Hello, and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry. with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You can find episodes and more at thinklikeagamedesigner.com. Today's episode is going to be a little different. Today my guest is Ryan Suave. He is a healthcare executive consultant.
therapist and coach and speaker based out of delray beach florida he has over 14 years of experience in mental health consulting and counseling he has done lots of one-on-one coaching and helps creatives and high performers to achieve their best work Now, I know a lot of people can get turned off by the idea of therapy and coaching and counseling. And I wanted to use this episode as an opportunity to demystify that process.
I first met Ryan at a creativity retreat that I went on several years ago, and he really helped me to unblock some deep insights that I... didn't realize I needed to have at the time. And so I wanted to be able to present some of those insights to you and I talk about some of those paths and some of the kind of traumas and challenges in my own life that helped.
pushing through those things helped me to kind of get to where I am today. And one of the things we talk about in the episode is this idea of what do you mean by trauma, right? Trauma can be a very loaded word in today's society. we really turn into something concrete, right? There's traumas create unconscious automatic processes and strategies that you apply in areas where they don't necessarily serve you.
This idea that you've either from your upbringing or from hardships that have gone through your life, you've learned certain things to protect yourself. You've learned certain things about how to belong and how to be in the world. And as your situation changes, you need to be able to update. the frameworks that you apply to your life and that's really what this episode in many ways is about and there's a variety of different methods to do that we dig through how
how you can approach creative work, how you can approach the challenges of doing things new, inevitable setbacks, when things come up for you. And so I wanted to give this...
framework for people i do think for some people this may be uncomfortable and if that's not the kind of thing you want to approach feel free to skip this episode but i do encourage you to push past that a little bit and see because there's really a ton of value and the idea of being able to have introspection whether that be through the assistant
of a coach or a therapist or journaling or just really spending time with people that you care about that can listen, I think could really transform your lives, not just in the work that you do and being able to be great designers and great.
business owners and everything that you want to accomplish, but in having great relationships and having a great life. Because at the end of the day, that's why we all are here and doing what we're doing. So I hope this episode serves you. And feel free to reach out to me if this is something that was helpful to you. If you'd like to see more episodes like this, you can also look.
to my episode with Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art, talking about a lot of this process of resistance and pushing past it. If you want to see more episodes like this, reach out to me on social media and I will be happy to bring you more. Or if not, let me know what you think either way. Without any further ado, I'm going to get out of the way and have the conversation with Ryan Suave.
Hello and welcome. I am here with Ryan Suave. Ryan, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I've been really looking forward to this. Yeah, me too. It's actually, I think, a real privilege because you and I have known each other for many years. We've had a lot of incredible conversations. You've been incredibly helpful to me.
I wanted to share that with my audience. And because you're a little bit of a different kind of guest, I will have introduced you some beforehand. But maybe it's worth just giving a little bit of your background here. And then I'll start talking about kind of... how we met and where I think a lot of your insights can be valuable to the people listening.
Well, from my background, my professional background, or my current professional background, which has been that way for almost a couple decades, is I'm trained as a licensed mental health counselor.
My work was primarily in the beginning with people with trauma and addictions, but that really expanded. And I did a lot of work in the coaching and personal development kind of realm, which is where we met. So I've spent my... this this career which is my second career and we can maybe get into that but um really helping people work through challenges and also kind of expand
the good parts of their life, you know, to really take on new challenges. I think, I hope that kind of encompasses it, at least for now.
Yeah, yeah. And it's a great, it's a great 30,000 foot view. And we're going to dig into the details because, you know, I spent a lot of time, obviously, sort of, you know, living a a life of you know trying to be creative and build things and i've spent now quite a bit of time trying to teach other people um you know how to do creative work whether it be game design starting a company writing books all of these different aspects i've worked with
you know fortune 500 companies working on creativity and i find that the the actual steps like the concrete like here's what you do is not hard. It never is, right? I put everything that I could in a book. There are plenty of other people who have written great things about this. But what's really hard is the emotional challenges. It's getting past blocks. It's getting past your blinders. It's being able to overcome.
these sort of triggers and traumas and fears that hold us back. And this is one of the areas where you have been super valuable to me. And one of my goals of the podcast has been to demystify a lot of this process of... creativity and trying to live a life that you actually are proud of. And so that's why I'm really excited to have you here as a guest. kick off with is something that you said to me we so we met at this you know it's kind of a workshop retreat really focused on creativity and we
I was going through a tough period where my company was in trouble, the projects I was working on weren't working so well. And there was a series of phrases that you said to me. I don't know if they stuck with you as much as they did with me, but I wrote them down and I still have them and I refer to them often.
Stay rooted, do the right thing, accept discomfort, relax, observe, and make choices based on the present circumstances and use your vision and your values to guide your decisions. And there was so much that I... to unpack out of that that was super powerful. The one that was the most powerful for me, which I'll start with, and we can kind of bounce around is this idea of accepting discomfort. Can you talk a little bit about what that means to you and why it's such an important concept.
You know, in my practice as a therapist and a coach, and, you know, I also help run some behavioral health facilities where we treat people with addictions and mental health disorders. And, you know, I... It's something I would never probably put on the website or when somebody calls, they ask you what you do. But I think at the root of it, at least from my perspective as a therapist or a coach, and we'll start with as a therapist, is that we're helping people learn how to feel bad.
You know, we're helping people be able to lean into discomfort. Usually when they're coming to us in a therapy setting, there's something not working, you know, and. Often when we discover what's not working, they don't like how they feel. I've been in situations where when I feel bad, I don't like to feel bad.
But that avoiding to feel bad stops me from moving through it. And when we can really lean into the discomfort of the negative feelings that we're experiencing, then... instead of avoiding them we can actually work through them and make decisions based on what's happening not based on what i wish wasn't happening you know and and so it's
Like anything, you know, I mean, if you want to improve in anything, if you want to build bigger muscles, you have to go through the discomfort of waking up, going to the gym, lifting weights, eating right. You know, it's not always comfortable if it were. comfortable and easy, no one would be coming to me to ask for help as a therapist or a coach. And no one would probably be coming to you saying, how do we design this game better or this company better or something like that?
