And like you said, you know, we're living in an era where
AI market volatility, like is it the global
complexity of it all? It's accelerating faster and faster and there's so much
change and people are having a difficult time adapting.
But the leaders that are trying to outwork the velocity are the ones that are
suffering. They're pushing harder, they're grinding, like you said.
And you can't outwork velocity if
grinding harder isn't working anymore. You're not alone Today,
what's really breaking in the age of AI? This is Data Driven.
Hello and welcome to Data Driven, the podcast where we explore the emerging
field of data science, data engineering and
artificial intelligence. Now with me today is not my favorite estate
engineer in the world. He is unavailable. So I brought the most curious
person I know. And I mean that. Not like curious strains, but someone who's actually
inquisitive and
you're quantum curious. But I think you're also data curious and you've also done a
lot of work with neuro
diverse type things. I know you have a blog on
that you're going to reactivate thanks to a little animal
called the dingo. But that's for. That's a show for another day.
I have with me Angus Nelson, who is. He was an author and
fellow podcaster and we're part of a group, mastermind
type group called Podcasters Paradise. Shout out to you JLD
and and you have a book that is
about, I think, something that's very, very timely.
It's stress and anxiety. And as I was kind of
skimming through it, I realized like, you know, he's
right about a lot of this here
because grind culture, hustle culture, can only take you so
far. And I kind of. Candace knows this because I had a kind of a
come to Jesus moment last week with a lot of stress going on in my
life and things like that. And I kind of realized
I was listening to a song by Pitbull. Yes, Pitbull. And he has
a line, a lot of things in his lyrics I can't repeat,
but one of them was interesting. He goes, you know, life is a gift and
a curse. Which one do you figure out first? He goes, it's about
what you leave behind because I've never seen a U haul behind a
hearse. And then he goes
into some Spanglish and some naughty words. But the lesson
there I think is very important. And as we're going through here, it
really. We live in a very stressful time. Obviously,
geopolitical events weigh on our minds kind of subconsciously,
but also that
3am Slack message where you're up at 3 in the morning because you're thinking of
something at work. So welcome to the show. The book is Neuro
Resilient Leader, the Internal Operating System for Leading at the
Speed of Change. Welcome to the show, Angus. Well, great to be here,
Frank. And like you said, we're living in an era
where AI market volatility of the global
complexity of it all, it's accelerating faster and faster and there's so much
change and people are having a difficult time adapting.
But the leaders that are trying to outwork the velocity are the ones that are
suffering. They're pushing harder, they're grinding like you said.
And you can't outwork velocity, you just simply
can't. And I believe that every single business problem that most people
are facing right now isn't so much about, you know,
the data sets, it isn't so much about the strategy and the
tasks at hand as much as it is them finding
themselves from an internal operating system that's,
that's flooding them or overwhelming them. So now they have
analysis, paralysis, stalled innovation, they're
hemorrhaging talent, losing people, people are
disengaging, there's all sorts of stats and we can go into some of that if
you want and get nerdy on the, the data of that particular piece.
But what's actually happening is the internal operating system
is what's breaking down in people. Things are changing and we're trying to run
on Windows 2000 and it ain't working
anymore. So everybody's in this dysregulated nervous system
and they're treating every daily challenge like it's a frickin life
threatening emergency. No, exactly. And that's kind of
how we evolved and that's what got us here. And there are a lot of
good stuff messages in your book, right. Like what got you to where you are.
And you know, your, your book is geared to what I can tell,
towards a leadership level. But this happens I think even at the individual contributor
level. And certainly I think the people who are
independent contractors, I know a lot of folks who you know, listen to show
are independent contractors. Andy is one. Right. And there's always a
lot of stress going on and I think there's a lot of stress that is
induced by AI, but I also think there's opportunity induced by
AI. But the thing that really struck me was I'm sitting there and I have
my best idea as drive in driving around. So I was driving Around I was
listening to, you know, a notebook.
Lm summary of your book because I don't think there's an audiobook yet.
But, you know, it really got me thinking, like.
And, and we think about the best business leaders of the 21st
century thus far, right? The, the name that everyone, almost
everyone will bring up is Steve Jobs. Right. And Steve
Jobs, yes. Was he difficult to work with? People have said that. But he
also saw ahead. And I think part of his ability to see ahead because,
remember, he disrupted not just Apple, Pixar, right.
Filmmaking, music, you know, everything Apple has done.
Mobile. I've been a victim of, of
that when I was working on Windows Phone. I think that he has a
background and I know we did a lot of meditation and kind of things like
that. I wonder if he hadn't had that, would
he have been able to see so far ahead into the future?
Right. And this is part of the piece
of the whole book where we talk about clarity,
capacity and composure. Those are the three core elements
of the 3C or excuse me, C3 protocol.
And what most people don't understand is that what
we're facing as a
dysregulated individual is an inability to
be clear on what's actually happening. And most of us are focused
on everything around us. And it's easy to look at, you
know, certain, you know, elections or political things,
or we can look at, you know, the corporate, you know, change
and Jack Dorsey saying all middle management is now going to be coach
players. You know, like we're hearing all these things that can
feel really, really
scary, fearful, uncertain, et cetera.
