From Imposter to Natural Olympia: Harnessing Psychology for Success with Dan Storey
Are you struggling with self-doubt and feeling like an imposter in your own life? In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Dan Storey, a behavioral psychology expert and natural bodybuilding champion, to explore the fascinating world of human motivation and decision-making.
Dan shares his journey from rural England to becoming a top natural physique bodybuilder, competing at the Natural Olympia. We delve into the mental processes that drive success and how to overcome the barriers that keep us stuck in life.
Key Insights:
- The two types of imposter syndrome and how to overcome them
- Why the status quo is holding you back and how to challenge it
- The power of accountability and objectivity in achieving your goals
- How behavioral psychology can help you make better decisions
Breaking Free from Self-Doubt
Discover how Dan used his knowledge of behavioral psychology to transform his own life and achieve remarkable success in bodybuilding. Learn practical strategies for:
- Quieting your inner critic and building self-confidence
- Embracing discomfort as a pathway to growth
- Leveraging the power of visualization and goal-setting
The Science of Decision-Making
Dan introduces fascinating concepts from behavioral psychology, including:
- The Region Beta Paradox: Why we stay stuck in unfulfilling situations
- Confirmation Bias: How our beliefs shape our perception of reality
- The Trolley Problem: Understanding ethical decision-making and its impact on our lives
This conversation is packed with actionable insights for anyone looking to break free from self-imposed limitations and achieve their full potential. Whether you’re seeking personal growth, career advancement, or simply a more fulfilling life, you’ll find valuable guidance to help you on your journey.
Don’t miss this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of your own motivations and decision-making processes. Tune in now and start Giving A Heck about unleashing your true potential!
Connect with Dan Storey:
Website: https://danstorey.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkLK9hgdGFnvBaUlcgvrDHw
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danstorey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danstorey14/
Connect with Dwight Heck:
Website: https://giveaheck.com (Free Book Offer)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/give.a.heck
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dwight.heck
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Giveaheck
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@giveaheck
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwight-raymond-heck-65a90150/
TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@giveaheck
X: https://x.com/give_a_heck
Chapter summaries of Episode(Full Unedited Transcript follows)
00:00:02
Introduction to Dan Story: Author, Trainer, and Motivational Speaker
Dan Story, an expert in personal motivation and behavioral psychology, is introduced. His background in NLP, behavioral decision sciences, and natural bodybuilding is highlighted. Dan’s mission to help people unleash their potential and live life to the fullest is emphasized.
00:02:18
Breaking Out of Conditional Programming and Comfort Zones
Dan discusses the importance of breaking free from societal conditioning and comfort zones. He emphasizes the need to challenge the status quo and live outside one’s comfort zone to achieve personal growth and success.
00:04:43
Dan’s Origin Story: From Rural England to Personal Development
Dan shares his background growing up in rural England, his academic journey, and his transition into personal development. He discusses how a personal development CD sparked his interest in mindset and psychology, leading to his career change.
00:10:41
The Importance of Coaches and Mentors in Personal Growth
Dan explains the value of having coaches and mentors in achieving personal goals. He discusses how his brother, as his bodybuilding coach, provided accountability and objectivity, helping him overcome self-doubt and stay focused on his goals.
00:34:32
Specializing in Behavioral Psychology and Its Applications
Dan explains his focus on behavioral psychology, discussing how it differs from other psychological disciplines. He emphasizes its practical applications in sales, personal growth, and understanding decision-making processes.
00:47:00
The Trolley Problem and Decision-Making Psychology
Dan introduces the Trolley Problem to illustrate complex decision-making processes. He discusses how this ethical dilemma relates to real-life situations and the psychological concept of locus of control in decision-making.
00:51:28
Writing Books and Personal Transformation
Dan shares his experience writing books, particularly “The Personal Transformation Blueprint.” He discusses how the writing process helped him understand and overcome personal challenges, while also providing valuable insights for readers on behavior change and goal achievement.
00:54:48
Closing Message: Challenging the Status Quo
Dan’s final message encourages listeners to challenge their status quo. He emphasizes the importance of questioning established patterns, stepping out of comfort zones, and living a life that sets an example for others.
Full Unedited Transcript of episode:
[00:00:02 – 00:01:13]
Good day and welcome to give a Heck. On today’s show, I welcome Dan Story. Dan is an author, trainer and motivational speaker who has spent years studying the principles of personal motivation and behavioral psychology to answer two simple questions. Why do we do what we do? And can we influence this? As a master practitioner and trainer of NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming and with a master’s degree in behavioral decision sciences, Dan truly understands the mental processes it takes to be successful in transforming the results you get in life. Through becoming one of the top natural physique bodybuilders in the world and competing at the Natural Olympia, Dan has put these principles into action to show it as possible when you put your mind to it. Dan has made it his mission to help people unleash their true potential and live life at a level they only dreamed possible. I’d like to walk me to the show. Dan, thanks so much for agreeing to come on and share with us some of your life journey.
[00:01:14 – 00:01:32]
Thanks Dwight, thanks for having me. And yeah, I listened to that intro. I think, oh, this guy’s going to be interesting. Then I realize it’s me and then I hope I can live up to the hype. So I’m excited to be here, have a great conversation about all things psychology mindset and figuring out how we get out of this the most out of this life.
[00:01:32 – 00:02:18]
I think, yeah. And get off the what I always talk about and coach about getting off the hamster wheel of life. We don’t have to be that person. We don’t have to strive to say, I just want to be normal like everybody else. I raise my children and I coach. I’d rather be Abby normal. I’d rather be that difference maker. I’d rather be the person that’s living outside of my comfort zone. Normal means comfort. And I’m not saying to anybody listening that that’s bad. I want more and hopefully you do. Right. And I know I mentioned you before we hit record. I bring on guests that excite me. I go through 8, 10 requests minimum just from one service a week. The other one, I get over 30 and I read through them and I have to have that. I really want to talk to this person.
[00:02:18 – 00:02:18]
Right.
[00:02:18 – 00:02:26]
I really want to learn from them. And then hopefully my, you know, listeners want to as well and viewers on YouTube. Right.
[00:02:26 – 00:02:45]
I’m sure we’re going to cover some really good ideas. I’m going to, you know, like I said, it’s, it’s going to be a good conversation. We’re going to challenge some ideas, some status Quo get people trying to think differently. Because I think that’s the point, right, is we’re conditioned to think in a particular way and that doesn’t always get us what we want out of life. So we start thinking differently a little bit.
[00:02:46 – 00:04:43]
It’s hard to break out of conditional programming. As we talked about a little bit before recording, our learned behaviors don’t come from just our parents either. They come from society. They come from everything we watch read our aunts, uncles, our influences, a coach and a sport we’re in, a teacher we favor and they just influence us, just these little micro influences and we get to a point in life that we become camped. And that’s why I wanted you on. I wanted people to have something that they maybe haven’t had in a long time and that’s belief and hope for, for a future that then have faith that they can find great people like you to help them or me or whatever the case may be that they, they don’t have to stay camped, they don’t have to go back and forth, work, go to work, go home, get paid and live in that proverbial rut where that rut becomes their grave eventually. Right. I honestly believe that we need to have great people like being a, being a life game changer, right? A world changer. So we’re going to get started here. Dan, one of the things I focus on initially, before we get into in depth of questions and conversation is your origin story. And I’m not talking about the fluff from when you finished, you know, grade school. I’m talking about the real meat of things that happen and influence you throughout your life. Like Maybe you were 6, 7 years old and now looking back you can go, wow, that was a difference maker life. I seen my parents do this, I’ve seen somebody else do that. Again, it doesn’t have to be bad. It’s good, bad and ugly. It could be sometimes they’re people’s origin. They just had this epiphany from somebody or they had a grandparents support them. I just want people to be able to better relate to you. It makes it easier for them to connect as we continue on with our conversation. So Dan, please tell me your origin story. What key things from your childhood to adulthood that led you to where you’re at currently?