Yeah, yeah. So there's another, you know, we've talked about, I've kind of been working on my new book, and one of the chapters I titled, Time Management is Pain Management. And what I mean by that is, you know, everybody talks about time management. If I could just have this, you know, write journal and this system and this getting things done things, it's like whatever. What really happens is we all have the same 24 hours in a day.
But what we do is we avoid the things that are the most important because they're the most uncomfortable, right? Sitting down and trying to work on a new prototype and test it with somebody or a new book or putting your business idea out there or doing like the hard work of really trying to solve difficult problems.
it's very uncomfortable. And the natural instinct for everybody is to run from it. And so in the most extreme cases, this turns into addiction and you could be doing drugs and alcohol, but in the common case, it's like, okay, I'm just going to check.
twitter or x or whatever for a while i'm just going to go and do something that's more you know just easy for me to do i'm going to run away i'm going to get distracted i'm going to eat food i'm going to do something that gets that relieves the pain in the moment and that prevents you from getting through to the other side where there's a real
satisfaction of creating things and doing things that are that are really hard um i think that that is just true for everybody i would i would i would guarantee that everybody listening and and i'll give another little hook to this too because
it's sneaky. Like it's, this is, I had a Steven Pressfield on the podcast before, and he talks about this idea of resistance and this is the resistance is always pushing against you. And it's a sneaky, the way it shows up. Like, for example, for me, you know, the, the not accepting discomfort might be. going and just checking email
Right. Like email is it's work, but it's the easy work. It's the like, okay, I could just respond to a few things. I could just get some stuff done instead of doing the hard work of like, Hey, listen, I've got a real business plan. I got to put together. I got to start pitching to fundraisers. I got to start getting a, you know, this new.
game that I don't really know it's not working I got to figure out how to make it happen like that that we hit these walls all the time like well how do you advise people to sort of either be more conscious of this or how to be able to address this you know whether it be on their own or through other support systems
That's a great question. And when you're talking, it brings up probably about 15 years ago, I had this mentor. And at the time, I wasn't getting the stuff done that I wanted to get done. And because I wasn't, I had this story that I was lazy, I was incompetent. And I went to him and I was like, I'm lazy. And he looked at me.
And he said, you're not lazy. And you know what? He was right. Because if you followed me around, I wasn't laying on the couch all day. I was engaged in things all day long. You'd probably be tired if you followed me around. But he said, you're not lazy. You just think you're the ultimate authority of how your time should be spent. And what he meant by that was...
I was letting kind of the moment decide what I was going to do or my feelings in that moment decide what I was going to do rather than let my commitments and my goals kind of dictate that. And in that case, letting my schedule dictate what I was up to. And in order to have a schedule, I have to have an aim. You know, I think, you know, we hear the word intention a lot and intention really just means aim.
And when we have aim, we have a direction. And out of that direction, we can determine how we break down steps for certain things we want to solve or what we need to do to get to where we want to go. And if we don't have aim, we're aimless. And if we're aimless, then we feel lost. We feel stuck. We get depressed or maybe anxious.
You know, oftentimes I'll get people and I'll say, well, what do you want if we're working together? So what do you want out of this? And they'll say things like, I just want to be happy. You know, and the next question I have to ask is what is happy?
And you'd be surprised, and maybe you wouldn't, that how many people have no idea what that means. They really mean, I want to feel comfortable in every moment, often. And happiness doesn't mean comfortable. Oftentimes, happiness means getting uncomfortable. If I want to be... happy in my marriage, I can't just be comfortable all the time. We have kids, we have different viewpoints, we have different life experiences.
You know, that's why, you know, when I got married, we said we committed to each other. I have a ring that reminds me of it. I don't need this ring and commitment for when I look at my wife and think about her and feel about her like. the moment we first met and i was scared to ask her out this is for when stuff's going like really hitting the ceiling like we're disagreeing about things and then i can sit in that discomfort and and and move through it
So I think first we have to have some sort of aim. And then out of that aim, we can develop commitment. And another mentor of mine described commitment as the... The commitment is what we access when all the good feelings that we had when we made the commitment fall away. So people make a new year's resolution. They're super excited to go after it, you know, but.
all that it requires to meet that big goal, you're not going to want to wake up early every morning or wake up every day and do all the tasks that it has to take. The desire to do it isn't going to fuel our motivation or get things done. We have to be able to trudge through when things get hard. And that's where leaning into the discomfort really comes into place.
Yeah. And so to get concrete with it, I think there's two things I heard there, right? So one is about having an aim. And I would emphasize that it needs to be a clear aim. A lot of people, a fuzzy goal is worse than no goal at all. This idea of I want to be happy, I want to be successful, those are impossible to achieve goals. You never know when you're really there. So I always try to force people.
people and this is something i learned a lot from designing games frankly right in games they they are part of why we love games is they give you a very clear goal they give you very clear borders to play in you know with it and and then from within that box you can now make decisions you can now get motivated you can get excited and we sort of take something in a game we take
For granted, whatever the goal is, get however many points, reach the other side with the ball, whatever, is a meaningful goal. There's this magic thing that happens to us when we play games. In real life, you have to make that happen for yourself. You have to make a goal that's very concrete and be very clear about what it is that's... important to you and then use that to kind of drive you forward and so so i think that is a one really important piece i think a lot of people get wrong and then
then the second piece that I heard is this idea of being able to sit in the discomfort as you're committed to something. And that's one where, boy, oh boy, I've been doing this a long time. I may... feel like i'm good at this sometimes and other times i don't um and and so is is there is there advice that you have for like what makes it you know you mentioned having the ring right and actually do you think physical reminders matter i mean actually for those that are watching like i have a
I have physical reminders on me, right? This is a memento mori that I have around my neck that's like a reminder that I'm going to die, that I keep to remind myself when I start doing things that are stupid.
pointless or not wasting you know i waste my time from my perspective this helps to remind me i do think physical reminders can can be a part of it are there other tools that you find people can have in their toolbox to help them to stay committed to these goals to remember in those moments where look, I'm not feeling it, man. I want to sleep in today. I don't want to go to the gym. I don't want to stay on my diet. I don't want to do that next project or next iteration of my design.