And that lack of clarity for what's the next step, because we're
faced on the outside, we're looking at everything external to
translate to an internal state, and it never will.
And those that have always risen to other
heights have taken their own sovereignty, their own
agency, and then become whoever they
became. Whether that's a Steve Jobs who went internal or whether
that's, you know, name any, you know, great movement of
individual from Jesus to Muhammad
to, you know, Martin Luther King to Gandhi to
Mother Teresa, they had an internal
understanding and clarity of who they are and what they're for.
And this is a state most people don't know how to connect to
anymore. We've forgotten our own personal value
and we've instead let everything outside of us, whether it's
through people pleasing or whether through accolades or through
paychecks or the size of our house or the size of our body
parts. We think that's what qualifies us or
gives us value. And it's simply the lie.
And we bought it for so long that in this now dysregulated
state, everything within our decision making now is distorted.
Is what's keeping us from living a life that actually fulfills, that
actually sustains, that actually gives meaning and
contribution. So what part of our
humanity, the human capabilities that
we should try to be relying on more as we
see, for example, AI reshaping workflows and
expectations, you
know, what, what can we reach inside
ourselves for to that we're not gonna, you know, we're
obviously not getting from the AI that's gonna help us.
So you've heard all the like soft skills type of stuff and
people will say, oh you, you know, you need to improve your EQ
or you have to, you know, work on your communication
skills. And so many companies will focus on the
symptom. Oh, you're a terrible communicator, you're not good with people,
you lose your temper. We need you to be, you know, executive
presence, blah, blah, blah. The other side is the question
you're asking is how do you change
what's going on inside? And there's a couple of different things I'll give you just
real quick. One is every one of us live our lives based on
stories we tell ourselves in many ways were our own worst
enemies. And we build those stories based on the
experiences that we've had through life. And if we're going to stay to this
kind of metaphor of our operating system, it's like our minds,
our bodies are like supercomputers. And so all the
data that we've taken in based on that fifth grade
little league coach that told me I never amount to anything, that parent who
maybe challenged me on something, if there was that girlfriend
that rejected me, that boyfriend who said I was fat or ugly
or what, like all those different things that we just take off as part of
life on some level, we built a story around that,
right on top of that are the daily inputs,
the news we're listening to, the people we hang out with, like the movies we
watch, the music we listen to, all of that will have some sort of
agitation. If we're listening to stuff that is either detrimental,
angry, bitter or, or
blaming, that is all input.
Now the supercomputer, our mind and our body is processing all of
that. And now it wants to validate the information it is now
consumed. And so subconsciously on a
very deep level, we will seek to create or to
attract the relationships,
experiences or opportunities that reflect
that belief system. And if that belief is. I'm never going to amount to
anything. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve. I'm not
worthy. You will create opportunities to
validate those beliefs. And that's where people suffer.
That's what people get challenged. That's where they run into roadblocks in their careers
or their relationships, vice versa.
If now I create new stories that all of that was,
you know, that that was training, that was
learning, that was me understanding who I am. The things that
I went through, difficult, good, bad or ugly, were all
shaping me and forming me. They were working for me.
They weren't happening to me. Now that becomes
all the different kinds of things that I've done for this new graduation.
It's like the price that I paid of my tuition.
Secondarily, I start to protect what I'm listening to. I start to protect.
I'm turning off talk radio. I'm not listening to the news. I'm stay informed, but
I'm not staying inundated. I'm no longer
associating with people who are critical or negative or
bitchy. I'm no longer associating myself
with environments that pull me down. Instead, I'm hanging out
with environments that pull me up. Now all of a sudden, I've
created new data. I'm reformatting the drive to a new
operating system. And so now my subconscious goes to work you to
now seek to attract or create a higher
caliber of experiences,
relationships and opportunities. And that's when the game changes.
You know, that's a good point. Cause I noticed that,
you know, I think the best thing you could do for your mental health is
not sleep in the same room as your phone. Yeah, right. Because what'll
happen is before you even get out of bed, you check your feed. You can't
help. But these things literally are, I think. I mean, there's a court case
about this, right? They are incentivized to make them addictive.
Right? And those little dopamine hits. And then before you get out of
bed, you're taking on the world's problems. I forget to phrase it that
way. And that's just not good for you because we weren't built for that. Right?
If you think, I mean, you shouldn't at least. Should
you take on all the world's problems? No, but you should at least do it
after you've gotten out of bed and after you've had your first cup of coffee,
right? Whereas I think if people kind of lay, they doom scroll, right? Just that
term doom scroll, I think, sets people up for failure.
