I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
for 14 years.
Suffering from sleep deprivation, body composition challenges, mental health challenges, libido,
hair loss, etc.
Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely
incorrect all the way to the other way now where men's clinics are popping up left, right
and center.
So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology
and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
my throat.
Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.
They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
responders through some of their therapies at no cost to the individual.
So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they
guide me through my results and the supplementation that they suggest.
In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
So I went down the peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology
knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.
Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
they offer, they will talk about the pros and cons.
So for example, a lot of first responders in shift work, our testosterone will be low,
but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.
So this company is not going to try and push you down a path, especially if it's one that
you can't come back from.
So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show the facilitators for the emotional resilience program at OKA, Ryan Munsey and
Hassan Kamel.
Now Hassan is the lead consultant at OKA and he personally coaches a spectrum of people
from C-suite executives to the military and first responders.
Ryan Munsey is the author of the bestselling book, Fuck Your Feelings and the co-founder
of the Better Human Project.
So in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from their early lives, their journeys
into their respective careers, the importance of discomfort to forge resilience, emotional
intelligence, vulnerability, servant leadership, their perspectives on the first responder
community and so much more.
And before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of almost a thousand episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Ryan Munsey and Hassan Kamel.
Enjoy.
Well Ryan and Hassan, I want to start by saying two things.
Firstly, thank you to Joel Evan for making this connection in the first place.
And secondly, I want to welcome you both to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you, James.
Glad to be with you.
Yeah.
Thank you, Joel, for the introduction and James, thanks for having us on.
Looking forward to the conversation.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, I'm obviously going to go back and forth with each of you so we can kind of walk through
your journeys.
Let's start with you, Hassan.
Where are we finding you this my afternoon, your morning?
So in Fairfax, Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC, sitting here at work and just
finished coaching a couple of people on resilience as a matter of fact.
Beautiful.
And I said, so it's your afternoon as well.
And what about you, Ryan?
Where are we finding you?
Same time zone as Hassan and you too.
I'm about an hour west of Hassan in Winchester, Virginia, working from home today.
So beautiful.
All right.
Well, then I'll stay with you, Ryan, first.
I love to kind of learn the kind of back story.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
Okay.
So only child.
I was born in Roanoke, Virginia, about two and a half, three hours south of where we
live now.
And I guess family dynamic, man.
I was really fortunate.
My parents were awesome and are awesome.
It's funny, I've had this conversation with them and with other people, being 40 years
old and having hindsight into how I was raised and why they did what they did.
I'm really fortunate to have had parents that were as invested in my future as they were.
And grew up playing sports, dad coached little league and basketball, and I played travel
basketball, travel soccer.
Mom worked her butt off.
She would drive 45 minutes to an hour each way to work and then shuttle me across town
to travel practices.
And as a kid, I had no idea how hard they worked and what they did for me.
But again, as an adult and in hindsight, just really grateful for the childhood that I had
and how they set me up for life.
And as far as professions, what were they doing?
Dad was a salesman.
And so he traveled quite a bit.
But like I said, when he was in town, he was a coach on all the teams.
And mom worked in, I don't even know what industry you would call it, I guess.
She worked for a company called Gardner Denver.
Then they were bought by Ingersoll Rand.
And then it became, she worked at General Electric.
She's always been kind of in an office setting in industrial warehouses type things.
She's been a buyer, her most recent 15, 20 years, she was a buyer for a company called
Altech.
They make cherry pickers and cranes.
Okay.
And then what about career aspirations?
You mentioned the sports you played.
What were you dreaming of becoming when you were in the school age?
Professional athlete, of course.
Which one?
Which sport?
I don't think it mattered.
I just wanted to play sports.
Now I played baseball until middle school, and then it was just soccer and basketball.
I think by that time I realized I wasn't a good enough athlete to be able to do that
professionally.
And I went to a big time D1 school.
I went to Clemson University and definitely was not a good enough athlete to play for
them.
So yeah, I think professionally, once athlete was out of the picture, I never knew what
I wanted to do.
I only knew what I didn't want.
And what I didn't want was, if you've ever seen the TV show Weeds, I love the intro to
that show, because it's kind of a parody on going to college, getting a degree, getting
married, having a bunch of kids, having a minivan, living in the suburbs.
And I just knew that cubicle farming wasn't my future.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to get onto the topic of youth sports.
Before we do, let's go to Hassan's early life and then we'll reconvene.
So same question to you.
Tell me where you were born and a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents
did, how many siblings?
Sure.
So James, I was born and raised in Heliopolis, which is a suburb outside of Cairo, Egypt,
and grew up there until I was age 17 before I immigrated to the United States.
But my family dynamic, slightly different from Ryan's in the sense that my mom was fully
dedicated to really taking care of me and my brother.
We were her job.
Basically, she was a homemaker.
My dad was an architect and his job pretty much was consuming most of his time.
We saw him, we interacted with him, but certainly not to the degree that we interacted with
my mom.
She took care of our education.
I grew up in a British school, so it was half run by British educational system, half run
by Egyptian educational system.
From a very young age, both my brother and I were multilingual.
Mom and dad were educated in French schools, so my brother and I were British schooling.
Interesting enough, when we were growing up, of course, if they wanted to tell secrets,
they would say them in French, so we wouldn't understand them.
This kind of helped my brother and I decide, okay, the third languages we're going to learn
is French.
I grew up in a fairly privileged upbringing given Egypt and my Egyptian background, upper
middle class family.
Definitely from a very young age, education was important to both of our families that
we finished our schooling.
We went to college and from college, we did what we wanted to do.
I don't know how much you know about the British education system.
I think you probably are very well versed in that, but our future was very scripted
from the very beginning based on what classes we did well in and so forth.
Pretty much science and engineering were pretty much the track that my brother and I were
kind of encouraged to pursue from a very young age.
Grew up thinking, okay, I'm going to either become a doctor or something in the field
of biology because I was always fascinated by the natural environment.
That was kind of my track until I came to the States at age 17 and went to school and
studied biology for an undergrad.
Really, my career took a complete turn and got into more the social sciences, but with
a hard science background for the most part.
That's kind of a little bit about my family dynamic and upbringing.
What about sports?
What were you playing and doing in the school ages in Cairo?
In Cairo, we played basically soccer was big or football.
That's how we refer to it.
That was pretty much it.
PE was part of the system, but I was never really much into sports.
I was the geeky kid who constantly read and kind of taking a deep dive from a very young
age at whatever topics I was fascinated by.
That was more my area.
I did PE and I did sports just because everybody else was doing it, but not because of an interest
that I had necessarily.
I was very fortunate to be part of a thing called 7X just over a year ago.
We went around the world with a bunch of Navy SEALs and elite triathletes.
They were basically doing a marathon, a skydive, and a swim in seven continents in seven days.
It ended up being a marathon and then some swims and some skydives depending on what
they were doing.
The whole point was to study the breakdown of a tactical athlete and then how do we rebuild
them again.
One of the stops was Cairo.
I was fortunate enough to skydive out of a Russian helicopter right over the pyramids
and land 200 meters away from them.
It was insane.
When we went there, we stayed and had breakfast in this beautiful hotel.
I had that incredible experience, but I'll never forget the drive to the pyramids.
It seemed like there was such poverty, just a few blocks from these massive tourist attractions
that obviously are the center of your culture.
Talk to me about Cairo growing up.
You mentioned about having an affluent upbringing yourself, but talk to me about the city in
general and the contrast between wealth and poverty in Egypt.
The contrast is pretty drastic between wealth and poverty.
You're from the upper class, which was pretty much well-educated.
You had enough money to live anywhere from the upper middle class to the upper class.
Then you had really extreme poverty at the same time.
Cairo is overwhelmed by the number of people and it's growing by the year.
So it was heavy contrast to see that and I was always reminded constantly whether by
seeing and experiencing life in Cairo or living at home.
I was always fortunate and appreciative of what we had and how we were brought up and
how our parents emphasized the value of education and don't take things for granted and so forth.
Also a sense of social responsibility that you're privileged, look around you.
You don't have to look very far before you realize that there's a lot of poverty.
So we always were taught from a very young age the importance of getting involved and
taking care of others who are less fortunate.
I think that was imprinted on us from a very young age, both my brother and I.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to go back to you, Ryan, and open this to both of you now.
When we're talking about PE and athletics in schools in America, I don't know if you
had the same kind of perspective, Hassan, but when I came from the UK, my school experience
at least was there was no real elite performance in schools.
Now if I was an incredible football player, I'd go off to some farm team and wherever,
maybe get groomed to actually be a good footballer.
But we did a lot of sports, we played, we exercised, but there weren't gyms.
We weren't having these massive football games where tens of thousands of people were watching.
And what I witnessed when I moved to the US was this incredibly high level of performance,
but this country is riddled with Uncle Rico's.
And I always say that affectionately, but the number of like late 20s, early 30s men
that I met that said I could have, should have, would have if it wasn't for my ACL,
you insert injury here.
And now they're deconditioned, they don't work out anymore.
And so my observation has been we almost, there's a trade off between performance in
our high schools and colleges and wellness and longevity of those young men and women
once they leave.
When you look at the UK, you play football at a certain level, but then you pay publics
and local leagues.
And normally, at least when I was young, the men were still playing rugby and football
and cricket and all the things.
So when you look back now, because we're going to talk about culture and mindset and fear
and all these other areas, what is your perspective of how we introduce sports at the school level
and or PE and how that factors in to what we're going to talk about today, the wellness
and the motivation levels of our adults post education?
That's a loaded question.
