Become a Master of Uncertainty
Episode Stats
Summary
Rich Devenney, a retired Navy SEAL commander, returns to share insights from his new book, Masters of Uncertainty. He first explains why thinking that life will be predictable keeps people from realizing their potential. Then, he walks us through practical techniques for dealing with uncertainty like moving horizons, creating meaningful goals, and de-stressing your body so you can be more resilient and make better decisions under pressure.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Uncertainty is a constant of human existence. How will market conditions affect your new
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business venture? What will be the results of that medical test you just took? Will a
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new relationship work out? For most of us, situations of uncertainty trigger anxiety,
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even fear. But the stress of uncertainty doesn't have to overwhelm you. You can learn
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to navigate it with secure, adaptable confidence so you can keep thriving and progress towards your
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ultimate goals. Today on the show, Rich DeVinney, a retired Navy SEAL commander, returns to share
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insights from his new book, Masters of Uncertainty. He first explains why thinking that life will be
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predictable keeps people from realizing the potential. He then walks us through practical
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techniques for dealing with uncertainty like moving horizons, creating meaningful goals that
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work with our brain chemistry, and de-stressing your body so you can be more resilient and make
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better decisions under pressure. We also discuss how teams can tackle uncertainty by implementing
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dynamic subordination to adapt in rapidly changing environments. After the show is over, check out our
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show notes at awim.is slash uncertainty. Rich DeVinney, welcome back to the show.
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Well, thanks for having me, Brett. It's good to be back.
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So we had you on a few years ago to talk about your book, The Attributes. I know it was a big hit with
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our listeners. You've got a new book out called Masters of Uncertainty. Is this book a continuation
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of your thinking in The Attributes? It's not a continuation. It's actually the overarching idea.
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This is the book actually I've wanted to write for years and years and years. And as you know,
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because you've read it and I know we'll get into, The Attributes is simply one aspect of understanding
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oneself in uncertainty, challenge, and stress. And so in a move that was kind of unconsciously
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genius, I guess, I decided to write The Attributes book first, which was fantastic because The Attributes
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is such a big topic and it laid a nice foundation for people to understand them, for us to build our
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assessment tool, and so on and so forth. But understanding how we operate and perform in
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uncertainty is really where I've always had my passion and what it takes to do that, both
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neurologically, physiologically, and of course, what we need to know about ourselves. And so
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The Masters of Uncertainty is really kind of the overarching idea that I've been exploring for
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a long time. Attributes was a piece and I just happened to write that Attributes book first.
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Yeah. Maybe Masters of Uncertainty is the prequel.
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Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah. Prequel. Yeah.
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So why have you been so passionate about uncertainty and thinking and writing about it? What's your
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Well, you know, uncertainty on its own really is defined as that which cannot be relied upon or known.
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You're just in an unknown, unreliable situation or environment. Now, what we have to understand is
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that there are different forms of uncertainty. You know, you can have uncertainty with curiosity.
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That's, you know, every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? There's uncertainty there, but there's no
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fear. It's excitement that comes from that. What we're talking about and what I specifically focus
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on is this idea of uncertainty plus anxiety, which equals fear. So it's the uncertainty that
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elicits fear because that's really where most people focus on when it comes to defining their
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performance or interrogating the performance or when they fail in performing. And so, and so
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obviously in the SEAL teams and any spec operations unit, especially in combat, you are very well
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versed in managing and moving through things that are pretty dangerous and scary and have that
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uncertainty element in it. So, so in doing that throughout a career in the SEAL teams, I really
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began to wonder, okay, what is it we do? How do we do it? I began to kind of explore the neuroscience
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when I linked up with a, who's now a good friend of mine, Andrew Huberman. This was seven years ago,
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seven or eight years ago. So it was before his enormously successful and awesome podcast.
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But we began to, he was, he was, he has a sphere lab at Stanford and we began to kind of explore this
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together. And I began to realize, or I guess we began to realize together that you could talk about the
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neuroscience and you could talk about the techniques that guys like us use. And you could fuse those
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together in a meaningful way that allowed other people, anybody to really understand that this is
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actually quite human and we all have the capacity to do this. So yeah, you mentioned you are a SEAL.
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That's your background, Navy SEAL. How did uncertainty show up during your career as a SEAL? So I imagine
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that every time you went on a mission, even if you had done a lot of planning, there was still an element
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of uncertainty to it. 100%. And I would even say uncertainty shows up in SEAL training. I mean,
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the day, day one, I mean, SEAL training, you know, BUDS, basic underwater demolition slash SEAL
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training is designed to throw you into uncertainty and challenge and stress, all of it, because it's
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designed to take you down to zero physiologically and physically and even mentally, and then ask,
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okay, what else do you got? What else can you do? And can you, in fact, problem solve when things are
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very, very serious and the stakes are very, very high. And so you start in SEAL training, the guys
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who show up to SEAL training and make it through, we're all folks who somehow got good at this prior
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to getting to the beaches of BUDS. You have to have some level of competency even to make it through,
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you know, the first day, first week, first two weeks of BUDS. But what happens is you hyperdevelop
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these techniques, these tools, these skills, if you will, and then you find yourself utilizing them
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in almost every aspect of SEAL life, whether it's training, jumping out of airplanes at 20,000 feet,
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whether it's in combat and gunfights, whether it's scuba diving in dark harbors, you know, every one of
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those environments comes with it, a sense of you don't know exactly what's going to happen. And so
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this is why you become masters of the craft. What do you think is a common misconception civilians
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have about how Navy SEALs deal with uncertainty? Well, I think one common misconception is they think
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SEALs are fearless and Navy SEALs are absolutely not fearless. In fact, fearlessness in of itself is a
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very, very dangerous thing. I was told by a really wonderful officer when I was a younger
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junior officer. He said, Rich, beware the fearless leader because that guy is going to get you killed.
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And so fear is a natural human thing. It's a human being's risk assessment tool. And it tells us,
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hey, pay attention. This is risky. This might kill you. This might hurt you. This might harm you.
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So Navy SEALs, we experience fear just like anybody else. However, we have the capacity,
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the tools and the practice in moving through that very deftly. So it doesn't sideline us. We use the
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fear in a very meaningful way by risk assessing properly and planning properly. But then after
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that, we understand that, hey, things are just going to happen and we know how to move through it.
