Jay Shetty Podcast#1 CONFIDENCE Expert: The Brutally EASY Way to Eliminate Self-Doubt FOREVER!
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 28,164 words- 0:00 – 0:28
Intro
- JSJay Shetty
[intro music]
- 0:28 – 1:38
What Drives Self-Doubt?
- JSJay Shetty
If someone was to listen to our podcast today, what would they overcome and what skills would they build?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So this is essentially going to be a masterclass on self-doubt, but not only what it is, actually determining for yourself what are the drivers of your self-doubt. Because we think self-doubt is just one big blob of worry and anxiety and insecurity, but when we look at decades worth of literature, my own research over the past five years, we've distilled it down to four main drivers. And so if you're able to determine, okay, where am I on these drivers, which one is really propelling my self-doubt, that allows you to then determine what you need to do to move through it. As you said, self-doubt doesn't necessarily disappear with achievement. It doesn't disappear as you advance in your career. It just scales with responsibility. But the real measure of someone's success and happiness is if they can hear the voice of self-doubt and still move forward anyway.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And so what I want to help everyone listening with today is to determine which of the drivers of their self-doubt is taking the driver's seat, and then exactly what they need to do to move through it so they can get the connection they want, the success they want, the performance that they want, and create the life that they want.
- 1:38 – 5:34
The Power of Your Self-Image
- JSJay Shetty
I love it. Let's, let's talk about the four drivers because I'm fascinated now as well to-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Let's do it
- JSJay Shetty
... to discover which one I've-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Let's go straight in
- JSJay Shetty
... which ones I've been dealing with.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
We can actually diagnose your doubt profile.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, let's dive in.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Which will be fun.
- JSJay Shetty
Let's do it.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So the first thing we need to do is rewind a little bit. How did we come across these four drivers? So we've been working with leaders and teams across organizations for the last five to 10 years. That's tens of thousands of people. And we found that, again, no matter where someone was at on their journey, they were hearing this voice of doubt, and it would sound different, and it would look different. But then we wanted to know, okay, specifically, what is driving this? And we need to bring it back to something called your self-image. Let me tell you about a study that was conducted in the '70s, and it opens your mind as to the power of the self-image that we have about ourselves and how that keeps repeating throughout our lives. So in the 1970s, a psychology professor by the name of Robert Cleck from Dartmouth, he conducted this fascinating experiment where he brought people together. He split them into groups, and with one group, he drew a scar on their face from their right ear to the side of their mouth. Big, ugly scar, and he let them see themselves in a hand mirror. Then he sends the groups out to have conversation with strangers, right? So you have one group that has this scar. Another group has no scar. After the conversations, they come back, and they report on how they felt the conversation went. The group with the scar overwhelmingly reported that they felt judged. It was tense. The other person was distant because of the scar. But here is where it gets really interesting. If rewi- we rewind just a little bit, right before the researcher sent them out into these conversations, he applied moisturizing cream to the scar. So they'd just seen themselves in the mirror. He then applies this cream, but he doesn't tell them that he's removing the scar.
- JSJay Shetty
Wow.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So now they have no scar on their face, but they believe that they do.
- JSJay Shetty
No.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
They go into these conversations believing, expecting they will be treated badly, poorly, judged, and that's what they experienced.
- JSJay Shetty
Wow.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It's wild. When you think about the implications for us in our lives, okay, it may not be a physical scar, but we all have beliefs or expectations about ourselves based on how we see ourselves-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... our self-image, and then we're going to notice things that reinforce it because of how the brain is wired.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Confirmation bias, selective attention. Your brain is wired to magnify what you focus on. So if you're going into your life, into your conversations, into your meetings, into your work, believing that you're not worthy, that you're not capable, that you don't deserve it, you're going to notice things that reinforce that, and it's only gonna make you feel worse. So we know that about self-image, so the first question to ask ourselves is what are these invisible scars that we are carrying-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... throughout our lives? How can we become more aware of them? So then my next question is, great, so that's the power of self-image, and self-image drives our self-doubt. But how do you measure self-image? If I were to ask you, Jay, what do you think your self-image is, you might share something, and then I'd ask someone else, "What do you think your self-image is?" And they might share something else. We need to determine if something is measurable so we can determine what it is.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And when we look at over 50 years' worth of research, this is when we find that, yes, there's a lot of information out there. But it really comes down to just four dimensions of how we see ourselves. And when these four things come together, that shapes our self-image. It shapes how we interact with the world. Not only that, these four things that actually have their base in our personality, they have been shown through meta-analyses of over 100 studies to predict our success, our job performance, our career satisfaction, how happy we are in our life and our relationships, and it all comes down to these four things. And I could not believe it when I came across it. So let me tell you what these four things are because essentially these four things drive our self-image, which then drives our self-doubt when they're weak.
- 5:34 – 7:24
The Four Pillars of Self-Image
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So the very, very first one, the first driver of your self-doubt, which shapes your self-image, is what we call acceptance, self-acceptance. It relates to this personality trait of self-esteem, so how you see yourself in terms of your value and your worth. Now, if you don't accept yourself, it shows up in four painfully familiar habits. The first one is what we call the pressure to prove.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You feel like you constantly have to prove yourself through your work, through your performanceYou have to prove that you are of value to other people, so you seek their validation and their praise, and when you don't get it, it becomes this automatic switch, and you need to win it back.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That's the first. The second one is what we call the shrinking syndrome. So this is where someone might be afraid of success because they don't accept who they are, and therefore they're afraid of what will happen if something amazing happens to them, because deep down they don't feel like they deserve it. So then they try and sabotage before they get there. The third is what we call the schadenfreude cycle, and the schadenfreude cycle, you may have heard of it, it's a German term. It's that moment when you see someone else fail, and you suddenly feel really good about yourself.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You feel a little bit better about yourself. You enjoy other people's failures. This is a sign that you do not accept yourself.
- JSJay Shetty
Wow.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Your self-esteem is suffering. And then the fourth pattern that we see here is, of course, that endless need for approval. We need other people to like us, to validate us. We might become codependent in our relationships. We say yes when we really want to say no. We wear masks and contort ourselves to better suit the people around us, but in doing so, we lose ourselves.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So that is the first, and the, in my view, the most foundational, acceptance.
- JSJay Shetty
And
- 7:24 – 15:14
Struggling With Self-Acceptance
- JSJay Shetty
as I'm learning about it from you, it feels like that starts so early, and you're just carrying it for all these years, and then you become aware of it when you're starting to apply for a job, or you're wanting to put yourself forward for a promotion, or you're trying to find the relationship of your dreams, and all of a sudden now you're like, "Well, why do I feel this way?" And I can imagine a lot of our listeners right now are sitting here going, "Shadé, I do all of those four things."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That's me.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, that's me. And so if someone's listening right now and they're saying, "Shadé, Jay, that's me. I do all four of those things. I have no idea. Do I have to stop doing those things? Do I have to... So I, self-acceptance, that is the issue that I'm having. I don't accept myself according to your four measures. Where do I even begin to go? What questions should I be asking from that point?"