There's so many different ways to go with that.
I don't think there's any one reason, there's no one answer.
I think the thing that as you go through all of that, the thing that keeps popping into
my head is just how much the world has changed since we were say elementary school age.
I think back to 80s, 90s, youth sports, PE, it was a very different time.
And I think around the time that maybe I hit high school and after, maybe it's because
I saw it, but maybe not.
I mean, I can remember as a kid, my dad used to go to the Y and play pickup basketball
games and would take me with him.
There were other men that did that.
They played before I was born, they played in softball leagues.
And I know that still exists some, but I don't think as much as maybe it does in England
or other countries.
But in regards to how kids are introduced to sports, when I say I think the world has
changed, I mean, AAU and travel sports, specialization and year round things, it didn't exist in
the 80s and 90s, certainly to the extent that it does now.
And if it did, there were maybe one or two teams, it was maybe invite only.
And I think there's pros and cons to this.
So I don't want to phrase it in a way that only suggests that it's negative.
I think if you look at the professional leagues in the college game now, you hear so many
people talk about 18, 19 year old kids showing up on campus and they're ready to play at
a really high level as a freshman.
And a lot of that is due to what they've done through middle school, high school years,
as opposed to go back to the 90s when a freshman shows up on a college campus, they're not
as developed mentally or physically or from a skills standpoint either.
And so there's certainly some pros and cons on both sides of that, but I just think it's
just really changed.
I think social media plays a part in that.
I think money plays a part in that.
Just look at the purses for golf tournaments now and the payouts for college bowl games
now.
Sports have changed dramatically in the last 30 or 40 years and therefore the introduction
to them at an early age has as well.
Hassan, what's your perspective?
What I'm trying to unpack is, and you talk about these with social media, I feel like
there's a feeling now that if you're not first draft, if you're not varsity, then you know
what?
Don't even bother.
And then you add into the injuries.
You have these people that were phenomenal and then it's an overuse injury of a pitcher
or it's a linebacker that was encouraged to eat as much as they could and now he's fighting
all the diseases that come with it.
So what have you observed?
Because obviously you weren't growing up through the American system, but at the contribution
of some of the elements, like I said, it's not black and white, but the contribution
of some of the ways that we view sports and exercise in the U.S. working against the motivation,
the ability to stay fit and healthy as we progress through adulthood.
Yeah, I think that my experience was completely different.
Of course, it's outdated because I left Egypt in 86.
I was only 17 years old, but I do remember, I mean, sports were an integral part of the
curriculum, but it was for everybody to stay healthy and you do certain things, you participate
in PE and so forth.
But even the athletes who are professional athletes, they didn't, from what I recall
and even members of the family, I had two members of the family who were part of the
Olympic team, but at a much older generation, my parents' generation, and they had their
professions and they did sports on the side.
They were pulled into the Olympics to do that.
And one of them was actually on the football team, the national football team that played,
I believe in 26, either 1920s or 1930s.
And that was from my grandfather's generation.
And then the other one was a weightlifter, but they both basically had professions that
they did and sports were on the side.
So the level of professional sports back then wasn't like what it is today that you dedicated
your life to sports and you went on the sports track all along.
My generation, I mean, we did sports.
It was one of the many things that you did in school, like arts, like anything else.
So it was given its due time, but it was never that you do it at the exception of everything
else.
It was a balance between all the things that you're interested in, arts, science, sports,
et cetera, to stay healthy and well-rounded.
And that's how it was kind of introduced to us.
All right.
Well, Ryan, back to you.
You're at Clemson.
You're not going to be able to play at that level anymore.
What was the kind of career path from there on in?
The first year or two, the career path was get as good at being a typical frat bro as
possible.
And I still didn't know what I really wanted to do.
It actually took me quite a few years there to kind of figure that out.
And I mean that in terms of what I was studying, but also what I wanted to do post-school.
And again, even then, I didn't know what I wanted.
I just knew what I didn't want.
And I think that led to, I always call it the Van Wilder track where, you know, carry
the one and I was in school for six years.
So not quite his seven, but I started off, like I said, my dad was in sales.
He sold packaging and at the time Clemson had one of four packaging science schools
in the country and had really good job placement.
And so that's where I started off and eventually changed to food science and human nutrition.
I wanted to do something more like exercise physiology, but Clemson didn't have that.
And so what I chose was the closest I could get to that route.
And there was actually a lot of carryover, believe it or not, from packaging science.
Most packaging dealt with food.
So it's funny.
It's actually led to a lot of consulting work over the last five or 10 years with supplement
companies and other CPG companies who are, you know, in the health space, but also have
a need with packaging.
But you know, I was also really fortunate.
My best friend from home was a year behind me and he actually was good enough to play
sports at Clemson.
He was a high jumper on the track team there.
So when I wasn't in school and I started to get hooked on lifting, I kind of filled that
competitive void with the weight room.
And my pursuit was a little bit more along the lines of like bodybuilding.
I had Arnold's bodybuilding of an encyclopedia of bodybuilding and was just memorizing every
page of that.
And so between that and then my buddy being on the track team, I was able to kind of hang
out at track practice quite a bit.
And that's where I learned a lot of performance training from the coaches that were teaching
the sprints to guys who did run in the Olympics and won medals.
And so it was really fortunate to be able to be exposed to the training side of things
and then also the science side of things.
And I always make the joke that I was biohacking before that was a word because in school I
was learning that you could really manipulate inputs, how you eat, how you sleep, how you
train to get certain outputs that facilitated the goals that you had.
And as far as the career path, I knew that that was something that I was obsessed with.
I just wasn't sure how I was going to be able to do that.
And whenever I give my bio, I always like to skip the part immediately after school
or I gloss over it.
I tell people I pretended to be Derek Zoolander for a year.
Let's not skip.
Talk to me about that.
I'm going to stop you there because I was at drama school for a year and then got stuck
in the vicious circle of needing an agent to get work, needing a work to get an agent.
And they were headshots.
They weren't model shots, but I went to model agencies, put it there and I got a face like
a smacked ass.
So there was no chance I was going to get anything.
But I kind of experienced that cold judgmental world that is acting and modeling.
So let's not skip over it.
Let's talk about it for a moment.
It's wild.
And so because of my interest in bodybuilding, I did a couple of shows and I met some photographers
and they're like, hey, we'll pay you to come out to this show or pay for the travel and
the entry fee.
And we'll just in return, you do a photo shoot, you get some photos.
And then I met a guy who was like, he called himself a mother agent.
And he's like, I'll take you to New York and introduce you to some agencies.
And all the while, like I said, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to pursue the
things that I'm passionate about.
And I saw this as an opportunity to one, get paid to lift weights and to create some kind
of a platform where there would be a reason for people to listen to me.
And this was 2006, seven, eight.
So really before social media was a thing.
One of the guys that I followed was a guy named Greg Avedon.
And he was like the men's health cover model.
And I'd had some interactions with him on his website and over email and he was really
helpful and I always liked the stuff that he wrote about in the magazine.
Again, this is like the early days of the internet when people would actually respond
to emails.
That's a long gone now.
It is.
And so I was like, you know, this guy is using his platform as a cover model to be able to
teach people how to eat and how to train.
And so that was something that was of interest to me.
And I was like, okay, well, you know, maybe I'll go to New York and I'll get famous and
then I'll be able to teach people how to eat properly and how to train and things like
that.
And that was the plan.
And then as you kind of alluded to, you get there and you realize like, wow, this is nothing
like what I expected it to be.
Cold, superficial.
You walk into castings and it's like a cattle call.
There's 200 guys and they all look exactly like you and you walk up, they're like, next,
you hand them your portfolio.
They flip through the pictures, they hand it back.
Okay, thank you.
We'll let you know.
You're out the door.
And it's like, it's that.
And it just, it wasn't even the rejection that stacked up, which I mean it does, but
it was more of, for me, it just felt really superficial.
And some other things happened that just made me realize, say I had opportunities for work,
but in order to get those opportunities, I would have had to compromise my values and
I wasn't willing to do that.
So I lasted about nine months and I went up right after school and then by Christmas I
was out of there.
I'm glad you shared that bit because the only time I ever did modeling was naked with a
Donald Duck held over my groin for a car rental commercial.
So I don't think it exists anywhere on the internet.
Thank God.
But yeah, that was my one modeling gig I got paid for.
That's because I worked for that company.
But anyway, all right.
On that tangent, so Hassan, you were talking about being so engrossed in the science side.
Walk me through your on-ramp into your profession.
So what got me in my profession, I was doing science in school with the intent at the time
to go into medical schools afterwards.
And of course, being having left my home country, my family, all of that stuff, there are all
the trials and tribulations of assimilating into a new culture, new system of education,
everything else.
And my grades suffered at some point in time and I realized, why am I going into medicine?
Is it because those were the two tracks, medicine or engineering, if you went into science in
Egypt?
Or is it because of a passion I have?
And I really had more passion for the natural environment.
That's why I went into biology.
And I was like, okay, I'm going to pursue that.
And I pursued that for undergrad, grad school, all but dissertation and a PhD.
And that didn't work out very well, particularly because of a conflict I had with my advisor.
And at the time, being in a science field, it was very much emotions.
All of that was foreign language.
I mean, you did your work, you studied, you took the exam, and the world was very objective
world to a scientist at the time.
And that's what I was supposed to do.
And when I did all but dissertation and the PhD and realized that that's not where I want
to continue my life path.
Along the way, I was working because as a foreign student, you could only work on campus
and something that's affiliated to the field that you're studying.
And I did work in environmental education in an outdoor education center.