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Yeah. You use the example of the Osama bin Laden raid. This was something that was planned for
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months. They even built a replica of the compound he was in to practice. Yeah. But whenever the actual
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mission was underway, things just went completely cattywampus. Helicopter went down. And so they had
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to adapt and they still were able to get the mission done. They were. Yeah. And just a quick correction
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there. The mission actually hadn't been rehearsed or planned for too long. I mean, the decision was made
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by the president when they got the intel. And so the team had about, I think, three weeks, three or
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four weeks. Yeah. But in that three or four weeks, they just, they rehearsed ad nauseum and memorized
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and got prepared for every single detail they could possibly anticipate. And yeah, like you said,
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once they hit the, I mean, as soon as they hit the target, the plans changed, you know, uncertainty
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struck and the plans changed. So it's a classic example of the idea that, and again, I don't, I don't,
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we can talk about planning. I do not besmirch planning at all. I think proper planning is
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good. What we don't want to do is get caught up in the paralysis by analysis or paralysis through
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analysis where we're trying to plan every single thing. Because A, it's not going to let us move
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and B, it's a real energy drag. So we have to get ourselves into a position where we plan a couple
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things. Hey, this might happen. This might happen. And then after that, if anything else happens,
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we'll figure it out along the way. At the start of the book, you write this. I thought it was,
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it really caught my attention. Most people fall short of realizing the potential primarily because
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our culture promotes a misleading belief that life is predictable. How does believing life is
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predictable set someone up for failure, falling short of their potential?
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Well, you know, we are lucky enough to live in a society and live in a time, and most of us,
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I guess, where the environment is structured around us so that, or such that we can rely on
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predictability. I mean, we don't, you know, people don't have to worry about getting killed by the
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saber-toothed tiger anymore, or finding their food, or else they're going to starve, or finding proper
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shelter, and so on and so forth. However, what we do have to understand is that even though that is
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the case, even though life is designed nowadays around predictability, uncertainty is always going
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to happen. It's always going to be present. The combination of not knowing and the combination
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of anxiety is going to bubble up that fear response in us, and to assume that things are going to go
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as planned is a bad assumption, because you're not going to prepare yourself when things inevitably do
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not go as planned. And so I think that's one factor. The other factor is that we are, as a species,
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designed to step outside of our comfort zone. I mean, this is, in fact, why we have gone from cave
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dweller to space explorer, because the human being, the human species, were designed to keep exploring,
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keep discovering, step outside of those boundaries. And so understanding how we can do that more
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effectively not only prepares us for that uncertainty, challenge, and stress that hits us
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without warning, but it also allows us to take deliberate steps, choose deliberate times to step
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outside of our comfort zone and explore and grow. That's where growth and evolution happens, and I think
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that's a really powerful aspect of unlocking potential of every human being. All right, let's talk about
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some of the tactics people can use to get a better handle on uncertainty in their work or their life.
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I'm sure a lot of our listeners, most of them probably aren't Navy SEALs, but they're dealing
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with uncertainty. We're living in a work environment where artificial intelligence is upending a lot of
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industries. If you're a parent, your kids can come home with problems you got to deal with that
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you've never dealt with before, so a lot of uncertainty. One tactic you talk about is moving horizons,
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and this is where you progress through uncertainty toward your ultimate goal by repeatedly setting
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and then reaching for one immediate horizon at a time. And you do this by clearly defining a duration,
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pathway, and outcome, or DPO, for each step along the way. Tell us more about moving horizons and DPO.
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Yeah, moving horizons is a tool that taps into our own every human being's neurology,
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and the neuroscience behind that is that when we are in any environment, our brain is trying to
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figure out that environment. And it's doing so along basically three major factors. There's
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obviously other things in there, but the three primary factors it's trying to figure out are
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duration, how long this thing's going to last, pathway, what's my route in, out, or through,
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and then outcome, what's the end state of this. And what we have to understand is that when we are in
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absence of one or more of those aspects of those three things, we find ourselves in uncertainty and
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anxiety, and we start to feel an oftentimes the fear response. An example would be illness, okay?
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So say you and I got strep throat, okay? Strep throat is a known disease that we know people
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don't really die from, and there's a known antibiotic to treat strep throat. So in the case
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of strep throat, we are knowledgeable about pathway, the antibiotic, and we're knowledgeable about
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outcome, which is we'll get better. What we don't know, what is unknown,
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known as duration? Because some people respond to antibiotics differently than others. You might
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get better tomorrow, it might take me three days. So our anxiety, stress, uncertainty level is mild.
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Now say we get the flu. The flu is also a known disease that most people, at least in today's
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society, don't die from. However, there's no known antibiotic or medicine you can take for the flu,
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and the recovery for the flu is variable. We don't know how long it's going to take for someone
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to recover from the flu. So in the case of the flu, we know the outcome, we will get better,
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but we are absent duration and pathway. So our anxiety, stress level is moderate. Now imagine
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a virus shows up, and we've never seen it before. There's no known cure or vaccine. There are some
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people dying, there are some people not dying, and it's spreading around the globe, and we don't
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know how long we're going to be in this thing. Obviously, this sounds familiar to most of your
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listeners, because this is 2020 in a nutshell, right? And in that case, we were absent all three. We're
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absent duration, pathway, and outcome, and our fear, our anxiety, our uncertainty level was high.
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So all Moving Horizons does is it gives someone the ability to, inside of any environment,
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basically buy down uncertainty by creating a duration and pathway and outcome. You create what
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was previously unknown, and you do that by, in whatever environment you're in, asking yourself,
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what do I know and what can I control in this moment? And you pick something to focus on,
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a horizon. And once doing so, you've created a duration pathway outcome. So I'll give you a
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quick example of SEAL training. So in SEAL training, you run around with big, heavy boats
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on your head all the time for hours and hours. And I remember doing this, it was three in the
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morning or something. We were on the beach, and we were running next to a sand berm. And of course,
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I was miserable. Everybody else was miserable. And I remember saying to myself, you know what,
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I'm just going to focus on getting to the end of this sand berm. And what I realized, well, I didn't
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realize at the moment, but what I did at that moment is I picked a horizon. And by picking a
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horizon, I created a duration pathway outcome. Duration from now until end of sand berm,
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pathway from here to end of sand berm, and then outcome end of sand berm. By doing so,
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I also neurologically created myself a small goal and then a reward at the accomplishment of that
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goal, which is a dopamine reward. And that allowed me then to, once I hit that accomplishment,
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to come back out, ask the question again, okay, what do I know? What can I control? Pick another horizon
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and then do it again. And you can do this cycle over and over and over again through any uncertainty,
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challenge, and stress until basically one of three things happens. Either you move through the
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challenge, you're done, you accomplish the goal, or you gain enough certainty in your environment so
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that you no longer have any uncertainty in your environment. So the moving horizon strategy,
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by the way, is the reason why it's such a powerful strategy, powerful tool is because every single
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human being has done this at some point in their lives, right? So I'm not telling anybody anything
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new. They've done this. They've chunked their environment in a way that allowed them to step
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through whatever they were trying to step through. All we know now is by articulating it and understanding
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it, you can in fact do it more often. You can practice it and become very, very good at it so
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that you do it without thinking, which is where masters of uncertainty lie.
