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Heart First Leadership
Welcome to Heart First Leadership, the podcast that explores a revolutionary approach to leadership. In a world that often prioritizes success above all else, it's easy to find ourselves leading from a space of fear, doubt, and unworthiness. There is a new way!
Join me, your host Ryan Sawyer, and my co-host and wife, Heidi Sawyer, on a transformative journey as we seek to inspire and guide leaders, parents, and athletes to unlock the secrets to a truly fulfilling life—one that resonates from the heart. In Heart First, we challenge the conventional norms and embark on a voyage together, where heart-driven leadership becomes the compass for a life well lived.
Are you ready to redefine where you lead from? Let's dive into meaningful conversations, insights, and practical tips that will empower you to embrace a new paradigm of leadership.
Heart First Leadership
#1 Skill for Mental and Emotional Wellbeing and Performance
Embark on a transformative journey with Heidi and me as we unlock the mental mastery of self-detachment, an indispensable tool for navigating the turbulent waters of our thoughts and emotions. Through engaging conversation, we reveal how stepping back and observing our mental landscape can not only bolster our emotional resilience but also enhance our performance in all walks of life. We draw on examples from the rigorous training of Navy SEALs to the nuanced strategies of psychotherapy, demonstrating the profound effect self-detachment can have across various disciplines. Imagine the possibilities when we apply this liberating perspective to our daily lives, creating a robust foundation for personal growth and success.
As we further navigate this episode, we highlight the undeniable impact of experiential learning, especially in shaping the minds of young people. Traditional textbook knowledge pales in comparison to skills forged in the crucible of real-life experiences. Imagine the power of training that instills an automatic, competent response to life's chaotic challenges, much like an elite athlete in the throes of competition. We share the excitement for our upcoming workshop where participants can immerse themselves in the practice of self-detachment. Join us in this unique setting, where we'll guide you through breathing techniques, mindful movement, and the stillness required to integrate these life-altering strategies into your everyday existence.
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Welcome back to the show. And here we are once again with my favorite guest, my wife Heidi Soyer Hi.
Speaker 2:I just paid a little bucks to say that.
Speaker 1:So I brought Heidi on today to help me with a conversation, to make it as simple and relatable as possible, because sometimes I tend to get a little bit going down a rabbit hole. So you're here to help me, so thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to make this as powerful and as impactful as a conversation as we possibly can make it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love having these conversations, so I'm here for it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So I'll do a little introduction into the conversation. Then you either ask questions or share insights. Do what you do, ok. So this is about the number one, absolutely number one mental skill. There is four mental and emotional well-being and four, performance.
Speaker 1:What I have found in my journey is that the things that pull somebody and help somebody out of a dark place in life and the things that help somebody go from complacency or contentment or a plateau in life to excelling is the same.
Speaker 1:Going through the journey of studying everything from shadow integration to mental toughness with forward Navy SEALs, right to studying with neuroscience specialists, to neuroscience, neurotrauma, epigenetics, all I mean quantum physics, I mean, goodness gracious, the list can go on and on.
Speaker 1:There was one consistent through line with all of it. There was more than one, but there was one that stood out above all else and it was this mental tool that, if practiced, turns into a mental skill, an emotional skill, which is to self-detach, to witness, to observe, to notice we even heard it called the Watchman at the Gate To be able to observe yourself with a non-judgmental awareness, to recognize a thought, to not attach that thought, to recognize an emotion and not get caught in the story of that emotion and that dip and that disturbance, to self-detach and just objectively notice. This gives us the ability and the awareness to course correct. It creates space between stressor stimulus and how we choose to respond to it. It allows for us to relieve stress. It allows for us to relieve pressure in our life in a way that gives us space to create what we do want in the next moment. So I would love to see here from you what is the first thing that comes to your mind.
Speaker 2:The first thing that comes to my mind actually is from a book that I read years ago. I changed my life just hearing this phrase that you are not your thoughts. I really had to sit with that because for a long time, for a lot of my life, I believed every thought that I had. I didn't understand that it was something that I could actually take a step back and observe from a different perspective, and once I was able to get an idea of what that was, then I began to explore how do I practice this? How do I create that space between my thoughts or my anxious overthinking or ruminating about something, and actually being in my body and being okay in that moment and being able to realize these are all thoughts, these are sentences in my brain happening, and I don't have to merge with those. I can be watching them.