But part of it was environmental education.
Part of it was also helping people learn how to work together, collaborate and build teams
more effectively.
How to lead more effectively, how to follow more effectively, what group dynamics are
like, etc.
And I really found a passion for that.
I enjoyed it.
And at first, I did it because I was an extremely shy, introverted on top of it, individual
who was really having a difficult time give any public speaking.
And I realized in grad school that, well, I'm going to have to do a lot of public speaking.
So I better get good at it very quickly.
And doing the job that I did at the outdoor education center was a way for me to do it
in an environment I was somewhat comfortable with, the outdoors, and with smaller groups
and helping facilitate activities from one activity to the next, etc.
So they're doing the work I'm observing at the end.
We debrief and we talk about what worked, what didn't work.
So that was an easier way for me to inch my way into public speaking and being able to
talk in front of a large group of people and know what I'm talking about.
That led into the field of organization and leadership development when I decided I'm
terminating my PhD program, all but dissertation in sciences.
What do I do afterwards?
I was so done with academia, I didn't want to have it left such a bad taste in my mouth.
And my biggest challenge was how did a relationship that starts so well with me and my advisor
over time deteriorated and I was incapable of managing the interpersonal side of that.
It got to the point that we couldn't see eye to eye almost on anything.
And that intrigued me.
I was like, why is it what makes for good, effective working relationships and what makes
for poor relationships?
And what are the success factors?
And to me, that was another field that I got really interested in.
And with my science background, I tried approaching it from a science perspective, from a black
and white perspective, but it's really behavioral.
Shades of gray are all over the place.
There's no black and white in behaviors and no black and white in leadership.
Some leaders are effective and some leaders are very ineffective.
And it's not ones and zeros anymore.
So that to me was fascinating.
And I got more and more in the field of organization development, leadership development, how do
you develop effective leadership skills and so forth.
And part of it along the way was the element of resilience, because when you leave your
country, the familiar territory, your family and so forth and immigrate to a new country,
there's got to be some ability to build resilience skills in there.
So resilience was always playing in the background without even my knowing that it's part of
the equation.
But that kind of got me in the field of organizational learning and organization development.
And one of the individuals who was the head of the master's program in organization development
at American University, she would bring her classes always to the center where I taught
and she would select me as the facilitator every time she was like, nope, I want Hassan.
I want Hassan.
So she asked me one day, she was like, Hassan, where's your PhD program at?
What's going on?
I said, I'm not answering, let me tell you.
So I started telling her, she decided, hey, let's go to dinner and talk about this at
more depth.
And she was really a catalyst in my moving my career, basically 180 degrees from physical
sciences and hard sciences to social sciences.
She was an inspiration to me.
And she said, hey, have you thought of what you're going to do next?
I said, no, I'm at a loss actually.
All I know is I don't want to go back to Egypt.
I want to stay here.
This is my home and I want to pursue a career and I have so many limitations.
She said, okay, well, let's work on those limitations.
And she basically was the one who thought, have you thought of going into leadership
development and facilitation?
I said, I was always doing this on the side.
It never was an intent for me as a career.
And she said, yeah, but you're good at it.
Have you thought of that?
I said, yes.
And I haven't thought of it, number one, it would be fascinating to me.
When I'm done with academia, I don't want to go back and get another degree.
So she was an inspiration in the sense that she helped me solve the problem and work through
it and she said, you do not need another degree.
You're already doing the field in a practical way.
You just don't have the credentialing that is academic to go and do it.
So you could do it.
You're basically doing it backwards.
You have all the practical experience.
Have you thought about getting certifications?
You don't have to go back for another degree.
You're educated in another country.
You're multilingual.
You have experience from other cultures and other organizations and so forth.
Have you thought about just getting certification, not a full on, you know, master's or PhD in
the field of organization development, but just the certifications with your practical
experience and really take the plunge and jump into the field of organization and leadership
development?
And I had never thought about it until we had that conversation.
I was like, well, actually that sounds feasible.
And that's what I ended up doing.
But it was really a very circuitous way of getting to my field that I'm currently in
and I'm very passionate about.
You mentioned being an introvert and this is something that was really interesting.
I had the author of The Introvert's Edge on quite a while ago now.
And one of the things he said to me, I know this isn't his own work specifically, but
the way you discover if you're an introvert or an extrovert is where you draw your power
from.
And I had never thought of it that way because I'm the kind of person, I'm fine to be in
a crowd, but you'll turn around one moment and I'm gone.
Like when I hit that wall or I go to a party, I'll be the one sitting in the garden, still
at the party, but sitting outside.
And so I didn't realize, oh, wow, I'm actually an introvert.
But the number of people I think, especially when it comes to the real powerful topic is
drinking, the number of people that need a pregame before they go out because they see
everyone else is the life of the party.
I don't know what's wrong with me, so I'm just going to drink.
Now I feel good.
Now I can go dance on tables.
How many people through your work collectively have you seen, do you think actually unbeknownst
to themselves are truly an introvert?
And that is some of the internal struggle that they deal with.
Actually that's more common than you think.
It really is, and there is such a misconception about what introversion is.
Often people associate introversion with shyness and you don't have the social skills, et cetera.
It couldn't be farthest from that.
It's what you draw your energy from, as you had mentioned earlier.
So if I plug in my computer, my laptop, my phone to a source of energy, it's recharging.
But when it's fully charged, I can unplug it and I can use it in whatever capacity I
want, but it's draining the batteries.
And that's exactly what introversion, extroversion is about.
I'm someone who's clearly an introvert.
I am drawn to the inner world of ideas, of thoughts, of reflection and so forth.
And that's where I draw my energy.
But once I am fully charged, you can unplug me and put me in a crowd or whatever.
Mind you, it's much easier if there's context, either familiarity with the people.
I'm with or familiarity with a subject we're talking about.
Then yeah, you cannot distinguish between an introvert and an extrovert once there's
context and familiarity.
So it's a matter of can you one, understand what your preference is to fill that cup,
fill the battery, recharge the battery.
But then can I function outside of my preference?
Absolutely.
The demands of us to function out of preference on a regular basis and to say, well, sorry,
that's not my preference is not an excuse.
We have to be able to navigate both worlds, but know where you charge your batteries from
and what drains it so that you can be fully charged.
And when you face whichever world you're in, you can perform to your best of your abilities.
Absolutely.
Well, Ryan, same question to you with your perspectives on that.
I think Hassan just said it so well.
I would consider myself an introvert in a lot of circumstances, but I think like both
of you guys, I think like you, James, I mean, I'll be at a party, but I'd rather be in
the garden having a stimulating conversation with two or three people.
And I think to Hassan's point, it's not all one way or all the other.
I think for those, I mean, obviously the three of us would consider ourselves introverts,
yet I'd put money on it that something like this conversation is energizing for all three
of us.
And so I think we have to be careful putting labels on ourselves and on others and putting
things into these little boxes.
Because I think both of you guys are aware that that's a really dangerous fixed mindset
and to say like, this is what I am.
And as Hassan said, the more we do that, the more we tell ourselves that we can't function
outside of that preference.
And I love that phrasing.
And I think, again, as Hassan said, the world requires that we function outside of our preference.
I see it so many times in corporate settings, in team settings.
Hassan and I both work with military, fire, law enforcement, as well as corporate.
And so many team dynamics suffer when individuals fail to recognize their preferences and their
propensity to not want to function outside of those preferences.
And not just in terms of introversion, extroversion, but in terms of tactics, strategies, communication,
there's a lot that goes into that.
Well, tacking on what Hassan was saying about education, I went to University of North London,
got my sports science and exercise.
Oh, God, I forget the term now, exercise studies, I think it was.
And then at UF here in Gainesville, I got my exercise physiology degree.
And it's a shame because I reflect with a lot of money spent in higher education.
And it really didn't serve me very well to get out there and coach and really understand
exercise.
I was lab focused and I was very disappointed, for lack of a better word.
Conversely, the NSCA, some of those certifications that I've done, the strong fit classes, the
strong first classes, I mean, these are a handful of days that really gave me a lot
to go away with.
Any of them stand alone, perfect, of course not.
That's why you learn other things.
As you progress in your strength and conditioning journey and you had the food nutrition degree
under your belt, what was your journey as far as education, learning the trade and how
did that compare to your academic journey?
So wow, you know, in school, it's always so frustrating, maddening for me to talk about
the dietetics programs.
Again, I was in school from 2002 to 2008 and I learned back then what everybody is talking
about today in terms of food.
And by that, I mean, you know, you can't trust the recommendations that are put out.
You know, I was, at least in my curriculum, you have the prerequisite science classes,
right?
So you name the science class, I took it, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology,
organic chemistry, regular, whatever.
And then you have the nutrition side of the curriculum, community nutrition and medical
nutrition therapy and all these things that make you a dietician.
I almost did air quotes, but it was actually like that is the schooling that I have.
If I did an internship after school, I would be a dietician.
Personally, if I hear someone's a dietician, I run away.
And the reason for that is because I know what they're taught and I know what you have
to do in terms of kissing the ring to maintain that certification and that status.
And what I would have to do to be able to call myself a dietician means that I have
to tow the party line and say things that, A, I don't agree with because B, they don't
fit the science.
And so, like I said, in my science classes, I'm learning how metabolism works and what
happens and blah, blah, blah.
And then you go to the nutrition class and you've got a teacher who's overweight to obese
and she's saying all foods fit.
There are no bad foods.
And I'm the kid in the back of the class with a can of tuna and half an avocado and everybody's
turning around like, oh, man, it smells in here again.
