Leading in the Age of Constant Distraction

In this episode, we explore how constant stimulation, social comparison, and nonstop feedback are affecting motivation, confidence, and resilience in younger generations. When people live in a constant stress response, pressure-based leadership often creates fear, avoidance, and shutdown instead of growth and performance.

Ryan and Heidi break down simple brain science behind performance, emotional regulation, and psychological safety, then connect it directly to practical leadership and coaching tools. The conversation focuses on how to build environments where people can take risks, learn from mistakes, and grow without fear of embarrassment or failure.

One of the biggest takeaways is a weekly intention and reflection process that shifts people from simply chasing results to paying attention to who they are becoming through the process.

If this episode helps, subscribe, share it with a coach or leader, and leave a review so more people can find these tools.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Core Theme

Heidi 0:00

Welcome back to the show.

Ryan 0:02

We're back again.

Heidi 0:03

What are we talking about today, Ryan?

Ryan 0:06

You were the same thing as every time. You know, I'm giving myself permission to not feel like I have to come up with an completely new topic every single time we hit record. I don't know if anybody out there follows Michael Singer and his podcasts. I don't know how many episodes he's up to, like 180. But for years he has done talks at his Temple of the Universe down there in Florida. And if you follow Michael, you know that like he legitimately in every single episode basically talks about the exact same thing in 18,000 different ways. So we're not going to do that, but but there is a but there is a theme and there is a thread and there is some repetition because we need to hear things over and over sometimes. And the theme is you are the environment.

Heidi 0:51

I know I sure need to hear things over and over because the tendency is to the tendency is to forget. So we have to constantly remind ourselves, especially when it comes to principle.

Ryan 1:00

Well, it and let me clarify. We have a brain that is more likely to remember fear-based memories. That's true. Which thank you for saying that. Because that's exactly where that's exactly where we're going today. Let's talk about a little bit of brain. So, recap. I think this is probably going to be our last episode answering this question from a listener who is talking about how do we motivate and lead and manage the younger generation that doesn't seem to be where what he was always doing previously doesn't seem to be working anymore. We talked about it being incomplete. We talked about the importance of the building culture. We talked about the cultural pyramid of knowing your identity, your mission, vision, standards, accountability, then setting goals. Now let's talk about some tools and let's talk about why we need tools. Um, and we have to operate with these tools. We have to understand a little bit of brain science, I think. We have to understand a little bit of how the mind works to be able to understand the value of what I'm about to talk about. So let's just do that a little bit. Let's just talk about for a moment the age, what I call the age of information. We're in the age of information.

Heidi 2:20

Oh, I thought we were before, but now with AI, we are it's big time.

Information Overload And Youth Culture

Ryan 2:35

We begin to lose our ability to regulate, our ability to self-soothe, our ability to create some form of what we call safe harbor or psychological safety within ourselves, because our attention, our energy is so externally focused and is so influenced by the amount of information that's being we're being bombarded with, whether it be social media, news, politics, all the things, but let's mainly it's social media. And you have to remember that if we're talking about staying with this thread of managing and leading the younger generation, they're they have grown up with TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Snapchat, whatever. These social platforms that are a huge amount of information, crossing insane amount of social terrains where we know we're best in small cultures of around 150 people, is what we, you know, thousands of years ago. Our neurological hardware, our systems are built to be in community with no more than about 150 people. Yeah, the sense of safety begins to change when you go to bigger numbers than that. And our kids are in schools with I mean, the school down the street for us is 1,500 something. I don't even know. I don't know how many kids are there.

Heidi 3:54

It's a lot, I think even just on the track team, there's like 170 kids.

Ryan 3:59

Yeah, so there's there's so much more information, they're crossing way more social terrains, there's just so much more diversity within what they're exposed to. Not bad. Again, opportunity. I look at any resistance or challenge as opportunity. Like just fundamentally, that's what we have to do. That's what we call a hero's mindset. Let's look at the challenge as an opportunity for growth. So it's an opportunity for us to be better at building culture, but what we need, what the youth needs, what we need as a nervous system is tools. And let's go a little bit more into why. So it's a little bit of brain science. And uh we do have something called a hand model. A hand model is where you take your thumb and you wrap it underneath. If you're watching YouTube, you can see me doing this.

