Mental Fitness Matters with Steven English

0:02 Welcome to the Catching Up with Casey show. If you are tired of chasing buy in, frustrated with teams who can't seem to get on the same page, or over the constant struggle of holding people accountable without micromanaging, this is the show for you. I'm Casey Watts, speaker, author and the creator of the Clarity Cycle Framework. I help leaders just like you take teams from frustration to alignment, so teams can work collectively toward a common purpose in a committed way instead of against each other as though they are functioning in different organizations. And we do it all through the craft of clarity. Whether you lead from the middle or you were the front facing leader of your organization.

0:45 On this show, we bring clarity to the seemingly small things in leadership that make the biggest difference because clarity precedes capacity. Now, with all of that said, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Catching Up with Casey show. I am a stoked for tonight's episode because we're going to be talking about one of my very favorite topics and that is mental fitness. More on that to come. But first let me introduce to you guys our guest, Steven English. Welcome to the show.

1:29 Hey, great to be here Casey. Yeah, my name is Steven English. As you mentioned, I am a recovering engineering leader who became a coach in 2018. I help professionals stop over thinking and start leading with confidence, clarity and emotional power. I had worked in semiconductor engineering for 22 years and pivoted back in 2018. Yeah, and we're going to get to talk about that, which I'm really excited and interested to hear so much more about this. But tell us something just regular about you. What makes you the average Joe? I, I thought about this question is it's a funny question. I'm, I'm just your average everyday guy who likes to mountain bike.

2:20 I have a very expensive learning funnel in that I, I like to buy the audio book and then buy the physical book. That's a kind of a quirky thing about me. I, I, I don't really know what exactly why I do it is. Sometimes it's about convenience and then my little thing that is is very strange is I can spot an under inflated bicycle tire at 250 feet. Wow, you're really into biking then. It it's AI, don't know. It's probably a trauma response from riding on a flat tire at A at a young age. I don't know. OK, so have you always ridden bikes? Like has it's always been a thing. It has I, I see I got on a bike when I was about four and I, I B MB MX race from age 6 to 13. And then I broke an elbow and then didn't get back on the bike because I didn't have very good mental fitness. And I got back on it at age 37.

3:20 And IBMX raced from 37 till my, I guess the end of my midlife crisis. Yeah, fascinating. OK, so I mean, you look fit. So that's what you do to stay fit then? It, it's one of many things that the main thing is to not eat too much that that's been, you know, they say ABS are made in the kitchen. I was actually 311 lbs in high school. And so I've battled, I've battled obesity my whole life. I my my low weight is 183 lbs and I'm currently at 2:11. Wow. For anybody's keeping score. Yeah, so. And there's a story in and of itself, right? So you were talking about the books and having both the audio book and a print version.

4:05 I can be the same way. I feel like I have to have the print version in case I want to reference something. Absolutely. So I, I just, I'm not, I may not ever read it, but and I will buy books and just kind of look at the table of contents. Even if I don't read the whole thing, I'll look at the table of contents and decide, OK, I know that at some point I can come back to this book for these things for reference. Yeah, this is therapy. This is therapy already, Casey, because I, I, I sometimes judge myself and say, wow, I've only read, like you said, the table of contents, maybe a couple of chapters. Maybe I'll do index learning where I'll look something up in the index and and I'll read part of that chapter.

4:47 But yes, I keep them all. They're, you know, it's, it's funny, I, I used to drink a lot and, you know, I'm, I'm a recovering alcoholic and I, I, I used to think about, well, you know, you buy a bottle of something, you finish it and then it goes away. The cool thing about books is, well, number one, you, you don't get hangovers from reading them. And yeah, if you, I mean, I guess if you stayed up too late, you know, had too many Red Bulls or something. But then the other thing is they don't go away. So they they sit on these shelves and sometimes they get dusty, sometimes they get pulled off the shelf. Yeah, that's a great analogy. OK, I'm going to lock that away for for some time. I don't know when I'll use it, but I'll use it for sure. Yeah.