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So I love how you mentioned that we develop this early in life. Let's start there.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, let's do it.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And then we'll go to how we can start to break the, the attachment that we have to this.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So generally, this sense of acceptance that we have develops in the first three to four years. Initially, it's based on the response we get from our parents, our primary caregivers, and then it also develops based on whether we feel that we get the emotional support and the nurturing that we need. If you feel like you constantly have to earn your parents' attention or do something exciting to get them to pay attention to you, then we develop this belief that I must perform to be worthy. It can also happen later in life when a parent says to you or compares your report card, your grades to a sibling, or makes you feel like you're only of value when you're winning an award or coming first in the swimming competition that you're in, the race. So we develop these really early on, and, you know, we do need to acknowledge so much of who we are as a result of those early experiences. That doesn't mean we are a prisoner to that, and it doesn't mean that we should be blaming that environment and our parents and our, you know, the caregivers that we had. We need to acknowledge that they were doing the best that they could with what they knew at the time. We have this beautiful ability of taking ownership of our lives, which actually comes down to the third pillar, which we'll get to, which allows us to, as you said, become aware of these patterns. So often, Jay, and if you're listening, you may find that you have not been aware of these things, and it's only when you listen to sessions like this, conversations like this, when you read a book, where you suddenly start to almost self-diagnose and realize, "Uh-oh, this is me." See that as a really positive thing, because you're identifying that you are part of this experience, as opposed to just this is who I am.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So that's a really positive thing. So what do we do if we identify, okay, I'm really struggling with acceptance? The very first thing is to acknowledge that you are not your thoughts, and you are not your beliefs. Beliefs are simply just a repeated pattern of thought that has happened so many times in our brain that it becomes a default. It's just a really, really fast process, neural pathway. And in the same way that a belief is formed early in our lives, we can overwrite that belief. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it takes repetition. Yes, it takes practice. But we have the ability to do that through conscious choice. And so the moment you start noticing that you're feeling insecure, those thoughts come into your mind, "I can't do this. I don't deserve this. I'm not enough," that's the key phrase for someone who lacks acceptance. "I'm not enough, so I must prove that I'm enough. I must earn that feeling from other people. I must chase it through achievement." The moment you notice that, consciously re-engage the prefrontal part of your brain. This is how you re-engage attention, and say to yourself, "Hold on. I don't need to believe that thought. I don't need to believe that belief." Remind yourself that, "I have value. I am of value." And one of the simplest hacks that you can use in those moments is to stop thinking about yourself. I know that sounds really odd to say, but when we are suffering with a lack of self-acceptance, it's always I, me, my. How do they see me? How am I coming across? What am I doing right now? If you can shift and go, "Okay, how can I be here for them? How can I be of value? How can I be of service? How can I make this person feel seen?" That's called self-forgetting.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And research shows that this process of self-forgetting, by becoming more service-oriented, helps to quieten that incessant voice of the ego.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And it's remarkable how when you tap into that, suddenly you realize, okay, I don't have to be so in my head.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
I want to share just a couple of really simple techniques for anyone who really does struggle with acceptance. The first one is, if you struggle with acceptance, you are going to attach your sense of identity to your job.And to your achievements and to your performance. So if things are going well professionally, if you're achieving things, if you're doing amazing things, you feel fantastic. And then something happens, and it all crumbles, and you fail. You take it personally. You internalize that failure.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So the first and foremost thing you need to do is acknowledge you are not your job. There is so much to you that exists outside of that environment, which I know is really hard to do if you work, especially in a corporate organization, where your entire status is determined by your job title and how well you're delivering and your promotion track record, right? So we tend to internalize these things, but you need to consciously remind yourself through that prefrontal activation, "I am not my job. I am so much more than this." And there's a really interesting little technique we like to share, not even a technique. It's actually a suggestion. So Jay, there was a study that was conducted with Nobel Prize-winning scientists, and they looked at 500 of them, and they found that they were three times more likely than regular scientists to have a creative hobby.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Not only that, they were 22 times more likely than regular scientists to have a hobby in the performing arts, singing, music, drama.
- JSJay Shetty
Whoa.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
They, many of them attribute that hobby to helping them bounce back when things didn't go to plan, and also to allowing them to make connections that other people wouldn't have been able to.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And so what can we take from that?
- JSJay Shetty
That's brilliant.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It's great, right?
- JSJay Shetty
So good.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Cool study. What can we take from that? Well, having something outside of work that we can pour ourselves into, especially something creative, 'cause we know about the impact that has in the brain.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That allows us to remind ourselves, "Hey, even if I didn't do well today at work, even if I didn't achieve this thing that I wanted to, I get to go and take on that character in that play."
- 15:14 – 19:30
How Lack of Acceptance Fuels Perfectionism
- JSJay Shetty
free. Something you said that resonated with me was this idea of if you performed for your parents, if you had to perform to get your parents' attention, you ended up thinking that performance equals success equals winning equals love equals worth. A lot of people who are really successful today have just lived that pattern out. So in one sense, it's also a pattern that makes people quite successful in the public eye. So the biggest performers in the world, some of them would say themselves that they were the performer in their home or their family, and they didn't realize it until they became the number one person in the world at something, that that wasn't who they wanted to be. It's who they became because of it. So it can make you successful but maybe not happy. What do you think about that?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Uh, yes. I love that you've mentioned this. So there's two elements we need to touch on here.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So this lack of acceptance that develops early on, where we feel like we must perform to be of value or to earn the attention of others, that leads us to perfectionistic tendencies as adults, where we set these very, very, very high standards for ourselves, beat ourselves up when we inevitably don't reach them, and then just set the next high standard. And so for a lot of people, this does propel them forward. This does propel them to amazing heights, but as you said, they might reach that number one pinnacle, and then they stop and think, "This is not what I wanted. This is not the life that I wanted to lead." And so what we need to think about with success is two elements. Okay, there is the material success, the status, the external success, but then there is that internal feeling that really should be coming with it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
The sense of satisfaction, the sense of fulfillment. And so anyone who is driven by a lack of acceptance, what we see in a lot of really high performers is that if they're driven by this, yes, they have amazing work ethic. Yes, they're incredibly diligent, but they never feel satisfied.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And that level of emptiness that they feel also drives them to try and seek that satisfaction from the next hit, the next achievement. It's called the arrival fallacy. "When I get there, I will feel like I've made it." And then they get there, and they think, "Well, why doesn't this feel any different?" And then they set the next goal, and they're perpetually seeking this state of enoughness, and then they sacrifice things on the way to get there. Because they're so fixated on believing, "When I get there, everything will fall into place," that they've sacrificed relationships. They've sacrificed time with their children. They've sacrificed family. They've sacrificed well-being generally. And so, yes, it may be a driver. The, the fundamental question that we get asked about perfectionism, 'cause we have a lot of people who say, "Well, I set high standards, and I think it's a good thing. Isn't that a good thing?" The fundamental difference is what happens when you don't achieve the standards.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm. Breakpoint.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That determines whether it's perfectionism or it's just striving for excellence. If you beat yourself up and tell yourself, "I'm a failure. I'm not enough. I'm terrible"You judge yourself. That is a sign of perfectionism that is called maladaptive. That is a reflection of you not feeling like you're enough.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So you punish yourself. Whereas if you fall short, yeah, you can feel disappointed for a while. That's fine. That's natural. That's human. But then if you ask yourself, "Okay, how do I get better? How do I learn? And how do I apply what I've learned to implement it the next time I do it to get further ahead?"
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That's called striving for excellence, and it all comes down to your approach. I also spoke to someone very recently, a highly, highly successful businesswoman, very prolific on social media as well, and she said to me she's driven by that sense of... She, she described it as, "It's a sense of not enough-ness, but not to do with me. It's that I have so much impact I wanna create that I don't feel like what I'm doing is enough." And so for her, she's driven by purpose and service. And so I said, "Okay, so what happens if you get to the end of the day and you don't feel like it was enough from that perspective?" And she said, "I just get more fired up for the next day." And I said, "Does it make you reflect on you? Do you become judgmental on you?" And she said, "No." I said, "There you go."
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So you can be driven by this incredible desire to, to, uh, serve others and to be of value, and that's a fantastic way to still get that desire to perform and to succeed, but for the right reasons.
