 If a pigeon is tapping on a button, and every time it taps, it gets a grain of wheat, it'll just keep regularly tapping. But if it's tapping on a button, and just every now and again randomly, a piece of wheat comes out, that pigeon starts tapping like crazy on that button because it's just waiting for the next reward. And you know what? We actually do the same thing. What's up everybody, and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week, and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. A big part is the group experience. And they often maintain communication with other participants. Years later, we'll find out that they've traveled together and they were complete strangers in starting the program together. Even in our X Factor program, we've had members go on trips together just meeting each other through Zoom and the coaching sessions and having fun in the monthly improv sessions and allowing the storytelling sessions to really spark their vulnerability. And they feel more connected to other members of X Factor than some of their close friends at home. And that support of seeing others striving and putting this into practice reinforces for them even if right now they're facing a struggle or they're feeling themselves falling back into their comfort zone of, hey, I can do this too. Like this is possible for me. I wanna add to that as well. The group support is certainly helpful and it goes a long way in keeping people connected into what they're working on. The other part of that is the rewards that they get for trying things differently and succeeding and seeing people's, the seeing interactions with people now take on a different, it changes and they're actually enjoying themselves. And because of the skills that they have built they're having fun. And the other people that they're now engaged with interacting with, they're having fun too. They're not dealing with somebody who is stiff and rigid and in their head and whose body language looks as if they've been hit over the back of the head with a shovel. Now they're lighter. Now they're laughing. Now they're in the moment. There are rewards that come with that and we all understand how much change comes with reward. Wow. Wow. It certainly sounds like you guys get some like really interesting results out of your program. How do you find that you don't try and do it perfectly yourself? You know, how do you? I mean, you're surrounded by your job. It sounds like fun creators and flexibility creators here, which sounds awesome, but it's so easy to get stuck in that trap Luckily for us, Johnny and I have never considered ourselves perfectionists. So that trap for us is something Johnny, being a creative and performing and me working in science before this and realizing that there's no perfection when it comes to scientific experiments. All we try to do with the program experience is seek feedback and grow from the feedback. You know, we just had a team of special operators come through the program and they're giving us a full debrief and we can't wait to get the debrief because we want to continue to improve. If we were to go into that experience or hop on an X Factor accelerator call saying this call has to be perfect, not only would our clients suffer, but we know the pain that we would suffer from that mindset. Yeah, yeah. So you're doing a lot of really great modeling for your clients then, right? We try our best. Hold it lightly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, certainly in music for myself, a lot of my favorite artists and my favorite work from those artists are the records that are imperfect that have wrong notes where the band is so loose that they're messing up in those recordings. To me, that is the perfection of those records and that will never happen again. Those are what's beautiful about that. And of course, even for myself and my own transformation and history and music of having to get on stage and being awful as a kid when you're getting on stage and clearing out rooms from performing and working on getting back in the garage knowing that we should do better next time or if we practice more, we'll enjoy it more. And there's another aspect of it too that is very important that I want to see our clients reach which is when you're in the moment and you're enjoying yourself you sort of transcend the moment. When you're self-conscious and you're in your head, it's painful. It's frustrating. That's where the anxiety is. When you're in the moment and you're enjoying yourself and you're able to create whether that creative spark is you being on stage and transcending the moment or you firing on all cylinders on a first date, loving that you are killing it and that the person is just highly engaged in your conversation and that they can't wait to see you again and knowing that you just knocked it out of the park well, for our clients, for myself then you begin chasing that. You want those moments because every moment that you are you transcend the moment. What you feel from that is incredibly addictive. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Yeah, that's the same in therapy. You have the odd session where I mean, I'd love to say it was every session in a perfectionist would say this should be every single session but it's just not true. You have sessions where you know, some sort of light bulb goes on where you make some one or other of you make some sort of realization the client shifts they've come back and they said I tried this thing we talked about and like wow or they give you feedback like this has been so helpful like those are rare. I don't know you clients don't spend a lot of time telling you that you're doing a great job and that's fine. That's part of the job but don't go around seeking it either but way back to the behavioral science just to use a tiny bit of techie talk that's called an intermittent reinforcement schedule. So like way back when I did first year psychology they said if a pigeon is tapping on a button and every time it taps it gets a grain of wheat it'll just keep regularly tapping but if it's tapping on a button and just every now and again randomly a piece of wheat comes out that pigeon starts tapping like crazy on that button because it's just waiting for the next reward and you know what? We actually do the same thing. Of course. So we just like we love those moments they're so fantastic aren't they? But if we're expecting that every moment will be golden like that every moment will have that sparkling quality to it it's just not gonna happen. So we just keep tapping, right? We just keep trying something else. And that's where psychological flexibility is really helpful because that idea of I don't have to just keep doing the same thing I can try a range of different things I can try all sorts of different approaches and I can do that because I can stuff up it's okay to mess up I can try this new technique in coaching or is it a therapist or whatever I'm working as as a leader I can try this thing and guess what? It's gonna I'm gonna flub, do you call it? It's gonna sound clunky. It's the phrase that I'll use but you know I can try something new and see whether you know what happens so it is it's so hard it's so hard to teach I get the people who are really stuck I think about perfectionism like on a continuum from sort of like maybe you guys like really relaxed to perfectionistic and then OCD is out the other end and like where you really locked down then and that is immobilizing like if I can't make any mistake at all then I can't do anything I literally am frozen I've had clients like it goes a lot into health as well right? A lot of health goals I see a lot of people for weight management and binge eating problems and a lot of them like very simple goals are really hard to set I'll say you know let's talk about increasing your physical exercise you know that's part of this sort of broader healthy life that we're trying to build and they go sure I'm gonna go walking every day and I'm like no you're not no you're not like that's not gonna happen like immediately they set this perfect forever goal so the first day that it's raining or they have to go to work early or you know they can't walk they're failed because of this sort of rigid absolute rule so then it's like well I'm always failing so I'm just gonna give up now and or you know you forget for the whole week and they are supposed to be walking you know well I'm a failure so there's another bit of evidence for that so I try and work on increasing the frequency of that particular thing over time increasing the frequency of the desired behavior over time so it's like if what we're aiming for is increasing some healthy habits maybe we're eating lunch every day so that we don't get to dinner completely starving or to eat and finish off a double ice cream you know let's start adding in lunch so like how many times can you add lunch in across the week let's see what you can do and let's see if we can use that as a baseline and keep building on that or how many walks do you think you could get done between now and when I next see you so it's introducing this idea of it being like it's an imperfect goal isn't it we're not aiming for an absolute like from always to this like from now for forever I'm gonna do this new behavior no you're not because humans are imperfect and you just you're just setting yourself up for failure