5:31 So let's talk about tonight's topic because we're bringing clarity to something that so many leaders really need to understand and hone. And that is, I mean, the title is mental fitness matters. So really bringing clarity to mental fitness. And, and this is one of my favorite topics because we dive, I'm sure we will dive so much into like your self-awareness and social awareness and things like that. So I want to start off by asking you to share a little bit about maybe a time when you lacked clarity or you had applicable clarity and how it impacted you.

6:15 So maybe even tell a little bit more about you talked about your career change, age of 45 S talk about the clarity there. Oh, yeah, that's, that's great because it's, it's funny because it did, it did start with a lack of clarity. I I'll go all the way back to 1998 when I was getting my master's degree. Don't worry, I won't take you incrementally through this. I'll just couple little waypoints here in in 98 when I got my master's, my professor said, I don't even know why you're an engineer and I I that that landed, but I was already two shots of or two champagne flutes in and I I just kind of let it go.

6:57 Then when I got out into the first jobs, let's say first job interview, at the end of the interview, they said, which job do you want? And I had no clarity. And so I said to them, you pick. And so they picked quality, which quality? The cool thing about quality is that it's it, it's very broad. It's very, very broad. So it actually worked with my, I guess you could say my, my neurodivergence, not to, not to, I'm not like diagnosed with anything. But let's say my, my multi potentiate, the fact that I'm very good at learning a little bit about a lot of things. It fit for a long time, but I never really had that clarity of, of here's the one lane that I want. And then as the years went by and I started to realize that who it is that I am on the inside and what it is I'm doing in the world, we're we're completely orthogonal. They were at 90° a pose right here. Here I am a person with the Clifton strengths of empathy, harmony, woo, individualization and futuristic and, and all these relational strengths.

8:11 And then I'm doing this very heavy left brain analytical engineering work. And so if any clarity came was that the clarity moment was, Oh my God, I'm doing the wrong thing. And then I started to figure out, hey, based on when I, when I look at the, the long career and pick out those moments when maybe I was in my zone of genius, I said, well, what were those things? And, and then I could put them all in front of myself on a plate and say, let me, let me investigate each one. Maybe let me do a pilot and I'll give an example.

8:53 So the four, the four choices that I had in my, you know, as I was making my career transition. So here I am, I have my midlife crisis. I'm racking up DWI's life was just complete hell. I realized I needed to do something different. So I had four choices. And that was go back and get an MBA and then go be a consultant at a, you know, a McKenzie, ABCG, etcetera. Go be a Six Sigma black Belt consultant, then go be an executive coach or go be a workshop facilitator. And so I went and I met with people who did every one of those things. And eventually I just decided let me do a pilot of. So here I am.

9:39 I'm still making a living as a, a quality and reliability engineer. I went and I tested out those last two. And so I went, started to coach, do some one-on-one coaching and then I, I would run trainings and workshops and I, I did it on PTO days. And that's what helped me gain clarity of, you know what I wanted to be in my next phase of life. Yeah. So you gain clarity by doing the thing. You had to put some things into action in order to gain clarity. I think so often love that you said that because so often there are so many things that hold us back from doing the thing. The fear of of whatever, whatever kind of fear it may be that's holding us back.

10:26 Imposter syndrome doesn't mean there are lots of different things I think that hold us back that qualify as fear of something. But also to your point, you cannot gain clarity until you do something, until you put something into action. That's fantastic. There there was something that you were you going to say something to add to that, because I have so many thoughts in my head, I want to be sure that I write down. Oh, no, no, no, I, I was just going to say, you know, it's easier. There's a quote that says it's, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting or something to that effect. Or it's it, it, it's, it is, it's all in the doing. Like you learn.

11:07 That's, that's how you learn. You know, there's a great book, I think it's called like fail fast, fail forward or fail fast fail often. And and that's the whole thesis of it is that you're better off rather than trying to think your way into this goal and say, oh, what, what's, you know, what's the best thing that I can do instead? The the best thing is just the next thing. And what will happen is, is the the path will appear through the either succeeding or failing, succeeding or failing. And there is no such thing as failing, right? It's really just learning, right? The the Nelson Mandela quote says, what is it is I, I never, I never lose. I either win or learn.

