we are performing, we do need to let go of the concern. We need to be bold. We need to be brave. We need to be vulnerable, courageous, whatever word you wanna put there and not worry about the outcome. And there comes a time where you have to say F it I'm going for it and let's make it happen.

And I think if you've done enough fear in preparation, then you've earned the right to then let go and just say, all right, I've done all the work. I've thought about everything that could go wrong. I'll give you an example. I have fear every time I come on a podcast. And so like, my preparation for this is like, I go on and I, I try to listen and I try to learn about you and like a word that I'm really hoping we talk about at some point today is loneliness.

Like, I think that is front and center in, in your work. And so I had some fear and like, oh, that's something I'd like to talk about with Michael. And if I didn't have the fear, then probably wouldn't go on your website. I'd be like, I'm good. I'm just gonna do my thing. I have no concern.

I'm gonna be bold and brave if I was that in preparation, I don't think I'd we'd have as great of a conversation, but now where we are, I need to be able to not worry about any fear that I have about how I'm sounding. Am I talking too much? Am I talking too little? Am I too loud? Am I too soft? I can't worry about that. Like, it's go time. Let's be fearless and I need to be bold and brave. And hopefully we'll talk about loneliness at some point, but that's me. Let's do it.

And so I think she's a good example of when you're performing, you don't have to be the same way that you are when you're at dinner with another couple, like it can be different and that's fine. And like, we need to give ourselves permission to step into that side of ourself. And I think she just does a wonderful job of that, but she says I'm nervous when I'm not nervous. If I'm nervous, I know I'm gonna have a great show. And I think that's the fear.

Like we need to have a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of nerves to make sure that we're doting all our eyes and crossing all our Ts. And if we don't have that, then we're holding back our attention to detail and we're making we're not making the plans and the preparation we need to then let go. And I'm pretty sure when she gets on that stage it, she lets go of those nerves and they go away because now she's home and she knows, and she's gonna be bold and brave.

And if there's a misstep or a mishap, she's gonna keep going and not worry about the loss or the fans booing or anything like that happening. Yeah.

No don't like, feel the sadness when someone passes. Oh, just be fearless. No, don't just be fearless. Like have a little bit of fear that this won't go well. And sit in that for a little bit. Don't sit in it all the time, anxiety. Like we all think of anxiety as a bad thing, but like anxiety is necessary. It's our radar. It's a signal that something might be a little bit off or that there's riskier and maybe we need to step into the risk, but we need to be able to feel it notice it, observe it.

And then like my mentor, Neil, who I mentioned earlier you to always say, do you have this story or does the story of you? And I love that phrase and I've used that with most of my clients, but I've taken it to one more step where I would say, like, do you have the anxiety or does the anxiety of you, if you have sadness or does sadness of.

Do you have anger or does anger have you, and you could keep going on that list because I think there's a difference and we need to be able to acknowledge like, yes, living involves having sadness, but that doesn't mean sadness needs to have you that's depression, you can have anger, but anger doesn't need to have you that leads to all kinds of issues. Even like alcohol, do you have a glass of wine or does wine have you like, those are different things. And so I love that dynamic at play.

And I think I've learned so much from just putting that framework into my world. Yeah,

It's not comfortable, but it causes you to get out of that situation. Emotions are similar in terms of that, in terms of it's going that there's a fundamental need. A lot of times that's going unmet here that we need to look at. So when you look at loneliness, they actually show. Acute loneliness. There's a difference between acute loneliness and chronic and acute.

When you have acute loneliness, it actually triggers you to pick up more signals from other people, the body language, because you're trying to reconnect into a social group, but it's different than all the negative effects of chronic loneliness. So with that in mind, I'd love to turn it over to you as far as what loneliness does look like from a peak performance standpoint from these peak performance or even for yourself personally.

And I had COVID, I still have some health issues from it. And so like, I understand there's like real big things and I'm not minimizing that people have lost jobs running toward a recession. Like there's some real shit going on for me. I have felt disconnected. I felt like, my whole life I've had great friendships and great relationships and I've felt lonely over the last few years. And that's a new feeling for me. So hopefully it's acute. But yeah, belonging is a big deal for me.