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As you're speaking, an example that came to mind where you could use this is unemployment. Let's say you
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lose your job, you get laid off. You can use moving horizons to work through that. I think the
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uncertainty with job loss is typically duration, like how long am I going to be unemployed? The
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pathway, it's like, okay, I got to start networking, submitting resumes, things like that. The outcome
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is obviously I have a job. So the duration thing could be the tricky part. But yeah, you can just keep
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setting smaller goals for pathways until you accomplish your goal of getting a job.
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It's a wonderful example. I would say, you know, the initial loss of employment immediately creates
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an absence of all three. How long I'm going to be unemployed? What's my route? What's my pathway
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to get a new job? And then how long, you know, am I going to be able to get a new job? So you're
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immediately absent of all three of those. You're correct. So in those cases, in that case, someone
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needs to say, okay, what do I know? What can I control and create a horizon and therefore create
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a DPO. So it could be, you know what? Okay, I have a buddy. My buddy can link me up with a recruiter.
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That's my first horizon. I'm going to call my buddy and see if he can link me up with a recruiter.
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You've created your first horizon. You've created your first DPO. You do that. Then whatever that
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result is, you create your next one, then you create your next one. But it is very much about
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working the problem in the moment and focusing only on that which you can control in the moment.
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One thing you will never, ever see Navy SEALs do is worry about stuff they can't control in the moment.
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If they don't have any control of it in the moment, we're not going to worry about it because
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it's useless. It's a waste of energy. And this goes for everything from SEAL training to
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legitimate gunfights in Iraq or Afghanistan. When you're in a gunfight in Iraq or Afghanistan,
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there's so much going on. But you're in the moment, you're saying, okay, what do I know?
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What can I control? What is my thing that I can actually take focus on and control in this moment?
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And you start moving through that. And slowly, certainty builds, hopefully, and you move through
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that. But I think unemployment is a wonderful example. And you see exactly why these strategies
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are not only reserved for Navy SEALs or super performers. They're very human.
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Yeah. Another example I thought of was waiting for medical test results. So you might know you're
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getting results back in three days. So what you do is you set a horizon and you just say,
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okay, I'm going to research the different possibilities of what I might have and what
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that might mean. That's my horizon. And then when I reach that horizon, I'm going to ask myself again,
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all right, what do I know? And what can I control? And maybe set another horizon where I then research
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specialists who might be able to help me and then just concentrate on that horizon. And that can give
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you a sense of control. It gives you something to do. And I don't think not everyone might want to do
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that because some people just don't want to worry about things before they're concrete. And maybe
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they're just going to say, I'm just going to focus on keeping up my health by making sure I do one of my
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workouts every day for the next three days. That's the only thing I control. And that's the only thing
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I know has a benefit. Related to moving horizons and creating manageable horizons is creating
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meaningful horizons. What do you mean by that? So the meaningful horizons describes what the size
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horizon needs to be. That's always the next question. Okay. How do I know, like, what should I focus on
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or what's the best size horizon? And so what we have to understand to understand the answer to that
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question is dopamine as a neurotransmitter, which is a very powerful chemical. You know,
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it was for years and years regarded only as a reward chemical, but it's much, much more than
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just a reward chemical. It's actually a motivation chemical. It kind of gets us up and moving. It
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tells us keep going. This is good. Keep doing this. Dopamine is what gets us up out of the bed in the
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morning. They've done experiments in the lab with rats where one group of rats is given, well, I guess a
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whole group of rats is given a device where they tap a lever and a tasty pellet comes out of that
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thing. And so of course, every rat will just sit by that thing and just hit the lever, hit the lever
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and get a pellet. Then they took half of that group and removed the dopamine from that group. And all
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they needed to do is put those rats who had no dopamine, basically a rat's length away from that
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lever. And those rats wouldn't even move to get that pellet. So what this means is that, and dopamine
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works in our system, is that when we create a horizon, we are giving ourselves a motivation
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through dopamine and we have an amount of dopamine that's allowing us to keep going.
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If we create a horizon that's too far away, that's too big, we will run out of dopamine along the way
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and we will quit. All quitting is, is just you run out of dopamine. That's what it is. So if I'm in a
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situation and maybe I'm on that beach in hell, we can I say, you know what? I'm running with this boat.
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I'm just going to make it, you know, to the end of the week. That's way too big in that moment.
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The other side of that is if you pick a horizon that's too close and too easy, you won't get
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enough of a dopamine reward to feel it and be motivated to pick another horizon. And so,
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so that would be, you know, maybe I'm just going to count three steps. You know, that's,
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that might be too small, whatever that is. But as you can tell, these are very subjective to the
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person and they're subjective to the intensity of the environment. The more intense the environment,
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the shorter the horizon is likely going to have to be. But we can and must modulate this size,
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these meaningful horizons as we move through. And it has to be subjective to our own experience.
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Well, let's walk through an example of doing this. Let's say someone wants to start a business.
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They have a nine to five job. They've got a dream of, you know, becoming an entrepreneur,
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starting their own business. What would setting meaningful horizons look like for that?
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So let's just work through at least a basic level of subjectivity here, right? So imagine the person
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has already started some businesses before and is looking to start a new business, you know,
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get out of what they're doing, looking to start a new one. Their first horizon might be, you know what,
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I'm going to call my buddy who's a VC, pitch him an idea and get some, see if I can get some funding
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going. Okay. Because that's, that's the, that's the first thing. Or their horizon might be, you know what,
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I'm going to, I'm just going to, I'm going to start something up. I'm going to talk to my friends,
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start something up and we're going to see if we can put together something in the next three or
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four months. That might be the horizon for someone who's done it before. Someone who's never done it
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before and is literally has to, is deciding to quit their job and do it. Their first horizon might be,
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I'm going to go to the library and start learning about how to build a business, how to create a
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business. You know, I'm going to call somebody to ask some questions to, to do that. You know,
00:20:58.500
a really good way to describe this. So in the book, I talk about a guy I met who was an ultra runner.