- 19:30 – 26:36
Shifting From Comparison to Emulation
- JSJay Shetty
I love that nuance because I think for so many people it's very much like ambition bad, satisfaction good, and that's such a simplistic-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... way of looking at it. Because you're so right, and I love that question of how does it feel when you don't hit that goal? Do you actually get more energy and more excited and more focused and more diligent, or do you become more harsh or more critical or more comparative? And as you were saying that, and you, you repeated this sentence a couple of times when you were talking, you said, "You are not your job."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
And I was thinking your work is not your worth. And then I was thinking about just how hardwired it is. So I was looking into this, and it was about the time of the Industrial Revolution that work became-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... so much more attached to worth. Everyone knew what role they played on the conveyor belt. There was the division of labor. You now had everyone having titles and roles, and the question became what do you do? And everything became about title. Now if you take it back a bit further, you've actually got everyone's last names being representative of their job. So you have Baker, Blacksmith, whatever else it may be, and that became your name, and that was just-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... your shop front. And so this hardwiring that we all have of our work being our worth has been hardwired for a few decades now, and probably longer. But it's so hard to lose it because that's what you're measured on since you were a kid, the grades against your friends, then the college you went to and its reputation, the degree you received, and then the first job you got. And it's almost like as you get out of school, your job becomes the only measurable thing.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
Like, the amount you earn and your job title because people aren't comparing, like, "Oh, I've got seven kids. You've got three." Like, that isn't really a point of contention.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Thank goodness. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah. Thank goodness, for sure. But it, but it, that isn't really the metric.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
Or you're not like, "Oh, I've got... I've..." You, you might compare, like, "Oh, I've been in a relationship for 10 years. You've only been in one for two." But the job feels like, "Oh, this is how much money I make, and this is my status." How do you operate in a world which is created for that competition and that comparison and not feel that schadenfreude of, like, "Oh, I feel happy when someone else is not making it"? How, how do you manage both of those emotions?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So we do live in a world that is absolutely amplifying our self-doubts and is almost designed to get us to compare ourselves to others. As you said, in university you're often ranked against your classmates, and we don't really have objective markers other than salary and how many cars you have and where you live and, and job title. And the fact is in the, the world that we live in as well, your job does attract a certain perceived status. You know, lawyers, doctors, suddenly people go, "Ooh." They pay attention. But this is just fueling this comparison that we have and this sense of not enough-ness. So how do we prevent ourselves? And we need to acknowledge we live in this world. We're consumed by this world. It's very easy to internalize these things, and that is why these four pillars are so fundamentally important. Because we're just talking about the first one-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... but as I go through the rest, you'll see how you can also use the other three to counterbalance.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So a lot of people struggle with acceptance, and they think, "Okay, I need to get my acceptance really strong before I'll be able to move forward and succeed and be happy." Not necessarily. It's a lifelong journey. You can actually lean on other attributes. So we call them the four A's, the four attributes of self-trust-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... which reflect our self-image. You can lean on your other attributes to help you take action anyway, focus on what you need to focus on, and prevent yourself getting stuck in that comparison cycle.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Something that we do share though with people is if you feel like you're constantly comparing to other people, and you're feeling like you're worse off, you're feeling like you're not as good as they are, something that's really valuable is to move from comparison to what we call emulation.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Comparison is pitting two things against each other and looking for differences. Emulation is, "Cool, look at what that person is doing. How did they do it, and how can I emulate that so I can do it, too?" So you take learnings from their journey, apply it to your own, and suddenly rather than feeling, "Oh, gosh, I'm so far behind," you suddenly realize, "Hey, if they can do it, I can do it. What's that first step I'm going to take?"
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So that's one step you can take. It's to really focus on, "Okay, how do I stay in my lane?"
- JSJay Shetty
Yes, yes. I love that. Yeah. I've o- I've often said you can turn your envy into study, and it's exactly-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Beautiful
- 26:36 – 31:22
Becoming Before You Believe
- JSJay Shetty
it. Oh, before we go into the other three, which I really want to do, I want to ask you... I'm, I'm taking this tangent because I can, I can feel people thinking about it, and I'm like, "Okay, I want to ask it." Like, fake it till you make it, is it actually good advice?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Fake it till you make it is something that we hear constantly. I don't necessarily like the idea of faking anything because I think that links to inauthenticity, and it might give people permission to do things that are completely insincere. I like to use what Amy Cuddy describes as be it until you become it, which is... You know, it's a matter of semantics, but I think it resonates so much more with people who are all about sincerity and authenticity and integrity. You do not have to fake being someone else. You need to be that person, have the energy that you want to be exuding, see yourself achieving what you want to see, who you want to be, right? And then show up every day as if you've already achieved it. There is this remarkable thing that happens, which has not been able to be measured just yet. When someone puts out to the universe, "I want to achieve this. I believe I'm this," and then they start acting in a way that is aligned with that, things are attracted to them. Opportunities come their way. Importantly too, though, they also take the steps to put them on that path.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Just on this point, I want to mention something really fascinating that comes-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... out of the research. Something that we see a lot of people talk about, online especially, is manifestation. Manifest who you want to be. Be it till you become it. Have the vision board on your wall. And I definitely think there is some power in that. Again, it's, has not been able to be measured, as far as I'm aware. But there is another element where if you're visualizing yourself becoming something and believing you can achieve that, what you're doing is changing your self-image.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You're updating that blueprint.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You know, we spoke about it earlier-
- JSJay Shetty
Yes, yes, yes
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... the idea of these scars. You're allowing yourself, in your mind, to create this new concept of who you are. Because if you cannot see yourself as being there, as deserving that, you will inevitably sabotage yourself as you get there.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You will notice everything getting in your way, and that'll be proof that, "See? I can't do this." So that's the idea of upgrading your self-image, so that's really, really powerful. But then a lot of people get stuck, where they just have this view of where they want to go. They're so clear on it. They're excited about it. And then suddenly they just, they flounder.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And it's because of two things happening. There was a study that was published that found that when we have these beautiful, positive... They call them positive fantasies, these visualizations where we want to be, and we feel them and we embody them, it can actually sap your energy.
- JSJay Shetty
Ooh.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Why?
- JSJay Shetty
Tell me about this.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Because when we then face a roadblock or a setback that we are completely unprepared for, it challenges that view that, "Hey, I can get there," and suddenly we start to think, "Oh, no." We start to anchor back on our current self-image and think, "Too hard. I'm never gonna get there. I don't deserve it. I'm not capable enough." And then we retreat.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So there's an important step and second step, right? So you need to visualize yourself getting there. But then you also, and this is contrary to what a lot of people suggest, what the research suggests, what we encourage all of our students to do, is be very clear on what are all the things that are going to get in the way of you getting there. Be really clear on that. A lot of people say, "No, don't anticipate that because you'll will it into existence." No, we say be very pragmatic. What are the things that could get in the way? One of them is, well, my own belief about myself. The other one is the people I'm around. Maybe they will prevent me from getting there. It could be boredom. It could be this obstacle, that obstacle, that setback, that failure. Write them down. But then there is an important second step. If you only write them down, you're going to enter an entire world of catastrophizing and worrying. [laughs] So the next step then is to ask yourself, "What will I do if and when this happens?" You create your contingency plan, your recovery plan.So that if it happens, you have your steps, you've prepared, you've essentially been there before, so you don't need to worry about spiraling into overthinking, and worry, and catastrophizing. You say, "Nope, I've been here. I've got my plan." It's called an implementation intention, and if you come up with these, if, then, you are going to be more likely to achieve that goal, more likely to persist when the roadblock or when the failure comes, and more likely to move towards where you wanna go.
- JSJay Shetty
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- 31:22 – 37:07
Why the Brain Craves Certainty
- JSJay Shetty
fascinating, isn't it, that the human mind either imagines everything going wrong-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... or imagines everything going right.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs] Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
But then you're presenting this, like-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Middle
- JSJay Shetty
... middle ground of be pragmatic, be aware.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
If this, then that.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
And that's the reality of life. Like, that's where you're gonna live. Like, if you just sit there in dreamland and think of everything being perfect, we know that's never gonna happen. And also, we have this tendency to just think in nightmares, where, well, everything's going wrong, nothing's ever gonna work out, I'm not worth anything. And these, we almost gravitate to these extremes because they feel safer-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... in a weird way. Why, why do we do that? Why do we gravitate to these extremes?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
The brain craves certainty.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
The brain fundamentally craves certainty.
- JSJay Shetty
It really does. Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And the reason why, when we look at fundamentally why the brain does what it does, its primary function, a lot of people say its primary function is to protect us. There's a little bit more to it. The primary function of the brain really is to make sure that the rest of the body is doing what it needs to do while using the least amount of metabolic energy, right? So it needs us to function while using as little energy as possible. And so part of that is obviously protecting you, because then if you're in a situation where you're having to deal with something terrible happening, the brain has to put in a lot more effort. So it will often magnify everything that could go wrong, because if it does that, it gives you a sense of certainty. "No, this is gonna happen. You're going to fail. You're gonna fall short. They're going to laugh at you. They're going to reject you."
- JSJay Shetty
And at least you know.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
At least you know, so that you don't do the thing. Because if you do the thing and that happens, your brain's gonna have to put in a lot more work to get you through that.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So if it can prevent you from taking that step, and we actually refer to this as what's called the misguided protector in our mind. It's that voice, it's an inner deceiver, and it's trying to protect us, but it's misguided. But fundamentally, it will highlight everything that could go wrong so that we don't take action, because then it succeeds. Then we're safe.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
But we're stuck. And then the other extreme, of course, is only visualizing where we wanna be, 'cause again, it's certainty. "No, I'm guaranteed for that to happen."