But I'm raising my hand and I'm asking questions and I'm pushing back and the teachers, I mean,
they did not like me.
And they're just like, please stop asking questions.
Stop thinking critically.
I'm like, well, no.
And so that was on the nutrition side.
But then I think to your question on the strength and conditioning side, it was very similar,
my experience to yours in terms of, I was kind of laughing to myself as you're talking
through that because the reason I got out of the gym, I always tell people I got tired
of coming in on a Monday and answering the question, how many burpees do I have to do
to undo what I did over the weekend?
And I guess to elaborate on that, you learn programming and you learn the X's and O's.
And I became very good at writing programs.
If you come to me and you say, hey, I want to be 100 meter champion, okay, or I want
to lose 10 pounds or I want to be a bodybuilder, whatever.
The strength conditioning side, the diet side, that's so easy.
I can write that for you and you can follow it and you'll be there.
But most people can't follow it.
And so my evolution as a coach is what got me into what I do now and how I've come to
work with Hassan.
And I think he said it earlier, you have this realization that there's more to it than just
the X's and O's.
And that's what really fascinated me.
I wanted to know why people's actions didn't align with their goals and values.
You tell me you want to lose weight.
You tell me you want to get a college scholarship.
You tell me you have this goal.
I'm laying out the red carpet for you.
All you have to do is follow this program.
Why can you not follow it?
And so that was what really led me to, again, this work and to get more into the neuroscience,
the psychology, biology of behavior and decision making and what we might call mindset and
high performance.
When I talk about first responder fitness, there's always the ownership conversation.
And again, we're all sitting here seemingly in pretty good health.
So that's an understood concept.
But to be very fair to my first responder brothers and sisters, they work in an environment
that mostly is set up for failure.
The fire service, they work 56 hours a week, not sleeping every third day.
You add in mandatory overtime, which is becoming increasingly likely because of the understudy
staffing.
Now they're working 80 hour weeks, the same with law enforcement.
They're in a patrol car for 12 hours a day.
So sometimes they're fit despite the environment, not because of it.
And there are some departments that do the work week, some departments that have nutritionists
and strength and conditioning coaches that are trying to affect that side.
But when I look at it nationally, it's the same conversation.
And there's no better example of how far we are from where we need to be than the advice
that was given during COVID.
People shut the parks, the beaches and the gym, stay in your house and you can door dash
fast food and alcohol while you binge watch the Tiger King.
You know, I mean, it couldn't be worse.
So before we dive deeply into the psychology, the environment in 2024, what are some of
the challenges that are creating this distorted mindset that's so hard to get people back
on track when it comes to their wellness?
Hassan, you want to take it or I mean, one of the things that really jumps out at me
right off the bat is, you know, Hassan and I were in Virginia Beach last week with the
sheriff's office and had multiple parts of conversations with them around, as you just
touched on, staffing.
And I mean, the room that we were in, in this training facility right across the hall was
an amazing gym, great equipment.
I mean, I would love to go in there and train.
But I think you said it well, the folks who use that resource are probably doing it in
spite of not necessarily because of the opportunities and their environment.
You know, they're struggling with numbers, you know, getting people into the academy,
getting people to apply.
You know, I've got a friend that just retired from LA SWAT and he was telling me, you know,
he's been in for 30 something years.
When he first came through, they would have something like 90 to 100 people come through
the academy and only the top 20 or 30 may have gotten a job.
You know, now there are, you know, 40 to 50 openings and only 20 or 30 people coming through
the academy each cycle.
And so everybody that passes gets a job.
So you have this, there's for a variety of reasons, you know, social pressures and, you
know, beliefs and, you know, there's not a lot of people wanting to do this work right
now.
And, you know, there's, as you said, people are understaffed or under resourced.
You know, we were talking to these folks last week that, you know, they want people to get
the training and the development that we're trying to bring.
But folks are either on shift and out working or they're off and that's like they're one
day off and they don't want to come in and do this kind of thing on their day off.
Not because they're not interested, but it's like, if you only get one day off or two days
off, the last thing you want to do is go to work.
And so I don't know, I'm kind of off on a rant here.
Hassan, is there anything you want to add?
No, I think I'm going to try to approach it slightly differently, but to compound what
you just mentioned, Ryan, I think the ability to unplug and be present is something that
is highly desirable and truly lacking in today's society.
Social media, the ability to be constantly connected, compounded by further by COVID.
And now we can be in a meeting like we are right now virtually and so forth.
There's almost no separation, no boundaries.
So I think boundaries are really critical in knowing when to unplug and be fully present
in whatever it is that you're doing.
And we used to think mind, body and spirit.
I think what Ryan and I are finding and working on, we found it already, I think a while back,
but now working on is to integrate emotion into that.
Knowing body, spirit and emotional states, because our emotions play a huge role in how
we make decisions, how we discipline ourselves.
And when we do whatever it is that we're doing, be fully present, be unplugged from everything
else and let's kind of drop the myth of multitasking, because I think multitasking is exactly that.
It's a myth.
We cannot multitask.
Science has shown it.
And I used to think, well, I'm lacking something because I can't multitask.
Now I'm realizing that everybody can't multitask, but they're just pulling the wool over our
eyes that they can actually focus on anything that they're doing when they're multitasking.
So I think part of it and part of the challenge that these folks are facing is even when they're
not on shift, they are accessible still because they have a phone, they're supposed to answer,
they're supposed to stay plugged in and respond to whatever email or text or phone call they
get from their chief or whatever.
So I think we need to bring back the boundaries where I say, okay, I'm not reachable and I'm
working on something else.
I'm working on developing me because without me, I have nothing to work with.
I don't know if that made sense or I've took that tangent further out.
No, no, it does.
It does and that was absolutely tactical athlete specific.
When we move backwards though, when just in the general population, we've gone from, for
example, schools where the kids either brought their own food or the kitchen in the school
would make real food, PE was integral, play was integral.
And now, PE has become voluntary if you want and the school food is nothing but processed
foods from Cisco and then soda machines everywhere.
So when it comes to, for example, our children's health, immediately, there are very, very
obvious things that in my opinion should have been fixed during the two years of COVID if
we were truly talking about health.
That aside, it's very unfair, I think, to shame someone about their wellness or their
fitness without taking into account the environment.
So for example, you're an inner city kid, the only food around you is in a bodega down
the street.
You've got chain link, you know, fence parks that may or may not have gang activity going
on at the same time.
That's a very different experience than my English as growing up on a farm in England,
having food growing in the fields and animals to chase and play.
So environment is definitely part of it.
Culturally as a nation, what have we done to create some of the issues that we're going
to discuss as far as motivation and mindset in the US population?
I think that currently there is the will to pay attention to that.
I'm not so sure what we've done.
I'm grappling with that because I think we're having the right conversations.
I'm not sure that the environments and the setup are really conditioning us to pay attention
to those things that we're saying we're prioritizing as important.
So I think the conversation is always a good start, but I'd love to see us put more effort
into so what are we putting into action to actually bring about the importance of those
conversations and really speak to the prioritization we're giving to each and every aspect of our
lives that we're considering important, whether it's physical, whether it's mental or whether
it's emotional.
Ryan, anything to add?
I think that's well said.
I would agree completely that the arenas and the ways in which we're having these conversations
may not be the most conducive to true dialogue.
I would say that to your question, I think societally, culturally, I don't know that
most people are really interested in dialogue.
I think people want to be heard.
And I guess when I say that, I'm thinking about how most people behave on social media.
Again, most people, not people who listen to a podcast like this.
I think as a whole, whether it's, I guess if we move off of how the conversations are
being had and where they're being had to the other part of what Hassan said, I think it's
just like anything else.
If it's a priority, then we need to implement, we need to act on it, the follow up.
If you say, hey, we're going to make this change, if we're truly interested in betterment,
growth, development, whatever that change might be, we have to take action on it.
And I think that's where, again, it's from a society standpoint, we're so conditioned
to celebrate new beginnings or new starts.
We don't celebrate consistencies or follow throughs.
Just think if somebody was like, hey, I'm starting a new diet or hey, we're day one
of blah, blah, blah.
How much energy or celebration would that same announcement garner if somebody was saying,
hey, I'm 461 days into whatever the thing is, right?
Walking, drinking enough water, sleeping eight hours a night.
So I think maybe shifting from celebrating new starts to celebrating consistency and
follow through and the actual work required to do the things that bring about the outcomes
and results that we're interested in.
Well, let's start unpacking the neuroscience then.
So you mentioned about having that kind of Monday morning conversation, which a lot of
the coaches on here have talked about.
People are great Monday to Friday and then they come in with their tail between their
legs on Monday morning going, I kind of screwed up.
So what was your aha moment and then walk me through your journey to start understanding
the tug of war in our mind from all these different elements?
Tug of war is such a great word or phrase.
I'm glad you used that because that's actually one of the phrases I use to help people understand
the different parts of our brain.
And so we have the limbic system, we have prefrontal cortex.
And if I'm speaking and trying to give people a crash course, I will say, think of these
as parallel universes that are playing tug of war to see who's in control.
Or if we want to anthropomorphize it and say, the prefrontal cortex is like an angel on
one shoulder and the limbic system is sort of the devil on the other shoulder.
Limbic system is incredibly fast.
It is the ego driven teenager that is incapable of seeing beyond the now.
On the other hand, that prefrontal cortex is like the wise old sage.
It's capable of complex thought, seeing beyond the now.
And so that's sort of like being able to, what's the word?
I'm drawing a blank on immediate gratification.
