From Surviving to Thriving with Yush Sztalkoper | EP005

What happens when the journey to help your child flourish reveals that you've been surviving—not thriving—your whole life?

Yush Sztalkoper spent 20 years masking in high-pressure corporate environments before her son's twice-exceptional diagnosis held up a mirror she couldn't ignore. That recognition became the foundation for everything she's building now.

Today, Yush is the founder of NeuroSpark+, a strategic advisory helping leaders understand what she calls "human capacity under acceleration"—the invisible strain that shows up in neurodivergent people first, but eventually breaks everyone.

In this conversation, we explore:

- The "mirror moment" when parenting reveals your own neurodivergence
- Why environments—not people—are often the problem
- The SHIFT Path framework for moving from surviving to thriving
- Why 70% of AI adoption fails (hint: it's a human capacity problem)
- The Horizon Trap and why we keep deferring happiness
- What flourishing actually means when you stop performing for broken systems

This one goes deep. Yush doesn't hold back—and the result is one of the most honest conversations we've had on this show.

🔗 Connect with Yush:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yushsztalkoper

🔗 Your Flourishing Partner is ready when you are:
Start free at baryons.com

Host: Brooks Canavesi, Chief Product Officer @ Baryons
---

What does living well mean to you? That's The New F Word.

Baryons is your Flourishing Partner. You call, it listens, and together you design what's next. Science-backed. Patent Pending. Start for free with your Baryon today at Baryons.com 

Transcript

Brooks Canavesi (00:05.056)
Hello everyone and welcome to the new F Word podcast where we explore what it actually means to live well through authentic stories and honest conversations. I am your host Brooks Cannavesi and I'm honored to be joined by our guest today, Juche Stahlkoper, founder of NeuroSpark Plus, where she works at the intersection of neurodiversity, human system design and capacity in an accelerating world.

Her perspective is grounded in neurodivergent informed lived experience in two decades in the global events industry, where she began to see how conditions shape what people can access in themselves. Now she writes and speaks about invisible patterns that either constrain or restore human capacity, helping to surface what environments are doing so that access can return. Welcome to the pod, Yush.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:01.102)
Thank you so much for having me, Brooks.

Brooks Canavesi (01:04.052)
Yeah. So, I thought just kind of getting started here before we get into anything else would love to kind of talk about how you're actually arriving to this conversation today. before we did our pre-call before this actual conversation, I was coming back from Costa Rica, did a whole week there with my family. My son was working at a surf camp for three weeks as an intern, had an unbelievable experience. was just a great, like nervous system reset for us. And,

you were about to embark on a trip with your family to Japan, and I think you recently came back. So can you just tell us a little bit about how you're arriving to this conversation today after that trip?

Yush Sztalkoper (01:45.772)
Yes, no, Costa Rica trip sounds amazing and I think we all kind of need those types of trips, right? Just to reset and ground our nervous system. So my trip, you know, in theory was a little bit different. It was to Japan. We visited Tokyo and Kyoto and my two boys who are five and nine and our family. It was an incredible trip, but

We knew that there were a lot of things that we needed to prepare for. And this is how I travel with my boys because they're neurodivergent. I'm neurodivergent. We ensure that we have accommodations in place to, you know.

to make sure that our experience is as successful and enjoyable as possible. Japan really surprised me because it actually did more grounding for our nervous system than we expected. We chose Japan intentionally because of how well designed and organized and orderly and all these things that you hear about Japan. And Tokyo is the second largest city in the world, so.

you would think it would be very chaotic, but it just was incredibly well designed. And I think what Japan has figured out is really how to design for human nervous systems. The way that things are predictable, the orderly, the quiet, the cleanliness, the heated toilet seats, you know, we're there in the winter. And it was just, you start to...

to create this contrast in what your day-to-day life in reality is compared to your experience there. And it was very insightful to kind of understand what actually helped calm our nervous system being in a foreign country and what we would like to bring back with us and what we would like to change about our lifestyle here. And it's just incredible when you experience something where

Yush Sztalkoper (03:48.342)
A city is designed for your nervous system. That how much capacity you get back to be able to explore, to be able to learn, to be able to engage and connect, right? And so it freed up a lot of capacity for us to be able to enjoy Japan in a way that I...

didn't really expect. It was hard. It's always hard traveling with two kids for two weeks in the winter. We got definitely got the stomach bug while we were overseas. Fortunately, I'm quite prepared and had all the things we needed. But it's the reality. And I think travel just does something for us, especially neurodivergent individuals in a way that I think not traveling, know, really, really.

can't afford to can't afford us. So it's right now I'm very cold. And as you know, we've just had a blizzard. Fortunately, we returned in time, so we weren't stuck anywhere because after two weeks, we were ready to come home. And I think that's also the other part of traveling. It makes you grateful for the things that you do have, right? The routine, your friends and your connections and and stability and predictability. So it was a wonderful trip.

Brooks Canavesi (04:46.805)
Hmm.

Yush Sztalkoper (05:02.306)
but we were happy to be back.

Brooks Canavesi (05:04.916)
Yeah, I love hearing the artifacts that you bring back with you and the grateful and gratitude, sense of gratitude that you have. you're coming back to something you miss, know, some of that normalcy of your life and your home and your community and what you have going on. But you're bringing some artifacts back of like, we want to integrate this now into our space, our environment, our world. And I find that same thing for my family as well as

We're always bringing little pieces back with us and saying, do we shape our lives here in our community to integrate some of these either practices, beliefs, or maybe it's just an eating practice or a dietary type of thing. We're eating more mangoes now since we've been back from Costa Rica. They're not the same, let me tell you that, in Pennsylvania. But it's funny that you start to bring some of those things back and I think that's really awesome.

Yush Sztalkoper (05:55.541)
I know.

Brooks Canavesi (06:02.09)
And I've heard this city design from Abu Dhabi and Singapore as well, that people that have traveled to those environments have a very dear friend that goes to Singapore often, and she just raves about the cleanliness and the design and just how efficient it is. So I love hearing that, that's amazing. Thank you so much.

Yush Sztalkoper (06:24.984)
Yeah, thank you. I think the thing that you touched on, when these cities are designed,

for a sensory system when you're talking about what you see, what you smell, what you hear. My children noticed those things too. When they came back, those were some of the things that they highlighted. It was so quiet. It was so clean. I didn't even notice. I didn't smell the toilets. Just these things. And I think children are such a...

They're like the most accurate reporters. They tell you exactly how they feel things and they're not, you know, it's almost in its raw form. And so it was really, there definitely was this sort of takeaway from all of us in how safe our nervous systems and our sensory system felt there. So.

I think there's probably some commonalities there. I haven't been to Abu Dhabi, but can definitely speak to that for Singapore as well. I guess we have to go to Abu Dhabi next. Yeah.

Brooks Canavesi (07:24.618)
Amazing. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. As you've been working through this type of work that you're working on now and coming from the professional background that you've come from, and having children, and I've had this experience and you just mentioned it, where...

seeing through their eyes and you know, there's no racism, there's no judgment. Everything is beautiful when they're born, like, and all the way up through like certain ages. It's not until the world starts to imprint on them that some of these judgments and biases start to come into play. And that's why you hear like seeing through a child's eyes and having that. Can you talk a little bit about that experience like when you're traveling with them, but then also what having your children has meant to you?

and your perspective shift kind of looking back at your life.

Yush Sztalkoper (08:18.838)
Yes, thank you for that question because that actually really was a turning point for me in my life. My older son is neurodivergent, he's twice exceptional, and that means he's gifted with a co-occurring learning difference. life for him looks very differently than what, as parents, you predict.

how parenting is going to feel like or what your children are going to be like, no one prepares you for how different they actually are. And my son was different to the nth degree, right? I was noticing different behavioral struggles. I was noticing how he showed up differently. I was noticing a lot of these things that were struggles for him as well. And that really just changed how I had to see him differently and...

The reality is as a parent when your child is struggling in any way

when there are challenges that they face, all you want to do is remove those barriers and challenges and want to ensure that they're happy and they're safe and they're thriving and flourishing. so, you know, now that I'm looking back, I can name a lot of the patterns and the signals that we were seeing, but at the time I didn't. And so it's worth visiting because this happened five years ago when we

and really started because the conditions in our lives changed. It wasn't so much that we changed and you mentioned we moved from California to New England and it was just a monumental shift, one that was much bigger than we expected that landed in our nervous system. I talked about these sensory things and I talked about our nervous system and our...