Everyone says I'm an extrovert. So I guess I'll say I'm an extrovert. The tests say I'm an extrovert and so I like say that begrudgingly, I just don't like that label, but yeah, I definitely crave human interaction and I have felt lonely over the last couple years. And that's a new feeling for me and I've been working on it. I have a coach, we talked about this in our last meeting last week and I've been trying to like go out there and hunt relationships and hunt, meaning and deep connections.

I have plenty of surface networks and communities that I can be a part of and I am, and I'm grateful for those and they help. But I think for whatever reason I have felt lonely. I felt disconnected in a lot of ways the last couple years. So, yeah, help me, like, I don't know, like what I, my, my plan is to like go I realize I've probably always gone toward convenience in a lot of my relationships. I'm very fortunate. I live where I grew up.

I've got amazing friends that I've known in their entire life and my entire life. Like, it's a very unique environment that I'm in, where I've had just amazing people high character people that I like being around. I've found the last couple years to be difficult, to stay connected to anybody. And there's a lot of factors that go into whether or not you're able to stay connected to people with a pandemic. And so, yeah, loneliness would be the word that I would use.

That's been the biggest challenge for me over the last couple years. And so, yeah I definitely don't have it figured out and I'm trying to improve that. What's the opposite of loneliness? Well,

Like what's the opposite of loneliness you could say connected sort of. Right. But a lot of times when we have these words, the opposite is just an optimal state and it's like that fish in the water kind of thing. Like it's like when you don't have pain, you don't think about your health really? It's kinda like what you're talking about with fear, right? Like when you don't have pain, you're not thinking about your health until you have pain. Right. And then loneliness is that kind of thing.

Like when you don't have loneliness, you're just doing life. Like, there's not really like, you could say connected. But there's not really a really strong word that correlates to the opposite of it. And I

So I define myself as like, I'm a husband, I'm a spouse, whatever. I'm a father. I define it in relationship to the intimate circles. Then you have it defined as I'm an entrepreneur. I'm an executive coach, that kind of thing. I'm an American your nationality, your race. So we have those different levels and you could actually look at those different levels and basically go which one, and if you just use a connection thing or a belonging thing, it's interesting to look at some of loneliness.

Then this is, the research around it is subjective versus objective loneliness. So you can be surrounded by people in a room and feel subjectively alone, and you can be like hiking through the Sahara desert and not feel alone at all. So the interesting thing is that has to do with the internal definition. So do I, actually, some of loneliness has to do with, am I connecting internally with myself? Is there a connection? Is there a belonging or is there a disconnection?

And then like you're looking at, you're a part of all these tribes. So you're like, I check the box up on that one. I feel like I fit in on that one. But looking at, is there a disconnect in terms of that intimate level and basically what, where in my past did I really feel these connections? What, it's like you do with peak performance, like let's break it down and look at what are the components, what are the variables that made that connection amazing.

And then what skills do I need to develop to reproduce that in the challenging environment that I have?

And rather than change people in my network or my community, like how can I maybe change some of parts of me? And like, I love what you said is like, if I'm in a room and I feel lonely, like, all right, well what's going on for me? And to your point, like, that's why I struggle with the word extroverted, cuz I get tremendous energy from nature and being alone as well. And so I know that feeling of not feeling lonely when you're in the Sahara desert, so to speak.

So I've, you've got me sort of wondering for myself, like what is my relationship with loneliness? And I feel lonely. What do I want do in those situations? Do I want to just sit in. Do I want to be okay with it. Do I wanna dance with. Like, and I'm not sure, I think I need to chew on that a little bit more. And there's a signal there that I need to just pay attention to and notice and observe and not let it run me and not.

And I think the biggest thing is not let it create a story about others because I don't only think that's fair to them and they're just doing the best they can. And when I'm in that room and I feel like, oh, I'm not connected to those people. It's like, well, that's me. It's not them. And there's, I can have grace for myself or I can say, all right, like, let's go have a conversation with someone and. Try to find out something about them or give them the space to ask me some questions.

I think that's the other piece. I sometimes don't give people the opportunity to really go and ask me questions. And then there's the other piece, which is like also who do I wanna surround myself with and who are the people that I want? I said like, hunt, like go hunt. Yeah. People that love to ask you questions and love to help you and give them the opportunity to do that. So those are things that I'm definitely thinking about working on.