So that would be the limbic system.
But the limbic system, and this is something I always make sure to communicate is it's
not all bad.
It's there for survival purposes and especially in the tactical population.
We're going to want to rely on the limbic system for a lot of circumstances.
As I said, it's much faster than the prefrontal cortex.
If you and I are walking down a trail in the woods and we're side by side, if I see a snake
before you do, my hand is going to go out and shoot in front of you to stop you before
I can verbally say, stop snake.
And I always, in a talk setting, I'll have somebody, I'll ask them what they'll do and
they always give me some variation of a physical movement and then the verbal communication.
And that's because the movement is rooted in limbic system and it's faster than the
verbal which is rooted in prefrontal cortex.
And so this is a great example that A, it can save our life, but B, you will always
have the limbic response before you have the prefrontal cortex response.
And that is really important for folks to understand because it brings about an awareness
of how we're wired.
This is the human operating system.
And if you can understand that, then you can start to have some grace and some understanding
as you go through life.
And instead of it being a snake on the path, maybe it's a cookie at Whole Foods in the
bakery section.
The first thought, that limbic response is, oh man, that thing smells good or, oh, I'd
love to have that cookie.
And then the prefrontal cortex is, oh, but I don't eat gluten or, oh, I'm on a diet or
whatever it might be.
And so many people get hung up on the fact that they had the first thought first.
But that's the thing is it's just a thought.
You don't have to act on it.
And there's nothing wrong with you for having that thought first.
As a matter of fact, the more that folks start to understand that this is how you are wired,
the less they judge themselves and the less they feel like they have to act on that first
thought.
And so that kind of brings us into the first part of your question.
The aha moment for me was coming across research from a guy named Antonio Demacio who had a
patient that had a tumor on his prefrontal cortex.
Tumor was removed and it led him to realize that 95% of our decisions are made based on
how we feel in any given moment.
And I always tell people don't get hung up on the number because everybody wants to argue
95%.
Okay.
I don't care if it's 90% or even 80%.
It's still an overwhelming majority of our decisions that are made based on a fleeting,
transient, short term way of being.
Neuroscience defines feelings as mental experiences of physiological states.
So with your background, you realize, hey, a physiological state, I can change that instantly.
And so if we can change our physiology, we can change our mental experience, that means
we can actually control what's going on, whether that's bottom up or top down, both are viable
avenues.
But again, we don't want to be making decisions based on short term transient ways of being.
And so that's where, as I phrased earlier, I want to know why people's actions are not
aligned with goals and values.
And the answer is what we just talked through, that most people are making choices and therefore
acting based on feelings and short term transient ways of being.
And so the work that I do and then the work that Hassan and I do together is helping people
realize that and then defining their values and learning how to make choices and act based
on goals and values as opposed to feelings.
Hassan, I want to add to that, but to add another layer, what I'm getting from this from a lot
of people that I just know in everyday life, that initial kind of lizard brain response,
if it was 500 years ago, you probably wouldn't have guilt and shame layered onto that cookie
in Whole Foods.
So how have we devolved to the point now where that initial response is actually, or the
following one is actually a negative kind of tug of war now instead of those two just
working side by side?
Well I think kind of to pull on the thread that Ryan started here is it's not the ability
to suppress one system or the other or to give favor to one system over the other, but
it's how do they communicate with each other?
We are constantly making decisions and using both our cognition and our emotions or feelings
to make wiser decisions.
Think about a bird.
A bird cannot fly with one wing.
Our cognition is one wing.
Our emotional states is the second wing, but it's to allow the communication between those
two to really foster better, more effective decision making about the process.
So whether it's a snake on the trail or it's the smell of a cookie and it's just freshly
baked in the oven or I am in the boardroom making a decision about my team or my own
leadership of myself because leadership is self leadership, leadership of others and
leadership of organizations.
So all of us are leaders at one point or another.
So when we are making decisions and let's say you and I are sitting at the board table,
James, and you kind of I say something and you kind of give me that look on your face
and I read that look which reminds me of a look that I used to have from my teacher in
high school or whatever that you disapprove of what I just said and automatically that
influences my decision making about you and about what we are doing moving forward.
But those are being made on a regular basis, those decisions and am I succumbing to just
the emotional gut reaction or am I taking this information and saying okay here is the
reality of what happened.
James could have been responding to what I said or James could have been responding to
a thought that he was thinking of on his own and just made this facial expression.
So to be able to use both emotional data as well as cognitive data to help inform how
do I move forward, what's the decision that I need to make.
I think that's at the root of it whether we are working with PTSD patient or an individual
who is trying to be more disciplined in managing their health or whatever the case may be.
But I think it's that connection between the emotional and the cognitive that helps us
move forward.
So when you've identified that there is this tug of war, what are some of the principles
and philosophies that you teach people so they can actually take that tactical pause?
I think first of all it has to be enough emotional self-awareness, knowing what am I feeling,
can I name it, that emotional granularity of am I angry or am I feeling betrayed or
what's going on with me and what is it triggering in me.
So one to be aware of what's the emotion or the feeling I'm experiencing right now, what
really caused it and what's the story that I'm telling myself to justify one thing or
another to give it some pause and thought.
And people sometimes say, well isn't that really difficult and it takes time.
Yes, it does at the beginning but the more you develop the muscle memory in doing that
and the more fine tuning you have in understanding your own emotional landscape and what are
your default modes, then you can navigate through that process much faster.
It's almost like in sports, it's play by play, slow motion so that you can see how things
are played and what really took place.
The more you study yourself doing that, the more apt at doing that faster, more efficiently,
more effectively and therefore managing yourself in those states better.
So I think the first step is to pause and say, what's going on with me?
Ryan, would you add anything to that?
I think the way you approach that is great.
I think it's something where it's not a flip the switch once and you're done with it.
It's not like, hey, I made the decision to be a better leader or be a better communicator
or have more awareness.
As James was asking the question, awareness is what was popping into my mind as well.
And so I think just to elaborate on the way that Hassan was explaining that, I always
remind people that it's a process.
I made the face because Hassan said one of my trigger words.
Muscle memory is like nails on a chalkboard to me because muscles do not have the capacity
for memory.
It's neurological wiring.
And he's heard me say this.
I'm not throwing him under the bus.
No, I'm not throwing him under the bus on the podcast.
He knows this.
But to that point, anything that the lay person may think of as muscle memory, whether we're
talking about a golf swing, riding a bike, drawing a pistol, those are neurological wirings.
They're neurological pathways.
And the same way that we ingrain those, we ingrain behaviors, thought processes, patterning.
So James, if I told you I was going to change your golf swing, you may have thousands of
repetitions of doing it a certain way.
If we go out and we have a lesson, and we make some changes to your swing, you're going
to feel great while you're doing it.
And you're going to hit the ball straighter, further, higher, or whatever.
And then tomorrow, you're going to go out on the range and you're going to practice
it and you're going to have some expectation that it's not going to be perfect right away.
And you're going to know that you need to accumulate many, many repetitions of this
new way before it is as ingrained as the previous way.
And I explain this because, again, behaviors, thought processes, these are neurological
pathways and patterns, just like a physical skill or movement would be.
And so again, it's that having awareness and grace and understanding that, hey, we're
learning a new behavior pattern, you're not going to get it all right all the time.
There's going to be a couple of those bad swings where it's not the previous way, or
maybe it is the previous way and you make the mistake, but understanding that you need
to accumulate those repetitions of the new way.
And again, it goes for these new patterns and behavioral processes just like it would
changing something physically.
One of the things that I've really started unpacking recently, and the backstory is simply,
how do you be the head of a cigarette company knowing that hundreds of thousands of people
are dying because of your product?
How do you become the chief of a fire department knowing that there's multiple suicides and
you're doing nothing about it?
And each of those individuals are able to sleep at night.
And I would argue that the same mental health challenges, not saying it's ill health, but
mental health challenges that we see at my level, at the firefighter level, that is evident
in these areas too.
They're head of a Purdue Pharma that you could sleep knowing that you are the cause
of an opioid epidemic that's killing people to this day.
So when you kind of dissect some of the challenges to true servant leadership and some of these
great leaders that you've seen, have you witnessed at all the element of unaddressed trauma,
unaddressed struggles, whatever you want to describe it in some of this micromanaging,
self-serving leadership that I've certainly experienced in the fire service?
Yes.
Short answer is yes, we have.
So I mean, when you give those examples, so cognitive dissonance is the behavioral phrase
that comes to my mind when you talk about somebody who smokes cigarettes and believes
that they won't get cancer, yet they fully understand that smoking cigarettes causes
cancer.
Right?
I know it happens, it's just not going to happen to me.
That's cognitive dissonance.
For the head of Purdue Pharma and how they sleep well at night, I would say that's probably
not cognitive dissonance.
That's just a terrible person.
But I think we would like to hope or we would like to believe that if somebody is a chief
at a fire department, that they're not evil, that it is either cognitive dissonance or
a lack of awareness.
I know we just talked about awareness, but I think if somebody is truly a good person
and they're not acting on something, it has to simply come down to either a lack of awareness
or maybe they simply feel like it's futile to try to do something.
And if that's the case, I mean, that's sad.
But I think it speaks to some of the things that we kind of touched on earlier where people
are understaffed, under-resourced, and feel like it's insurmountable.
I know Hassan and I both have some people that we've had those conversations with.
And I think Nassim Taleb is one of my favorite authors.
And he's got one of his books is The Bed of Proclustes, and it's a bunch of aphorisms.
And one of the aphorisms in there is bureaucracy is a construct created to maximize the distance
between the decision maker and the risk of the decision.