Yush Sztalkoper (10:11.788)
biology and all these things. And we realized that when we moved from California to New England, the conditions like, you know, access to healthy foods and being outdoors all the time, being in sunshine, getting vitamin D like 24 or seven, and actually sense of belonging, being in communities where we felt like we could be ourselves. All these things shifted and I couldn't name them at the time, but it was enough.

big enough of a shift that we all felt it. And we were all different in our different ways struggling. My son most prominently. And, you know, if you spend five minutes, not even with my son, you will see how brilliant he is, how gifted he is and how incredible he is.

And we always saw that part of him, but we couldn't understand why he was struggling in ways that felt like it was going against his abilities. Like, why can't you sit still? Why can't you pay attention? Why can't you behave? Why can't you, you know, do all these things? And it was just really confusing as a parent. And it was scary because I knew he wasn't like everybody else. And

It was scary because I didn't at the time have the skills nor the tools to support him nor to even understand him. And so as a parent, I just really needed to figure out how to how do I support him in whatever way that he needs me. But in order to do that, I need to understand what's going on first. And so, you know, that kind of took us down this path of.

Trying to understand a child in the deepest way you possibly can to figure out how you can support him. And I think as parents, I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't have done the same things that I've done.

Brooks Canavesi (12:11.638)
When you started down that journey, and we've had similar experience, my wife, my son, I think I told you in a previous conversation, had pandas and no one knew what that was. And it was through, I think, taking antibiotics so much, it stripped so much bacteria and it actually gave him this reaction to where it was psychologically affecting him, right? And no one knew what was going on. So my wife, like you,

And us like dug deep into research and talking to holistic doctors and other doctors and in trying to figure out what was going on. Now it's a much more recognized type of symptom or syndrome or that type of disease. But back then, like this was, he's 18, 19 now, this is when he was very young. So we're talking over a decade ago. It was not talked about, it wasn't widely known.

you'd show up with your WebMD kind of research and they'd all kind of laugh you out of the building. Can you talk about that in understanding like, know, because we always think that, you know, is it our children are just overreacting to something? they just being difficult? My middle son had a sensory issue with clothes and he just wouldn't wear certain things and he would lose his mind about just getting dressed and we were like, what is going on?

Yush Sztalkoper (13:15.726)
Yeah.

Brooks Canavesi (13:40.053)
but it was way more than just what we thought, because our first son would wear whatever we put on his bed, he'd just get into it and off he'd go. And it's just different. And trying to step back from why is this happening or what's wrong with them to what is deeper and what is the environment saying? How do we adjust? How do we start to remove things to understand like, you know.

Just like when you're restricting your diet, if you're having an allergic reaction to something, it's like you start doing a restricted diet and then reintroducing things slowly. It sounds like you had some experience with this and how you started to work with your son to understand. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yush Sztalkoper (14:25.068)
Yes, very similar stories and you know, my son, the challenges that we were seeing, I knew there was something deeper going on because what everybody else saw was surface level behavioral issues, right? Not paying attention, disrespectful.

Similar to your son, had sensory issues where he couldn't put on socks. And so that meant we couldn't get out the door every day. And it was epic meltdowns, Brooks.

I mean, you know, there was, will vividly recall there was this, it was, you know, summertime and he was signed up to play soccer and he had to put on soccer socks, which are like polyester. You have to pull it up to your knees. And it, for a child who has sensory challenges, it is literally torture. And, you know,

But for somebody who doesn't have sensory challenges, I couldn't understand why is it so hard to put on socks? Are you just choosing not to, or is this something really going on? And with both of us literally crying and screaming on the floor, and just, I didn't know what else to do. I just felt so lost. But I also felt so incapable of helping him.

And so that took me on this journey of trying to figure out what's going on, because I knew there was something else going on. So we started addressing everything layer by layer.

Yush Sztalkoper (15:55.82)
for whatever he was, whatever the biggest strain was, which for us was sensory issues, we addressed that first. Occupational therapy is a game changer, life changer for sensory issues. And so we started going to OT multiple times a week, like pretty extreme in the beginning. And it made a big difference. And then every time I addressed something and it improved, something else surfaced. And so, you know, we work with natural paths as well because

as you can imagine, a lot of the medical practices, they just tell you to medicate. They just tell you that this is what you need to address on the surface level. And I knew that we needed to go deeper. So I worked with naturopaths. She's very familiar with pandas. And so we started to uncover these underlying health challenges that were actually due to his diet changes. And so when we were in California, I talked about the conditions

When we were in California, he ate a diet that actually was suitable for his biology and physiology and his body's ability to break down, you know. It was all whole foods, right? Just eating healthy. And that diet changed significantly when we moved here because I had a younger son at that point who was only three months old and so I wasn't able to prepare whole meals for him.

He just wasn't getting, and we didn't have access to, in California, I think we were picking fresh fruits off of trees every season. And we weren't doing that here in New England. And so there were a lot of these things that I started to notice that had changed. And this naturopath helped us do these tests to uncover what was going on. And it turned out genetically, he has a mutation that doesn't allow his body to detox.

Brooks Canavesi (17:33.279)
Right.

Yush Sztalkoper (17:53.708)
toxins, chemicals, whatever that was going into his body knowingly or unknowingly his body was holding onto. And what happens when that happens is it creates inflammation. there were some neurotoxic inflammation that was creating a lot of challenges. And so it was almost like the conditions around him were exacerbating some of the challenges that, know,

neurologically is who he is and how his system is built. And so we worked with every specialist across every single discipline. I don't think there's a specialist that we didn't consult or spoke to, but every single one of them had a piece of the puzzle.

this is what's going on. You know, the neuroscientists, the psychologists, the naturopath, the therapist, the OT, and they were all right. But I actually had to be the one to integrate all of this, to kind of paint this whole picture. What is going on with my whole child that helps explain what's going on? And so it took this whole journey to get there, right? Because we needed to peel back these layers in order to understand what we needed to address.

you know, that's kind of, it was a lot of work that went into it. And this is almost now five years.

And he's still growing, there's still more layers I'm sure we're going to be peeling back as he develops. And as parents, you just become the researcher, you become the expert, you become whatever it is that your child needs you to. But the ability to integrate and synthesize what I was learning from all of these specialists was this new intelligence that had to emerge for me so that I can make sense of what was going on and so that I could implement and

Yush Sztalkoper (19:49.204)
integrate all these changes in our, I mean, you as a parent who have shared similar journey, you know the changes that we had to make. It wasn't just lifestyle, it was everything. was the way we parented, it was how we communicated with him, it was how we supported his sense of self and what he believed in himself and how he, like just seeing differently. Around, I would say about a year and a half into our journey pretty early on, something did happen.

that completely enabled me to be able to even navigate this journey. And I went through this coaching program that helped me understand the relationship between our mental capacity.

and mental patterns in our capacity. How do we think, whether negatively or positively, how do we see a situation? How do we process the information and make sense of it? It completely shifted how I thought. So, you know, pretty early on, I was...

shaped kind of my experience of how I was supporting my son was shaped by all the negativity. What was wrong with him? What was struggling with what people were saying to me? I mean, he didn't have friends. was social rejection. School, he was misunderstood. And as an individual, he was mislabeled as being the, you know, the bad kid. And all these things just

made me realize that I needed to shift the way that I was seeing all of it. And I always knew that he had, he was brilliant, right? I always knew that underneath everything, he was this incredible child, highly sensitive, highly attuned, gifted, is incredible in so many ways, but.

Yush Sztalkoper (21:50.594)
think I met an expert around this time too where she said it didn't matter how intelligent he was if his nervous system is dysregulated because that's what is going to make people misunderstand him and that is what is going to overshadow all of his gifts. And that made me realize I needed to see him differently and think differently about.

who he is so that I can help him reach his potential, right? I needed to remove all these barriers for him. And so this coaching program helped me kind of give me the tools that I needed to shift the way I was thinking about him. And that mindset shift did everything because I became curious. I became, you know, innovative. I started exploring things I otherwise wouldn't have. I started to trust myself and...