00:21:03.360
And when I met him, I said, how'd you get into ultra running? And he said, you know,
00:21:06.800
you won't believe this, but I used to be 400 pounds or so. And I was like, well, no, I was
00:21:11.200
like, my gosh, I mean, tell me that story. He's like, well, you know, I was so heavy and I was so
00:21:15.180
overweight and unhealthy. And I decided one day I've had enough and I'm going to, I'm going to start
00:21:19.340
running. I'm going to, I'm going to set a goal to run a marathon. And I said, so what'd you do?
00:21:23.660
He's like, well, the first thing I did is I decided I was going to go home and I was going to order
00:21:26.940
running shoes. So that's what he did. And then when the running shoes showed up, he said, okay,
00:21:31.020
tomorrow morning when I get up, I'm going to get up and put on the running shoes. He did that.
00:21:35.260
Next morning he put on the running shoes. He walked to his front door. Next morning he put
00:21:39.060
on the running shoes. He walked to his mailbox and then so on and so forth until he was running
00:21:42.420
a marathon, you know, six, eight months, 10 months later. I can't remember. So the example for him
00:21:47.200
was, you know, putting on his shoes and walking to the front door was a meaningful horizon. Now
00:21:51.620
I try to run a couple of times a week when I'm home and not traveling. I like doing it. If I have to
00:21:57.380
take two or three months off and I haven't run in two or three months and I decide I'm going to start
00:22:01.300
running again, putting on my shoes and walking to the mailbox is not going to be enough
00:22:05.200
of a horizon for me. It's not going to be meaningful enough for me because it's too short.
00:22:08.720
And so we have to understand that this subjectivity matters and we have to begin to modulate our own
00:22:13.680
horizons. You could do this in the moment too. I mean, you can actually in the moment pick
00:22:17.600
something and as you're moving towards it to decide, oh wait, that's way too far and pick
00:22:22.080
something shorter or you accomplish it. It's like, actually that wasn't far enough. I need to pick a
00:22:25.440
longer one. So it's not, you don't have to get it perfect every time, but it must be subjective
00:22:30.700
Yeah. It sounds like a skill that you develop and how to measure that. Reminds me of in weight
00:22:35.760
training or even in running, you have this of RPE, rate of perceived effort. Yeah. And it's
00:22:41.020
auto-regulation and it takes a while for you to figure out like what's a 10 for you, like what's
00:22:45.920
really, really hard and what's a four. When you first start off, I think you typically underestimate
00:22:52.000
because you're not fully aware of what your body can do. But then yeah, like once you get the hang of
00:22:56.620
it, you're able to be like, you know what? My goal is to go for an eight. And today this effort
00:23:03.020
feels like an eight. But on another day, an eight could be less or more just depending on
00:23:09.800
A hundred percent. And I'm so glad. I went for a run this morning and I was traveling all day
00:23:13.960
yesterday. So I didn't eat a lot all day yesterday. And so when I went for the run this morning,
00:23:17.480
I started and I just felt completely depleted. And I was like, oh my God, I was slower than I usually
00:23:21.940
am. And so perfect example that you just gave because my eight today was markedly slower than
00:23:27.460
my eights when I'm properly nourished. So yeah, you're 100% right.
00:23:31.180
Okay. So creating meaningful horizons is about making sure the horizon you set is challenging
00:23:36.080
enough or just has enough to it to keep you interested, but not so challenging that you
00:23:42.160
give up and quit. So here's an example. Let's say you're thinking of moving somewhere different
00:23:47.320
from where you're at right now and you're not sure about the move. Like you don't know if
00:23:50.800
you're going to like it or not. It, I think it takes about two years to really feel settled
00:23:55.740
into a place and be able to feel like you click with it, but telling yourself you're definitely
00:24:00.800
going to have to stay for two years, that can feel pretty psychologically daunting. And I
00:24:05.640
think you can tell if you've got a, if you got potential with the place in a year. So you
00:24:10.860
set a horizon for one year, you say, I'm going to do all I can to dig into this place for
00:24:15.160
one year. And at the end of the year, I'll evaluate if it's working and whether I want
00:24:21.240
to stay. So that could be a motivating, meaningful horizon. Another idea you have on sort of modulating
00:24:29.240
your and taking control of your dopamine system to stay motivated is this piece of advice that
00:24:35.240
I thought was interesting. It was, it was counterintuitive. It was keep your eyes off the prize.
00:24:40.500
Yeah. How does that actually help with long-term motivation? Well, this feeds into the meaningful
00:24:45.160
horizon concept. So in other words, we have to have an objective, right? We have to have a, you
00:24:49.160
know, something we're moving towards, whether it's run a marathon, whether it's make it through
00:24:52.540
sealed training, whether it's start a business. Okay. That's the objective that has to be present.
00:24:57.120
However, we know just like we, just because we just talked about it is that that's too big.
00:25:01.480
That's too far away. That's too much of, that's the whole elephant and you need to break the
00:25:05.380
elephant into one bite at a time. So when you are in this process of moving horizons,
00:25:09.380
as you move through these challenges, especially during uncertainty to keep focusing on the big
00:25:15.980
goal, the big picture is too much. It's too far away. It's too much to handle. So,
00:25:20.260
so keep your eyes off the prize. It's simply a reminder that, Hey, it's there. It's driving you.
00:25:24.900
It's, it's important, but take it down to the chunk and focus on that chunk. Don't worry about
00:25:29.020
the big goal right now. Focus on the chunk. This is what keeping our eyes off the prize means.
00:25:32.400
And it's important because if you focus on that big thing too much, then you'll lose focus on your
00:25:38.640
horizon shifting and you will eventually, it'll be too long and you might give up along the way or
00:25:42.660
quit. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:25:48.380
And now back to the show. Okay. So we've talked about some psychological tactics you can do to
00:25:53.760
reframe things in your head whenever you face uncertainty, how to manage it, how to navigate
00:25:58.400
it. You have another section in the book where you talk about actual tactics, like physiological
00:26:03.880
tactics you can do to calm down the arousal system that kicks in whenever you're, whenever we're
00:26:10.360
afraid, whenever we're dealing with uncertainty. And this is important because you need to be calm
00:26:15.780
in order to be in the right mental space to choose an appropriate next horizon. And that can be
00:26:22.440
challenging when uncertainty is just thrown right, right in front of you, right in the moment, like
00:26:27.080
something's wrong in the moment and you don't know what's going on. How's it going to affect you?
00:26:31.280
What do you need to do? I mean, you're just stressed out. So what are some tools people can use
00:26:35.860
to reduce the arousal they feel whenever they're stressed out in uncertainty?