Speaker 2:That's the first thing that came to mind was just I remember how mind blown I was when I heard that the first time, and I even remember getting on Facebook and doing a video. You guys did you know you are not your thoughts? It was just blew my mind. I thought I have to tell this to everybody. This is amazing.
Speaker 1:I've been screaming this from the mountain tops. This is one of those basic skills that, man. I wish we found a way to integrate this into school, where you begin with a very simple practice in the first grade and by the time that kid was a senior in high school, it was just somehow integrated into everyday life in the class where or there'd be a health class or a PE class or whatever, or every class where this was practiced in a way where it went from being a concept, it went from intellect into experience, it went from this idea into a visceral, recorded body experience. Because you maybe have heard this before, but you're not your thoughts, you're not your body, you're something greater. And yet you can think of this as a spiritual context, but it shows up in every single thing.
Speaker 1:When I went and worked with Mark Devine, former Navy SEAL, this is one of the first things he taught us was a tool called Worm. A tool called Worm which is basically a mental performance tool of being able to witness, interdict, replace and maintain. Now, the main part of Worm is that first word to witness. This is something that they teach to Navy SEALs. If it didn't work at a very high level, they wouldn't spend the time to train it into Navy SEALs? To be able to witness your thoughts, witness your emotions and to be able to ask yourself like is this supporting me or is this damaging me? Is this helping me stay focused on the task at hand or am I getting distracted? To be able to observe yourself, to witness.
Speaker 2:They do those muscle testing. You know and the way that you're thinking and if you're attaching to a negative thought in a high performance scenario Navy SEAL they might be in a really high-stakes situation. They need to be able to detach from something that is not supporting them in that scenario and really find something that's going to help them be stronger and perform in a really powerful way. They don't have time for that.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know. So I mean I could go to every single discipline and I could tell you where it shows up, from Buddhism to the Bible and Logotherapy Victor Frankel's work you know. If you don't know who Victor Frankel is, he survived three concentration camps and ended up, obviously, creating a whole entire series of different books. And Logotherapy is a type of therapy that complements psychotherapy, and it's based in the idea of seeking meaning in life. One of the main tools that he basically takes two different concepts, but one of them that he talks about in there is to self-detach, to be able to give somebody a break from their neurosis right which we all have some form of neurosis in our lives ruminations, things that cause you know where I mean. The science shows it over, and over 80 to 90% of your thoughts are the same thoughts as yesterday they were recycled. So how many of these are really truly allowing us to be present and create the future life that we want, rather than a past and present reality, a future, present reality, right? We have to be able to self-detach and allow for things to come and go, and so this is the tool that I don't want to just talk about. This is a tool that I want to give people.
Speaker 1:One of the most important things in my journey was that time that I spent in California. When I went down there and spent two weeks in training, there was 11 of us in a yoga studio with Mark and Catherine Devine and we did my Korkakoro yoga certification. Now, yes, it was yoga, yes, we were doing Asana practice, but we were moving, breathing, visualizing mantras, all these different things, but still the theme of all of it was to observe, was just to notice, was to witness right, was to self-detach. So whether we were doing 300 burpees when Mark first walked in the door, within minutes we're all doing 300 burpees. Why? Let's see where your mind goes. Did you notice that when I said, when I got to 300 and Mark goes all right, we're halfway there your mind goes.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, I don't know if I can do this To just notice what does your mind do? What's the automatic default pattern or mechanism of survival or of protection that your mind goes to in moments of adversity? And if it isn't supporting you, we can do things to learn how to train it so it will. And if you don't know what's happening internally, if you're not building awareness and the ability to observe and witness. And if you're not doing hard things, doing one of two ends of the spectrum, I'd say to build this ability to witness, how do you have to? Either sit still and listen you have to become familiar with yourself in there or you have to do something hard and then notice. So you do something hard, like stepping into an ice tub or when we're doing workouts. We do things where we're like, hey, expect the unexpected, now we're gonna do something different or hard that wasn't written on the board for our workout and just notice how your mind goes.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna do burpees.