Heidi 4:50

If you're driving, don't do this.

Ryan 4:51

Don't do this, yeah. You can wrap your thumb underneath and wrap

The Hand Model Of The Brain

Ryan 4:54

your fingers over top of your thumb, and that will illustrate a brain. Uh, the your knuckles on the front of your hand would would illustrate your prefrontal cortex, which doesn't fully develop until you're 25 to 28 years old, and that's the control tower, the executive functioning part of your brain that's able, if trained, and is trainable, by the way. That's what we do. Everything that we do fundamentally is training the the prefrontal cortex to be stronger executive functioning system. So it's being able to quiet down the fear sensors part of the brain, the part of the brain, like the limbic system, which would be illustrated by your thumb, that is all rooted in wanting to be to feel connected, to not be embarrassed.

Heidi 5:35

Social emotional.

Ryan 5:36

Social emotional, not wanting to be rejected by my peers. So somebody who has a little bit more of a flared up limbic system or has more flare-ups and doesn't have the ability to regulate, doesn't have that model, the ability to self-soothe, and or is not in an environment where their leader is able to regulate, then that limbic system is gonna be more flared up, which means they're gonna fear rejection and embarrassment, more less likely to take risks. The other parts of the brain, obviously the amygdala, we know that is the fear sensor constantly scanning, safe, not safe, safe, not safe, safe, not safe, like three times a second. Right? And reptilian part of the brain. There's also a part of the brain called the habinula. And the habinula is a failure scanner, constantly scanning for failure. And so if a an if an individual nervous system brain feels like it's failed too much, it will create what is called avoidance strategies. It'll create all kinds of strategies to avoid making that same mistake. Great! Don't touch the hot stove, don't walk out into traffic, don't go associate yourself with that particular crowd because that's not going to help you become who you want to be. That's great. But because again, of the age of information, the amount of stimulation, the amount of social terrains, the amount of social comparison that's happening through social media, and a lot of it is is fantasy, right? Is just the the best moments, right? That we that the brain becomes way more caught up in comparison, way has feels way less of a safe. The nervous system feels way less safe, way less of a safe harbor, way less psychological safety, and the habinula can be overactive, which means that there's a bigger fear of failure. So telling people to fail forward and all these things, like, yes, that's truth. Yes, challenge creates growth, and yes, failure is can turn into opportunity, and we can unpack that later. But I think it's important to have a little quick illustration and do a little bit of brain science to know that what our youth is navigating, what we're navigating, if we're on social media consistently or watching a bunch of news, is probably a prefrontal cortex that if you don't train it, you lose access to it, right? Even if you're 48 years old like myself, I train my prefrontal cortex on a daily basis. This is why I do things like cold exposure and hard things and breath work and meditation to keep that part of my brain online. Yeah.

Heidi 8:18

I was just talking to a client about that. I said,

Train Your Capacity With Discomfort

Heidi 8:20

if you think about it, if I learn to speak Italian, which would be really cool, it may be on my list for the future.

Ryan 8:25

Yeah, it'd be awesome.

Heidi 8:25

Uh if I learn to speak Italian and I go on a trip and I speak Italian while I'm there and it goes pretty well, and then I go two years without using it at all.

unknown 8:36

Yeah.

Heidi 8:37

That's going to atrophy. So we have to constantly train our brains.

Ryan 8:40

It's not like riding a bike, right? Where you but you've been riding a bike. I hopped on my bike just the other day, hadn't rode in a bunch in the last couple of years, and I was like, uh, like I don't feel safe to like jump off the curb, right? I'm like going to where I can just easily go off the curb. Yeah. You know, so uh you have to use it, you have to train it.