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And then we know what happens when you hit a roadblock. Suddenly everything crumbles, and then you go into the other side. "Oh, no. All these things [laughs] are gonna go wrong." So when we recognize that this is just our brain doing what it needs to do, there's something else which is really interesting here. There is a connection between intelligence and anxiety. People who tend to be higher on intel- on IQ, ratings of IQ, they tend to be more aware of complexity, more aware of all the risks that could go wrong, which then leads them to overthink about those risks, and then overthink about what could happen if those risks actually occurred, which increases anxiety, which reduces confidence, and then reinforces that initial state of awareness of the complexity. And so if you're listening to this and you feel like you're constantly overthinking and you're constantly aware of risks, it could be that you have a slightly higher than average IQ. But it's also important to know that we can break that cycle. We call it the spiral interrupt technique. When this is happening, the part of the brain that's activated is the emotion center, the threat detection center. It's trying to identify everything that could go wrong to keep you safe. So what you can do is control your attention. Bring your attention back to, "What can I control right now?" by literally saying to yourself, "This is my brain doing what it does. I am safe to act anyway." So again, simply by doing that, by consciously controlling your thoughts, you are reengaging those prefrontal regions, which reduces activity in the amygdala, in the fear centers, and allows you to have that moment of rationality-
- JSJay Shetty
Yes
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... to then decide what's next.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, I can think of a really good personal example of that. I remember, so I was very fortunate to go to public speaking school from age 11 to 18, and had training, and found it comfortable being on stage and everything else. But then as soon as my scale started to change and I started to work in different audiences, in different arenas, in different spaces, I could notice that my heart rate would go up.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Oh.
- 37:07 – 43:30
Do You Ever Feel Like You’re Not Enough?
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. What's the second A?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Okay.
- JSJay Shetty
That's-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So that's the first A.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That's acceptance. The second A, oh, can I just-
- JSJay Shetty
And there's so much more in the book. I just want to point out.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
There's so much more. [laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
There is so much more in the book. I am just moving us through-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes
- JSJay Shetty
... as, as we discuss some of the highlights.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Do you want to hear one other thing for people-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... who struggle with acceptance?
- JSJay Shetty
Okay. Please.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Just because it comes up so frequently, especially for people early in their careers. And this was me 15 years ago, working in corporate in a male-dominated environment. I started my career as a lawyer, commercial law. I was in that industry for four years, then I moved into banking and finance for six years. Oh, gosh, the whole time I felt like an imposter. I felt like I didn't belong. I felt like a hiring mistake, but I for- get, I got very good at faking it.
- JSJay Shetty
Why?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So okay, now I'm gonna share a little bit of my story. So when I was very young, the age of three or four, I had a beautiful, supportive Persian family, and we'd always get together at my grandparents' house and have kebab that my grandpa would make. And then after dinner... So I was a l- I liked performing as a, as a kid. After dinner, there would be this chant, "Shadé bayad berase," which means, "Shadé has to dance for us." And it was great. When I was a kid, I'd get up and I'd do my little thing, and they'd watch and they'd cheer, and it was fantastic. But then as I got older, I started to enjoy it less and less. But I didn't know how to say no. And so at the age of 9 or 10 or 12, I still felt like I had to perform to make people happy. This was entirely in my head. If I had communicated to them or set a boundary or said, "Look, I don't feel like it," they would've been fine. My family loved me. I didn't know, and I internalized from a young age that I am only as good as the performance I'm giving, which means making other people happy. And I have carried that with me through my entire career. In fact, one of the drivers of me doing a PhD, which was one of the hardest things I've ever done, was because of this feeling of not being enough and needing to still prove myself, which is the wrong reason to do anything. And I will tell you this much, it's done, and I still don't feel... I still haven't developed that acceptance. So it's an ongoing process for me, and I'm very aware of it, and I'm working on the habits to develop it. But when I entered the workforce... So I, I did law because I did really great in high school, and I had a lot of pressure to use those grades. So it was like law, medicine, engineering. I wasn't gonna do math or engineering, so I did law. I did it with psychology 'cause I was passionate about people, but law was so difficult for me that I had to focus so much on it, and I had to overcompensate because I didn't feel like I belonged. I tried to drop it after the first class. But any, any case, I kept with it. Never felt like I belonged. I, I was able to do really well. I got fantastic grades at the end, got a job in a top-tier commercial law firm. But that feeling of, "This is not me. This is not for me," stuck with me. And I was trying to fake it till I made it. So I was becoming someone different. I was speaking differently. I was showing up differently, trying to sound smart and credible, using big, fancy words to fit in. What I now know is that that can backfire. Studies have been found that when you use unnecessarily complex language, where you're trying to be perceived as more credible and competent, it does the opposite, and it undermines your credibility and your competence. Simplicity. It's all about simplicity, but I didn't know that. So I carried that through banking. I was so full of anxiety. I'd literally hide behind my cubicle so people couldn't give me work, 'cause if they didn't know I was there, I wouldn't basically be given it. Then I moved into banking and finance, convinced that if I moved into a different industry, I could start fresh, reinvent myself, leave the doubt behind. Do you think that happened?
- JSJay Shetty
No.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Absolutely not. Doubt doesn't work [laughs] like that. I took it with me because of my self-image, because I was carrying that self-image-
- JSJay Shetty
The scar
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... around. The scars I had. And again, I came from a wonderfully supportive family, and still I had scars. And one of the things as I was doing research for this book is, you know, there's a lot of talk about attachment theory and those early experiences. What some people experience is a secure attachment style when they're young. They have a supportive environment full of love and validation, and yet still as adults they feel like they're not enough. And could be one of two reasons. It could be that you feel so indebted to your family that you feel like you need to keep performing for them to make them proud. The second reason is that you might also have had a sibling who was challenging, just by nature of their personality, and you saw that, and you didn't want to be that, and so you became the opposite. You became the good kid-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... to be that for your parents, and you just take that with you. So that was me, and then I started feeling guilty about, "Why am I feeling this self-doubt? I have no reason to." And so it became this whole big thing. Anyway, seven years in banking and finance, I eventually found my way. I tapped into roles that I loved, learned to lean on my strengths, and I stopped trying to be like everybody else and realized, "Hey, I'm here because I have some value to offer. How do I tap into that value?" And then so that was kind of my journey.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And that, I completely forgot the question that you asked me.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
But that's a little bit about my [laughs] how I got there.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Oh, what I wanted to share is something that I used to do, which people listening might do if they struggle with acceptance. Because we want other people to be happy with us, we say yes compulsively, reflexively-
- 43:30 – 52:23
Learning to Detach From Labels
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, it's... That- that's the hardest part I think we all have because I know you write about in the book that we respond to social rejection like physical pain.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
We think that if someone... W- And- and social rejection works two ways, right? Like, one social rejection is you're not invited to a party, but the other type of social rejection is you saying no and then thinking the other person thinks you're mean or bad-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... or rejects you in the sense of, oh, you're not good at your job. And I think we often don't talk about that second version of social rejection, which you get from standing up, setting boundaries, whatever it may be, where you go, "Uh, I don't think I can do that." And then someone goes, "Oh, I k- I knew you didn't care."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Oh.
- JSJay Shetty
Right? Like a friend or whatever-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... it may be, and that's a feeling of social rejection, which feels like a punch in the gut.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It does.
- JSJay Shetty
Feels like someone just stabbed you because you're like, "No, I do care."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
"I love you. I'm there for you." And you're like, "No, no, no." So, so many of these things are so hardwired.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
Like you just said, your- your example, as I was listening to you speak and I was thinking about your beautiful family who loves you, and- and- and I get that. It's so in our head, where it's like, oh, I have to dance.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
I've always danced. I've always made everyone laugh. I've always told jokes. I've always got good grades. I'm the good kid. I'm the high-performing kid.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
The labels.
- JSJay Shetty
The labels, right?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And we... And- and those labels m- m- most of us put them on ourselves. Sometimes they did come through teachers and parents, of course. There's- there's plenty of versions of that. Ripping off a label-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... is not easy.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It's painful.
- JSJay Shetty
It's painful.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs] Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Right? It's like ripping off a name tag is whatever.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
But ripping off a label is- is so much more painful. How do you encourage people to go through that process of ripping off a label? I'm the dancer. I'm the entertainer. I'm the performer.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- 52:23 – 59:44
The Self-Talk That Keeps You Grounded
- JSJay Shetty
thank you for sharing that, by the way.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Of course.
- JSJay Shetty
And thank you for being so open because, yeah, it's, it's, it's always harder to, to share those types of things and, and the things we're struggling with. And I, I can relate to what you're saying as well. Like, I, I find myself being someone who loves deep, thoughtful conversation.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
So I gravitate towards one-to-one, even in a big group of people.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And initially, m- many years ago, and especially when I moved to LA and, you know, got invited to all sorts of events and everything, in the beginning, I would just feel like, oh, I didn't... There was a part of me that felt I didn't belong at these events because I was surrounded by people that I grew up-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... watching on TV and film. And, and then there was another side of me, more interestingly, which was, oh, I don't know how to do small talk, and small talk's not my thing, and I don't know how to navigate that. And that even happened when I went into the corporate world because after I left the monastery, where we didn't do a lot of small talk, it was very difficult for me to go into corporate networking scenarios because to me, the conversation just didn't go anywhere. And at that time, I would start to think, "Oh, maybe I'm boring."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
I am.