[00:04:43 – 00:06:47]
It’s funny, I’m literally writing a new book on one of the chapters is origin story and kind of looking back at some of the things that have gone on and actually taking the lessons from those points. Right. Because you know, if you go out superhero, the origin story. And you know, take Wolverine’s. One of the most recent ones is you see all the bad stuff that happens and this is like the pre superhero phase. And you’re just like, this guy is a nobody. They’re ordinary. They have, you know, typically character flaws and things that make things. This person is never going to be a hero. And then they come out the other side of that, hopefully with some kind of ability to influence the world. So I love this concept of origin story. Mine’s very ordinary. This is quite interesting. I grew up in kind of fairly rural England. I remember the school that I went to had 47 people in total that was including kind of seven years of students, all the teachers and probably the caretakers and stuff like that. So, you know, I kind of grew up in rural England. I did make it to London. I mean it’s a big city. I sound like Dick Whittington or something along those lines. But you know, it kind of growing up I was, you know, we had a good family. My parents divorced. And that’s kind of something that, you know, I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that, you know, we have these childhood traumas. And although the divorce, there was nothing bad that happened. They both remarried, both stayed married again for 40 plus years. And so I’ve seen through that actually kind of second chances and how that actually works out a lot better. And there may be a lot of pressure on these kind of divorce situations, but actually for individuals involved, it can work out extremely well. You know, I was good at school. I was kind of lucky academically. I say lucky. I put in the work, you know, I kind of had opportunities, but I put in the work as well. I enjoyed playing sport and kind of followed that. But one of the things you talked about is, you know, we, we were a bit compliant. We grow up. And here’s one of the funny things. I went to university. My first time at university I did because I’ve been back a couple of times. Just keep learning stuff as much as possible. I did sports, science and maths. So in theory I’m really good at counting press ups.
[00:06:48 – 00:06:48]
Right.
[00:06:48 – 00:10:40]
But they’re quite, they’re quite different elements. Right. I really love the physical body and we’ll talk a bit about bodybuilding and how important that is. But you know, I’ve played sport my entire life at a fairly decent level. But I’m also a little bit of a nerd, you know, and the maths thing is a thing. I play Dungeons and Dragons now. Yeah, so that’s the thing. So I kind of have these kind of two wolves inside of me, the jock and the geek, they’re both kind of competing. And I remember not enjoying maths. This is, this is a thing. And I remember having this conversation. My mom tells it differently, but I didn’t want to carry on studying maths. And I remember having this conversation with my mom. I had, I spoke to university to say, yeah, you can go on and do sport. I sat my mum, I said, hey look, I don’t want to do math. So she sat down and cried and I was like, okay. And she’s like, you need to have something proper, you know, something that you can fall back on. And I remember this as a conversation at like 20, 19 years old, something like that. And having that conversation and the emotional pressure I felt for my mom, I carried on doing maths. Now I’m grateful for having done it, but that’s one of the very early chances or very early things that I’ve noticed that we comply or we, we can be emotionally kind of steered in certain directions and stuff. And had I followed my own path like everything would have been different. But it’s interesting, right? So I have this kind of sports background and maths background. I went back to university to really kind of challenge myself from an athletic studies perspective. Went back to do a masters and at that point I was saying, just in a warm up, friend of mine gave me a CD and it was a personal development cd. He said, hey, listen to this, I think it’s going to be interesting for you. And at the time I was working with athletes and fitness people trying to get them fitter and stronger and healthier. And this was all about mindset. I was like, wow, like how do I do this? And literally in an instant my career changed. Like no longer did I want to work on the fitness side. I was all about the brain. I ended up studying, like you said, neuro linguistic programming, going and trying to understand the psychology, why we do what we do, how do we communicate, how does our brain communicate? How do we think? That kind of took me into business. I ended up working with salespeople for about 20 years teaching them these principles of, of thinking and communication and why we make decisions the way we do and how our values align or contrast or, and how we play to those and how we tie our kind of products and services to values and make it seem appealing to people. I went back to university to study psychology even further because, you know, constantly chasing that little certificate that says you’re good enough. So I have a master’s degree in behavioral science which looks at not just the brain and how we make decision, but how we make bad decisions. And you know, if we kind of go back into my, my life story and why I chase this thing is because I’ve made some dumb decisions like why did I do that? Why did I not, why did I not challenge myself? Why did I not push myself a little bit further? And you know, one of the fun things now is I’m a parent and we’re talking about this. I’m a girl dad. I have a five year old girl who’s an absolute dream and nightmare at the same time. You’ll know what I’m talking about. You’ve got a little girl. And I’m now stuck in that situation where I want to be an amazing parent and provide for her and care for her and protect her because I’m her dad. And at the same time I also know that I need to challenge her and let her fall over and expose her to the world and let her figure herself out. And if I don’t do that, then I’m going to cuddle her and she’s not going to develop strengths that she’s going to need for the future. So all that to say is it doesn’t matter how long you study this psychology stuff, you never quite figure it all out, but you do, you are able to look back and kind of piece some of the pieces together. And so hopefully now at 45 years old, I’ve got a decent idea of how not to mess up for the future. And you know, if I take care of myself physically and mentally, then I’ll get to practice some of these principles for a very long time.
[00:10:41 – 00:12:21]
Yeah, that’s, that’s fantastic. It, you know, you talk about we never really get perfect at it, but what does education give us? And this isn’t a slight at anybody that doesn’t because I know some people that are super intelligent, super important businesses. They’re, they’re leaders in their industry, they’re leaders in their community and they’re, you know, some of them are average. Well, some of them are super wealthy and they never went to for liquor school. But I know for me I went through school a couple different times for computer engineering, then electronics engineering and I literally, it taught me a lot. It taught me that I had the ability to learn like really at the end of the day when somebody comes out of school with a diploma or degree, wherever you live, whatever, they give you that piece of paper that Dan mentioned, it’s telling you that you are enough. Maybe, maybe you continue to go back to school like you mentioned, because we have that imposter syndrome where we don’t think we’re good enough. We all suffer from that. But school gives many people a step, a leg up. Right. It gives us an ability to circumvent our comfort zone, to take us outside of it than to be that camp person our whole life. So kudos to you for realizing that. And even today, even some of the things we talked about in the pre conversation, you literally are a person that is tenacious and my listeners have heard me talk about this before. Tenacity is a good thing. To me, tenacity is a superpower. To always want more is not a bad thing. Now what you want more of can be a bad thing, but to want more knowledge, to aspire to connect is a great thing. So good for you.
[00:12:21 – 00:12:27]
Yeah, I think wanting more is never a bad thing. Wanting more than is often a bad thing. And it’s your comparison.
