Focused - 149: Asking Questions, with Marc Champagne

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Marc Champagne (author of Personal Socrates) joins us to talk about mental fitness, journaling, and why simply asking the right questions can change your life.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing great. I'm really excited. We've got a special guest here today. Welcome to the show, Mark Champagne. Thanks, guys. Excited to be here. It's already been a fun back and forth bantering on audio details and geeking out on

all things podcasting. So I'm excited for this conversation. So a little bit about Mark, you're the host of the Behind the Human podcast. You are a mental fitness strategist, which we're going to talk about later. You're the author of one of my favorite books, Personal Socrates, and a former app developer, which I'm sure we'll touch on too. But I'm going to steal a line from your show, Mark, and just ask, who are you? I should always be prepared for this one, right? And I'm not. I mean, but I'll answer with what comes up right now. Because I think a who are you question is always evolving as we evolve and our story does and our life and so forth. So what feels right right now is just,

I am, and core values stay the same, obviously. So maybe I should start there. I'm someone who is just energized by great people in conversation. I mean, nothing lights me up more than, you know, getting behind the mic with people like yourself and just learning from each other. curiosity and asking good questions and curating good questions with life situations and use cases and so forth. So at the core, I guess you'd say of my being is really just being energized and connecting with wonderful people and trying to live a life of curiosity as much as I can. I love that. And the question, maybe you want to talk a little bit about the inspiration behind that. You kind of touched on it a little bit, but I think that's kind of brilliant. I love some of the stories that you tell in the book about people's responses to those questions.

There was one in particular, I'm blanking on the person's name, but you asked them who they were and they said, I'm a curious white boy. Chip Conley. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I think that's pretty great. We tend to view ourselves in terms of what we do or what we produce. And that's probably one of the issues a lot of people have with the last episode we had Chris Bailey on. We talked about the productivity racket, right? So much emphasis on what you're doing, but we're not human doings.

We're human beings. And just reframing that provides some pretty candid insights sometimes. Well, I'm just always amazed. I've asked at least 300 people that question so far, and I'm just always amazed, and we'll see if it happens here, but I'm sure it will in some capacity, of how the conversation starts with those characteristics or those values, and it always comes full circle at the end of the interview, somehow linking towards how the person answered.

And it's not intentional. I mean, at least on my side, I'm not leading the guests anywhere on the conversation, but it just naturally always happens. And it's just, it's a beautiful thing to experience versus, you know, just saying, yeah, I'm, you know, a podcast host and author and mental fitness strategist. I mean, you know, you've, you've provided those details, so I don't have to go any further on job descriptions. It's interesting to me because so often the go-to is what do you do? Like I was just at a thing with

my wife recently and the other obligatory husband walks up to me and says, what do you do? You know, and that's like it's so often in our culture. It seems that your occupation is your identity and it's like found its way into everyday conversation and all these little insidious ways. And I don't think anybody ever really stops to think about it. I mean, what's it matter what I do? Really? Yeah, totally. Well, and I mean, I anybody ever really stops to think about it. I mean, what's it matter what I do, really? Yeah, totally. Well, and I mean, I experienced this firsthand as well.

Then something happens with what you do and your life is rocked, right? Or it can be, for example, because you have so, to your point, you have so much of your identity wrapped up in that thing, you know, that you're, and I get it, you're spending a lot of time doing, you know, doing that kind of work. But I mean, it's not necessarily who you are. It's a part, you know, it's a part of the journey. Well, and Austin, I feel like that question, what do you do,

implies judgment as well. I mean, when they're asking what you do, they're evaluating where you fit on the scale, the social scale that you're sitting in right now. And that's why I always like give really bad answers to stuff like that. You know, I was a, you know, I mean, I have many funny stories of things I've made up on the spot of what I do just to see how it goes. And it gets me into a lot of trouble, honestly. I can imagine. It gets me into a lot of trouble, honestly. And I want to talk about your book because I have some history with you, Mark, that we need to discuss. But before we do that, I think you were talking a minute ago about how your identity got rocked a little bit.

And I think it's really a fascinating part of your story. Would you mind sharing a little bit of that? Sure, sure. Yeah, I say my identity got rocked a little bit. It's probably a lot, actually. But that definitely was one of the hardest periods of my life so far when it comes to anything related to mental health and just pressure and, you know, feeling, you know, not clear on a path forward and having a young, we had one son at that point, he was two years old and just having, you know, family pressure there and so forth. And what was sparking all of that,

or what I'm describing was that I had spent about just over, just under a decade in the corporate world and had left that world to create, or to co-found, I should say, one of the first guided journaling apps. If you think of, most people are familiar with some of the meditation apps out there like Calm and Headspace. And it was around that same time when those apps were picking up Steam that we decided, said, said you know what there's nothing on the market right now that is similar to how meditation apps are guiding people into a practice if they want to start to meditate there's nothing like that for people that are interested about journaling and that you know that's been my practice and the mental fitness

that I've had in check for well over a decade at this point. So we said, you know, we decided, and I linked up with my brother-in-law and we created this app that, you know, set out and accomplished exactly what I just mentioned. We had, you know, Chip Conley, as we mentioned earlier. He was one of the people featured in the app with his questions to help guide people into, we can say, a theme-based reflective exercise. And then hundreds of others, Adam Grant and brands like Lego and LinkedIn and so forth. So there was a lot. There was a lot going on in there. And it ended up, and this is the only reason I'm sharing all this, it ended up reaching 86.9 million people in just under two years without any type of paid media.

But at the same time, and this is what you're referring to, I was looking at that Apple dashboard, and I was looking at how many people we had reached. And my next step was to hit delete from App Store. Because financially, the app and the company wasn't working. I don't need to get into all the details because there's nothing actually shocking. It's what you would expect. The people coming in were leaving just as fast.