Seeing him differently, you know, just really changed everything because then I started focusing on how do I remove these barriers instead of trying to fix something, right? Because humans aren't meant to be fixed. None of us are broken. We just have these conditions that we need to reshape and redesign around us.

Brooks Canavesi (23:05.749)
So instead of trying to re-educate, you were creating an environment in which he could thrive in and develop gracefully within that environment versus coming at him with, hey, we're gonna set up all these new routines and you're gonna do it this way and I'm gonna re-educate you into how this is going to work and it's gonna be great. like.

You can see this in corporate world as well, and I know that's part of what we'll get to and what you're working on now with corporations is just accelerating people, giving them tools and saying like, go get it and being enthusiastic about it does not create an environment for thriving where we're going to see workplaces flourish. And we're seeing this more than ever in this age of AI. So yeah, can you talk a little bit about the...

environment and like how creating an environment can help people thrive where it's not about fixing, it's about altering the environment, the conditions, I think is how you talk about it to help with the capacity.

Yush Sztalkoper (24:15.256)
That's a great question because it allows me to share the patterns that I notice across all human systems. The way that I was supporting my son, none of the improvements and the pathway to flourishing, thriving would have been possible if we didn't stabilize first. My son was showing me through the struggles that he was facing, through the friction, through the strain, these signals.

What was wrong? My son is my biggest teacher. He actually guided me throughout this whole journey All I had to do was listen and see clearly what he was trying to signal to me You know the behavioral challenges the inattentiveness the all these things they were just signals that hey, this is what's going on This is how I'm wired and this is what I'm trying to communicate to you My environment doesn't match what I need to thrive and so similar for organizations, right? I'm sure

Most people and I experienced this myself About a year and a half ago and you know I'm just gonna backtrack a little bit because my son's journey actually served as a mirror I started to see myself in everything that he was experiencing and I realized my gosh, I struggle with this I I

can't sit still, my brain's all over the place, wait a second. And you won't be surprised, I also have ADHD. And I only discovered that about almost two years ago, only because of what I was seeing in my son. also twice exceptional like my son. And having these gifts that I...

overused and the reality is a lot of us have strengths, all of us have strengths. The difference between having those strengths and overusing them is what actually leads to masking and burnout. And so in our organizations we're seeing a lot of this, we're hearing about it, right, because it is so prevalent.

Yush Sztalkoper (26:18.732)
that burnout and the masking and all these things should be signals. Leaders should be noticing what is that signaling to me? What is that telling me? And change is not possible if we don't stabilize first. So with AI, obviously a lot of organizations are adopting AI and they're doing it urgently and quickly. How are we stabilizing our humans before we ask them to integrate?

new programs, new technology, new platforms, and new ways of working. We're not. And that's why 70 % of AI adoption has stalled or failed or hasn't met expectations.

To me, it's the human system and the stabilization of supporting these humans. Do humans have the capacity to take on this change, to integrate this change, and for it to be sustainable? The 30%, I have a feeling, it's because it might be short-term success. Or it might be because they've considered, how do we support our humans to ensure that they have the capacity?

to integrate this change and adopt these new technology and tools. And so, you know, and I learned all this through my son. And what I also realized was that the system, when it comes to humans, it's fractal. What happens in one nervous system actually ripples out to families, then to teams, then to organizations, then to whole ecosystems.

And because at the end of the day, we all have something in common as humans. all, you know, we all have a nervous system and so much of that shapes our ability to perform, our ability to connect, our ability to, you know, function. And so when you start to see this different way, you know, this, because at some point I realized this wasn't just about parenting.

Yush Sztalkoper (28:30.68)
This was about humans, wherever we exist. And the experience that I've navigated in the past five years, this urgency, A mother's love and need to help support her son is something that we're, think, all now.

experiencing that acceleration, right? The pace of life has changed. I think the one thing that AI can guarantee now for us is constant change, constant uncertainty, and constant acceleration. And so if we are operating in a system that doesn't allow us to just be foundationally human, it's asking so much more of us. How do we stabilize humans first?

so that we can end up leading in the future and not relying on humans, I mean, sorry, on machines. And so, you know, that's kind of why I realized that everything that I've learned in my journey, it can't just be about my family. There's this intelligence that I feel like other people now can benefit from. And the reality is you can apply that across every human system.

Right? So that's why this isn't just a parenting conversation. This is just a perspective to help you understand humans on a much deeper level. My son's neurodivergent. I'm neurodivergent. And what I've noticed about our systems is that we're more sensitive to strain. We're the ones that notice the strain first. These signals, it's like an early warning sign.

Something is not right. How do we address it? I spent five years doing it layer by layer and what I realized is I want to help other people not have to go through the pain and the struggle and the uncertainty and the confusion and the loneliness Because this was a lonely path as parents, know You kind of have to figure this out on your own because it's your child And so that's kind of you know, that's kind of where I am and and I think it's it's very relevant for what we're all facing today

Brooks Canavesi (30:41.952)
Yeah, and there's some stigma around going to your community about something like this. So it can be a very lonely path. And as you're talking about the corporate environment and neurodivergent, I look at my team and who I work with, and I think we would all qualify as having spiky profiles or being neuro spicy. When we think about the workforce today,

Yush Sztalkoper (30:42.262)
Okay.

Brooks Canavesi (31:09.161)
So a manager working at a large enterprise and you came from one of the largest consultancies at Gartner. What percentages you've done this research into the space? How much different is the thought process that everyone's normal that's working here versus having some neurodivergent aspect of them? What's the gap in reality for them of like.

Is it 40 % of the workforce has some kind of neurodivergence or like what's that number that people would be a little bit shocked by maybe that, you I know, you know, 20 years ago, people just were not having this conversation.

Yush Sztalkoper (31:47.158)
Yeah, yeah, the stigma is a huge part of it. pretty early on in this journey, I, you know, a lot of my work has continued to go upstream because I similar to how I was navigating solving problems and challenges for my son was how I realized, OK, this is how I can help people. started with how can I help my neurodivergent community, people who don't have a voice like I do? Because early on, I started sharing my story, even though it was.

you know, uncomfortable, even though it felt like it wasn't safe, psychologically safe to share my story because it revealed that we were different. But I realized that that was powerful because every time I shared my story, it made a huge impact. Someone would say, wow, you gave me...

understanding that I've never had. You gave me language. And what I realized is when I speak about my story and share it, I give people permission to start to see themselves in this journey and to start to recognize these things, right? These signals, all of us have them if we choose to see them. And so I started talking about twice exceptionality because 2E is quite

unique. is 30 years ago they discovered this term. I mentioned earlier it's people who are gifted or have and giftedness I think is also misunderstood. A lot of people think it's STEM, know, math, science.

You could be gifted in anything where your ability in that area is higher than your peers. And so it could be art, could be music, it could be literally social giftedness. There are all kinds of giftedness. And so when we start to understand that, we start to...

Yush Sztalkoper (33:38.006)
understand ourselves differently. And so it's giftedness alongside challenges like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and those are just neuro types. It's just how our brains wired. And so when you start to understand these things, you actually start to see, wow, I think there are a lot more 2E people in the workforce than we would expect. And so most of what we understand about neurodivergence is ADHD, dyslexia,

autism and dysgraphia and all these other neuro types and there's a negative connotation. Something's wrong with you. Something's different about you. You're not normal. And normal is a construct of society, Neuro-typical is a word that was created to address, to describe everybody who didn't, wasn't neurodivergent. And so these are just societal constructs. And so how do we...

determine what's normal. And so in the environments I worked in, it's funny because I wrote an article, I want to say like maybe six months ago, where I actually started to label industries with neurotypes. So I come from the events industry. And what I noticed is, you know, because once I got diagnosed with ADHD, I started to really research and understand what does that mean? What does it look like? How does it show up? And

Events industry has ADHD. Yeah, because we are. It is this is what makes us so amazing and this is why I knew I don't know if you know this, but events is the one of the top five most stressful professions ever. Like behind firefighters and and you know, doctor. Yeah, exactly. People who are like saving lives and whatnot.