- JSJay Shetty
"Maybe I have nothing to say. Oh, I'm not that funny because I can't just quip and whatever." And I'm good at building rapport one-on-one, but just in a group, I just didn't feel confident about it. And I started to reframe it as, I'm just gonna look for the one person that I can have the deepest, most beautiful conversation with.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And what's amazing is wherever I go, I have to go to so many events for work or whatever it is, and I just found the one person that I had the most meaningful connection with. And what I found is that just turned into loads of great friendships.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And so now I never feel alone anywhere because I know someone deeply than knowing a lot of people in a shallow way, where I can still feel un- alone and disconnected.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm-hmm.
- JSJay Shetty
What was helpful for me was there are certain settings where I will be boring, but there are certain settings where I'm the least boring person in the world, and I'm just looking for those. And that acceptance allowed me to play to my strengths-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... and who I wanna be and what kind of conversations I wanna have. And it's like I wanna get to know someone deeply. I wanna share intimate things. I wanna hear things back. I wanna hear about worldviews. Like, I'm, I'm fascinated by that. What I don't wanna hear about is where's the best restaurant-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... to go out for dinner. I'm just not interested. Like, that's not... And, and so in that conversation, I am boring.And that's okay because I don't want to be interesting there
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And so I love what you're saying because there's so much freedom when you address the truth of it and you find the part of it that is, like you said, growth-oriented.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
Not just posi- We're not positively spinning it-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
No
- JSJay Shetty
... because that just feels fake. But it's, where's the growth side of this?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And that's what it was for me. The growth side was, go and find someone who wants the same thing as you, because then you'll have a great time.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
How did you... So when you were starting... Let- let's flip to you, if you don't mind.
- 59:44 – 1:04:54
Believing You’re Capable
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
as we go through this. There's a few things that came to mind as you were speaking. One of the things you said is that mistake that we make when we think we're the only one feeling a certain way. "Everyone else must be confident. I'm the only one." It's called pluralistic ignorance.
- JSJay Shetty
Interesting. I didn't know that word.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah. Everyone actually feels that way. I mean, look, we say everyone. Probably 95% of people-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... will feel that. But as you said, your ability to just show up in the discomfort and acknowledge that, "Hey, it's uncomfortable, but I'm here. I'm safe. It's fine," that makes it easier the next time you do it. You develop what's called a tolerance for discomfort, and that leads to amazing things. And then the other thing you highlighted is that what helped you is this idea of having a purpose and this idea of not making it about you. It was this concept of self-forgetting that I'd mentioned as one of the... We call it the gift of self-acceptance-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... is the ability to forget yourself and make it about other people. So you said, "If I have something meaningful to share," which is not about you, that's about adding something to them, that allows those voices to quieten.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
'Cause it's not just you doing it because you want to-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... or you think you need to or you think you should.It's for their sake. So that's beautiful. And then I love how you brought in impostor syndrome, which brings us beautifully-
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... to the second pillar, which is agency.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So just by way of recap, we've just covered acceptance, for everyone listening, and acceptance is w- essentially when your self-esteem is shaky, you seek validation, you feel like you need to prove your worth, your sense of identity is attached to what you're producing or performing or achieving. The next way that self-doubt can show up is not to do with the I'm not enough or I'm not worthy, and entirely to do with the can I actually do this thing? Do I have the skills and the ability to do it? And what we see here is a lot of people will fall into impostor syndrome.
- JSJay Shetty
Shadé, can you actually define what impostor syndrome is?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Impostor syndrome actually doesn't exist in the literature and the research as the term impostor syndrome. It's called impostor phenomenon. Now, just notice the difference between a syndrome and a phenomenon. One of them is a behavioral phenonom- phenomenon that was observed among a group of people. The other one pathologizes it and makes it seem like there's something wrong with us. So impostor syndrome was initially discovered in the 1970s, where they were specifically looking at women. So this was high-achieving women, women who had just entered the workforce, women who had PhDs and a strong track record behind them, and they felt like they didn't belong. They felt like they were frauds. They felt that they were undeserving of their success.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
They felt that everyone else thought that they were smarter or more capable than they really were. So there's two elements for the impostor phenomenon. We'll move away from syndrome. Impostor phenomenon. The first element is that you feel like a fraud, that other people believe you to be something you're not, and the second element is that you have to have some kind of track record behind you that allows you to feel like, "I don't deserve this." If you feel like an impostor and you've just started a new job, it's probably not impostor, right? It's just, "I'm in a new environment. I need to give myself grace to learn."
- JSJay Shetty
That's it.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
When we self-diagnose and say, "Oh my gosh, I'm such an impostor. This is impostor syndrome," that can lead us to withdraw even further. We use it as an excuse. So remind yourself, no, the impostor syndrome or impostor phenomenon is only when I have achieved something. I've just won this award. I've got this amazing job, and I can demonstrate that I've got all these achievements behind me, but I still don't feel I deserve it.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That is the definition of i- impostor phenomenon, and it is so common, not just among women, but also among men. Some studies have found that up to 82% of people at some point have felt like a fraud. So if you've ever felt this way, firstly, rest assured you're in very good company. The next thing to be aware of with impostor syndrome or phenomenon is if you feel like a fraud, rather than hearing that voice saying, "You don't belong. Don't speak to that person. Don't speak up," flip it immediately to, "Wow, what an amazing opportunity I have to learn and grow. Who can I learn from? What do I need to develop here?" So again, it's this idea of shifting from almost comparison into emulation or envy into study. Make it something action-oriented. That's really powerful. And speak to someone about it. So you know Jason Segel from How I Met Your Mother?
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
He was describing on a podcast how he was... When he transitioned from actor into director on Dispatches for Elsewhere, From Elsewhere, he was so full of impostor syndrome and anxiety. And he said he didn't know what to do. He was overthinking, and it was becoming this big thing. So finally, he calls all the crew together, and in front of everyone, he says, "Hey, everyone, this is my first time doing this. Don't really know what I'm doing. If I do anything that bugs you, let me know. I'm sure we're gonna have an amazing time." He called it out. He acknowledged. He didn't try to be perfect as we try to do when we feel like the impostor. We try to overcompensate so people don't find us out.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
But he just acknowledged it, and he said it was incredibly freeing. When you call out the fear, it shrinks it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And so if you're ever feeling this way, speak to someone about it. You'll probably find they've been
- 1:04:54 – 1:07:29
Everyone Experiences Self-Doubt!
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
there, too.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah. And I love what you said about this idea of... Because a lot of people ask me, they're like, "Jay, do you ever still feel self-doubt or like an impostor?" And I said, "I always feel it when I'm doing something new."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And that has made me realize that it's got nothing to do with me.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
No.
- JSJay Shetty
It's because I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
So I love it now.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It's brilliant.
- JSJay Shetty
So I love the idea of feeling that way because it's proof to me that I'm pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. I'm trying something new.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
We're expanding something. We're building a new business. We're starting a new venture. We're creating a new service, purpose, program, whatever it may be. It's like I've just never done it before.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And yeah, if I keep doing everything I've always done, I don't get nervous anymore, but that's boring to me.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
And that's not exciting. And so now that feeling of being uncomfortable and being nervous and being... wondering whether I fit in and everything is great because it's a sign to me that I'm moving forward.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
And-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It's growth with integrity, as we say.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes. Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
'Cause if you had blind delusion, you wouldn't feel the doubt.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Right?
- JSJay Shetty
Exactly.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So you've got the integrity, the intellectual humility to know, "Okay, I haven't done this before. Here are the gaps," but you're embracing the discomfort that comes with growth. You only experience that kind of impostor feeling when you're stretched.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You would never feel that if you know how to do everything-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... and if you're fully comfortable.
- JSJay Shetty
And if you're a narcissist. Like, you're like to your point, you know [laughs]
- 1:07:29 – 1:13:53
What Actually Replaces Self-Doubt?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And a big part of that comes down to your level of agency.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Where do you fall on that scale? So agency relates to what's called self-efficacy, that's a personality trait, which is the belief that you can do what you need to do to achieve what you want to achieve.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
I wanna take you somewhere which relates to this, and it actually relates to the overarching theme of the book. Jay, if I were to ask you, I mean, we've kind of primed it now, but if I were to ask you off the top of your head, what do you think the opposite of self-doubt is?