[00:12:28 – 00:12:32]
The compromise. Yeah, the comparison part of me. Yeah, the comparison.
[00:12:32 – 00:12:38]
If I want to be smarter than Dwight or richer than Dwight or better looking than Dwight, none of the above are ever going to be possible. But you never know.
[00:12:38 – 00:12:45]
Yeah, I was just going to say, I was honestly thinking, I think you’ve got, got that already, man. Look at you go to YouTube people.
[00:12:46 – 00:13:13]
I’m gonna blush. I’m already Rosie on this. It’s warm in here. But yeah, it’s that comparison thing is we never, we should never do it for other people or you know, compare to other people. But if we want to challenge ourselves, like I said, wisdom, you know, for us to be clever or smarter, sometimes we’re not doing it for a reason because we’re not enough. We don’t, we feel inferior. You mentioned imposter syndrome. We can talk about that today. You know, we often kind of set these barriers that we think we’ve got to overcome and then we overcome it and it’s like, oh, look, there’s another barrier and it stops.
[00:13:14 – 00:13:23]
We can talk about that right now. It doesn’t have to be so structured in a conversation. Things come up and we decide to talk about it. Let’s talk about imposter syndrome then.
[00:13:23 – 00:17:34]
Well, let’s say so I think there’s two types of imposter syndrome. I think there’s that one that I just kind of highlighted there, which is I don’t feel good enough. You know, it’s a lot of people who go into academics, in fact, the original studies on imposter syndrome were done, I think it’s in the 50s or something with women who are going to get PhDs. And it’s kind of very early on where women were going that far in academia. And they’d ask them at the end, you know, how do you feel? And they’re like, well, I don’t feel, I feel I was lucky. And they would justify their accomplishments and then, you know, the males would not justify their accomplishments. So there was this very clear difference in perception and women at that time feeling that they weren’t good enough, even though they had a piece of paper. And so it’s a pure psychological thing, right? And now I think the studies show us about 70% of people experience that. On occasion it’s like, I’m not good enough, I’m going to get found out, somebody’s going to know that I’m a fraud or they get promoted and it’s like, oh, am I going to, can I do this role? And they’ll kind of play down their own abilities or shrink and they’ll not do the things. And actually it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, right? We don’t do the things that we know we can do because we don’t, we feel like we don’t have permission. So there’s that kind of inferiority complex element from a imposter syndrome. The other one I think is, is really prevalent, which is probably more of the stuff that I do is whenever we set a big goal, if I, if I challenge myself, let’s take the bodybuilding thing for example. So last year I came second at Mr. Olympia on a natural stage, which is, I’d say, pretty good, one more step to go and we’ll try and do that this year. But when I started bodybuilding before I did my first show, I was telling people I’m going to be a bodybuilder, or I am a bodybuilder. I was trying to do the Muhammad Ali thing. You know, I told people I was greatest in the world before I even stepped in a ring. Is that kind of idea. You got to fake it until you make it. And there were times where I was like, yeah, I’m going to do it. But then there were times where I didn’t have any reference point. I’ve never competed as a bodybuilder and yet I’m trying to be a bodybuilder. And we have these two identities. There’s our current identity, who we are right now. We know if we look in the mirror, we see the Person who’s reflected every single day, who’s a result of all of the decisions we’ve made. That person is our comfort zone. We know that person, whether we like them or not is another factor. But then typically, if we set a big goal, we have this different identity. We don’t have reference for that. We haven’t ever achieved that. We don’t feel certain it’s going to happen. We have no certainty that that will ever play out. And so there’s this gap in personal identity and self identity and there’s a lot of work done around identity and how we view ourself. And it’s that gap which is the biggest imposter syndrome. And so I’ll try something, or let’s say I’ll start bodybuilding and, you know, within three weeks of working out, I’m not Arnold Schwarzenegger and I’ll be like, oh, it’s not going to work for me. And so I quit. And this is, you know What? We’re in January 15th, so just past quitters day resolutions dropping left, right and center because people don’t believe not in the opportunity, but they don’t believe in their own ability to get there. And we typically set unrealistic timeframes or we don’t put in the work or something along those lines. And I remember in those days when I was trying to be a bodybuilder for the very first time, before having ever done show, I would go, and I do the things that bodybuilders do, right? I go down, you know, weigh myself on the scales, look in the mirror, take photos, send them to my coach of me in the gym and, you know, my top off, and I’m looking at, I’m like, I’m never going to get that, never going to get there. I’m feeling like a fraud and like a fake and like, you know, how dare you say you’re a bodybuilder? I dare you say that. And yet if I just keep going. You talked about tenacity there. If I just keep going, I have the discipline to show up, show up, show up. It’s going to happen. Like it’s, it’s inevitable. It can’t not happen. If I follow the path and the process, and I think that’s the biggest thing is until you get there, you don’t have that certainty that it can happen. And so for me, as you know, you mentioned, I’m an author, so I have two books now. I’m writing a third one and I still have that. I’m Like, Dan, you’re not a very good writer. It’s like, you know, this, this writing you do is terrible. Okay, well, I’m still a writer. I’m still going to write. I have to tell myself that in my head because that voice is. You know, I’ve tried. I don’t think it’s ever going to shut up. It’s always going to come in and it always knows your deepest, darkest fears.
[00:17:34 – 00:17:35]
Oh, my God.
[00:17:35 – 00:17:57]
It can go straight to the point and it’ll say, dan, do you remember this time where you were useless? It’s like, yeah, it’s like this just throws it in your face. And this is where we talk a lot about emotion or motivation and stuff like that, especially in fitness. Side is, I don’t feel motivated most of the days. If I relied on motivation to go to the gym, I’d go a couple days a week maybe.
[00:17:57 – 00:19:17]
Oh, my gosh. We have to push past it. And it’s again, I like how you put though I just want to. You can continue on. But we don’t have a reference to that. And I had a guest on here in the last few months that talked about, really, at the end of the day, most of us don’t have a frame of reference for what we see or hear. We automatically make snap judgments based on our limited knowledge or those that are around us that are going, well, that, you know, blah, blah, blah, they’re getting upset. And we just have a lot of bias toward the knowledge of others when really they don’t have knowledge, they’re just piping off because they don’t like where their life’s at. So let’s make it about everybody else’s life. So I like that you talk to reference to that and, and just at the end of the day, we really having, you know, confirmation from others that we’re right or wrong, when really at the end of the day, we got to please ourselves. And how many of us really know how to do that because of imposter syndrome and even know what imposter syndrome is. They don’t even know what the definition of it is. And if you mention it to them, they’ll nod their head or go, you know, they like a deer cotton headlight. So it’s important that we discuss things like this and, and give the two different sides of it. I like how you differentiated that. So I appreciate that. Anything else you want to add about.
[00:19:17 – 00:19:47]
It comes up at the strangest time as well, you know, so at the beginning of the journey, I was definitely there and there was a moment, I remember this very clearly, where I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and didn’t recognize myself. That was a turning point for me. You know, I kind of was like, oh, who’s that? And I was like, whoa, it’s me. And, you know, certainly the work shows, but I’d say It was about 90%, 80 to 90% of down the journey. It’s not 50, it’s not halfway, which would be nice, right? First half, you know, it’s hard. Second half is easy, it’s nice, it’s closer to the end. It’s annoying. This is how the world.
