EVERY SPOKEN WORD
20 min read · 3,705 words- 0:00 – 0:30
Why high achievers still feel stuck: the 3 habits the top 1% systematize
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
The top 1% don't leave this stuff to chance. But here is where it gets dangerous. And this is one of the most misunderstood high performance habits of the top 1%. Now, instead of asking the vague what are my strengths question, ask these instead. They are not you, and you are not them. If you're driven, passionate, high-achieving, and still feel like something's missing, like you're doing everything right but it's not getting you to where you want to go, it's probably not your skills, and it's probably not even your work ethic. I've trained tens
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Habit #1 — Conscious affiliation: your circle is never “neutral”
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
of thousands of leaders, and I have seen firsthand that these three habits are what the 1% do differently. So let's get straight into it. Habit number one: conscious affiliation. This one is everything. The people you spend the most time around are shaping your future. Now, I don't mean that in theory, I mean that literally. Every single day they're either watering your potential or slowly starving it. There is no neutral energy in your circle. You're either getting pulled forward or pulled back. And let me tell you
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Pygmalion effect: expectations from others can elevate performance
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
why that matters. There is a Greek myth, maybe you've heard of it, about a sculptor named Pygmalion, and he carves this stunning statue. It's breathtakingly beautiful. So lifelike, so perfect, that he falls in love with it, and he names her Galatea. And he starts wishing, really wishing, that she were real. Eventually, the goddess of love, Aphrodite, takes pity on him and brings the statue to life. Galatea becomes a real, breathing woman. In this story, Pygmalion's belief was so powerful that it brought a statue to life. Now fast-forward. Modern day psychology actually gave this idea a name, which you probably heard of, the Pygmalion effect. And it's been shown in hundreds of studies from schoolchildren to workplaces to military environments, that when others believe that you're capable, competent, and destined for more, you start to believe it, too. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You rise to meet their expectation because they expect you to succeed,
- 2:02 – 3:02
Golem effect & expectancy theory: how doubt becomes self-sabotage
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
so then you expect you to succeed. You end up then performing better, you take more risks, you show up with a different energy, and then you are more likely to succeed. It is a fascinating phenomenon. But here is where it gets dangerous. If people expect you to fail, to mess up, to not be good enough, that expectation sticks, too. It's the opposite, and it's called the Golem effect. That also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As you continue to expect yourself to fail, you start making choices from that expectation. You hesitate, you hold back, you second-guess your instincts. This is based on what's called expectancy theory. Your actions are largely determined by what you expect to happen. And without realizing it, you begin to create the very setbacks you were afraid of. It's a vicious cycle. Your belief predicts your behavior, and your behavior proves your belief right. I remember seeing this snippet of a show from comedian
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A quick pop-culture example: self-fulfilling expectations in relationships
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Taylor Tomlinson. It's really short, but it highlights how this idea of expectancy plays out, but in a different context. It's in a romantic relationship. So she's having this conversation with her therapist about a relationship that ended, and this is what her therapist says to her.
- SPSpeaker
Well, you might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes we expect someone to treat us poorly, so we treat them like they're going to treat us poorly until they do. You thought someone was gonna cheat on you, so you treated them like they were gonna cheat on you until they did cheat on you, and then you were like, "See?"
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
And I was like, "Oh."