- JSJay Shetty
Is it not self-trust?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah. So I primed you.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So it's, it's absolutely self-trust.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So we find, though, that 90% of people, if we haven't had this conversation-
- JSJay Shetty
I just had a fresh house over there. [laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs] I should have asked you that at the very beginning.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
When we ask this question, 90% of people will say that it is, or 95% will say it is-
- JSJay Shetty
Self-confidence
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... confidence. Confidence. And so many people, so much of the population, are waiting for that feeling of confidence before they take that step. They say, "I'll know when I'm ready. I'm..." You know, that feeling of confidence that we wait for, actually, when we look at the literature, it does not come before we take the action. It comes after we take the action. Because the brain needs to see yourself doing the thing. It gets a proof point. It gets an evidence point, "Hey, I can do this." That then builds a degree of skill and competence, "Hey, I did it and I was okay, and I got better," which then boosts your self-efficacy.
- JSJay Shetty
Right.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And then that creates momentum and motivation, and that is the feeling that we've associated with confidence.
- JSJay Shetty
So what do we need before that?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So what do we need before it? Well, when we actually look at the word confidence ... So I think this is where the mix-up happened. When we look at the origins of the word confidence, it comes from the words, in Latin, con and fidere, meaning with trust. And so really, what we need before we take action is not that feeling that we're waiting for, it's self-trust, trusting that you can handle whatever comes your way. Whether you succeed, whether you fail, whether you bounce back, whether you bound- whatever it is, you will be okay.
- JSJay Shetty
Right.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And in order to do that, we call that the state of Big Trust, which is recognizing these four attributes, reminding yourself that you can strengthen them, working on strengthening them, and also knowing which one can you lean on when you might be weaker in the others. So that's ... And why this ties into agency is agency is such a big part of this. Because if you do not believe that you can do the thing, if you don't believe that you have the skills or the ability to learn or capacity to adapt, you will not take that step.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And so you will perpetually wait to feel ready. And then you're waiting. And you will often occupy yourself or distract yourself with preparation and planning, and all the things that we do that we think we're being productive by doing, but they're just distracting us. It's procrastinating, essentially. Yeah, we just need to take the action.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So agency is recognizing, hey, I can do this. I have been here before. As in, I've been in unfamiliar situations, and I was fine. How can I draw on that? I have handled challenges before. How can I bring those attributes? There's this fantastic story that comes from Paula Scher, legendary graphic designer. So in the 19... It was 1998 when Citibank was merging with Travelers Insurance, creating Citibank. They, or Citigroup, they brought Paula Scher in to create the logo design. And so she's sitting at this meeting, and they're all talking about what they want for this logo. She grabs a napkin, and she starts scribbling on this napkin for a few seconds. Finally, she slides the napkin over, and she says, "Here's your logo." The table was stunned. They said, "How is it possible that you created a logo in a matter of seconds?" And she sat back, and she said, "It's done in a second and 34 years."
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
"It's done in a second and every experience and everything that's in my head."
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- 1:13:53 – 1:22:26
Getting the Job Even When You Feel Underqualified
- JSJay Shetty
such a good practice. And you've reminded me, because you just gave us the Latin of confidence, right?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
I remember looking at the English dictionary definition of confidence, and one of them was the acknowledgement and appreciation of one's own abilities and skills.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Oh, beautiful.
- JSJay Shetty
Like, that's actually the definition.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Beautiful.
- JSJay Shetty
So confidence isn't a feeling.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It's not a feeling.
- JSJay Shetty
It's not a feeling. It's not an attitude.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
No.
- JSJay Shetty
It's not a mindset. It's the acknowledgement and appreciation of what you've just said-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Wow
- JSJay Shetty
... of one's own skills-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... and abilities and qualities, as you're saying. It's, it's a bit more than that. When I looked... I think it might even say qualities, actually. I could be wrong. I actually think it might actually say that. And now when I think about it, I'm like, "Of course." It's almost like when you're halfway up a mountain-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... you have to look back down and say, "I've walked up halfway."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes, as opposed to just looking at how much is left to go.
- JSJay Shetty
Totally. If you just look at the top and you go, "Oh, God, that flag is so high. Oh, my gosh, there's so many, you know, there's such a steep climb," but if you look back and go, "How did I get halfway up here? That didn't take that long."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
"Oh, okay, I've done half. Okay, I've got another..." And it's just so fascinating to me that we haven't been trained to do that-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
No
- JSJay Shetty
... to actually acknowledge. And I say that to everyone. When I'm speaking on stage sometimes and I'm working with someone in the audience who's having a really tough time with this, something I like to remind everyone is each and every one of you have been through something really difficult.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
Each and every person has been through a extreme pain, whether it was the loss of a loved one, the divorce of family members, a breakup, the loss of a dream.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
Everyone. There is no human on the planet who hasn't been through something that, for them, was exceptionally difficult, and you're still here.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And you survived, and maybe you've even fallen in love again and have an amazing job and have found kindness and grace within yourself. And if you don't look at that as a monument and as a marker of how far you've come, nothing will ever fill that.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- 1:22:26 – 1:25:30
Understanding Key Differences Between Men and Women
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
that it's okay.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You're still you. You still have value. You can still accept yourself. You still have agency, and you can apply what you need to apply to achieve what you need to achieve.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So that's one process to think about. So any women who are listening, or even men, who hold back, stop holding back. Take the step. What's the worst that could happen?
- JSJay Shetty
Mm. Did you see any other differences between men and women in your research?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So I saw really clear differences when I used to coach men and women. I... And this is actually even before I was officially coaching. We don't even coach anymore. We don't do one-to-one. We do group sessions now. We'll work with companies. But when I coached, and I was actually coaching when I was still working in banking. So I would have people reach out to me, colleagues, coworkers, peers, leaders, and ask me to coach them. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know what it meant to be a coach. I had no credentials, nothing, but I loved to help. So I started helping as much as I could, and what I discovered is that the women who would reach out to me would do so because they had self-doubt. They were holding themselves back. They wanted to ask for a raise, and they didn't have the courage to do so. The men who reached out to, to me for coaching wanted to excel. They wanted to perform better. They wanted to be more productive. They wanted to start a side business. And it was really, really clear that what they were seeking help for was very, very different. It's not that these men didn't have self-doubt, but they were... They s- in that environment, it was a small sample, and anecdotal entirely, but it seemed like they just wanted to get ahead and know how they could move fa- faster, whereas these women felt like they were stuck and they needed to get unstuck. So I found that really fascinating. I think part of it is that men typically don't like to share the doubt that they're experiencing. They see it as a weakness, whereas women, we are just much more in tune with that. We acknowledge it. We share it. We're communicative. And then also potentially there's this element around sharing at work. So, uh, this is moving slightly in a different space, but still really valuable for anyone listening. A lot of women are branded as being emotional. When they're insecure, when they have... You know, they, they feel a strong emotion in a meeting or something like this.Interestingly, a lot of men have very strong emotional reactions to things, but it's more anger-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... or frustration or stress. They don't get labeled as emotional. So what some research has found is if you feel like you're being labeled as emotional because maybe you've got a lot of self-doubt and the insecurity's coming out, in that moment, say out loud and to yourself, "I'm just really passionate about this. I'm acting this way because I'm so committed to seeing this through," or, "I'm so committed to doing a good job." By shifting from emotional to passion or commitment, it fundamentally changes how people see you and how you see yourself.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And so that's just a little tweak, a little hack that comes from the science around helping to... Again, it's almost like this labeling.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You're not emotional, you are just passionate. You really care deeply about this thing. And then again, it allows you, because you're shifting your attention, to then focus on, "Okay, what am I doing next?"
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So Jay, now I think we should go into the third [laughs] pillar.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs] Go for it, yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Are we ready to
- 1:25:30 – 1:35:44
Why Constant Complaining Signals Low Self-Trust
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
dive through?