[00:19:47 – 00:19:49]
But when is the end, though?
[00:19:49 – 00:22:08]
Well, you just never know, right? But on this occasion, from a bodybuilding perspective, it was like, okay, I’m nearly there, I’m nearly there. Just one more little push. Which was. Which was fun, but then going on to stage and, you know, for the Olympia, we went to Vegas. We’re in the Golden Nugget Hotel, and. And you’re backstage and there’s a ton of athletes, and you’re looking around and you’re like, oh, my God, there’s some incredible athletes here. There’s one guy on stage, you know, I follow him on Instagram. He has like hundred thousands of followers. I’m like, oh, my God, how is this guy here? Like, what? This is not fair, this kind of thing. And you look the other thing as well, because, you know, there’s different categories and ages and weight classes and stuff like that, just from a simplicity perspective. So as you’re backstage and you’re kind of warming up and trying to pump up, you’re looking around and you’re trying to figure out, who am I going to compete against? If it’s that guy, I can beat that person. If it’s that person, I could be that person. And so I’m like, okay, well, I have no idea. I went into this thing completely blind. And then they’re like, right, this group, up you come. Suddenly, right, you’re going on stage. And there was six of us in this kind of. This final. Who qualified? And I remember standing in line and I must have been like, fifth in line. So I could. I saw one person behind me and I looked. I could see all the people in front of me. I felt like a. Just a dwarf. I felt like I was surrounded by giants. And immediately, like, my heart was like. And I could feel this imposter syndrome. You don’t deserve to be here. Down. What are you doing? How are you going to go on stage? You’re Going to get laughed at. All of these things, like, immediately coming in and it’s like, nope, I deserve to be here. I’ve done the work. Like, I wouldn’t be allowed to be on stage if I hadn’t done that work. You deserve to be here. And then as the kind of element comes down, you can be a bit more objective and you can look and go, okay, well, I see that here’s an opportunity, here’s what I can do, and you come back in control. But yeah, it requires just a moment, just a breath. Okay, thank you. In a voice. Just go over there, let me get on with my work. But so many people allow that in a voice just to. To knock them off track. So the sales is a classic one as well. Like sales people, oh, you know, can you pick up the phone and call somebody? Or what if they don’t answer? And what if they hang up on me? What if they swear at me? What if they don’t like me? What if they don’t want to call? It’s like, okay, you’ve just spent half an hour not picking up the phone. You could have just picked up the phone and found out. But imagine doing that 5, 10, 100 times a day.
[00:22:10 – 00:23:40]
I don’t know, for rest of my life. I did. I’ve done the phone. Well, I’m in the finance industry. I’m a financial planner. So the first few years, I picked up the phone a lot. And that uncomfortableness, I don’t honestly know if it ever goes away. I think we can quell it, we can squash it down, we can make that call. But those initial first few seconds, I can feel myself holding my breath sometimes. Yeah, right. It’s like, are they going to answer? Are they. Yeah, are they going to answer? What happens if they reject me? Right? Then all of a sudden, the conversation goes on. It’s either. And really, at the end of the day, it’s either yes or no. There’s no maybes, there’s no in betweens. There’s no. It’s just, it’s either yes or no. People that say to me, well, maybe, let me think about it. I automatically put them in the no pile. I just. It just through experience, right? And it’s. It’s not negative to anybody. It’s just a reality of learning human behavior and especially you understanding psychology, understanding what you expect and having that in, in here in your brain and your heart and go, this is what I expect. Okay, it’s outside of there. Flush it. I didn’t get what I needed that nose closer to my next. Yes, and just one. And that I had to constantly remind myself that. But even today, 22 years into my industry of financial planning, a lifestyle coaching, I don’t like picking up and doing a cold call, even if it’s a referral. Yeah, well, I get that little bit of nervous energy. That nervous energy.
[00:23:40 – 00:24:49]
Let’s talk about maybe, because maybe it’s one of my favorite words, and I hate it so much because it’s a pointless word, especially from a decision perspective. Sales people. Salespeople. And if you’re listening, sales people, I’m talking to you. Your job is to make somebody make a decision. Everybody else out there, you guys need to make a decision. And maybe it’s one of those. It’s a word of weakness. Not like anything bad. It’s not a bad weakness, but it’s a lack of commitment. You haven’t made a decision either way. And salespeople, your job is purely just to get someone to make a decision. Don’t be attached to the outcome. Whether they decide to go yes or no is not up to you. It’s, you know, if you educate effectively and tie everything into their benefits, then hopefully it’ll go your way if you’ve done it effectively and sold ethically. But your job isn’t to get a yes or no. Your job is to make them make a decision, push them off the fence. And one of the questions, and, you know, maybe this would be useful is, you know, for you, is one of the best questions I like to ask to get people off that fence. And you have to do it with ideally an English accent and a tiny little smile, cheeky smile on your face is you say, okay, well, and this you’ll see why. It’s like, okay, well, how long have you been thinking about this?
[00:24:51 – 00:24:52]
Simple.
[00:24:52 – 00:26:04]
You know, it’s like you call me up, okay, Daniel, I see you’re interested in having a financial planner. Would you like to have one? Well, maybe so. Okay, well, how long have you been thinking about this? And then how much longer do you want to think about it? Because all that thinking you’ve done up until now hasn’t made the difference. I just want you to say yes or no and, like, get clear in your head and then move on to your own next problem. If you want a financial planner, great. If you don’t, great, then do something else, but stop entertaining this as an option. Stop entertaining. This is an option. Not for me. I don’t care. Like, I’ve got a pipeline. I’m fine. I’m gonna eat. Kids will be okay, you know, but for you, because we waste so much energy not making decisions, we think about things, we ruminate. We’re like, oh, what if I do this, what if I do that? And then we’re exhausted and then we actually never graduate our problems. Or we’ll, we’ll think, we’ll make a decision and we’ll do go back around in circle. And so one of the reasons why I study decision science is how can we quicker or more quickly get to a yes or no either for other people when we’re communicating with them. Like if we’re coaching somebody. So is this an option? Yes or no? Okay, we’ll eliminate it. And also for ourselves so we don’t keep going around in patterns and we can hopefully break those patterns and move on to a bigger bear problem.
[00:26:04 – 00:26:42]
Yeah, it’s, it really is though. It’s like you talk about, how long have you been thinking about that? I know in my career I may not use those words, it’s very simple. But I do go through that process and I goal set with people. I’m very much into goal setting before we get and conversation, getting down to the meat and what’s their, what’s their life monsters, their money monsters. And so that when the reason I asked this stuff is to have that connection so that when they falter, I can actually challenge. Well, remember on your goal sheet this was, you know, when did your decision to want that change since we last talked.
[00:26:42 – 00:26:42]
Yeah.
[00:26:43 – 00:27:01]
Good questions are hard to come by sometimes because every, every good question that might be a good question for you might not be a good question for that person because the personality, at least that’s what I found. So, so I have to be able to pivot on in the moment based on personality.
[00:27:01 – 00:27:01]
Yeah.