Yeah. I mean, I think a physical reminder can be wonderful for people and different things are going to work for different people. But what we want to accomplish with it is keeping it in front of you because we'll forget. We'll forget the reason why we're doing it. If you forget the reason why you're doing it, in the middle of feeling like crap or not wanting to do it, you'll go, I always use, I'm a parent. And with people who have kids, there's a lot of things you do with kids.
especially when they're young, that if you had all of the possibilities of choice, you wouldn't do. When you have a baby, if it could be up to me, the baby would sleep through the night. But baby's going to wake up and, you know, cry and scream for something. They're having teeth, you know, teeth coming in. They're hungry. You know, they need to be changed.
I'm going to be in a dead sleep or my wife's going to be a dead sleep and this baby's screaming. I love that kid so much that I'm going to do anything for it. That doesn't mean that I want to get up and get out of bed and do it, but I'm going to do it anyway. because I know why it's important. I know that taking care of that baby, and it's easy for me to see that.
especially with a baby because they can't be left alone at all. It's this constant vigilance. So it's easy to stay in front of you. I want him or her to be safe. I want them to be protected. I want them to grow up. feel important. And so I'm going to get out of bed. We don't always remember that with the goals that we set. So you have to kind of make up your own
We hear people say it a lot and it might be cliche, but it's true. Why are you doing it? Make up your why. What's the reasoning behind it? Why is it important to you? And then you can put that in front of you. And I like to be able to put that in front of us on a daily basis. You know, you do that with your journal and you and I had that discussion recently. I was doing one very similar to that. And thank you for sending me one, by the way. It's great.
But to be able to put your plans out in front of you on a daily basis and also include what your aim is, not only your aim for your life goals, but your aim for that day. Because sometimes just completing that aim for the day is going to move you forward. That was kind of like in what you said, keep moving forward. Stay rooted, keep moving forward. The stay rooted part is remembering what you're going after and why.
Yeah, yeah. And then I think there's two pieces of this, right? One is this, and this ties in the last piece, right? Use your vision and your values to guide your decisions, which is this clear vision, like a clear, compelling vision of something that you're excited about can pull you through an enormous amount.
right like that like most of my day you know people think making games for a living is just like all fun and playing games like you know part of it is but most of my day is not that at all like the amount of things that i have to do with managing production pipelines and marketing and you know supporting the team and having tracking tasks and building out schedules and like this.
tons of stuff that i have to do managing the budget you know all of this stuff that's like not fun by any means right but i know that it all supports the thing i care about which is making great games building great communities really just adding value to to people that i care about and to my community, that keeps me fired up. That keeps me going. And so I can do a lot.
And when I lose sight of it, then it's it's drudgery. Right. But when I can remember that, then, OK, even the things that are not fun, you know, spending my life in spreadsheets is it's OK. Like, I don't mind it, you know. And so and then and then the other piece of it is about your values. And this is the other thing that I think.
is under discussed and this was a big big breakthrough for me that i really credit you um you for in in this like i had you know for a very long time i had just sort of been pretty successful at everything i did and i kind of had perceived my value to the world in terms of my external success right i had done whatever i did what if i did well in school or in my tournaments or in my creative work whatever if it was successful then i was
good i was okay and then when i started to hit walls where that was not true now my self-identity and my self-worth came into question and that created an enormous amount of like pain and resistance and it stopped me from even being able to do good work after that
And it was this shift from focusing not so much on like what happened in the outside world, but just like behaving in accordance with my values. And even my vision doesn't come to life exactly the way I saw it, right? We're going to hit.
walls all the time that having something that's internal and saying okay listen if i'm living true to this what i believe in is important for me and i'm you know being honest and having integrity and you know working hard and you know being good to the people around me like that's what matters
I can do that regardless of what happens in the outside world. And that shift was so powerful. I don't know if I did it justice, but it's going to be a lot harder for people to hear this. I think maybe you can kind of try to articulate this in a better way. Well, there's a couple of things in what you said. And number one is when you articulated earlier that you got to have a clear vision and something that you can accomplish and you know when you get there, that's really important.
too oriented in that way then it's kind of like i'll be happy when i complete this right and some of our things might be but if we're choosing from what's you know our vision and but
in this case, our values, if we're living out our values and what's really important to us and we're clear about those, then along the way, we can have the experience of life that we want. You know, I often ask people when they say, you know, I have this very clear goal and it might be to, in your case, complete a game. And so the question will be, what do you believe that will provide you?
Right. And, and, and in looking at that, you might look at, okay, that's going to, you know, I know that I'm going to be valuable to the community that I serve. I know I'm going to feel accomplished. I know that other people are going to have a joy and connection and so will I. And so you've got joy.
joy, connection, community, right? And so I would ask, okay, if you think that's what's going to be provided at the end of this goal, when you accomplish it, maybe not the end, but the accomplishment, how can we access those things along the way? so that you don't have to wait until you get there because it's not an end game, right? And understanding what's important to you along the way. There's a great, I'm probably going to butcher the quote, but I think it's St. Augustine who said,
Well, living depends on reordering your loves. And what I think he was trying to say is, you know, whatever we're loving the most or whatever we're making the most important on a daily basis becomes kind of our master. He was probably saying our God. you know, we become a slave to it. If money is the most important thing and it's at the top of the list, then I become slave to that.
And it doesn't mean that money can't be important to us, but what are the values that are most important to us? And are we living that out regardless of what my financial situation is, regardless of where I am on the track to accomplish that goal? You know, if family is the most important thing to me, am I living out? of making my choices out of what's best for me and my family, regardless of what's best for the goal that I'm trying to accomplish, as an example. Yeah. Yeah. And society will...
default put these goals in front of us, right? That I need to be rich and I need to be famous and I need to have a six pack and I need to have all these things that we see on social media or wherever that this is like what success looks like. And that may or may not be the right answer for you. And also, you know, you're only seeing this sort of, you know, cookie cutter front version of what other people are living. And, you know, the reality is, you know, as someone who's
A, gone down that wrong path because I thought I was supposed to be a lawyer because my family were all lawyers and that's what I was supposed to do. And I was successfully making myself miserable for many years before I learned not to do that. And also someone who's even...
who has succeeded and accomplished many of my own goals in life and exceeded plateaus that I had imagined for myself, that doesn't suddenly make your life magically better, right? All of a sudden there's new problems and there's new...
