Greg Voisen
Welcome back to another episode of Inside personal growth. And joining us today from San Jose, California is Eduardo brisendo, and this is the book, the performance paradox, turning the power of mindset into and action. Eduardo, thanks for being on today, and I really appreciate having you. How you doing? Doing great. Thanks

Eduardo Briceño
for having me, Greg.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's always good to have somebody like yourself who has an expertise in an area where I think so many people today are kind of like struggling, because there is so much I think, pressure being put on folks, especially in the corporate world for performance, and I think it causes, as people say, performance anxiety as well. So I am going to let the listeners know a bit about you first, and then we'll get into the series of questions. Ed warder is a global keynote speaker and facilitator who guides many of the world's leading companies in developing cultures of continuous improvement, innovation and high performance. I watched his TED talk just this morning, how to get better at the things that you care about, and he's got another TED talk, so there's two up there. The power of belief have been viewed more than 10 million times. Pretty phenomenal. Congratulations to you. Eduardo on that. He's won multiple awards. He's been featured in Harvard Business Review. Big Think, Business Insider, entrepreneur, Fast Company, Forbes Inc and so on. Early in his career, he was the co founder and the CEO of mindset. Works with the pioneer and growth mindset development services, and he started that at Stanford with Carol Dweck, which most of my listeners know, and he's held and he held that position for a decade. Prior to that, he was a venture capital investment with the sprout group, and he served on several for profit and not for profit boards, and before that, he was an investment banking analyst with Credit Suisse. And the list goes on and on and on. He's got his MBA, his MA from Stanford University. So he is definitely somebody who is knowledgeable about this. And it's just a pleasure having you on and let's just kind of kick it off because, and I think the main thing I hear today inside cultures of companies, and I think it really depends on the culture, but in a lot of cultures of companies at wardrobe, there's this need for the management, because they've got to meet milestones and goals and all kinds of things. And it's like people are working harder faster, and it doesn't seem like there's an end in sight. You know, technology has sped things up. A lot of things have helped to precipitate this, what I call environment, and it puts these, I would say, unrealistic expectations on a lot of people. You speak about the big idea that you present the first chapter and your reference, you call it chronic performance. Can you speak about that? And you know what you see going on, and potentially what you see is a way to resolve some of these issues, sure.

Eduardo Briceño
Well, you know, what will you describe? You know, to me, I think it can sometimes feel like a hamster wheel, right where we are working towards something, and the world is changing faster and faster, and there's greater and greater complexity and challenges, and the solution that we come up with is just to run faster, right, to make the hamster wheel turn faster. And that is unsustainable, like you said, but it also just doesn't work, because what happens is that what, what we tend to gravitate toward often, is just to perform more. You know, we want to perform. We want to deliver results, so let's just perform more so that we can, we can keep up and we can continue delivering. And what we don't realize is that the reality is that there's two different forms of effort. There's effort to perform, which is important, effort to deliver, effort to get things done, but there's also a different type of effort, which is effort to learn, an effort to improve, and that involves different activities, different attention than when we are focused just on doing what we already know how to do, try to do as best as we know how try to minimize mistakes. That's what I call the performance zone, and that's what we're often kind of stuck in. So if we're always in the performance zone, I call that chronic performance, and that keeps us stagnant, that keeps us at the same level of effectiveness. Versus what we need to do is to combine that with a different form of effort, different strategies, different systems, which are designed to leap beyond the known, to experiment, to ask questions, to try different things. And it is the combination of those two things that allow us to increase our performance over time. Performance is good in terms of achieving our goals, but in order to achieve higher performance, we need to not just perform, we also need to learn and and and integrate these two things in our lives in sustainable ways so that we maximize our medium term and long term results.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, you being a speaker and an author and a coach, and you know, coaches are usually about performance, right? It's like, okay, I come to a coach because I want to perform better. So the underlying theory is that I've always got to get better. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but you mentioned that performance paradox is a counter intuitive phenomena, and that chronic performance could be the reason that we're feeling this stagnation in some areas of our life. Um, what can people do to counteract the issue you said, to take a leapfrog forward, right? Okay, well, that means I have to step out of my comfort zone. That means I have to create a new mindset about the way I think about this. So I'd love to know what Eduardo would tell our listeners out there who have this performance paradox.