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
Think about that. You brace yourself for betrayal, so you get cold, distant, defensive, and eventually that person responds in kind. You confirm your expectation because you were holding the script for how it was going to end. Now granted, there is no excuse for infidelity, but it's simply to demonstrate how our expectations can create our reality. Now, zoom out from that example, away from relationships. If you expect to fail in business, you will second-guess every decision, you will overthink, you
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Auditing your circle: social contagion and the belief-behavior cycle
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
will hesitate to invest, you'll shrink in meetings, and eventually the business suffers, not because you weren't capable, but because you never acted like you were. So let me ask you again, who's around you right now? Do they believe in your ability to succeed? Do they speak life into your vision? The most successful, fulfilled people have developed a habit of what I call conscious affiliation. They understand that success isn't just about what you do. It's also about who you allow to shape your mindset. Jim Rowan once said, "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." And while there's no hard science behind the number five, what is backed by research is that there is a social contagion effect. Other people's moods, beliefs, confidence levels, even risk tolerance, they are contagious. This is why you have to be conscious about auditing your circle, because their belief influences your belief, your belief shapes your expectations, your expectations guide how you interpret other people's behavior, and that interpretation directly influences how you show up. Then that reinforces the very beliefs that started the cycle. Not only that, it can also influence others' belief in you. So here is what you need to reflect on. Are the people in your inner circle genuine supporters, or do they second-guess your every move, mask their fear as concern, and leave you wondering if you're doing the right thing? Today's episode is brought to you by Big Trust, my upcoming
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Whose advice counts: projection, egocentric bias, and respecting the source
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
book launching January 20th, 2026. Bestselling author Jefferson Fisher said, "We all know the fight with self-doubt. If you're ready to stop second-guessing yourself and step into your potential, this book will show you how." More on it later, but for now, let's get back into it. Which brings us to the second part of this habit. Conscious affiliation also means being really clear on whose advice actually matters, because not all advice is created equal. When I left my corporate job to build the business I now run with my husband Faisal, people thought I was reckless. "Why would you leave something so secure? What if it all fails?" I heard this constantly. It didn't matter that we had a plan or that I'd built credibility over the years, they couldn't see it because they wouldn't have done it, and that's the key. They weren't evaluating my plan. They were projecting their own limits based on what they would do in the same circumstances. They give advice through the lens of their own experiences, fears, limitations, and values. It's a form of egocentric bias. We tend to assume that others see the world as we do. So when someone says, "I wouldn't do that," or, "That's too risky," what they're often saying is, "I wouldn't do that because I don't feel equipped," or, "I don't value that outcome enough to pursue it." But they are not you, and you are not them. As I like to say, be wary of the advice of those you don't respect or people who haven't done what you're aiming to do. You don't need to take every piece of advice, especially from those who haven't walked the path that you're on or don't have the vision that you're holding. And that's why you have to be relentless, ruthless even, about who you let shape your beliefs. Because whether they mean to or not, the people closest to you are writing the script that you live by, and if that script is rooted in fear, safety, or smallness, you'll unconsciously start performing to it. Now, the top 1%, they know this. They don't audit their circle once a year or when things feel off. They audit constantly. They are asking themselves, "Do I feel uplifted by this person? Do they challenge me to grow or subtly pull me back to stay the same? Are they invested in my potential or just comfortable with who I was in the past? Do they speak possibility or limitation? Are they constantly complaining or blaming others, or do they take ownership and look for solutions? Do they believe in the future that I'm building even if they wouldn't choose it for themselves?" And if the answer is no, the top 1% make adjustments quickly because they know that who they're around is going to be who they become. And your environment
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When you can’t change the people: boundaries and protecting your energy
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
isn't neutral. It's always nudging you in some direction. But of course, we have to be real. Sometimes you cannot choose the people that you're around. Maybe you're on a team that isn't exactly high-performing. Maybe it's family or close friends, people you love, but who don't see your vision and who unconsciously try to keep you small because it makes them feel more comfortable. So what do you do then? That's when you become even more intentional about your boundaries. You stop seeking validation from people who were never meant to understand your path. You limit the emotional access they have to you, and you double down on curating your inner circle, people who do see you, do challenge you, and do hold you to a higher standard. Because the 1% know that your energy is your most precious asset. I've learned that myself as I've gotten older and more experienced. So protect it like your future depends on it because it quite literally does. Guard your passion. Guard your belief. Guard that little spark that keeps whispering, "You're made for more." You don't need everyone
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Habit #2 — Care less: stop outsourcing your power to approval
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