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So the third pillar is what we call... Actually, before I tell you the third pillar, I'm gonna share Bruno's story with you. So Bruno was an entrepreneur who reached out for help. He was running a business. It was doing really well, and yet he was one of these people who would always find a problem in every solution. He would always focus on what was wrong, and it was always everyone else's fault. So the very first time that we met, he walked in, he was rushing, he was complaining about the weather and the traffic and the fact that it was so hot in the room, and he spoke for about five minutes ranting. We hadn't even shook hands or sat down. [laughs] He was stuck in this litany of grievances. Finally, we sat down, we started speaking, and what I discovered is that Bruno has a number of common patterns. He was an endless complainer. Chronic complaining about everything. Not only that, he was very resentful to other people. He felt like everyone else had an easier life than he did. Other people's business success was easier. He felt like he was constantly having to work harder. The third pattern was blame. He was constantly blaming other people for issues that he was responsible for. He was never willing to take ownership. And the fourth pattern is he would keep reliving past hurts.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So past times that he had been hurt by somebody, someone had double-crossed him, someone had treated him poorly, he kept sharing that story. Now, initially, when you're having a conversation with someone, you listen to these stories, of course you have empathy. By the 10th time they're telling you this story within a few months, you realize they're stuck in a cycle that is keeping them stuck.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
When it comes to complaining, and I'll share what the attribute is in a moment, but when it comes to complaining, we don't realize this is a sign of a lack of self-trust.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Because we lack the trust that we have the ability to do something about the situation. So what do we do? Focus on what we cannot control, and magnify it, and complain about it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Because it's easier to complain than to take ownership and do something. When we keep reliving past hurts, things that have happened to us in the past, we're telling what's called a contamination story.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Jay, you mentioned earlier how every single person has lived through hardship. Every single person. And depending on the story that they tell themselves about that hardship, it determines how they feel about that hardship-
- JSJay Shetty
Yes
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... whether they internalize that hardship and make it mean something about them, and then whether they feel empowered in their lives or the victims. And I'll come back to that story in a moment or the, the example of the hardships, 'cause I do have a really great case study for that. But coming back to Bruno, what we discovered is that he had a very low level of what we call autonomy. He felt like he didn't have the freedom to make choices. He felt like he didn't have the ability to influence his outcomes, and that's why he fixated on everything outside of his control. This relates to what's called a locus of control.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So Jay, you have a locus, I have a locus, everyone listening will have a locus of control, which comes from the Latin word location, which means where do you place the control in your life? Do you believe that you can control things? And I'm not talking about control everything, because we know a lot of life is uncontrollable.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
But do you believe that you have some degree of influence or that life is happening to you because of external forces or other people or society or the government? If you have an external focus, external locus, you will focus on things outside of your control, what other people think, what other people do, what other people say, what the government is doing, what the media is doing, what your neighbor is doing, what your brother is doing, the future, the past, things that you cannot control. And then how do you feel when you're focusing on those things? You feel powerless. Why? Because you are powerless.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
When you have an internal locus, you acknowledge that you can influence the outcome, you can shape your path. Again, not everything is controllable, but you focus on what you do have control over, your thoughts, your feelings, your interpretations, your actions.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
That is it. And when you focus on those things, guess what? You remarkably feel more powerful because you're focusing on things you can do.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
We also know when people get stuck... So where Bruno was, when he was in that external locus, we see a lot of activity in the emotion centers of the brain, very little activity in the prefrontal regions, which is what we need for rationality and solutions and logical thinking. So if you ever find yourself feeling like you're complaining, feeling like a victim, and I'm not talking about real victims, I'm talking about those who victimize themselves.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
If anyone listening ever feels that, and the reality is it can happen, especially when unfair things happen in your life. You need to tell yourself, "Okay, instead of why me, what now?"
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
"What now? It's happened. I can't do anything about it. I'm not gonna dwell on it. What am I going to do about it?" And we have this great little exercise we love to share with people. It's called the I could and the I will list. So when people get to this state, if we encourage them to think about what you will do next-Often what happens is that they start to think about all the things that they should have done-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- 1:35:44 – 1:42:25
Growth After Trauma
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
is autonomy.
- JSJay Shetty
There's something you said today that really struck me. I was saying that everyone's been through hard things.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And the way you flipped that really powerfully, and it was subtle, was that, but it's how you feel about how you got through those hard things that define how they impact you.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm.
- JSJay Shetty
And that is so true and powerful. Like, that really, really hit me and resonated with me. I don't think I've heard it being said like that before because, like you said, you talked about your parents' divorce, and even if it was, even though it was amicable and you had lo- a loving family, your take was, "What else could I have done?" So even though you've been through a hard thing, you see it as your fault-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm-hmm
- JSJay Shetty
... in some way, or you see it as something you could have done better. And therefore, thinking about that hard thing and getting through it doesn't make you feel stronger. It makes you feel weak and insignificant-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Mm
- JSJay Shetty
... and whatever else you would use to describe yourself because your memory of it and your story of it is, "I failed."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
Your story of it isn't, "I'm still alive-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
No
- JSJay Shetty
... and I still survived, and I'm still good." And that is m- magnificent as a, as a case study because that's why people's difficult times don't inspire them, because their difficult times remind them that they're a failure.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
Because that's the story that they built around it.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes. And we also know that when you're remembering-
- JSJay Shetty
Yes
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... a memory, you're not actually remembering the first thing, the, the first time that it happened.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
You're remembering the last memory you had of it.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And this is why, actually, memory is so fallible.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
They've done some studies where they've looked at suggestion, and they've had people witness a crime, and then they get asked to report on the crime. And let's say there was a yellow car that was speeding by. The, the person asking questions would say, "How fast do you think the red car was going?" And because they're not thinking about the color of the car, they'll report a speed. And then the next time they ask them, that person will say, "Yeah, it was a red car."
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And so we need to be so mindful every time we relive something, and this is why overthinking, resentment, complaining is so dangerous. We're rewiring this into our system, and also just remembering the last time we remembered it. But you know what's beautiful about that? It means that you can actually change the meaning you're applying to these events.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes, yes.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And then when you start remembering the new meaning, you start to fundamentally change the memory.
- JSJay Shetty
Yes, yes.
- 1:42:25 – 1:49:17
Why We Focus on What We Can’t Control
- JSJay Shetty
And it's, and, and there's enough evidence to prove that-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes
- JSJay Shetty
... if you're looking for it.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
We know that there's things we can control, and there's things we can't control. But when you were saying, you ca- you were calling it the external locus, when your mind space is locked in the external locus, you feel powerless because you are.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
And that, I love that connection because if we believe we're powerless, it's because we're finding all the evidence that we're-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes
- JSJay Shetty
... powerless. So if I consider the... weather today and your mood and my success online today as a dictation of how good I am, then I'm gonna feel powerless because I actually am powerless by the three metrics that I've chosen to do it by. So it's not even that your story's inaccurate. Your story's just wrongly focused.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Completely. Your attention is on the wrong thing.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah, yeah. And so just that simple shift back to say, "Okay, let me actually only measure myself by things I can control." And I don't know why we all believe that we can control someone else's mood-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
... our boss's mood-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
... the weather, the, the timeline, the schedule. Like, I just don't know why we feel so strongly that we can control the things we can't and that we can't control the things we can.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Because it's easier to do that. It's much harder to focus on what we can control because then we feel empowered and we have to do something about it. Remember the brain? The brain likes certainty.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And it wants to use the least amount of effort possible. And if it gets you to focus on everything outside of your control, you're not using your prefrontal regions, which require a lot of metabolic energy, and so great. It's easier for the brain. We go down these habit paths of overthinking and catastrophizing, and, and then we don't have to do anything about it.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
We don't have to take the step into discomfort. We don't have to risk the rejection or the criticism by trying the thing. There's this beautiful analogy of a cow and a bison which I came across and I loved, and I had to put it in the book. And I want to share it, 'cause it's very short, but it's so poignant to what we're talking about. So cows and bison are very similar in terms of, you know, their animal history. Very, very similar. They're cousins in the animal world. But they have a very, very different approach to how they weather storms and challenges that they might experience, like a physical storm. So cows have been observed to huddle together, usually under a tree, but also they generally walk away from the storm. So they'll walk with the wind. And then what happens is they end up receiving the brunt of the storm when the storm eventually catches up to them. Bison, on the other hand, have been observed to walk towards a storm. They walk into the wind, which counterintuitively means they generally pass the brunt of the storm. They get through it much quicker. So what is the insight that we learn from this? Well, there are two mindsets. There is the bison mindset, where you see the bad thing, you acknowledge the bad thing, you approach the bad thing knowing that there's light on the other side. Or the cow mindset. You avoid the bad thing. You run away from the bad thing. You don't want to own up to the bad thing or take ownership over it. You run away, and then it'll just get worse and worse and worse.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Some people don't like the, you know, thinking of themselves as a cow.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So you can think of something else, some other animal.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
A gazelle, a Labrador, whatever it is.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
But we need to be asking-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... how do we embody more of that bison mindset?
- 1:49:17 – 1:55:01
Learning to Adapt to Your Emotions
- JSJay Shetty
talked about acceptance.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
We have.
- JSJay Shetty
We've talked about agency.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
We've talked about autonomy.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes.
- JSJay Shetty
I love that you taught, you taught me something about Nolan that I didn't know-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs] Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... because I'm a big Nolan geek, so I love that. What's the fourth one?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
The fourth one is what we call adaptability, and it specifically relates, in the context of doubt and Big Trust, it relates to your ability to adapt to your emotions.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
We cannot necessarily control emotions. We can guide them, we can harness them, but they will often come in response to a stimulus.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So how do you adapt to it?
- JSJay Shetty
So for that, what I wanna do is-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... I wanna give you a series of scenarios-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Okay
- JSJay Shetty
... where I think you're having emotions-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Okay
- JSJay Shetty
... to help you answer it. Sound good?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Okay, great. All right, 'cause I think this is what I was saving these for because I feel they'll... They're, they're moments in time that all of us experience where there is an emotional reaction, and we need to know how to adapt.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yes. Brilliant.
- JSJay Shetty
So you're about to speak up in a meeting, and your brain floods with, "What if I mess up?"
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So we call this the three-second spiral stop. So when this happens, you want to acknowledge... So firstly, take a breath. Take a moment, take a breath, three seconds. Breathe in. Second step is to acknowledge that your brain is just doing what it's meant to do. It's just wired to magnify everything that could go wrong, but it's okay. There's no physical danger here. So you need to remind yourself nothing terrible is going to happen. The fourth... Are we up to the third step? I think we're up to the third step. The third step is to keep your, whatever you're going to say, keep it as short as possible. And the reason why I say this is because your brain is magnifying what could go wrong because you probably haven't done this many times. It doesn't really have the proof points-
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... that you can do this and do it well. And if you try and go out there, and the first thing you want to say is a five-minute monologue about... You're going to fluster and lose in- and then you're gonna have a negative evidence point, so keep it really short. You might validate what someone else has said. "That's a great idea, Jay," or, "I'd like to build on what Simon said," or, "Maria, can you repeat that one more time? I want to make sure my notes have it correctly." Really low stakes, easy. You're just allowing that energy to come out.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm-hmm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Once you've done that, and you've got the proof point, the next step is, okay, now I'm going to really share what I wanted to share, ask that longer question, share my perspective. I know I can do it 'cause I just did it before. I'm also gonna breathe again. I'm gonna remind myself there's no physical threat, and then I'm going to speak. You want to make sure that you're not speaking fast. Because when our emotions are in overdrive, we get nervous. We speed up our pace-
- 1:55:01 – 1:58:38
Creating Your “I Could, I Will” List
- JSJay Shetty
if someone just got fired or lost their job, what would you encourage them to do?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
I Could, I Will list.So if you just lose your job or you just got fired, and you're ... Generally what'll happen is you will feel very low autonomy, 'cause these things are completely out of your control. You might also feel a lack of agency. "Oh, no, I got fired. Does that mean my skills are not valuable?" You might then experience a lack of acceptance. "Oh, no, I'm a failure. I'm never going to be good enough." And then the adaptability's gonna be going crazy because your emotions are firing. So what'll help you as the first step is the autonomy piece, right? Okay, what are all the things that I could do right now? Well, I could reach out to someone. I could ask the interviewer for feedback. I could update my LinkedIn. I could ... You know what? I could take a day off and just process this. And then I will. What will you do? You might be like, "You know what? I'm gonna take a day off to process this, because this was a lot," or, "I'm gonna take a week off. I'm gonna take a month off," whatever. But remind yourself you can take an action, and then take the action, and then make your plan.
- JSJay Shetty
Mm.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
But fundamentally, if we bring it back to big trust, you have to remind yourself you are not your work. It was a business decision. It is not a reflection of your value. Maybe, let's say, that you were an underperformer, and it was a reflection of your performance. You still say to yourself, "This is data that I'm going to process and get better next time." Next one, agency. I can improve my skills. I can go f- work for an organization that values the skills that I already have. I can learn what I need to. Autonomy, what am I going to focus on right now to keep moving forward? And then that adaptability, what else do I need to do to make sure that my emotions are in check? And a lot of it is reframing. So instead of saying, "I am anxious," 'cause remember this idea of labeling. Anything that comes after I am, we internalize. It feels like it's fixed. Instead of I am anxious, I'm noticing a thought that I'm feeling anxious because this thing happened. Identify the stimulus. Instead of I am a failure, I'm noticing a thought that's telling me I'm a failure because I just lost my job. You're creating what's called cognitive diffusion, separating yourself from the thought, reminding you you don't have to believe everything you think, which also reminds you you don't have to believe everything that your mind tells you to, and that can be really powerful.
- JSJay Shetty
I love how your four As just fully-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah
- JSJay Shetty
... encapsulate the entire process and give us something to turn to at all times as to quickly diagnose which one we're struggling with before the domino effect happens-
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Exactly
- JSJay Shetty
... and they all start toppling each other on.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
Uh, Shadé, today's been ... I have learned so much from you. I feel like you've blown my mind with research.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs] blown.
- JSJay Shetty
Fascinated, fascinated me with stories.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
[laughs]
- JSJay Shetty
Uh, so many great practical tips, and it's all inside this new book, Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence, and Fuel Success by Shadé Zahrai. Pre-order your copy. You will have it for the new year so that you can start your new year with less self-doubt, find your confidence, start trusting yourself. Please pre-order this book right now. As an author who knows how hard it is to write books, authors put in so much time, so much effort to put together. As you can tell, Shadé's one of the most researched, most, uh, well-read and, you know, comprehensive thinkers that we have. Like, that's ... It's such a, it's such a brilliant, uh, tapestry of a step-by-step process of what people can actually apply in their lives. And so it'd mean the world to me if you go and support her book. Go and pre-order it. Pre-orders help authors a lot too, so just wanna put it out there, that if you've been ... if you found value in today's conversation, which you'd be crazy to think you haven't,
- 1:58:38 – 2:15:20
Shadé on Final Five
- JSJay Shetty
then, uh, please go and pre-order the book. Shadé, we end every episode with a Final Five. These questions have to be answered in one word or one sentence maximum. So Shadé Zahrai, these are your Final Five.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Okay.
- JSJay Shetty
Uh, question number one: What is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
My mom always encouraged me, "If you want it, ask for it."
- JSJay Shetty
Great advice.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So I asked my husband to marry me.
- JSJay Shetty
Did you?
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
I did.
- JSJay Shetty
Tell us that story.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
I did. Okay. That's more than a sentence or a word.
- JSJay Shetty
No, no, you can go.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Okay.
- JSJay Shetty
Now, now you've got my attention. Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So my incredible husband, Faisal, he's also co-author, so a lot of the ideas... I wrote it, but a lot of the ideas are our ideas. When I met him, I had a deep knowing. It wasn't even an emotional thing. It was a deep knowing that, okay, this is the person I want to spend my life with. And then we got to a point where I said to him... It was very quick. It was... It all happened in a year. We met. We were married within about nine months. I said to him, "I can see us having an amazing life together." Uh, w- it was basically like, "Look, this might be forward, but I can see us having an amazing life together." That was essentially me proposing. And then he said, "How do we make that happen?" And that was him accepting.
- JSJay Shetty
[laughs]
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
And that was it. So there was no, "Will you marry me," getting on one knee.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
It was just a conversation-
- JSJay Shetty
That's great
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... making sure we're both on the same page, and then it happened so quickly. And then from that moment to when we were married was, like, three months.
- JSJay Shetty
I love that.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Yeah.
- JSJay Shetty
It's great.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
So if you want to ask, because, in fact, Steve Jobs shares this story of how when he was young, he was about 12 years old, and his neighbor was the head of Hewlett-Packard. And one day he just asked. He said, "Can I come in and learn some things? Can I just come into the office?" And he said it was that ability that he had to just ask, because 99.7% of people will not ask. They will wait for someone to tap themselves on the shoulder-
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
... to give them the opportunity.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
They will wait to get the promotion or get given the raise. It doesn't work like that. We don't live in that world, especially in the context of work, where studies have found that, especially in big organizations, managers don't remember at least 60% of what their teams do.
- JSJay Shetty
Yeah.
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
They either don't know or don't remember, which means if your manager is not aware of what you're delivering, you need to ask for what you want and demonstrate it by way of tangible value.
Episode duration: 2:15:20
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