It's what you would expect. The people coming in were leaving just as fast and the app just wasn't set up perfectly to retain the people that were coming through. And we just needed more time and more mental capacity to stay the course and figure all of that out. And we ran out of both. So when I hit delete though, to your point, it wasn't just deleting an app from the store it was three years of essentially deleting that identity behind uh what what what

i had created what the team had created and what i was just living and breathing i mean we had so many uh desires and and and objectives of like how can we help millions of people with this, which was the first product that we're trying to set up. And, you know, we were doing everything we could to launch a wellness or mental fitness company. and and now that you know that the big kickoff product uh you know succeeded in many different ways but failed financially and ultimately led to well now what am i going to do yeah i mean it feels like you're feels like you're deleting yourself in a way right when you hit that but yeah yeah and i'll never forget because i was in toronto canada when that happened and our team was scattered around the world and uh i was the the only one in Toronto in this co-working space. And it just, it felt so alone.

I mean, there was, I mean, there were people obviously around, but in terms of the team and how fast, like literally one, one tap of a mouse pad or trackpad on my, on my MacBook and the whole thing's gone. Oh, you know, that breaks my heart. I mean, being in a room full of other people, but anonymous at the same moment as you do it, that's almost like the worst way to do that. I feel like that must have just been heartbreaking. Yeah, it definitely was not great. And, you know, that was just the start of, like I said, a really hard time because then, you know, at that point I was asking all the wrong questions.

Like, how could we fail at such a colossal level? What would my family think? What would my ex-colleagues think? Because I remember when I was, you know, when I was leaving that world and explaining kind of why, because I wasn't leaving in a situation where I was unhappy with my job. It was one of those situations where I knew I would regret not trying this idea. But what allowed me to leave was, well, what's the worst that could happen? It was that prompt. And if it doesn't work, I'll just come back. But in those three years, what happened, which I could never have predicted, happen, which I could never have predicted, I clearly landed in the space of mental fitness that really fulfills my life purpose. And now it felt completely aligned that this is the work that

I need to be doing. But now I just deleted the vehicle that was going to keep me in that work and I don't want to go back to the past world that I was coming from because it doesn't just doesn't align anymore but now what it's the first time in my life I didn't have a plan forward since probably university that's super healthy though I mean honestly because I think a lot of people there would be like I don't want to go back to the old thing because I'm embarrassed right you know or I don't want to go back because I'm ashamed. Or those people that gave me the funny looks when I left, they're all going to be nodding their heads now. That's not what drove you.

What drove you was your sense of purpose, which I feel like you had that going for you. Yeah, I know. Very, very thankful for that. thankful for that. And, you know, from that point forward, I mean, that's, like I said, it was a challenging time, but thankfully, given the work that I'm in, I have access to practices to help pause and I guess you can say reset your mind. And I was able to tap into some of those practices and bring me a little bit more present, layer in some gratitude, rituals, and so forth. Just enough, just to give almost microseconds of a pause to stop my mind from going, well, how are we going to pay rent? What's next? All of that stuff, right? Like all

of that was circulating, but how can I pause it just long enough to get to the right questions? And eventually I found myself reflecting on, well, what do I really want for my life? And that was the start to a plan, the next steps, well, who do I need to speak to? What would this look like? And essentially forms the whole thesis behind all the work that I'm doing. And that's just that we're all one question away at any point in our life from a different life or a different outcome or in the micro, one question away from a completely different mood and mindset. And that's what I'm trying to put out into this world is just, hey, how can I help you surface that question? Because there's

a million different ways you can do that through mental fitness. But if we can find your question and it's well-timed to where you're at in your life right now, then it's very, very powerful. And that's where you came into my orbit. Because if Amazon was a dating service, it has been trying to hook me up with you forever.

Because it keeps telling me, you've got to read this book, Personal Socrates. And has been trying to hook me up with you forever because it keeps telling me you've got to read this book, Personal Socrates. And just a little history about me, I went to law school and I was bludgeoned by the Socratic method. I don't know if you, I'm sure you've heard this from lawyers, but the way they teach you in law school is they don't teach you anything. All they do is ask you questions. The teachers never actually say, no, this is how the rule works. And the school I went to, the teachers were very much into that. So we only got asked questions for three years. And so I was like, when I left law school, I'm like, I am done with the Socratic method.

And then Amazon kept saying, you read read this book you would really like personal socrates and then and then you're like hell no yeah exactly exactly and then mike said this is one of the best books i've read and i'm like all right so i i download it and i'm i'm a huge fan of you but the uh so amazon's dating service was actually right but but yeah that it is it's kind of fascinating that you know you leaving the business, asking yourself questions led to this project. Yeah. Well, it's so interesting because this has come up a few times now

with obviously lawyers as well as academics or people that have stayed in philosophy of some sort, right? And which I remember when I was talking about the concept for the book with the now publisher, Baron Figg, because the CEO of that company, Joey Caffone, he's a good friend. And I was linked up with them when I was running the journaling app because I was looking for a print partner to one of the features eventually was going to be, well, how can we export people's journals so they have a nice high quality notebook essentially. So I got linked up with Baron Figg and I was explaining this whole concept. And I remember, I'll never forget because, you know, Joey said, oh, well, so you're talking about the Socratic

method. I mean, this book should be called Personal Socrates, like having your own Socrates within you. And I said, Joey, absolutely not. I mean, I am farthest removed from being a philosopher or, you know, like what you're sharing, David. I mean, I've only ever heard kind of negative things when it comes to Socratic method or people having almost like PTSD of being grilled with questions, right? So I'm like, I'm not going, no way. They make you stand up in front of a hundred and so many people, and boy, if you didn't do the reading, you're going to get shellacked. They don't let you sit down, you know? Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that was my first reaction, but then I have to say, I became quite curious because I started, I mean, really all I knew