Eduardo Briceño
Yeah, so the performance paradox is the kind of counterintuitive reality that if we're constantly performing, our performance suffers. In order to improve our performance, we have to do something other than performing, which is different activity, which I call the Learning Zone. And so, great coaches, yeah, you might go to a coach to increase your performance, but in order to do that, in order to increase your skills, you have to engage in different activities that is different from doing the activity. And so great coaches, you know, like John Wooden you know, you hear what he teaches and what he says, and he's very clear that you need to do what you're saying. You need to get uncomfortable during practice. You might use your if you're weaker on the left side, you might use the left side a lot. Or you might go to the part of the court that is a weakness for you, or that is a strength with you, for you, but you're getting get uncomfortable, to get even better, and during the match, during the game, you're going to try to just win, and so you're going to go to what you think works best, and try to minimize mistakes, try to increase your results at that match. So So for us, yes, getting, you know, uncomfortable out of what we already know how to do is critical in order for us to increase our skills, like you're saying,

Greg Voisen
Yeah, you know, I I reflect back on what you're talking about. And Steven Kotler has been a guest on this show so many times, and you know, he talks about his flow Genome Project and all the things, any and flow in particular. And you know, for so many people, they would love to attain this euphoric state of flow, right? It's like everything is timeless. It just kind of like I can sit here, and we all know we've had moments or segments like this where everything just kind of syncs together. Our performance is amazing. Whether you're a runner or you're a basketball player or you're an employee inside of a company, what might you tell somebody, from a standpoint of some of the things that they could do to actually get to that flow state where they are enjoying right? Because we look at employee engagement today, it's at like an all time low all the time. Every time I see it, it's like 30% maybe it's even less than that, but that's part of the issue, isn't it? Eduardo,

Eduardo Briceño
yeah. Well, you know, flow is an interesting thing, and so so with flow, you, I think so. So there was a, there was a debate between, kind of the the world expert on deliver practice, which is Anders, Ericsson, and the world expert on flow, Mihaly, she kiss my Holly. And they were kind of going back and forth on, can you, can you be in a in a state of improvement, in a state of flow? And, you know, I think when, when you're engaging in something called deliberate practice, which is when you are outside your comfort zone, you're working on a very specific skill, back and forth, uh, trying new strategies, getting feedback between each iteration and and it's, it involves a lot of effort, a lot of concentration, that that can feel, often not in a state of flow. It doesn't. It is not it can. It can feel flow, but it can. It doesn't have to in a state of flow. Usually you are performing, but it performing at a at a high level of challenge, but it's not too challenging. So it is, it is it is right at the edge of what you can do well. And so you are really achieving things really well. And you are, you know, at your peak, at that moment. And I think of it more as a state of performance, right, as a state of learning, but it is where you're exploiting your skills as best as you know how, and you get into a timeless, fantastic place. And so there's a place for that, and it's a magical place. And for me, I mean one, one way that I think is is required for flow is to be focused on one thing. So often in this today's world, we are so kind of distracted with notifications, and you can't be in a state of flow if you are, you know, getting dinged with messages and, you know, other things. So you need to be kind of blocking your environment and focus on that one thing that you're going to be kind of deeply engaged in. This one, one of the requirements for you to get into that state of flow. For me, that's the most important one. But also, you know, connecting with something that you care about, that connects to your purpose and that you feel like, is something that that is important for you to be engaging it.

