Life, Health & The Universe - A Journey From Midlife Crisis to Midlife Awakening
Welcome to **Life, Health & The Universe**, the podcast dedicated to empowering women in their 40s and 50s to embrace a vibrant and meaningful life. Join us as we explore the intersection of health, wellness, and personal growth, offering insights and inspiration to help you navigate this transformative stage of life.
Each week, we dive into topics that matter most to you— from holistic health and nutrition to mindfulness and self-discovery. With expert interviews, relatable stories, and practical tips, we aim to inspire you to live your best life, cultivate deeper connections, and find purpose in every moment.
Whether you’re seeking to enhance your well-being, explore new passions, or simply find a supportive community, **Life, Health & The Universe** is here to guide you on your journey. Tune in and discover how to thrive in this exciting chapter of life!
Contact Nadine: https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/contact
Life, Health & The Universe - A Journey From Midlife Crisis to Midlife Awakening
From Fear to Connection: The Neuroscience of Authentic Leadership with George Brooks
Ever wondered why your best ideas come at 4 AM? Neuroscience reveals that the brain’s early-morning transition from delta to theta and alpha waves creates the perfect conditions for creativity and problem-solving.
In this inspiring conversation, leadership coach George Brooks shares how understanding our brain can transform the way we lead, work, and live. From regulating the amygdala (the fear centre of the brain) to reframing problems as opportunities, George offers practical tools to move beyond micromanagement, stress, and control — and into innovation, empathy, and authentic connection.
We also explore George’s seven-year sobriety journey and the powerful cognitive benefits it unlocked: sharper memory, deeper emotional regulation, and enhanced awareness. His personal story shows how healing and self-leadership directly strengthen our ability to lead others.
Whether you’re leading a team, a business, or your own life, this episode uncovers how neuroscience can help you step into a new era of trust, creativity, and human-centred leadership.
Find out more about George's work through his profile in our Guest Directory
https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/person/george-brooks
Welcome to Life, health and the Universe, bringing you stories that connect us, preventative and holistic health practices to empower us and esoteric wisdom to enlighten us. We invite you to visit our website, where you can access the podcast, watch on YouTube and find all of our guests in the guest directory. Visit lifehealththeuniversepodcastpageio. Now let's get stuck into this week's episode. Today I'm joined by George Brooks. George joined me on the podcast on June, the 20th, and we had so much to talk about. He's back. If you haven't listened to our first conversation, go back and check it out season 14, episode 3. George, you gave us so many rich insights and we covered a lot in our first recording. I went back and had a listen and, yeah, we covered a lot. I was like, but there's more and I have more questions and you were open to coming back, so welcome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, Nadine. It's great to be back and you've got incredibly great questions. So there's always more to talk about, because there's great questions yeah I think that we're a really interest.
Speaker 1:Well, so many of my guests have said this, we're a very interesting point in history, um, and we're seeing a lot of stuff going on in.
Speaker 1:Oh you know, government, I guess, is like the biggest leadership team that we've got right and we're seeing a lot of things going on there, but there's a trickle on effect, you know, when we're looking at what's going on in society as a whole and that kind of trickles down into what's going on in our workplaces and that's where we're kind of sitting in our conversations together. So, yeah, I was really interested in having you back to sort of explore some of that stuff more and that change in direction that it feels imminent and imminent and and it and you're right at the forefront of some of that stuff. So yeah, that was me rambling, sorry. I hope you made a bit of sense. Um, just, yeah, it's 6am, so I'm I'm, uh, doing my best to get my brain in flow, right, so I had some questions for you. I'm still going.
Speaker 1:I had some questions for you, some things that I thought would be really interesting for us to cover, and we're going to start with the morning routine thing, because in some of the notes that you provided with me, provided for me on our previous podcast, you mentioned that 4 am can be a really good time of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's appropriate right now right.
Speaker 1:And it's appropriate right now.
Speaker 2:yeah, I've got my cup on right now. Yeah, yeah, got my cup, so yeah, so what, we, what?
Speaker 2:we briefly touched on, is, um, your best thinking, like your insights, clarity, intuition, where you want those aha moments. Or I got it, um. Or if you can't get it, when can you get it? Uh, there's a time period between 4 and 6 am where your brain stops processing and I literally can watch my brain process when I dream.
Speaker 2:It's almost like a computer system. It's like your day's flashing through your life. It's processing, it's finishing up thoughts, and around 3.30 every day I kind of wake up and then I go into a second state, which is a more thinking state. And I know that there's a Tibetan kind of practice around this, but there's also I looked it up there's a neuroscience behind this that our brain transitions from delta sleep, which is deep sleep, to theta and alpha waves, and those alpha wave states are associated with creativity, problem solving and calmness, and so, neurologically, there's a time in the morning and you find that many, many successful people have wildly consistent morning practices and many of them include the 4 am or 5 am club, and I actually found that it's a 48 minute period that begins one hour and 36 minutes before sunset. So that's why you get sunrise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sunrise, sunrise, sunset. So that's why you get Sunrise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sunrise, sunrise, yeah. So that's why you get that range of four to six. It's a 48 minute period where our brain is actually calm and ready to do the thinking for us. So what I do is I plant questions to resolve and now you say you wake up and you write it down. You have a notepad. Well, yeah, that's what's happening, and I actually shared this with a friend of mine that I work out with and he said it's actually he found it in the Bible, in Job, where, yeah, god speaks to you while you're sleeping. So there's cross-references to many different kinds of religions and neuroscience. But it's a great time. Take advantage of it, use it before your day goes crazy, and you can even think through things while you're sleeping.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I'm in it. It's still dark outside. I'm supposed to be in my intuitive phase. Yeah, oh dear, I used to do the 5am club, which was Robin Sharma. Have you heard of him?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, you should check him out. He's got a book called the 5am club and he delves into the neuroscience of it as well, and it's a bit of a thing.