to understand your vision. You just need a few who believe it's possible, and most importantly, you need to believe it too. That is how you get ahead. That is how you stay ahead, and it starts with the habit of conscious affiliation. That's the foundation behind every success story that I've ever seen. Now to habit number two: care less. This one can be really confronting, but if there's one habit that has changed everything for me, not overnight, but with time, it's this one. Now, not careless, as in careless with your work or your standards or your impact, and definitely not care less about people, but I've learned to care less about their approval. And this is one of the most misunderstood high performance habits of the top 1%, yet it can be one of the most powerful to develop. Because if you spend your life trying to be approved of by everyone and avoid being disliked, you will spend your life contorting, compromising, shrinking. You'll say yes when you mean no. You will soften your edges so you don't make waves. You'll trade authenticity for approval, and you'll call it being a team player or not rocking the boat. And I say this with full empathy because I used to do this too. For years, I thought that my value came from being liked, from being the one that could make anything work, the agreeable one, the high performer who maintained harmony. I would leave meetings questioning myself, "Did that come across okay? Did I upset someone? Should I follow up and clarify again?" It was exhausting, and the worst part is I still wasn't fully respected because people don't respect performance without boundaries. They respect clarity. They respect congruence. They respect someone who knows who they are and isn't trying to be everything to everyone. So I started practicing this one line: care less. Not because I stopped caring, but because I started caring more about the right things. I care about staying in integrity. I care about doing my best work. I care about treating people with respect. I care about leading with excellence. But I stopped caring about whether that made me likable to every single person in the room. Because here is the thing. If you're doing anything worthwhile, someone will misunderstand it. If you're growing, evolving, expanding, someone will feel threatened by it. If you're stepping into leadership, someone will project their insecurity onto you. You cannot control that. But what you can control is whether their opinion gets a vote in how you move forward. Now, why is this so hard for so many of us? It's because we're social creatures. We've evolved to care
- 11:41 – 12:41
The neuroscience of rejection: why disapproval feels physically painful
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
what other people think, and not just emotionally, but neurologically. A groundbreaking study at the time, which came out of UCLA, headed by Matthew Lieberman, found that the pain of social rejection and the pain of physical injury activate the same neural circuitry in the brain. In other words, your brain processes a snide comment, a cold shoulder, or being excluded in the same way it would process a punch in the arm. That's why it feels so intense. That's why you second-guess yourself after tough feedback. That's why you hesitate to speak up. But this is exactly why the care less habit matters. It's not because you stop caring altogether, but because you stop consciously choosing what feedback is worth your energy and what opinions you're done performing for. The 1% don't override their humanity. They just don't let the fear of disapproval make their decisions for them. One of the leaders in our career program managed to land a step-up role in another country with a huge salary increase and increased visibility at the regional
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Leadership case study: credibility rises when you ‘care less’ in key moments
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
level. But when we spoke, she admitted something that caught me off guard. She said, "I should be really excited, but I feel paralyzed about this need to be liked." Now, her new team hadn't exactly welcomed her with open arms. There was resistance, there was resentment, so she doubled down on trying to win them over. She softened her feedback. She avoided hard conversations. She over explained every decision, all in the hopes that eventually they would approve of her. But it completely backfired. Her credibility took a hit. Her team was still disengaged, and now they saw her as a pushover, and she was exhausted from thinking about it constantly. So she applied this one small shift to care less. She started practicing this habit of saying "care less" in her head before key moments, before she stepped into a meeting, before she would give an announcement to the department, before she would hit send on the important team email. Now, the intention wasn't to shut people out or stop having empathy, but it was a reminder for her to stop handing over her power. And here is what she wrote to me after six weeks of focusing on developing this habit of care less. She wrote, "I didn't realize how much energy I was wasting trying to be liked. Once I let that go, I felt like I could finally show up like the leader the team needed me to be." That is what this habit gives you, a clean, clear kind of freedom. It's not a freedom from responsibility, but it's a freedom from rumination, from overthinking, and it works in those micro moments too. In fact, I use it more in the micro moments, like when you're overthinking a LinkedIn post wondering if it sounds too bold, whether you're debating to call that disgruntled customer and have that hard conversation, when you're holding back in a meeting because you're worried that someone won't like your idea. Pause, exhale, and say it in your head, "Care less," and then move. That's the second one percent strategy. It frees you up to focus on what really matters. So now we move to habit
- 14:42 – 15:43
Habit #3 — Strategic feedback seeking: self-awareness is rarer than we think
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