Greg Voisen
And I think you think, I think what you just said at the end, something you care about and that you have a love for and a compassion for, really makes the difference in getting in flow so much easier, because all of the chemical releases in your body than dorothens and the oxytocin and all the things that you get the reward from, they continue to come in. And that happens in that state of flow, whether you're a skier or a mountain climber or all the other things that we were talking about earlier. Now you and I have a common friend, Chip Connolly, and you've been through the modern elder Academy, which is facilitated by Chip and sometimes other people as well. But he was recently on the podcast, and he and he's been on the show several times before, and and I love chip, and I love what he's doing. And you did that inward journey. You took that time to go away and do that retreat. What did you learn and what could you convey to the listeners? Because, you know, he puts it out there as kind of a midlife thing. Well, you don't look like a guy that's in midlife by any means. You look pretty young. But the point is that midlife is being pushed further and further and further out, right? Maybe they even call mid life for a person like me, who's 70 years old. So the point is, is that, what did you take away from it, and what? How could it actually affect people positively, like it did yourself?

Eduardo Briceño
Sure, yeah, I loved going to modern elder Academy and chips become a dear mentor for me, and he would consider both of us midlife, for sure. I'm 49 years old. And, you know, people who go to modern elder Academy are, you know, from their 20s to their 90s or further. And and it's more is a wisdom school or that they they talk about kind of a being, a wisdom school or a school for for midlife, like you're saying. And one of the things that it made me reflect on is that in in through adulthood, we are going often through different transitions, right? We might our body changes, we might move, we might shift jobs or industries, or we might get married or get divorces, or our parents might, you know, go through transitions that affect us or our kids or parenting, etc, and and there's no support in society to help us learn about those transitions and the next chapters in our lives. So we have kind of schooling support for childhood and and adolescence, but then we're sort of out in the wild, and then we're just supposed to know what to do, or just to perform life and work. And so to the I love what they're doing and being deliberate about providing kind of support in the learning space and wisdom for people to navigate life and to continue to grow throughout lives, and to continue to go into experiences that are different from what we've done before, and that makes life so much richer, right? Rather than just do the same thing over and over and stay in that hamster wheel throughout life, it's like, how do we get to different experiences? But we need to learn and expose ourselves to other, to ideas and to wisdom in order to navigate those transitions and those new chapters. So there's tons of activities a beautiful place, and one of the things that that is beautiful about it is that is the sense of community. You know, people who are together going through experiences of growth in adulthood and supporting each other in that way and how important that is in pretty quick we told we've talked about, you know, mindset and, you know, effort and flow, and those are all things that happen inside of us, in our minds and as individuals, but all of all of that is affected so much by the people around us, and so The community that we form, and what the community values and the habits that those communities form, those affect us so much and affect our quality of life and our success so much.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I think like any play, any retreat, hopefully you feel safe and you feel vulnerable and open with the people around you, because they've either experienced or are experiencing the same feelings and emotions you are. And that's what chip has created with that modern elder Academy. I've been to many, many meditation retreats on the orcas islands, and I find that the people that come there literally are the same kind of folks, and we have a lot of things in common, and it's easy to open up and share. Now you speak about what you refer to as the PErforM, learn curve. Okay, now you've spoken a little bit about it and then on the fringes, but can you explain this concept and how it can help the listeners overcome performance paradox, because you said, Okay, we got to go to this learning point, so we have to stretch a little bit like you were saying in the basketball courts. John Wooden, right? It's like, how are you going to look your left side, your right side? And I think a lot of people get comfortable, and they don't want to be in discomfort. And there are elements of discomfort which are going to be required for you to stretch, to to grow, right? So explain how you make that simpler or easier in people's mindsets to say, hey, I can actually do this.