Heidi 8:56

It's a capacity thing too. Like I think about people I know that are retired, and when they say that they have a busy day, like our you know, parents or whoever they have a busy day, it's like, oh yeah, what do you got going on? Like two doctors' appointments. That's that's the busy day, right? So our capacity to deal with things that are stressful, to be more resilient, to deal with potential um conception of failure on the other thing.

Ryan 9:22

Even to do things you don't want to do. The mid-sigular cortex is a part of the brain that's you know more prefrontal cortex uh region or the frontal lobe, uh, is a part of the brain that legitimately gets bigger or smaller on a daily basis, whether or not you do something you don't want to do or not. So whether or not you're willing to step into discomfort and a challenge, right? So that part of the brain is actually scientifically kind of considered to be the will to live. I call it for athletes, the will to compete. While we do things we don't want to do on a daily basis, hard things, emotionally hard, mentally hard, spiritually hard, physically hard, is to make sure that that part of the brain is getting bigger. So we are more likely to lean into challenge, we're more likely to grow, we're more likely to have a stronger will, right? Uh to live, to compete, yeah, uh, to learn, to grow, and which will then turn into to winning in life, which is the point, right? So okay, all of that. So we need tools, just tools. So we need tools, we need tools and tools, right? So without me going into all the tools, right? Yeah, I mean breath work and all the components, right? Um let's just understand mindset as a tool. Okay. So growth mindset, Carol DeWek coined the the term growth mindset. Initially, when I heard the idea of growth mindset, I instantly think performance. Win, lose, right? And there's two ways to divide

Performance Mindset Versus Learning Mindset

Ryan 10:52

growth mindset. One is performance mindset, and the other one is called learning mindset. Performance mindset is very extrinsically focused, goal-oriented, short term. Think about being an athlete and a sports team. You absolutely are in a performance culture. We live in a performance culture, but that's a performance environment where there's a score. It's short term. There's a certain amount of time that we play that game. There's a winner and a loser. Awesome. Great. Here's the thing: we need to have a performance mindset to be able to put ourselves in a situation where we're pursuing something. Okay. But if we don't also adopt a learning mindset, then we will become very rigid and extrinsically focused, and we will lose the intrinsic driver or motivator, which is growth. Growth is the strongest glue in any relationship or culture. If you're helping people grow, you're helping your spouse grow, and you're helping each other, you create a type of environment we call in an environment of growth, that's going to create the most, the strongest glue. So before I go forward, I want to say something real fast, by the way, is that did you know that psychological I know you know this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Did you know that psychological safety is the number one factor of highly effective games? Psychological safety for people to feel safe to take risks. This is everything that we've been talking about the last couple weeks, that's what this is about. It's not soft, it's being clear about all these components. So performance mindset is necessary. We gotta have a goal, we gotta know what we're pursuing. In of itself, back to that term, it's incomplete. Right? If we're only focused on the performance, on the outcome, on the metrics, on the goals, we're learning the we're we're losing access to the most important component that strengthens the performance, that makes people to be able to compete on free, untethered, to to thrive in their roles, to know their the clarity around their role. Learning mindset is very intrinsically focused, is very growth-oriented, it has much more of a sense of longevity to it. And the the things that you extract are gifts, are lessons. The growth you extract from the pursuit of the performance is what's eternal. Like nobody can ever take it away from you.

Heidi 13:41

When you're no longer an athlete, when you're no longer in that role, right? Those are the things that you get to take with you.