[00:27:01 – 00:27:40]
Client A might be different than client AB. Husband and wife. That’s individual. The business person is going to need different hand holding initially or a reminder of their passion or why they wanted what they wanted. Because sometimes they’ve got that external societal noise which is family, friends, news, whatever, and all of a sudden they’re feeling a little bit, you know, not connected. So then they need that push. They need that push from somebody that is not. What’s the word I’m looking for somebody that’s outside of their circumstances, that is truly invested in listening to them.
[00:27:40 – 00:27:40]
Yeah.
[00:27:40 – 00:27:42]
Not judging them. Does that make sense?
[00:27:42 – 00:27:59]
Yeah, 100%. We want to be empathetic. Like that’s, it’s, it’s like that empathy. It’s like I don’t Whether you make decision or not, I don’t mind like, but I want the best for you. I just got to do what you need to do. Not a lot of people like that, especially with salespeople. Well, we are all a little bit self motivated and that’s, that’s not a bad thing as long as we do.
[00:27:59 – 00:28:39]
It ethically then I love, I love that empathy is, and sorry for interrupting you. I just smile because I met a lady, I was speaking in this a few years, two, three years ago speaking in and just outside of Salt Lake City. I can’t even remember the community. It’s attached right to Salt Lake. And she’s an empath coach and I’ve had her on my show twice now and I met her personally and she took me through an exercise and ask me questions about my children grow, you know, you know, how do I feel about certain things. She says you’re an empath. You score so high on this scale it’s not even funny. This is why you feel this like. And we’ve become really close friends now.
[00:28:39 – 00:28:39]
Right?
[00:28:39 – 00:29:18]
She’s just super nice. She’s, she lives in the States. But empathy is so key. And sincerity, Empathy and sincerity tie one toward one another. And I love the fact that you brought that up. We really do need to be more compassionate and have empathy toward other people’s circumstances. The number one person that needs it is ourselves, the person we look at. Like you said in the mirror, it’s hard to have, it’s hard to have empathy for ourselves. Like you talked about, you know, a couple of things I wrote down too, but just different things in your life. You talked about the fact that you took pictures and you sent them to your coach.
[00:29:18 – 00:29:18]
Yeah.
[00:29:18 – 00:29:46]
You explain to me, no matter what you’re trying to accomplish in life, whether it’s your, your natural bodybuilding physique, bodybuilding, or getting into behavioral sciences, whatever the case may be. You talked about sending stuff to a coach. How do you feel a coach, a mentor is important. They may not necessarily berate you or tell you, but how important is it for us to communicate with others what we’re trying to achieve?
[00:29:46 – 00:30:00]
So my coach is also my brother actually from a bodybuilding perspective. He, he competed for a long time and he’s, he’s been invaluable in getting me to this point. So if you’re out there, little brother, thanks. He knows, he knows.
[00:30:01 – 00:30:03]
Hopefully he listens. You can send him the link.
[00:30:03 – 00:30:10]
But we’re also brother, so I’m going to send him as much abuse as I Do love. And that’s how I love it.
[00:30:10 – 00:30:10]
That’s good.
[00:30:10 – 00:32:15]
But I think there was a few things, there was a few things that were really beneficial. Number one is the accountability perspective is I’ve got to show up, I’ve got to do thing whether I like it or not, I got to send it to him. I’ve got to get outside of my own. Like, oh, this is stupid. Like, don’t do it, get it done. Like you’ve got to do this thing like sitting, taking, standing in front of a mirror, like setting up a phone on a tripod or something like that, or leaning against your water bottle and trying to take photos of you, trying to look great when you don’t look great. And you know that kind of things is all good, but you do because it’s a check in and it allows you both to see progress and compare where you were last competition to current competition. And you’ve got all of these different data points that you can have later on. You can do it not just through photos, but kind of weighing scales. I would step on scales every day, send in my weight, those kind of things, especially close to competition time. So we know we’re on track, we know we’re making progress. That’s the other thing, as always, is, you know, I think it’s the Hawthorne effect is what gets measured, gets done. So if you have a metric, if there’s a specific metric you’re working on, typically that will improve. And so, you know, working with a coach, it keeps you focused on the main things. So for me it was weight, body, composition, all those things and like conditioning around from a visual perspective. The thing that was really useful, this is probably the most useful thing, is objectivity. And I think I mentioned this a second ago, objectivity versus subjectivity. So when I look at my photos, I look at it and I see this, you know, I see what I see in the mirror or a dunk actually this is really annoying because I look okay in the mirror and then I take a photo, I’m like, is that what it really looked like? Oh. And then I start getting really critical. Like you said is we’re not, we have to be more self empathetic or self compassionate, but we’re not. It’s like, oh, that looks terrible. And you know, somebody does that pose better and you know you’re not flexing there and you know you need to try. There’s so many of these things, I’m not going to be ready. This isn’t going to work. And like panic sets in. And I literally. I’ll send a text to my brother. He’s like, yeah, look good. We’re in the right place. And that was all he needed to say. And I’d be like, okay, simple words.
[00:32:15 – 00:32:19]
Yeah, can just accelerate our. Our confidence in ourselves. Right?
[00:32:19 – 00:33:31]
And it was. It was literally just that. It’s like, okay, we’re on track. Remember, there’s a path. You know, I’ve still got X amount of weeks or whatever it is. We don’t have to rush. You have to be there tomorrow. Like, let the process work. And just sometimes having somebody who’s in. Invested in your goal, like, they’re genuinely invested in your success, but they can be a bit more outside and not kind of so panicky is really useful. So that was what, for me was just one of the most important things, especially is, you know, if you know anything about bodybuilding, close to the end, you’re dieting hard. You know, you don’t have a lot of energy, you’re tired, your hormones are all over the place, even as men. So you get miserable, you get grumpy, you get ratty, you get snappy, all of these things. And you panic, like, sleep down all of these things. It’s not a healthy place to be for like two minutes on stage where you try and look as good as you can. Then you go and have a burger. Burger, Exactly. So. And during those times where you’re your most. I say, you know, emotionally vulnerable point, to have somebody there who says everything’s going to be okay is just a. I can’t tell you how useful that is.
[00:33:31 – 00:34:32]
That’s awesome. We’re gonna. We’re gonna jump into. Because we’re gonna run out of time. Most likely gonna have to have you on again if you’re. If you’re up for that, because there’s so many things I’d love to discuss. I was looking at it last night when I was putting together the flow of my podcast and the people that are not new to the show. No, I take it very serious. I end up with always way more than I have time for. And some people, I don’t care. And it doesn’t mean. Because there aren’t good guests. They just. It doesn’t need to. But you’re. You. You’re. You’re a fascinating man, dude, just to be honest with you. So one of the things. You’re welcome. I wanted to get into the psychology. Like, psychology is such a vast field. Right. I know to specialize in a niche, no matter what we do, it’s important to truly make a difference by establishing ourselves as not being the master of everything. Right. Because then we really are not really helping out. What made you decide to specialize in behavioral psychology? And can you explain how it differs from other psychological disciplines?