Speaker 1:So you get up and his process is that you do 20 minutes, I think, 20 minutes of kind of rigorous exercise, 20 minutes of meditation and 20 minutes of journaling. I think it's 20 minutes of each. And there's some science behind that the boost of the chemical like, I think, even brain chemicals, getting that kind of instant high from the physical movement. And then, yeah, this process, but it sets you up for the entire day and he breaks it down.
Speaker 2:It was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:I'm not in that at the moment but okay, well, I do get up at 5 am, but I don't do that process at the moment well, I, I didn't know that there's a exact sequencing, but, um, when I was a leader at ey, I always recommended people to at least just have a morning routine period um, you know, start with that and um, then, within that routine, typically, um, you know how your day starts, set the tone for your day.
Speaker 2:There's no doubt. If I do meditation in the morning or read scripture in the morning, um, or both and um, have some quiet time and reflective time, that definitely sets the tone for the day and it carries through. Yeah, and if there's sequencing to follow, like you said, with exercise, meditation, you know, and journaling, that's great, because part of that includes, you know, practicing gratitude, what you're grateful for, set your intention for the day, calm yourself down and if you wake up a little bit earlier, you know you can actually do the, the creative uh and intuition kind of activities. Or, like I said, you can even happen when you're sleeping. Just set the question, invite the question, invite the answer to happen and it'll happen do you do that before you go to bed?
Speaker 1:Invite that question in? Absolutely yeah. You prepare what you want to resolve or what, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually. It's interesting, as you said, that I was doing this without even knowing I was doing it so way back when. So I was an accounting major and I'm a certified public accountant. Then I went to law school and I'm a certified public accountant, then went to law school and I'm a lawyer and there was a lot of learning and a lot of tests to get certified and I found that if I would review my materials before I sleep, my brain processed it overnight and that was a way to help me, you know, get through all those studies. So I was doing like a form of it way back when.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I remember that old system that people used to say if you were learning something, to play it while you sleep. Like to play a recording of it so you could hear it in your sleep and that would help to embed it in your memory.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Similar sort of thing. What would you recommend for people who just say that I'm not a morning person? Get over it to acclimate.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I think the out is you don't have to be up to do this. If you set the question and you invite the processing to happen before you go to bed, more likely than not, you know, it will come through. It may not be like that day or so, but and I found that if you do have a nighttime routine, it even helps set the stage for this to happen. So you don't have to be a morning person. But there are nighttime routines of getting off the screen, you know, a couple hours ahead of time, you know maybe doing some stretching, maybe doing a nighttime meditation or gratitude journal, and then set the question, then go to bed. You don't have to be a morning person, it can process yeah, cool because there's a lot.
Speaker 2:I reckon there's lots of uh barriers to entry with that for a lot of people oh, I'm sure and it's not like I'm a morning person every day too, there's certain things happen. You don't get a good night's sleep and such yeah. But so, yeah, I think the routines before and in the morning, you know, helps set up the good sleep and helps set up what we're discussing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, great, I'm just going through the notes you sent through, which you've been very generous with Thank you. So let's get stuck into this really big topic and that's the leadership change which I mentioned at the beginning and how there's definitely an evolution and a necessary shift, I think, and many of my guests have talked about this from different perspectives. But leadership is going to still be crucial it always has, always will be but it's changing. Rather than a top down approach, someone said to me that it's kind of more of a sideways approach now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, can you talk a little bit to that, and then we'll get into some of that um the neuroscience around it okay.
Speaker 2:So leadership styles are are evolving and that that goes with our work is evolving. So many industries. We were robots at work. We had routines, daily activities. It was mechanical or if it did involve mental, it was just repetitive mental work, right.
Speaker 2:And what technology entered into the workplace? It took the robot out of the human, which means we have to show up with a different part of our brain to be more creative, innovative, collaborative and have more empathy and connectivity with our co-workers and customers. And when you look at the need for innovation, there's a neurological formula that has to happen and typically it begins with establishing trust, and that trust allows for a collective cooperation. You're working sideways, and then that allows a safe psychological space to be innovative and think in fiction. So, yeah, it's changed and we used to show up with repetitive practices and now we're showing up with adaptability, being a chameleon, more human-centered. In a place that you have to be agile or be like a chameleon, you have to be more open to accepting new technologies.