00:26:41.680
Yeah. I mean, there's many, although the most powerful, fastest ones that have kind of been
00:26:46.680
discovered have to do with our visual system and our respiratory system. And that's because our
00:26:50.380
visual system and respiratory system are directly connected to our central nervous system, which is
00:26:55.000
what we talk about sympathetic parasympathetic systems when we're in stress, challenge,
00:26:59.800
uncertainty. And so what's happening, like you just described, and we have uncertainty, challenge,
00:27:03.340
stress, fear, all that stuff, our anxiety goes up, our autonomic arousal, our sympathetic system
00:27:08.440
starts to climb. So let's talk about the positives and negatives of this, right? As our autonomic
00:27:12.260
arousal climbs, we're in sympathetic response, our frontal lobe, the decision-making part of our brain
00:27:18.320
begins to recede. And our limbic brain, our emotional kind of unconscious brain, our lizard brain
00:27:24.800
begins to come to the fore. Now, in the extreme cases, we encounter what's called autonomic overload
00:27:31.420
or amygdala hijack, which is when the frontal lobe, the decision-making part of our brain has
00:27:36.000
receded completely, and our lizard brain has taken over, and we are acting without thinking, okay?
00:27:41.600
Now, this comes in very handy for things like jumping out of the way of a moving train or
00:27:45.320
running from a bear, okay? But it doesn't come in handy for 99% of the other things that happen to
00:27:51.240
us in life when we can actually really use some conscious and intelligent decision-making going
00:27:56.940
on. And so what we have to understand is physiologically, we can bring that frontal
00:28:00.300
lobe back online by decreasing our autonomic arousal. We can do this visually or through
00:28:05.380
breath. Now, like a visual tool that I talk about in the book is open gaze. You know, when we're
00:28:09.900
stressed and focused, what happens is our gaze begins to focus in very tightly on whatever the
00:28:14.740
threat is. That's why we sometimes get tunnel vision during these phases. So what they found is if
00:28:18.940
you go into open gaze, and open gaze is simply the technique of just if you're staring out or even
00:28:23.380
if you're staring at something, you just soften your gaze. You're no longer staring at it anymore.
00:28:27.420
You're just kind of noticing all of your peripheries. You're just taking it all in. This is very easy to
00:28:32.640
do with horizons and things like that. But they've proven that this type of open gaze begins to shift
00:28:37.940
your physiology from sympathetic to parasympathetic and brings down your autonomic arousal. There are
00:28:43.180
respiratory tools as well. I'm not going to go into all of them, but when we talk about breath, when we get
00:28:47.660
stressed and anxious, what happens is our breathing changes. It becomes quicker, shorter, we're not
00:28:52.840
taking in as much oxygen, we're taking in a lot of carbon dioxide. And so another technique that I lay
00:28:58.440
out is this technique called the physiological sigh, where basically you take a full deep breath in, you
00:29:04.240
top it off, and then you slowly breathe out. And what's happening there is you're blowing out the carbon
00:29:09.180
dioxide from your system, which is de-stressing you, which is taking your autonomic arousal down. And so this is
00:29:14.140
taking our autonomic arousal down, it's shifting our physiology, and most importantly, allowing our
00:29:19.580
brains, our frontal lobes to get back online in such a manner that we can start to ask questions
00:29:23.980
about our environment. And of course, the first question we want to ask is, what do I know,
00:29:27.800
what can I control? What's a horizon I can focus on? And so there are physiological ways. What's
00:29:32.640
happening there is when we think about uncertainty plus anxiety equals fear, the way we buy down anxiety
00:29:38.560
is through those techniques, those physiological techniques. You can buy that down. The way we buy down
00:29:43.060
uncertainty is through the process of moving horizons. But as you buy down both of them,
00:29:47.880
the fear starts to dissipate. Gotcha. Okay. So an example of this, let's say you run a business
00:29:52.880
and you have a website that takes orders. The website crashes. I mean, that's happened to me with
00:30:00.600
some of the stuff that I've run. It can just stress you the crap out, especially when you're having a lot
00:30:05.140
of high traffic and like, this is really important that the site be running. And I've, you know,
00:30:10.100
whenever that happened, I just like freak out. Oh my gosh. I would have been better first to just
00:30:14.920
do some of those practices, maybe open up my gaze, do the sign. And then that calms things down. And
00:30:23.140
then I start doing the moving horizon thing. Yeah. Although I will say, I mean, the cool thing
00:30:27.420
about this, even, even choosing in the moment to do like, say five physiological size, that's a horizon
00:30:33.000
right there. You've just picked a horizon. You've picked something to focus on. You do that and you
00:30:37.020
come back out and you say, what can you do again? So, so you can use even these tools,
00:30:41.580
even these breathing tools as mini horizons. Sometimes the environment's so intense that
00:30:45.420
your only horizon is I'm going to take 10 breaths. That's what I'm going to do. And after that,
00:30:48.720
I'm going to see what's going on, you know? So, so yeah, it's a great example. And all of this
00:30:53.200
meshes in a very, very meaningful way. Okay. In the next section of your book. So the first section
00:30:57.460
is all about calming yourself down when that fear starts hijacking your limbic system and then
00:31:02.120
figuring out ways to reduce the uncertainty in that specific situation. The second part of your
00:31:08.440
book, you talk about identity and you return to your framework of attributes, which you talked
00:31:15.160
about in your first book in this part. How can knowing what your attributes are help you navigate
00:31:20.780
uncertainty in life? I mean, maybe we start out like, what are attributes for those who haven't
00:31:24.220
read that first book? Well, yeah. So, so this part of the book just describes, so, so I say the first
00:31:30.280
part of the book describes those things that are not unique to us as human beings. In other words,
00:31:35.220
all of us have this, all of us have the capacity to move horizons. And this is how our brain works
00:31:39.200
ubiquitously throughout the human species. The second part of the book focuses on those unique
00:31:43.300
things that we bring into an uncertain situation. This is when we get into those things about us that
00:31:49.080
are different from everybody else. So the first one is attributes. And this idea of these qualities
00:31:52.420
that we have, patience, situation awareness, compartmentalization, perseverance, okay? And where we fall
00:31:58.620
on those qualities, like we talked about in the last conversation, attributes, we all have all
00:32:02.980
of the attributes. We have all of these qualities. The difference in each one of us are the levels to
00:32:07.080
which we have each. So, so adaptability, for example, if I'm about a level six on adaptability,
00:32:11.760
which means when the environment changes around me outside of my control, it's fairly easy for me to go
00:32:16.340
with the flow and roll with it. Someone else might be a level three, which means the same thing happens
00:32:20.300
to them. It's difficult for them to go with flow and there's friction there. So they're still adaptable
00:32:24.640
because all human beings are. But if we were to line up these attributes on a wall, like dimmer
00:32:28.580
switches, all of us would have different dimmer switch settings. And it starts to speak to our
00:32:32.680
own unique performance, not only in everyday life, but especially during stress, challenge,
00:32:37.720
and uncertainty. Because in stress, challenge, uncertainty, we are literally running on our
00:32:41.000
attributes. Because all that other stuff, you know, personality, all that stuff goes out the
00:32:44.860
window when the you know what hits the fan. So understanding our unique attribute fingerprint or
00:32:50.300
footprint is very valuable in understanding how we're going to show up at uncertainty. And that's
00:32:55.640
why it's so important in this process. Gotcha. And where can people go to learn like what their
00:32:59.140
attributes are? Is there like a website that you have? Yeah, yeah. Our website, theattributes.com,
00:33:03.300
we have it all there. And we have an assessment tool there that you can take and you can figure out
00:33:07.020
where you stand on all 41 attributes. And it gives you a readout and gives you some information on how
00:33:11.320
and why you behave the way you do. And so, so yeah, check it out at theattributes.com.