Right. And you're right if you think about it as a, you
know, a data problem. Right. Garbage in, garbage out. Right. If you're
consuming junk content, well, you know, don't be surprised if you start having
junk thoughts. Yeah. Or even think about, you know, the people who are
just swiping left or right. Whether it's, you know, TikTok or whether it's
Instagram or if it's dating apps or all that stuff is training your
brain to be highly reactive and highly
judgmental. And so you can't rest, you can't think, you
have no critical thought. And the World Economic
Forum released a 2026 report called
the Human Advantage, which I think is just, again,
uncanny with the timing of my book. And it highlights
that AI handles more cognitive task. Right. But
the global disease that's kind of the burden of
people is the brain health, and that is
a rising increase in what they call brain capital.
And that's the piece that people are not paying attention to is they don't understand
that their proficiency for thinking, their proficiency for
critical thought or decision making is being
hijacked by an amygdala that is
operating in an absolute flooded state. Right. And so
we start to, like, take our decision making and we off board it to,
hey, what do you think? What do you think? Let's bring in the advisor, let's
bring in a consultant. Because people have stopped trusting their gut
or their own instinct or their own genius. And they
don't want to subject themselves to possibly being
criticized or, you know, making a mistake.
And it's because of this heightened state that becoming hypersensitive.
Right. I think that's what's happening. I think that's what's happening to the
baby boomers right now. I think that the information
and the pace of life is just so quick
that they have no idea how
to relate to it, you know, as it's happening, you know, even from,
like, the simple things of, like, okay, someone who's gonna go see a psychiatrist.
Well, don't worry. Coming to my office, I'm gonna zoom you. What the hell is
zoom? How do I find zoom? Do I have it on my phone?
How do I. Is that an app? Like, you know, and I have, I have
these conversations with my mom all the time. She's 80, you know what I mean?
And just her trying to make sure she
has her place in the world still. Right? And, and
you, you, you wonder, like, what are we risking?
You know, what are. What Are we risking in our humanity and
that people aren't paying enough attention to. Yeah,
yeah. What does it even mean? What does it even mean to be human anymore?
Right? Because up until a few years ago, I had this debate with somebody recently.
It was like, you know, up until a few years ago, we had the
monopoly on creativity right up until, say,
early 2021, right? Is when you started seeing a lot of the image
generators kind of coming up. And
now we don't have the monopoly on that anymore, right? So, like whenever you go
back and you watch like, you know, Star Trek Next Generation, which is pretty funny,
some of the things they say now in regards to AI and one of their
things was, you know, well, to be human is truly to be creative, right?
And it's like, well, that's not necessarily. We don't have a monopoly
on that anymore. Yeah, right. And I know someone's out there thinking,
well, you know, AI doesn't really create. It regurgitates what it's already
seen. Like, how many people?
How many people, you know, arguably, you
know, creativity. Even the great artists that you can think of take what
they've experienced and input themselves and then they output it in some new
novel way. Right? There's still arguably a,
you know, there hasn't been an original thought, so to speak, in, you
know, 10,000 years. That's one. One way to look at it. I don't
totally agree with that, but I can, you know, the whole resting on the
idea that only humans can be creative. Those. That's gone. I also think too,
like in terms of what you said about data processing, right.
You know, I don't care how hard you can hustle, right?
A, you cannot process data faster than an AI
can. Right. It's kind of like a bird trying to
outfly, you know, a supersonic jet. You know,
that bird can only grind, but for so long. Yeah,
yeah. And if you look at it from,
you know, the creativity aspect, you know, we
are still tastemakers. You know, it's one thing that
AI cannot do yet is context how this
is applied. What does this look like? I mean, I've been playing with AI. I've
built my whole website using, you know, just. It's all
hard coded, all from AI and thank you, Claude
Code. And you know, I said, oh, you know what, I want to build
this assessment. And I used to use Score app. Well, I just
saved 70 bucks because now I just coded it, you know, with cloud code.
Oh, let's get rid of type form. I can build that into and it's like
I'm saving 220 bucks a month just because I learned AI
and I'm not even. I don't know. I don't know Python. I don't know
JSON, I don't know any of this shit. I know. I know
Ruby rails from like 2010 little course, but that's like
it, right? But for the context
of this conversation is to understand that the
AI is here and it's going to continue to be here. But
the deeper question is, what you're asking is like, what does that mean
for us? Who are we going to be
in that time where AI is doing whatever utopian thing
we're hoping it will do? I've heard some say it could
take us back to the times of the Greek. Now, do we agree with why
the Greek had the time on their hands? They had a lot of slaves. That's
not something that's very politically correct. And it's. So let's just say the
AI is doing what the AI is doing. What did they have
available to them? And remember, it was only, it was only
upper echelon who had that. Right, right. You know, was, you know,
somebody, you know, some. Somebody pointed this out.
I'm sorry I cut you off. But like the Spartans, right? We think of. Spartans
are all warriors, right? Well, a lot of them were. Those are the ones calling
the shots. But somebody had to forge the steel. Somebody had to be the blacksmith.
Somebody had to make the shields, you know, the leather and things like that. Like,
you know, there's kind of what we think of as,
as. As the society and there's like, actually how it works. Right.