Speaker 2:I thought we were almost done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now we have to do this, that was our whole time and just noticing what the mind is doing in these moments when things get hard, because each end of the spectrum is hard sitting still being quiet, being bored. That can be hard for people, right, and that's important. Now, I'm not gonna go into all the reasons why that's important, but that's important. And then doing hard things and programming and kind of, and working through and stretching our nervous system in two different directions to know like, oh, this is the automatic default of my mind when somebody says something that I feel like is rejection, or, and now I can do something with it, now I can change it, now I can work with it. We just recorded a podcast for your podcast that we might put on both, I'm not sure, but it was about shadow integration, right? This is the first piece of shadow integration work, of being able to create a new version of yourself, is awareness. We call it a war of being, not therapy. So that ability to just be like, yeah, I can notice, I know what's going on in there. Now I can decide do I wanna keep what's going on in there? Do I wanna change what's going on in there? Is it supportive of me or damaging my ability to be present, to be okay or to perform.
Speaker 1:My desire is to not just have people have this idea in their head like yeah, okay, I'm not my thoughts, but to give them a visceral experience. So, going back to when I was working with Mark in person, that becomes this grounding experience in my life that I can constantly go back to remember what it felt like inside that room when we were moving and breathing for eight, for 10, for 12 hours a day, for day four, day seven, day 10, day 12, and this space that I felt Now I'm not gonna. I don't have two weeks to do this with people, but we're gonna take a couple hours and I'm gonna take a group of teenagers, athletes because that's really the demographic that I'm focusing on working with the most right now. But we can do things like this for parents and for coaches and different people as well but to take a group of teenagers that maybe are a little bit entangled in their experience of their mind, of their thoughts, of their body, of their emotions, right, and give them this experience by me guiding them through some breath, some movement, we'll do something hard and we'll sit still.
Speaker 1:I'll hit both ends of the spectrum that I just talked about, and I'll guide them to a place where they're going to have a visceral experience of realizing oh, I'm observing myself. If I'm able to observe myself, then am I actually my thoughts? If I'm watching my thoughts, I can't be my thoughts. I have to be the one watching them. If I'm observing my body, I can't be my body. I'm the one watching my body, right?
Speaker 2:So a much more powerful position to be in than being at the mercy of whatever going on in your head because, like you mentioned, as human beings we have what is it? 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. There's also a negativity bias, because our brain's job is to keep us safe and it's constantly looking out for threats. A lot of those thoughts are negative and fear-based, and so being able to separate from that is really just such a game changer. And, like you said, it's a cool concept to think about and to post a video on Facebook about when you first hear it. But it's another thing to actually have a visceral experience of it, and I love that you're gonna be doing that with these young people. What an awesome opportunity to learn something through experience that is not really being taught anywhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I can be taught in the school. You're not gonna learn it from your sports coach, they don't have time. Right, that's where I come in. And even when we look at it from a brain mapping perspective, when we work with the neuroscience specialist, which we have a lot of exciting things coming down the pipe line. You guys, with Stephanie Fay, our neuroscience specialist, who's integrated into our team with some certain things and some brain mapping that we're gonna be able to do, even when you just look at it from where the energy is going in the brain when somebody is experiencing pain physical, mental, emotional pain, all just pain to our system, to our brain.
Speaker 1:Really there's no differentiation between the two or the three that when you are able to self detach and notice that the pain sensors in your brain settle down and you can actually recontextualize what pain, the signal of pain, means, which means that you can actually change your brain and be like oh well, pain doesn't kill me.
Speaker 1:So was that thing that felt like death to my system, that rejection from a friend or even that physical knee pain all of a sudden doesn't impact me the same way, because the part of my brain that lights up when there's pain is now able to settle back down and this is what we call prefrontal cortex training, where the part of our brain that is our control tower that helps to quiet the mind, helps to quiet the limbic system, helps to quiet those fear-based, automatic negative thoughts.
Speaker 1:When we strengthen your prefrontal cortex, then the rest of those parts of the brain and it communicates with them, all the rest of those parts of the brain settle down. So then now the narratives and the stories and the judgments and the fears and the doubts and the anxieties and the swings of the depression and the wanting to be a perfectionist and hoping that we're good enough and not being okay unless we win, and all the things that happen, especially at that younger age, that 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 years old, we can learn how to begin to settle those things down. So that to me is not woo-woo. There's hard, hard, hard science that backs this up. But then how? My point is that we have unpacked and learned how to explore, how enough to work about facilitating that help for other people. So they have that visceral experience and I'm super excited about bringing that.