Eduardo Briceño
Sure. Yeah. So you asked about the PErforM, learn curve. That's just a visual representation that shows that at one end of the spectrum we've talked about, if we're constantly performing, our performance suffers. It's lower. But it's also true that at the other end of the spectrum, if we're constantly learning, then our performance also suffers because we we don't get things done, we don't contribute to other people. We don't actually achieve anything, if we're only learning and purely learning, however enjoyable that might be to some of us. And so for us to achieve, whether it's our personal goals or our professional goals, or any other goals, our medium and long term goals. We have to have a balance and an integration between these two zones of performance and learning. And so if you think about the kind of medium and long term results, it is a it is kind of like an inverted U to U curve, right where you know, if you're purely performing, you're you're at a low level of of goals and achievement. If you're purely learning, you're also low, and it's somewhere in the middle where you're maximizing your medium and long term results. Now if you're only looking at your short term results or your immediate results, the way to maximize that is through the performance zone. And so if you really you have a big project due this week, and you just have to get it done, and that's the only thing you care about, it might make sense just to disregard learning for a bit and just focus on getting things done. And that's reasonable to do for the short term. But the issue is that we we, if we are doing that every single week, then we just stay at our current level of performance. So so the solution, like you're saying, is to integrate the learning zone into our lives, and like you're saying, that can feel uncomfortable in some ways for some of us, learning certain things can feel comfortable and enjoyable and really great. But an example is, you know, my my wife and I want to both speak more Spanish to get better at Spanish, but that feels uncomfortable in our relationship, because we're more comfortable speaking English to each other, and so it helps me to remind myself that it is supposed to feel uncomfortable speaking with my wife in the language that is not the language we usually communicate with, and that associating that discomfort with something that I want to achieve, which is getting better at Spanish, helps me engage in that experience now, or, you know, I I also have, about a year ago, started taking cold showers because it's kind of healthy, but it also is reframing it as a way to train myself for discomfort and to lean into discomfort. That has also helped me, you know, get into the cold shower, because I know it's good for me.

Greg Voisen
Well, the next thing you'll be doing is cold plunges. If you haven't done that yet, my son does him every morning. He's got a cold plunge in his garage, and so I know it. I think he said it's at 34 degrees. So he said he can get about three and a half minutes, three or four minutes, but it is definitely a wake up call, as they say. But look, you mentioned this Learning Zone, which we've talked about, and it's about inquiry. It's about experimentation. It's about making reflect and reflecting on mistakes and implementing adjustments on the journey toward greater excellence. As you say in the book, what is the transformative power of moving between the two zones? Because you said, hey, the one end is the Learning Zone, right? And that might be the stretch, but we really want to be somewhere kind of in between.

Eduardo Briceño
Yeah, we want to be both getting things done and contributing and achieving things and evolving and transforming throughout our lives, and we need both of those zones in order for us to do that. And so life at some point can feel like boring and stagnant and like we're just in a linear, you know, habits of just inertia, right? Of just doing every day the same thing. And so when we think about transformation or evolution, I think a more interesting life, a more fulfilling life, is one where we are changing ourselves through our lives, through our lives. In order to do that, we have to engage in both zones.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, the body seeks much of the time homeostasis and where now we're talking about the physical body, but I think also the mind, depending on your mindfulness and meditation practices. And you mentioned that the learning zone and the performance zones are states of mind. So speak with us about, oh, we can shift the mindsets for a more balanced work and personal life. Because, you know, it's one thing to stretch the body, push it, push it to a new heart level, rate, run a little bit faster, lift, heavier weights, all of the kind of things that you can do to the body. It's another thing when it comes to the mind. Because I think many people, if you ask them, I think this statistic still holds true. They haven't read a book since high school. And you know, when you think about the number of books that Amazon has and the number of people that I have on the show, and the number of books that I've actually profiled, it's hard for me to believe that people don't do that, but there's so everything is so fast they don't feel like they have time. So you got a state to get these people, to stretch the minds, the mindset.