I think Spartans are a good example of that. Right. Speaking. Well, I would say
there's two sides of this. So, yes, you're going to take me to the second
side of this. But the first one is that creativity,
philosophy, art, like all of that creative
nature was how people filled their time. And then you
get to the other side of the equation, and I think this is where the
employee experiment is starting to change.
Whereas the last 150, 200 years prior to
that, we didn't have a lot of employees. Everybody, for the
most part, on some degree, was an entrepreneur.
You had to bring something of value to the world, whether that was through
farming or like you said, a blacksmith, leatherman, like all these different
things had some kind of value that someone would trade, barter or
buy. And now we're at this equation
where if this does what we believe that is perspected
to do, perspective, that's not even a word predicted to do
is take jobs. Let's just say in
whatever way or fashion, then what does that make me?
If my value and my identity was in my work
and they take away your work, well, then how do you show up?
How do you make a living? How do you. And I would say now you
have to figure out how to actually bring meaning and contribution to the world on
your own. What is your creativity? What is your gift
to the world? How are you leveraging your experience and your knowledge base
in such a way that now that creativity is something of such value
that people will exchange their dollars or by
this time, Bitcoin, XRP or whatever
else for your thing, whether it be a
product or a service. And so people are going to have to bring an
entrepreneurial spirit to the future of their career.
And that's where I think a lot of people are choking, is they don't know
how to do that. Because again, if trust has been
diminished from government, from corporate,
from other people, from our teams follow the line of the
continuum. And where trust is really eroding is
in ourselves. Yeah. Is that because
potentially, you know, AI can
generate all these ideas, you know, instantly.
And does that kind of affect how we feel about our own
creative voice? Well, what do you do
to execute on that? So it's one thing for AI to be
able to, you know, like, I mean, shoot some of this, like
open claw and whatever is going to go in and spin up all of its
own ads and set up all of its accounts and blah, blah, blah, and just
do its thing, right? Cool, cool, cool. And
if we're going to say that AI can do creative, or
it can come up with concepts, ideas, whatever,
the execution now is how do I interact with other human beings?
Full stop. Because if we look at AI,
every person in every industry, not every person, let me reframe
that. Every industry, the companies are going to
be competing with one another, not on anything but
the humanity, because they're going to have the same SOPs
built into the same task, into the same copy,
same sales mechanisms, because the AI is going to optimize it
to such a degree that each industry is going to have a carbon
copy. So then the differentiator becomes who's
behind it? What's the promise they're making to those that they deliver for? And
do they back it up? And then secondarily,
on a cultural standpoint, how do you treat your employees?
What is their. Not just acumen, what is their
temperature on their leadership with one another?
Because that will also tell the customer base what the
company's all for and then follow that up the chain is who's leading? Are they
trusted? Are they human? Are they authentic?
Because that will be the differentiator of the future. Is
that humanity? And in my book, I call that human success.
Interesting. There's a lot to unpack there, because you're right, people do identify
themselves with their career. Right? You know,
this is the cocktail party question. What do you do? Right. It's a very American
thing, by the way. I'd have to throw that out. Yeah, it probably is. Yeah.
No, it really, really is. Because when I moved to Canada,
all of a sudden, I had no idea what anybody did for a living.
You didn't ask people. You found out eventually because you
got to know them. But in America, it's very like, who
are you? What do you do? And that's like the definition, right? Well,
I'm talking to you guys right now from Portugal. Okay.
100%. You're spot on. Like, nobody cares,
you know, from the. It's the expats who are like, well, so what do you
do? What keeps you busy? Because they're looking for the normalcy of what they.
What they're. What they're used to from. From home. Exactly. And
the other thing is, like, people don't care about money here. Like, they. It's
just. It's not so in the States, like, it's like taboo. Let's not talk about
money or whatever. Or if we're talking about money, it's because of investments or
crypto or whatever. And here they just don't care.
Like, you could be a surgeon or you could be,
you know, a storekeeper, and they're all going to hang out
and share a beautiful bottle of Portuguese wine,
watching the sun go down over the Atlantic Ocean.
It's really an amazing kind of culture. And it's why
my family and I, we've been here for the last four years, is because we
chose to change the dynamics of how we interacted with life.
And we created an existence that gave us the
freedom to be able to work from where we are and which, you know, the
power of being online and then secondarily is my
kids made this transition being 10 and 12 year old
when we first came here, and now they're 16 and 17
and they're speaking Portuguese. Their friends are
from all over the world, so they're
exposed to different languages, different foods, different ways. And for
us, and this is kind of my world, is. I
think life is about expansion in Whatever way
you want to define that. And so as we look at
all this change and transformation, if you go to
scarcity, to fear and to constriction,
you're actually choking off life.
But the whole premise of the neuroresilient leader. And by resilient,
I define not as, like, white knuckling, not as pushing through, not as
surviving. But it is part of the expansion, which means as
the pressure comes, the pressure only gives more power.
You absorb it and you turn it into leverage,
you turn it into opportunity. Because every challenge you face,
one of two things. One is it's an invitation to a new reality,
because the second piece is the universe has this
uncanny ability to show you areas of
your life where you are not yet free.
