[00:00.2]
Well, for all my listeners, it's always a pleasure to have Dr. Jim Loehr back on. This is the book Wise Decisions that we're going to be speaking about and he is joining us from Golden, Colorado.

[00:16.6]
Beautiful spot. Good day to you Jim. How you doing? I'm doing great Greg. Happy to be with you. Well, I'm happy to have you back. This is another Wiley book. He does a lot of Wiley books and I'm going to do a little brief introduction. You don't think you really need it, but for many of my listeners out there, they may not know who you are after all of these years of writing books.

[00:38.1]
So it's really a privilege to have you back on the show again. He's been on the show before. He's a world renowned performance psychologist whose primary work has transformed how we understand human achievement, decision making, for four decades of experience.

[00:55.5]
He holds a doctorate in psychology from University of Northern California and is the co founder of Johnson and Johnson Human Performance Institute. Actually he sold it to them, so I don't know if we call it a co founder. He's trained more than 250,000 leaders worldwide.

[01:14.4]
His research and methodologies have been embraced by elite performance athletes and leaders across multiple domains. From the Olympic athletes to professional sports to Fortune 100 companies to the FBI to rescue teams and military special forces.

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Throughout your career, Jim's work with 17 number one ranked athletes in their respective sports and, and coaching leaders across Hundreds of Fortune 500 companies. You know, he really approaches everything with I, what I call a holistic understanding of human performance.

[01:51.8]
Now today we're going to explore the science behind decision making and obviously, I have a friend and I don't know exactly lives in Boulder why he made this decision, but maybe you could tell me. He's actually up at base camp today at Everest.

[02:08.1]
This is his third time. He's done all the highest seven sums. He's going to ski down the north side of Evers Ski. Now I, I'm not quite certain why anyone would want to ski down that. But that's the book that I sent you. That's Bo.

[02:24.2]
And actually either today or tomorrow he's going to make the ski down Everest. So you've worked with plenty of people like that. So let's dive right in because this book is also co authored, I want to mention, I don't want to leave out Sheila is Dr.

[02:39.7]
Sheila Olson, is that correct, Walker? That's, that's correct. Okay. And so he was the co author on this book. And kudos to her because, Jim may not have written this if it hadn't been for Sheila. Is that correct?

[02:57.2]
Am I wrong, or would you have written it anyway? You guys wrote it together. Okay. However it happened, here it is. So before we dive into the concepts of the book, could you share the origin story of how wise decisions kind of came about?

[03:16.3]
What personal experiences led you to explore the science of decision making, of all things? It's a great question. I've spent most of my professional life building the Human Performance Institute.

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We, started that in 1991. As you said in the introduction, and thank you for that. We, probably to date, there's some 400,000 people have gone through this intensive training program.

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And from every walk of high performance, as you said, we sold the company to Johnson and Johnson, but we have all these people. The program was two and a half intensive days, and then followed up in 90 days and then 180 days.

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We really tried to collect as much evidence as we could about the efficacy of the training. And we really wanted to do something significant for people. Countless numbers of people went through and said, you know, what we'd really like is to offer this to our children.

[04:29.7]
Do you have this available for youth? We said, no. And they said, well, why wage 150 or 60 to learn these lessons in high performance? Why don't you do this for youth? When we sold the company, we started, the youth, part of this, or, an application to youth that we call the Youth Performance Institute.

[05:00.2]
We, formed a board and Dr. Sheila Olson was on that board. She has her PhD in bioengineering from the university, from King's College, Department of Psychiatry. It's an amazing program.

[05:16.1]
She's a brilliant woman. We both started to think about the most important ground that we have as human beings from the very earliest days is trying to understand what are the choices that should be made early in people's lives.

[05:34.1]
Yeah. And we eventually said, let's write the adult version of that. And then we have a team translating that into the language of youth. And that's how it all started. Because we both felt the most important asset we have as human beings is our ability to make good, wise decisions.

[05:57.1]
Well, you know, I'm going to ask you this question about Yoda. Right. You introduce this concept in the book of your own decision advisor. Right. And I've written. I wouldn't say extensively, but I've written a lot about intuition.

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This gut feeling you get, this supernatural, power I'm going to call it, that we all have, we just have to be discerning when we listen to it. We have to understand that, that that's helping us make a decision. Now, that's from my own viewpoint here.