00:33:15.560
Let's say you take the thing and you realize, oh man, I suck at adaptability. How should you
00:33:21.080
prepare yourself for times of uncertainty? So first of all, knowledge in this case is power,
00:33:26.720
right? Because if I know I'm low on adaptability, then automatically when the environment starts to
00:33:31.320
change, uncertainty starts to come into the fray. And because the environment is changing,
00:33:36.560
I immediately can say to myself, oh, wait, this feels bad because I know I'm low on adaptability.
00:33:42.200
And just that conscious thought, by the way, is bringing your frontal lobe back online,
00:33:47.100
or at least keeping your frontal lobe engaged in the process because you're having a conscious
00:33:50.660
thought. But I would say in those environments, if you know you're low on adaptability, you can say,
00:33:54.940
okay, well, when the environment shifts, so say you're traveling, okay, and you have a couple
00:33:58.760
connections and you're at the airport and you're told the flight's delayed and it's going to affect
00:34:04.300
your connections down the line. It's also going to affect the engagement that you were supposed to be
00:34:08.500
at. So you're not going to get there in time anymore, so on and so forth. Now you are in an
00:34:12.700
environment of uncertainty and it's because the environment's changing rapidly. And so the same
00:34:17.820
process applies. You just begin to pick horizons that are meaningful for you. In the case of low
00:34:23.460
adaptability, just know that it's going to feel uncomfortable and more stressful and more uncertain
00:34:29.260
because you're low on it. When I'm traveling, because I do so all the time, and the plans start to
00:34:34.800
shift around me, the environment starts to shift around me, I'm pretty high on adaptability. So the
00:34:38.600
difference between me and someone who's low on it is not that we don't DPO the situation or shift
00:34:44.780
horizons through that situation. The difference is I just feel less stressed about it. I feel less
00:34:49.320
uncertain about it. So just understand that the attributes we're a little bit lower on, we're going
00:34:52.780
to feel more uncertainty, challenge, and stress when those things are exercised due to the environment
00:34:58.340
versus other ones. But you know, the opposite is true. If you're high on stuff, the attributes you're high
00:35:03.400
on, when the environment goes uncertainty, and the environment requires whatever that attribute is,
00:35:07.220
and you happen to be high on it, you're going to feel less uncertainty and challenge and stress.
00:35:10.300
So that's a one way to look at is that these uncertain environments that are asking for the
00:35:14.600
attributes we're lower on, those are likely the ones that are going to cause us more work.
00:35:19.140
Yeah. And I imagine too, if you're high in adaptability, if you don't have enough uncertainty,
00:35:25.580
then you get bored. And that can be a problem too.
00:35:28.700
Well, yeah, any of these attributes to their extremes, too high, too low can be bad, right?
00:35:33.300
But we also understand that any of these attributes, whether you're high or low, is not a bad thing
00:35:37.840
or a good thing. These are completely non-judgmental. In fact, there are advantages to being high
00:35:42.840
adaptability, there are disadvantages to being high adaptability, and there's advantages of being low
00:35:46.680
adaptability and disadvantages. So in the normal spectrum of these things, there's always pros and
00:35:51.800
cons. But at the extremes, in any of these attributes, it certainly gets to be a bad thing.
00:35:55.940
Yeah, I think knowing your attributes can help you design better horizons. So if I'm low on, say,
00:36:04.300
perseverance, that's one of your attributes. If I'm low on that, I can't just set long, vague goals.
00:36:10.100
I got to make my horizons shorter, more defined, more frequent, so I don't run out of gas halfway
00:36:16.240
through. The same thing goes with compartmentalization. That's another one of those attributes you talk
00:36:20.600
about. So if you struggle with that, you probably struggle to block out noise, stay focused when
00:36:26.080
things get chaotic. So if that's your problem, then your DPO might need to be even more simple.