[00:34:32 – 00:39:47]
Yeah. So like I said, as I started teaching salespeople, neuro linguistic programming. Neuro linguistic programming. I’d say pseudoscience. It’s got a lot of great tools and techniques, but it isn’t scientifically verified by the academic community. A lot of it comes down to the therapist or the practitioner, whoever’s using the tools. That’s. It’s. It’s their ability to choose the right tool, technique at the time, communicate effectively, build rapport. So a lot of it is down to the individual as opposed to the. The science. And so part of me was like, okay, well, it’s still useful as an influencer, as someone, a salesperson. I want to be able to use these tools, but I also need to understand on the other side what’s going on in that person’s head. So when I’m trying to convince you, Dwight, to do something, what’s going on in your head? Because if I understand that and how the cogs are turning and all those elements, then I can be more effective as a communicator. Say, okay, well, you’re probably thinking this now. This is probably a concern for you. All right, great. And if you can be one step ahead, it seems like you’ve been there before. People buy from confidence, like as a confidence element. So, okay, well, it sounds like he’s been there before. Yeah, he must be good at this. I’m more likely to make a positive decision. So that was my original motivation for studying this thing, to become a better sales trainer. What I since learned is that I’m actually less interested in sales application and more interested in the personal application. So this is where I’ve kind of been turning my attention. And the biggest thing that I took from that and as a sales trainer, it’s the same thing is I hate, hate, hate the status quo. Like, the status quo. How we do things all the time is one of my biggest bugbears, because we don’t change. And you talked about camping out. I use the term stuck. You know, a lot of people get to a point where they’re stuck, especially men at my age and women as well. But, you know, I do a lot of work with men is we get to a point where we wake up and we’re like, where. Where am I? Like, I’m not in a life that I thought I was going to be living. Whose life is this? Like, I’m really. I’m not happy. This is what kicked off my bodybuilding journey, is I realized that I saw a photo of myself and that I saw a guy who said a lot of stuff but wasn’t living a lot of stuff. And, you know, I had an average career, a very average physique, and I was living a very comfortable place, but it wasn’t satisfying. You know, I was dissatisfied. There was a whole bunch of things that I wasn’t happy with. And I’m like, well, how did I get stuck? Why did I get stuck? And if we look at that and we use all of these elements from psychology and this, behavioral psychology and decision psychology, and this is what my book this year is going to be about, called Unstuck, there’s like seven principles from behavioral psychology that we can really pinpoint to this. And some of them are actual models. And you talked about the academic thing. Understanding the models of why we get stuck is really useful because we can then differentiate, pull different levers. And some of them are other challenges that are kind of in other areas of life, but are super applicable to how we make decisions and why we get stuck. So let me run you through a few of them. So here’s. Here’s a classic. So I’m recently moved to New York. This is. This is. This is important because it’s about walking. Now, in New York, you walk everywhere. Like, I’ve gone through at least two pairs of shoes, and I’ve only been here for five months, but you walk everywhere. The weather’s been good as well. A little bit cold, but, you know, generally pretty dry. So the question is, if I’ve got to go 10 blocks, how do I get there? Well, the easy answer is walking. It’s a nice sunny day. I’ll walk 10 blocks. It’s maybe 10 minutes, depending on which direction the blocks are. If I’m going to go 50 blocks, how do I get there? At some point, like let’s say it’s 100 blocks or something like that, I will change. I will either take the bus or train. Okay? And so what we’re going to understand is between 10 blocks and 100 blocks, let’s do it like that. Just for easy maths, there is a point of crossover, which we call this kind of region beta, where I will change from walking to motorized transport because it’s inefficient. It’s inefficient, right? It’s faster or easier or More convenient to go by bus or by Metro than it is to walk. So the question is, what is that point? For some people, it’d be, okay, well, I could do 20 blocks. Oh, maybe it’s 30 blocks. Oh, it’s a sunny day. Maybe I’ll do like, actually, I’ll do 35 blocks. Oh, don’t mind. Or it’s rainy. So we change it. So this principle is actually sliding. It’s a completely psychological sliding scale. Now, obviously, I’m not talking about walking blocks in New York. Let’s take it to a different application. So let’s say, Dwight, you have a terrible job, you hate your job, and this is your job, and you’re stuck in this job. And at some point, if things were bad enough, you would change your job. You go and find another job, you would leave your job. My question to you is, at what point on that sliding scale do you change your job? And what we’re really good at as human beings is moving according to how we want to feel. And I say, oh, you know, I hate my boss. I hate this. It’s terrible. I’m going to quit tomorrow, have a conversation with my buddy. It’s like, yeah, you should definitely quit. Oh, did you hear about Dave?
[00:39:47 – 00:39:48]
Oh, no.
[00:39:48 – 00:40:28]
What happened with Dave? Why Dave got fired? Dave doesn’t even have a job. And, oh, that’s terrible. And now suddenly conflicting. It moves, right? Oh, I should be grateful I even have a job. You know, it might not be great, but, you know, at least I’ve got a job. So we move the barrier and we move the point where we change. And this is. This is. It’s called the region beta paradox is this crazy idea that we’re able to move an inflection point. And, you know, you talked about coming from the. The kind of the school of life as opposed to academics. Our grandparents knew all this stuff. My grandparents like better. The devil, you know. Remember that? If you remember that phrase.
[00:40:28 – 00:40:30]
Oh, abs. Absolutely heard it.
[00:40:30 – 00:40:55]
All the same thing, right? So it’s encouraging us to stay stuck. And so, you know, what we’ve got to understand is this is a purely hypothetical thing. So at what point does it become bad enough to change a job? At what point does it become bad enough to leave that relationship? At what point does it become bad enough that you quit drinking or smoking or doing drugs or whatever it is? At what point does that change? And we can manipulate that. We can say, today, actually, I’ve had enough. Like, this is it.
[00:40:55 – 00:41:06]
Well, now to manipulate. It can involve friends. Your. Your. Your Associations, watch. And associations, like I tell people, are just aren’t friends. What are you listening to? What do you read?
[00:41:06 – 00:41:06]
Yeah.
[00:41:06 – 00:41:36]
What events do you attend? What groups do you belong to? And I have those conversations, people go, why? Oh, and then all of a sudden you get to some of them, you get this light bulb effect right away. They’re like, oh, I searched out the type of life that I, that I thought I had to live. I searched out the same type of people. So all of a sudden now you have that bias or that, well, you should quit your job. Yes, you should quit your job. And the person that you talked about that had somebody say they just lost their job, the other person said, oh, quit your job. Now all of a sudden you’re going, yeah, what do I do?
[00:41:36 – 00:42:58]
And, and I tell you who was funny. This thing, this thing, you know, and if you’re listening is I’m holding up my mobile phone. But if I sit here and I say, I want to quit my job, I want to quit my job, I want to quit my job, I want to quit my job. I say, I say it enough times, it’s not listening. Obviously it’s not listening. But if I go onto Instagram in a little while, how many posts do you think there will be on there that say, hey, you interested in quitting your job? These are the five reasons you quit your job. And we get this. The other one we’ve got is this confirmation bias, is that the information that’s coming to us reinforces the things that we think already and so rarely do we ever get this kind of contrasting opinion. So this is one of the things that, in psychology is a really interesting thing, is we’ll believe, we’ll look for opportunities that reinforce our beliefs as opposed to opportunities to conflict it. And so it’s called confirmation bias. We seek out these things that make us feel good about what we believe and we should really change that if we’re going to make good decisions. You don’t want, hey, Dwight, I’m thinking about this, Dan. That’s a great idea. Idea. Like every. If everybody, I say, yeah, this is, you know, it’s a great idea. It’s a great idea. I should be worried. I should be worried. I want someone to ask me questions. I want to say, well, why do you think that? Like, have you thought about this? Like, surely this is not a great idea. You know, what about this contingency? Like, I want to have that conversation. I need to have somebody to give me that perspective so I can make a better decision. I Don’t need to be panicked or postpone a decision.