Brooks Canavesi (35:08.081)
in general, right? Yeah, that's a superpower there.

Brooks Canavesi (35:27.357)
air traffic controllers and yeah.

Yush Sztalkoper (35:33.11)
The reason why it's stressful is because we operate in the most condensed, compressed time, intensity, you know, perfection and everything, right? It's all of this compressed into one and you have to be able to show up to survive in the system. And so.

Brooks Canavesi (35:47.541)
sleep deprivation, high energy.

Yush Sztalkoper (35:58.048)
And it's also very high reward because when you see your event.

coming together and you see all these people benefiting from all your tireless work, it's instant gratification. And then it makes it worth it. And what do we know about ADHD? It's all dopamine driven. And so it's one of the biggest industries that deliver this constant, constant hits of dopamine. And so we do it again and again, and we push ourselves beyond our limits. And this is what I earlier mentioned, the strengths in overdrive. Everyone has strengths and it's okay to have those

strengths. Like one of my strengths was adaptability. I never realized until I started parenting my son and now I've been on this journey that that adaptability was a strength that I overused. I overused it to a point where I was masking because I had to just keep showing up in every space as if I was thriving and it wasn't sustainable. And so when you start to understand yourself, you start to see it in others.

And so in my industry, I'm like, I think a lot of people have ADHD just like me. And it's not a coincidence. We are attracted to this profession because it matches our wiring. It matches the way that we operate and the way we function. But that doesn't mean that it's good for us. Not if we don't know how to set boundaries, not if we don't know how to listen to the signals. And so...

You you ask for data and statistics, and I will tell you, only 20 to 25 % of people are diagnosed, labeled, whatever, as neurodivergent. These are statistical data that is out there in every source. I would 100 % disagree with it.

Yush Sztalkoper (37:49.014)
knowing what I know, knowing what I see, the patterns that I recognize, right? Like the people that I work with and I'm like, I can tell you in technology and engineering and finance and law and events.

probably a significantly higher percentage of neurodivergent wiring. We are attracted to these professions because it requires precision, it requires pattern spotting, it requires intensity, it requires the ability to hyper-focus, it requires all these skills and strengths that we have as neurodivergent individuals. And so pretty early on, I started talking about neurodiversity and neurodivergence as strengths. How do we remove the stigma around being

different is by talking about actually what our strengths are and what makes us incredible and amazing and so that has carried through to all of my work and and it's also about seeing differently right if you choose to see a neurodivergent individual for his struggles or challenges and

the things that they can't do, you miss these incredible abilities that maybe are being masked or that they're not allowed to emerge because we are forcing people into these boxes. So there's this prediction by one of the consulting organizations that predicted Gen Alpha, which is my children's generation, to be 70 % neurodivergent.

And I 100 % believe that statistic because the reality is what we are facing in today's world, in our environment, with screens, over stimulation, with toxins, chemicals, pollution, that is putting this pressure on our internal system, it is literally rewiring our brains.

Yush Sztalkoper (39:51.084)
You know, being neurodivergent isn't just like you're born this way, your conditions, your environment, all these things can actually shape. We're, as you know, our brains are neuroplastic until the day we die. It is a lot more neuroplastic early on in early childhood ages where the

Brooks Canavesi (40:09.555)
Yeah, like the first seven years, I think is the highest neuroplasticity.

Yush Sztalkoper (40:13.21)
Yes, eight to nine probably, but the reality is it's still even in the teenage years and you know, boys aren't fully matured adults until they're 25.

Brooks Canavesi (40:25.877)
Just ask my wife, you sh- She'll tell you, 47, still working on it.

Yush Sztalkoper (40:30.74)
Yeah, it's an ongoing journey but when you start to

see these things with clarity, it makes you question so many things and it makes you, you know, and the way that I talk about seeing is that when you can see clearly, you can then do something about it. Because if you can't see, you have no idea what it is that you're up against and what you need to address. And so, you know, that was my whole journey with my son. I started to see him clearly and every signal that he was sending me, I would see it and I would use it as a guide and I would navigate that.

And this applies to organizations, it applies to industries, it applies to leaders who want to start, like if they just started paying attention to these signals. And tools like Baryons is great for that. How do you use these tools to help these individuals? And let's be honest.

The place that I am at is very different than where I was five years ago. I couldn't see clearly. I had no idea. And once I could, my gosh, the patterns are everywhere. And you start to question everything and you're like, wait a second, why does the sun shine? You know, whatever, like just the most basic things you start to question. And it reveals so much. And so when you just...

start to notice these signals, it changes how you make decisions about how you move forward. And earlier I talked about stabilization. I think it's absolutely critical for all leaders within any sort of workplace, within communities, within anything, anywhere, is how do we think about supporting humans so that the capacity can emerge? We stabilize so that people can really understand, you know,

Yush Sztalkoper (42:23.8)
how to restore that capacity. Because currently the way we work, the way that we, even our families, the way we go to school, the way we operate in general, we are being asked to just give constantly. We don't have time to stop and think about, wait a second.

Is that something I can do? Am I overriding my own signals? You know, is this sustainable? We don't have time to ask that. And that's why I speak and I write is just to help other people start to see through the same lens.

Brooks Canavesi (43:04.597)
So before we get into stabilization and the framework that I stabilization is part of, you just mentioned something that struck a chord with me and that is getting time to not be in reactionary mode. Do you find that in writing? I know you write and you speak to help people, how do you also, what are some things that you do in your life over the last five years that have been kind of a game changer for you to?

unplug or step back to gain some more perspective and kind of sit with it and let those things kind of emerge. What are some tips or tricks that you could give our listeners today that have worked for you?

Yush Sztalkoper (43:49.966)
I know we'll talk about my shift path later, but how shift path was developed is actually through understanding how humans change neurobiologically. So the way that I helped my son emerge to reach his potential and become this version of him that I always knew was within him, it didn't happen overnight.

It was these micro shifts, right? These subtle changes that created new habits and new patterns. And so as humans, this is why all these big systematic changes and big overhaul strategies don't typically work for humans because that's not how humans change and that's not how we work. And so...

Yes, I stabilized first, then change was introduced incrementally, right? Not necessarily linearly, but kind of as we went along. First, we did this. As that stuck and held, we moved on to something else.

It wasn't like I was like, okay, we've addressed the sensory issue. Now I'm already immediately moving on to something else. That's not how it works. My son needed to be really, you know, like his sensory system really needed to be regulated before we could move on to the next thing because you actually can't see what the next strain is until you've stabilized until you've addressed this one thing. And so, you know,

When I think about that, I think about all these little micro habits that I have. I learned pretty early on. I've always been a meditator and I believe in, because of the coaching I received through positive intelligence, these like, you know, micro sensory sort of tools that you can access. Our brain is in overdrive all the time.

Yush Sztalkoper (45:46.028)
I've talked about that enough, right? In this accelerated world, we're just constantly nonstop. How do you disrupt that? You stop. You...

Stop and smell the roses. You look outside at the beautiful snow. you know, smell something. The smell of the coffee that you're brewing. You touch, I'm into crystals because they have energy fields that humans connect with. I have crystals all over. And if I'm feeling like I just need a moment to anchor or just a moment to disrupt something, my thought process or my anxiety or my stress, whatever it

this.

I just go back to my senses. It is something that we all have access to. And I think a lot of what people struggle with is I'm so busy I can't sit down for 30 minutes and meditate. I can't do this strategy for 30 minutes. You know what I mean? So I started to understand how to incorporate and integrate these micro practices into my life that allow me to reset. So even if you close your eyes for 10 seconds,

it actually helps because the way our brains are wired is when we're constantly forcing it to operate and function and go go go we it never gets a break and the reality is we want to disrupt these this sort of mode that we're in

Yush Sztalkoper (47:17.26)
And you can disrupt it in whatever way makes sense to you. And yes, we hear all these strategies, right? Like you've been at your desk all day, like get up and walk and do what up. But I think where most people struggle to access is when they need it the most, when they're stressed out, when they're overwhelmed, when they're anxious, when they're, you know, facing something. And that is where I've learned through the positive intelligence practice that I can access that.

with just what I already have, my senses. When I get, know, if I just wanna ground myself, I rub my fingertips together. I can access that anywhere. You know, if you're in a conversation with somebody who is stressing you out, not necessarily tune out, but you can start to study.

the shape of their eyes, their eyebrows, the color of their eyes, right? You're disrupting the sort of stress signal that your body is sending you that forces you to go into like whatever mode that you don't want to go into. So that has probably served me the most in this journey because you probably know this. My life is very stressful. It's less stressful now than it was before. When you have a child that is, when you have a child who's struggling every day, all day and

at any given time, you need to make sure you're taking care of yourself. And that's what I learned through this journey with him, is that how do I support myself so that I can show up for him in the way that he needs me to in those moments when he needs me the most? Because, and I'm not a saint, there are moments now where he has a meltdown and I'm just like, I can't, right? Because my nervous system is impacted.