11:54 Yeah, yeah, such a great quote. There's so much gold in what you just said. My gosh, guys, if if you're listening to this podcast episode, just you can pause here and restart and write down some of the things that Steven just said because they are such great things to hold on to. Especially if you are in a position, and I know a lot of people who are listening to this episode. You could potentially be in a position where you're just not quite sure if where you are is where you want or need to be. If it is not bringing you fulfilment, then chances are it's time for some kind of change. But you've got to put something into action in order to gain clarity around what that thing is, right?

12:38 So let me ask you this, you, I kind of want to move back into that fulfillment piece because you said you knew something had to change and your life had kind of derailed a little bit. But why do you feel like it was because you weren't experiencing fulfillment where you were? Oh, absolutely. It it was a whole host of things. I mean, I had a lot of resentment from being basically a paycheck machine and doing something that was I, I, I'll harken back to something from there's a book by Gay Hendrick called The big Leap. And in it he talks about there's, there's four zones. The four is coming up again.

13:25 Oh my God, maybe I need to play the lottery. And in it he said, there's, there's your zone of incompetence, your zone of competence, your zone of excellence and your zone of genius. And what I noticed was that I was spending a lot of my time in my zone of excellence or in my zone of competence. And what zone of excellence looks like is you're good at it. People are really happy to pay you to do it because it's a very maybe maybe unique skill. Maybe not many people want to do that job, but maybe not a lot of people want to get the certifications, credit accreditations and education to do that job, like of semiconductor reliability physics, not exactly the most sexy vocation in the world, but it's draining. And so that's what I noticed was just how draining it was. And it was combined with with working for organizations that had really low mental fitness, that had really low, you know, let's say high toxicity, low psychological safety, low trust, etcetera.

14:33 And, and so that whole thing combined to to show me that I was, I was in so much pain. And and then that's when I had to pivot. Yeah. You've talked a lot about like the four zones and being in that zone of genius. You talked about Clifton strengths and really knowing what your strengths are and and finding something that makes those strengths allows you to bring those strengths to light and and actually implement them, which brings you fulfillment in the work that you do. And it's key because this is what we are doing most of our lives is the work on a, on a day-to-day basis. If you go to work even at even for me as someone who is now a speaker and consultant, I make my schedule for the most part, but it's still work every day. And there are pieces of it that are tedious, that are not that I don't get great joy out of, but they're small pieces. So I get to do a majority of work that brings me great joy. It's where it's where my working geniuses lie. So I wondered if you have, have you dug into the work of Pat Lencioni Working geniuses?

15:47 Not working geniuses yet, No. So I'm not I I when you asked me about Patrick Lencioni in in general, yes, but I haven't looked at working geniuses just yet. I, I need to check and see if it's on the 1st level of my learning funnel, which is Blinkist. It's a digital platform that has literally thousands of books summarized. So that'll be that'll be after I get off this call I'm going to. Go check. OK, Yeah, yeah, write it down for sure. Well just to a summary. So he talks about 6 working geniuses. We all have at least two working geniuses, 2 that are working competencies and two that are two that are working frustrations.

16:27 And if you are within your working geniuses, that that is the kind of work that brings you great joy and fulfillment. Your competencies are things that you can do, but you don't want to do them all the time because they'll drain you and then you're working Frustrations are the things that man, I it's like you have this coffee cup and the, there's a hole at the bottom. It's just pouring, coughing in. It's pouring out of the bottom. You don't have the capacity for it. So the six working geniuses are wonder, wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement and tenacity. And so you go through this assessment to decide what are my working geniuses competencies and frustrations that going through that work, but also kind of thinking about my also my own Clifton Strengths Finder, like my strengths. It is so fascinating to work with teams, even in schools, and see that we grind day in and day out because it's a job that we've been given to do and we do it the same as we've seen everybody else do it.