And yeah, but this conversation, the timing of it can be better cuz it's absolutely a thing that I'm thinking about. Well,

Then we have needs for like significance to actually feel like we matter. And then the connection piece, the love piece, both for ourselves and for other people. So an interesting question to look at is like, what needs am I trying to basically, like you said, what's the signpost, what needs am I trying to get met with this is it actually, I just feel super uncertain in life right now. And so this is a trigger for that. Or actually life just looks exactly the same and I need more variety,

We went and got a hotel room in Washington, DC, and then I'll never forget, like we were just together and we just went for a walk through the city and, we were just walking cuz we hadn't seen anything. We'd seen the same stuff over and over again and we were craving it. I think we've done a better job. We've traveled more and had the spontaneity.

It's the last piece that you mentioned though, the love and the connection and like the there's it's that it's a deep like piece that I've probably been questioning and it really has to do with like friendships and relationships in that sense. And yeah it's a me thing. It's and I've talked about it for a while now. I. I've talked about enough. It's like, I need to take better action with it. And maybe it's connected to the other pieces too. It's like, Hey, maybe there's uncertainty there.

Maybe there's spontaneity. That needs to be brought up. Like tomorrow night I'm doing something way more spontaneous with some friends and I'm excited about that. I really am. So that was really helpful.

The other interesting kind of exercise that you can do with any emotion in general is you can ask it, what is the positive intent behind this? And a lot of times for loneliness, it is a connection kind of thing, but then you can follow up those questions with going if I was completely and totally connected with other people, what would be even more important than that?

And it's interesting because like it, it's totally different for different people, but sometimes from that spot, then it might be, if I was completely and totally connected with other people, then I would be taking that connection or taking what I have from that and giving to other people or making an impact. And then you can follow it up with that question again, like if I was completely and totally giving from that spot, what would be even more important than that.

And, depending on your background, it might get into, religion, spirituality, connection, or, dissolution of yourself. You can, for a very simple question, use that as a starting point and have it ratchet up to a lot higher levels of intent.

And then you can bring those higher levels of intent down, back, back down those different levels and bring the feeling into the feeling of loneliness and actually see, how does that change if I'm actually looking at what is the highest intent that I have behind this? How does that, if I bring that into this moment, how does that change the feeling of loneliness?

I think sometimes I present to the people in my circle that I do, and I think that is limiting the connection and need to genuinely appreciate and be curious about ways in which they might help me be better rather than sometimes just assuming that I know better. And I think that's a growth edge for me that I'm working. Yeah,

So the areas of loneliness, like tons, same kind of thing with the pandemic, or in the international scene, when you have the revolving door of like your friends, just leaving, like it's something that is a challenge and a struggle for me as well. Like how do you navigate through this when you just have these very real variables that reduce the length of the friendships and stuff that you have.

And so you learn these tools and stuff for it, but it's, I had a guest on the podcast and they talk about, sometimes we bookmark mental health. Like I struggled with this, which really is an accurate representation. Like we're just a living and it's, it ebbs and flows it's situation, depends on the situation.

And we can learn things, we can grow through it, but doesn't necessarily mean like I wrapped it up with a bow and then we sorted that out in the past, so I think that's important to remember as well,

And the name of the company is really about changing how the world thinks about soft skills. I come from a sports background. So if you say someone is soft in sports, they usually get cut or traded or released from the team. And so I've always just thought that soft devalue what those skills really are on skills like creating curiosity or leadership or teamwork or emotional intelligence. And so we do workshops.

We do them mostly remotely and we teach organizations how to be better at these skills. And then we also do one-on-one coaching. So we believe in both, we believe in group experiences and we believe in one-on-one coaching. So there's some magnificent coaches and facilitators that are part of the team. And there' on our website. You'll find my podcast, which is called Intentional Performers.

You'll see the book, which is Shift your Mind, which you mentioned, you can sign up for my newsletter, which is called Brian's message of the week. So everything you need should be there on social. The two places I like to play are Twitter and LinkedIn at Brian Levenson so other than that, Michael, this has been really fun, really helpful for me. Thanks for the free session and just grateful that our path crossed grateful for Mark Polymeropoulus for connecting us.

And if you're ever back in the states and in DC, hopefully we can meet in person sometime.