And so you have to really learn. And this is something that I think is relevant for leaders. All these leaders are being asked to do impossible things, to lead teams, to navigate change, to implement new technology. And how are they feeling? What's their capacity? And so I think that's the biggest key to stabilization.

Yush Sztalkoper (49:32.938)
is the leaders that have to make decisions right now, how are they being stabilized so that they can then take care of their teams and make more informed and better decisions about what comes next.

Brooks Canavesi (49:48.873)
Yeah, if we're looking at the shift framework as stabilization being the S in the beginning of that, if you can give us a brief flyover and then let's kind of maybe move through the different letters of the acronym around that pathway, just to give the listeners a sense of, know, a lot of this has been emerging for you through discovery and working with your son, your experience at Gartner and running global events, literally.

and being all over the world, all of that kind high pressure, high stakes, sleep deprivation types of things. What have you learned through that? And then how does the shift pathway look for someone just kind of, you know, from a surface getting into this to understand it? And then we can kind of dive into like the sections of it and how that ties together.

Yush Sztalkoper (50:46.102)
Yeah, well, I think first I need to I've been talking about this for a while, but I didn't really name them all these sort of areas where I was supporting my son emerged as these five domains. So you really need to understand what these five domains are before you move into the shift path because it is about.

Brooks Canavesi (51:06.152)
Okay.

Yush Sztalkoper (51:08.054)
the change, but you can't change until you start to understand what you're working with. So the five domains, it's wiring. It's how someone's brain is literally built, how we process information, how we take in information and think, learn, focus. And then it's regulation. That's the nervous system layer, right? How do we stay calm in stressful situations? know, do we get stuck in fight, flight or

or breakdown, know, shut down mode. And then it's energy or biology. Energy is the physical and biological layer, sleep, nutrition, health and wellbeing, mental health, all these foundational things that give us the ability to sustain what we're doing. Processing, how does someone's take in information and make sense of it? It's not just how do I read and

see it's like how do I understand it in a way that I can integrate it and make sense of it and the last is belonging how can I show up authentically as myself and without masking and without feeling like I have to be somebody else and the reality is all of these things are core to who we are as humans

I call it the human operating system. Apparently somebody's already trademarked that. But it really essentially is what that is. It's what we all need to operate. And that's how I came to understand my son. I understood how he was wired. I understood how his nervous system was regulating across all spaces. I understood what he needed. Health-wise, nutrition and exercise. And in processing, how is he taking in the world?

The information that was sticking and that wasn't. And his sense of belonging, that to me underscores everything. His sense of self, how he saw himself was how others saw him and how others accepted him. And I wanted him to be able to show up as himself. And I mentioned earlier that...

Yush Sztalkoper (53:19.692)
This became sort of like a mirror. And when I started to understand myself across all those five domains, it made me think about my colleagues that I worked with. Across all these, I worked at JP Morgan, I worked at UBS, all large Fortune 500 international organizations with very high capable individuals, high achievers, performers, you name it. And I started to notice that we all have a lot of things in common.

and that there's an imbalance across these domains. That's what contributes to the masking and the burnout. And we're all headed that way, unless we start to understand where is the biggest strain across these five domains.

And for somebody who hasn't been on the journey that I've been, it might feel overwhelming to think, wow, my gosh, there's so many domains and there's I'm experiencing strain across all of them. And by the way, I call that a capacity reflection. It's these a series of questions to help you think about where am I sensing or feeling the most strain across these five. And as humans, you know.

It's not meant to, you're not meant to come in and do a complete overhaul and go, okay, I'm feeling straight across all five domains. So I'm going to tackle it all at once. That's not how it works. And this is where the shift path came from because that's how I navigated this journey with my son and how I navigated it with myself and how I navigate it with parents that I help and, you know, leaders that I talk to and people within the industry that I'm in now.

And what I talk about and write about is that we then need to think about how do we shift? And S-H-I-F-T stands for S is Stabilize, H is Honor, I is Integrate, F is Flex, and T is Thrive. Thrive, flourish, same thing. And shift to me is the most critical phase of this path because if we don't stabilize, like I mentioned before, change,

Yush Sztalkoper (55:23.488)
is not going to be sustainable. It might stick for a little bit and it might look like you it was you were successful, but you're going to revert right back to experiencing that strain again. And so that's kind of, know, these there's a reason why I built these two frameworks and and a lot of it and all of it, as you can imagine, was reverse engineered because of this journey I've been on because of

the ability now to see the patterns that not only that I experienced with my son and myself, but what I was seeing in the workplace. So I left my corporate job about two years ago. When I got my ADHD diagnosis, I knew that my environment was not suitable for me, not for my wiring.

It was not designed for the way that my brain works. It was not designed for the innovative thinking, right? The pattern spotting, the ability to understand humans, you know, on a much deeper level than just how we're being supported and what we're being asked to perform. And I knew that I needed to change the conditions around me for me to truly get to a place where I can flourish and, you know, and reach my potential.

There was so much masking my whole life that I didn't realize until I started to see things clearly. I, you know, I talk about it a lot because I see a lot of masking in others.

Brooks Canavesi (56:52.147)
Yeah. The, when you think about your career, you talked about JP Morgan, UPS, Gartner, and you've seen so many leaders, you've worked with so many profound leaders over your career. This type of masking, how do you, how do you, how did you experience it and how do you see it in others where they're, they're just grinding or that hustle culture, or they're just kind of putting that face up, but like behind the scenes and.

What are the common things that crack? Is it the quiet quitting? Is it the burnout? Where do you see that? And just so people can kind of understand, because some of us might be going through that right now, and we're just unrecognized, right? What are some of those kind of warning signs that people could look for that you've seen?

Yush Sztalkoper (57:44.63)
Most of it is overriding. Things where you feel like you're pushing through, right? We work in a lot of cultures where you ignore these signals. I'm tired, my body is tired, I'm overwhelmed. I have so much on my plate, I don't even know where to begin.

You know, I used to be a quote unquote procrastinator. It wasn't because I was lazy. It was because my brain wanted more exciting projects. I didn't want to work on the administrative tasks. I wanted to work on strategy and big picture thinking and patterns. And so, you know, for me, that's what I started to notice is that why are some tasks so hard for me while others I would literally if I was working on something I was interested in, I would stay up all night. Right.

you know, supporting my son was this. Everything was interesting and passionate for me. And so I didn't stop. I was relentless. I did research until all hours of the night. I put together so much information and it was just, it was like, this is what I was built for. And of course by this, you know, I was doing this while I was working a corporate strategy role. And

Yes, so burnout doesn't even begin to describe what I was feeling because I was essentially managing to doing two very high level and intense jobs at one time. But my diagnosis. Felt like it was it gave me permission to understand myself in a way that I didn't before. It allowed me to give myself grace.

that I struggle in these areas not because something is wrong with me or because I wasn't good enough or because I wasn't capable. It was because I'm wired differently and I was meant to do something different. And so, you know, when I made the decision to quit my job, it was because I had figured out what type of environment I needed to thrive in.

Yush Sztalkoper (59:52.886)
I needed an environment where I wasn't being micromanaged. I needed an environment where I could be autonomous and be able to come up with incredible ideas and be able to explore projects on my own, right? And I had bosses in my career, she knows who she is, who really supported this part of me that honored my wiring, that honored...

how, where my skills were, where my strengths were that didn't require me to constantly perform to override these challenges. And so it's really challenging and hard because in a day-to-day job, every job, there's something in it that you don't enjoy doing. But I think when you start to understand, why is that so hard for me? You can come up with tools or strategies to focus like,

ADHD hyperfocus is one of our superpowers. You can hyperfocus on things only if they're very interesting to you. I saw this with my son. my gosh, everybody when I first learned that he had ADHD, I was like, that means he can't sit still. He can't pay attention. He can't do all this stuff. And then as I started to evaluate and observe him, I'm like, wait a second.