[00:42:58 – 00:43:48]
Well, it depends of situations. If you do it correctly, it really does. It diffuses any situation where I have people that are upset and they’re not necessarily upset at me and they’ll, they’ll, they’ll say, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do you think? Yeah, I will pause for a second and I’ll say them just a second. And sometimes it can be instantaneous. I’ll pause and I’ll think about it and I’ll give them two sides of the coin and I’ll go, what do you mean? What are you doing? Well, I agree with what you say here, here’s some good. But if you thought about this, because I’m always trying to make their, their thought process not be conflicting, but be educated for them to think. I never thought about, that’s that option. I never thought about that. I can accomplish that. Or really you think I have that in me because I’m somebody that sees them for the, like the forest, for the tree step, you know, like the phrase.
[00:43:49 – 00:45:35]
Yeah. So confirmation bias is a big one. I’ll give you a couple more. These are fun. So we talked about conformity Bias is another one, is if we don’t make our own decisions, we allow other people to make our decisions. So I think the classic example I told you about my mum sitting down and crying saying, you should do maths. I am appreciated. Now, I think the numerical awareness has been super useful. So don’t tell her if she listens to this time I realized that I was being emotionally blackmailed. But it’s all good. But as we often do the things that people expect us to do, you’re going to go to school, you’re going to get a good job, going to do these things. And we take the traditional path. And actually many of us aren’t up for that. You know, my, my nephew at the moment, he’s 18, just turned 18, and he’s trying to become a plumber. He didn’t want to go to academic. He doesn’t like school, he doesn’t like studying too much. He wants to kind of go into business. But it’s funny listening to people conversation, like where they’re trying to guide him. It’s like, well, try this, right? When you try this, it’s all very traditional. It’s like, well, I don’t like that. And we try and guide and we’re like, no, but this is the path. You know, we’ve been educated. This is where you go to school. You do this. And it’s like. And if you don’t go on that path, math, I don’t know how to like, what’s going on. And you know, and yet the future, like, for my daughter, it’s not going to be that, like, she’s not going to be employed for her skills. Skills are going to change so fast that after school it’s going to be. No, it’s not about that. It’s about attitude, it’s about application, it’s about capabilities, about softer skills, transferable skills. Those are things that people need to be able to learn. So it’s going to be interesting to do that. But a lot of people make decisions because they want. They think that’s what other people expect them to do and then make them. And it’s not what makes you happy and it’s not what makes you come alive, and it’s not the decision you would make, but you do it because you think other people want you to.
[00:45:36 – 00:46:28]
Oh, and that’s that, that hamster wheel effect. That’s that learned behavior effect where, you know, like, my father owned a business and he really wanted me to take it over, but it wasn’t what I wanted. And it causes. Caused some conflict, some strife, and I never did take it over. I could have been way in some ways, based on his level of definition of success. I would have been way more successful doing that than maybe what I’m doing now. I don’t know. We don’t talk about it. I’ve gone on my own journey. He’s proud of me for what I do. Now. My mom and him, they’re still alive in their 80s. But at the end of the day, really, we need to help society one person at a time, group at a time, just be able to believe that they can accomplish anything and find the right person. Like you would get that simple message from your brother, from another mother or whatever. Maybe it is your actual brother and you message. And they just say, yeah, good, keep on going.
[00:46:28 – 00:46:28]
Yeah.
[00:46:28 – 00:46:53]
And that’s just like, awesome because we have to have people in our life that we respect and believe that they have the knowledge that we aspire to gain or. And help us through those decisions. Now if you’re getting decisions from people that are always saying, well, I want to quit my job, okay, quit. I want to. I want to get a promotion. Okay, get one. You know what I mean? They’re always just parroting what we say. It’s look for good people.
[00:46:53 – 00:46:58]
You did different opinions because I know we’re out of time, but I really?
[00:46:58 – 00:46:59]
Yes, we are.
[00:47:00 – 00:47:41]
This is called the trolley problem. You may have heard of this. This is a psychological problem. So think about AI driving cars now, right? This is happening. So cars are making these decisions, but I’m going to put you on the spot. Okay, so we’re, we’re standing by a train track and there’s a runaway train coming down the track. Okay. If it carries on down this track, there’s five people lying down on the track. They’re going to get squished. Absolutely. Going to get squished. If you’re by a lever. And if you pull this lever, it will divert the train down another track where there’s only one person. Okay. The question is, do you pull the lever? Do you pull the lever to divert the train to avoid five people, but guaranteed to kill one person, Would you pull that lever?
[00:47:42 – 00:47:47]
Well, I believe in the needs of many over the needs of the one. I’d pull the leverage.
[00:47:47 – 00:47:57]
Cool. So there we go. So that’s the utilitarian view, is that we should always make the decision for the greater good. And the greater good is, sorry, one person. You’re going to get sacrificed five people over here, you know.
[00:47:57 – 00:48:25]
But it would be nice to know the story of the one person though. Now if I knew the story and there, and there are a future Nobel peace winner for the cure for cancer, then now all of a sudden I might not pull the lever because the other five, not that their lives are inconsequential, that one person might save millions. The other people work at a menial job. And not that their menial job isn’t important. They’re valued to society. So information.
[00:48:26 – 00:48:32]
So it could be five old people, one young person, it could be a millionaire. It could be pregnant people. It could be.
[00:48:32 – 00:48:34]
But my knee jerk response would be.
[00:48:34 – 00:49:00]
To pull it right. Five dogs, one cat. It’s like it’s all you can play around. Is it? Actually a really funny one. I’ll show you the link afterwards. But. But you can play around with so many different variables. But the question isn’t necessarily that. Because there’s a pause and one of the pauses is, okay, but I might be saving five, but I’m proactively killing one. And that’s. Have you ever been in a situation where it feels like it doesn’t matter what decision you make, it’s the wrong one. Eventually we let go of taking control.
[00:49:00 – 00:49:01]
The lesser of two evils.
[00:49:01 – 00:49:02]
Right.
[00:49:02 – 00:49:04]
The least slimiest choice.
[00:49:04 – 00:50:37]
Yeah. And so even though, and you’re right, from a utilitarian person, like we should Pull the leverage. We don’t because we know that we’ll get into trouble for that or that we’ll be blamed for that. And actually, I don’t know the story for those five, why they’re even five people on the Internet and on track. I don’t know enough about this. I’m not going to make a decision. I’m out. And how many people live life like that where they’re passive in the decision making? And in psychology we call it locus of control. Right. Is it’s okay, well, things are going to happen to me. It’s fate. It’s, you know, it’s just how the world is. I’m not going to make a decision. Things will happen. Right. Versus okay, actually I’m going to take control of this and I’m going to do something. And whether it’s right or wrong isn’t the matter. It’s like I’m going to drive. And one of the things that people get stuck is they let go of the wheel. They’re not prepared to make decisions because they’ve been burned so many times in making the wrong decision or being scolded for making a decision. It’s like, why did you do that? You have to justify yourself. It’s like, no. And so luckily with locus of control, it’s very contextual. And this is why fitness is such a great start for people who are stuck. Taking control of your fitness doesn’t require other people. You can just do it. You can go to the gym, you can eat the rice food, you can do so many things that are without other people being involved in influencing. So that’s why it’s a great place to start from a transformation perspective. And as we scale up and we say, okay, well I want to take a little bit more control of other areas, then we have to interact with people. But it’s about pulling the lever. It’s about knowing when to pull the lever and not, not, not making decision. Can we come back to that point? It’s not maybe it’s like I will either pull it or not pull it. I will not abstain from making the decision.