things you now want to do like this idea that there's some finish line that once i get the the house the car the project the bank account the wife whatever it is right that any any anything that you think it is that's not the thing that's going to make you happy if it is it's a very temporary blip
And so this idea of being able to look internally and enjoy the process, as cliched as that phrase is, becomes really important. And it's, again, not just for woo-woo, your own personal happiness, but in fact, you are better at doing your work. You're better for everything. You are more likely.
to get those goals when they don't become the end all be all because if that's all there is then you burn out you come at this with a very closed mindset you know i i keep having to kind of refresh that for myself periodically when it's like okay things aren't working out the way i wanted to There's a great Jocko Willink
quote about this you know when things go wrong it says good right that he like takes the frame it's like no that's actually great and and because i can look back at the horrible things that have gone on in my life and when i went through that period when we were when we were first meeting and i was facing near bankruptcy
seeing things were in real trouble and it was like very very painful if it wasn't for that pain if it wasn't for things going that wrong way i never would have had the opportunities to have this growth and this opportunity to then become a better version of me and be a better leader and build things that i never could have built back then
So it's a very powerful shift when you can make it. Nobody goes to the movie for the person who accomplishes all their goals and never experiences adversity, right? No one wants to just see the person that everything goes right all the time. The movies we want to see are the ones where they went bankrupt five times. They went through a period of grief. They went to the precipice of falling off the edge and pulled it back. Those are the stories we like. You know, I...
I want to have had done that. I don't want to have to go through it. Right. But I always want, I remember I got a gift once and I guess I told the person I wanted to go skydiving. And when I got the gift certificate to go skydiving, I realized that I'd always wanted to.
have said I'd gone. There was a very important distinction there, but I'll take what you're saying even a step further. You know, if we're not living out of those values and enjoying the ride, as you say, or the process and living a life. that's principled and full of our values along the way, when we accomplish those goals, life doesn't necessarily get better. In fact, for some people, it gets worse. Because now there's a cognitive dissonance of...
I thought that when I hit this, when I reached this peak, right, it's kind of like the idea of a false peak. Like you're climbing up that mountain and then you get there and oh my God, there's another like three mountains, three peaks above you. And so it's a matter of really looking at what you think that stuff's going to provide you. And then not only what you're going to do, but how are you going to be as you're living your life? And that becomes a choice on a daily basis.
I'm facing adversity. Am I going to let adversity drive how I feel and how I interact with everybody? Or am I going to let what I value drive that? Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's not just a kind of important... frame to take in terms of like as you're in it and as you're facing those things how do you but then you know again what are i always like to just sort of bring it down into practical things right what are
What are practical things that people can do? Because we're really, so much of this conversation is just circling around this idea of discomfort, like being okay with discomfort, being able to sit with discomfort, being able to be in it. And are there other practices and things that people can do for... those moments to help them.
be in living in accordance with their values and not just reacting not just snapping at the people around them or or even just feeling you know sitting in this you know you you know sort of self-pity instead of being okay this is i'm i'm in the suck and that's okay and i'm gonna figure out how to get through it
Um, what, what helps with that for people? Cause for me, it's just been, I just, I guess the easiest things for me to say is that I, I like to use the analogy of being lost in a dark forest, right? Like I'm, I don't know.
necessarily how to get out and it's not pleasant to be here. And the only difference for me is that I have been there so many times and I've gotten out so many times before that I have more confidence that I will figure it out. And that has been very helpful, but I don't know how to impart that to other people.
I think the things we've touched on is first, you know, being really clear about what it is, what's the direction, what's our aim, right? Then keeping it in front of us. There has to be some sort of reminder, whether it's a physical object, whether it's writing it down, whether it's, you know, writing out a daily journal. remember that, but there's another really key component to this. And I may be biased because I'm a therapist and a coach.
But it doesn't have to be a therapist and a coach. It's some sort of mentorship or sharing with others. Because as another mentor said to me once, I'm not qualified to grade my own paper. He said, Ryan, you're not qualified to grade your own paper.
You know, I need somebody else to be able to share it with that's going to help me in those moments. Also remind me, you know, someone that I trust and respect that's going to say, hey, yeah, I get what you're feeling. You know, I understand it, but remember why you're doing it. you know, get off the couch and move your feet, you know? And, and I think that's a, that's a, it doesn't have to be someone you pay. It doesn't have to be someone that's trained in.
every type of therapeutic modality. It could be a very close friend or confidant or a colleague, you know, it could be another type of peer that we share these things with because the moment. we share it, then others can reflect it back to us. Because in the moments of the most, the biggest discomfort, I'm not going to remember why I'm doing it. I'm just going to want to walk away. And it's helpful to have, to build a team that you can rely on to help you.
move through that. Right. And I, and you've done that, right. You, you never, you're in the forest, you know how to get out. But a part of that is I reach, I lean on other people, right? No, 100%. That's a, that's such a, it's such a deep and profound insight. I say, you know, I think there's, you know,
First of all, having coaches and therapists and things like that, which I have had at various points throughout my life and career, and I definitely want to de-stigmatize any of that stuff for people that need it. But in addition, just surrounding yourself with people.
that lift you up, surrounding yourself with people that can remind you of those things. It's very easy, right? When someone, when I have friends that come to me for advice and I'll have regular calls with a variety of mentors and investors and partners and people on my team, you know, just all the time because it's those reflections. back are so, it's so easy to see other people's problems, isn't it? When you say something, it's like,
No, obviously you're seeing this wrong. You should do it this way. And it's so much harder to see it for yourself. And so I have, I have one friend that I talked to, you know, for almost every week and it's literally just us. continually reminding each other of the things that we already know, but the other person just sees better for us. And so it's just super powerful. Just like that, having somebody there that, you know, you know.
wants the best for you and who can just be able to reflect back the key moments is so important. And just building in those regular feedback cycles, I think self-reflection is... really it's a whole powerful additional topic here that we can spin off on because finding other people that can reflect
to you and help you to kind of grow and see things from different perspectives or even again the perspective that you you already know but you just kind of lose sight of in the moment um and then also you know more ways for you to be able to see it for yourself so for example you know for me journaling has been incredibly powerful, being able to sort of write things down, I will notice, and I have a journal app I use called Day One, which will automatically surface.