When he is playing Minecraft or when he is building Legos, I literally can't make him stop. And when he's reading books that he loves, he could sit still for hours. So what's going on? And when you start to understand these different, how you are wired, regardless of whether you have a diagnosis or a neurotype or whatever, just start to pay attention to how you're wired and start to understand why is that hard for me? Why am I moving this through this?

Brooks Canavesi (01:01:17.258)
Yeah.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:01:36.278)
with more friction. And why does this come easily to me? Why do I enjoy doing this more? You know, and when you start to understand that, you then start to create the conditions that allow you to be yourself and to operate in a way that you were wired to operate. And so it is different for everybody because we're all wired differently. But all it takes is for you to notice these signals.

You know, I love the baryons tool because you can talk to it and you can say, I'm struggling with this right now and I can't really put a finger on why. AI now can help you understand what those patterns are and help you understand those patterns faster. So then you can start to notice it more and more because as humans, we are actually all pattern.

We all have pattern abilities, right? To see patterns. It's just whether we choose to notice them or not. Whether we choose to use that ability. And there are a lot of people who just don't want to see and they don't want, they kind of avoid and they deny. And that's real too. And so I think...

To me, that's about stabilization. Do you have the capacity to really, truly understand yourself and to see these patterns and to see the signals? Because if you don't have the capacity, it doesn't matter if you have a variance tool or if you have AI or anything. And so I think that's where I think as all humans, I would love to see this level setting that kind of needs to happen.

How do we stabilize so that people would start to get this capacity back and they can start to understand what they need to focus on and address?

Brooks Canavesi (01:03:21.34)
Have you ever heard of the Horizon Trap? There's a couple components to it. One of them was the delayed life syndrome that came out in the 90s. Another one was called deferred happiness syndrome. And they're not like clinical syndromes that people get diagnosed with, but they just kind of gave it that name. There's another one called the arrival fallacy. And it's like it says, like delayed life syndrome. It's like.

I'm living this life right now, like what I'm doing right now, working hard, grinding, doing my thing. I am doing this because there's going to be another life when I retire and that's my delayed life and that's when I'm gonna start living for me and I'm gonna live my life. And it's this delayed life syndrome. Like what I'm doing now is to prepare for the next thing. Deferred happiness syndrome, very similar, right, is.

I'm gonna grind, I'm gonna put in the work now, I'm gonna be happy later. I'm gonna retire, I'm gonna whatever. Whatever that looks like, that next chapter for people is. And then the arrival fallacy is the same thing. When I feel that I made this amount of money, or I've reached this role, or I've acquired this house with a picket fence and the two cars in the garage and the whatever.

or a partner or children or whatever, that's when I've arrived and I'm going to be happy then. And I feel like, I just wonder if you've heard of those terms or have done any research in there. I've been fascinated by this for like the last few months of just digging into the research around this and the hedonic treadmill, they call it, which is our ability to reach homeostasis and normalize to whatever. And where it came up for me was,

very weird story, but my son went camping. He went out West. He was out in Zion. He was out Moab at Arches and doing all that. He went up and ice climbed and Cody and went to opening day at Big Sky. So he was out for five weeks in a rooftop tent in a Tacoma truck. He lived in there. I met him out at the Grand Canyon, spent a couple of days with them and then I flew home.

Brooks Canavesi (01:05:35.605)
And when he came back and came into his bedroom, and I'm telling you, his bedroom's like nine by 10. It's not a giant room. Like this is not a huge house. And he came in his room. He's like, my room feels so big. Because he was living for five weeks in this rooftop tent. He normalized to that. He got used to it.

And then all of sudden he came back to the house and everything was bigger and easier because he didn't have to like put up his tent, go make food, pack up, move to the next spot. what you do when you're like kind of living nomadically on the road. and that really then, you know, that hedonic treadmill of like people that win the lottery three months later are no less happy. They're not more happy than people that didn't win the lottery. They just normalized to it. Like we just normalize.

as to the next thing. And I just wondered, kind of like, as you're thinking about people and burning out and things like that, do those things resonate with you? Have you seen that in your own life, or do you see that with some of the clients that you work with that they're just caught in this horizon trap?

Yush Sztalkoper (01:06:48.405)
It's very common.

The thing is, I learned pretty early on in my coaching journey that at the end of your life, when you're looking back,

What would you be proud of how you navigated this journey as an individual, right? How you moved along and who you were and all of these things and what mattered. And a lot of those things that mattered to me, both, you know, earlier on in this journey and pre being on this journey was shaped by external forces.

your definition of success, what does that look like? It's likely shaped by your culture, your environment, your family, you know, and what does happiness look like? It's likely external factors as well. And when you start to really understand who you are and what you need as an individual,

and to separate these external factors that influence your definition of success or like why are you grinding, grinding, you know, 24 seven to achieve X like who told you that that is what life is about? And, and I think for most people who have children, you know, our children are here to help us see differently. And, prior to children, I would have never had this perspective. And so

Yush Sztalkoper (01:08:25.6)
You know, I think about all those fallacies that you just named. And the reality is that they assume that nothing is, everything's going to be constant until you get to that point. That your health isn't going to deteriorate. That your mind isn't going to deteriorate. That all these things are still there for you to enjoy when you retire and when you eventually have time for happiness.

And so that means you haven't lived your life, right? You are waiting at some point to live this life that humans are meant to live, which is, you know, enjoyment, relaxation, and feeling like you're moving through this world, being yourself. I talked about belonging earlier. It's so important to all of us. It's your ability to be yourself, to be authentic, you know, to feel like you can...

dress the way that you want to dress, have the friends that you want to have, behave the way that you want to behave, and all these things, and do the work that you want to do. And so if we wait, do we know that we've given ourselves a chance to be all of those things? Because if we're just pushing through, and I'm working in this corporate job until I'm 60,

What's waiting for you at the end of it? You're probably exhausted. You're burnt out. You have nothing left. Do you have the energy to go travel? And you hear this very often. I know my parents are in their 70s and 80s now, and my in-laws are just retired.

And it's like, they don't have the energy to travel and do all these things that they wanted to do. And so that's kind of my counter argument to all of those things is that what are you waiting for? And when you get there...

Yush Sztalkoper (01:10:17.676)
Are you who you thought you wanted to be and who you were meant to be? And I know there's a lot of sort of these like broader philosophical questions, but day to day wise, I think if you just think about how do I show up every day as myself? I will tell you, I'm in a season of life now where my work, my life, my parenting, my sense of self, everything feels a lot more aligned.

I don't feel like I'm constantly performing to belong. I don't feel like I have to be somebody else I'm not. I'll be honest, I've intentionally lost some connections. I've changed a lot of my lifestyle. I've integrated in a lot of new ways of being and doing. And that's because I really understand who I am.

and what I need. And when you move through life, and I think this is ultimately flourishing, when you're flourishing, you move through life with ease and you feel like you can navigate complexity and change and uncertainty from a really strong baseline. That you can really, you know, take on anything because the reality is life is not easy for humans. It isn't because of everything that we're facing. It's not easy. And

So how do you think about these frictions in your life, the strains and the struggles and challenges? How do you think about removing those so that you could be more yourself? And so to those people who are like, I'll put off happiness and I'll put off, you know, whatever until I retire. It's like you're missing out on this opportunity to do the work to get you there in the first place. And that's if you make it. And so.

That's kind of, you know, why I do what I do is that we have so much potential as humans that that's always been a part of us. If we could just only understand how to create the conditions that allow us to have that capacity back. Because right now we don't have capacity to do those things, right? All of us are facing these external expectations.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:12:26.722)
that tell us we need to have that job, we need to make this much money, we need to have this house, we need to go on these vacations, we need to do all this stuff. And it really forces us to lose a part of ourselves that I think is absolutely critical in today's day and age with AI, with machines running everything. It's like humans need to go back to understanding

what we have is native intelligence, you the ability to process complexity, make sense of it, integrate it, and then still show up as yourself. So yeah, I hope that answers your question.