Eduardo Briceño
Well, you know, it's funny, I I didn't use to read at all until I was in my 20s. And the reason was that growing up, I only experienced really boring books, like when I went to school, what we read was textbooks that were just facts. You were just supposed to memorize. Things that were not relevant to me, they didn't seem interesting, and the only purpose of the textbook was to pass the test. And I didn't have any other books like I never you know, I didn't read any books that were interesting to me, and so I always associated reading of books with things that were really boring, until I was in my 20s, I married my wife, Alison, who is an educator. She's a professor of education in a university, and she teaches teachers how to use children's books in the classroom, in schools, and I, she exposed me to amazing books. And now I read, you know, every night, and it's I love it so much, and both kind of fiction and non fiction, and it's just, there's like you're saying, there's just a world of awesomeness in books. And I listen to podcasts, and I get myself exposed to different things in different ways, but I can, I can relate to people who don't read, especially because in I think in school, we we teach that reading is boring, and I think that's changing, but, but, but, yeah, we haven't. A lot of us haven't discovered the magic of books, but, but when you say that the two zones are states of mind. Yes, it's about a lot of it is about what we're paying attention to. Like, for example, there's a research study that was done that was looking at people's brains in a brain scan machine as they were solving problems inside of the machine, and what they realized is that some people, they were paying attention. Their brain was very active when they were getting information about whether they got this problem right or wrong. They just wanted to know whether they were right or wrong. But they were not paying attention at a different time, which is at the time when the when other people were were making, paying attention to the mistakes that they made. So when the machine was telling them what they did wrong, and they had opportunities to learn what they did wrong and to think about those things, and it is the people that that paid attention to that that learned something and were able to get better in the subsequent problems. So their performance increased over time, but only if their brain was active when they were getting information about what they did wrong. Versus some people didn't want to think about that, because it made them feel badly about themselves, right to think about their mistakes. And so when I say that the Learning Zone is a state of mind. In the Learning Zone, we have to pay attention to the mistakes that we're making, to the hypothesis that we're making, to the experiments we want to to to to execute, and how we're going to learn whether that works better or not. We want to be asking questions. We want to be listening better and asking follow up questions. That means we need to be really actively listening. And that's all about what's happening in our brain and and that's what I mean. You know, people can be solving problems, but it is, what are they paying attention to? Are they paying attention to what they can learn, or are they only paying attention to what they can already do and what they have gotten done?

Greg Voisen
That's a really good way you put it. And I think that you know that when people are curious, they usually want to solve a problem, so they're going to look at mistakes as a way to say, well, that's one way. I tried it, but it didn't work. So let's try a different hypothesis here. Let's go down a different road. Let's try a different way of solving this problem. And as I see, so many entrepreneurs are problem solvers. That's what they are, and they're highly curious, so there's this deep level of curiosity. They're also add. So they're all over the place, right? They can be and that's because they have interest in so many different things, right? But you might find it like, Okay, I got an interest in this, and have an interest in that. And I think if you're interested in things and you're curious, you are probably the kind of person that's going to look at a problem and the one where you made a mistake and you're going to find a way around it. You're going to find a way to actually make it work. So you mentioned,

Eduardo Briceño
yeah, can I go ahead? Yes, absolutely. I agree with you. I think in particular, you describe the successful entrepreneurs. You know, I think in entrepreneurship, there can be some traps where we might not get to a state of curiosity, like, for example, sometimes entrepreneurs get really enamored with the solution that they came up. You know, they see a problem, they also see a solution, and then they want to, like, sell people on their solution, and it doesn't work. And so that's when entrepreneurs don't find what they call kind of product market fit, as opposed to, you know, instead of falling in love with your solution, fall in love with a problem, right? And then, and then do that curiosity, and that kind of lean startup methodology, where you are testing hypothesis and, you know, being customer centric and iterating on what the solution might be in order to solve the problem you're going after. And that's that curiosity approach that you describe is a much more likely way to lead to success.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, we just had a gentleman on from Switzerland talking about how to create innovation. Innovation. It's the name of the book. It's a Wiley book, and it was interesting, as we were talking Stefan diefenbacher, the reality is, is that, you know, you have to create a culture where people in your company are creating you have to put a budget toward it. You have to have it be ongoing all the time. And, you know, we see iterations of products go from the iPhone 16, but really, are there revolutionary breakthroughs in innovation, and that's a big difference than seeing an iteration of a product like going from an iPhone 15 to an iPhone 16, right there, there's maybe a few things that have been incorporated in it, but for breakthroughs to happen, you really have to set it out there, and you really have to invest into it. So look,