um the journaling i did the year before on the same date so i can see everything i've written down and i'll actually notice over time the same pattern where i'll be like wow i'm i'm worrying about the same stupid thing
for the last two years and you know, okay, that's more about me than it is about the world. Right. And so now that helps me to realize, okay, this is something I should. And so that has been very helpful for me or, you know, things like meditation where I've been able to, you know,
learn not to just sort of squirrel runoff with whatever random thought that comes up in my brain like being able to just sort of pause every now and then be like okay wait where's this thought coming from or noticing like i'll feel this intention in my chest or tension in my throat that i don't even
I'm not even aware of it. I'm like, okay, wait, where is this coming from? There's something going on. That's like causing me to clench up in a way that again, doesn't make me a great leader. Like I, I, I have. I was just closing this because I noticed as a leader, as someone who runs a company, your personal psychology will infect everyone around you for better or for worse. And it's a powerful part of the work to be able to...
untangle what's going on with you so that you don't spread, you know, the kind of irrational fear and whatever to others that you can actually, you know, process it and then show up in a way that helps them. Yeah. You know, what you just touched on is so important. And this really gets into the world that I've worked in for a long time, really helping people heal from trauma. And trauma can be a very loaded word. I really just kind of look at it as the ways we were shaped.
become kind of automatic unconscious processes that we start applying to almost all situations and they work in the situations that they need to be applied to. But in other situations, they don't apply. Right. Sometimes we can be shaped in a way that we have kind of.
one gear. I've worked with a lot of executives that are very good in transactional relationships, right? They can handle any sort of stress in a large company. They can be a leader in a way that's like almost unshakable, yet they can't keep a relationship together. or their kids don't like them. And, you know, because they're taking that same type of gear of being in a transactional relationship home. Same thing happens with me. You know, I'm a therapist, you know, and I think I'm...
okay at what I do. But when I come home at night, my wife doesn't want me to be her therapist. And I got to remember that. I got to take that off and become husband and dad. It doesn't help me with my... little kids to like project what they're saying now and what kind of adult they're going to be and then react to that rather than, you know, they just want to play a game in the backyard. Right.
understanding and being aware through self-reflection and doing some work on it to understand where these kind of automatic unconscious processes and strategies are that we've developed to be able to be aware when they're kind of rearing their head. And going into the body, like you said, is one of the best ways to do that. You know, if you're feeling a certain way that you don't want to feel or it's negative or you don't feel is conducive to the situation you're in, stop.
just become aware of what's going. You don't need to know where it comes from. Like notice, where am I holding tension? Where am I holding my breath? Do I feel like I need to get up and run away? Do I feel like I want to shrink down and hide? And just allow yourself to experience it. Maybe even just name it. You know, I'm feeling tension in my chest. I'm feeling heat in my belly. My breath is slow. You know, I feel tired.
and just really noticing it and sometimes you don't even know where it comes from but as you name it and notice it it can kind of like let yourself move through it like a like a wave passing through and then you can kind of see the world as it is because lots of times
In reaction, we're seeing the world not as it is, but as we were. We're seeing it through the lens of our history. And when you can just stop, slow down, and it doesn't have to be a long meditation. It could literally be, I'm going to sit here for a minute. before this meeting or after this meeting and take seven breaths, you know, and just kind of name what's going on in my body. And then you'd be surprised, you know, at how much we can get in touch with that.
And really, it can make a difference in the decisions we make as we move through it. Yeah, this is where one of the other phrases I opened with, what you said, relax, observe, and make choices based on the present circumstances, right? This idea that we're not... And I love this definition that you gave of trauma or this sort of useful frame for trauma of this unconscious and automatic processes and strategies that don't necessarily serve us in the circumstances. I think it's like a, it's...
Again, I think it takes a very loaded word and makes it very concrete. We, through various things that happen to us in our lives, build up certain strategies to... get the things we think we need, right? It could be just, you know, often starting with love from a parent or, you know, from other partners or things that we feel like we need in the world. And we develop strategies that maybe they worked in.
Right. I am part of my identity as being, you know, the sort of smart and successful kid was because that's what I did to please my, my mom. And that's what I did to please my family. And that's where my sense of identity came from.
trauma capital t like i was abused and it was horrible but it was this is something that i just built up as a strategy that this is what my ego and my identity and what love depended on in my head and it wasn't until i was able to realize hey that really does not serve you as an adult
That really does not serve you in the world. And it wasn't, I wasn't even aware of it. And so I think it's just, you know, I like, I started to bring this stuff up because I think there's a lot of people out there who, if they were like me, they come at things with a very analytical mindset. They feel like everything should be just very solvent.
in your head, basic problems in front of you. And we don't realize how much these sort of unconscious frames just like put blinders on. So we just make certain decisions, start acting in ways we don't even know where they're coming from.
And we become the best in the world at our own strategies, right? So let's even take it as maybe a more simple example. If the only game you ever played was Magic the Gathering, if that was it, right? If that was it and you were excellent at it, right? I think you were maybe world champion or something, right?
if you didn't know any other game, right? You didn't even know what, let's just sit for a minute, suspend our disbelief. And like, that was the only game you knew. In fact, you didn't even know other games existed. And then all of a sudden I came to you and went and said, you know, here, this is chess.
And you see the board and then you start playing chess like Magic the Gathering, which I don't know all the rules of that, but some of your skills are going to transfer, right? You're going to be able to maybe think strategy, but if you don't know the rules and you're playing it that way, it's not going to match up. you're not going to succeed. In fact,
And it's not only about winning. You're going to look crazy and feel crazy because you're going to start throwing cards at people or something like that. Forgive me for not knowing what it is. I love that you're trying to bring it into my world. I'm trying. I'm trying my best. No, I appreciate it. What I'll piggyback on with that is important is that it's not that the strategies don't serve us. In fact, it can serve us very, very well for a very, very long time.
achieved a lot of the success in my life because i was driven to make sure that i was perceived as smart and did the things and so it went and i had this you know massive work ethic and i had this massive things of like so it it got me a very far away and so a lot of these
these unconscious strategies, they feel like they're a necessary part of us. And it takes a little while to sort of untangle and say, okay, wait, hold on. Can I keep the work ethic but lose the self-hatred that comes from not achieving? But even the self-hatred, I would say, and maybe I should be careful in how I say this, but there's a part to that when it doesn't get all the way to hatred.
you know, when you're analyzing yourself or judging your actions, I mean, that's important. It's important to look and say, you know, this is, these are my plans for the day. This is where I want to aim. Like, how did I do? You don't want it to go all the way to self hatred, but we want to be critical. You know, we, we, we definitely do.