Brooks Canavesi (01:13:10.995)
That's amazing. Yes, absolutely. the double clicking on what you just said around intuition, I've read a quote that you've talked about Jensen Wong and some of his mentors and the intuition and seeing around corners. Can you talk a little bit about that? that is the things that when we started thinking about the age of intelligence and

this new industrial revolution that is AI and what's going on with it. And I've been a researcher in AI for over four years and like been working in machine learning and AI space for a decade. Like since the early days of intelligent tutoring, it's coming on fast. Like it's grown exponentially in the last three years. It's been amazing, but there is something of the human nature that is not going to be replicated.

by machines, there's this intuition, there's these things. Can you talk a little bit about like what you saw from Jensen Wong and his quote?

Yush Sztalkoper (01:14:13.432)
Yes, it was very validating when I saw his response because the question that he was asked in this podcast interview was who is the most intelligent, who's the smartest person you know? And he started to answer with what you just said that he felt like...

The intelligence that we talk about that humans have today that makes somebody the smartest isn't technology or engineering minded or math or science. It's actually something more human.

and it's our ability to see around corners, right? The ability to make sense of complexity and still be able to metabolize that and use that to guide our decisions. And I think that is the human intelligence that machines can never replicate.

Right? We have something that is innately a part of it. I call it native intelligence because every human has it. How do we listen to our intuition? Our intuition is just our gut telling us, hmm, something feels off or this, you know, it might be listen to it, pay attention to it. And then what you hear is then how you integrate that information. OK, this is what I'm hearing. This is how I'm making sense of it. And then how do you use that information? This is the last the latter two parts are where I think

a lot of people can use to help in understanding that they have this ability is once I've made sense of it, how do I use that information to make better decisions about whatever I'm facing next? It could be an individual, it could be a parent, it could be a team member, could be somebody in the community, it could be anybody. And so as humans, we have this ability. so AI is all about output, productivity, efficiency.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:16:08.588)
performance. But humans is all about input. What are we taking in and how are we processing that information in a way that machines can't? And that to me is a differentiator for humans and how we set ourselves apart from machines. And this intelligence, I call it human integration intelligence, it's not something that is created or given. It's something that emerges.

And so all this talk I've been naming about conditions and capacity, when you think about how you clear all the barriers that are in your way from really truly having full capacity to operate as a human, this intelligence emerges because you're not sitting here fighting.

burnout, you're not sitting here fighting strain, you're not sitting here fighting all these things. Your brain can start to do what it was always meant to do, right? And it combines with your nervous system and your heart, like all these things together. But intuition isn't just thinking, it's feeling, like somatic experience, you know? And so, and that's something that is uniquely human. And I think it's so beautiful because I really see

where we are as humans as an opportunity. A lot of people are concerned about AI replacing jobs. They're concerned about acceleration and what it's doing to humans and performance. And yes, I have concerns about those things too, but I feel like this is actually an opportunity for us to think about how do we support humans differently so that humans can show up as themselves.

and be able to function optimally, be able to flourish and thrive and not feel like we're just surviving in the system that is asking so much of us and is depleting us. I don't really know a single person out there and if they tell me they're doing fine, they're lying because this is happening to all of us. But you know, and maybe they're not lying. Some people do have figured out, right? And the reality is not everybody and I will tell you,

Yush Sztalkoper (01:18:25.17)
neurodivergent individuals do feel the strain more strongly and more sensitively and earlier and more intensely than neurotypical. And so if that is the case, there are people out there who are probably like, some things don't affect them. They're not carrying the weight of what we carry. And so they might not have as hard of a time, but there's still barriers to

that intelligence emerging where you start to really understand that AI is just another thing that I need to face and that I have everything within me but I need to clear everything else out of the way first so that I can have, so that can emerge.

Brooks Canavesi (01:19:12.605)
If we were looking at the five domains, the shift path and this integrated intelligence as one continuum, how would you explain that as overarching fields of like understanding oneself from the five domains, having an appropriate plan for shifting, you know, and talking about that, maybe a couple words there, and then how that leads to this emergent capability or integration.

just to kind of tie it all together for someone.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:19:43.628)
Yeah, well, and the way to think about it top level is that this is talk, this is about humans changing sustainably, right? Humans, that intelligence that needs to emerge, let's say, and that's not, I don't even like to say that it's the destination because we continue to grow and evolve as humans, right? It's just, it's just this, the state of being, this ability that we have to continue to face whatever is in our path.

And so for it to emerge, have to have these things navigate this journey in a way that allows us as humans to be able to sustain that change. And so if...

Historically, and I think, you know, a lot of times when you see change and people who are like, I'm going to make this change, it doesn't stick because they're trying to do an overhaul or they're just focusing on one thing. What the five domains shows you is that you need balance across all of these. And I'm not saying like if you address one of the domains that you're not going to start to see the change because you could address one of the domains, go through the shift pathway and something will emerge that wasn't there before.

And so, that wasn't there before, that hasn't emerged before. And so, this is just a sort of full mapping of the possibility of being human and understanding ourselves and complexity of being human. And having sort of the pathway.

to guide us in understanding what do I need to do for me as an individual? What do I need to do for my team? What do I need to do for my family? Because without the five domains, it could be anything, right? And so the five domains is meant to help ground us in understanding where are the areas of opportunity that I can pinpoint where the strains are.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:21:49.43)
these signals that then guide me onto this shift pathway. the shift is, like I said, it's neurobiological ways that humans change. It is literally how we need to change, because you can't go to integrate if you haven't stabilized.

Because if you do that, it's not going to be sustainable. you know, and flex. I intentionally built Flex-N because we are humans. Things happen, things change. You could, you know, identify one area in your domain that is most strained. Something could change tomorrow. And so to be able to be flexible and think, okay, I need to adjust.

That's really what creates an in shift isn't meant to be this linear process. It's meant to adapt to how we are as humans. And so this intelligence, like I said, it's something all of us has within us. It's just kind of removing all the obstacles and the barriers, things that we're obscuring it from view. And then you can see clearly. And so I think I think like I said, I'm very optimistic about

where we are in today's world and what we need to kind of think about as humans.

I feel like I've figured out what my purpose is. My purpose was always to be this mom to my unique child. But I figured out this broader purpose is to help people use these frameworks that I've reverse engineered as a result of how they emerged in this journey that I've navigated. Because of the fractal nature of human beings,

Yush Sztalkoper (01:23:38.336)
it applies to us as individuals, then it applies across all these different areas of life where humans exist. And so this isn't something that works just for me. It could work for all of us.

It might not look the same, but I created something that could be customizable, if you will, that could be personalized because being human isn't about one size fits all and surface level. I discovered that throughout my journey supporting my son because those one size fits all solutions didn't work and the surface level solutions didn't work. So this takes us down to the root of who we are.

You know, the five domains, I actually used to call it the root reflection. And then I thought that, you know, just I renamed it to capacity because really it's about understanding how to see our capacity. But it was really about who we are at the root of being humans. And these are all the things that really define us, right? That operating system that I mentioned before, so.

Brooks Canavesi (01:24:53.589)
What have you learned to stop doing through this entire process that you used to do regularly? Maybe it was learned early on in childhood, maybe it was something you picked up through your career, but now today, sitting here today, what's one thing that you've learned to stop doing?

Yush Sztalkoper (01:25:13.438)
say the biggest thing I stopped doing is surviving in every space where I showed up.

I mentioned earlier that adaptability was my biggest strength and it was what carried me throughout my whole life and it was what quote unquote it was what led me to quote unquote success. You know was an immigrant I moved here when I was seven and

Adaptability was always my survival skill. And so what I've stopped doing is surviving. What I've stopped doing is overriding who I am and what my natural wiring is and, you know, my sense of self and how I needed to show up. And I used to show up in every space, adapting and surviving and, you know, thinking that, OK, I can handle this. I can become.

whatever it is that people need me or the environment or the culture. And so I've stopped doing that because once I stop doing that, I get to choose where I show up. And that is the environment we talked about pretty early on in our conversation, right? I'm now creating the environments that I want to be in.