[06:33.0]
Maybe not your viewpoint, but when I hear people like, you know, in the past, Bill, Gates and, you know, all of these famous people saying, hey, I used my intuition to make many of my business decisions.

[06:49.7]
I listened to what I was hearing. Your book introduces this. Your own decision advisor. Can you explain the Yoda and why you choose this particular framework for helping people make better decisions? Because I intuitively have made a lot of decisions based on my feeling.

[07:09.2]
So it's another great question, Greg. You know, we make somewhere around 35,000 decisions a day. We make, an enormous number of decisions. 245,000 per week and 12 million a year.

[07:27.3]
And if you were to ask people, well, what were you thinking when you made those, when you made, your decisions and when you made mistakes, what was the process you went through? Most people have very little understanding of how decisions are made.

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And what is the process by which we can make sure we make better decisions? We all have an internal advisor that is actually vetting these decisions. Most of those 35,000 a day are made unconsciously.

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They're habitual. You just make them. But there are opportunities where you reflect and pause and say, maybe I shouldn't do this reflexively. This is a decision I should make intentionally.

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And that is when this, what we call your own decision advisor Yoda, needs to be called forth. This is not the Yoda of Star wars, but there are some similarities. This is your repository of wisdom that can be called forth in making very important and maybe consequential decisions.

[08:45.7]
And you just referenced it. There are several sources of wisdom. We'll go through some of those, but I'll just mention one of, or just a couple of them. One is your head, your logic, analytical side. Another is your intuitive side, your gut.

[09:04.5]
Another is really, your emotions, and they're different. The difference between your instinct or emotional side. Those are two separate sources of information. And, we have, multiple sources of wisdom, but we have to really pave those neurological paths that they're quickly accessible, in decision making for us, when we say, what does your Yoda say?

[09:38.7]
We want to make sure you understand that everyone has a decision advisor that's making some kind of recommendation. And it may be horrific or it could Be really wise and discerning. It's true.

[09:54.5]
And I think what's important for people to understand. With your background in health and human performance, you state in the first chapter of this book that health ignites wisdom and decision making. Now, a lot of people would be like, well, does my health really have anything to do with my decision making?

[10:11.8]
Could you elaborate on how the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health impacts our ability to make good choices? Obviously, I get the fact, hey, if somebody drinks excessive alcohol, they're going to make stupid decisions. Most cases.

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Right? And you of all people would understand this. Eating is another one. It's like, hey, what are the number one leading causes of death? Smoking, overeating. Right. And making bad decisions when you're drinking over drinking alcohol because you either kill yourself or kill somebody else in the process.

[10:49.3]
I mean, those to me, are just kind of stupid decisions. And they make sense when it comes to health and decision making. But explain further. So it's really kind of embarrassing. But, you know, I'm a data guy. We had very large numbers, very large data sets with that many people coming through the institute and tracking them.

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We were in the performance business. Everyone came to us. Our mission was to help teams and individuals perform to the highest level possible in high stress, extreme environments, but with one caveat, without compromising their health or their happiness.

[11:28.6]
Because we learned that there are lots of ways you can push someone to the absolute limits and then exceed those. And they might do well for a while, but there are consequences. And when we looked at all the data, we found that ultimately, what we did for all these people and help them do things they have never done before, Olympic champions and so forth, all we did was get them healthier.

[11:54.5]
And health is physical, emotional, mental, and it's actually spiritual. Yes. We realized we were in the health business, and Johnson Johnson was in the health business and wanted to really understand how to get into the performance business with all their surgeons and nurses, pharmacists and so forth.

[12:16.1]
And so we realized that the whole essence of taking someone to the next level is really getting them healthier in every dimension possible. And, in the physical realm, just getting people to eat better, to have more oxygen, transfer better fitness, more sleep, if we just raise the bar there, or emotionally helping people to be more optimistic, more positive, to summon those emotions that really inspire them, and then to help them to get the stories right that they're telling themselves based in reality, that are inspirational and to really understand how to use this brilliant analytical mind that they have to make Better decisions.

[13:02.9]
And then if we can improve their mental health, we're going to improve their physical health and so forth and improve their decision making. And then the spiritual dimension proved to be the most important, which is the domain of character and purpose, values and beliefs.