Speaker 2:I love it. I think we get a lot of knowledge from books and podcasts and things like that, but nothing tops the experiential way of learning and actually having that felt sense of what you're learning. I had someone recently ask me for some book recommendations and I said I think you've read enough books, it's time to have an experience, and that's the truth. We can take in a lot of information, but until you're able to actually integrate it into an experience, especially for teens and younger people, you've got to get it into the hands of these kids so that they can not just understand it intellectually but have a felt experience of it, so that they have something to go back to when life gets hard, because it will.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, you just hit the nail on the head. Thank you, heidi, for saying that. Because we don't rise to occasions right, we fall to our level of training. And what that means is that, just gently speaking, is that if we try to access these types of tools but they're not yet integrated into our life as a skill, when things get hard you're not going to have access to them. But if you do some front end preparatory work and you have the awareness of it and you have the experience of it, so there's the resource there, there's the tool that now is a skill, because the brain knows how to fire and wire that way, because you've practiced it in a calm environment. Now you're faced with adversity. Now you can pull up that resource, go to that resource and use that resource when life is happening.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:When things out there are a little bit chaotic or there's an adversity or something happens or things didn't go well or didn't play well or whatever the thing is. Now we can practice compassion, we can practice taking responsibility, we can practice curiosity, we can practice engaging in these things and these ways of being that allow for us to be more present and to perform at a higher level. And, again, these tools that turn into skills. With enough practice, tools turn into skills. They're the exact same for somebody who is struggling with a rumination, with periods of spells of being in their own head, stuck in their head, anxiousness, depression, perfectionism, all these things in ways that are keeping somebody from experiencing peace, joy, love or performance. The tools are the same. They help to settle down the rumination, settle down the overactive, overstimulation of the mind, the overwhelming of the mind, the overthinking, and gives space for that person, that same individual, to then perform at a higher level.
Speaker 1:Victor Frankel talks about hypertensionality, hyperintentionality, which means that this is one of the things that self-detachment helps us with. If you're a very goal-driven person, a lot of times you become overidentified and over attached to a specific goal or specific outcome. You'll keep yourself from that goal or outcome because you're being hyperintentional. Our ability to self-detach is going to increase our performance, because now we're not going to be as attached to a specific outcome or goal and we're able then to see how we can course correct and navigate towards that goal with more space.
Speaker 2:Right. Creativity takes a different part of the brain than that overthinking, ruminating, anxiety level of thinking. It takes a different part of the brain and that's what you're looking for is the ability to be in a stressful situation or high-stakes situation like competition, and to be able to innovate, be creative in that moment. What else could we do? Okay, we're down by this score right now. What else could we do Then? Also just in other areas of life for young people that they face rejection within friend groups I know you mentioned that breakups, failing a class or a test. There's so many things that happen at that age where these tools are incredibly beneficial and to practice them is the only way to have them in your tool belt when you actually need them, when the occasion comes up.
Speaker 1:Now I love that you bring that up that this is we use sports as the analogy, is the vehicle, but it begins to show up in every single area of life. It allows for that person to carry themselves into adulthood with these already inborn in, they're already integrated into their lives. They don't have to later, at 25, 30, 35 years old or beyond, come back and try to learn something that is harder to learn as you get older. It's just the way it is. Your brain is less plastic. 16 years old, right around that age 14, 16, 18 years old, like man, it's just prime time to learn some of these stuff, to have these seeds planted. Then that person, that individual, can water them a little bit and help them grow.
Speaker 2:Any last thoughts about yes, I love the conversation. I appreciate you having me on to chat about it.
Speaker 1:Drop a couple of nuggets. Yeah, thank you for your time. Yeah, it's me about me thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it gave me a chance to spit what I wanted to spit out, but still be supported. So thank you for your time. We have these workshops coming up. This particular next one is March 2nd at the Matt and Libby Lake, from 12 to 3. And again, I'm just going to be giving them an experience of what it feels like to self-detach and observe themselves. So we're going to breathe, we're going to move, we're going to do something kind of hard, and then we're going to be still and we're going to be quiet and I'm going to guide them through the whole thing to give them that experience as a grounding reference point in their life. And then, if there's more from that point forward, we can have all kinds of other conversations of what it would look like to continue this practice and developing the skill to self-detach, to cultivate greater mental and emotional well-being and greater levels of performance in our lives. So, once again, thank you so much for your time and attention and we'll see you on the next show.