Ryan 13:47

That's what you get to take with it. It's who you become. That's who you become, right? So creating an environment, creating a communication feedback loop in an environment where those two things exist. Here is the revenue that we're going after. Here's the goals that we have to be able to go generate X revenue. And also, what type of environment and communication feedback are we creating that makes sure that as we're pursuing those goals, that we're also adopting a learning mindset? Here's the final little nuance, and I want you to ask questions or explore, and we can take the conversation in a different direction to wrap up this kind of little series. Is it's impossible to have a learning mindset without a performance mindset. To create growth mindset, to create an environment where people are learning and growing, right? You have to be pursuing something, but you can't just be about the pursuit. It can't just be about the outcome, it can't just be about the goal. It's got to be about who you're becoming in the process and what you're learning. The real goal, when I set a goal, like I'm not the version of myself right now, here today, that can reach that goal of whatever type of business or health goal or whatever it might be, because if I was that person, I would have already reached the goal. The view, the value of setting goals is that I have to explore. I have to become something that I'm currently not up, some level of operation I'm currently not operating from. I have to train my mind-body system to be able to execute at a higher level. I got to be more present, right? And the bigger the goal, the more learning that you're going to acquire, right? Just having a conversation recently about the balance between intention and surrender. The bigger the thing that you're taking on, the better you have to be at being able to hold it lightly and be able to release it. Well, when you hold things lightly, it opens you up into a place of curiosity.

unknown 15:55

Right?

Ryan 15:55

It opens you up to be able to extract a lesson, to be able to be more adaptable, to be more flexible. So when I when we use the word flexibility, I don't think it just means that, oh, I get to take off on Tuesdays when I want one o'clock when the weather's nice outside. It might have some, it might have some schedule flexibility, but really to me, flexibility is cognitive flexibility. Where in that role, I get to morph and grow and change and evolve. And then if I am morphing and growing and evolving, then it's gonna change the role that I'm living in, that I'm taking on, the amount of responsibility I have and what I'm able to pursue in the next moment. Because I became X in the pursuit of this first goal. Now the next goal I set, the next thing I set my eyes on, the next horizon is probably going to be uh more exciting, more fulfilling, right? And so these two mindsets have to coexist, right? You can't have learning mindset without performance mindset. And without without learning mindset, performance mindset is incomplete.

Heidi 17:05

What are some tools that you think uh looking back at the person who wrote this question, uh the business owner or perhaps a coach of a team, what are some ways that they can help to enhance these aspects of learning and performance mindset? Like how do we strengthen that?

Ryan 17:27

So uh fun a great question. And I think the thing that we have to think about is how we create an environment of growth? What in what ways,

Building Growth With Feedback Loops

Ryan 17:41

if this person enters into my environment, if I'm talking to a recruit and his mother, and I'm sitting in the living room as a college coach, which for you know 12 years I coached collegiate football, and for seven of those years I was recruiting coordinator and we had a ton of success. Like, yes, we're gonna your son's gonna have an opportunity to play ball. Yes, right, we want him. He's wanted and he's needed, and this is the depth chart and all those things. But way more important, what the mom wants to hear is how are they gonna grow? And what is the system, what is the ecosystem that makes it to where growth is guaranteed if they stay in that system? So if your business, whatever it is, I think the thing you have to think about, and starting as small and microscopic, based upon your knowledge, based upon where how can you create the type of environment where that person is going to see that they're growing, that you're going to create the type of conversations that is going to help them notice how they're growing. And and that's going to then actualize in their life in a really relatable, appliable way, where they then see how this matters when they go home. When they go home to their own environment, to their marriage, to their family, right? Or they start thinking about what is going to be in store for me beyond this, beyond the game, beyond this job, because not every job is meant to be forever. Not every environment is meant to be forever. There are environments that are temporary, especially very high performance environments, is temporary at short term. Awesome. What did you learn? How did you grow? So I think the fundamental component is being able to create a rhythm of communication, of feedback that helps to uh that helps for people to set an intention. This is what we call a feedback loop. I just I just realized I just started to explain our feedback loops that sets a very specific intention of the skill that they're developing, the mindset that they're developing of how they're going to grow.

Heidi 19:42

Yeah.

Ryan 19:43

Right. Now, within that, there's also like how do we regulate, you know, breathing and mindfulness and all these strategies to get out of our head and get into our feet and you know, yoga and whatever, like that's all the training component behind the scenes of what we would do with somebody. But fundamentally, that feedback loop of what is your intention this week, Heidi? How are you growing this week? Right? Not what are you getting done?