about the Socratic method and Socrates in general was just, hey, here's some philosopher that has been around since or is known about since the beginning of time, essentially. And it's something around the idea of asking a big question followed up by sub-questions to really get to the core of what you're unpacking. But when I started to actually research into Socrates and how the method works and so forth and what scholars were describing about the Socratic method, then I started to get really interested because I'm like, well, we're all using this method in some shape or form without really even realizing it. Because we're all asking questions. It's just, are we asking enough of them? Are we asking quality questions? But we are asking questions followed by the next set of questions and so forth. So the method is used day by day, or day in, day out, I should say. And there's all this literature around, well, there's all these question types, you know,

that form the Socratic method, or on the clarifying assumptions, and probing, or clarifying details, probing assumptions. See, you can already tell, like, I can't rhyme off the six question types because no one remembers this stuff. So that's when I was like, well, if this has been around forever, so it's stood the test of time, how can I modernize the method so that we actually use it more intentionally and without kind of all the past stereotypical or predefined notions that we have of the method and just get real simple with, let's ask questions to help unlock more clarity. And then the next step after that is questions to help us be more intentional. And if we're doing those two things in unison or back to back, I should say, then there's just an expansion of possibility. And we'll see the path forward. And we'll feel a hell of a lot better going through that method. And we don't have to really think about it as well. Here's one question type, another question type. And it's not necessarily about grilling yourself. It's being kind with yourself. so that's how it all kind of came together as uh

how do we how do we bring this back to life leverage the fact that it's been around forever but bring questions and use cases and stories that are relatable to present day so i'm kind of curious uh you mentioned when you shut down the app business you had had a two-year-old. And as a parent myself, I've been through somewhat of a similar situation where the big question was, how am I going to feed my family? And I'm kind of curious because the question you mentioned already was basically, what do I want to do with my life? But I'm sure in that moment, you were trying to balance or wrestle through, what do I want to do with my life and how do I fulfill the responsibilities to the people that rely on me? Do you mind just walking us through

maybe how you reconciled that? Yeah, absolutely, Mike. I mean, that's a great point. I mean, because the big one, part of the reason for making the decision to shut down that app or not deciding to hold on a little bit longer, because that was essentially the alternative because we had just conducted a whole bunch of market research or user research, I should say, and we had a very clear roadmap. We knew, okay, this is what we had to do, but we also weren't naive to the fact that we weren't going to nail that in one iteration of the app, and who knows how much more money and time that would result in. So what was in the back of my mind, though,

was when I would go home, as much as my wife and I were trying, we're trying to yield our son from any type of, like the extreme stress that we were feeling, right? And I couldn't keep going down that route because I knew that for sure he's feeling that in some way, probably not consciously, but subconsciously he was picking up on those cues and I didn't want that to be a huge mark on his development in his life. So I just share that

first because that was a huge, huge proponent to making the decision to say, you know what, this is not healthy. I need to do something else. Then getting more directly into answering your question, I was going back and forth for quite some time on just saying, screw it, I'm just going to start applying for jobs, you know, and let's just do the responsible thing here and I'll figure out another path later. And I have to say, I credit my wife tremendously throughout the whole journey, even up until right now, because she still kind of course corrects my own mind when I start thinking, oh, well, maybe I'll just do this. And it reminds me, I said, you didn't spend, and in this case, she said, you know, you didn't spend those three years developing this really

rich network of people in the space that really matters to you. And, you know, you didn't, because it would almost be like, well, I guess the question that came to mind that then, well, like, what was it all for? If you're just going to throw in the towel for the mission, even though like, you know, it's just a product that I deleted, right? It wasn't the whole vision of helping people in the mental fitness space. It just so happened that that was the main focus at that point. And I just needed to figure out, well, what else can I do? And the book came about from that. The podcast obviously is still alive and thriving. And now I'm coaching teams or training teams, I should say, with all these different mental fitness boot camps and workshops

and so forth. So it really came down to that, Mike. It was really, you know, the support of my wife. Because had she said, you know what, you just need to find something else. And we were trying to have her our second. So she wasn't, at that time, wasn't working. So it was really just me. And we were, you know, we were blowing through what little we still had left from our savings when I left that world. As I was in Montreal at that point, we had a condo. We had sold all that.

And when we moved to Toronto, we were like, let's just rent until we figure things out and become a little bit more stable. So we were in this flow now of we were living a pretty luxurious life back in the corporate world. There was a paycheck coming in, and we owned our house, and we had cars and all these different things, and then everything just kind of exploded. But I wouldn't trade in that journey at all

because it's the only reason I'm talking to you guys. And like I said from the very beginning of the conversation, this is what lights me up and and stuff starts to appear then when uh when you're doing this stuff you know everybody that gets through life and is successful in anyone at anything really i always feel like there's some person it it's usually a significant other but it could be a teacher or an uncle or there's somebody there that sees the thing in you that you don't see in yourself. And it always you always have to have that person. And I don't think I've ever met someone that's achieved any level of success that didn't have that person, you know, in the darkest moment who says, no, you can do this.

And I think it's something everybody should always think about. You should have people around you that do that for you. And if you don't, that's something you need to work on. Yeah. Well, and the other thing, like, so my wife is for sure that person for me, but ironically, her dad, my father-in-law is the other person that I probably speak to the most and that helped guide me through that journey. And it's funny. I mean, he would often say, you know, I know this feels really hard. I know it's stressful. And you're questioning a lot of things. He's like, these are the good years. It's like, trust me when I say these are the good years. These are the character building years.