And when I think about bureaucracy in something like a fire department or a police department,
I actually took a picture and I sent it to one of my firefighter buddies who's a battalion
chief because he struggles with something similar issue to what you just laid out.
And it's like, you may not be able to change what the organization does, but if you're
at the battalion chief level, you've got guys that you are leading and serving, and you
may not be able to change policy, may not be able to change the organization, but you
can show up for your people as much as you can.
And you can have their back and you can take care of them.
And I think if everybody simply took care of what they can take care of, I know it seems
like so utopian and idealistic, but if everybody listening to your podcast took it upon themselves,
it goes back to that ownership or that individual responsibility conversation, and you make
sure that your house is in order and your people are taken care of and that you're leading
your people with that servant attitude and mindset, you're demonstrating that, you're
teaching that to them, you're modeling that behavior, it will impact everybody below you
and yes, it will rub off on the people above you.
And I think that learning how to lead up the chain of command is every bit as important,
if not more important, than being able to lead down the chain of command.
I think a couple of things to add to that, Ryan kind of teased that a bit, which is the
whole idea that I don't believe in our work, we found that organizations change or systems
change, they don't, individuals do.
And it's the drip, drip, drip.
Of course, that becomes a challenge in organizations that have a lot of turnover, military being
one example, maybe officers don't hold the command for any more than two years to maybe
three, four, max, and then they change, so there's constant change.
And even though we believe that individuals change, so if I change and the people in direct
contact with me or in my proximity change with me and there is a ripple effect, that
is soon to be taken over by a tsunami of changes and now we have to start over again.
So there is that challenge, but I really don't believe systems and organizations change at
that level.
It's at the individual level, so it's at the microcosm level.
That's number one.
And I think, Ryan, you made that, you alluded to that earlier, but I just wanted to hit
that even harder because we're finding that day in and day out.
The second one, which again, Ryan, you kind of alluded to it, which is the whole idea
of developing those neural pathways, new neural pathways.
When we start and we commit to doing something new, classic example, okay, I'm going to start
with the new year and I'm going to start working out, et cetera, whatever.
And we default, we falter, whatever.
That sets negative emotions of either guilt or shame or whatever other negative emotions.
Okay, I'm never going to get good at that.
Why even try?
I've already forgotten two days.
I've skipped two days because the weather was not good.
I wasn't feeling up to going out for my run or whatever.
But the idea is to stay, the word that Ryan used, I can't emphasize enough, which is grace,
have grace with yourself and have patience and the persistence and discipline.
Okay, that was yesterday.
Today is a whole new day.
I'm going to do it today.
And that commitment to doing it, I think is what separates the ones who stick with it
to get from behavioral modification to habit because I need the patience and grace with
myself, but also with each other as a team, as a leader of a group or whatever the case
may be, is we need both patience and grace.
And then the persistence comes with that.
In medicine, there's a term trending because no patient's recovery is a straight 45 degree
line.
It's ups and downs.
But the overall thing is if you're trending in the right direction, then good, you're
probably not going to die in the back of my ambulance.
And if you're trending the opposite way, then oh shit, we need to drive faster.
And this is what I see in a lot of these, whether it's strength and conditioning, whether
it's abstaining from alcohol, whatever someone's goal is, is I think especially now with the
social media perfectionism that's a complete facade is, well, I fell off the wagon, so
I'm a piece of shit.
Instead of going, all right, I had a drink yesterday.
It's not ideal, but let me get back onto this path again.
And overall, those peaks and valleys, you're going to find yourself in another place.
And I think that understanding that, and I use the term grace all the time, giving yourself
some grace.
Okay, you missed the gym, you ate a cheeseburger, whatever deviated you from that perfect line.
It's okay.
As long as you're still tethered to it, as long as you can clamber back onto it, then
just keep going because the alternative is you stop.
And I think just don't think people have enough faith in themselves to forgive themselves
to get back on that track and just keep climbing.
No, I agree with you wholeheartedly on that.
And I bet you, correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, but what I'm seeing and hearing and what you
said, James, is the whole idea of there is the initial emotional gut reaction of, oh,
I'm a piece of shit.
I didn't stick to my schedule or whatever.
So therefore I'm going to stop or I'm not good enough or whatever the case may be versus
your prefrontal cortex comes in and says, okay, I had one drink and I'm going to get
back to my discipline again.
And I didn't really, so the exaggeration of the initial reaction can be tempered by, well,
let's look at the data, what happened really, and then continue moving forward.
I think in your previous response, Hassan, before James put that one out there, I was
thinking about how important some of the terms are that we talk about with folks in our class,
you know, optimism, the importance of language, and how that impacts internal dialogue.
And then, you know, as soon as James said that, I mean, all three of those things are
so important there.
I mean, especially language and internal dialogue.
Like you said, there's that immediate limbic response, lizard brain reaction of, oh, I'm
a piece of shit.
I'm this.
And just listen to that from a language standpoint, you know, the things that both of you guys
know and I'm sure many of your podcast listeners are aware, I mean, A, it's fixed mindset,
right?
And so from a developmental phrasing, we would want to say, you know, instead of saying something
like, I always give in to pizza, or donuts are my weakness, it would be something like
in the past, pizza is a temptation that I have struggled with.
Even in that simple, what seems like semantics, mental gymnastics switch, we've gone from
a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
It's developmentally phrased, meaning that it gives us an opportunity to change the future.
Whereas if I continue to say, you know, I can't hit a moving target, or I always give
into this, then we're signing up for a future in which that is our reality.
And so by changing the language, we've also created an internal dialogue and narrative.
And look, that narrative plays in our head on a loop over and over and over again, it's
the stories we tell ourselves.
And if we can get in front of that, and use language that allows us a different future,
most people have no idea how important and how powerful that is.
Absolutely, Ryan.
And to your point, James, what you said earlier, okay, I'm a piece of shit.
There is difference between I'm a piece of shit versus I made a shitty decision.
Huge difference.
And the way I think of myself is gonna help me propel forward or stay stuck in the mindset
of well, okay, this is me, I'm that way.
I'm not gonna change.
One of the things that I've seen, and I love that term paralysis by analysis, a local department
here that protects my family.
Recently I was with a bunch of their battalion chiefs, we went to Echelon Front, Jocko Willink's
organization, great, great presentation, great weekend.
But since then, I've been pushing from all angles to try and get the fire service as
a whole to look at their work week and give their first responders or firefighter paramedics
in this case, the rest and recovery they need between the shifts.
And you said earlier about an organization doesn't change, the people change.
The job hasn't changed.
When I came on as a firefighter 20 years ago, we were firefighters and we were EMTs and
or paramedics in Florida.
And back then I was testing, for example, Anaheim, California when I worked out there
against a thousand people in the sit down written test that had resumes as thick as
the yellow pages.
I mean, it was so competitive.
And now fast forward, I mean, you know, George Ryan, one of my friends from LA SWAT, I mean,
we've had this conversation numerous times.
Now, police, fire, EMS, they're struggling to hire.
And as you talked about earlier, now when you have a pool of candidates, you're taking
all of them.
And the reality is that means you're taking the great ones and the awful ones.
And those are going to rise through the ranks one day.
So where I feel like, you know, you're what you're doing here and the classes that you
offer are so important is you're actually giving these people a way to get away from.
I mean, I use the word cowardice and it is really, it sounds very harsh.
But the reality is if you're doing nothing as recruitment is just tanking as first responders
dying from cancer and suicide and all the things we need, we need a push for courage
again.
And, you know, the tools that you're offering, I think, are bringing that.
And one of the things that I see that's so detrimental when it comes to first responder
mental health is less, you know, lesser the nasty calls that we all see and more so the
organizational stress and betrayal.
So it's not the job.
It's not the organization.
Like you said, it's the people within.
So what I think is exciting about this is it's really challenging those people.
And I would again, I would argue everyone in the, you know, my level, the firefighter
all the way through to chiefs and then city and county to look in the mirror and say,
what is it about me that isn't fighting for my people?
And I think by separating these two elements that you talked about will take away that
shame and hopefully empower the good leaders and then force the bad ones to step aside
if they're not willing to put the work in.
But it is the same job.
And the way that we fix this recruitment crisis is we address the things that are wrong.
And in 2024, a young candidate for police fire EMS can look at everything.
They can look at all the hero stuff, but then they can also look at the divorces and this
cancers and the suicides and the pay and the work week and go, I'm going to go work for
Amazon instead.
So we are, you can doom and gloom it about how bad it is because it is bad, but we're
also at the beginning of a potential paradigm shift where if, for example, using what you're
teaching that we can actually finally have the courage to address the things that are
and have always been wrong about our professions, we can go back to the lines around the police
and fire stations of young, excited people wanting to put on the uniform.
No, I fully agree.
And I think the difference is when you give them time for rest and relaxation, what are
they doing with that time?
Are they really, are they escaping?
Is that a mode of escapism or is it really to rest and recover?
And what are you doing mentally and emotionally besides the physical to really get into that
recovery piece?
I think one critical thing that you said there is courage, courage.
I don't think, and I'm borrowing here from Brene Brown's work, courage can not happen
without a sense of vulnerability, vulnerability is the gateway to courage, number one.
One of the things I discovered in prior to meeting Ryan when I was working with the military
and it was not on resilience at all.
It was really developing their leadership skills.
And then I get people saying, well, can I talk to you about something, sir?
Sure.
And they start going down that route and I find that it's getting close to therapy.
And I say, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist.
Are you aware of them?