Heidi 20:07

Right. Not what are you checking off your list or what are you accomplishing in your job or in your role, but who how are you growing? Who are you being as you're doing it?

Ryan 20:17

Who are you becoming? That intention is a GPS signal that says, if I pursue this skill, if I pursue this goal this week, athletically, professionally, as a parent, even, even if you were to ask your kids like, hey, what's your intention today? We used to do that. I mean, I don't drop the I don't drop the kids off of school as much anymore. But when I did on the drive from home to school, I would ask them, what's your intention today?

Heidi 20:47

Yeah.

Ryan 20:48

So having some sort of a feedback loop where a mat and we do this with our company, we do this with our athletes. When I'm working with a a corporation or a sporting uh environment, a sports environment that um that I'm working with full time, then there is that feedback loop. We assess ourselves, like where are we? Where do you see room for growth? Then what's the intention? How are you growing? Patience, courage, communication, right? Self-awareness, self-regulation, mental toughness, compassion, curiosity.

Heidi 21:27

Yeah.

Ryan 21:28

Like, I mean the endless.

Heidi 21:29

And helping people to get get down to the actual intention behind the intention. Like, for example, I had an athlete who said, I want to be more vocal on the court, I want to be you know, louder, I want to get noticed. And I'm like, okay. How does that impact your environment though? Because when when she actually started thinking about okay, beyond myself getting recruited and getting noticed, it encourages my team. And I want to be somebody who is an encourager. I want to be someone. Who lifts the moment? Okay, cool. Now we got even deeper into the intention behind what you're doing.

Ryan 22:05

You talk about the why.

Heidi 22:06

Yeah.

Ryan 22:07

Yeah. So that would be another level, right? And I was, I wasn't going to go down that rabbit, but thank you. Uh maybe we should do another podcast. But right. So we set an intention, but why? What who are becoming why do you want to become that version of you? Why do you want to be able to pursue that goal? What is the real intrinsic burn behind why that goal is important to you? Right. Going through an exercise. We do a five Y exercise. It's a, you know, very intentional question exercise that's that's very powerful to be led by a coach to get to a very deep, like, why is that important to you? Okay, well, then now let's go. Here is the microscopic way that you can go live that intention. Here is the micro goal behind the bigger goal, behind the bigger vision, behind the bigger thing that's gonna help you to become that version of yourself that you want to become, which is gonna help the organization or the team to reach its goal and to live out its mission and vision and identity. And now we have a shared vision. We have a shared language, we have a shared identity, right? We have a shared intention behind what we're doing. Your role now becomes meaningful because if you are able to execute your role, reach your goal of who you want to become, it's going to benefit the corporation or the team to become what they want to become. And their goals are your goals. So your individual goals become the team's goals. And the team's goals become your goals. And if you do that, watch out. Watch out.

Heidi 23:37

Yeah. Tying and tying all of those things together. Tie them all together.

Ryan 23:40

And it's not as hard as you think.

Heidi 23:42

Yeah.

Ryan 23:42

It just takes you pausing for five minutes here, 15 minutes there, maybe an hour and a half, once in a while, whatever. And you think, well, yeah, but that's revenue or that's money, and time is money. Yeah. And but what's it costing you to not have the retention you want to have, or the performance, or the buy-in, or the lack of motivation? And if you can drive those things, right? So then the final piece of that intention feedback loop, there has to be a feedback loop at the end of the week or before you start the next week, or maybe it's a monthly cycle or even a quarterly cycle, then it's about noticing growth. How did you do reflection? This is one of the most important life skills that we teach that I think goes so overlooked is the power of intention and reflection. What is your intent this week? What do you, what are you trying to create, become, right? Who and even that, but who does the world need you to be this week? Who does your team need