[13:19.8]
We spend a lot of time helping people raised the bar there and automatically they started making better decisions. Yeah, it's it's fascinating to me what you just said and I, and not only is it fascinating, it's so true.

[13:37.7]
I think of like the noetic sciences, we, we speak a lot about functional medicine. Doctors, people that are practicing in this way and are changing the outcomes of people's lives as a result of looking at the psychology, the spiritual, the mental, the physical, the emotional well being of an individual.

[14:02.8]
And I have a doctor that was on recently and he's become a very good friend. He lives close by. His book is called Healing Beyond Pills and Potions. And his theory though, and you would really resonate with this was, and this is a great one, it's how that physician at J and J or wherever it is, or the people that are out there treating people actually communicate with the patient when there's a diagnosis that if they said to you, hey Jim, guess what, you've got pancreatic cancer.

[14:40.1]
But the reality is you have an X chance of survival versus saying oh she gym, you got pancreatic cancer, just go home and forget it. You know, you're, you're doing whatever the, the, the impact that the way doctors communicate to our subconscious and what's going on in our mind has a huge effect.

[15:02.1]
And I totally believe that. And you mentioned that we are feeling creatures that think, not thinking creatures that feel. That's why I told that story. How does this perspective change how we approach important decisions?

[15:18.9]
Because the decision you make to either get treatment for cancer or not get treatment is actually predicated upon the advisors around you as well. So the, the most primitive part of our, you know, kind of repository of wisdom, one that's been around the longest is the emotional side.

[15:41.4]
And this upgrade, this prefrontal cortex executive function is kind of new on the evolutionary stage. We're trying to modulate this powerful engine of emotion, the amygdala, all these subcortical regions of the brain, we're trying to figure out how to control that better, with this really incredible ability to rise above for abstract thinking, for complicated language and for reasoning.

[16:16.4]
And so it's really interesting that emotions actually dominate in most people's lives. I mean, I had a perfect example of this recently. I've had a car that I've, kind of had my eye on for a very long time.

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And I happened to go into a dealership and the exact car that I had always been thinking I would want, I'm a car guy. And it was absolutely the, every. Every single. The color, I mean, absolutely everything.

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And I'm like, oh, my goodness, how could that possibly be? Then I found myself going, well, you have to buy that. So I went home and I started to think about, well, let's just go through this process. What should I do about this car?

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This is, I'm being pulled to buy that car instantly. I really want to buy it in me. I can afford the car, no problem.

[17:13.5]
But should I buy this car? So I went through the whole thing and I began to realize on a logical perspective, it's a convertible. I only going to drive it because I'm in Colorado a few months out of the year.

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And I started figuring out all the costs involved with insurance. And I figured out what it would cost if I sold the car in two or three years. Then I realized, wait a minute, think of all the things I could do with that excess money to help other people.

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And I love to help wounded warriors and do all kinds of things. I give a lot of money away. And I thought this would be the dumbest thing possible. It doesn't really make sense from my values perspective, from a logical perspective. And so I said no in my mind.

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And then every single moment, this powerful wave of emotion comes up and says, go buy that car. Yeah. And I go, no. So then I made all these notes and I had to go back and read my notes over and over again or I wanted to go buy that bloody car.

[18:20.1]
I was flooded with the emotion. And that's how powerful emotion can be. That is an amazing story because I've been there before and I understand exactly what you're going through. I've. I wouldn't call myself a car guy, but I've certainly had plenty of cars in my day, and some of them I wished I hadn't bought.

[18:42.1]
And again, it's not in alignment with your value, so I appreciate you not buying it and taking that money and giving it to charity or whatever else you did with it. On the other hand, the emotion is telling you, well, what about all the summer days in Colorado where you could drive around so fast in that car?

[19:01.0]
Well, you know, you're crazy creature. We're a Crazy species we are. So your book discusses two versions of the inner voice. Inner voice, you say one untrained, and the inner voice number two that's trained. What are the key differences and why is transforming from one to the other so crucial?

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Because this is. When I talk about intuition, I refer to it as the inner voice. It literally, to me is a spiritual element. It's like a sixth sense, that. That we have or seventh, what depends on where you look at it.