And then you start asking these questions, right? Like, well, when you were around this age and whatnot, like what was going on in your world? Next thing you know, you know, he's sharing these stories about how, when they bought their first house and he was laid off from his job the day before they moved into the house, first time with a mortgage. And you start just, I'm only sharing that because you start realizing that, no, everyone goes through this stuff. And if you can just like slow down your mind and kind of step out of it a little bit and say, you know, everything's

going to be okay. Like if you've got good support around you, it feels like it's not going to be okay. But if you can just come out of the fear long enough, you'll be able to navigate the path. If you can just come out of the fear long enough, you'll be able to navigate the path. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Indeed. If you are ready to take your business to the next level, then you're going to need the right team to make it happen. And Indeed makes it easy to hire and build a team with the right skills to make those thoughts that you've had about growing your business a reality. If you're hiring, you need Indeed

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delivers four times more hires than all other job sites combined, according to Talent Nest. So start hiring right now and get a offer is only valid through April 30th. So go to indeed.com slash focused to claim your $75 credit before April 30th. Once again, that's indeed.com slash focused F-O-C-U-S-E-D. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. So Mark, you're talking about slowing down your mind. We were talking about the power of having people in your life who can help guide you. And I feel like this just naturally leads into this phrase, which is printed on the back of your book, that at any point we are one question away from a different life. And I love that concept. I'd love to unpack that further and also kind of hear what are some of your favorite questions?

What are the ones that have really made a difference to you in your life? favorite questions? What are the ones that have really made a difference to you in your life? Yeah, I mean, when it comes to questions and favorite questions, this is like asking who's your favorite interview on the podcast. I mean, it always changes. And it's hard to answer that one because kind of what I shared earlier on with saying, you know, that one big life question of what do I want for my life? Like that literally pulled me out of a downward spiral where I was heading into a deep depression. So very impactful, very significant at that time. But if you ask me that same question right now, it serves more as a check-in, right? Like, okay, am I on track to

that life I described and so forth? But it doesn't have the same power that it did, you know, three or I guess three years ago at this point versus looking for questions and just being curious and present with the knowledge you're bringing in, whether that's through podcasts or books, blogs or everything in between, for the questions that are most applicable to you right now, right? Right now in your life, right now in your business, whatever you're doing. Because then those prompts really provide the unlocks right and they're they're relatable and you can apply them to something that that's real life right now so

all to say i mean the one that it's funny i mean you brought him up chip conley he his question uh around and his opening prompt in the book for his chapter is around how can I be the most curious person in the room? I love that one. Yeah, me too. I mean, and it's the one that resonates the most right now for me because, you know, there's on my side with the business I'm building around mental fitness, there's just a, it seems like there's a lot of different avenues and opportunities that are coming up. And, you know, a lot of that is coming from the book as well, thankfully. But I need to be as present as possible to not follow only the shiny things or the short-term gains or whatever, you know, however those things show up and be so clear in my own mind that it's a hell yes on, you know,

Avenue A or Avenue C that makes most sense in terms of what I'm trying to build, you know, with a full ecosystem of mental fitness offerings, let's say. So that's the one I come back to most. And a follow-up question on that, I'm not sure if it's in the book or I'm sure it is somewhere. It's not an opening chapter prompt, but the one that often comes closely behind that one for me is, what am I hearing right now? What's in the back corner of my mind or the room or what's in the whispers right now? Because we all know, we all have the answers to the questions that we're asking. We just need to organize the mind and blow out some mental fog to be able to surface those answers. So a question like that often

just calms you right down and really, really blows out a lot of the distraction and really gets to the core of, okay, you know, it's that, you know, it's, that's the thing that I should be focusing on. So you mentioned questions that resonate with you and questions appropriate for your situation. And I'm kind of curious. One of the reasons I love the book is that it gives you a whole bunch of questions. And I've experienced that, you know You never know which one is really just going to land with you. But I've also been curious in the whole concept of mental models and liminal thinking and all that bunch of questions like your book, how do we know, how does that person know which one to attach to? How do they figure out which of these questions is going to blow away that mental fog for me? Yeah. I mean, this is where you've got to rely on the intuition. And I state this pretty clearly in the introduction when talking about suggesting that people read the introduction from kind of start to finish, but then from there to really use the book as almost like a choose-your-own-adventure.

I guarantee if someone picks up the book and looks at the table of contents and just skims through the people that they're seeing or the opening prompts, something will jump out on the page or something like, oh, interesting, like Stephen Hawking. I wonder what that's all about. That's where you start. Because from there, there are so many jumping off points within each chapter that it will lead you to essentially lead you to your next prompt or lead you to the next set of practices that make the most sense. So I would encourage people to just follow your intuition on this. I mean, it's an age old organism that we're walking around with that has evolved to have a pretty strong intuitive superpower. So I think we can feel confident that leaning on that skill or that intuitive power will lead us in the right way. Yeah. And I think we should just back up for a minute to, for folks that haven't seen the book. I mean, this is not your typical like, you know, productivity, yada, yada, yada book.

That's going to tell you how you're going to get your tasks done or whatever. It's a, um, each there's all these sections in it where Mark starts with a good question and then has kind of a little bit of an etymology of the question, a little narrative about how the question a lot of times resonates with you, Mark. I find it just like a little essay with each question. And I've been doing it just the way you explained. I have been jumping all over the book. I've got a journal I've created in day one. And so every new question, I just create an entry for that

question. And then I actually don't even just sit down and do it in one sitting. I'll start and sometimes I'll summarize what the question means to me, and then I'll come back in a day or two and write on it. And it's not like, it's not like it's, we, we, we talk to authors and have books on the show often, but this isn't like that. I mean, it's something where it's kind of like a little self-exploratory journey. And I just, you know, for someone who was resistant to anything involving the Socratic method, you have landed with me, brother, because this is such a great idea. And I think it's such a great exercise to find out more about yourself. But I would recommend this is one of those books that you work through

as slowly as you possibly can to get the most out of it. Yeah. So I cheated because we covered it for the Bookworm podcast that I do with Joe Bielig and we read a different book every couple of weeks. So I did, in some sense, crank through it. every couple of weeks. So I did, in some sense, crank through it. I do agree with David, though, that this is very different from most of the books that I typically read. The best description I can come up with is it's an anti-systems book. Because instead of professing to give you the formula, the answers, it's giving you questions and you have formula, the answers.

It's giving you questions, and you have to find the answers for yourself, which is a much more refreshing approach to this whole subject matter, in my opinion. When you go into a book thinking, okay, so this person is professing, they're going to teach me the way. This is the way. I've climbed the mountain. Here's the tablets. Just follow the plan. You're left to question what's wrong with you when it doesn't work. But by just being curious and asking questions, you don't have any of that judgment. And I feel like you can much more quickly, much more accurately, like you can see things for the way that they really are just by approaching things curiously and not trying to decide is this good or bad. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Microsoft Lists.

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and all of RelayFM. Can we talk about the anti-systems because I'm so happy you brought that up. It was intentionally written in this way and there's a very specific reason. If you'll entertain that conversation. Let's do it.

Yeah. Because I mean, I've used the language a few times now, mental fitness, right? And just maybe for the listeners, the way I at least see mental fitness is it's the umbrella. Everything, really anything you're doing to train your mind whether that's in the moment or from a preventative standpoint falls under mental fitness which includes mental health mental performance mental resiliency and agility and all those different things just like physical exercise includes running, yoga, spinning, you know, triathlons, like a million, rowing, like a million different options. And it would be as if I would have taken the systems approach as if I'm saying to be the most physically fit in your life, you have to run a marathon every month. That's the way, that is the system or the formula to peak physical performance. And no doubt, if you're doing that, it'll probably be helpful. I mean, you might show up with some injury

along the way, but it doesn't mean that that's right for you. If you hate running, you're not going to do it, right? And I see it the same way for mental fitness because I hear this all the time. You know, oh, I've really tried meditating. I've been doing everything possible to get my meditations in. And I just, whenever I hear that,

I think, well, that kind of defeats the purpose of the meditation because it seems like you're stressed about trying to get the meditation in versus approaching this with, well, let's just ask some questions that allow people to slow down and come to the practices and come to the solutions on your own and hence the personal part, you know, in the book title of Personal Socrates. Because when it's personal and relatable to us, we just have a much higher probability of actually sticking to it, right? Even my own mental fitness routine over the years, it's been, like I said, over a decade now, the only thing that's consistent with it

is that I typically get up and dedicate at least an hour every morning, early in the morning to mental fitness. What happens within that hour always evolves. And it's always based on, okay, well, what do I need the most? Maybe I do, maybe I need some breath work. Maybe I need a longer journaling session. Maybe I just need Maybe I need some breath work. Maybe I need a longer journaling session. Maybe I just need to read something inspirational today. But it takes the pressure off of, you know, to what you mentioned, Mike, of just of not accomplishing or feeling like you didn't succeed in your training, right? So, sorry, I mean, I get passionate about this one because like all of this stuff is so available and accessible to each and every one of us and can have such, you know, tremendous benefit for our minds. But we make it so complicated and I'm guilty of doing this as well.

I mean, I have to check out every now and then or pull out of the situation and reset myself. But I just want to make this accessible to people and see like, yeah, you can do this for five or 10 minutes and literally predict the outcome of your day by just some simple questions. Yeah, you don't have to follow somebody else's formula for this. And even personally, like your formula may change. I remember you're talking about running. Like I decided one day because I had a different view of mental fitness, I'm going to run a half marathon because I hate running. And if I can do this, all the training that's involved with this, then that's the ultimate

test of mind over matter for me. I can do anything. And I did it. I over trained, which the mistake I made is pretty common for beginners. I guess I didn't cross train. My patella tendon slipped off my kneecap on the side of my leg, but I had put in a year's worth of training and gosh darn it, I was going to finish that half marathon. So I did. And I remember like running through the pain, see the finish line, cross the finish line. Oh, line oh it feels awesome i was able to persevere and then like they put the metal around your neck and you're going through the line and immediately just like a ton of bricks they hit me

now what my identity was i'm a i'm a runner but i can't run i'm hurt i have to figure out something else to do yeah oh that's yeah that's a tough one that's a tough one yeah i just you know i was i say it on the show often but we're uh we our dna difference with the monkeys is one percent and sometimes we really prove it to ourselves so true and that's why uh you know you're talking about in the first segment you shut down the app and now who am I? You know, I think there's a very nuanced detail worth calling out in your approach because you mentioned your wife was like, well, all these connections that you made, like, what was that for? Was it, was it for nothing? And no, it wasn't for nothing. You were able to leverage that sort of stuff, but you had to pivot.

And so you were running in a direction, basically, and that path got cut off. And from my experience, some of the most rewarding things that I've found to be able to do are when you can't go forward anymore and you look to the side and you see something that is adjacent and you're like, oh, that looks interesting. I'll try that. And then you find something else adjacent, something else adjacent, and pretty soon you find something that you just absolutely love to do. Exactly, right? If you remain curious, open to try, and then stack that on with the reality that we've all experienced and conquered some really hard things in our lives, and just bring those things back up, right? Like even with the app,

there are certain elements that obviously didn't work, but there were, I'd say 80% of the other elements worked and worked above any expectations that I could have ever dreamed of. So like bring those things back. Hey, you never, like we had zero app store or app experience, and we're able to reach nearly 100 million people with a product. So bring that confidence back that, well, if we could do that over there,

what's stopping me from writing a book? I've never written a book before, but I mean, surround yourself with people that know what they're doing in the space so that you've got that support and that confidence and just go it and you just you don't know where it's going to lead um but you're definitely progressing regardless like the byproduct of any of this stuff is that you're learning and you're growing and i think it's tony robbins i've read this a whole bunch of times where he just says you know know, the true unlock, the happiness, is just progress.

Feels like we're making progress in all areas. As long as it feels like we're progressing, it feels good. We've got this saying at my house, progress, not perfection. Yeah, exactly. It's not lost on me that when you're so focused on producing and you've got your goal and you're going to achieve this thing, Yeah, exactly. based on what you do or what you produce. But when you give yourself freedom to just be and engage with the present moment and the things that are around you right now,

and you do it in a way that's intentional and curious, those are some of the most rewarding experiences, the biggest aha moments where it's like, oh, I never noticed this. This is really awesome. Yeah. Well, and here's the thing with what you just said though. And, and, and, and I struggle with this, uh, daily as well, but thankfully again, the practices work and are able to at least bring me back, but just operating in regular society will always put us back to compare, you know, to others. We'll always throw in that self-doubt or fear. And so we always need the reminders and the little mini resets. And that's the consistency part that if you can nail that. And for me, a lot of that has to do with journaling and reflection because it's the mini

reset. Like, okay, yeah, this is what I had planned out. I noticed my mind's going down this track. I just need to reorient and come back on track. And we can do that almost hourly at times. And it doesn't mean that you have to be a pen to paper or an audio note. It just could be a quick, you know, conscious, you know, thought process like, oh, caught myself. But these practices give us the luxury of the, oh, I caught myself, the self-awareness, right? And the more we train, the more we do, the more we implement these practices, the more that we see and are able to just have that luxury of the micropause to take a different path and not react, but respond to the situation instead. All of this kind of circles around this idea of self-reflection. And I like to think about it in

terms of the Harry Potter pensive. Are you familiar with that? I am, but I am curious to hear your perspective on this one. Well, you know, the idea of the pensive is you can pull a thought or a memory out of your brain, I am, but I'm curious a fan of meditation is I feel like that's like my personal pensive. That's the time when I can stop and look at myself more realistically. Mike and I have a mutual friend that just recently shared with us. He said he had gone through all this therapy and stuff. He said, but none of it compared to him to meditation and journaling because it does give you that introspection of yourself that I think most of us go through life without doing, you know, without having that avenue for it. And that's why this book resonates with me, because I think it's another just excellent way to find out about

yourself. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. I appreciate that. But I say yeah in the sense of just the power of any of these reflective practices. And especially when you compare it to, and I mean, I'm a huge proponent to therapy and all these different modalities, but the thing with having a journal by your side, whether that's day one or another app or a pen and a notebook, it's there all the time. And I remember, I think it's probably about five years ago, when I was able to disconnect from the notion of having everything, because I am a longtime day one user as well, having everything in day one or having a stack of notebooks lined up on a shelf that, you know, one day I can, you know, revisit or so forth. And once I let that go and just realize, well,

the real value is using whatever medium I've got in front of me to pause and actually use the practice, which the practice is just reflection. Right. And then now, now I find like, I mean, I obviously have kind of staple moments in my schedule, usually in the morning and usually right before I go to sleep where I'll, I'll do the majority of my journaling. But if something comes up at 2 PM, you know, taking three minutes to reflect and just process whatever's happening, literally changes the course of what the rest of that day could look like, right? Stewing and whatever came up, whether it was an email or a conversation that, you know, set my mind down the wrong path.

Like, we all have the opportunity to just pause, let that go, rechannel it, whatever needs to be done. Or if you're using it to creative think or ideate on new situations or projects and so forth, I mean, it's all there right in the moment. Have you ever heard the term interstitial journaling? No. So it's a concept, and I don't know where it got started, but the idea of it is exactly what you're talking about. It's journaling as you go throughout the day, and not necessarily sitting down to ponder life's biggest questions at 2 p.m., but after you finish

recording your podcast and before you go on to writing for your next book or whatever it is that you're doing in the day, taking a moment to reflect on what just happened and what you're about to do. And when I first heard about it, I thought it was a good idea. I tried it. It didn't really land with me. But since then, I've gone back and maybe the last four or five months now, I've been doing it daily. And it's like, it's really great because it lets you, not only does it let you reflect a little bit, and like you said, this is like three minutes. It doesn't take long at all. It also allows you to transition through your day as you finish one

thing and start another thing. I find it a really good way to settle my mind into what I'm going to be working on in the next block, for lack of a better word. It's so powerful. When we finish today, I'll journal this recording before I go and do the next thing. And the concept's called interstitial journaling. There's a bunch of, I'll get some YouTube links and some stuff for the show notes. But I don't think I've ever mentioned on the show, but I've been doing this for a while. And the first time it didn't work, the second time it did for me. And I think your book would be a good partner for that. Like,

like I've been doing because I use day one, but I also use pen and paper because I've got now a journal of personal Socrates questions. I can jump into any one of them. Um, whenever I feel like it, like the one that really resonates for me lately is what is my art reflecting? I guess you got that from Picasso. And I love that question. And I keep coming back to it because I can't get my arms around my answer to that. Oh, wow.