Eduardo Briceño
then we have to so we have to create the communities, because it's not individuals that are doing this, it is a community of people who are valuing that experimentation and innovation and innovation and also the right systems so that you're, you're you're creating the right habits and structures in order to to create that innovation. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
most definitely. Now you mentioned the failure to prepare ourselves for this ongoing change is what economists refer to as present bias. Speak with us about present bias and how we can break free from it, because it look it's rampant, it's everywhere. And I don't, I think this is one of those things that's always there, but people don't. It's almost like it's blind. They never see it because they're really not looking for it.

Eduardo Briceño
Yeah, I agree. Present bias is kind of a cognitive bias that, as humans, we all suffer from, to overvalue the present and undervalue the future. So it leads us to under invest, right to overspend under invest. And the learning is a form of investment, right? It's an effort that we we make to increase our skills so that we can reap the benefits in the medium term and the long term. And so we have this psychological want for immediate rewards, which then put gets future rewards kind of away from us. But in addition to this psychological bias, there are structural systems in our society that exacerbate that. Like, for example, you know, in public companies, research analysts tend to base the value of the stock on the current net income. And so CEOs of public companies feel a lot of pressure to deliver to maximize the current net income, and that leads them to under invest in things like research and development, which would lead to those innovations like the next technology that can really make a huge difference for the company in the future. And so when CEOs feel this pressure that that cascades down the organization to just execute short term goals at the detriment of long term goals, and then that gets into the culture of what management is, what leadership is, what workplaces, even in private companies. And so how do we how do we get around this? First, we need to become like, aware of this cognitive bias and the system so that we can see them and then create some micro habits, I think, to help us think more about the longer term, right? And so, for example, one thing that I do every morning is I remind myself of, what are my goals like? What am I trying to what is my first my life mission, and what is my strategy? What are my goals and and that helps me, you know, start with the end in mind, and then figure out what, what do I need to do today to go toward those long term goals?

Greg Voisen
Well, that brings me to this, this concept, you and I talked a little bit about it. I told you that I did interviews with 22 mountain climbers that climbed all the highest Seven Summits. And in in this chapter, you call it the big idea, speak about learning by doing. And if you would, you know, kind of weave in some of the stories that you told in this chapter, and also speak about your learning while doing cycle. You've got this learning while doing cycle. And you had some great stories in this chapter,

Eduardo Briceño
sure, and you've met Alex Honnold and worked in the book. You know that involved him. And so I started the chapter with with a story about him. He's a climber. He has climbed lots of vertical rocks without any ropes, you know, just with his body, including El Capitan in Yosemite, which is just a huge vertical, you know, granite wall. And, yeah, and, you know, you know, you know, his strategy is more better than I do. But you know, when you're doing something like that, you you really need to build your skills to such an expert level before you get into that performance zone of going up the wall without a rope, because if you make a mistake, one mistake can cost you your life, right? And so you need to use ropes in the Learning Zone and to really try different strategies as you're going through the tricky parts of the mountain, and like you were telling me before, that, he has a journal, and he writes down, you know, the positions of the fingers, and he reflects on what he's doing and what's working well, what he might try differently next time. And that is that requires a lot of learning zone time. So he went up El Capitan like 40 times with a rope before going up without a rope, as an example. But most of us so that that approach can work. If you're a violinist or if you are an acrobat, a gymnast, you need to be kind of on the learning zone with a net underneath, or like foam blocks, taking risks and falling and, and, and that's great, because you're you have something that you are an expert on, this very specific but most of us, our jobs are very complex. They involve lots of different skills. The world is is changing in many different ways, and, and so for us, most of us, don't have a ton of time to just devote hours to a Learning Zone every day. And so I think the biggest opportunity for improvement in for most of us is not to block long, long blocks of time to devote to the learning zone only, but it is to shift the way we work, the way we get things done, so that we're getting things done at the same time, but we're also improving, and that's what I call learning while doing. There's this term learning by doing that that is, you know, well, you know, known, but it's a little bit, I think it's a little bit confusing, because it implies that if you just do, then you will learn, right? Learning by doing. But in fact, learning by doing comes from theorists on experiential learning. And if you read what they wrote, they say that you don't learn, like John Dewey, for example, he said, You don't learn from experience. You learn from reflecting on experience. So you have to do something other than just do in order to learn. And they came up with cycles that that looked kind of similar, but it looks usually they look like something, like you try something, or you have an experience. And then after experience, you you reflect on your observations to try to figure out what happened there, right? And you know maybe what worked well, what didn't go well. And then you develop a hypothesis of how the world works, or how you know this skill works. And then you test something that that okay, I'm going to try this differently next time. And so you try that different thing, and you have that experience. And then again, you go through that cycle. You reflect on how that went, and then you develop a hypothesis of how the world works, and that's a cycle that involves different activities than just doing the activity over and over again. And so if we just go and do, do, do, do every day in the same way, and we don't stop and reflect and figure out what to change and do differently, then we just we get stuck in that hamster wheel, and then we feel like we need to just run faster and faster and faster. And we don't, we don't make progress, because we're doing the same thing.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, very well put and I'll and I'll segue here to something that I think almost anybody listening this podcast can understand. If you know, look it, YouTube has really been such revolution for people that want to do things. And if you want to learn how to do something, you go find a video about it. You probably type in almost anything, and you'll find a video. And then you can see somebody doing something, repairing something, fixing something, whatever. And I think it's become like, I'm just going to use this for an for so many people to go to as a default, to watch someone do something and go, I didn't know how to do that. Let me try. I can do that, and feel a lot more confident if that person can do it, I can go ahead and try this, and the end they succeed. And I love the fact that we have taken it that way, and I find that AI is doing the same thing. It's revolutionary, but we're finding new ways of doing I was watching the 60 minute special about how it's being used in the classroom with the kids. The Khan Academy now has got this new piece of software with AI in it, so the kids can't go get their papers done through AI. It actually asks them questions to prompt them, right? So I find this is just fascinating where we're going with all this technology. And I'd like for you to speak about the six essential learning zones briefly, because we don't have that much time left, and the cornerstones of change, as you call it, because I think these are the most important things. It's a way for somebody to put a label on it. And I'm going to tell all the listeners, go out to Amazon and get a copy of this book. There's a lot of illustrations in this book, there's a lot of questions, there's a lot of things to prompt you, but this is really a great book. If you're finding yourself in this performance paradox, it'll put your mind at ease, because he's giving you strategies that you can walk away from after reading this book and then highlighting it and rereading it again, hopefully, or listening to it on an audio book. Any way you have to get this book, you can get it. And the point is, is that it will help put your mind at ease about how you can progress to the next level without eye levels of anxiety and stress and all the other kind of things. So what are those six learning zones strategies, and what's the cornerstone for change?

Eduardo Briceño
Sure. Well, first, thanks Greg and and, I think when you talk about kind of YouTube and AI and Khan Academy? Yes, there's, I think we live in a learner's paradise and in a non learners pit, right? So there's so many amazing tools and resources and content for us to learn and explore if we are, if we have the mental models and the relationship with learning where we don't. We're not about perfection, we're about progress and about exploration and discovery. There's just a world of joy out there for us, but there's, there's a ton of different learning zone strategies with we've spoken about some of them, right? We've spoken about deliberate practice. We've spoken about the importance of reflection. We've spoken about analyzing mistakes, not just making mistakes. We don't learn from mistakes. We learn from reflecting on mistakes. Another one is experimentation. And sometimes we think about experimentation as to performance, overly performance oriented. So we think we're going to try something, but we're going to just try it as a way to scale, as opposed to try it as a way to learn, first in a low, in a low in a small scale to figure out what works. And then once we we figure out what works, then we scale that, and we make it more performance oriented. So that's something that I explore in that chapter. I also spoke about the the important. I write about the importance of developing our mental models in our brain, rather than thinking about kind of the internet or AI as the substitute for our brain, right? It's because we can find so much information in online searches or in AI. We might get the impression that now we don't need to know things, but actually, when we know things, we can integrate those things in our brain and come up with innovative ideas. And so we need to both use those tools, but also use them to make ourselves smarter. And it's in the in that partnership that we can become a lot better. The final maybe strategy that I'll mention is feedback. You know, when because we're social animals and we are collaborating with each other and want to have an impact in our colleagues and our customers, is so so valuable to solicit feedback frequently and broadly. We learn so much about what we're doing that's helpful to other people what we're doing, that we could be doing better other people's perceptions, other people's ideas. And that's perhaps the most the most powerful learning zone strategy in work and life is to solicit feedback. The

Greg Voisen
feedback loop. It's so important, because once we get the feedback, the thing is, I have a feedback now, so what am I going to do differently once I have the feedback, to try and do it better or improve on it? And I think that's the loop. And I think if people really are open to feedback, and they use that loop they're really going to propel forward. So in wrapping this interview up, what are three key ideas you want our listeners to take away from the book, and how can they really just apply them to their life, their work life, their personal life, to really make things less stressful, stay more in this learning zone and be more How do you want to say, have a level of discomfort but also comfort.

Eduardo Briceño
Sure. So say, first, to overcome the performance paradox, we need to integrate the Learning Zone and the performance zone, right? So involve both of these types of efforts. Second, we want to develop a sense of purpose, something that we care about, something that's important to us, so that we can direct these two different forms of effort in into something that matters to us, right? Otherwise, why are we going to work either in the Learning Zone or the performance zone? And third, we want to think about community, the people around us, whether you talked about kind of building a culture in entrepreneurship or in the workplace, right when we but we can do that in our personal lives or in our work lives, the people around us matter a lot, and so we can be deliberate about what we value, you know, talking about those things that we value, talking about the things that we care about, that we're pursuing, and the behaviors of how we interact with each other, so that we are helping one Another build those mental models, strategies, systems and habits that help us continue to learn and grow as well as achieve in in work and life. And so for you, in terms of you, asked about, well, how do we do this in a way that's kind of discomfort, but also comfort through doing this, it through, like through small habits, right when, for example, the simple habit of reminding ourselves every morning of what we're working to improve. That simple habit, it activates the Learning Zone. It activates it reminds us that we want to go beyond the known and do things not for perfection, but for progress. And little by little, it changes our mental models. It changes the way that we think about mistakes and about challenge and about trying new things, about feedback, about all these things, so that we do become more comfortable and eventually like these things and want these things as life goes on.

Greg Voisen
So yeah, and I believe that mindfulness in the morning, a bit of gratitude, reminding yourself of your purpose, which you said you do. These are small little steps. Being grateful for everything that you've got is a small another small little step. The other thing is, is just how you treat your body exercise, the routine. And I think people that have routines, when you get out of a routine, you have a tendency to not feel as good about yourself. You have a tendency to be more depressed. So I can't say it anymore, that if you're going to stay in this learning zone that do the things that you would naturally do, and then push one additional step further in that learning arena, in the Learning Zone. And I want to let everybody know that if they want to learn more about your book, your offerings, your speaking, your workshops, everything, go to b, r, I, C, E, N, o.com, bursino.com, and there you will learn more about this. There's a press room there. You can contact Eduardo as well. I really want to thank you for being on you've really given our listeners a lot to think about, a lot to actually say, Okay, if I picked up this book, how could this change myself and the way I learn and the way that I actually kind of push my comfort zone, push me out of my comfort zone to do something differently, and you've done a great way of putting it to people so that they understand it easily. So thanks for being on inside personal growth and sharing your insight and your wisdom today.

Eduardo Briceño
Thank you Greg for having me, and thank you for all you do.