And the problem isn't the, like you said, it's not the unconscious patterns. It's that they're unconscious. We want to move our history from being a liability that drives us to an asset that informs us so that I can choose like, yeah.
Work ethic is there. I want to use that right now, but there's also a time to relax. I don't want to be on vacation with my kids and use work ethic. You know, it's going to drive them. I'm going to be like, get up kids. We've got to do our chores. You got to do this. You know, it's not going to. It's not going to work. So we want to be able to identify what we're really good at and be able to employ it when it's time to employ it. And then that becomes...
great power. If it's just automatic, I mean, there are some things we want automatic, right? We want to, I don't want to have to learn to walk and talk again every day. I want my I, you know, if I had to remember to breathe, you know, thankfully it's an automatic and conscious process. I lost my keys like six times today. Right. I would be probably passed out or dead. Right. I forget to breathe. But, you know, when we're talking about how, what we.
how we use these strategies and relationships in our daily life, we want to be able to garner control over them in a way. Right. Yeah. There's two angles on this one. One, I 100% agree. Not to say that the parts of you, it's not like you're going to destroy or not.
have these parts of you it's just that you're going to sort of make friends with them right you're going to say okay look i'm going to pull in you know my work ethic and you know kind of self-critical area at the right time or so for example i in the process where you know my sort of game design core design loop brainstorming is a key part of it and to do brainstorming properly you have to
to turn off the critical evaluating part of your brain for a little while. Like in order to generate as many ideas as possible, the part that's the self-censoring part will actually slow you down and will prevent you from coming up with these crazy different...
more interesting creative ideas and then later in the process during the third phase of brainstorming you need to turn that critical part back on because your crazy idea of making solid gold alien pieces that fly because of the power of plutonium is not going to work so let's let's set that one aside and so you then move into something that's more concrete and so being able to pull the okay i'm the freeform totally artistic creative person
to a job and the, Hey, I'm the self-critical, like let's be practical part of you to a job, but don't let them try to trade jobs because that's not going to work very well at all. And so I think that's just like a, an important frame for, as we start to figure out the different parts.
of our psyche and the different parts of what we do and just making sure that you bring the right part of you to the right job, I think is really powerful. Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, what you described is like you have an aim, you have a very clear goal. And then you kind of set that aside for a minute to really think in a way that might be outside of the box because oftentimes we'll think we know how to get there.
So you kind of set the aim aside and say, let's just, I can think about anything. I can bring plutonium into it, right? And then you bring the aim back in to say which pieces fit in this. What parts are going to get me to where or get us to where we want to go? I think that's very important. When you talk about the creative process, developing yourself personally or working through a therapeutic process is a creative process.
Because we're actually asking people to invent new ways of thinking, new ways of thinking about themselves, the world, their place in it, and then take risks based on these new ways of thinking rather than... what ends up happening is we kind of plagiarize from our past we just repeat the patterns of our past we repeat the behaviors and beliefs and maybe we needed this belief system when we were younger but i don't need it now and i don't mean your belief system like in god i mean like
If I grew up in a dangerous environment and I needed to think that the world is dangerous, that maybe helped me survive in an abusive environment. But if I'm walking around with a fixed view of the world as the world is dangerous.
then I'm going to miss out on the parts of the world that are safe. That doesn't mean I want to go the other way and just think the world is safe because if I'm just thinking and believing in a fixed way that the world is safe, I'm going to miss out on the dangerous parts.
We want to come back to make our choices based on what's happening now, using our history to inform it, right? I don't want to just have to start fresh every time, but just because I'm dealing with somebody who reminds me of...
somebody in my past doesn't mean that I have to act in the same way. I have to recognize, oh, you know what? These are some feelings I'm bringing from the past into this moment. Which ones are really valid? Which ones aren't? Which ones are going to serve the situation? Which are? And then how are we going to move forward? Yeah, let me run a, there's another thread I want to get back to you, but before we do, I'm going to run a phrase that I use a lot and see how it resonates with you.
Um, you know, in any situation where, you know, somebody's life is not on the line, right? You're not really threatening life and limb and you're having an extreme emotional reaction that says more about you than it does about the situation. that there is, that is a, every single time I use that, if I start getting angry or upset or sad or something like very extreme, then I look, I use that as a trigger point to say, okay, wait, what's going on? Because for sure something in the, my past.
I'm bringing more story to this event than, you know, somebody cut me off in traffic or somebody turned in a project late or something, just something happened. And if I start getting a very extreme reaction, then it's like, okay, wait, what does this mean to me? What am I making this mean? What's going on?
And I use it actually as a really powerful tool to see where I've got these kind of traumas and triggers or belief systems, you know, the kind of unconscious process that's driving me. That resonates completely. If you can get to the place where you can recognize where you're having an overreaction to something, and I think that's what you're describing. Some people might not be in the place where they can recognize an overreaction. But so I would say when you're having an intense reaction.
anything that's really intense, like I'm really angry, I'm really hurt, stop and ask yourself, does this level of reaction that I'm having match the situation? Is this a familiar feeling? If it's a familiar feeling, when do I remember having this in the past? And then you can start to see where maybe we've transferred stuff from our history onto the present moment.
when we're in a really intense reaction, we've triggered that survival mode within us. And in fact, I think that our biggest problem as human beings is that we go into survival mode and we don't need to be in survival mode. You know, we react to situations as if they're life-threatening and most people aren't reacting to it going, you know, I'm going to die from this. But if we're very anxious, if we're very scared, if we're very angry, it's triggered that same part of us.