And when you face a challenge, the challenge is not the
actual thing. It's the confrontation that that challenge brings you.
What does this challenge say about me, and am I
willing to face it for its truth? Or will I
deny it? Will I ignore it? Will I try and
push it off on somebody else? Or will I look
at it and say, this is not the kind of person I want to be?
Or this is calling me up to a different realm, or this is my
opportunity to move from where I'm at, to go to where I should be.
Learning to release. That's when we start to connect to it. Exactly. No, that's it.
No, I'm sorry. No, I just thinking, like, learning to release what's
inside of you that is holding you back or
causing you dread or trauma so that you can,
like you said, live a life of expansion. Yeah.
So. So let me. Let me unpack this just a little bit more. Remember, I
said those. There's three things I threw out there real quick early in the conversation
where I said, I don't deserve. I'm not worthy. I don't have what it takes.
And these are like three little gremlins in our heads. There's a lot to
unpack there. In the book, I talk about the Guardian, which is like your
overprotective parent. That's that inner voice, the inner critic. It's not
there to be an enemy. It's actually there to try and keep you safe.
Right? So when you step into something, it's going to be that
overprotective parent or the auntie that's like, oh, who do you think you
are? What do you think you're doing? You know? And that's
that voice where what it's really trying to do is say, hey, that other
thing that you're seeing or facing looks scary. And I
don't know if I want to go. I would rather stay here in my chaos
or complacency, because at least here I know what to expect,
right? So now, as we're going towards this thing called success,
you're going to be faced with those three questions. Do I deserve?
Am I worthy? Do I have what it takes? So as I'm walking up, like,
do I deserve this opportunity? Do I have what it takes
to make this happen, to get this role, to work with these people?
Like, those are the questions you get up to this thing you call success.
Whether it's the money, whether it's the role, whether it's the company, whatever, whatever. You
come onto the other side and the exact same questions come up.
Do I deserve to make this kind of money? My dad never made this kind
of money. Am I worthy of this accolades,
this visibility, this role, this corner
office? Do I have what it takes? If I had an
exit and I made all this money, I can't do the next thing, because what
if people finally find out I'm a fraud? What if this next thing
doesn't go as successful as the other one? What if I screwed up? What if
I lose it all? And really, the root. I'm
sorry I cut you off. Is that really the root of imposter syndrome? You think
so? Imposter syndrome, I think at its
core is actually the
distance between who you know you can
be and who you're actually living as.
Ooh. Oh, I really, really
like that. We struggle
to believe in our own greatness.
We've allowed whatever your
circumstances, your environment or whatever, to
impute upon us a belief that we are
smaller and weaker than we are actually capable.
And so the clients that I work with, the people that
I walk these journeys with, will
tell me moments where they feel like they're inauthentic because they
see something great that they're doing, they're building, they're creating
in some form and expressing. But right now,
they can't see it, feel it, touch it, or taste it.
And so my question to them is, you know, twofold. One is,
are you waiting to be the beautiful butterfly? Because you're the
squishy middle in the middle of your chrysalis, because
this is the formation and it's a necessary part of the journey.
And then number two is the reality is what
you see out there, you have to possess and pull
into now. And suddenly when you
do that, your identity shifts. The way
you carry yourself, the way you talk, the way you make Decisions is
made in light of where you're going, not
where you are or where you've been.
And that's the dislocation. We think
where we are is truth. But what we're living right now is a product
of the past. It's the decisions we made, the way that
we acted, the chances we took, the challenges we
faced, and we defined ourselves by that. So where we
are right now is only an expression of the past.
And if you want to change the future, you have to do it different.
It's that thing where we say you're doing the same things over and over again,
expecting different results. That's that definition of insanity.
So this neuroresilient leader is painting that picture
emotionally, psychologically, and in some ways
spiritually of an identity of who you
know and see yourself to be. So suddenly now
your eyes are open to all the promise, all the hope.
And I challenge everybody, every conversation with what I call the Spice Girl
principle. Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.
Because the moment you get clear on that, your future
has now a bridge because you finally gave
yourself permission to become the greatness.
And that's where most people are hung up. And all
of this external stuff is keeping us distracted of
the power and sovereignty and agency we already possess.
Wow, I'm feeling very uplifted. No, for real. I
mean, I mean, and I think it's good to hear that even
successful, high performing leaders
still feel stuck. Right. 100. You know, you see them,
you know, sometimes, you know, you mentioned crypto, right? Like you see the crypto
bros. And you know, you see that kind of, you know, people flexing with
the, whether it's luxury car, whether it's this. And
I mean, I wonder what goes through their head.
And you know, I think sometimes the more
arrogant somebody comes across and maybe they're
overcompensating to that. I don't know. Like, I mean, it's 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's just fascinating to kind of see. And I wonder how many people
are kind of stuck in their own head. Probably all of us to some
degree and not aware. Yeah,
so most of my clients are high net worth.