17:34 Instead of going to work and saying of the things that I know I have to do, what are the things, what is the pieces of this job that bring me great joy and fulfillment? And you can't do that if you haven't analyzed yourself or if you haven't thought about where how am I mentally bringing myself to this job? What's draining me and what's bringing me joy and what could be my geniuses within this work? So yeah, I I love that you brought all of that up. Yeah, it, it's, it's so true. And I think what's so wonderful is when you get to either through a powerful agreement with your leadership or through entrepreneurship to go off and do what it is that really lights you up.

18:22 And you know, not many people get to, but yeah, it, it. And the, the thing that I think we're pointing to is that there's a lot of tools for self-awareness. And and we've, we've mentioned probably 3 or 4 of them just in this conversation so far. Yeah. Well, Speaking of self-awareness, I want to ask you a little bit about like emotional self mastery and mental fitness. Talk more about that and what you mean by those things. Yeah. Talked a little bit about I know you've mentioned self sabotaging too, so dive into that as well. We've I've seen you post some things like on LinkedIn about that.

19:03 Yeah, let's say, OK, so emotional self mastery is really about staying in response versus reactivity most of the time. And I say most of the time because I can't, I, I, I know even, you know, I don't even want to say like even myself. No, I'm, This is why this topic is important to me is because I'm a work in progress, right? It's like, it's like the hair club for men, right? I'm not just a, a, you know, I'm not the, I'm just the founder. I'm the customer too, right? Like I, I really, I personally need to work on my ability to respond in a healthy way. And so emotional self mastery is, you know, not being kind of pulled around by your own triggers, your own unconscious self sabotaging ways.

19:58 And So what is self sabotage? You know, self sabotage is that automatic, habitual way of thinking and acting that gets in the way of your success. Some of those are. Let's say the the forms of self sabotage will be, you know, negative self talk, perfectionism, procrastination, or people pleasing and people pleasing. That's, that's me. That's my number one form of self sabotage. So yeah, self sabotage, as I said, it's, it's this, you know, habitual negative emotion and an activity that gets in the way. And then, you know, there's a bunch of, let's say there's these archetypes, if you will, of self sabotage and they're called your saboteurs.

20:52 And, and I would say as as one thing for, as a reason for people to reach out to me is send me a message and say, hey, hey, how do I self sabotage? And I'll send you a, a free assessment so you can see it. And, and here's the cool thing is that once you're able to see it, then you can be more at choice. And that goes back to that emotional self mastery, right? Like if I can't see my unconscious mental programs of self sabotage, then I don't have access to emotional self mastery. Does that make sense? Yeah.

21:32 Can you say those you talked about the four, four ways we self tap sabotage? I think go through those again, people pleasing with one of them. Yeah, so there's people pleasing. Now, of course this is not a a list that is, you know, complete. I'm sure that somebody else could say, well, here's another way. But these are the most common forms, right? So there's there's the negative self talk and and everybody's walking around with an inner narrative. We have about 60,000 thoughts a day, 90% of them are unconscious, 95% of them are repetitive and 80% of them are negative. So negative self talk. It's yeah, it's the radio station that never stops.

22:17 Then there's perfectionism. There's a lot of people out there who they, they'll work on something. They, they won't put it out into the world. They won't send it to their boss or, or they might take 20 minutes to write an e-mail that really could have been done in 2 minutes. And that's that perfectionism. And and that's, that causes stress, that causes a lot of stress to the person who's who's, let's say in that, in that moment of self sabotage. Then there's procrastination, which, you know, that's putting off important tasks due to the fear of failure, lack of confidence, any kind of feelings of overwhelm. A lot of times people say that procrastination is an anxiety response.

23:05 And then the last one is that that people pleasing and that's a, a pattern of putting others needs over your own. And that's, that can lead to a lot of resentment, which is kind of one of the things that I dealt with. Yeah. Do you see any times where some of these overlap? So for example, one of the things that you mentioned the first two, Oh shit, now I can't remember the first two that you. The self talk and perfectionism. Yes, yes. So because I am striving for perfectionism, once I send the thing or whatever it is that I do, then I think it could lead to the negative self talk right?