00:36:33.300
And so basically, your weaker attributes don't mean you're doomed under uncertainty, but they do mean
00:36:39.760
you need to tailor your horizon strategy to how you're wired. That just makes the whole system
00:36:45.620
work better. And you also talk about the role that identity plays in motivation and staying the
00:36:52.460
course during times of stress and uncertainty. Talk to us about that. Yeah, identity has always
00:36:57.120
been fascinating to me because it's always been something on my mind. And it's because I've witnessed
00:37:01.800
and certainly researched and seen examples of people acting in ways that are confusing to them when
00:37:10.940
they look back at it. So so take the sports fan who beats the crap out of another sports fan and then is
00:37:17.080
suddenly in front of the judge and like, I don't know what I was doing. I was out of my mind. I just they're
00:37:21.320
confused as to why they're they even acted that way. And one of the reasons is because our performance, our
00:37:26.720
behavior sits and relies upon the identities that we collect along the way. So we are as human beings, a
00:37:33.740
collection, a collage of different I am's. They can be everything from benign to very, very important, very
00:37:39.660
powerful. I went to this high school. I am this type of sports player. I am a Navy SEAL. I am a husband
00:37:45.160
father. I'm a Metallica fan, whatever that is. Okay, we have a collection of these things. And each one of
00:37:50.300
these I am's each one of these identities comes with it, some conditions, some rules, some behaviors
00:37:55.020
that describe how you act in that identity. And we align to those. That's why we chose those identities
00:38:00.640
in the first place. What we have to understand is uncertainty, challenge and stress, we are always going to
00:38:04.520
behave towards the identity that we align to that we prioritize in that moment. And this can be an
00:38:10.720
advantage. It also can be a disadvantage. So so the example would be, as you know, as a Navy SEAL,
00:38:16.240
that's a very powerful identity. And in Iraq and Afghanistan, obviously, that was the priority
00:38:20.300
identity that I was aligning towards as were my teammates. However, sometimes the target would
00:38:24.780
change. And we'd suddenly have to put on our husband father hats, because maybe we have to deal with
00:38:29.080
some civilians or kids. This is an example where a fluidity in your identities can actually be very
00:38:33.740
beneficial. Now take the sports fan. I mean, say you're a fan of whatever ex sports team,
00:38:38.600
and you find yourself in an argument with a fan of another ex sports team. And you know,
00:38:43.860
if you continue down that track, depending on the sports teams, you and I could probably comment on
00:38:48.020
some that are worse than others. But if you continue to have that track, you may find yourself
00:38:52.480
in a physical altercation, because that identity is driving you. Or you could calm yourself and ask
00:38:58.300
yourself, okay, what? I'm also a husband and father, I'm a professional business person. And so getting
00:39:02.460
into a fight in the street right now is probably not good for that identity. And you can shift. And so
00:39:06.300
so all this to say is understanding that identities really are very powerful in the way they drive
00:39:10.960
behavior, especially during uncertainty, challenge, stress, to start to get a handle on those identities
00:39:16.460
we carry. And we all carry a lot of them really do. Again, some are really important and powerful,
00:39:21.240
some are fairly benign, but but there are a lot of them get a handle on what they are and begin to
00:39:25.580
use them in a more effective, proactive way. Because you can begin to shift into identities that
00:39:31.120
actually more appropriately fit whatever situation, you'll often find if you, if you do the diligence,
00:39:35.960
you might find some identities that don't, they don't matter to you anymore. They're like, Oh, I
00:39:39.080
don't actually, I'm not that anymore, I can discard that one. And then we also find ourselves in in
00:39:43.560
situations where we're building new identities, you know, this is entrepreneurs do this, I did this
00:39:47.620
coming out of the Navy, the Navy SEAL identity, very powerful. But once I'm not a SEAL, I'm not a SEAL.
00:39:51.540
And so I put that on the shelf, obviously, in a position of honor and respect. However, now I'm going to
00:39:56.720
build a new identity. And that is author entrepreneur. And that's another way to actually
00:40:01.820
actualize this stuff is to have an understanding and move and flow in a positive way towards
00:40:06.740
whatever you're looking at. All right, so we've been talking about how to deal with uncertainty
00:40:10.300
as an individual. So the DPO, moving horizons, using those tactics to calm yourself down,
00:40:17.760
knowing how you typically navigate uncertainty by knowing your attributes, having that identity to
00:40:23.660
help you stay grounded and motivated when things get hard. Let's talk about teams, how to navigate
00:40:28.940
uncertainty as a team. And you introduced this key principle that you got from the SEALs called
00:40:35.300
dynamic subordination. What is that? Yeah, dynamic subordination is simply if you were to think about
00:40:42.120
how this looks on a chart, it's not the pyramid task org structure, which we all know, the leader sits
00:40:48.760
on top and barks orders. It's not the flat line where everybody's in this together. We don't know
00:40:55.340
actually who's in charge. And it's not even the upside down pyramid where the leader's at the bottom
00:40:59.840
in service to everybody, because the burden is not supposed to sit only on one person. And so what it
00:41:05.520
really is, is a blob. It's an amoeba. And the position of leadership in that amoeba can be anywhere at
00:41:12.300
any time. It's wherever it needs to be in the moment. And so dynamic subordination is an idea that
00:41:17.100
the team understands that challenges and issues and problems can come from any angle at any moment.
00:41:22.040
And when one does, the person who's closest to the problem, the most capable immediately steps up
00:41:26.800
and takes lead and everybody follows and supports. And then the environment shifts and someone else
00:41:30.360
steps up and takes lead. And so this is how all the highest performing teams operate. Listen,
00:41:34.400
I was an officer in the SEAL teams. I went on hundreds of combat missions and I was in charge of
00:41:38.400
every single one. It did not mean I was always being supported. In fact, most of the time was the
00:41:42.880
opposite. I was supporting other people, whether it was my snipers or breachers or whatever,
00:41:46.200
or salters. Sometimes the environment shifted and they were in support of me, but it was all based
00:41:50.800
on the environment and what was needed in the moment. So it's a very important concept that
00:41:55.500
tells us that our role on a team has nothing to do with our hierarchy or rank. It has everything to
00:42:01.520
do with what we are there to contribute to the team. And this is how the highest performing teams
00:42:06.160
operate. And this is the key to operating uncertainty, challenge, and stress, because uncertainty by its
00:42:10.980
very nature is we don't know what's coming. We don't know what angle things are coming at. So we need to
00:42:15.040
adjust and focus on whatever we can in the moment. And that might be at any angle.
00:42:19.580
And just to be clear, I want to kind of touched on this. There's still a leader
00:42:23.200
whenever you have dynamic subordination, correct? Like someone who's responsible.
00:42:27.640
Well, yeah, I understand the question, but what we have to do is I can't answer it if I use the
00:42:32.280
colloquial definition that we all think of as leader. A leader is a behavior. Being in charge is a
00:42:37.780
position. There's two very different and distinct things. And we don't get to self-designate,
00:42:42.280
by the way. We don't get to call ourselves leaders. That's like calling yourself good
00:42:44.820
looking or funny. All right. People decide whether or not you are someone they want to
00:42:48.520
follow based on the way you behave. And I remember being in situations in the military,
00:42:52.160
at least a couple of times, where I'd look at a person in a hierarchical position above me,
00:42:56.680
and I would say, I would not follow that person anywhere. Meanwhile, there'd be someone over to
00:43:00.500
my right or left who had no hierarchical position whatsoever. I'd be like, I would follow that
00:43:04.200
person to hell and back. Okay. It's because of the way we behave. And so leadership is defined as
00:43:09.200
someone who others choose to follow based on behavior, which means everybody on a team can
00:43:15.080
be a leader in the moment. Now, if you're talking about the person who's in a position of being in
00:43:19.660
charge, who is responsible for the team holistically, now you're talking about someone whose leadership
00:43:25.480
role should be to create a dynamically subordinating environment. That's the whole role of the leader in
00:43:31.600
terms of the person who's in charge. You need to create that environment because if you don't,
00:43:35.160
you're not going to create a team that can in fact deal with uncertainty, challenge, and stress.
00:43:38.900
So yeah, every team is going to have a hierarchical nature to it. That's the nature of a team. But
00:43:43.220
the role of the person in the highest position of hierarchy is to create a dynamically subordinating
00:43:48.720
team. It's not to have the big office, big desk, get the big paycheck and be deferred to on everything.
