Transformation Tuesday: Growth Mindset

On this episode of the podcast we have our Transformation Tuesday webinar.
  
This week, we talked about how to building a growth mindset and the daily actions required to create change.

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Gib. Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard here with another transformation Tuesday edition of the show. This is where we take our weekly show, transformation Tuesday. It is a webinar. You can sign up for it. You can find our Facebook group where we talk about the stuff that we're going to talk about. Transformation. Tuesday is all about getting you from the place you are to the place you want to be. It is all about helping you achieve the things that you want to achieve, whether that's better relationships, a better job, whatever that is. You can find out more about where to find us@tesh.com or you can email john@tesh.com both of those ways will get you to transformation Tuesday. But what we do every once in a while is we take the audio from our transformation Tuesday broadcast and we provide it for you as part of the podcast. So folks, without further ado, here is me and John Tesh. Oh, hello everybody. And happy transformation Tuesday, folks, we are going to talk a little bit about what it means to be willing to change, what it means to change today. First of all, I've said this before, and it is true every time we do this. It is good to see all of you guys. It is a pleasure to be here and to do the to do the background stuff, to get to get prepared for these days. It brings me. It motivates me. So I walk out of doing the prep for our transformation Tuesday, I walk out of it happier, more motivated than I was before we do this. So I hope that as a result, you guys experience the same thing that you guys feel the same way after you see these videos, after you hear what we have to say, John is, may or may not, visit us today. He is. He is working on a couple things. I think his plan is to come and jump in, but I don't know if he is. We'll say that being said, let's dive in to today's stuff. So we are going to focus today on what it means to be to change, right? So we all signed up here to do transformation Tuesday because there is an element where we would like to transform. We would like to be the best version of ourselves. We would like to see ourselves grow in a way that that makes us, gets us from the place we are, the place we want to be that makes us our best version. So what does that mean? What does it mean that we want to change? Is change possible so many people, and I've talked about this because we have resistance to change built into our system. I call it homeostasis. People will, you know, people? Some people call it regression to the mean. There are different ways of looking at it. But the the bottom line is that when we tell the world, when we tell our friends, we tell the universe that we want to change, we tell God that we want whatever, however you have you put, we tell ourselves that we want to change, so many elements jump in the way of us being able to do that, that it makes us believe that perhaps change is impossible, that perhaps we can not actually become something different from what we are right now, that we are so set in our ways and the reality is, and this is why we talk about stoicism. This is why we talk about discipline. Is destiny, that the obstacle is the way that you are, that when you find yourself blocked oftentimes, that teaches you what you have to do to unblock. That teaches you what it is that's keeping you in the same place, what's blocking you from changing, and sometimes it's your own mindset. So we have Andrew Huberman here talking about what a growth mindset means, because you hear that term bantered about, right? What is a growth mindset, actually? How do we approach it? So we're going to hear a lot from Huberman today, and then a little thing to close this out. So here's Andrew Huberman talking about what a growth mindset means. Growth Mindset, it's, again, a very misunderstood concept. It's the idea that we can change. So that's built into that growth mindset is, I believe, if a sort of a neuro, neuroscience lens on growth mindset would be that the agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning of something and when you're trying to lean into it and you can't focus is just a recognized gate. You have to pass that through that gate to get to the focus component. And then, if you can reward the. Effort process, you really start to feel joy and low levels of excitement in the effort process. That's that buffering of adrenaline. That's that feeling like, yes, I've got a lot of adrenaline my system, but I'm on the right path. It feels good to walk up this hill, so to speak. And when you start to bring that, those neural circuits together, you really start to create a whole set of circuits that are designed to be exported to any behavior you want. So this idea that you can change is as much about starting the change process as anything else. But you have to begin to the change has to be internal. And when we talk about, and we're going to talk more about this today, when we talk about the idea that the effort required to change is the change, we talk about the idea like, you know that the old adage that people roll their eyes at of which is, you know, the real adventure, the real journey was the friend. The real treasure was the friends we made along the way. The reality is that that's true. The real change is the ability and the knowledge of yourself in that ability to change. I know that that's a subtle difference, but it's really, really important. It's the effort that we put into changing ourselves that actually changes us. And I don't mean that the end result comes exactly how we envisioned it. I mean the fact that we put effort into ourselves, the fact that we begin to we begin to exercise every single day. The fact that we begin to change how we eat, I'm going to stop mid sentence, ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Let me get him in here. John is here. Leroy, here we go, folks. So it is that fact that we are willing to put in the effort to change. That is the change that we see in ourselves. That is, that is the tweak that is, that is the end goal, is the effort. And the more we can acknowledge that, the more we can acknowledge that we are investing in ourselves, and that that investment in and of itself is the process and is the goal, the better, the more outcome independent we become, and the the better focused we are, and the more we are resistant to that homeostasis, that that elasticity that pulls us back into where we were before. Here is, I know it's Andrew Huberman again, but I really like what he has to say on the topic, because he comes at it from from a perspective that I that I appreciate. Here he is talking about how effort beats outcome. I think that didn't come naturally to me. And then eventually, over time, you kind of get it, or you get you get it. So it's it, but it's still my favorite topic, because it was that friction point, right? It's the ratcheting through. And there's something I don't know that's just so intrinsically satisfying to me. I used to watch my Bulldog, Mastiff Costello, like chewing on a bone, or when he was a little on a brick, because, you know, he had a kind of a homer simpson brain about his object choice to chew on, and he bit, and he just looked like he was in just total bliss. It was like this effort combined with some intrinsic pleasure of the process. And so I think that when one is ratcheting through something that's hard, it feels so good that it's almost better than the outcome. Like it is better than the outcome, I think it is. And, you know, it's, it's fascinating, because this is why I'm always bothered by people saying, play to your strengths, right? So the point, the point is that we want to make those changes in ourselves. You were going to say something, sorry. Oh, me, yeah, I looked up actually the other day because I was, I was like, what is I was trying to deal with, with a goal. And, you know, when you get to be a certain age, excuse me, like I better. I better get busy and finish reach a couple of goals, but, but then I kept hitting the thing that we're always talking about, which is, which is, forget the goals. Goals, great, but fall in love with the process, which is exactly what you're talking about. So I found a list, which was, you should shift your focus. You move from goal oriented to process oriented, which is what Gib talking about, prioritizing daily actions over the end results. So the dog with the bone right. Find joy and routine. Learn to enjoy the repetitive, mundane or challenging aspects of your work. Falling in love with the routine is huge, especially if you're if you're doing something, if you're doing deep work, like if you're writing a book, or you're or you're teaching or anything, if you're, if you're, you're in the gym, any of that stuff. And if you love the process, you don't need to wait for a final result to feel accomplished. You find satisfaction whenever your system is running. And that's what what human is talking. Up, because if you're running the system every day, then then it's already a win. You don't have to worry about, about, about the goal. I remember before, before the big red rock show that we did, which was the biggest risk that I've ever taken in my life, financially and personally, and I came up with a system where I would, I would memorize the songs in my head, and they were instrumental songs while I was on a Stairmaster and and I did that every single day for for three months, and even when, and, oh yeah, this was right. She was in hospital at Cedar Sinai. She was so mad at me. She's like, she's like, do not, do not, do not. Be focused on on anything with the baby right now and then consistency, adaptability is actually another one. So people who are process oriented, they can pivot or adjust their methods when challenges arise without losing motivation. So you don't give up on the goal. You just, you just iterate. You change. Okay, so I injured myself, so I'll find a different way to get aerobic exercise today, for example. Yeah, exactly. So you have to have that focus on what is right in front of you, on what is the process that you can this is why, this is why I put my kids in sports. And by the way, we had so my kids, my son's baseball just started this last week. It was the first it was opening day at his little league. And normally, you know, to the kids is they come out and they they get them on their uniforms. People clap, and there's a couple of speeches from the the league leadership. And it's super boring this year. It's not boring, it's it's excitement, it's pageantry. It gets the kids motivated for the for the season. This year, they had a an astronaut who was actually the pilot for the new Artemis missions. He is the pilot for the the missions that will be going to the moon coming up, and was only able to come because there was an issue with the rocket that kept him from going to the moon this month. So he spent, you know, six continuous months on the on the space station. It was really cool. And he gave a speech about exactly this, about the importance of process, about how, about how you have to fall in love with learning forever if you would like to be successful, if you would like to if you would like to get to that place that you want to be. And it's again, it's why I put my kids in sports. It's why I love coaching baseball, because baseball is, I don't think it's boring, but it's boring, right? It is. It's a lot of sitting around, and then all of a sudden, you've got 900 decisions you have to make in a split second. You've been totally checked out, and now you have to check in. And each of the skills needs to be repeated over and over and over again, and then on game day, you've got to figure out how to put it all together. It's not because any of the kids I coach will necessarily become major league baseball players. I'm not setting them up for a career in baseball. I'm setting them up for an approach to life because sports gives us a lens through which we can see the the effort, outcome, relationship, or where you can fall in love with the process, where we can do everything right and still lose. And how do we deal with that? How do we get motivated after we did everything we were supposed to do? We listened to the coach, we got in better shape. We learned these skills. We got we show up on the day we executed the plan and missed by half an inch. It happens. How do we deal with that? How do we then get up the next morning and go, Okay, recommit to the process? Yeah, it was very cool. Watching the watching the kids. I think you mentioned to me, Gib, is that after, after the speech, the kids were sharing the quotes from the they were from, from the astronaut. Well, that's the thing. You know, kids, the boys, especially, they either will, and your daughter included, they either want to be an astronaut or a dinosaur. So there was the other thing is too. I mean, these are inner city kids. It's that you're that you're coaching basically, right, whether it's a very, very diverse baseball team. And here is an African American guy who has, who has reached the pinnacle that used to be just, just white males, you know? And here he's the pilot of of this, this program. And just giving his time, I could see the kids face like, Why did an astronaut show up in my baseball game? Yeah, this must be, this must be a big deal. Arranged this. It was the president league knew him. But yes, it was. It was incredible. It was motivating. It was great to see somebody who, again, was able to talk about the process, and he's a former Navy Test Pilot. And he's a former Navy pilot and test pilot now an astronaut, by the way. Let's just stop right there. Test Pilot is probably less risky than going to the moon. Oh yeah, he's he's escalating the risk in his life step by step. It's unbelievable. It's like, yeah, all right, you know, you start off, I'm gonna learn how to fly a plane. Now I'm gonna learn how to fly a plane and landed on a boat. Now I'm going to learn how to fly an experimental aircraft and landed on a boat. And now I'm going to fly a space shuttle into into out of the orbit of the Earth, into the moon. Unbelievable. Yes, I want to, I want to talk a little bit, and this is Huberman. Is going to talk here about the neuroscience, about how we reward effort, and this is about kids again, you know, talking about how I motivate my the baseball team that I coach. This is relevant for that. But on the other side of this, I want to talk about how we can use this information to motivate ourselves and to reward ourselves properly. The idea that everyone gets a blue ribbon, this is terrible too, because every child is rewarded regardless of how well they performed. If they're all rewarded to the same level, you actually flatten the dopamine curve. Yes, everyone might feel celebrated, but you actually are lowering motivation for the given activity. This has a whole landscape of research in back of it related to intrinsic versus extrinsic reward. Strongest motivation is always going to be intrinsic motivation. If you reward kids or adults for something too many times, even if they like that activity, the propensity to do that activity will be reduced. But if you reward without effort or without success, arrives