They're on some level of
achievement that they got to a level
where what they were doing no longer works.
Right. And as I stated before, most people are
operating from that path. So there's a, a chip on their shoulder.
They're trying to prove something to someone. You know, there's some kind of
dark energy, you know, that's empowering. Them to
move mountains and change, you know, the face of life
until they get to a point where that stops being the fuel, that fuel
no longer works, right? And so they need a new translation. So
that's one piece for some of the people I work with. The second piece is,
if you notice every high performer, every great
orator speaker, every great politician, every great
athlete, every great actor, all had coaches.
Some mentor, some. Someone was given
permission to hold a mirror up to him and says, see this? This is your
bullshit. And how would you like to fix this?
Right? Let me show you the way. Because to
your point, what divides us from where we
are to where we want to be is the friction of
the belief, the permission,
and that qualification that we've defined for
ourselves. And that's the problem is
we set the bar too small for what we deserve, what we're
worthy, or what we have. Do we have what it
takes. But now you have some outsider come and
start showing you a different perspective, starts helping you reframe,
reshape the stories, all of a sudden,
the shackles have been set free, right?
And every one of us do that. I have coaches. I've spent over a hundred
grand on people to help me get out of my own way.
I went through a season where I blew up my business. I went through
addiction, I went through a divorce, I was an alcoholic,
I blew up my life, something royal. And then
I started seeing a counselor, and I learned about human behavior
and psychology and emotional
intelligence and all this stuff. I had no idea what that stuff was.
And once you see, you can't unsee it anymore.
That's true. And it's kind of funny. We talked about this a little bit in
the virtual green room. You know, I'm a survivor. Listeners know this. I'm a
survivor of the World Trade Center. And, you know, I was late
for work, right? And horrible
thing, horrible thing. That day was bad. The following two, three years was really
bad. But it wasn't until I kind of did get counseling and kind
of, like, did realize, like, there's a gift here that I was
inadvertently given was,
you know, the ability to just stop and pause and kind of step outside myself,
Like. And that's helped me in
a lot of ways because I think there's a lot of
biochemistry that happens that we're not consciously aware of,
even to the point where some philosophers are wondering, do we really have free will?
And that's a whole other thing, right? But like you mentioned the amygdala. The amygdala
will process signals kind of like BIOS in a computer. Right. Like before,
before the CPU even sees anything. Right. So to speak. We like
to think that we live in our heads. We are the masters of our
domain. Clearly that's not true.
But the amygdala will process things before you even
are consciously aware. One story I give was we were on a
cruise ship and it's the first time we went cruising. All of a sudden
we were at dinner. I feel incredibly anxious
and I'm like, sometimes I'm good at it, sometimes I'm
so good at it, not so good at it. But this time I really was
self aw aware to the point where I had a Fitbit I was tracking.
I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I'm like, we're at dinner on
a cruise. Like why am I, why am I freaking out?
And I kind of like took a couple deep breaths, kind of
realized assassin might in imminent danger. Right. I'm not.
And I kind of realized it was the way that the engine was
thumping the waves or something like that was exactly the same
tone, pitch, everything, cadence as
when the towers fell. Yeah. And I felt that in my
feet. And I kind of, once I
realized that like, oh well, one, I'm not going crazy, so yay me.
And two, I was able to kind of walk back and get my heart rate
back down to like normal and enjoy the rest of the meal. Right
to the point where my wife knew that something
was definitely up with me and my kids were there. I had to time. I
only had the two kids. But then I realized like, this is what this is,
so I can kind of like walk it back. And I was able to like
rejoin. But that level of self awareness didn't,
did not come easy. You know, you talked about blowing up your life.
Been there, done that. But like,
you know, just in a strange roundabout way, it's kind of a
gift. Yeah. Yeah,
I treat it as that too. Is, is, you know,
when you go through stuff, right. This shapes and
forms you. And in some I say that,
you know, it made me fearless because when you lose everything,
you're not afraid to lose it again. Right. Most
people have again hung up their identity on all these, these different
factors. Thank you so much for sharing that the
story. And I think, you know,
there's so many people who probably still walk around with a lot of the
weight, you know, from, from going through that.
And part of, you know, this concept of this
clarity and capacity is that element
of reframing those stories.
In my book, I talk about when I Went to work
with a buddy of mine, Jeremiah, and we built a company
together called Crowd Companies. It was a Fortune 500
brands coming together in an innovation association.
And when I first started with him, I didn't know anything about the industry of,
like, Airbnb, Uber Lyft. We were tracking all the
investments coming into this peer to peer space, and then that spun
into crypto, then autonomous vehicles and drone
delivery and just crazy innovation. Cool stuff.