Wow. Well, thank you. I mean, yeah. So it wasn't just for everyone listening. Some of the questions in the book, or especially the opening prompts, some are directly from the subject that I was researching or interviewing, and others are, in Picasso's case,

the prompt is actually just inspired by the research and doing the work and trying to connect, you know, just Picasso's life and the work and and guide us down some reflection. And that's one of the profiles, to be completely honest, that I personally got probably the most out of while I was writing it, because I was going through the actual exercises and the prompts myself while writing the profile. And again, it's just like there's so many of these little opportunities where we can just, if we just slow it down, we can make massive shifts from small little moments of reflection. It's just where most of us are on autopilot throughout the whole

series, through the whole journey of life, let's just say. And it's just like, these are the moments where we can pause that autopilot and see, okay, yeah, this is where I'm coming from. This is why I'm in this current place, whether it's good or bad, it's not to pass judgment, is this is why i'm in this current place whether it's good or bad it's not to pass judgment but just at least to be aware right jane austen is another uh profile that links really well with with the picasso one because it's you know who are the characters in my in my story like what what's what chapters have made up my my life so far and and to know that we all have the power to write the next chapter and we all have the power to write the next chapter and we all have the power to decide which characters we want to make up those remaining chapters. And also that if you think of like a Jane Austen novel or any great writer or movie, I mean, what makes the whole story

is a whole host of characters. Some are, you know, some of the villains, some are great, but it's not that anyone are good or bad, let's just say. They all have a purpose. And it's just, I feel like it's, you know, it's the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. You want to do anything on the web? Take a look at Squarespace first. You can stand out with a beautiful website. You can engage with your audience. You can sell anything, your products, your services,

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The Intentional Family, we launched that on Squarespace, and I love that the analytics can show us where people are tuning in from all around the world. When someone comes to me and asks about a website project, and they ask, how much is this going to cost? I say, don't even worry about it. Just go sign up for Squarespace. I'll help you build it, and then you'll be able to maintain it. I did that with my church.

I did that with a local coffee shop just the other day. I get requests like this all the time. And every single time I tell them, check out Squarespace first. Just get started with it. See if it's going to meet your needs. And every single time it does. They don't come back and they say, I need something else that Squarespace doesn't offer. Squarespace can cover it. So whether you are somebody who doesn't want to know how to do all of the web development stuff, and you just want to focus on writing your words or sharing your content or building your portfolio,

it's great. Squarespace is great for people like that. But even if you have a lot of web development experience and you just don't want to deal with all of that hassle of updating plugins and maintaining servers and things like that, then Squarespace is for you as well. For me, it's basically the starting point for just about anything web-related these days. And if you want to give it a shot for yourself, head over to squarespace.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, for a free trial. No commitment, no credit card required. You can build your site, you can see what it looks like, and then when you're ready to launch, you can use the offer code FOCUSED to save 10% off of your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash FOCUSED. And when you decide to sign up, use that offer code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, to get 10% off of your first purchase and to show your support for the Focus podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Mark, you've got this great idea about resetting our minds. Could you tell me a little bit about

that? Yes, absolutely. I mean, there are so many different ways, I think, that we can all use a reset. And the ones that come up most often are, in my opinion, the easiest way to reset our minds literally in minutes is to layer in some gratitude, right? And we can do this live now on the show. I mean, if everyone just closes their eyes, thinks of a person that you would like to thank that you haven't thanked in a long time for whatever reason, bring that person to mine and send them a message right now, a text, a direct message on social media, wherever the best medium is. And it doesn't have to be long just say hey I was just thinking about you hope you're having a great day and first of all you've just made their day they'll probably write a message back saying wow that you know thank you you just just made my day

now they just made your day and what's happening in in the background though and this is where the reset comes in is if you do that when you're stressed or you're worrying or you're anxious or you're fearful, like any of the motions that you're trying to pause and release, if you go through that practice, you're not thinking about that narrative. And you've quickly reset your mind right away. I'll go back to, you know, just because I'm actually writing a bonus profile on Tony Robbins. So a lot of his work is fresh in my mind right now. And he often says, you know, you can't be grateful and fearful or upset at the same time. It just chemically doesn't work in our minds. I love that. And that is the basis of a personal gratitude practice that my wife and I have

implemented into our, our date nights. Because this, this, I want to frame this the right way. The people that are closest to you, while they also, while they bring you the most joy, they can also make you the most upset. Yeah, exactly. Well said. the most upset. We love each other very much, but there are times when we have a weekly date night every Tuesday. There are some Tuesdays where we approach it like, oh, we know it's date night, but we're still upset about something that happened. And so the minute that we verbally express gratitude, all of that stuff just goes away. And I've told people that like, it's impossible to verbally express gratitude and still be angry at the person you're expressing

the gratitude to. I challenge people to try it all the time. Like that doesn't work. And I'm like, well, it worked for me. Yeah, no, for sure. And it's just, I mean, it makes sense if you start thinking about the mind and cause when you, when you fire up gratitude practices, you're releasing, you know, a really awesome neurochemical cocktail of dopamine and serotonin, which are all the feel-good chemicals. So, you know, it puts you in that state. And, like, another way, again, you know, if you're not feeling – and it doesn't always have to be – I find, and I'm guilty of this, but whenever I'm speaking about mental fitness or journaling, like, there's a tendency to go towards, you know, we're high stress or there's something going on and leverage these practices to shift out of those states, which is obviously very impactful and helpful. it where, you know, you, if you're trying to think of new ideas or if you're trying to get clear or trying to be more creative, you can also shift your mind immediately to, to, to, you know, have some output in whatever you're working on and, and leveraging something like a visualization or