23:46 Like the two could go hand in hand or feet into each other. Yeah, they all and they all play together for sure. And, you know, it could be that, you know, let's say the perfectionism is more of the action, right? So the, the let me, let me rearrange these grains of sand or let me change the color or change the font 15 times on this document. Let me proofread it 10 times, you know, let me whatever. So that's the, that's the perfectionism. The the negative self talk is more of, you know, the inner game if you will. Yeah, I, I think I, I mean, I, I know I have these moments. Probably probably more than I even recognize.

24:28 I would say that probably happens to a lot of us. But today I was reading someone's newsletter, A colleague that is also a consultant. He's got a great website, great newsletter. Was reading the newsletter, went over to his website and I was like, oh, maybe I should change XYZ. But if you change one thing on a website, it's like you've got to change so many other things to match. And I can constant, I could change my website every single day. I could change something about it to try to make it perfect. And it's not going to lead to any clients, right? Like I think there's this idea that something has to be perfect in order for XYZ to happen, but it's not always the case. It's like we have this narrative in our heads that's not that. It's not always realistic.

25:21 Yeah, I agree. And I would, I would seek out what's the feeling that started that that chain there. So I'll, I'll introduce an another idea. So one of the things that I kind of drove over pretty quickly and only because I to, to explain all nine of these archetypes called the saboteurs would take a long time and we only have 10 minutes and 30 seconds left is so one, there's we self sabotage and through these 9 saboteurs. But it all starts with this, this idea called the judge, right? So the judge is this master ringleader of all the saboteurs and the judges, the thought of I'm bad, they're bad.

26:11 This circumstance is bad. So if it started with a negative feeling and you know, it could be, you know, fear, grief, apathy, shame, you know, any of these kind of low, you know, if this is the map of consciousness from Doctor David Hawkins, you know, you've got pride, anger, desire, fear, grief, apathy, guilt, shame. If it's starting meaning this thought that you have of maybe I should go do this on my website, maybe this is this change I should make. If it started from negative emotions, it's very likely self sabotage. If it started more from a perspective of innovation or learning, right, Like like, oh, look, I just caught the wider truth.

26:59 You know, I just learned something. Let me go apply it then. That may not be self sabotage, yeah. Have I made a distinction there? Yeah, absolutely. I am loving this conversation. Hey, how about you come on again and we'll talk through all nine of the saboteurs because I am so interested to hear about it. Oh, here's what I would say for you is to is take the take the assessment and just start to catch. So this is this is look, I don't come to a podcast to self aggrandize to showboat to any of this. I actually come here to serve. And so my service right now for you and all your listeners is learn about how you self sabotage so you can catch these saboteurs in action.

27:47 And what happens is as soon as we catch them and we celebrate that we caught them, it it stops that neural activity, right? The brain is a feelings based biocomputer that responds to repetition. And so when I told you earlier that 80% of your thoughts are negative and 95% of your thoughts are repetitive, what it is, is that there's a constant loop that's reinforcing limiting beliefs and old stories that you have about yourself. And so the way to break that cycle is to catch it in the moment. Yeah, yeah. And listeners, because so many of you are leaders coming to this podcast and you're striving to make change in your organization, the 1st place to start is with yourself and building your mental fitness.

28:44 So this is a way to do that. This is a fantastic way to do that. So you you kind of already mentioned this, but it sounds like according to what you're saying, your suggestion would be start to recognize when you're self sabotaging. Once you recognize, celebrate that you have recognized it, and then implement a different pattern of thinking. Correct, correct. And that, yeah. And that is. So I run a 7 week program that teaches people how to do that. But in short, think about it this way, right?

29:24 When you're in a negative emotional state and you're stressing, what happens is as your world gets really small, you're really, your world gets really small, turns into a lot of black and white thinking like, oh, I have to do this or this. And so you're not in a very, you're not running on all 8 cylinders, as we'd say up, you know, hanging out with my, my, my Motörhead uncle, right? Like you're just not running on all 8 cylinders here. And what happens is in addition to the your world getting small, you actually become a little bit dumb. So they say after 60 seconds under stress, we we down regulate the GABA GABA gamma amyubiteric acid in our brain, which it that that GABA kind of relaxes us and allows us to make full use of our brain. So what I would say to anybody who catches their self sabotage is calm your nervous system.

30:25 And there's a lot of different ways to do that, but really, really simple way, a really simple way is through a sensory based mindfulness activity. So you see my two hands here and you see my fingertips together and I'm going to do a 10 second mindfulness. So just imagine now that you've gotten stressed out, you've caught yourself sabotage, you've caught your saboteur, you celebrated catching it. And now what I want to do is I want to turn on the part of my brain where my sage powers live in the way that I can do that is with a sensory based mindfulness. And I can take 2 fingertips, putting them together and rubbing them together with such a tension, such a tension that I can feel the fingertip ridges. Are you able to feel those fingertip bridges? And now if I do that for just 10 seconds, the default mode network in my brain kind of turns down a little bit and then the task positive network of my brain turns on. I'm not, this isn't woo woo.

31:32 This is validated with functional MRI. Nothing wrong with woo woo by the way. But I'm just like, I'm not making this up as I go along. Like actually, if I, if I had a functional MRI machine with, with me, I could, you know, get inside and I could do some kind of sensory based mindfulness. I actually turn on the part of my brain where these powers live. And these 5 powers, just briefly is empathize, explore, navigate, activate and innovate. And there's a, there's a set of questions that we can ask ourselves to really step into that sage power. But the fact of the matter is, is first we need to calm the nervous system. And that's one way is with something like, you know, a tactile mindfulness routine. You could also do breath.

32:18 You could also do you know, you could, you could listen, you know, you could use, you could look at something, any kind of sensory based mindfulness. Yeah, I'm doing this right now as you're speaking, and that was one of the things I was going to ask you because you you said, you know, it's not woo. I think sometimes people don't give this kind of work, mental fitness work, the significance that it, that it needs, it is such powerful, significant work. I would say it is a difference between a great leader and a, an empathetically assertive leader, which is I would say is a higher level.

33:06 John Maxwell talks about the, you know, 5 little levels of leadership. We can get to that pinnacle that is great leadership, but you've got to do the mental fitness work. You could you see this being beneficial because what my mind goes to is what are how would leaders experience self sabotage in their work environment where they're leading people? And I see it in a in several different ways. But one of those ways is when they are getting ready to lead meetings or when they're getting ready to roll out some kind of initiative to their organization, which is seems it's a big deal. Like we're really thinking about change management here.

33:49 So I'm thinking you pause for a minute before you go into any kind of situation where you know your nervous system may be dysregulated and you go through a mindfulness activity and you try to recognize how could I be self sabotaging in this moment? There's two things inside of there. So one, you're, you're pointing to just kind of charging up what's referred to as the PQ brain. So the positive intelligence quotient brain, by the way, that all this work, I'm standing on Shoulders of Giants. This is from a book written by Shirzad Shamin called Positive Intelligence. And something, something, something a lot of extra words that I don't remember all the time and what, what it is. What you're pointing to is, is #1 charging up that part of the brain ahead of time.

34:40 So that is going off and regulating the nervous system. It could be doing the breathing exercises, it could be this, you know, rubbing your fingers together, it could be whatever. It, it doesn't have to be complex. It, it, it just has to ground you. It could even be like the 54321 anxiety grounding technique that is, is really famous. So that's one side of it. So basically you're, you're saying prepare for it. Then there's also ways to anticipate which saboteurs might show up. And for leaders, actually the number one most common top three saboteur, if you will, is the controller saboteur. And then this is a anxiety based saboteur that has us, you know, lead with this.

35:33 You know, it's funny because I don't have the controller saboteur. And it's kind of funny because that's probably why I never got built above, you know, senior manager, middle manager roles. Is it it it's it's really about getting people to do things and, and, and pushing them. And I, and that's the, the controller is, is just that it's a, it's a anxiety based saboteur. And, and I, as I said, so many people have it. And so, so like, like I said in, in summary, there, there's, there's two elements to what you were saying. So one kind of prepare for it #2 anticipate which saboteurs might show up and then build in. They call it a sage step.

36:15 A sage step is really a question to ask yourself so that you're focusing on the right thing. Yeah, that's fantastic. Oh my gosh. OK. I've loved this episode so much. You mentioned something that our listeners can access. Was it the nine saboteurs? Yeah, it's the saboteur assessment. If if you reach out to me, I'll just shoot you the link. It's free of charge. I'm sure somebody could Google their way to finding it. Doesn't matter. I just would love it if they'd reach out to me because then I can have a conversation. I can give more information. I can, you know, share white papers or other other documents that will help them perhaps be more convinced of why they need to do this. And, and as you said earlier, right, the, the change in an organization starts with the leader. And so that's why in fact, the studies show that when you look at this level of self, emotional self mastery, or we could, we could say the PQ score, right?

37:23 The PQ score is the percentage of the time in which you're acting like your own best friend, which is a really kind of a kitschy way of saying it. When you're acting on on your own, let's say best behalf, that if the leader has a low PQ score or has a low level of emotional self mastery, low mental fitness, whatever you want to call it, then that's the cap for the whole organization. You know, we can't that that the team can't get any better. And you see this in organizations when they change out a president or a vice president or whatever, a leader in a, in an organization, people start to March to their beat, right?

38:03 It's it's very top down. You know, you people start to model, they model what they see. So if you have a leader who's just a, you know, a loose cannon emotionally, right? It doesn't have that psychological, doesn't build the psychological safety doesn't build trust, any of those great things that then people in the organization start to behave like that person. Yeah, man, have I seen that. I mean, we've all experienced it. So you know, so many leaders have these leadership institutes before, like at the beginning of the year or mid middle of the year, maybe even end of the year.

38:43 That would be something. During that time. I would suggest instead of thinking so heavily about protocols and logistics and even strategy, I would say your number one strategy is building up self reflective leaders and really building their mental capacity, their their mindset. The funny thing is that so many organizations focus on these, these skills, you know, they'll look at say performance management or they'll look at, you know, recognizing and rewarding, or they'll look at delegation or, you know, or, or inside of the leadership track. It might be influencing skills or aligning or setting vision or driving execution or any of these things. But if the, if the person who's doing the work doesn't have the high level of mental fitness, it doesn't matter that they know all the techniques because they won't be able to put them into action in a way that actually works. It's kind of like, it's kind of like this. It's like there's, there's the moves on the chess board and then there's the chess player.

39:57 And if the chess player is reacting to everything and is is, you know, spending the majority of their time with their judge and their saboteurs. That like really running the show, then it won't matter how they move the chess pieces. It's just the game won't go in their favor. They won't know. They won't know which moves to make, I guess is the point, because they themselves aren't moving through life with this, you know, accessing all of their, their faculties and maybe they're self sabotaging through, you know, the controller, the stickler, hyper vigilant. These are just three of the nine that I, I mentioned earlier.

40:38 So anyway, yeah, I agree with you. So many times people just send, they send you off for that, that two day training and then what happens? Nothing. And so this program's unique and that it runs seven weeks and it's, it's more, it's, it's more about habit building than it is about big insights, right? Like I literally, if, if you and I had said, let's spend an hour, 90 minutes talking about this, I probably could teach the nuts and bolts of positive intelligence this mental fitness program that I'm talking about. But the real change comes about through just repeated habit formation.

41:22 First catching your saboteurs, powering up your PQ brain, using your 5 sage powers. But you, you have to, you have to build that. You have to wire that in. Yes, absolutely. I love that you mentioned that as habits. That's so the Clarity cycle framework that I talked about in the intro of this show and that I teach mostly about when I'm working with specifically schools is Clarity Cycle Framework is 6 steps, but it's 6 habits you're building as a leader and as in a leadership team. So that we're not, it's not a one and done. It is we're continuously building this habit so we can create and gain, gain and create clarity for our people. So tell everyone how they can reach out to you. Where might they find you and what is the work that you love to do mostly with people?

42:14 It's that's the last part's the tough one. Where can they find me so they can find me on LinkedIn is my main jam. The other places they can find me is, you know, www.stevenenglish.net. That's my website. It's with in Full disclosure, I don't, I don't edit it nearly as often as I could. I don't put a blog post like I used to back in 2018. It's yeah, it, but it does have a contact me page. So there you go. So anybody can contact me, right. And then of course, my e-mail info, INFO at Steven with AV english.net. So those are three ways to catch me in terms of what I like to do the most. You know, that's the thing that is and, and, and a lot of coaches will answer this in a way that really creates clarity in their niche and their specialty. And, and I'll say this, the main thing that it's been around is communication.

43:16 And so I do a lot of public speaking anxiety coaching, which is how you and I originally met and through the coach that you had worked with in that post that you made so long ago. And so that's, that's a big piece of it. The main thing is, yeah, just helping people rewire their brain and and that's what we've been talking about when we talking about mental fitness, right? Just like how you build physical muscles, we also build mental muscles, right? The brain, the brain has this neuroplasticity effect. We're able through, you know, the hebbs, the famous quote that I think I don't know how many times Joe Dispenza says it in a in a given week is Hebbs law, right? Neurons that fire together wire together. So just rewiring our brain so that we can have better relationships, higher performance and better well-being, right?

44:10 The, the workplace is a very, very dangerous place. In fact, today I just read an article. This is very fascinating. It said that the, of all the relationships that we have in our life, the relationships that have the highest impact on our mental health. And so I'm not talking mental fitness, I'm talking real mental health, right? Like depression, anxiety, all that kind of stuff. And I can get into the distinction between those two, but I won't for the lack of time. But the main thing they said is our manager has as much impact on our mental health as our spouse. Think about that for a minute.

44:55 And, and, and it goes back to, hey, where do we spend 3033% of our life, right? A third of our life, man, maybe not really because we don't work on weekends, but 40 hours, right, of 168. So, you know, I can do the math on that, I guess. But you know, yeah, it's like 20 something percent, 25 percent, 30%, Yeah. So we spend a lot of our time. Man, that puts things in perspective for sure. Holy moly. Yeah, Yeah, OK. Yeah, anyhow, I I know we could keep going so. We still could keep going. We're having another podcast episode because there's just too, too much goodness here to to not so listeners.

45:38 I would, I would love to know of the things that we've talked about and we've kind of hinted at. Let me know what is sparking your interest most. What would what are you like? Man, I want to learn more about this. Let me know and then we'll put together another episode to talk about that. I I already have the list of things that I want to talk more about. That last thing that you just mentioned. Definitely something I want to talk about because I think we could talk about and it I think it ties in to to your experience when you got your masters where it was like, oh, what what should I do? You tell me based on your skills. They said, OK, you can do these. Well, skills are different than the things that bring me fulfillment.

46:19 Like I can be really, really skilled at something. And because I'm skilled at it, someone notices and they say, well, we'll, we'll have Casey do this because me and she does that really well. But guess what? Casey hates doing that. And so I'm going to get burned out really fast. We can have another conversation about that too. OK, this has been so fun. What's what's something that you just hope our listeners take away from this conversation? That they have more control over the way they react? Well, the more, excuse me, they have more control over the way they respond to the world then they currently think they do, right?

47:00 That that if they can start to spot how they self sabotage, they can get out of these vicious cycles a lot quicker. That's what comes to mind. Awesome. It sounds so great. OK, Steven, thanks for coming on. It's not the last time. Yeah, everybody else, we'll catch you next time. Bye, everybody. Hey, listener, I am so honored that you listen to today's episode, and I hope you gained something valuable from it. I'd also be honored if you did ME3 solid favors. First, subscribe to this show. I've got a lot of great content coming up and I don't want you to miss any of it. Second, be sure you're following me on social media platforms. You can find me at.

47:47 Catch up with Casey on LinkedIn or Instagram. And finally, if you were looking to book a dynamic and relatable speaker for your next event, conference, or retreat, I would love to bring a message about how the craft of clarity makes a significant impact on both leadership and life. Until next time, always remember clarity precedes capacity.