And I always believed
that I got lucky, that in 2013,
Jeremiah gave me a shot. And
I'm writing this book last year,
and I was going through that story in my head as I was writing it,
and I got this revelation that
I didn't just get lucky, that he didn't just choose
me, but he needed someone with my
skill set and I was just the right person for the job. And he
was the vehicle to help me get in front of the right people to deliver
my gift to the world. And it
completely shifted my identity because the
story changed. And so as I'm sitting here in front of my laptop,
I'm bawling in the middle of fricking Starbucks
as I'm writing my book. And I just felt this
huge release. And it was, you know,
yeah, I was invigorating, yes, it was liberating, but
it was the shift of identity. And as I tell people,
as I wrote this book, this book wrote me. And I
could not have released this book six years ago or five years ago
because Angus wasn't ready. Right. And
I had to be shaped so that I could articulate this world, this.
This book, into a world from a place that I could
not just say, hey, here's some intellectual, you know,
pontification. Like, this is a lived
reality and the
authenticity. And I'm going to go back to what you were saying before when you
felt that thing on the cruise ship, right? There is a
legitimacy to an energetic exchange. When you
talk to someone and you're looking them straight in the eyes, they're talking, you're like,
you are full of shit. You don't say that because you're polite,
but you just know something's not right. Or
you're in line with somebody and you suddenly feel
like everything inside you is like, oh, God, I just feel stressed. And you're like,
this person in front of you has some weird vibe
and energy they're giving off. They're just agitated and it's
coming off, it's slopping on you.
So we are communicating on these different levels that
are beyond just our conscious thought. And the more that we start paying attention. I'm
not saying this to be woo. I'm not saying this to be all New
Agey and we're not going to like, you know, talk to our ancestral
whatever peoples. I'm saying this is real
science, that the more that we know about this,
the more brain capital
we possess. Yeah,
you're absolutely right. Like, and, and you know, there's a. There's a tendency
to kind of dismiss this. And maybe this is people's inner, inner
ante, I think, is the word you used, right? You know, like, oh, this is
just hocus pocus, right? You know, this, you know, we're not talking about going to
Peru and smoking ayahuasca or whatever and singing Kumbaya. This
is very real. One phrase I kind of came to terms
with in the last decade or two was like, no matter
what happens to you, what happens to you to the
day you die, you're stuck with you. What happens to you after
that, I mean, that's up for the interpretation. But as long as I'm on this
earth and I'm breathing, I am stuck with me. I might as well make me
someone I want to spend time with. And you know,
I haven't quite gone so far down the personal coaching path
as you. Although I do aspire to that. Because, you know,
ultimately, if you invest in yourself,
that's an, that's an investment that you are going to
benefit from for as long as you're alive, right? At least
that. Who knows after that, maybe, maybe you'll come back and you'll benefit. I
don't know. But people, I think, underestimate
that, right? I think we live in a very
empirical society, right, where only
the physical exists. And I think
there used to be a rich esoteric tradition, right? You talk about
ancestors. My grandmother, my great grandmother would always tell these kind of weird,
kind of crazy folk tales and things like that. We kind of
thrown that all out. We thrown the baby out with the bathwater. And we live
in a very empirical, very physical world. And I think that once you get to
a certain point, that's very empty right
now. Obviously the good thing is we don't burn people at the stake for
witchcraft anymore, you know? You know,
generally that doesn't happen. That's good. But I think we also lost a certain amount
of flavor and soul to that.
I agree with that. And I'm listening to everything you're saying. And I'm
saying I'm an adult and I can take in this information
and I can Think about, you know, trying to, you know, really
listen to my intuition, to what I feel is right for
me. But what I keep on coming back to in my mind is
Generation Z. And these children,
I have, two of them were raised in
such a traumatic experience
with COVID that they're all walking around with
PTSD and nobody is
doing anything about it. Like, and. And they're.
And they're suffering and their children
who are trying to understand all this when there are adults
that don't even understand it. Right, because you've seen. I mean, because you said
you, you know, you moved. It was right. Right around, I believe, when the pandemic
happened. Right. And you said, I'm getting the hell out of Dodge,
you know, And. And that wasn't a bad idea, you know, and it was like
the first time since I'd moved to Canada where everybody stopped saying,
why? Yeah. Every time. Because I'm from New York.
New York is amazing. You know, I'm saying I'm in New York. Right. But no
one, no one, no one questioned me once. Once Covid hit.
And then you have all these children who, like, couldn't go
to school and didn't learn how to properly
socialize. Right. And completely
addicted to their phones because that was their
only outlet. Right. Well, we had
kids going to school on Zoom. They had kindergarten in our
old school district on Zoom, which sounds like the punchline to a Saturday
Night Live skit. Oh, yeah. Right. So think about, you know,
the human side of this. And this is why I believe this work is
so critical and so important, is we're having to retrain
people into a way that's always been. That
has become so foreign and
to your point. Yeah, we were actually. Our vision board to move to
Portugal was. Well, actually just to move to Europe. Portugal wasn't even on
the map. In our brain was 2024. And
in the middle of COVID we're like, what are we waiting for? Let's just go.
And we lived here for a year. That was the plan. And then we turned
to the kids, said, what do you think my kids are like? Why would we
go back? Because the level of safety and independence they have
here, etc. Etc. But that point that you just
made about children not knowing how to connect,
but at the same time, the adults not knowing how to bridge that,
that's the problem we're talking about. This is such
a massive issue.