some questions and the, the, the profiles I'm thinking about. And this one there's one on Naveen Jain and this whole language of of just imagine if you know and insert your scenario played out exactly how you wanted it to play out like how would you feel what would people be saying what would the results look like and we can use that for everything right like if you're giving a talk or a keynote or something like imagine if everyone left just whatever you or a keynote or something, like imagine if everyone left just whatever you, however you want them to leave, like inspired, motivated, like how would you feel at the end of delivering that presentation or keynote? And just, it just puts your mind immediately in a different state, right? And it blows out often a lot of the nerves like i'm using uh you know a talk of some sort of presentation as an example but i wish i had this stuff when i was in in my corporate role because

i used to be i used to pitch all the time to senior management for these million dollar brand budgets and remember feeling like going in there and just like and nervous because I need to say the right thing. There's a lot riding on literally the next 15 minutes. And had I had these type of practices, I mean, I would have changed it completely and gone in with a really calm, confident state. minutes of either journaling or visualization or a combination of both to just prime my mind in a way that will generate the outcomes I'm looking for. I have to admit that Naveen Jain profile, that one challenged me a ton as a recovering perfectionist. I have a lot of trouble envisioning the best positive scenario. It's easy for me to think of, well, what if everything went wrong? But I have to recognize that that's a tendency of mine and that usually ends up leaving me in a pretty negative state. And I need to give myself, I feel like I've made steps since going through Personal Socrates, but that was the big thing that was illuminated to me is when I read that book, that profile specifically, giving myself

permission to dream again. What if you actually were successful? Yeah. Well, so let's stay with that one for a minute because I don't think I have this public anywhere, but it's probably going to come out in the newsletter somewhat soon. And it's exactly what you just brought up, but like, what if everything goes wrong? I'm trying to think of, I think I was listening to a podcast where this came up and then it kind of inspired the writing on or the prompts for this one. So, because you can layer, you can combine the what if everything goes wrong with the imagine if everything goes right. And I would say start with writing out the kind of the dooms case scenario. And most importantly, at the end of that, write out, well, if this happens, what's my plan of attack?

Like, what is the strategy here? What are the first steps that I need to take to inch my way out of this scenario? So step one in that process then by default gives us some confidence knowing that, hey, if that ever happens, I have a plan. And then you can park that. And then, I mean, you know, days in terms of an emotional response if that situation was bothering you. Oh, yeah. I mean, what happens is your brain gets stuck on an endless loop when you're worried about something, right? And you don't know how to process it. So you just, the loop just runs over and over again. I mean, I've felt that laying in bed sometimes worried about a client problem and it just, the loop starts. And the only way out of it for me is get up and write it down.

Like put, make the enemy real, you know, and accept what it is. And what, like you said, what would you do? And all of a sudden, the fangs come out of it if you write it down. I feel like when it's this nebulous concept in your head, your brain has an ability to really do a one-over on you if you just let it roam free. It's almost like writing it down puts it in a cage. Yeah. it's almost like writing it down puts it in a cage yeah i mean the worst there's nothing worse than than just letting that mind run on default or autopilot and just you know run uh its own track because it's it's not only first of all we're as as most know we're biologically wired to just survive. So our biology hasn't actually caught up to the times that we live in. So just with that, we'll seek out more fear states because that's how we're programmed.

And then you layer on just society in general, which, I mean, you just have to fire up the news for five minutes and it's pure. Everything in there is, for the the most part negative or clickbait kind of fear-based headlines. So, I mean, if you're not consciously doing whatever you can to train your mind to be able to reset, it's really not a shock that about 80% of the population has suffered from some sort of mental health condition or knows someone that is or has. I mean, it seems obvious when you think of it from that perspective, right? So, I mean, that's, again, a huge driver to the work that I'm doing is just, again, to show that

it doesn't take a lot of time. This stuff's all accessible. We just need to find the right little formula or recipe that works for us personally. And we can really alleviate a lot of suffering that we put on our own minds. You were talking earlier about resetting, and we went through the exercise of saying, let's stop and send something grateful to someone we love. Are you familiar with the Buddhist concept of loving-kindness meditation? Have you ever bumped into that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and that is what that's about. I mean, I was trained on that like 30 years ago, and my teacher for several months had me doing loving-kindness meditation about people that I love. And then after a couple months, my teacher said, okay, now I want you

to find someone that, um, that annoys you someone that is, uh, that you don't like so much. And I want you to do loving kindness meditation on that person. And man, that was a game changer for me. Like suddenly, uh, like hacking myself to change the way I felt about people through this meditation. And it's very similar to what you're talking about, but it has, I don't know, I feel like it really can help. It's a big, but that's what I love about all this stuff is that you, and coming full circle to one of the questions that one of you had asked about like where to start in the book, for example, you start in one place and then next thing you know you're trying all of

these different practices right and other like i'm the same way with meditation i mean just slowly started with just focusing on my breath then uh that led into it's your point loving kindness meditations and all these other different modalities. And then it led to breath work. I mean, there's just so much that we can experiment with that really is, for the most part, I mean, depending, everyone's different, obviously, and going through different situations. But for the most part, there's really no downside to jumping into these things. part, there's really no downside to jumping into these things. Yeah, so true. Well, thanks so much, Mark, for coming on today. This has been great. We're going to talk a little bit more in deep focus about your specific journaling habit. But before we go, where can we send people to connect with you and find out more about what you're doing? Yeah, the easiest place,

all the links are there, the book, the podcast, socials, and all that is just at behindthehuman.com. It's also the name of the podcast, but that website is essentially my personal brand and I'm accessible. So please, I mean, I'd love to hear from people, especially if you want to share any prompts

or reflective questions that have been really impactful for you I'd love to share those with the community awesome thanks again for coming on thanks to our sponsors today Indeed, Microsoft Lists and Squarespace and we'll talk to you all in a couple of weeks