number three, strategic feedback seeking. Would you say that you are self-aware? When I ask audiences in workshops who are usually leaders from Fortune 500s, I get anywhere from 60 to 80% of people raising their hand believing that they're self-aware. A study conducted by Tasha Eurich found that even though 95% of people think they're self-aware, so actually more than my audiences, only 12 to 15% actually are. Let that sink in. That means that up to 85 to 90% of us are walking around with blind spots, completely unaware that we have them. That is a huge visibility issue. You can't see your own patterns, habits, and impact from inside your own head. This is why the best athletes or sports teams all have coaches. You need someone watching from the sidelines, someone who sees what you can't. You might be swinging too early. Your pacing might be slightly off. Your form might look fine to you, but from the outside, it's clear there is a small tweak that changes everything. This is one of the reasons that differentiates
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Two targeted feedback streams: improve gaps and optimize strengths
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
the top from the rest. Most of us, most people, avoid feedback until it's too late, until something goes wrong, until there's tension, a performance issue, a blind spot that's already done damage. The top one percent don't wait for feedback to come to them. They go after it. But not just any feedback. I've noticed that they are highly selective, and they seek out two types of feedback consistently. The first one is obvious. It's feedback on areas to improve. There are gaps. They might have a mentor, a business coach, someone in the industry who has paved the way before them that they turn to for guidance on where they need to focus. But there's something else they do that's different to most. They don't assume that every one of their gaps needs to be fixed by them. They ask, "Is it mission critical that I fill this gap myself?" If yes, they address it. But if not, they usually hire someone better. They delegate. They partner with others. They build systems around the gap so it gets filled, but not necessarily by them. This is why so many high-performing entrepreneurs or CEOs have two ICs or leadership teams that essentially fill their own gaps. Improving doesn't always mean doing it all yourself. It means building capacity, and sometimes that means finding it in somebody else. Now, the second type of feedback they seek is feedback on strengths. But they don't just wanna hear about their strengths. They want to optimize them. They ask questions like, "When have I been at my best? What was I doing? What conditions allowed me to thrive?" Because the top one percent are
- 17:14 – 19:14
Practical method: Reflected Best Self exercise and better questions to ask
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
usually very intentional about making their strengths stronger. They design their roles, their schedules, even their teams around the zones when they're most effective. They look for ways to sharpen, to scale, and to repeat those peak moments. So instead of spreading themselves thin trying to be well-rounded, they double down on being well-aligned. That's the difference. So how do you actually do this? Reach out to five to 10 people who have worked really closely with you, people who have seen you in action on a project, in a crisis, in a leadership role, or even just everyday situations. It could be a mix of peers, direct reports, team members, mentors, clients, even friends. Now, instead of asking the vague what are my strengths question, ask these instead. When have you seen me at my best? What was I doing? What did you notice about how I worked, communicated, or led in that moment, and what impact did it have? These questions come from the reflected best self exercise. It's a research-backed tool developed at the University of Michigan. They designed it to elicit stories, not just adjectives, because the stories are where the insight lives. Anyone can call you confident or driven, but when someone shares a moment where you made them feel seen or led a team through chaos or turned a setback into momentum, that's gold. Once you gather a few of these stories, do two things. First, look for patterns. What themes showed up again and again? What are people relying on you for when you're at your best? That's your natural strength zone. Second, you want to translate it. So turn those insights into language that you can actually use when you pitch yourself, when you shape your career path, or when you make strategic decisions. Use it to intentionally design more of what lights you up, more projects in your sweet spot, more collaborations that bring out your best, more time in your zone of genius. Now, you might think to yourself, "Oh, but that's just fishing for compliments." But no, it's not. It is giving you evidence. It's increasing
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Wrap-up + Big Trust book plug: don’t leave these habits to chance
- SZDr. Shadé Zahrai
your self-awareness and building your identity from real impact. The top 1% don't leave this stuff to chance. So these are the three habits that I have consistently seen in the highest performers, the highest potential people that I've ever come across, that you can implement into your life too. Habit one, conscious affiliation. Audit your circle constantly. Your future depends on it. Habit two, care less. Respect is greater than approval. Choose alignment over validation. And habit three, strategic feedback seeking. Don't just ask how to fix what's broken. Increase your self-awareness and use the insight to help you design your next career step. If you found value in this episode, please hit like and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And let me know in the comments, which of these three habits are you going to focus on right now? I'm Shadé Zahrai, and I'll see you in the next one. Self-doubt doesn't shout. It whispers, and it keeps smart people playing small. You can't positive think your way past it. You have to rewire it. Big Trust is the result of five years of PhD research and over 100 studies, and they all point to one powerful truth. Your career satisfaction, your earning potential, even your happiness, are shaped by four core attributes. When one of them is weak, self-doubt gets louder. Strengthen them, and everything changes. Go to bigtrustbook.com to order, and grab the exclusive bonuses while they're still available. Why is my phone buzzing? Is that my phone or your phone? What? We did it.
Episode duration: 20:45
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Transcript of episode 62y2gyEAZXw