They say, absolutely, but the conversation helps me.
Okay, as long as we know that we've drawn the boundaries, happy to have the conversation
with you.
And people would come out and say flat out, I've been diagnosed with PTSD or I know I
have it and I struggle with all the signs and symptoms.
However, I don't want a formal diagnosis in my file because it would stop my career short
of what I want to do.
And the more we had conversations and to help people think differently about themselves
and how they're engaging things is where it's at.
That really, so I think Ryan's in my work is to help them develop the resilience so
it doesn't have to get to therapy or worse.
And I was talking about the numbers with Academy applicants and hiring that was told straight
to me by George Ryan.
So when I said my buddy had just retired and then you brought him up.
I love George, George is such an awesome guy.
And I've learned a ton from him.
And I just, I think the other thing is you were talking through the SS Han said, it's
really about understanding that individuals are the ones driving change and that drive
change.
And James, the way you phrase some of what you just said made me think of a question.
There's a book called, it's either critical conversations or crucial conversations.
And there's a question in there.
It goes, what am I pretending not to notice about my role in this situation?
And I think if folks who may be frustrated with or dealing with a lot of the things that
we're talking about, were to ask that question to themselves and honestly look for answers.
I think it'd be impossible not to come up with at least a few actionable items that
they can do to have an immediate impact on the people that they interact with on a daily
basis.
And as we've talked about earlier, that's where this really has to start.
And again, if you can't, let's don't sit around and hope and pray and wish that the
organization changed, let's take action into our own hands and make sure that we're doing
everything we can to be the best leaders, the best teammates that we can be.
I think what's really been eye opening for me is I always stayed at the rank of firefighter.
I only have an exercise physiology degree.
I'm not downplaying my achievements, but I'm not a thought leader in this space and I'm
not a bugle chief or anything.
But over and over again, what I see is an element of false economy.
And it's the opposite of that phrase, plant the seed of a tree under which the shade you'll
never know.
It's built, whether you're a union president, whether you're a fire chief or a city or council
member, more often than not, the focus is, well, let me look good in this fiscal year
so then I can get that promotion or I can get reelected.
And that has come at the detriment of the wellbeing, not only of the first responders,
but the community that we serve.
And even if you look at the fiscal point of view, long-term, if you actually added another
shift and again, to Hassan's point, absolutely, if you fill the vacancies, these men and women
can't take up all the overtime and they're forced to go home and disconnect and relax.
And I've always said this, and then start something on the side.
Whatever your passion project is, make that an entrepreneurial project.
Now you've got an entire different tribe.
But when you look at the financial element of breaking first responders, what we're doing
at the moment, there is so much money downstream and I'm not an economist.
And if I can see it, people that are trained with money should be able to see it.
So there is no downside.
And this is why this conversation is so important.
All that's really needed is that vulnerability, that courage, that selflessness to put your
hand up and say, hey, I'm not going to look, seem very good to you at the moment, but this
is a long-term impact that we're going to have on our health and our mental health,
on our ability to recruit, on the way we serve our community.
We just need to invest a little bit more now.
And so that false economy, and even I had Tulsi Gabbard on the show, it's the same nationally.
We have 70% obese and overweight in this country, 70% of Americans.
We have an opioid crisis.
We consume 75% of the world's opioids.
Where is that long-term investment that we're going to improve health, especially after
a virus that shut the world down?
So that false economy seems to always be coupled with the fear to actually make a courageous
decision.
I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that.
Go ahead, Ryan.
I guess from a larger perspective, I don't want to put my tin foil hat on.
So I think I'll just say that if we're allowing fear to guide our decisions, then we're certainly
not acting or operating out of a place of love.
We're not operating out of our values and certainly not out of alignment with our goals.
And so if we catch ourselves allowing fear to drive our decisions, it's just another
opportunity to step back, have that awareness, realize awareness creates choice, and choose
a path that if we put ourselves in the future and we look back, we'll be proud of the way
that we handled ourselves and the decisions that we made in that moment.
But you mentioned something there, James, that alludes to something Ryan and I work
on quite a bit, which is the work of resilience.
And we found that resilience, one of the components that feed into individual resilience, is a
sense of social responsibility and the sense of social responsibility, meaning how I benefit
the community that I'm part of, whatever that community is.
And can I look beyond myself?
And many law enforcement firefighters and so forth tend to think it's ingrained in me
to have a sense of social responsibility because I'm helping and serving the community.
Yes, but what are you doing to the community that you're part of?
Your shift, your battalion, your group of people.
What are you doing there?
And then are you creating venues where you can actually go out there and do something
for them or for some other community you hold dear to yourself?
And there are two important facets to that.
One is that, again, neuroscience have proven time and, again, there is so much benefit
to giving than to receiving.
They can even get it down to the chemistry and the biochemistry that happens to our bodies
when we do an act of kindness or giving of myself to the collective community I'm part
of.
So there are benefits of that.
But there's also a selfish aspect of it.
Sometimes we're sitting here wallowing in whatever it is that is going on with me.
The minute I compare it to what's going on with you, my aperture opens up.
It's like, oh, wow, my situation isn't so bad after all.
So it gives a sense of perspective, I think.
And I don't know where I'm going with that thought, but if we can harness the whole idea
of attention on self, but there is an equal force in attention and giving to others.
So if I'm part of us here, a group, you all are helping me, but how can I help your career?
How can I help grow your career, your interests?
Your hobbies, whatever.
So that there is an equal amount of focus and attention on me and maintaining my own
well-being and growth and development, et cetera, but equal attention to I'm part of
a community and what have I given to that community or how am I planning on leaving
it a better community than when I found it to begin with.
There is value in both.
And I think that value is reaped in many studies about resilience in general.
The resilient tend to have that focus and attention that is balanced between self and
also other.
Absolutely.
Well, Ryan, I want to get to the book and then obviously we'll go to all the ways that
you guys offer people listening to actually start developing themselves, whether it's
individually or organizationally.
What was it that made you decide to write Fuck Your Feelings and then kind of walk me
through or walk people listening through what they'll find in the covers?
Wow.
So I think as we were talking through some of my background and sort of bio early on,
I was in New York until the end of 2009, moved back to my hometown and in 2012 opened up
my own gym.
So I owned a gym from 2012 to 2016 and that's when I sold the gym and had that transition
of I'm no longer fascinated by programming and was a lot more curious about people's
internal wiring and programming.
And for the next couple of years, I had the opportunity to work with and interview, talk
to what I would call high performers on one side, Olympic and professional athletes, tier
one operators, anything that you might consider a high performer.
And then on the other side, I was able to talk to and work with lab coats, academics.
And so I had the theory of high performance and then the application of high performance.
And the book was sort of an attempt to synthesize that information and to answer my unending
question of why are people's actions not aligned with their goals?
What makes some people successful and others not?
So getting the application side from these high performers and being able to overlay
that with the theory and say, okay, well, they may not know terms like choice architecture
or cognitive dissonance or whatever the academics are calling it, but they're doing certain
things.
So I had the opportunity to speak in Stockholm actually at a big conference in May of 2017,
16, 17.
I don't even know anymore.
And so I gave a talk and it was on states versus traits.
I presented that research from DeMacio about 95% of our decisions being made based on how
we feel in any given moment.
And one of the other speakers was in attendance for my talk and came up to me afterwards and
said, you know, this is really, there's something here.
You should do more with this.
And he happened to have a book deal and was meeting with his literary agent in New York
City like a month or two later.
And so on the way home from flight home, it was like a nine hour flight or something.
And so I turned that talk into an outline for the book.
And then over the next couple of months came up with a business or I'm sorry, a book proposal,
which is if you've ever written a book proposal was basically a business plan for a book and
met with that agent.
And the guy basically told me, you know, hey, you don't have a big enough following.
So go on a two year PR tour and build a bigger following and then come back to us and we'll
get you a book advance that is a number that you might like.
I was like, well, I'm just going to write the book because if I'm going to go on a two
year PR tour, I'm just going to sell the book myself.
I'm not going to hope that, you know, my following will be big enough for you to give me permission
to do it.
And so I, you know, fleshed it out, wrote the book through 2017 and then it came out
in February of 2018.
And so, you know, again, it was sort of an attempt to answer that question.
You know, what is the thing that is going to help us be successful?
And I think in terms of what people can expect, like I said, it's sort of the, it's an attempt
to synthesize the theory and the application of high performance.
You know, my working title was the neuroscience of high performance, but I don't think anybody
would have picked that up off the shelf.
And given Demacios research and kind of that overarching theme of, you know, not allowing
our fleeting transient emotional state to drive major decisions, you know, just lent
itself to a title like, fuck your feelings.
Yeah, definitely two types of people reaching for that.
Well, I'll tell you what, that title actually, Hassan always tells the story about how we
got connected.
He found my book in a bookstore in an airport and the title triggered him.
He picked it up, flipped through it, read it, liked it, and that's how we ended up getting
connected.
So, well, Hassan, just quickly then talk to me about a reader's perspective of the book.
So a reader's perspective of the book, I think really, I mean, the way I discovered the book
was, is, I think, although I don't want to be egotistical, is how most people come into
this book if they haven't heard about it before.
Because I mean, in my work, in my field, emotional and social intelligence was an integral part
in what we teach and what we coach on, et cetera.
And we did it from a leadership perspective.
And right about the time that the book came out, I came upon it in the airport.
I had forgotten to pick up any book from home and absentmindedly I was like, ah, I forgot
the book I was supposed to read on the plane.
So let me walk into the bookstore and get another book or get a book or whatever.