Intention And Reflection That Stick

Ryan 24:37

you to be? Who does your corporation need you to be? Who does your family need you to be? Set the intent to become that. And then at the end of the week, reflect. How did I do? Right? And if you can make that a conversation, and I do this, I do this intent and reflection. I have been doing it for, I don't know, five years now, maybe more. I do it every single day religiously, seven days a week. And I'm telling you, it's so incredibly powerful. I absolutely love it because I love to see, like, oh, I fell short, but then tomorrow I'm gonna see and how. But the most important piece with that, because you're creating that learning mindset with the intention and the feedback reflection piece, you're you are creating that learning mindset where now you're helping people to acquire the skill of noticing and being able to verbalize how they're growing. Man, I'm telling you, if you are able to notice and verbalize how you're growing, it's going to increase the growth curve, right? We do this as a family. We do this as a family on a weekly basis, maybe sometimes two or three times a week. We're sitting at the dinner table and we go around the circle. Heidi, how have you grown this week? And you start with yourself and you share. I grew by X, Y, and Z. My capacity grew and my patience and whatever. And then the kids and myself would then tell you as well. Well, I noticed how you responded differently this one time, or, you know, you know, whatever else. And not just outcomes like I noticed how the house stayed clean, but like who are you becoming? And we know if you especially, especially if you know your environment's intentions of how they want to grow, then you're able to look for that intent. You're able to look for that growth, you're able then to verbalize it back to them because sometimes growth is incremental, microscopic, right? Uh, which is in alignment with the growth mindset theory, which was originally called incremental theory, because that's how growth actually happens. So that's my little last piece, which when you do those tools, whether it be breath work and regulation and those things, and we're not going to sit here and talk about the specific breath work protocols, but you create that intentional reflection feedback loop. You create that type of culture where the learning mindset becomes just as important as the performance. You create that type of culture where the the who you are supporting people and who they're becoming just as much as just as much, if not more, than what you're trying to get from them in a sense. So it's more about the contribution. All of that is going to, and then there's a constant assessment and adjustment iteration that's always happening that reduces the the flare-up and the habinula. It reduces the fear of failure, right? Because there's this constant iteration, this constant growth, not to mention people begin to notice how they're growing, which quiets quiets down that part of the brain that's always scanning for failure. You're now in these conversations of intention and reflection and growth, and that's going to build culture and connection, which then helps the limbic system to settle back down. And

Calming Fear Through Culture And Tools

Ryan 27:44

all of these things, doing these components of setting intention and reflecting and the regulation, they all strengthen the prefrontal cortex. So now the executive functioning part of the brain, whether you're 13 years old or whether you're 30 or 60 years old, is getting stronger and it's being exercised like a muscle, like anything else. And you now have more access. Whatever you train and whatever you practice, you have more access to it. So you have more access to that part of your brain for executive functioning. Well, guess what? Now your capacity grows. Now the next thing becomes possible. So hopefully I illustrated that clearly.

Heidi 28:18

Yeah, I love the tie-in with the with the brain science and how all of that works together. Wonderful.

Ryan 28:25

Any last takeaways?

Heidi 28:27

If you're listening to this and you have questions, you have ideas about episodes that you would like to hear topics. I want to invite you to text us at the link in the show notes. You can text us, send us a voice message. We want to hear from you, we want to open up a dialogue, and we want to talk about things that serve you and your environment, whether your coach, business owner, parent, uh, or just doing your best to lead yourself in the world. We want to hear what you want to hear about and we'll bring that to the show. And uh

Listener Messages And Final Sendoff

Heidi 29:03

just thank you for listening. Thanks for being here.

Ryan 29:05

Yeah, we'll make that the priority, even, right? If we get somebody's request and then it's in alignment with our content, our knowledge. Uh, and or if I don't have the knowledge, I'm pretty good at finding it. So um yeah. So we'll make that we'll we'll put it right to the top of the list if um if you guys reach out with questions. So we thank you for listening. We appreciate your time. I know there's a lot of things pulling on your attention. And uh so thank you for listening and yeah, go be the environment that you want to create.

Heidi 29:33

See you next time.