Speaker 2:So leadership has to change to allow that to happen. Right, to set the stage, set the expectations and lead by example. You know leadership used to be a situation where it was command and control. You know demanding respect, pushing on. You know key performance indicators and measures and just being productive, and you know that's going to wear itself out, especially with the next generation. Now you're leading with four to five generations in the workplace and that's not going to wear itself out, especially with the next generation. Now you're leading with four to five generations in the workplace and that's not going to work. Plus, that's also not going to advance your business strategy. So yeah, leadership is horizontal, it's changed, and what we touched on was are we set up to do that? But before I go on, do you have any questions on, like, the leadership styles?
Speaker 1:I'd definitely I'd love to sort of for you to share the kind of like before and after, like you know you talked about command and control. Yeah, like and I guess you've taken you've used a lot of words in your descriptions already like innovation, collaboration, agility. Is that for the leader specifically, or is that for the workplace in general?
Speaker 2:Both, yeah. So it's definitely for the workplace and it's also, you know, definitely for the leader. I think you know I often find that leaders may have the biggest challenge to go from the from to the to. You know, anytime there is a sense of uncertainty, you know, our brain reacts a certain way and wants to protect us. Uncertainty brings a sense of fear, whether it's conscious or subconscious. That brings about a natural instinct to put the brakes on things and be in control and to micromanage. So the paradigm has shifted. The from was control, micromanagement, to empowerment and trust. And, what's interesting, the last call I had there was a situation where another leadership attribute from problem solving to opportunity framing and this is a big one, I love this one.
Speaker 2:So problem solving a business grew very well, had a good trajectory and kind of petered out and it's just stagnant at a certain income level. And they brought in some people to look at and they said well, what you got is you have customers matured, customers are leaving and they're not staying around long enough, you're maybe not getting referrals, you're not getting repeat business and or you're not keeping that customer, let alone all those upsides. So the leader's response was you must be wrong, your calculations of the customer turn must be wrong. I don't think that's our revenue root cause problem. I don't. And so the consultant said well, let's go back and redo the numbers, give us more input. And they did. They found out the turn was even worse than they first whoops in the new world and it's fine.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's bad to problem solve and say, oh, let's see if that number's right. But I think in the new leadership mode it's around opportunity framing. So if someone says there's customer churn, forget about it. Let's go prove there's churn and let's use that as an opportunity to see why is the churn happening. If it's happening, let's see why we're not getting repeat business. Let's see why maybe we're not getting referrals. And that's an opportunity and not a problem to challenge. And you see the perspective and the way we need to think. We need to look at things as opportunities and not as on my watch. You know something's broken and we got a problem. You know and um that that reframing, you know, from protection to creation as needed, um, and you know. I'll just go through one more leadership kind of challenge.
Speaker 2:Nowadays and in the past, most businesses have, like you mentioned other people said we need to go horizontal. There's functional silos in business and within each functional silo there's knowledge hoarding and maybe not sharing, and technology is causing businesses to connect horizontally and work together around implementing business strategy. So what we're trying to do is go from silos to cross-functional collaboration and technology enables that and it's the same thing. I've found that, no matter what you bring up, whether it's I'm stuck in control and micromanagement, problem solving and knowledge hoarding or silos all three of those instances are things that we are biologically predisposed to do, and so 97% of our day is on autopilot and we're not using our reasoning brain. Our autopilot response is around fear, control and protection. So we're going to micromanage, we're going to attack the problem versus an opportunity, we're going to resist change, we're going to hoard to protect ourselves.
Speaker 2:And basically what I'm saying is our mind isn't built for the new way of business, isn't built for the new way of business. That we have to have a conscious change to a new way of thinking, and not only do we need to rethink how we're going to approach these situations, we need to rewire our brains, and our brains served us well in the past. Our brains and our brains served us well in the past, but they're not good for today's new kind of working models and methods. And so when you see maybe Harvard Business Review say 87% of corporate change fail, I sit there and go well, no kidding, I haven't seen anyone talking about mindset shifts in their employees to help be open to change and discern change right, and so, if we're biologically predisposed and conditioned to act that old way with the froms, we need some kind of intervention to let people know what's happening, why it's happening.
Speaker 2:And we're asking you to think this way, and underneath all this is the need for psychological safety that as we empower you and we ask you to innovate. Yes, there's a balance between we still need to produce and deliver, but there's also a part of you that needs to be empowered and think and innovate. And we got your back while you're doing that, and that's the new way of leading and thinking. And I see you're smiling and nodding. Is that registering? But yeah, I think that's a fundamental change, but it's a neuroscience change and unless you address it that way, I think you're going to be in the 87 club, or it's a really interesting time.
Speaker 1:I just wonder how quickly this shift is happening. Like, what are you seeing? Is this something like? Because I know that the old way is the safety, the security. We know how to do it this way, compared to the all of the what ifs. Uh, you know the safety mechanism is just going to be going on, going on overdrive, but I don't know what that other way looks like. Do you think we're just going to come with like there's just going to be a point where everyone's just going to be like you got to do it, you got, you got, no other choice. Or is there space for for more of an evolution with this change in the model?
Speaker 2:I think there's a couple of barriers, I think, I think, and one barrier is that whole left side, when things come at you and you go into that fear protection control mode and it shows up like a hundred different ways. What part you know? You asked about neurological response, the part of your brain that's responding for you and making this decision is your amygdala.
Speaker 2:That's the fight-flight control part of our brain, the primitive brain that's still around, that's still operating to keep you safe and it's important that it's there.
Speaker 2:It's not wrong, it's just there and we need it because maybe something's about to happen and that maybe you know could be harmful. You know, um, from a work perspective, um, but once you dispense with that, you need to um, calm that amygdala and because, neurologically, when the amygdala triggers no other parts of your brain work, it literally takes over, it hijacks, and so, just for example, say somebody has gone around your back at work, you're going to be frustrated, you're going to want to defend, attack and lash out and probably even demean this other person, right, and that's your amygdala reaction. So I think you know it's your sympathetic nervous system and you have to activate this parasympathetic nervous system to calm the amygdala before you go to step two, which is this new behavior. So it's a two-step and I don't see I see corporate mindfulness programs, but I don't see it connecting it to behavior change. So I think this amygdala regulation needs to be part of um, the the solution to offer up to employees.
Speaker 1:It really starts with an awareness, doesn't it? I think we talked about this in our first interview, that idea of being able to sort of step outside of what's going on and just kind of catch yourself in the moment. Hang on a minute, I'm responding in a certain way, but it's not. It's not rational. So that first step is just like bringing our conscious awareness to that exactly internal story that we've started to create.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think step one is awareness, step two is amygdala calming and then step three to, like you said, for this shift to happen. Step three is to. I think, personally, you know one teaching method is is like we're doing understand. Understand what's happening. So, hey, it's okay, you're acting that way, along with every single person to your left and right. We're just built that way. Here's why it's happening protection and control and you can do something different. And, by the way, if you do something different, it's going to be better emotionally. You won't have that emotional turmoil and there'll be better behaviorally for you and the business and the customers. And so there's that little bit of knowledge where, oh, I get it Now, that doesn't make you do anything different, it just becomes aware of the possibility and then you got to take action. So behavior shift happens when I act differently. So now I quit beating up whether we have customer turn it on. My new action is going to be let's look for opportunities. And once I start taking new action, looking for opportunities, I'm going to feel a new emotion, me just saying that I feel a lot better looking for better ways to keep and get more customers than I feel about beating up a number. And once you start combining action with the new behavior and new emotions, that's when your brain, your, your will start shifting. And if you repeat that, that'll become your new reaction, your new habit. So it's just repetition. So, to answer your question, will this just happen by being told to do it? Clearly, no, the hand grenade approach doesn't work. Somebody might do it once, but they haven't done the brain processing and the processing has to have an awareness, a new action, a new emotion and a new result, and it's not a bad thing to reflect on it and see all that happen. And then you're like, oh, this is pretty good. Yeah, we found now you're the hero we found that referrals weren't happening because our systems weren't working for referrals. You know, we had customer churn in this certain demographic and this certain kind of issue. Dah, dah, dah. We can solve that. So now you can start. Now you're being a part of the solution instead of trying to defend what probably was what's happening on your shift. Being a part of the solution instead of trying to defend, you know, what probably was, whether what's what's happening on your shift, yeah, so I I don't think this is a big deal.
Speaker 2:I've been able to get people to do mindset shifts really quick, and you can also do this through, you know, facilitating a session, but also have what you know, some kind of micro learning, to help people through it. Do it on their own time and you're not raising your hand, you're not exposing yourself, it's private. You're doing it and there's even some people that are doing it with AI right, and you know so. You'll be on the computer and you have an AI coach that's coaching you through this as well. You know so there of an AI coach that's coaching you through this as well. So there's a lot of different ways to do it, but I think the idea is you just got to do it, be aware of it. Some people call it a culture shift, but that's just a paintbrush. I think culture starts with people when they think and act differently. That's how this could happen, I think, by what we just described.
Speaker 1:Um, that's how this could happen, I think, by what we just described. It's kind of a well, you would know from your own personal journey with um being being more, I think you said in the last interview, probably about four years before you um finished working um in the corporate arena, that you started to become more aware of this stuff, all of this, yeah, sorry I call it stuff, but it's taken some practice and I would hazard a guess that still it it requires your conscious awareness because, because the old habits, the old behaviors, they are multi-layered, aren't they? And it also takes some personal reflection, because there can be some uncomfortable things that come up, whether that be about your past or, you know, relationships or, um, yeah, previous experiences. How do you, um suggest that people sort of overcome that, because that can be a real barrier as well. I'm talking about barriers. I um, I don't want to be sort of like the. I don't want you to think I'm talking negatively about it. I'm just curious about how we overcome some of those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I found what's tremendously helpful is like a buddy system. Yeah, I think you know, in some practices you call it cohort or your team, or in many instances, if you're going to go through some kind of facilitation for these from-tos and I actually ask only I'd say, give me one thing you want to change, like just one shift, just one. Like someone would say, I'd like to work on building trust or I want to work on thinking bold, I like to work on psychological safety, like just one thing. They often do a whole bunch here because basically a lot of things roll up into that one thing usually. But I think this idea of with another person and when you have a chance to talk and discuss your personal experiences and how you're processing it and how it's working or not working, I think that at times provides 80% of the value than just doing the practice.
Speaker 2:As I said, it's just this there's something about us, the way we're wired, that human to human, that when somebody says something to you and they share an experience or comment about what you're doing, it sticks in your brain more than you doing it on your own or listening to someone else. Just give a, you know, education session. So I found that teaming is really important. It could be also, it could be in a coaching situation as well, but, um, no, it's not easy, you know, just because some people you hear, oh, it's your brain playing tricks on you and you could do something different, uh, and then you go try it and you're still struggling with it. It's good to have some somebody with you in that journey to help bring you along and and straighten you out or or give you support, support.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. It's a really good point, yeah.
Speaker 1:It can. Well it does bring up a whole bunch of stuff, potentially because, although you're talking about how to improve workplace and people's performance, essentially performance looks different, um it's not the old, the old performance.
Speaker 1:You know kpis and all of that bizzo, but, um, you know connectedness and innovation, all of those things that you mentioned before. I had a previous guest on um and she was she's a business coach, and she was just talking about how your business or your work reflects your life, and so there needs to be, uh, an interconnectedness or an awareness of how those things operate together. What do you have to say about that?
Speaker 2:yeah, so, boy, a lot just went through my head when you said that I was like hell no, and then hell yeah, uh, but one thing, um, the hell no part was, if I'm doing well at work, you know you feel like you're doing well in life, right, but if things aren't going well at work, it shouldn't diminish your thoughts of how you feel about life, meaning it's like a yo-yo. Your self-esteem can't just be drawn from achievements. It needs to come from other sources, of what you stand for, your values and what you offer in other roles in life, right, as a parent or friend or community member. So that's the hell no part is be careful about that. But the hell yeah is what we're talking about. You know these kinds of issues and emotions and our reactions and our reactions. You could be undermined at work, but you could be undermined in some friend group and excluded. So these things happen everywhere. So learning how to control your emotional response and your behavior will help you.
Speaker 2:I think in both, and I think the more you practice it in both, it becomes more of a habit, it becomes more routine. It doesn't mean that you slip up, but the more you practice, I think, the better it gets. I think what's interesting. There's a lot of practices out there where people will teach you about mindfulness, about meditation, around empathy and compassion, but there's no understanding of how to apply it to a particular situation, a trigger, or how to apply it in general when trying to perform better at work and act in the certain ways we're talking about. So what I'm just trying to say is you can take that general knowledge and apply it specifically. Now you have a home for it as to how to use it. And the most interesting thing I found and I'm just consumed by it is now I'm asking anyone and everyone just give me one thing that's a barrier in your workplace that's inhibiting you from achieving your growth or achievement of your strategy. And, by the way, I think 80% of people say trust, which is interesting psychological safety, like I said, thinking big, being innovative.
Speaker 2:But 100% of the times where they said this is where I'm at and it's not good and I need to go to this, 100% of the time that trigger or that behavior or that response is amygdala driven and 100% of the time it's our, our subconscious, biologically predisposed behaviors and it blows my mind. I'm like is anyone else thinking about this? I mean, we're wired a certain way, you know, and we're supposed to show up different and our body and our brains are resisting the different because it's got to go through that. Hey, is this okay, you know? Are you going to be protected? Are you all right? Or even if you're okay now, later on will it be bad, you know, will it be bad, you suffer failure, and then you have all these subconscious tugs and you have biases coming into play that are sending you a certain way and we can't just go walk over to this other way, but we know we need it.
Speaker 2:I often wonder how do people get there then, if they're not doing what we're talking about? Right, and once in a while I find people that are there and often they're doing podcasts or podcast hosts or such, or people that are natural leaders, and they got it. And I don't know how they got it, and maybe it could be upbringing. You're conditioned a certain way. You came through life and your experiences. That conditioning has allowed you to see a new way and to veer off, and some people aren't conditioned and they're going to just act the way that we're built um. But yeah, I think that's why certain people are natural leaders and they become leaders and because they have that ability and that sway to do it. Um, but some folks maybe haven't been conditioned, and so then you know you're doing, you know the way you're built.
Speaker 1:When I yeah, when you were talking about that, I was just thinking about how, but what came up for me was how, as I said previously, there are so many layers. And when you were talking about the conditioning idea, when we think about that fear-based programming program that we have running that can go right back to school doing as you're told, not achieving or the expectations of your parents, I guess that's one of the things that people could potentially come up against when they start to delve into these new practices.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think where you're going is, um, so I'm talking about layer one in general, yeah, and, and so if, if you have, you know, 500 people or five people that work for you, I've found that there's 500 different barriers and there's 500 different ways you need to approach it. It's like a teacher needs to teach his student differently. I found people ask about retention formulas, how to retain people. So, if you've got 10,000 people, you've got 10,000 retention formulas, because everyone's got their thing, what's important to them, how they look at it. But let's just strip it down one layer though.
Speaker 2:So, as you said that, yeah, if you work with somebody and you do this buddy system, you know, I found, yeah, there's certain things lingering, you know, that were undealt with. And now I'm not a, you know, behavioral psychologist, I'm just trying to use some learning principles to get shifts to happen. But if people are hung up, I've seen, you know, one person I worked with, the mom always expected them to do the best, held them up to high standards, high achievements, and maybe wasn't giving enough praise. So there's this stuff lingering out there that creates a lack of self-confidence and that inability, like you said, it brings up issues. Right, everyone's got those things that maybe are lingering, that need to be dealt with, that maybe there's an employee assistance program or something to help them kind of get through. I'm just talking about like level one shifts, you know quick hit shifts, you know that are safe, can get you to thinking new. And when you do start thinking new, when you experience that new emotion, a positive emotion and a better outcome that has the ability to carry you through and maybe those anchors that were lingering around kind of go by the wayside and you find out you know that they'll go away.
Speaker 2:I mean, for me, a real big one, I think personally, is drawing of your self-esteem to achievement you think you need to achieve. You know, and what's really wild I was really big on, turn that me into we, we need to achieve, and just a simple mindset shift. I'd say, turn the M upside down to W and whenever somebody was so mean-oriented or took credit or they had an area of responsibility and it was success, but they reported it as their success as a person versus the teams or whatever I immediately was helping people, coaching, you got to turn that Because what happens in that team is obviously those people are going to think differently of you and you know why they're operating that way. They have this sense of they steer things we're talking about. They want to look good. But yeah, you got to turn that me to a we and I think eventually that person will feel better and he will feel better, and if they don't, we find a new we leader.
Speaker 2:I say that I laugh, but I mean sometimes you know that's what's needed, you know you just can't sacrifice. You know everyone's everyone. Like I said, leaders need to go to be more collaborative, leaders need to be more empowering and everyone's got to create trust. And that kind of behavior does not create trust, it's not empowering and collaboration declines. So it's just yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would be interested to hear about what you think about this idea. So you've mentioned technology and how, since we've had access to more technology at work, that's kind of changed things. I have this kind of idea and I've probably taken this from someone else and heard other people talk about it but this idea that the more advanced technology becomes, the less we are required to do those mechanical things like you mentioned, and so by giving that kind of work to the technology, let's say the AI, those kind of tasks that take up a lot of time but don't really, you know, ai can do them and it frees up all of this space for humans. How do you see that? Creating more connection in work environments?
Speaker 2:AI creating more connection.
Speaker 1:Well, no, actually the freedom of time the freeing up of time and space, and how that can change the dynamics in a workplace environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember it might have been 10, 12 years ago I had this big thing called the future of work and we had all these projections on what kind of jobs, what amount of jobs are going to disappear, dissipate, and what was interesting, it was 60% of a job, 30% of a job, 10%. It wasn't like the job. I mean there still is something there that's human right. There was that thread. There was another thread of these are all the new jobs that are going to be created and the new types of roles, which I thought was mind boggling. And I remember if you looked at the unemployment, if there was 6 million jobs in the country open today, it was like 5.7 million of those jobs people weren't trained for yet. Wow, yeah, so, and there's like 8 million people looking for work. There's 6 million jobs, but there is the skill mismatch. So the whole idea was our work is going to change, the type of jobs are going to change. You need to, you know, learn that next new thing right, and that that's kind of was the processing, um and when, when, with ai now it's even everything I'm talking about even got accelerated more than when I was looking at it.
Speaker 2:But what I find I have to point out one thing with AI that I find fascinating is that when it comes to trust, our minds are built to create trust with another human being. We haven't gone through the mechanisms yet of creating trust with the computer screens speaking back to us with typewritten answers, or now we're moving to avatars, ai avatars, and so we have a human-looking person on the other end. That, hopefully, will soften up. But we're not there yet. We're just starting it and our brain's got a neurological. There's six neurological steps to get to trust. That almost needs double duty with AI for us to trust it. Like you really need to nail those six steps. As soon as you hear about like an AI going sideways, like I'd be using it, and all of a sudden I start getting an Australian football match score, I was like what just happened and that happened to me. It depends which one you're using too, obviously. But yeah, so the credibility is part of that trust process.
Speaker 2:It's got to be reliable and consistent. If it's not reliable, then it falls apart. So I think for now, ai is going to be still like an augmentation. There still is those percentages.
Speaker 2:We have to know what questions to ask. We got to know the follow-up question, you're just getting more input and data and you're still building the story. Or, if you're a doctor, you're still triaging maybe what's wrong, and so it's augmenting you. If you're like a lawyer, using it, you still need to do the legal review, the work product, so that your experience or nuances or past history which the AI didn't know about in the case is all reflected right. So there's procedures and controls, there's checks, there's balances, there's adding to the answer.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of a two-way street right now and I think you got to start small, like we talked about, maybe those smaller, tedious, repetitive research kinds of things where you get a lot more back than you even thought it was out there and you use it, but you still got to frame it and position it. So, yeah, it's going to have a journey. I'm sure this is probably the way it was when the internet started. I'm sure we all were skeptical and we got to a part, and this will happen too. But for me, ai, like I said, it's not a human and we're trying to have trust with it and we're trying to make it be like a worker human and it's going to take some time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very good point. I think that can be a real risk for younger people as well who have only grown up so far with the access to the internet and technology that they may, you know, left unattended with those things. They may build too much trust with it and not even realise that the Australian football school is not part of the answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which, when you said the younger people, when you asked me about the transfer over to these new mindsets and how quickly that could happen, what I've found, and I said there's a couple of barriers you brought up awareness. You know, being second to the amygdala, knowing that, you know maybe some breathing techniques or mindfulness techniques to kind of calm. But the third area that I found as an impediment that's slowing down the transfer of some of these shifts from the from to say, cross-functional collaboration, empowerment and trust. Our brains are atrophying. The interesting thing about the brain is when you don't use a part of the brain, it literally atrophies like a muscle and as you start doing other things, that part of the brain will relearn or get reused or repurposed to do something else, to do something else, and so there's some really important interpersonal kinds of brain power we have that is disappearing, and the biggest one is empathy. And so if I'm supposed to go from being robotic to human-centered and interpersonal and collaborating, we have people that are afraid to even say hello or hi, or don't even know how to carry on a minimal conversation, let alone empathy, trying to understand, where maybe you know we're trying to be collaborative, not argumentative, and and empathize.
Speaker 2:Where's that person coming from and do I understand? One, what they're thinking, knowledge-wise, to what they're feeling? That level of empathy, um, or three, you know? Or three, do I have compassion type empathy in order to help them? So a lot of new leadership characteristics you're going to see is human-centered empathy, and empathy's been around for a while as an important leadership attribute. I know Microsoft is pushing hard on things like that, not just empathy with each other, but your customers. But if you go research the empathy part of our brain, it's severely drying up and there was close to 81 studies on college students which said that the and this was over 12 years ago, this study was done. This was before super, you know, used sub phones that aren't a big part of their brains or regions are totally disappearing. Wow, so you can rebuild that part of the brain, but you got to go rebuild it. So this mindset shift isn't going to happen totally until there's some rebuilding going on, with some important key parts of our brain that are disappearing.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:That's kinda crazy, but I'm certain to the level on that. When you were doing command, control, protect, I know what I've got and apathy didn't matter. One of the barriers was well, it always worked for me that way. That's another barrier, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've always done this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've always been successful. Well, that was a different working style, different era.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my hope would be that, with the rise in the use of AI, that, rather than we become more dependent on it or connect with it too much on a personal level, let's say that we're able to use it to free up time so that we can become more connected with ourselves and with others, um, you know, so that we don't have to stare at a screen for as long each day. Um, but that's also that's going to take time, it. I think us humans are quite good at, uh, inventing things and then realizing, kind of 10, 15 years down the track, well, that probably wasn't such a good idea, but then we overcome those things and it's all a process. It all takes time, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does I. I I mean I ai for me personally is I'm valid, it's, it's wild. I I process and think of things and then I go to ai and I find out yeah, it's already out there, like more times than not. I find neurological research and studies that backs up what I was thinking, experiencing. One thing I encourage people to do just to prove this. What I'm talking about is think of any barrier you have at work. Where are you in the front side? And so what's your trigger or what's holding you back the front side? And so what's your trigger or what's holding you back, and just go to ai and ask is this trigger?
Speaker 2:amygdala based. Okay, a hundred percent of the time it is. And you're finding out. The formula starts with that. We're operating out of the fear center, uh, and you know we're probably not in harm. So we gotta dispense with that. We gotta activate the parasympathetic move on. Get to, you know, make a, a new choice or decision, um, some kind of um you know, cognitive repurposing, um, you know, look at things a different way and experience a new emotion and act differently. And bam, you know, life is going to get a lot better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amazing. I think that's a really great tip. One last thing I wanted to share with you was something else interesting that one of my previous guests shared, and she was talking about how an emotion in our body only lasts for about 90 seconds and post the emotion it's the brain processing, so that's probably the amygdala a lot of the time, especially in the sort of circumstances that you're talking about. So if there was a way that we could kind of acknowledge that we're having that emotion, feel it, accept it, let it move through us and then bring to our conscious awareness that post 90 seconds that emotion is gone and it's just that fear center kicking in, I think that was a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, she or he is spot on.
Speaker 2:You're spot on. So there's a lot of techniques used here. There's attention deployment, cognitive. Here there's attention deployment, cognitive reframing, cognitive reappraisal. But what you're talking about is another technique. It's called self-witnessing. So you can just witness that happening. You don't judge it, it's not good or bad, and this too shall pass.
Speaker 2:And I personally believe that that technique is the most beneficial technique to use. It opens up so much more opportunity for you and, as you start, what I'm suggesting is these little triggers, these little mindset shifts you got to do over time. You're going to pick up more and more and you're going to start understanding these techniques. Is these little triggers, these little mindset shifts you got to do over time. You know, pick up more and more, and you're just understanding, you know these techniques that you can become rather stoic in terms of all the things that happen, and you can be in traffic, you can get cut off, you can, you know, have someone cut in front of you and live in line or whatever, and you're just, you just adopt a non-emotional response.