And I walked in the bookstore and I see Ryan's book sitting on the shelf and immediately
I was like, ah, yet another person dissing EQ.
So I got enough interested enough to pick it up and see how his dissing EQ or emotional
intelligence.
And the more I flipped through the book, I was like, I'll be darned.
He got me.
He really is talking about the importance of emotional and social intelligence.
So that's the book I bought and I started reading it.
And many of the military personnel, fire department personnel and law enforcement personnel I work
with, I had recommended Ryan's book to until we basically one of my good friends who was
reading it, he ran into a relative of Ryan's at a party and he was talking about the book
and they said, well, would you like to read the author or would you like to meet the author?
And Pete was like, sure.
And he met Ryan.
And then ultimately he goes, he calls me one day and he goes, Hassan, would you like to
meet Ryan Muncy?
I was like, Ryan Muncy who wrote the book?
I was, he was like, yes.
The book I recommended to you, Pete, yes.
Do you want to meet him?
Absolutely.
So we met and we talked and met a couple of times and talked and really our methods were
parallel enough that I ultimately got the courage.
I was like, Hey, Ryan, do you want to partner on doing some work?
Because in light of COVID, we had a lot of demand for work on resilience.
And I really have always believed that resilience is rooted in mastering that art of emotional
and social intelligence.
And that's how our roads, kind of our paths crossed.
And we started collaborating on work together because we're both passionate about the topic
and passionate about the communities we teach it to.
I've used the word resilience a lot recently in a different context, but I think it's parallel
with probably the way that you're teaching.
But when you look at the mental health conversation, the first responder professions, 10 years ago,
we were beating the drum.
We're starting to beat the drum.
It's the stigma, smash the stigma, smash the stigma.
A decade later, that same drum is still being beaten.
And the problem I have with this conversation is there's no hope in smashing the stigma.
There's no hope with quote unquote, dealing or living with your PTSD.
But after I've had almost like a thousand episodes now, you see these common denominators
surface over and over and over again.
And these are all actionable elements, everything from unaddressed childhood trauma, organizational
stress, sleep deprivation in my profession, all these areas that you truly can address.
And then now you look at the 2024 mental health toolbox, finally, thanks to, I'd argue, the
SEALs predominantly, the psychedelic conversation is now in there as well.
And literally a friend of mine who's big in the strength and conditioning world is off
for a psychedelic retreat this weekend because he's tried all the other things and it didn't
work.
So where I feel another area that the word resilience can be applied is if you are, I
mean, anyone, but in my world, the first responder, and you are going to go through the crucible
of finding your specific toolbox, there is a more resilient version of yourself waiting
on the other side.
So I think, what I've seen in the past, resilience training and the fire service is, we'll put
you in gear and put you through a mask and then we'll play a tape of people screaming
and it's like this heightened extra sensory experience.
But I think we're real resilient, or not the only place, but one opportunity for resilience
is to literally figure out the things that you haven't addressed yet, find that beautiful
toolbox, work your way through, because how many people have come out the other side of
addiction, suicide, and now they're these beacons of light, they're these incredible
human beings.
And I think that that hope conversation and that resilience element of your mental health
journey needs to be in the mental health conversation, especially in the first responder professions.
Absolutely.
And I would say there is, I mean, we all face trauma, there's capital T trauma and little
T trauma.
And I remember the first time I watched The King's Speech, a movie that came out and it
was about King George VI Stammer and how the person who really was discovering the effects
of war on the soldiers that come back and how the King's Stammer was a result of a maybe
little T trauma.
And I don't know, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist who designated little T or capital
T trauma, but nonetheless trauma.
And I think all of us face challenges in life that if we're incapable of dealing with, it
has ramifications.
But when we develop enough resilience to face those situations, we could either bounce back
or better yet, even come out stronger, come out stronger.
I mean, that to me is a fascinating topic that I don't think we have to be formally
diagnosed to really learn the importance of mental well-being and just the ability to
show up resilient.
And that bit about being able to potentially come out stronger is an aspect of this that
we talk about at the beginning of the programs that Hassan and I do.
And again, it's another nod to Taleb and the book Anti-Fragile, right?
And so James, you were nodding earlier, familiarity.
So if anyone has read that book, if you haven't, it's a phenomenal book.
Anti-Fragile Systems That Gain From Disorder, I think is the subtitle.
But in the book, he talks about a lighthouse, a storm comes and maybe, let's say it takes
out a house, a traditional house, right?
And so that house we would consider fragile.
The lighthouse remains unscathed, unchanged.
And so it is what we might term resilient.
It's steadfast.
And so on the other side of chaos, it is unchanged.
Systems that are anti-fragile are actually ones that gain or grow, improve due to exposure
to chaos.
And so we use that as sort of three different tiers for what can happen when we are exposed
to chaos or disorder, trauma, right?
And so the idea with resilience is at minimum, we would like to provide tools in a toolbox
that can help folks get at the very least back to baseline post exposure to chaos,
trauma, disorder with the, I don't want to say expectation, but with the ability to exceed
baseline and to grow or develop because of that.
And so that would be where that concept of anti-fragility ties in.
The other thing, as you were talking, James, we're talking about smashing the stigma.
Hassan mentioned earlier, people come to him and they say, hey, I like having this conversation
with you because I don't have to have PTSD written in my file.
And they don't want to do that because it's going to disrupt their career.
Well, I mean, to your point about smashing the stigma, as long as that designation in
your file has a negative impact on your career, the negative stigma will always be there.
And so from an administrative or organizational standpoint, that's something that absolutely
has to change.
Had the social layer and pressure of even masculinity and some of the concepts around
masculinity and what does that mean?
So I mean, we can take this conversation in a variety of different ways, but smashing
that stigma is critical.
I've said this a lot on the show recently, that term toxic masculinity that, you know,
I understand, I think how it was originally meant, but you shouldn't tell your girl that
she needs to wear a dress and wear pink.
You know, if she wants to get in the mud and she's still a girl that likes to do those
things as well.
But obviously it's been projected in many, many different ways.
But I think the real toxic masculinity is within masculinity or the two dimensional
1980s action hero version of masculinity.
And it's done a disservice to my generation, certainly the ones prior, where you have these
firefighters and police officers and we forget that when we went into the profession, we
were the yin and the yang.
It was kindness and compassion and service that led us into uniform.
And then we get in and we get beat down by the job and sleep deprivation and we become
a white circle and we've totally forgotten that feminine side.
And then we can come out the other side, now it's your identity and you're looking around
the world, you know, lost.
So reminding ourselves that we have to give ourselves that same, you know, kindness, compassion,
grace that we talked about earlier is so, so important, you know, in women as well in
first responders, especially in men that were raised the, you know, Rambo and Schwarzenegger
were the epitome of masculinity.
All right.
Well, then you mentioned the programs.
Where can people find the programs that you offer and then what is the kind of spectrum
that's available?
So where they can find it, they can come to the website and our website is ok-online.com
and they can just type search for resilience and it will come up with the resilience work.
The three programs Ryan and I work on are scaled basically and we try to customize as
much as possible with the availability of time, funding, et cetera.
So we've got the bare minimum is the one day program.
The one day program can give you exposure to what are we talking about when we're talking
resilience, what resilience is rooted in the whole concept of emotional and social intelligence
and expanding your bandwidth and your ability to deal with situations.
Add to it, can we identify one, maybe two, maximum three areas of my emotional and social
intelligence that it would behoove me to develop in order to show up more resilient in the
world?
So we have 26 skills.
Ryan, would you add anything to that one day design?
No, I think you nailed that.
The three day is very similar.
When Hassan and I created these, we realized that time constraints would be kind of our
biggest issue.
And so what we've done is we've created a program that can be collapsed or expanded
based on the available time.
And so the three day version expands on the one day version.
We actually build in the assessments starting with that one.
So the emotional intelligence and hardiness resilience gauge are involved in the three
day version.
And then we have, we call it a three month version, but it's an expanded version.
It can be two, three, four months that varies with logistics, people's location.
And that one has the ability for actually not the ability, we kind of say require the
first and last bookends there to be in person.
And then some of that can be online and virtual as well.
But that one really affords the opportunity for follow up and implementation as well as
some individual coaching.
Beautiful.
We'll stay in with you, Ryan.
Where can people find the book and where are the best places to find you online or social
media?
So the book is available on Audible and Amazon.
If you buy it on my website, you can get a signed copy.
My website is just ryanmuncie.com.
I'd say that's probably the best place to find and follow me as I am continuing to delete
social media accounts.
So none of them are on my phone.
Some of the accounts are still there, but they're not on my phone.
So I don't know how much longer they'll stay online.
But website and you can contact me through there.
Brilliant.
Hassan, same question.
Where to find you online?
So they can find me online.
The easiest is through the company I work with, which is again, OKA-online.com.
They can also find me on LinkedIn and it's Hassan Kamel.
And those are the only two that I really exist on.
Like Ryan, I'm trying to narrow down the social media to the bare minimum bone.
So that would be the easiest one.
Of course, they can always email me.
And my email is hkamel.com.
Brilliant.
Well, I want to thank you both so much.
We've been all over the place and this is what I love about these longer form conversations.
But I mean, there's so much value from each of your backgrounds and the journeys that
you've been through.
And then the book is incredible as well.
It's really kind of unpacking the why.
And I think this is the thing.
Once we understand what's working against us, the same with the Social Dilemma documentary.
What a beautiful insight into why we can't put our damn phones down.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you, James.
It's been a pleasure.
It has been a blast, James.
Thanks for having us on and thank you for doing what you do.