And I'm going to say this, too, if you're still listening to
us, like, pontificating here right now
is More important to me that you get this movement than you buy
my frickin book. I would love for you to buy my book. And then when
we have the audio, buy my audiobook. Cool, cool, cool. But
go to Freebook VIP and download
the PDF for free. My gift to you
because I want you to wrap your brain around this. It's
this important.
The first five chapters, you will immediately know
what we're talking about. Because
I was very intentional not to make this
psychobabble, very intentional not to make it academic
and use all fancy terms, but your nervous
system is driving the car
right now. And I opened the book to
imagine yourself as the driver of an F1
vehicle with a $15 million engine in
your chassis. And everything's clocking, everything's going
great, except there's a rattle in your dashboard and you
don't know why, and the rattle is keeping you distracted and
suddenly you're missing your lines, you're not taking your turns, you're hitting your brake too
early, you're not punching when you should,
and therefore you're not performing in the way that you are capable.
And this book, this mission is not to
fix the car, it's to fix the driver.
Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, I love that
analogy. I think it, it sums it up perfectly, right? There's
a, there's a he since passed away, but there was a
guy who was a, like an industrial designer type guy at Microsoft
and named Bill Hill. And he would, he would say like, you know, when you're
writing apps, you're not writing it for Windows, you're not writing it for the Mac,
you're not writing it for iPhone, you're writing it for the human operating system. And
anything I've done since I heard that, and it was a stupid, like little
five minute video that he gave talk that he gave in 2004.
I still think of that to this day. When I build something, I still think
about whether it's a book, a slide deck, a podcast.
I think about that, right? Because the human operating system is something we're stuck
with. There's no update in sight. Best we could do is patch
it, but we have to work around it. And I do want to. I could
talk for another hour or two because there's a lot of stuff we didn't cover.
But I definitely recommend. Folks, it's Freebook vip.
Yep, I have gone. I skimmed the book and I had
AI kind of process the summary for me, but I'm definitely going to
read it now. I eagerly await the audiobook But
I want to be respectful of your time. I could talk for another hour, but.
And as a fellow podcaster, you know who's going to be doing the audiobook.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
I like writing. I, you know, even though I do augment my stuff with
AI, writing is very cathartic. Right. It helps you process things.
Right. It takes a lot of that, like your experience. Right. It takes a lot
of that stuff that's in the undertow of the subconscious. Kind of brings it up
and you wash it off and you kind of like, huh, I can learn something
from that. You know, it's a very cathartic process. I write for
therapy. Literally, I write a lot. Even before AI, I
love that. And somebody taught me this. I
wrote a, two other books before this one. I released one
just sitting on a hard drive. And
my, my coach, my writing coach said, get it
written, then get it right. Because what you just
said, like, get it all out, flow,
right? And then you can go. And that's when you shape it, that's when you
make it what it needs to be. But if you don't go through that process,
you'll never get to the end now.
Exactly. I like that. Well, we could talk for another hour. I want to be
respectful of your time. Any final thoughts, Candace? I'm just
blown away. I've already gone to the website I'm downloading as
we speak. I, I, I
found this to be not just
intellectually stimulating, but like soulful,
you know, hopeful, really hopeful, which I think is
something that people aren't having right now and they're struggling with.
And so I think that you have really,
you've really, your fingers on the pulse of something just vitally
important for us all, all to investigate and understand better
than you. 100%. Thank you. This is, this is where you
have to leave your role and attach to
your soul. Oh. Because that's the
important piece. And we've forgotten that part of our
society. Everybody is so agitated
and so irritable and so reactive,
so fearful. Yes, because they're operating from
some role that they think they're supposed to play.
And my ambition is to get people to reconnect with their soul.
Right. The, the market is not rewarding your effort
anymore. It's only going to reward
when you stay regulated, when you stay human.
Right. And the AI is just going to get faster and faster. It's going to
do more. But can you be calm? Can you be
conscious? Can you be present?
Because your humanity, when it's properly regulated, like that's the
competitive advantage. And
I think when increasingly more so. Sorry I cut you off recently.
More. Right. And so when we get to that
stage and we get to connect with ourselves,
to give ourselves permission to step into our power, to give ourselves
agency, to take on our sovereignty,
then we're actually going to step that last piece, which is the composure.
And in that composure, the power that we possess in that
moment is that person who has nothing, nothing to gain,
nothing to prove, nothing to lose. And it's the most
powerful person in any room. And my hope is that
you, as the listener, learn to connect to that.
Wow, that's powerful. I can't come up with a better ending
thing than that. Thank you, Angus, for coming on the show.
It's freebook vip, definitely check it out.
I'm going to load it on my Kindle as soon as this call ends, actually.
Well, thank you, Frank. Thank you, Candice, especially Frank.
Just reaching out and just saying, hey, want to be my show. I
just love your generosity and your spontaneity. So thank you. Awesome.
Thank you. Thank you very much. And with that, we'll play the outro music.