without prior effort destroys people. Is why hard work followed by reward great that is powerfully positive. I mean, that just arrives because you say, Oh, you're here, so you get reward, terrible. And this is why rewarding every little positive thing that a child does, you know, their favorite thing eventually diminishes the value of that thing and diminishes their ability to get motivated on their own. Yeah, right, yes, this is, this is the baby boomers battlecry. Is it? What participation trophy? Are you out of your mind? What is that? What drives me crazy about boomers getting annoyed about that is boomers are the ones who did participation trophies. Millennials and Gen X. We didn't set the system up. We were just kids in the system. The Boomers were the ones were like, everybody gets a trophy. We didn't say that when we are dealing with we didn't get participation trophies so and we didn't have helicopters, so we fired up the helicopters and the trophy I got you just saying we didn't. It wasn't our choice. We are the ones who are undoing it. We are those like as a parent now we try to find ways to motivate. Look, this is the putting aside the idea of the concept of participation trophies, and why, why people find that frustrating. What What I like about this? And this is, you know, again, I have a player of the game when I'm when I'm coaching, and my this week, my son pitched really well, and he was, I think, a little bit annoyed that he didn't get part of the game. But the guy that did was like he had caught three innings and hit a home run. And so we anyway, the point being, by pointing out the standout. We actually, we keep that extrinsic motivation appropriate, right? But what we have to build in kids, and then I'm going to transition to ourselves, is that intrinsic motivation, right? If the external reward is all that we are doing it for. Eventually that dopamine hit loses its ability. It loses its power. Video games are really, really good at figuring this out. So when you first start playing a video game, you get accomplishment after accomplishment after accomplishment really quickly, like level one, you're like, oh, brand new. This brand new that the dopamine hits come and all reward you get the little shield. They figured this out because they want to keep you playing the game as long as possible. And then the next level, you get a bunch of rewards, but they're a little bit harder to get, and by the time you are an expert at the game, rewards are incredibly difficult, but you're already invested in the process. You already understand the mechanics of the game, sunk cost fallacy, all this stuff starts to come into into play, where you are working towards those goals and you can't help yourself. That is what we want to create in ourselves. So when you are trying. Let's, let's take gym. And I love because we've been working in we've been working in sports today. Let's so let's get going to the gym. If you sign yourself up to go to the gym, you sign up for a new gym membership. There is a certain they give you free stuff, usually when you sign up, great. That's the the initial extrinsic reward, the. First few times you go buy yourself a smoothie or a treat after you're done working out right, create those extrinsic rewards so that you begin to associate going to the gym with the dopamine, and then parse it out more so, meaning when you go to the gym, you don't get a smoothie. Every time you get a smoothie, if you hit a PR on the bench press right, you bench press more weight than you've ever done in the past, whatever those things are. But you need to use what video game, what Andrew Huberman is talking about there, and what video game designers already do, and build that slow, that slow spacing of extrinsic reward to and then eventually becomes a habit, and the intrinsic reward is enough. Yeah, that's really good. It's really, you know, and it's, it's also that the what, what I see people in the gym all the time. I used to be this person where they go to the, go to gym, they sit on the lake machine. Because I'm always trying to get on the lake machine. Don't give up this. They sit on there. And they do, like, a couple of extra a couple of leg lifts, and then they're on their phone for like, another 15 minutes. I'm like, Hey, can I work in? Oh, yeah. And, and, you know, I used to do the same thing without the phone, where I would do the same exercise at the same way all the time. And then all of a sudden, you read the data about progressive overload and that which is the only way to grow to stress your body, but progressive overload can also be applied to our brains, right? I just I discovered, well, not just because we were on a hike one time and Gib almost had to carry me, I've discovered progressively that my balance has gotten terrible. I mean, terrible to the point where we were at a basketball game and I was trying to walk down, like, really, like, straight downhill, the steps to go see Gib and his family. And there was a place where there wasn't a handrail, and I was I panicked. My heart rate went crazy. I used to be an athlete. What the hell is this? You know, it turned