And those environments have the conditions that I need. And look, I'm human. I might be in an environment where I'm like, you know, that's not what I expected. And it is requiring more of me. That is not who I authentically am. And that's the ability I have now. I can recognize those things. And I don't stay very long in those spaces. Right? And that...

Brooks Canavesi (01:27:06.239)
Right?

Yush Sztalkoper (01:27:10.006)
you know, is really the ability to be authentic. Is it how can you choose where you show up? And that changes everything.

Brooks Canavesi (01:27:20.789)
Yeah, that really resonates with me and the removal of things, the complexity to get to the inherent potential that we already have that you're talking about I think is so key for people, especially in today's day and age where information and knowledge is readily available and things are moving faster than ever. You've talked about, you

grounding yourself by rubbing your fingers together. You've talked about, you know, little, little mind hacks and little physical hacks that you can do during your day to just step back. box breathing. I did a bunch of breath work when I was in Costa Rica, that was really helpful to just kind of, you know, that para and sympathetic nervous system. And, know, how do you start to regulate and get out of that fight or flight? Just go, go, go reactionary mode. And I just love that.

There's so much that is readily available inside of us from a potential or capacity perspective. It's removing a lot of things that are filtering and blocking visibility to that. is, you know, what a lot of, at least in our Western society is being drowned out. It's like a skill that isn't being talked about enough. So I love that you're mentioning that.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:28:28.428)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:28:45.496)
Yeah, and that's why, you know, in my speaking and even in my writing, it sounds so simple what I'm trying to do. It's just to help people see differently. But the way I help them see is through my journey, my lived experience and everything that I've learned, even my frameworks. They're meant to help people see differently because like I mentioned before, once you see differently, you can do something about it. And, you know, in helping to make these invisible strains visible,

It's not easy because humans sometimes choose to not see certain things.

And so you have to understand why that's happening. And there's just so much complexity, right? And like, you know, in my son's journey, I focused a lot. We did a lot of genetics testing and understanding what is passed on for generations. Even the way that we think and in some of our belief systems and behaviors, you know, it's the science of epigenetics, which is one of the things I got super fascinated with that just helped me realize that as human beings,

we have the power to control our destiny. you know, my, there's a family history in my family of this health issue. And I saw my dad really suffering from it a couple of years ago. He had a heart attack and it kind of made me realize that I don't want to end up like that.

Why do doctors always ask about your family history? Because there's a high probability that you might suffer from the same thing.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:30:24.116)
And through epigenetics, I learned that I can actually change the outcome by changing the conditions. I can change how I eat, diet, exercise, health, like seeing different special, whatever. I can do all these things that actually can change the way my genes. know, in epigenetics, it's about how your genes can be turned on or off based on your behavior and environment. And when you start to understand that, you're like, wait a second, I can do what?

And you know, this is very different from genetics that are set in stone. Your chromosomes, yeah, 23 chromosomes, that's set. But the ability for your genes to be able to turn on or off because of how you eat, because of what you choose to feel and think and how you exercise, it's a game changer.

And so, you know, my son's journey taught me all of that, because I had to look into genetics to understand why can't his body detox? What's going on? And it unearthed all this information. And I mean, gosh, we can't even cover it in this call. I haven't talked about so much that that we navigated on this journey. But, you know, I was able to synthesize it into kind of these domains and the shift path that people can use. But, you know, early on, like the.

energy biology piece was something I didn't talk about very frequently because people wanted me to talk about the wiring so much because of my neurodivergence because it's not there's a lot of stigma around neurodivergence. I'm Asian American.

And in my culture, people who look like me, being a woman, we don't talk about what's wrong with us. We don't talk about the stigmas. We don't talk about the fact that we're wired differently. And so it took me a lot of courage because I knew it was important to hear from somebody like me, that I am different and that's okay. And because I was able to embrace my differences and figure out how to be authentic and meet my own individual needs,

Yush Sztalkoper (01:32:14.798)
I'm in a place where I'm thriving and flourishing and able to truly be myself. And so, you know, this is not a cautionary tale. This is a, do you see your potential? Like this is what happens when you're able to address all these things. And so, yeah, it's just, it's been an incredible journey. I wish everybody could go through or have the sort of realizations and...

that I've not go through what I go through. actually wouldn't wish it on anybody. It was so hard, look where we, there was a purpose for all of that. And I really believe it.

Brooks Canavesi (01:32:59.775)
Thank you. And that ties into one of our closing questions that we ask all the time. And that is, when you hear the word flourishing, we're the new F Word podcast. And we say that tongue in cheek because we think flourishing is where it's at. But when you hear the word flourishing, what does it mean to you now compared to before your mirror moment or even having your son?

Yush Sztalkoper (01:33:21.43)
To me flourishing is being myself. It's the ability to understand how my nervous system moves through the world and then building those conditions that enable me to sustain that. Being unapologetic and feeling this natural sense of belonging no matter what space I show up in and not abandoning myself.

ever again.

Brooks Canavesi (01:33:54.453)
That's wonderful. And what would your future self thank you that you're doing right now that your future self would reach back and say, yoush, thank you for doing that. What's one thing you're doing right now, habit wise or something like that, that your future self would thank you for?

Yush Sztalkoper (01:34:14.018)
think my future self would thank me for sharing this with the world. With people who are ready to hear what it is that I have to share, to read what it is that I've experienced. Because I want this for everybody. You know, I was able to do this for my son.

And he's flourishing, the way. I don't know if that was obvious, but he's flourishing, he's shining, he has friends, he's so popular, and he's excelling, he's in the gifted program at school, and he's able to finally be seen for who he is. And that's what I want for everybody.

not just for children, but for adults who never really had that support their whole lives. For people like me who were masking. My parents did the best they could with what they had. They didn't know I had ADHD. I don't think they even knew what that was. And being Chinese, raising a Chinese family, it's like even if they did, that's not something you talk about. They just were like, she's a bad little girl and she doesn't behave and she gets in trouble all the time. And that's not who I was.

And so many of us are misunderstood. if my work does nothing but help you start to understand yourself better so that you can change how others see you, then I feel like I've accomplished something significant.

Brooks Canavesi (01:35:40.341)
That's beautiful. And for our listeners that want to learn more about your work and connect with you online, what are some good places for them to go? know, socials, websites.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:35:51.35)
Yeah, my website is NeuroSparkPlus.com. I have a blog where I think I've been writing every, yeah, twice a month, blogs, whatever's coming sort of up in my mind and what's going on around the world and always through the same lens, right? Through this neuro-vergent informed lens of seeing humans in capacity and understanding intelligence and...

in what's happening in real time. And so that's where my writing lives. I also speak at different events and conferences. And so you can contact me on my website. LinkedIn I'm quite active on. I always have something on my mind. And that's kind of the beauty of this work is that it's relevant for humans and it's all of us. There isn't really anything that I talk about that is exclusive for, you know.

one person. And so I just invite everyone to follow along and reach out if they need support with anything. And I absolutely love all of our conversations, Brooks. So thank you so much for having me on this podcast.

Brooks Canavesi (01:36:59.423)
Yeah, the honor's truly all ours. And this was an unbelievable conversation. as a challenge maybe for our listeners using one of Yusha's kind of reframes, instead of asking what's wrong with me, maybe you would ask, what are the conditions requiring of me and is that sustainable? So maybe that's something to take away today and think about.

If this conversation got you thinking about your own capacity, where you're thriving or maybe where you're just surviving, that's exactly why we created Baryons. Baryons is something that Yush has experienced herself and it's the world's first AI built to care about you and your future. It all centers around the understanding engine, which is a patent pending piece of science that we've been working on and pioneered in our lab to enhance human agency.

during this age of high velocity change. And you can start for free at baryons.com. It's b-a-r-y-o-n-s dot com. And your flourishing partner is ready whenever you are to have a voice conversation. You can call it by phone or just chat with it on the web interface. So, definitely, so excited to have you today. We will have you back because there's so much more to talk about and there's just not enough time to do it in one session. So.

Thank you so much for being here today. was truly an honor and a pleasure.

Yush Sztalkoper (01:38:27.597)
Thank you. Happy to come back.