[00:50:38 – 00:51:28]
Yeah. So that’s the Directly moving forward. Yeah, yeah. So one of the. Because we are running out of time. I know you have another appointment coming up. One of the things we’re going to touch on briefly now, we don’t have a lot of time is, you know, you’ve written a couple books and you’re on your third one on LLP and another one released last year called the Personal Transformation Blueprint. How to create powerful, unprecedented change in your life. Iris Myself wrote a book, was very cathartic, right? Really helped me out. Haven’t written two like you and on the third, but it helped me realize both a lot of things about myself, both to pat myself in the back and also kick myself in the pants moments as I was writing it, especially rereading it and re changing chapters and stuff as my editor was going through it. What was it like writing your books? And did writing them help you continue to move forward in your life?
[00:51:28 – 00:53:17]
100%. I wrote it as I was going through it. So my personal transformation was my fitness goal and becoming my runner up in Mr. Olympia. Next year we’ll talk about it. I’ll be Mr. Olympia. But until then, I’ll just say, but it was great. So again, as you go through these challenges, you’re looking for answers. As I’m going through this kind of imposter syndrome, I’m like, why am I feeling this way? And now I have tools and resources. I can go and say, okay, well, let me go and study this. Let me understand it. And so the book Personal Transformation is about how do we make these challenges and how do we make this change? And why don’t people make these changes? If they try and change it, why doesn’t it work? So it combines like the practical advice that I’ve gone through from my own stuff with a lot of psychology related to behavior change and a lot of the theoretical models that help people understand why behaviors change or not change. And you know, you talked about social proof. There’s a lot about our social norms is a big element. It’s like one. One of the three main elements about whether we change our behavior or not. It’s like our social norms will impact our intentions to change and then we’ll follow through or not. And that’s largely down to self esteem. So it was really cathartic. It was like, okay, well, how am I visualizing myself? Like, how am I making that, setting that goal? Because, you know, I’ve done goal setting. But what’s going to be different this time? Okay, this is different. All right, Now I’ve got this imposter syndrome. How do I go through it? Okay, I need to develop mental toughness. I need to develop discipline. I need to think about things in a different way. I need to quiet those, limit those voices in my head or at least get them to say different things. Now how do I do that? And then I’m like, okay, well, how do I make this easier? And then historically, I’ve always tried to find the shortcut is there’s no shortcut, man. There’s no shortcut. And we’ve got to change our relationship with work. We’ve got to be prepared to work hard and then work smart. And this is it. So the first thing is the grind. You’ve got to go and put in the work.
[00:53:17 – 00:53:17]
Work.
[00:53:17 – 00:54:20]
You can outsource some things, but unless you know what you’re outsourcing, it’s always going to go wrong. And that’s. So you’ve got to. You’ve got to go through the process first and understand it extremely well, and then you can outsource it as a system. I think there’s a great book called the E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, which I kind of highly recommend to people who look into systemize their business. That’s a good book. But we’re going to do that with our life as well. But the only way you can do that is if you know the process because you’ve lived the process. So work hard, then work smart, and then it’s about changing. The other thing in there is sacrifice. That’s a big element to that, is sacrifice isn’t about goats and virgins at all. Right. It’s about chess and it’s about how can you give something up to get a strategic advantage so that it’s not about saying no to lots of things, it’s about saying a bigger yes to a fewer number of things and then you can really lean into that. So we can’t have everything. We can’t have our cake and eat it and there’s a bodybuilding joke in there somewhere. But we can absolutely invest all of our energy into a smaller number of things. And that if you choose those things right, I think that’s what winning is.
[00:54:21 – 00:54:48]
Wow, I love that, man. I wish we had another hour, two hours, three hours to talk. I have got so many things I want to talk to you about. We’re definitely going to have to have you on again. Maybe we’ll wait until you are ready to release your book or you’ve released it. Reach out to me. But one last thing. We got three minutes left here. Dan, if you had to give our listeners one last closing message, what would you tell them in regards to giving a heck and never giving up?
[00:54:48 – 00:55:54]
I’d say challenge your status quo. Anything that you look at and you say, oh, that’s just how we do things around here. That’s how we did it yesterday. It’s question why. Why do you do it that way and does it serve you? I think we have a lot of patterns that we bring forward, and they were useful in the past, but they’re not so useful anymore. And so like I said earlier, I absolutely, passionately detest the status quo. We all, this is one thing that keeps us stuck. And if we stay stuck, then our life is going to go past. And my nan always used to say, this is the years come past faster and faster. You know, I’m 45. I’m going to blink in a minute. My girl’s going to be growing up and leaving home, and I need to be the role model. I need to set the example. And she watches and listens more than she. She watches more than she listens. And so we all need to live a life of example. And yes, words are great, but live a life of example. Challenge your status quo. Do the things that are a little bit scary but exciting. And if we can do that on a little bit more of a frequent basis, get outside of our comfort zone. And I think. I think we’ll have a life that is far more exciting and that we should all give a heck of a right on.
[00:55:54 – 00:56:02]
Great message. So our time is almost up. I want to respect our listeners and your time. Weber, what’s the best way people can reach out to you?
[00:56:02 – 00:56:28]
Come to the website danstory.com I have a new newsletter called Pep Talk. It’s called Purpose, Energy and Productivity. That’s probably the best thing. So every week I’ll send out three little ideas on how can we be more purposeful, how can we be more energetic, and how can we get more out of our lives. And then the other one is on Amazon, Personal Transformation Blueprint and then unstuck working title. But the next one will be out hopefully in the next few months.
[00:56:28 – 00:56:35]
Oh, and you also have your podcast people can check out, too. Remind the audience, what’s the name of your podcast?
[00:56:35 – 00:56:45]
Personal Transformation Podcast. And Dwight will have you on there shortly. Just to reflip this conversation around because I know you’ve got a huge amount of insight to bring, so love to have you as a guest.
[00:56:46 – 00:57:21]
Oh, I’d love that, actually. But yes, please check out for the new listeners or viewers, go to GiveAheck.com, go to the top. Hit the podcast. It’ll bring up my podcast page. You’ll see a picture of Dan and I’ll have all his links for social media, his website. You’ll be able to access chapter summaries and there’ll be the complete unedited show notes if you want to go in and look for specific stuff because I know some people like doing that. So check out giveaheck.com any last words before I wrap up the show?
[00:57:21 – 00:57:29]
No. I think you’ve done an amazing job, Joy. Thanks for having me. And hopefully everybody’s find some value in this and they challenge their own beliefs and do things a little bit different.
[00:57:29 – 00:57:45]
Oh my gosh. I’m going to challenge more stuff myself because I love changing and growing. So thanks so much for being on Give a Heck. Dan. I appreciate your time and sharing some of your experiences so that others too can learn. It is never too late to give a Heck.