And there's a great question that I like to ask that I think aligns with what you're saying is, you know, when you're in that moment, ask yourself, am I or is anyone around me in immediate physical danger? If the answer is no, there's probably nothing that can't wait 45 seconds, 45 minutes, a day or two. We might not even have to react to it. If someone's in immediate physical danger, get out of the way.
You know, I mean, go into reaction. Like I always say like, we don't want to lose survival mode. If you and I are walking across the street and a car is about to hit us, I don't want to stop and meditate and breathe and journal.
Right. I don't want to worry, have compassion for the driver. I want to get out of the way, or I want you to get out of the way. And I want us to push each other out of the way so that we live. The problem happens when I go home and my wife says something that hurts my feelings. And I react to her like she's a car about to hit me.
And so to be able to recognize those situations that happen all of the time, where are we having more of a survival level response to things that don't require that? Yep.
Yep. And specifically when it comes to creative work, this happens all of the time when you have to put your work up for criticism, right? When you try to put something out there, whether it's, you know, you're putting out a new... prototype to test or a new idea or you're you have to present to people or anything like that we feel
criticism and the risk of criticism, the risk of failing as a threat to our lives, right? The, the, the cliched statistic that more people feel fear public speaking than fear death, right? Like it's because it feels like death. It feels like, and that is the thing that blocks. so many people. What if this doesn't go well? What if somebody steals my idea? What if they think it's not good? What if those fears, they feel like you're social, you're...
career life is on the line. And then that causes people to shut down and not do the thing that they need to do, which is, you know. really actually be willing to take in criticism and be able to move forward like it's the most powerful skill i think in any level i think pretty much any career i could think of that where that you'd be able to like learn and grow and push forward Yeah, we've confused in those moments. We confuse emotional vulnerability with actual vulnerability.
I mean, we're not that far away from where we were, you know, kind of living in the woods, you know, in our evolution. We haven't, you know, we're microseconds away from it in the history of time and man. Right. So like to be alone and out there. We weren't at the top of the food chain 400 years ago. I mean, to be alone and out in the woods or wherever you were might mean death.
our bodies and our nervous systems still are kind of oriented in that way. So now you put, it almost sounds ridiculous, right? When you say, I'm going to speak in front of people, I'm going to put this game out that I've been working on. And now I'm worried that, you know, everyone's going to come at me with.
clubs and fire and chase me out of the village. But that's what we're kind of confusing there. And that's the part to be able to sit in and recognize, hey, this is emotional vulnerability. It's not going to kill me. In fact, it's going to help me grow.
yeah yeah and and you know again for me i remember the first time i started putting games out there and started getting public hate mail and you know really critical reviews and people i mean i've had people say very very nasty things about me on the internet plenty of times at this point and uh you know when it first happens it's really it's really painful it's really painful
you know you eventually you learn okay you know what this isn't the end of the world and and in fact i can learn to be grateful for it because the worst thing you can do when you put out creative work is nothing happens And also recognizing that that's all about them and not about you. Like I put something out there for people to have fun and enjoy and they don't like it. So they're going to hate me.
You know, like that doesn't. Right. Like, all right, man, that feels a little extreme, but okay. I appreciate your passion. okay i wanted to i want to circle back well because you know we only have so much time left because you you mentioned you know we talked about the things that are automatic that we don't want to lose you mentioned breathing
and breathing for me is a really interesting example because you're right right it's automatic we breathe without thinking about it we breathe in our sleep but also breathing is it crosses this barrier because it's also something we can bring into conscious control and and the ability to regulate our breath.
I have been continually amazed at how important and powerful that is for regulating everything else that's going on in our nervous system. And I know you've done a lot with breath work, and I think a lot of our audience may not be familiar with that concept at all. And so I'd love to talk a little bit about... what the power is, then how people might be able to use their breath as a tool to help manage a lot of this discomfort and challenge and fight or flight reactions.
Yeah, we can take this very simply because there's a lot of different forms of breath work. There's a lot out there. There's some that's more for like kind of upregulation. I can focus or some for down regulation, which is kind of relaxing. There's more of a clinical type of breath work to help people kind of move through experiences similar to what would happen in a psychedelic treatment. But just very simply.
You know, if we look at our inhale and our exhale, our inhale kind of activates the sympathetic nervous system, which if you know that, that's kind of the fight or flight, right? And the exhale. kind of activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which we know is rest and digest.
Every time we're doing that, it doesn't mean we're in fight or flight. We can take that fight or flight out to mean like that's where we're gaining energy, kind of going up. And then where we're kind of letting that go down. And we kind of go through that cycle all day long through the inhales and exhales. In fact.
through our life, right? The first thing we do is inhale when we're born. And the last thing we do when we die is exhale. And everything in between is kind of a series of inhales and exhales. I would... Challenge people to kind of recognize the next time you're in an intense kind of reaction to something, really angry, really scared, really sad. If you check in with your breathing, most likely it's not kind of...
It's not deep and full. In fact, you might be holding your breath. You might find when people are angry, they're kind of breathing a lot deeper, right? And that's more like kind of if you're running, you know, you're bringing in more oxygen like that and kind of getting more intense.
And so whatever has triggered us has sent a signal to our brain that says, you know what, I'm not okay. There's something dangerous here. Whether it's emotionally dangerous, actually dangerous, it doesn't know the difference. It's just kind of, this doesn't feel safe. If in that same moment, when you recognize it, you can actually slow your breath. Take a slow, deep inhale and a really long exhale. Actually, when we tell people to take a deep breath.
to relax, we should probably be telling them to take a long exhale. I mean, you have to inhale to exhale, but it's really the exhale that we want to focus on because that really takes us into that rest and digest the parasympathetic nervous system. you know, that, that trigger sent a signal that a brain says, I'm not safe. When we can, I believe when we can slow our breath to where you're breathing, that's going to send another signal to the brain that says,
you know, if I can breathe like this, I'm probably not in actual danger. I don't know that that actual language is happening, but we can see when people are able to do that and garner some control over their breath. The intensity of emotions just really drops. And it doesn't mean that anger is going to go away. It doesn't mean that fear is going to go away.
But oftentimes we're dealing with the fear of the fear or the anger around the anger. And when we can get it down to the manageable level, then we can start looking at, hey, sometimes it does dissipate. Sometimes it's like, oh, wow, I can recognize, you know, I'm being. a little bit, you know, I'm adding, I'm bringing to this behavior, but when we can slow it down like that, you know, we can really start to first still our minds and then be able to see what's happening more clearly.
Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, it does. And I just want to sort of emphasize because there's a lot of scientific and research-backed evidence that our emotions, we think we feel like we... The way we perceive emotions typically is like, someone does something, I see something, I feel angry, then my body gets tense, then I get heated, then I start getting the reactions to it, right? And what actually happens is it's the opposite, right? It's what we have.
We have physiological things that happen, and then we use, our brain takes those physiological clues and clues from the environment to then say, okay, here's how I feel. here's what's happening right um and so you know and so you know for example is you know some some well done research on um with the the the bridge experiment which is a really fun one where they basically will have a uh confederate ask someone a bunch of questions on a uh on a bridge uh and so it's an attractive female the last
guys a question. And either it's a regular normal bridge that's concrete and safe and normal, or it's like a rickety touristy style bridge, and they'll ask them these questions. overwhelming amount of guys that then later report her as being more attractive and or are likely to ask her out increases dramatically on the rickety bridge and
The reasoning for this is that the physiological response that comes in from being on a rickety bridge and being a little scared, they see an attractive woman and they say, okay, that same physiological response is arousal and attraction. And in the same, in other cases, it can be excitement and enthusiasm.
That same physiological response is happening in all of those cases. And so, but because of the context clues, people will assume that it's okay. Hey, I'm more attracted to this, to this person. Right. And so there's these really interesting things. So if you can down regular, either, you know.
choose different interpretations of the environment around you. This is why it's great. You want to take a date to a scary movie, right? They can get them more excited about you when they realize that they're really safe and the fear of the movie maybe isn't the thing that they're feeling. Or that when you can sort of downregulate your physiology, your body will interpret.
the environment that's going on, this kind of stressful meeting or whatever. Even in the military, they'll advise things like box breathing and other areas to get people to regulate and calm themselves, even in very, very dramatic situations that are far worse than anything, hopefully.
anybody listening has to face. So I think that this is... uh again i i know this and i i wanted to bring you on in part because like i know i fell into this trap for a good 30 years of my life where it's just like very cerebral in my head like i think i kind of have all the answers and it took this being more aware of my body, being more aware of my unconscious kind of processes and patterns to help.
kind of become better at all the things that i do and all that i care about and you were just a big part of that for me uh and so i i i'm really grateful that you're able to kind of provide some of these tools um to others or at least an awareness right this is not the you know this is a journey that we're all
on forever, right? I still continue to work on myself. I still continue to find all of these things, new fun unconscious patterns that I didn't realize. But it's a great journey to put people on. And so, you know, as we kind of start drawing to a close... what other sort of either tools or options do you present to people or if people want to
you know, work with you or find, you know, things that you're affiliated with? What would you point people towards? And again, it could be books, it can be, you know, therapists could be anything you want, just want to kind of give people a path if they feel like this has resonated with them.
Yeah. Well, first, just touching on what you last said, you know, we call them feelings because we feel them. Otherwise we probably call them thinkings, right? I mean, like it's not, now there's a caveat to that where we can think ourselves into a feeling because we're thinking of. situations and remembering what's happening or creating, and then our body reacts to it. But I think going into your body and recognizing what you're experiencing is so important.
we get confused with that. We'll pay money to go get excited. I'll pay money to go to an amusement park and ride a roller coaster. But if I wake up like that on a Tuesday morning, I'm going to check myself into a hospital. Right. It's very different. So we want to understand what's, what's, what's, what's going on, you know, and you know, you know, I think.
You know, you're providing a great platform for people to start looking at themselves. I think that, you know, if you want to get into coaching or therapy, I think that's a great thing for people, you know. find people that seem to align with what you're doing, interview them, find out what it is they can help you with. What I would say is that...
You know, going to therapy and coaching when you're in the second best time to do that is when you're in crisis. The first best time is when you're not, you know, that's where we can really grow when we're in crisis. You know, we're just trying to get out of the hole or out of the forest like you talked about.
When you're not, I'm biased again because I am a therapist, but I've always stayed in therapy. I've always stayed in groups. I'm always looking at workshops too, because while my patterns come from my past, every moment I'm developing a new past.
You know, so I would just encourage people to find someone that can, that can challenge them, whether that's a therapist or a coach or a peer group. And, you know, sometimes you don't know what your aim is and that's okay too. So get some help figuring that out. yeah yeah and i mean i i it's one of the things i love the most about you know so i you know i've taught game design for a long time and put out the book in this podcast but we have the
sort of or think like a game designer masterclass is like just a group of people that are all up to the same stuff and the fact that you know i've i've said this for a long time like i'm not the secret sauce of that group it's the fact that everybody is there to support each other and so for you know obviously finding a great
mentor or coach or therapist is is i i also recommend but just finding that peer group and others who you can be open with who are there to support you who are sort of going through the same struggles or have gone through the same struggles that is to me is a sort of a non-negotiable of life. They have to find that. It's by far more impactful over time. I mean, you're not going to be in any moment and just go see your therapist, you know, but if you develop the right.
group of peers or friends or people who are going to challenge you, you know, you can, you can reach out to them at any moment. You know, I take that, I do a little journal that it's similar to what you have. And I do it on my notes on my phone every morning and I send it out to six guys.
You know, and they send it back to me or theirs back to me. And none of them are therapists, you know, I mean, and I'm not treating them like they're one of my clients. And lots of times they're not responding, but I know that I'm sending it out. And just knowing that I'm sending it out, I'm like, I better do something.
this. Or they'll check in with me if something's challenging. If people want to find me, they can go through the bio that I think you're going to post. I'm happy to help people or point them in the right direction. Yep. I appreciate it, Ryan. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for your friendship and your support over these many, many years. And thanks for sharing your wisdom and insights here with the audience. I look forward to getting to do this again back in the cold plunge.
sauna session next time I'm in town. Yeah, we'll do that for sure. It's waiting for you. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment and share on your favorite podcast platforms such as iTunes, Stitcher or whatever device you're listening on. Listen to reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us.
grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer.
In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at thinklikeagamedesigner.com or wherever fine books are sold.