out that that if you don't take care of as you get older, if you don't, if you don't, continue to stress your body in all areas, your brain, whatever. So now I'm doing the same exercises that we talked to you guys about, where, you know, I'm not just lifting one leg and putting it down. I was like, but it's, it's, you know, it's things like, I mean, I'm taking a Tai Chi course on YouTube, you know, all of it, just trying, trying to, trying to be balanced on either side of my of my body, and I can really feel it. I'll tell you what, Gib, I the exercises that I'm, that I'm doing. We could probably go over this on Thursday. But these simple exercises. I don't even need coffee. I mean, it's, it's amazing what it does to my brain. And, you know, one of the million was true. You're just waiting and on, waiting one leg back and forth, you know, that kind of thing. And you just really feel it in your brain. So that's, you know, and, and then I went to get a blood test, right? And I went, because it was a routine blood test, and there was a guy, and he was on, he was bent completely over, and he was on a walker right, and he looked like he was about to fall, and his wife was behind him, and she dropped a tissue, and she went, bent down to get the tissue, and I and I jumped and grabbed the tissue for her, because she was going to fall over, right? So I'm thinking, I don't want to be a pile up, right? And so my whole thing was okay, so progressive overload, and making sure that that yeah, in my my reward was, I did. I got a smoothie after, after doing all that, yeah, yes, so look, but what you're also talking about there, right? Is that as you do these exercises, your brain begins to attach itself to the feeling of accomplishment, and then that, in and of itself, becomes the intrinsic motivation, right? So we start by giving ourselves these extrinsic motivators. And you want to, you want to, you want to make them very frequent. And then, as you begin to form the habit, as you begin to get to the point where you're you're falling in love with the process, process, you want to expand the amount of time and the amount of accomplishment between the ways that you reward yourself. So again, staying with gym. A lot of people will do this thing where, when they have been going to the gym for a while, and their motivation starts to wane, you'll see this people online, they'll buy themselves new gym clothes as an extrinsic motivator to maintain that. And then that becomes right, why not? And then they and then you intrinst. And then that comes back to getting back to the gym. The dopamine starts to kick in, and the intrinsic motivation kicks in. And you, you stay with that process. So you need to reward yourselves, according to the neuroscience that that Huberman just out. Mind now, so also enclosed cognition too. Yes, 100% Yeah, it's why we're better in meetings. It's better why we're better in performances, if we have a suit on or pretty clothing. Here is a here's a clip that we've seen before. It is, again, it's Andrew Huberman, but he's talking to Rick Rubin. And the reason why I'm playing this is because I really want you guys. I've got two clips that are to end this show today with that that have, well, Rick Rubin is great, but the last one is, is a you'll say, but I'm replaying this because I want you guys to internalize this idea of change and how we are, how we approach the transformation that we are seeking every Tuesday, how we approach our goals. Rick Rubin is, is basically the king of music vibes like he just sits in the room and tells you if it's good or not. That's that's his whole thing. But here he is talking about how the work is more important than the outcome itself. How does one convince themselves that what they're doing and working on is worth it? Question of worth it is reliant on an outcome. We don't make these things for an outcome. It's, it's, it's not the mindset to make something great the outcome happens you're making the best thing you can make. It's a devotional practice. Whatever happens after that happens, and that part that happens after it is completely out of your control. Putting any energy into that part that's out of your control, it's a waste of time. All it is, all it does is undermine your work. Your work is to make the best thing you can so any thought you have about outcome undermines the whole thing. And I'll say, It's okay to think about outcome after you finished thing you're making, once you've made it, then you can say, What can I do to turn people on to this? But in the making of it, it's premature, right? Let me tell you. Let me tell you a quick story. So 3536 years ago, maybe, maybe almost close to 40 years ago, I released a record called Tour de France on private music, a label that's no longer that no longer exists. It was like 10 Songs, and there was a song called Bordeaux on there, and it was sort of a dreamy trance like thing the song, and it was, it was written for when the writers were riding up into the clouds of the Pyrenees mountains, and I've never played it live. Didn't even think about it. So Gib, you don't even know this. Two days ago, we get a call