00:43:54.240
It's to create a dynamically subordinating team that actually moves fast, moves efficiently. And I
00:43:58.120
always kind of told my junior officers when I was talking to them, you have to get used to what I call
00:44:03.040
the irony of leadership. And that is, if you do your job correctly, you eventually work yourself
00:44:07.380
out of a job. You create a team that can run without you and in many cases run faster than
00:44:11.900
you, outrun you. That should be the goal of every true leader because every true leader should aspire
00:44:16.200
to that. You want to make your team so good, so much better that eventually, oh man, they're so good,
00:44:20.860
I got to withdraw. They're moving way too fast than I could ever move. And it's because of the things
00:44:27.380
So let's say you're in a position of authority. How do you develop that environment where dynamic
00:44:32.500
subordination exists? I'm sure there's a lot to it, but like one or two things that people can do.
00:44:36.840
Well, I mean, first of all, you empower an environment of trust. Trust is the foundational
00:44:40.280
element. And trust is all about behaviors as well. You can't make anybody trust you. All you can do is
00:44:44.700
behave in a way that allows them to make a decision to choose to trust you. So as a leader of a team or
00:44:50.180
hierarchical position, the highest hierarchical position in a team, you must be behaving in ways that
00:44:56.160
promote that environment of trust. You know, making people care for you, listen to them,
00:45:00.060
you practice empathy, you're consistent, you're competent, you tell the truth, you're accountable.
00:45:04.580
These are all behaviors that will allow for others to look at you and say, ooh, this is someone I
00:45:09.040
trust. By the way, the behaviors that define great leaders are almost synonymous with the behaviors
00:45:14.080
that define trust. So they're very, very similar. So we have to build that environment by doing,
00:45:20.080
by modeling the behavior we want to see more of, and then rewarding the behavior we want to see more of
00:45:25.020
in terms of trust. Now, part of that trust, part of that trust building is that as the person in
00:45:30.260
charge, you need to give opportunities for the people on the team to extend themselves,
00:45:35.620
go outside their comfort zone to, to actually step up and be in charge to take those positions,
00:45:40.380
even if they might fail, because we learn a lot from failure. But when they fail, that's really
00:45:44.240
important because if you have their back, when they fail, they will learn rapidly. They feel that trust
00:45:48.540
and that safety, and they'll be ready to do it again. And so, and do it the right time this time.
00:45:52.620
So we have to, as people in charge, really take responsibility and accountability for
00:45:57.900
creating that environment, both through the way we act, through the way we reward, and through the
00:46:02.280
way we allow our teammates and those in our span of care to really extend themselves and, of course,
00:46:07.920
have their back when they do it. Besides developing that trust, another thing you talk about that's
00:46:12.080
important to have this dynamic subordination take root in a group is really being intentional about
00:46:17.460
the culture in a team. How can a person who's in a position of authority, not a leader,
00:46:22.800
person in a position of authority, help develop that kind of culture?
00:46:26.400
Yeah, I mean, the culture is kind of, I mean, very, very close to the identity of a team. You know,
00:46:32.400
whatever that culture is, is close to the identity of the team. And those things can be,
00:46:36.900
can be intertwined. In other words, what are the behaviors that this team expresses
00:46:43.340
because we're part of that team? That's what the culture really is. And so why we have to be
00:46:47.500
very cognizant of this is because culture in any group of people is going to emerge regardless of
00:46:53.200
whether or not the leader has anything to say about it or not. Whether you're deliberate about
00:46:56.640
it or whether you're not deliberate about it, some sort of culture, some sort of identity
00:47:00.040
will emerge. And if we are not deliberate about it, then we might not like what we see
00:47:04.460
that emerges. And so the challenge is to be deliberate about the culture, be deliberate about
00:47:09.820
whatever identity you're creating for that team. Include the team in that process, of course,
00:47:14.760
because it's not just you as the person in charge. But what are those things that define
00:47:19.240
us as a team from an identity standpoint and a culture standpoint? You know, the Boy Scouts and
00:47:24.720
the Girl Scouts do this well. The Marines do this well. They have, the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have
00:47:29.120
a creed. And their creed is really just a list of rules that define their behavior. That's what it is.
00:47:35.340
You know, that's the culture. And you talk to any Girl Scout around the world,
00:47:38.520
they are all aligned on that very same rule list of things, that culture. So we can do the same
00:47:44.740
thing in organizations. We just have to be deliberate about it. But rest assured, if you're
00:47:47.680
not deliberate about it, it's going to emerge whether you like it or not. And you may not like
00:47:51.760
it. And you also talk about once you establish that culture, you have to start being picky about
00:47:58.600
who you let in to the group to make sure that they match up with the culture.
00:48:03.760
Well, yeah. And this is a lot of the work we do with organizations and teams around attributes.
00:48:07.320
You know, every culture, every identity is going to have a set of attributes that are
00:48:12.220
prioritized. And I say set. It's probably, you know, one or two or three top things that
00:48:16.660
are prioritized. And so what we have to do as people who are bringing new folks onto a
00:48:21.720
team is make sure that the people we're bringing on are aligned with that from an attribute sense
00:48:26.620
and from a value sense, from an identity sense, all those things. So that they come in and
00:48:31.200
they're like, OK, this person actually fits their culture fit. And but you can't do that
00:48:35.280
if you don't know what the culture is. So you got to start there.
00:48:38.280
Yeah. I think in times of uncertainty, it really does help to know what you're about.
00:48:43.100
Well, Rich, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:48:46.680
Well, yeah, the best place is theattributes.com, like I said. So it's theattributes.com. So
00:48:51.620
there's a the in front of the attributes. And there you can find both books. You can find the
00:48:54.980
assessment tool. You can find everything we do for businesses and organizations and teams.
00:48:58.580
Kind of a one-stop shop. And of course, the books are also, you can find them on Amazon as well.
00:49:01.820
And I'm also on Instagram and LinkedIn under Rich DeVinney. But theattributes.com is the best
00:49:07.940
Fantastic. Well, Rich DeVinney, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:49:12.480
My guest there was Rich DeVinney. He's the author of the book, Masters of Uncertainty. It's
00:49:15.720
available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at
00:49:19.260
his website, theattributes.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash uncertainty,
00:49:24.060
where you can find links to resources when we delve deeper into this topic.
00:49:31.820
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website
00:49:38.480
at artofmanless.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that
00:49:42.300
we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And make sure to sign
00:49:45.520
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00:49:49.640
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00:49:53.740
next time, it's Brett McKay, reminding you to listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard