Shadé Zahrai: The Dangerous Mindset Secretly Holding Entrepreneurs Back | Mental Wealth Series | E3

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You talk about these common pitfalls. We all encounter in this journey of entrepreneurship. You call them mindpets.

“Can you explain what these mindpets are that entrepreneurs face?”

A lot of people who are lurking on social media, they're in this space. They have these amazing goals. They want to run these amazing businesses and have these following social media and do all these great things. They will feel ready at some point, but they're not taking action.

And when we look at decades' worth of research, there's one very common overarching theme. What do you think it is? Perfection. And it's overthinking. Sometimes you just need to make a decision, commit to it, and even if after a number

of years you realize, "Hey, it doesn't let my fire anymore, you still had that journey of growth." And what is your secret to profiting and life? My secret to profiting in life would be. Hey, out of them, we're officially in week three of our four week mental wealth series.

Where we're learning how to scale our businesses without losing our minds. Today we're sitting down with performance psychology expert Shadezare to talk about the mental traps that keep entrepreneurs stuck from overthinking and imposter syndrome to productivity

guilt and that inner critic that never lets you rest.

To get the most out of today's episode, grab your free 30-day mental wealth playbook at yatmedia.com/mentalwealth. This week's work sheet is all about teaming the inner critics. You're going to identify exactly which inner deceiver is sabotaging your success, and turn that voice into an inner coach instead.

Let's get right into it. Again, you can download your work sheet at yatmedia.com/mentalwealth. Shadez, welcome to Young Improvening Podcast. Thank you, Hala. It's such a delight to be here.

I am super excited for this interview, and when I was doing my research, I found out that you have a really interesting backstory. Your success was a long time in the making. You bounced around after college, you worked in law, you worked in business, banking. So can you start off with a little bit about your career journey, what you dabbled in,

“and how you ended up figuring out what you wanted out of your professional life?”

Yeah, it was a really interesting and varied journey. That's for sure.

I think the best ones always are.

When you're figuring out your way as you go. So I went to college. I studied psychology and law. I always thought I wanted to be a psychologist. When I was in law school, though, I was pushed down the route of commercial law, because

everyone around me just seemed so driven. So I spent the first four years of my career in a commercial law firm. And it was just the worst fit for me. I'm totally non-confrontational. I don't enjoy that kind of work, and I found myself in this environment where I almost felt

sick about going to the office every single day. So a new wasn't for me. I had so much self-doubt and imposter syndrome as well. To the point that I would hide behind my cubicle, so people didn't know I was there.

“Couldn't give me tasks because I was convinced I would fail and I wouldn't know what to do.”

Not a good fit. Decided to move into the banking and finance space. Expecting that a new start would mean I would leave the self-doubt behind me. But it just came right along, like a bad smell, couldn't get rid of it. And it stuck with me for many, many years.

And so through that journey, though, I spent seven years in that environment, I had a lot of exposure. I worked in the strategy team. I worked in retail distribution sales. What I discovered, though, was that the thing that really lit my fire had nothing to do

with my day job. And everything to do with these moments of connection I would have with people, who would ask for my help? Unrelated to, again, my job, but they'd come and say, "Shaday, I've got a presentation coming up.

Can you help me prepare?" Or, "I want to apply for this role. Can you help me prepare?" I'd never positioned myself as the go-to coach within the company, but people just started seeking me out because I loved it so much.

So that, for me, was the, that inner kindling of a sign that I need to get out and do more of that, finding ways to directly help people outside of an organization. So then, this is now, after 10 years of being in the corporate space, took me a really long time. I discovered I needed to leave, or I decided I was going to leave probably seven years

the transition.

“Now, I'm, I'm going ahead in the story, but I think it's a really interesting piece”

that got where I am now.

So, I had, so again, 10 years corporate, my husband and I had decided, okay, we're leaving,

we're going to relocate, we were in Australia at that time, we were moving to Southeast Asia to be closer to the rest of the world and closer to some of the clients that we had. We also had plans to really expand our business. We were dabbling in it when I was an employee, but this was it, we were going all in. So I leave, I have a week before the flight that's taking us to Southeast Asia and you

home. That was March 20th, 2020, is when I leave my corporate job. The flight is seven days from then. In that seven days, I mean, we'd sold our couch and we'd packed most of our things. And then, the pandemic takes hold.

COVID-19 is everywhere, international restrictions hit, and we're not allowed to leave the country. So our flight is canceled, we still have no couch, thankfully we didn't sell the bed in the fridge.

“But we were then left there thinking, what are we meant to do?”

We just had this wonderful plan to go and start a new life to expand the business and every

single client engagement had been canceled or postponed. So now we're left almost twiddling our thumbs. Had no idea how to reach people. And this is when this is when I have the idea of thinking, okay, well, what is our business do we help people at that time, our business was essentially a leadership firm, specializing

in positive leadership, empowering teams, working with organizations, developing, change readiness in people. We're like, okay, what we can't go to the companies because we're not able to fly and everyone's in lockdown. But how do we still reach people?

It's like, maybe we can get on social media. Now back then, that was a foreign thing to me, absolutely foreign to my husband. And I thought, let me try TikTok. Everyone was talking about it. It was this new thing, and now my husband, Faisal, was saying, he's my business partner,

and he was saying, this is for kids, this is for 15 year old who were dancing and singing. Don't go on there. It might be a little bit embarrassing for you, but I thought, well, this is low risk. No one knows me there. Let me give it a shot.

So I recorded 40 pieces of video content on confident self belief, managing workplace challenges, gratitude, mental health and well-being, positive psychology. 40 pieces, I scripted them in a day, recorded them the next day, in a row, I just changed my hair and outfit, which meant I had 40 days worth of content, and I couldn't back down. So then, from the next day, I start posting every single day.

And now, the reason why I did it that way is because I know that if something doesn't work out for me, if I don't see traction in a couple of days, I assume, well, hey, I gave it a shot. It's not for me. And then I give up.

“But this way, I had 40 days, and I could not back down, and it was the best thing I could”

have done, because on day 21, prior to day 21, there was no traction. No engagement whatsoever. But day 21, something happened. One of the videos caught the attention of the algorithm, and it went viral. Within four weeks, we had 75,000 followers, within a number of months.

It was over 200,000 followers, and we thought, we're actually connecting with people. And it all started from the 40 videos. And from a business perspective, of course, there's a fulfillment of reaching people and helping people, but from a business perspective, we started then having companies all around the world, Fortune 500, finding me on TikTok, and reaching out for a webinar for

their teams. So then we had JP Morgan, Switzerland, and Microsoft UK, who found me on this platform that we thought was for kids. And then that's how we had our initial entry point into these companies, and it has since taken our business completely global, because now short from content is such a core part

of what we do. So that's, yeah, that's the journey.

Yeah, that's amazing, thank you for sharing that story.

And I'm going to dig into TikTok a little bit, and your strategy on social media and building your personal brand. And it's amazing and very inspiring that you were able to pivot during the pandemic, totally change your client acquisition strategy, basically, and attract all these Fortune 500 companies to work with you.

But I do want to dig into how you became an entrepreneur, because so many people who listen to my podcast right now are young, they're in corporate jobs, they have side hustles, they want to become an entrepreneur. So my question to you is, was entrepreneurship natural for you, or was that a hard thing for you to adapt to, like being in corporate for 10 years?

Was it hard for you to actually work for yourself and let go of the safety net of a corporate job? You know, this is such a great question, and something I often think about because the, I call them, you know, like that analogy, how if you see there's a, you know, baby elephant, and they'll chain it up when it's a baby.

And then it learned that it cannot go beyond a certain distance. And then when that baby elephant is an adult, it doesn't have changed anymore, it just has a little piece of work tied around its leg, and it's not even attached to anything, but that elephant has become so ingrained with that belief that it cannot move that it

Same principle with corporate, I was very good at fitting a mold, being what everyone wanted me to be, being the yes person, doing what I was told, and I did it really well, and I excelled in my career because of it, but of course, in doing that, I then took that

with me, this need for validation, this need to always feel like I'm working, I haven't

been able to shake it, so it's funny that, you know, it's been however many years since I've left, I still take that with me.

“So that transition was really quite difficult, and that's why it took me a full three years”

to really prepare myself and get ready for the transition out. So my transition, if I take those three years and just give you a couple of key insights as to what I was doing to get me ready, firstly, I was really clear on the fact that I knew my vision was not to stay where I was, it was really clear that I had a vision for financial freedom, I had a vision for, you know, living life on my own terms, running

a business that really lit me up inside and was genuinely helping people. So I kept that front of mind, because the moment that dies down, you just get stuck in the doing, and then 10 years past, 20 years past, you're still stuck in your corporate environment or your full-time job. So I really clear on that, I also started implementing pieces that would get me closer to where I needed to go.

So I was offering my speaking for free, which did two things. One, it gave me a lot of good practice, because I'll tell you now, I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but it forced me to get in front of stages to clarify a message and to become comfortable with that. And the second thing is it gave me great exposure to companies who later became clients. I was also recording everything I was doing, so I was getting snippets and putting

them online. And then I was also accepting some coaching clients, so for me an easy transition out was to run a bit of a coaching business on the side, that was my side hustle. So I had been doing that for about three years. When it came to making the decision, I'll be completely honest, my husband. So I needed another person to give me the push and

“say, that's it. We're doing this. No more focusing on the risk. So I think for for many”

people, if you don't have someone in your life who backs you and believes you've tried to find one, doesn't have to be a business partner, but just someone a mentor, someone who was done it before who you can look at, it's the role modeling of a motivational theory of role modeling. When you find someone who is done what you've done, and my husband has

been an entrepreneur most of his life, he's run amazing businesses, scaled businesses, run

a company similar to what we're doing now in South Korea. He's he's journey's been amazing himself, because he'd done it. I could see it. And then I was more ready to take that leap. I think back in, you know, I wonder if he wasn't in my life. It probably would have taken me another few years to really feel ready, because at the time I didn't have a role model who had transitioned out. So the fact that a lot of your listeners have you and have the

guests that you're speaking about and speaking with, sorry, that in itself is that role modeling of I've seen people who have done it. What is their journey? And it reminds them, hey, I can do it too. Yeah. This sounds like it reminds me of my own journey. I started my company as a side hustle during the pandemic. And my role model was my first client, Heather Monahan,

“and she was so adamant. She was like, you need to quit your job. You're going to have a”

million, like, multi-million dollar business. Like, you're crazy for staying in corporate and she would push me and push me and then finally I quit my job. So you're so right, having somebody in your corner, and somebody who's been where you want to be. Like, she's an entrepreneur. She's a speaker. She's an author. She's really like somebody who I aspire to be like in 10 years. She thought before, I could see it. Right. So I'm sure your husband also saw the same when you. So did you have

any benchmarks? I remember it took me six months to leave corporate. I was already making six figures a month and had 30 employees. And I still didn't leave my job. Did you have any benchmarks? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Oh. Yeah. It took me a long time to to quit my job because I was just, I had a great job at Disney and I didn't want to let it go. What was the turning point for you? I'm curious. So what was that moment where you said, okay, this is I got on the cover of podcast

magazine. There you go. It's just like, all right. I'm like, obviously a top podcaster and this is not a fluke. And so I quit my job. And you know, yeah, how about you? Tell me about what benchmarked, did you have like a certain number that you wanted to hit or goal that you wanted to achieve before you were like, okay, I'm done with my corporate job. I'm going to pivot now into this entrepreneurship space. I did. So when I started working in corporate, I had a salary figure in mind only because I'd

heard someone else mention it when I was still in college. And I was like, that sounds pretty good. I don't even know if that's something I can I can get because back then I was so limited by what I thought was possible because I hadn't seen anything outside of that. And what I mean by that is when

I think about my family and the role models that I had, you know, my dad was always the one who would

get up and go to work. My mother, she sacrificed her professional career to raise the kids. And she has a business of very small business that does well. She runs it from home. She's a beauty therapist

one who played that role. So for me, I didn't have a vision as to, you know, a career for myself.

“I just went to university. I went to college because that's what you did. And then I thought,”

well, you get your first job. That's what you do. The rest of it came along the way, came on the journey. But initially, I had a salary figure in mind. And which was great. I think it's important to have something to work towards. So long as it is achievable yet a stretch, it can't be something

that you'll never get to because that's actually demotivating. And then I got there. And

like anyone else who is goal motivated or goal oriented, you get there and you're like, okay, well, maybe I can push it out just a little bit further. Maybe I can get just to the next level or get another 20K or you actually set your destination. And then when you get to your destination, you don't stand on the mountain and think, wow, I got here. You think, okay, well, which other mountain can I go and scale now? So there's this constant need to do something else. So that's

kind of what happened. I hit my salary expectation. What I didn't think was possible at the time. And it wasn't as hard to get as I thought. And then I thought, okay, well, let me try this one.

“And then I kept setting these new goals. So again, that's why for me, it was so important to have”

ISIL to say, okay, you can do this. Why are you wasting your time here? Move along and for you it was having Heather. And I think you said it so beautifully. They believe in you even when you don't. They can see a path for you even where you can't. They've been there before. I actually shared something on LinkedIn recently about how when we look at mentors and career development. There are different types of mentors you can have. And one of them is the champion. And the

champion is someone who sees the path that you can follow. And then advocates for you to get on that path. And then there's others at the supporter and the challenger. But having someone who has been there

and then gives you that not just amazing. Not everyone has the luxury of having that. And that's why

you can also find that through people on social media that you follow or listening to podcasts like this. You can do it vicariously through others. But it's beautiful that you had that story yourself. Yeah, fam. I'm all about doing health recess. I'm on a health kick this year. I tried juice cleanses, cutting sugar completely, even intermittent fasting. But they didn't stick for me because they were just too hard to follow too strict. And so I was on the hunt of a way to lose

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you were in law. You were in banking all these different things and I talked about skill stacking a lot on the show because it's something that I really believe in and I think a lot of young people they are under this mentality that should be paid right out of college and they're not really serious about acquiring skills and for me that seems like a really big problem because I've somebody who's been working since I was 15 having all these different jobs getting all these experiences

“and I think that's what made me really successful entrepreneur like from the start of me starting”

a company. It's because I had all these experiences and I worked for free for a long time and many different instances I worked at a radio station for free for three years right and so I'm with you also did speaking engagements for free because you need to build up skills somehow and sometimes you get compensated with experience and knowledge and know how. So talk to us about how all these different experiences that you had 10 years leading up to you being entrepreneur actually enabled you

for success once you did start your business. There's as you said there's this fallacy that I've gone to college I'm going to get a job and be paid really well and then that's just my career I'll just I'll be recognized for the hard work that I do and it will come to me and we know that's not reality and so you call it skills stacking is that the term you gave you a skill stacking yeah we call it a career multipliers so it's this idea that and we use the analogy of a look so you

know when you travel and you have those locks and they have the dials on them and you set the dials and usually they come with three dials if I'm not mistaken there's a reason why they come with three and not two or one because one dial is way too easy for someone to crack it's one in nine or one in ten if you can't zero. Two again way too easy once you get to three it's more complicated now in the same way when it comes to thinking about your career and when I was thinking about what my

journey is going to look like if I had a really linear path it would be like having a career I mean a a a lock from my luggage really valuable luggage with just one lock on it and guess what there are a lot of other people out there with just one lock on their little career luggage as well. I'm not any different to anyone else so the question I was asking myself is how can I have these career multipliers that allow me to acquire these skills that are different

because every skill set you develop as you say comes together and converges into this really

“beautiful unique package that you offer and no one else does and that's why I often tell people”

the more varied your background the more value you add because you come from things from a different perspective you're able to question things challenge the status quo rather than just accepting

and the worst thing you can say is it's always been done this way or that's just what we've always

done it's the worst thing you can say it kills creativity kills innovation so on my journey there were so many things I did I also spent time as a professional dancer while I was at university which taught me the value of having a goal and working really hard to achieve that goal and pushing your body but also playing to your strengths I'm not flexible and so my dance partner and I we were like we're not going to try and compete on flexibility let's compete on what we

do really well which is turn patterns which is really unique choreography if we tried to compete on the thing I was not good at we would have just failed it would have been miserable probably torn a muscle so again finding out what you're good at giving yourself the experiences volunteers you say volunteering for things doing them for free now of course there comes a time when you make that transition point you can't just do things for free forever how like you probably

have experienced is where people still reach out and say hello will you come and speak to this audience you'll get exposure yeah no pay but exposure you know you've got to know you

is how can I create these multipliers what else can I do and then reminding yourself that no matter

what you've done there's always a lesson or an insight you can gain my legal experience taught

me the value of having an attention to detail it also taught me that I don't like confrontation I like to work through things in a really harmonious way you know someone could say well that's

“because your female I disagree I think part of it is also just my nature how I am and so I learned”

in a legal environment that that is not for me because of that quality that I really value and I have brought that people orientation to everything that I do there's so many ways that even the biggest waste of time or the failures that we had you know they're not even failures because we learn the most only though if we choose to seek out and mine the experience for the lesson I really really love this lock analogy and it reminds me of preparing for this AI revolution that's going on

it's it's what makes us uniquely human the fact that we can have all these different experiences and knowledge in different areas and that way your job security is a lot safer in the future because your a unique person with a unique set of skills and you can design a business that really is optimized for those skills that you've acquired over your career so I love this advice okay let's get back to your TikTok so you ended up blowing up on TikTok you then took an army channel approach

and started you're following on Instagram which is really impressive LinkedIn which is really impressive for my understanding you were actually pretty nervous to be behind a camera or it wasn't really natural to you how did you overcome that because now you've got incredible stage presence

“and you're exuding confidence so how did you overcome that I just did it so I so if I think back”

even to my speaking career I loved speaking but I was so nervous doing it I would freeze up my whole body would be taken over by stress and anxiety and but I loved it so I thought how am I going to get over this fear while I'm just going to do it I'm going to put myself in that position where I decensitize myself to those emotions it's basically like if you think about I spots the way people are doing it now I haven't done it myself have you ever been in a lot of stuff I spot an ice bath yeah

yes or ice bath yeah I've done cool showers now I had Wim Hof on this show so like I know

oh I never did it yeah but the idea is you're desensitizing your body and desensitizing

that stress reaction to remind yourself that hey it's okay I've got this so you're almost overriding this natural biological instinct that you have with control and it's remarkable the benefits are remarkable as you know the same thing was for me when it came to speaking I needed to put myself in that position enough times that I no longer reacted to those butterflies in my stomach as though I was about to vomit and I started to think well actually know this gives

me energy that allows me to project further this gives me the care factor that I need to do a

“really good job so it allowed me to redefine it but I had to do it and that's why for me doing the”

free things upfront was really great because the standard was much lower in terms of what people were expecting and what I was expecting of myself it was free so I started small did them for free built it up same thing applied with video so when I came to doing video at that time I was still comfortable to be on stage I'd done it enough times that I didn't have that fear but video is totally different for some reason for me I couldn't I couldn't cross that bridge to just feel

comfortable with it I think it's because you record it and then you watch it back and you're so vulnerable I also knew that you know when you post a video online so if we move into the psychology space when we do that I'd love to finish and research and this psychology research

we make a first impression about someone in milliseconds so quickly and it's based on how that

person looks their demeanor their facial expressions even the initial tone of their voice their body language all of these things and typically we judge people on two things when we first meet them warmth do I like this person do I trust this person and then secondarily competence do I respect this person do I believe what they're saying do I believe that they are capable and competent so we make these assessments now when you're sharing static posts it's much easier to demonstrate

competence because it's words on a page the warm factor might come through in how relatable you are in your wording but it's a very different level to when you're putting a video out because people are seeing you there's seeing your face hearing your voice making these assessments about your micro expressions and then making an assessment is to whether they lack you or not whether they respect you or not it happens very quickly and so of course on the one side it gives video so much

power because people really quickly know whether they lack you or not so the people that choose to

5% of people who follow because they just want to troll or hate you know all love to them they're

“going through their own challenges but generally that's what we find happening so I was at that”

turning point where I needed to get comfortable on video I just did it before I did the 40 videos I'd started creating just a few short videos for LinkedIn really short helping employees mainly within the work environment how can they navigate work from home how can they navigate challenges with their teams etc I did maybe three of them and they were not very good like they were really not very good that's completely objectively not very good bad quality setup I had a little

microphone the lighting was okay but not very good but then I recorded these 40 videos I just put myself in a position where I said look whenever we start something new it's going to be a little

and that's okay embrace the shit because then you have all this room to grow from shit it's actually

better sometimes to start low because then you can only go up from here one of the things I've found since many years now down the track is sometimes I'll create a really great piece of content how let me know if you've experienced this really beautiful piece of content you share it and you think how am I going to top that and and I will hold off for a couple of days rather than posting regularly because I'm thinking well I've just posted something beautiful how

do I mean anyway these these things these stories that we tell ourselves but for me just getting comfortable with it required me to actually do it and then detach myself from the outcome yeah it's

“really good advice and it's really inspiring and I think something else that you did that was really”

smart I have a social media agency and I'm a huge link and influencer and the way that I stood out on LinkedIn was talking about something that nobody was talking about which was podcasting right and I stood out nobody was talking about it everybody in the beginning would tell me you know this is not Facebook why are you posting this and but it helped me succeed because I stood out and like you at a time when everybody was just doing dances on TikTok you were putting out this like educational

content and probably really helped you succeed because you decided to stick out so my next question in terms of building your personal brand is when you decided to branch off from TikTok and take this Omni channel approach did you actually study the platforms or was your content just so good that like you just put out your videos everywhere and it just seemed to work no matter what platform you put it on back then it was it was such a genuine intent it was really just hey if this health one

person fantastic because we were coming at it from zero like we we had nothing to lose so I just posted and I didn't even know what time to be posting I didn't even know initially that I was meant to be

“putting captions on to make the more accessible all of these things I just posted I think you're right”

though we got onto that platform when it was emerging when there were not many people doing the style of video that we were doing the talking head helping people style video and so that was really unique and people resonated really strongly and now it's exploded which is wonderful we then obviously had this Omni channel viewer like okay well let's take that content and just put it on the other platforms took me a really long time to get it onto Instagram though because Instagram was my

you know people knew me on Instagram and so there's this oh what are they going to think they're

gonna cringe you know I think there's always this transition point when you're going from where you

are now and all the people that know you where you are to where you want to be and it's almost like the people that know you now are actually not the people that you necessarily want in your community in terms of who you want to be because they're they're in a different world but that making that transitions really hard so for Instagram took a lot longer to get onto there but the response was really positive the hardest for me was getting onto LinkedIn though sharing the content on LinkedIn

because LinkedIn was my prized corporate contacts you know leaders of companies I'd worked with and general managers and and I felt so much scrutiny in terms of what will they think of me once we were doing really well though one takes off an Instagram I thought you know what I don't really care actually I don't really care and there are people who have chosen to leave people in that initial network that I worked with who have chosen to leave that platform or leave the connection

or unfriend or whatever it's called on LinkedIn because my content doesn't resonate with them which is totally okay because I want people who resonate with my content to be in my communities so yeah there was an interesting transition you just have to do it yeah that's awesome congratulations so you're using too as well whatever remarkable story thank you so let's talk about psychology I know that your expertise is really high performance for employees for entrepreneurs overcoming

self-disception like self-doubt, mind pits, inner critics and being an entrepreneur is hard right and you've talked about the importance of having the right mindset and you talk about these common pitfalls we all encounter in this journey of entrepreneurship you call them mind pits can you

so we were coming across a lot of people whether it was through the Fortune 500 we were working with but also in the entrepreneurial community and we were hearing this common frustration that they were underperforming and we wanted to figure out what is it that differentiates those who were super high performing and really happy from those who feel like they're underperforming

they have these amazing goals but they're not getting there and we recognize that there are some

cognitive differences differences and how people approach things and so our business and part of my PhD research is looking into this cognitive difference and fundamentally it comes down to how people approach their goals I mean there's there's a lot to it but I'm going to start just with the how people approach their goals piece so we discovered these mind pits which people resonate with they've either been in one or been in all of them and there are three as you mentioned so the first

one that we identified is where someone and a lot of people who are lurking on social media they're in this space how I imagine a lot of people who follow in your community are also in this space they have these amazing goals they want to run these amazing businesses and have these following's on social media and do all these great things and they're researching and consuming and telling themselves that they will feel ready at some point but they're not taking action

so they're stuck right at the beginning we call it failure to launch they're not launching and when we look at decades worth of research there's one very common overarching theme what do you

“think it is perfection perfection and it's overthinking it's believing that you must be perfect otherwise”

people will judge you people will criticize you what will you know what if I fail what will that do to me this this overthinking that is fueled by perfection leads to complete stagnation now when we think about the brain the brain is wired to magnify what we focus on it's it's an evolutionary survival mechanism that we have which is designed to keep us alive the negativity bias however when it comes to our goals and what we want to achieve if we listen to that voice in our

head it will convince us that what we might fail the risk is too high don't do it and so we wait we hold back so this is failure to launch now if anyone listening is in failure to launch there's one really simple and it's almost so simple it's almost counterintuitive really simple approach that comes from the research on goals Peter Goldwitzer is the expert the researcher psychologist who's looked into this and it's really simple those who are able

to take action on their goals they do three things which is captured in something called a goal intention they just specify when they're going to get started where they're going to do it and what they're going to do and they usually have a phrase of at in I will so they actually

“set themselves a goal and then you must take action don't let perfect get in the way of good enough”

for now remember embrace the shit good enough for now doesn't mean that's where it's always

going to be that's you getting started you want to start in an environment where you know you can grow and you can develop I want to just quickly tell you how my first or I think my second every video on TikTok so my first one I was doing one of those voice you know like where you you do someone else's voice you take the audio and you just mind it and then I had some messages about career and confidence pop up that was my first one my second one was a viral dance so I thought

that I had to create a dance in order to get any kind of cup through on that platform and then thankfully I learned didn't need to do that but the point is I just did it I knew that it was only going to go up from there so you just gotta get started that's my fit number one failure to launch and I know I've been in this sometimes I mean I I have wanted to do some things for so long

“and I keep convincing myself oh not yet not yet I think one of the greatest antidotes to growth”

is not yet it's good that has the word yet in it because growth mindset it means it may come but not yet is you giving yourself an out so find something and just just do it mine pit one failure to launch now mine pit two is a really interesting one so we discovered this initially I was having an interaction with this gentleman this was back in Australia and he was a highly talented young man he was one year from finishing his PhD research so he'd spent I think three or four

years doing rigorous research and and experiencing the world of academia then he came to me for some guidance and was coaching him and he said that he was going to drop out and then he also

shared that he'd half finished his masters he's second masters which was an MBA to pursue the PhD

so he hadn't finished that either and it seemed like he was just not able to see things through he wasn't getting anywhere with all these part completed commitments and he was trading water so he was exhausting himself without going anywhere and this is the second mind pit we call it trading water this is where people have so many goals and they're so excitable that they will start something and then get bored and then try something else and then go somewhere else and sign up for a

self-help books and they've read one chapter it's this kind of behavior of too many things that

“you want to do that you don't take action so the reason why we get stuck here have you ever been”

in this in this one I don't fall into the first few buckets I fall into the last oh got it okay that one's coming that's coming this one it's driven by self doubt where your questioning is this the right thing for me should I be doing this maybe I should do that you also you know boredom comes when you've been doing something for a while the initial dopamine hit tends to wane and so you think well this is not as exciting as I thought it would be let me try something else and then hey

that's really exciting initially because new is always exciting yeah you don't mean hit and then

it fades so you never commit 100 percent now here's really interesting thing this gentleman I was

speaking to he did end up quitting his PhD he dropped out I don't know how someone does that after four years but he did and he started a charity working with under privileged youth and he's still doing that five years later and he is extremely fulfilled and he's found his purpose so what we discovered is that when a lot of people are in this pit it's actually not that you can't

“commit it's just that you're doing the wrong things and you're doing too many things you need to”

just ask yourself what is the most important thing for me to do right now and so a really simple approach here is to remind yourself of the meaning of what you're doing and make sure that it aligns with who you want to be and there's two quick tips I want to share here the first one is in 18 knowing 1987 different century 1987 there were these two researchers valetron Wagner and they proposed a way to understand how we interpret and think about our actions and so basically there's a

range so we have a low level identification where we focus on the how of an action the mechanism so how about right now we're sitting and talking that's the low level mechanism the high level is where you emphasize the why of the action it's the purpose the goal of the action so it's empowering entrepreneurs with tools to improve and transform their lives that's the why it's so important we know this right we need to tap into the why in order to feel that motivation

but also to make sure that what we're doing is the right thing so I encourage anyone who might

be in this bucket or in this category hone into the high level meaning there's always a low

level meaning what's the high level meaning and then the second very very quick tip is some people in this state because they don't have the motivation the moment something challenging comes their way they crumble and they just say oh not for me I'm going to try something else and so we encourage you to do something called a pre-mortem a pre-mortem is a concept in the project management world it's also called inversion to really simple technique you proactively think about all the things that

could go wrong all of the obstacles that could get in your way and then you trouble shoot before they happen what will you do you develop something called an implementation intention it's your coping plan if then now fascinating the research from Peter Gaulwitz or tells us if you develop an implementation intention you're going to be three times more likely to achieve your goal simply by having your if then plan so if I start to lose motivation then I will remind myself of my

purpose and then reach out to my mentor if something else then I'll do something else really simple so that's for our second mind pit let me let me ask you one follow-up question about this son because I think trading water is actually really really dangerous for people's careers I have a lot of

friends that fall into this bucket and what happens is that they they never become very successful

or make a lot of money because they don't have the discipline to focus and just get good at something even if it's temporary even if you like work at something for four years and then you decide to quit that's okay but if you never actually get anything done you just end up just going in circles going in circles and really never actually creating a career for yourself and even experiences because you don't get far enough to really get skills so I just want to call out that if you

“feel like you're falling in this bucket you need to understand that focus is so important to actually”

grow skills and make money later on and I think that you know finding how to have that discipline finding your wife finding your purpose and really sticking to something even if you don't necessarily like it for a little bit just again the skills is really important. Totally there was this beautiful quote I can't remember who said it but it's more is lost through indecision than the wrong decision sometimes you just need to make a decision commit to it and even if as you say even if after

a number of years you realize hey it doesn't let my fire anymore you still had that journey of growth you've still learned you skills you've skilled stacked as you'd say yeah right you've developed those career multipliers because you chose to take that path okay number three okay number three so this is the one holiday that you're in and I am in it and I think a lot of people are in it it's the inability to be still you keep pushing without giving yourself a break you feel guilty

next one into your GPS right it's never enough for you so it's not that you have a discipline

problem at all you have iron discipline you you're just not able to see that actually your work and you are not one in the same that there is a distinction between what you're producing on yourself worth we call it destination obsession you're addicted to achievement it's also the reason why a lot of people will get to the end of their day busy work day they're in bed they know they should be sleeping but actually they're lying they're scrolling on their devices it's

called revenge bedtime procrastination and the reason why we do it when we have really busy day time lives and a lot of that is self-imposed we might be bringing on a lot of that to ourselves that moment right before bed is the only moment of personal control that we have and we know that

the sooner that we sleep the sooner tomorrow arrives and then we have to get back to doing it all

again so we want to try and hold on to that as long as we can and then we sleep later because we're on social media so we're revenge bedtime procrastination this is also the realm of productivity guilt you stop working holiday you feel guilty when you actually stop working yeah I've gotten better at it but yes for sure I for a long time I couldn't even not work weekends because I will be about it yeah and is that where you like that when you're in employee or only when you

became an entrepreneur but it's been more so when I was an entrepreneur it's really interesting I felt exactly the same thing and for me a big part of it is when I worked in the corporate space I would you know you work and then you get your salary it's it goes hand in hand so work and money come together when you're an entrepreneur it doesn't necessarily go like that you can you

“can design your your work in such a way that it's not time for money I mean that's what you want”

to do right it's not time for money you don't have to be working ridiculous hours but a lot of us do it because in our brain we have this belief that if I'm making money then I must be working and if I make more money then I just must work more it's almost it's gone the other way and it's very confusing for us and it's one of these things that drives this productivity orientation so in this position the best thing you can do if you're if you're here and how I'd love to ask you

what you've done because you said you're getting better at it actually before I even share my tip what have you done that has really been effective for you? I think that I I understood that I needed to temporarily put everything into my business for about four years where I just really worked 16 hour days, worked through every weekend, really put my relationships I still cared about my relationships but I deprioratized that and really prioritized my career and then there came

a certain point where I achieved a level of success and I was able to train more team members I have a big team where I just felt like okay like weekends are off limits now and I just started setting these boundaries still work with really late oftentimes but I I'd give myself the opportunity to have like no meeting Wednesdays and then sometimes I can go like get a facial or do get my nails done or do whatever I want I go on vacations all the time now so it's just I just basically realize that

that sacrifice was temporary and I no longer needed to do that anymore and you know there's just

“different phases of your life I think it's important to sacrifice at some point to get to where you”

want to go but you can't do that forever it's not healthy absolutely and it's beautiful that you have created a life now that gives you the freedom you knew that you needed to put in the four years and then unlike a lot of people who would get to the end of the four years and think well I just I want to just keep going because I was able to do it and maybe I can take my business to even higher level and it's just myth again that we're living where we think we must just

always be connected and always on but you've created that boundary which is so important and that's

essentially when it comes to this pit this mind pit this cognitive space that we're stuck in there's no magic pill it's gonna make it go away other than setting a boundary with yourself because people in this pit are really good at getting things done right they're very good at getting things done and so because we make time for what we prioritize we actually need to prioritize the brakes prioritize the weekends off the days off to go and get the facial or whatever that is

and then make them meaningful so again if we look at that high level low level meaning the low level is I'm taking a day off work the high level meaning is I'm taking this day to rejuvenate to become my best self to build up my internal stores of energy so I can be my best for my team to lead my business and go harder so it's having that the meaning behind your brakes

“and then even just starting really small going for a walk at disconnecting from tech so I think”

we are so connected to our devices and it's just getting worse I mean with AI it's a wonderful

where technology actually does alleviate a lot of the daily grind currently it's done a lot to

help it but it's also again made us completely connected I was having a conversation with Professor Pierce Deal who's one of the foremost researchers in the realm of procrastination and he said this beautiful line he said we're amusing ourselves to death on social media with all of these extra things that we're occupying ourselves with and I completely agree and I think we're also killing our creativity by working so hard for so long taking these brakes helps I mean how do you

feel after you have your no meetings or you know work Wednesdays or you know the days where you go and invest in yourself how do you feel when you come back totally re-energize completely like

and you as an entrepreneur especially if you have employees you're responsible for the energy

of the company so before when I was just working working working working like that made everybody anxious you know and now just more calm understanding relaxed and I think that that improves the energy management of the company overall too completely does and there are flow and effects to performance and engagement and it's interesting when we look at again a lot of the psychology around the effect of a leader there's something called trait-affective presence which I call I mean

the researchers called it like a psychological vibe it's essentially how people feel when they're in your presence but also when they're just thinking about you and you can be someone who they feel energized by when they're around when they're thinking of or deenergized by and so as a leader

“as an entrepreneur as a business owner it's so important that you do what you need to do to be that”

source of positive energy because again as you said emotions are contagious if you're feeling anxious if you're working so hard people are going to feel it no matter how much you try and hide it so I just want to quickly mention for anyone listening if you're really interested to learn a little bit more about these mind pits and do a little self assessment to determine which mind pit you might be stuck in I have created a special resource which you can download at shadayserai.com/mindpits

so it's s-h-a-d-e-z-a-h-r-a-i.com/mindpits which is m-i-n-d-p-i-t-s and then you'll be able to figure out which when you're in although you probably know how like you knew I knew which one I was definitely in yeah if you guys want that quiz I'll stick it in the shownouts for you to make it really really easy what's up yap gang you know starting a business sounds exciting until you realize it's suddenly you're the marketer designer tech support and operations team all at once and that can

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overcome them so so the first one is the classic judge the classic judge is that voice in your

“heads it your head that judges you for what you did what you didn't do what you should have done”

it's just you can't do anything right by the classic judge so the default critical voice

classic judge hmm the victim the victim is the voice in our heads that leads us to feel completely powerless who am I to do anything differently who am I to make a change you're focusing on things outside of your control the victim also leads you not to take any responsibility for anything generally you don't you can't identify that you have a victim because it won't let you but other people in your life will think oh yes okay that I can see that in you

so it's one of those that has a double double edge you don't notice it in yourself but other people do the protector the protector we call it the yeah the misguided protector it's role is to try and keep you safe from harm now the harm that it's perceiving is the risk of criticism or judgment or failure it highlights all the risks and the thing is when you listen to the protector it does keep you safe but you're also stuck because it paralyzes you from taking action

it magnifies everything that could go wrong to try and prevent you from putting yourself in a position where you might experience some kind of pain or rejection so it's well-intentioned but misguided the neglector the neglector is the one that convinces you that you are not worthy

“of care your needs don't need to be met you don't deserve to set a boundary you need to make”

your everyone else is happy with you otherwise you're worthless so it leads you to neglect your needs in preference of everyone else's you're a constant giver and the last one is the ringmaster the ringmaster is the one that drives our destination obsession that third mind pit it's the one that pushes us and tells us we have not done enough we don't deserve a break it pushes us relentlessly to just keep going okay and then how would we instead of having an inner demons start to develop

an inner coach and overcome all of these inner critics so the first thing to do is become aware

that we have these critical voices my PhD research is looking at self talk as a construct

and when you think about self talk it's the voice in your head the thoughts that you have it there's a spectrum so on one side we have self regulatory thoughts like oh maybe you could go to the gym tomorrow because you haven't gone for the last three days it's guiding you it's not criticizing you or judging you on the other end of the spectrum we have the critical voice which says you better go to the gym tomorrow because you're lazy and fat and you you know

all of these it's judging it's criticizing you need to recognize that these inner critical voices we call them inner deceivers I had a TEDx talk about this early last year and ended up being the top ten most watched TEDx of the year so people really resonate the inner critical voice it's there to try and help us it's well-intentioned it's just completely misguided so

obey it you can listen to it because if you try and deny it we know what happens when you try to

“avoid your thoughts they just pop back in and come up but inconvenient times like when you're trying”

to get to sleep or at three a.m when you wake up and it's reminding you of all the things you've done wrong it to there acknowledge it but don't obey it flip your thinking around and say okay what is this trying to protect me from is there any real harm and then what can I do instead what resources do I have available to me to help me so hello in your case you needed Heather Monahan who was your client at the time to give you the push to get out that's one way that you then

stop listening to these voices that you would have had in your mind for me I needed fossil so for some people it might be I'm going to seek someone who believes in me to remind me when I'm hearing these voices that hey I am a value I am worthy it might be okay I'm going to start really small so there's very little risk of anything really going wrong and then just gearing yourself to action so become aware of it acknowledge that you don't have to obey it and then gear yourself towards action

because these critics will often prevent you from taking the right action they take you down the wrong path so then yeah ask yourself what is the right action here what do I need to do and then find a way to do it hmm it's great advice and I know that the ringmaster also has to do with

imposter syndrome because it basically reminds you that you're a fraud you're undeserving of success

so I'd love to move on to the topic of imposter syndrome we've all heard of this term but how would you specifically define it so imposter syndrome is that voice in your head that convinces you that you're a fraud you're undeserving of success and leads you to attribute your success to others

“luck or timing so and the important part about imposter syndrome is that you have to have a track”

record of success so if you don't have a track record of success and you have these voices then it's not considered imposter syndrome that's probably just inner criticism but if you have a track record of success and there's something in you telling you you don't deserve to be where you are because you didn't earn it that's imposter syndrome now really interestingly with imposter syndrome when we look at how it was initially discovered so in the 70s there were studies that were done

initially it was just with women it was in a population of women and they found that 70% of them experienced imposter imposter you know feeling now the researchers back then described it as an imposter phenomenon not imposter syndrome just an phenomenon of feeling like an imposter somewhere along the way this feeling was it was what's the word it was made to to be a syndrome which is not it's obviously we know it's not medically correct it was pathologized turned into a syndrome and now it

becomes this really negative thing that a lot of people will use as a crutch to prevent them from taking action I can't do that because I haven't poster syndrome I can't say anything in that meeting I haven't poster syndrome so it becomes an excuse that people will use to prevent them from

taking action what I always say when it comes to imposter syndrome is a really simple beautiful

reframe is the moment that you start to think I don't deserve to be here instantly flip your mindset

“to what an incredible opportunity I have to learn regardless or not of whether I believe I”

deserve to be here or not I am here I have a ticket to the party so I'm not not going to go to the party I'm going to go to the party and have the time of my life and learn as much as I can from these people I'm with I experience this feeling of being an imposter when I'm in the academic community because I'm now in the PhD program I'm learning I'm in that learning phase working with people who have been in the industry for 30 years they are absolute experts in their specific

area of research it's very easy for me to think well who am I I don't belong here and I remind

myself this is amazing I can learn from these people so simple reframe a big part of it is just

how we're approaching it and the narrative that we're telling ourselves hmm I love that and I know that you also experienced imposter syndrome when you were in your law career so what advice would you give to young shaday right now the advice I would give is actually advice that was given to me when I moved into the banking and finance space it is stop fixating on everything you don't know how to do everything that you don't know yet and everything that you don't believe you're good at

stop doing that shift your focus to actually what you bring what are the qualities that you bring and if you don't know how to do you know back then there were a lot of things I didn't know how to do you know basic case research and all of these things but there were qualities I brought like my growth mindset my curiosity my desire to learn and meet people and understand I brought that with me and I needed to remind myself of that because it's those qualities

that are transferable regardless of what industry you're in regardless of what you're doing so even if you feel like an imposter you can still bring those qualities and then learn what you need to learn

you say that self love is an antidote to imposter syndrome so what is self love exactly so I

“like to think of it as self acceptance and self acceptance means I accept who I am I accept my”

inherent worthiness and if someone else doesn't agree with me or or doesn't approve of me that is not a reflection of who I am as a person I don't need to take that to heart so when it comes to imposter syndrome we're doubting our worthiness I am not worthy to be here and so we need to remind ourselves actually I am as a person I am just inherently worthy regardless of where I am really interestingly just on this when we look at the mind pits or when we look at where

people generally get stuck it's predominantly for one of four reasons and these four things that I'll take you through very quickly they converge to create something called our core self evaluations which is how we see our self the core of who we are our self image and what researchers have done over the last 50 years social scientists from all over the world have explored what's really going on and and identified these four things and the way that I that's described them is like this

the first one is if you're finding it challenging in life if you're not taking action if you're

stuck in a mind pit the first reason is that you don't accept yourself so you have a low self esteem you don't fundamentally accept that you are worthy or you deserve success and so you'll hold yourself back if it's not that it's that you fundamentally don't believe that you have what it takes in terms of your capabilities I don't know how to do this I won't be able to achieve the goal and that's to do with self efficacy self efficacy is that belief that you have what it takes to achieve

your goals if it's not that the third one is that you have what's called an external locus of control you're focusing on things that you have no control over and that's preventing

“you from taking action that's why you're experiencing the challenge the fourth one is that you are”

unable to manage your emotions so you're either so filled with anxiety about what the outcome would be if you take action or you're just not able to manage the feelings of overwhelm that you get when you're thinking about or your goals generally it comes down to one of these four things and it all comes down to how we see ourselves so I'd say those four things actually come in because you can have self love you can have self acceptance but if you're really struggling emotionally

it's going to get in the way you're going to feel like an imposter and then that's going to derail you because you'll have that anxiety influx the cortisol of run you won't be able to think

and it'll impact your performance so I always say these are the four like the antidote or the

four laws of confidence if you like right self-approach self acceptance self efficacy believe in your capabilities focus on what's within your control and take steps to manage your emotional state the best piece of advice I could give it's great so you mentioned confidence so let's move into that direction how do you think we can project more confidence at work what are your top tips so with confidence at work it's such a big topic and I remember talking about it a lot because

I picked up on this when I was in the workplace it seemed like those who were confident were assumed to be better at their jobs and they would often be the ones to get promoted and to accelerate their career trajectory because they exuded confidence they weren't necessarily more competent than other people but they were seen and so there's this correlation between confidence and

“competence so when it comes to how we look more confident because the fact is when we think about”

what I said earlier that when people meet us for the first time they're making a judgment about

whether they like us through warmth and whether they respect us through competence and competence is demonstrated through confidence how confident do you look how confident do you sound so really simple the very first technique or very simple piece of advice I'd give or guidance what's your posture we spend so long looking down at our devices that were developing all of us are developing this flat hunch which is not helpful for confidence also really interestingly there was this

wonderful research that was done with Amy Cutty's team what they did is they put people in a room and they either had a phone to look at or an iPad or a computer screen big one so if you think about the posters they were taking on people on the phone were hunched over the iPad was sort of more neutral and the computer screen they had a more expensive posture they found that people who were sitting behind the computer screen ended up taking action more than the other two groups and it's

actually entirely because of the posture not because of what they were doing so your posture not only impacts how others see you but how you feel so that's the first one the second one which I find really interesting is you know when you're around someone and they're just walking really slowly they're kind of doodling and then you see someone else and they know where they're going they have a mission they are getting there I mean who looks more confident the one yeah the

when you're walking if you want to exude more confidence have a purpose and walk with purpose as opposed to sort of doodling around so that that was really interesting there's some work that's done on looking at biological cues and how people walk and and how that converts into perceived confidence and they found that walking slightly faster can really help and then smiling really simple smiling conveys confidence because if you lack confidence your body will tell

you not to smile so if you see someone not smiling the brain automatically goes oh they're they're not telling the truth or something's up there when I used to be in the dance world I used to teach and when I was teaching if I were teaching in front of let's say I was teaching with other world champions or again imposter syndrome because I wasn't one but I was in that environment

I would always smile I would just adopt a huge smile even if I wasn't feeling it and I would start

to feel that confident trickle into the rest of my body because of how people would respond to me so smiling is really powerful really great tips and I know that a lot of people don't just struggle with confidence especially introverts they struggle with showing their smarts and confidence at work so can you talk to us about how we can actually seem smarter for all probably smart in our own way but a lot of us don't know how to exude this smartness to other people so

“what are the things that we can do yeah there's there's a few tips I'll give you three I think the”

first one though prefacing at all is to remind everybody that we don't live in a world yet where true merit is acknowledged and recognized it's actually based on how you look and the relationships

you have and all these other things I always encourage people to yearn for the day when we live

in a world where people are acknowledged for what they bring but in any case until we get there very simple tips the first one to exude more confidence especially if you're an introvert and that competence factor you gotta be speaking up in meetings and this is really difficult for introverts I am an introvert in meetings I would struggle so much if you're an introvert you might feel this way even before I would raise my hand so the moment my brain had the signal of oh

I have an idea or I have a question hadn't even done anything with my body but my entire body would start to sabotage my heart would pump my throat would constrict and I hadn't done anything yet so I had this whole thing going on inside of me and yet no one would know it so as an introvert

“really important to speak up because you need to be visible and in meetings that's when people are”

seeing who is engaged and unfortunately visibility is linked with perceptions of engagement so simply see if there is a way that you can share something right at the beginning of the meeting you might even get in touch with the person beforehand and say I have something I'd like to share can you as the host can you pass over to me or put me in the agenda that's really easy you can share something relevant to the meeting it can be an interesting insight that you read and article

you came across you want to let everyone know about whatever it is share something in the beginning and then try and share something right at the end doesn't even have to be a value it can just be that was a great meeting everyone looking forward to the next one there's something called the primacy and resency effect in psychology where we're more likely to remember something that happens at the beginning and the beginning in the end of a session so if you're speaking at the

beginning in the end even if you don't say much in the middle people are more likely to remember you so that's one of them the next one is if you really want to elevate your competence this is something that not enough people do you want to capture and document there's two ways you can document document whenever someone gives you a task so we all know what it's like whether you're a leader in a company or you're an entrepreneur you give someone in your team a task and it's

doing a week and then you forget about it and then they send you an email and like here's the thing

“and you can't even remember what you ask them to do so you have to go in there and so what you”

can do proactively if you're that person who was given that task you send an update maybe half way through the week hi quick update on what's going on here's what you ask me to do remind the person they will thank you for it here's what you ask me to do here is where I'm up to here are the road blocks I've faced and how I've overcome them and if I had more time this is what I would do differently or this is the help that I need from you so you can update the person and then when

it's due you do the same thing here is what you ask me to do here is what I did here are the challenges that I came across here's what I would do differently if I could do it again you're being really proactive whether or not that person reads it you're getting into the habit of capturing a progress report for yourself hmm you have it documented because how many times have you received something from someone and you say well that's actually not what I asked you to do or you deliver something

to someone and they say that's not what you asked me to do and you're thinking yes it is I've got it written in my notes when you documented and send them an email it's there it's written it's evidence so that's the first one the second one is every Friday incorporate something

you're working in a you know in a company or big one or small one but send a weekly

“win email on a Friday to your manager and just let them know this is what I have achieved this”

week this is how I contributed to the team and these are my plans for next week it can be very short a couple of bullets for each of them but you are reminding that person of the contribution that you're making without you physically having to say anything and this is also wonderful when it comes to visibility because that person's going to be across what you're doing and if you're a business owner and an introvert I mean however I'd love your perspective my perspective is I tell people

if I'm going to be the quietest person in the room because I'm an introvert I tell people hey everyone I'm an introvert you might not hear from me much but I'm still processing and I might reach out to some of you afterwards to ask some follow up questions people actually don't mind when you're really open and honest yeah I don't I I'm like extrovert to if anything like I have a problem like

it's not speaking up and I would always be my negative feedback is that you talk too much in meetings

so I have the opposite issue if anything I I try my best to help introverts and call on them proactively we do things like daily updates every day and slack and huddles every morning and things like this so there's little things that we can do to make sure especially because I've got teammates and countries like the Philippines and they like as a culture really struggle with like speaking up at work and and stuff like that so I really try to help them through that process that's

beautiful yeah so all right we are winding down here as we close out the interview curious to understand if there's any high performance hacks that we didn't cover that you feel like

“might be especially important for my audience to hear one of the ones I love is the incredible”

power of something which has been found to be even more effective than a short of coffee can you guess what it is any idea leap it's sleep but it's naps actually I mean sleep super important as well but in terms of during the day sleep taking these short naps meaning 15 minutes the research is very very clear 15 to 20 minutes maximum beyond that you start to enter cycles of sleep and that's actually detrimental sleeping having a little nap earlier in the day

is better for creativity later in the day is more physically restorative 15 minutes set your alarm

on your phone and just close your eyes it's incredible what this can do for your energy so that's

one of them the other one is the power of walking especially when it comes to creativity so we know that walking can help with focus with reducing procrastination and increasing your energy when you come back in after you've been outside and you're the important thing with walking though and I've made this mistake don't take your device and if you do don't read emails while you're walking might just default you know it destroys the entire benefit actually look

at nature around you look at the trees look at the clouds it's called soft fascination and it has these beautiful restorative powers in the brain but the other thing is there was a study in 2014 from a I was a Stanford researcher and what she found was that when people went out for a walk and looked at nature around them and then came back in they had more creativity their levels of creativity were significantly higher than those who were inside and it actually persisted for a long

time once they were back in and working so if you've hit a creative block which we all do if you've hit that point of diminishing returns where you're just exhausted or you're procrastinating just get outside for a walk it's remarkably simple but the research absolutely confirms the science confirms it is going to be so beneficial for you. That's great. Naps and walks it has Daniel pink on the show and he taught us about something called the Napa Chino and they love you

heavier heavier heavier heavier you drink coffee and then you take a 15 or 20 minute nap and then you get the boost from the caffeine caffeine kicks in and 15 20 minutes plus you get the boost from the nap. That's brilliant I love it it's overwhelming that's fantastic. All right so we and the

interview with two questions that we always ask all of our guests the first one is what is

one actionable thing our young and profitors can do to become more profitable tomorrow.

“This is beautiful so in terms of profit I think the first thing is you need to define what that”

looks like for you and of course we can talk about money but I'm not going to talk about money for me profiting is how do you live a more fulfilling life where you are constantly growing. So the one thing you can do today the biggest or the greatest piece of advice I can give you is create your two be list what this means is write down a list of things that you aspire to be so that you're super clear on that to be generous to be loving to be kind to be someone who challenges

the status quo to be someone who makes a difference and has an impact write this down and then every decision that you make make sure it aligns with that to be listed becomes your filter system

a greater fulfillment and the person that you aspire to be. Hmm and what is your secret to profiting and life and you already know this but profiting doesn't have to be just money.

“My secret to profiting in life would be to be grateful for every step of the way, every learning,”

every challenging situation you have every moment of suffering because suffering is what makes us stronger. Suffering when we can change our perspective on suffering this is what gives us that beautiful quality of being human and it's the hardest thing to be appreciative and grateful during times of suffering but if you can acknowledge how it's shaping you into a stronger and more

refined version of you then nothing is too much trouble and there is always time. Hmm that's

fantastic advice. Shaday it was so wonderful to have you on the show where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do. I would say come on to social media, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, you can jump actually I do have a career training that might be helpful for anyone who is in the career space. It's the Shadayzerai.com/ uh see uh you know what I actually don't know what if I heart I'll share it with you how I'd have put in the show. I'll sign in the net. That would be wonderful.

“Actually I think you can get it from the homepage if you just go Shadayzerai.com you'll find it there”

but please reach out and I'd love to hear if anyone if anyone really resonated with something in this

in my beautiful conversation with Hala let me know it's always lovely to see what people connected with

awesome. Well you're super impressive. You dropped so much knowledge bombs in this interview. I feel like people learned a lot and were truly inspired by your story so thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you Hala. I had so much fun. I really appreciate being here. Yafking what I love about this conversation with Shaday is she makes one thing so clear. Sometimes the biggest thing holding you back is not your strategy. Your business model or your

work ethic it's the voice in your head. For entrepreneurs that voice can sound like perfectionism

“and post-resendrum productivity guilt or the belief that you have to keep pushing non-stop to”

prove your worth but as Shaday reminds us you don't have to obey every thought that you have. You can pause question that thought and rewrite the script. So here's your week three challenge. Go to yatmedia.com/mentalwells and open the teaming the inner critics worksheet. Write down the exact thought that keeps coming up for you. Is it the classic judge telling you that nothing is good enough? The protector keeping you safe but stuck, then the collector telling

you that your needs don't matter or the ringmaster pushing you to work achieve a never-ever rest.

Name it, write it down, then rewrite that voice into an inner coach. Turn on not ready into I can start small. Turn I don't deserve this and I deserve all the good things that life has to offer because mental wealth is not just about thinking positively. It's about building a mindset that helps you grow instead of one that keeps you trapped. So yatmedia, I want you to take the challenge, do the worksheet and come back for week four where it will wrap up the series with Dr. Benjamin

Hardy. He's my all-time favorite guest of yat. I love his work. He is so brilliant and he's going to teach us all about his amazing concept of future self. See you next time.