from a documentary group who says, hey, we'd like to license Bordeaux for this documentary. Nice on Matthew Perry from friends, the one of the members of the friends cast, right, who had a horrible problem passed away. I mean, you know, I'm just telling everybody else from with, with, you know, drug, drug problems and, and actually, I have to know why. So I, you know, I asked, and they and they finally, they told me it was because this was when he was, like, like, destroyed, depressed, or whatever. This was the song that he listened to. Now, wow, I know, I know so, and there were so many publishing problems with it, because now universe, Sony Music now owns the thing, and I don't have control over it, over licensing it anyway. They're hiring another guy to play it. They're going to read, they're going to recreate the song. That's how much they want it. But the point is to Ruben's thing, you just don't know, right? What's going to happen, right? And it's, it goes all the way back to the astronaut, or I watched you coach Griffin and another kid, after like, two terrible eras on on Saturday, Griffin's dad was watching you coach too, and the stuff that you were saying or thinking, you know, it's, they're gonna remember this their their whole life. They will, though, they'll, they'll use it. So you just, you never know if you really can, like Ruben says, If you really concentrate on the on the outcome. You're just not going to be very happy. 100% 100% again. Why I love baseball is because it's a game of failure. The best, the best hitters in the world, strike out 65 to 70% of the time, or they at least get out 65 to 70% of the time. That's the best of the best. If you don't fall in love with the process and you are completely engaged with outcome, you will never, you will never be able to enjoy baseball. You have to become process oriented. You have to know that I'm doing everything right. I hit the ball hard if I get out. It happens. 65 to 70% of the time the best hitters in the world are done. I mean, the last person to get to, not to get out, only 60% of the time, was Ted Williams, right? And he was the last 400 hitter baseball head. So it again, why I love baseball is for that exact reason you have to fall in love with the process. We are guys. Well, I think I still have a Ted Williams bat that I got from Sierra. Dollars worth, a pretty penny. Now, as we wrap up, I'm gonna play I'm gonna play a video that was in my search for stuff today that this came up. I don't know who this person is. I don't care. He does not sound smart. That's not the point. The point is, the reason why I picked it is because whether he's smart or not, he is saying every single thing that we've been telling you guys to do, the small habits that you want to introduce. And this is, this is a recapitulation video that I want to leave you with today about everything that I've been saying, everything that we've been saying about what you need to do to make your life better right away. And here it is again, all of the checkpoints. Listen to this guy. It's absolutely insane that if you sat in silence for 10 minutes every day with no stimulation, and then you stop using words poorly against yourself, and stop judging everyone, including yourself, and then you wrote five things that you're grateful for every single morning after you woke up before touching your phone, and then you, like, walked outside for like 30 minutes every day, just got some fresh sun, fresh air, and then, like, read one page in a book and just filled your mind with positivity and new perspectives. Your life would immediately get better, literally after the first day. And if you did that for 30 days straight, anxiety gone, at least more manageable by far. Depression, non existent. Happiness level skyrocket. Yeah, there you go. There's Leroy. Also remember, you need to, you need to, you need to stretch out from leash. You need to break the bonds. Since, since we've been doing this, Leroy has been stretching so because I didn't want the kyries together, so hard against this, against this, this leash that he pulled it off of himself, and his collar came off and he took off. That's really, that's, that's the metaphor that we need for life, right? We have to break the bonds that bind us, right? Yes, oh, big stretch. All right. So we are out of time today. But remember, work on those things. Fall in love with the process. Get quiet for 10 minutes. Be grateful. Get outside. Connect with people, put down your phone. Go for a walk. All of those things. Be like, be like, Leroy, push on your leash. Head off the leash. All right, we will see you guys next week, and we'll be a little bit more practical next week and a little bit less focused on the process. That's it for the show today. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate comment and subscribe on Apple podcast. Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. It helps us out a lot. When you do that, we also try to respond to every mention the show, every DM about the show. You can tell us what you think about it, because ultimately, we do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening. You.