Speaker 2:Or, if you do get a rise, you just let it go and, yeah, you become kind of a bland person in a way, but in a good way maybe. Right, yeah, you know. But I mean honestly, you just kind of walk through life pretty content and, um, you know, I think, uh, I you know you can, you can get excluded from a friendship or whatever, and it's you don't let it impact you and they let that emotion go, and yeah. But the opposite is, if you resist, that actually causes more suffering yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, suffering equals pain times, resistance. The emotion is the pain, and the more you resist it, the more you're gonna suffer. So, yeah, you're better off letting it go witness it. I like that, yeah, and I know we're coming to the end, if you don't mind. We mentioned you asked a question about operating without alcohol. So I've been operating without alcohol for about seven years and everything we're talking about is highly more possible by not having the effects of alcohol versus consumption of alcohol probably dulls your ability to execute on all the things. We're talking about inhibits or or delays. Um, we're talking about inhibits or delays, and I think what I know this after not drinking alcohol is I had a release of like a cognitive fog. Second, I had a stabilization in mood and less triggers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And longer term I had my brain capacity came back to some crazy great levels improved awareness, like we talked about, improved empathy, compassion, kindness and lately, kind of like a reciprocal energy exchange where I am having so many people be doing good things for me Right, which always, you know, I'm trying to go out and so it's wild. It's almost like the elimination of alcohol put an acceleration on the entire conversation we just had. Yeah, and I think when I was consuming alcohol, like I walked into three stores today and it was really wild how these people were nice and said hi and nodded and I think of when you're drinking alcohol, I didn't get those same kind of responses. It's almost like people try to avoid and the same stores, I'm saying, but it was really wild. There's some kind of energy release and reciprocal energy that happens, I think, when you get into these states.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's that whole idea of the mirror, isn't it Like we see in others what we feel about ourselves. So you're receiving how you feel about yourself from the, from those people around you um, yeah yeah, interestingly, with the um, I have a whole consumption.
Speaker 1:You're. It's always like being in a continuous feedback loop, isn't it? And you're just in this perpetual cycle. Um, and, and definitely my, my awareness has has grown exponentially. My memory has improved, um, just for details of you know, conversations I've had, uh, places I've been that sort of thing, um, and has definitely opened me up to to all of the things that we've been talking about today Made, made. Yeah, it kind of opens up a lot of possibilities.
Speaker 2:Sure does, and not that it was bad before you know.
Speaker 1:I was having a great time.
Speaker 2:And obviously sleep is better. You know, recollections are better, Decision-making seems to be better. Interactions, reactions, yeah, it just seems to be on a better plane, better path.
Speaker 1:Did you plan to give up drinking For me? I just said I'm going to have 30 days alcohol-free and then I was like, well, I've done that now, and I just kind of kept going Did you go right? That's it. Well, I've done that now, and I just kind of kept going um, did you go right?
Speaker 2:that's it, I'm done. I'm never gonna drink again. Or was it a slow yeah, yeah, no, it was. It was nothing planned. It was. It was five o'clock on on a Thursday, you know, and I was leaving the house to go take a car to the airport and just said, yeah, it's time to stop, and never looked back. That was it. It was just a moment.
Speaker 2:I had good motivation to do it, you know. I wanted to be there for my family and friends in a better way and show up better, and I didn't think I was providing a good example, so I just stopped. And it was. You know, I never had an urge, never looked back, definitely had a craving for sugar, but yeah, and then I wondered so I play ice hockey and we always drink after hockey, you know. And I had a business dinner and we always had drinks before and during, and so, as these events came up, I wondered what would happen at that event if I'm not partaking. And then it was fine, didn't need to drink after the hockey game, didn't need to have the drinks at dinner, as a matter of fact, other people, they stopped drinking too at the dinners, and things like that. So it was fine. I think we can, you know, but those are just a couple of sidebars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool yeah it's good to know about that. Sometimes you feel like the odd one out, don't you? People sometimes say to me less and less, actually, but I have had people say to me but you don't drink. Like I said, I was going to have a birthday party and they were like but you don't drink. I'm like I can still have a pretty good time and actually it's great fun when you can go out and do dinners and parties and wake up feeling great the next day instead of shabby yeah, that that would be.
Speaker 2:A third one is you wonder, you know, are you still gonna have fun or be fun or be the life of the party, or do you need that to make the party fun and all that's just mind games? No, you don't. You can still have fun, you can still be funny, um, so yeah, yeah, so, um I. It's really wild, though, because it makes me think too. What circles are you in If you know that circle centers around drinking? Yeah, it may not be a healthy circle, but gravitate to yeah definitely Amazing.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining me again, George. It's been really insightful. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really flew by, didn't it, it does, it always does, and it's sunlight. Now, have a great um, have a great rest, rest of your day. Big day tomorrow, fourth of july, is that a big one for you, july?
Speaker 2:yeah, so we, we have our celebrations. It's fun we. We're in a small town, so the whole parade thing, the petting zoo, the fireworks, will be fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, enjoy it.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you Thanks.
Speaker 1:George, before you go, can I ask you a small favor? If you've enjoyed this show or any of the other episodes that you've listened to, then I'd really appreciate it if you took a couple of moments to hit subscribe. This is a great way to increase our listeners and get the word out there about all of the wonderful guests that we've had on the podcast. If you'd like to further support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash, life, health, the universe. You can find that link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.