[19:37.0]
But, I think there, you know, look at it, you've studied all this. There's the superconscious, there's the conscious. There's the subconscious. And at a certain level, this inner voice to me is coming from the superconscious.

[19:55.9]
Yeah. So I have a little, little different take on it, but it's definitely consistent with what you're saying, Greg. We've done a lot of intensive study on the role that this inner narrative plays in people's lives. That narrative starts to form in a very primitive way.

[20:16.2]
By the age of five, that voice actually is forming. It's the accumulation of all the voices that have been resonating through this auditory cortex of your brain. All the people that speak to you, Your mother, your father, relatives, siblings, parents, coaches, teachers.

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All these different auditory inputs begin to form, some semblance of an inner voice. And then if people begin to tune into it, they begin to realize that inner voice is running the show.

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So when I was thinking about that car situation, I was constantly challenging my inner voice because a lot of the information was coming. I, want that and on and on, but my inner voice was trying to make the best decision. So, what, what we've learned is that the, the voice that you come into the world with, if you had great parents and great coaches and great teachers, your inner voice probably is, is quite, effective.

[21:24.7]
It's probably very well trained in an. Almost an automatic way. And then we call that inner voice one where it's untrained. And it may be fantastic as an advisor, as a Yoda for you, or it may have many, many flaws, lots of issues that, compromise your ability to make good decisions.

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And so we have a whole training system where you clean that up, where you try to make that inner voice one something that is really an extraordinary advisor in your life, the very best advisor you could have, and you are proud of the decisions that you've made.

[22:05.8]
And that is training. So we have to train every day, and we do that through journaling. Most of that training is done through journaling about, how you want your private voice to speak to you in situations that are challenging.

[22:22.1]
And then we equip that private voice, that inner voice, with all the things that will be necessary for you to really vet that situation carefully and appropriately. We'll probably go through a number of these.

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The lenses that we try to have people go through to make sure that there is something you're referencing that you have confidence will take you to the right decision. Yoda, your own decision advisor is actually really well equipped to transcend any problem or chaos or, incoming data that is really not in keeping with who you really want to be as a human being.

[23:09.5]
Well, you spoke about, let's, let's put two questions together in one. One is this command center and contaminated data? You could speak about that and also you just referenced it. This fascinating element in the book about seven limit limit lenses and vetting process for making important decisions.

[23:33.7]
Could you walk us through the lenses and perhaps give an example of how someone could apply them to a difficult choice? Now, in your case, it was a car. Okay. It was a difficult choice because your emotions were pulling on you.

[23:51.5]
Right. I mean, there's people under much more stress than buying a car about making a decision which, which are, you know, I, I would say, you know, like, hey, I had a, in your case, you trained, Navy, SEALs, right? Imagine the stressful decisions they've got to make.

[24:10.9]
So put a story to it as well, because people relate to stories. So, yeah, there's, there's a really an interesting, Everyone will relate to this. I think, you know, you have the ability, we all have the ability to listen but tune people out.

[24:31.3]
Your parents talk to you and you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but nothing really gets through. It doesn't get through to what I would call your inner command center, where it really does have an impact on the way in which you're thinking, on decisions that you're making.

[24:49.0]
You have the ability to block out anything and everything you want. And a lot of times the people you should be listening to, you just kind of shut out. You Screen them out. And, it's unfortunate. And then sometimes you let people in that should not have gotten in and have really changed your thinking and your storytelling and have altered your Yoda in a way that really compromises what you are able to, do in terms of great decision making.

[25:21.1]
And so part of what is the process of really getting this right is who should you let in and who should you really make sure that you're protecting. Because once they're in that command center, they're going to have influence on you and they will influence your ability to make decisions.

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That's your first decision, Jim, is who you let in. That's exactly right. Is who should you be listening to? And we really, really have recommendation to others that, you get an advisory board that you listen to.

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Who are the people that you really should trust, have your best interests at heart, and who are the people that probably, if you really bet your life on it, you really wouldn't want them in the inner part of the most sacred space in your head, to, influence the way in which you run your life, make decisions, navigate in life.

[26:18.1]
And once people get clear on that, they can hold out, they can be nice, they can smile. But everyone wants to get in that command center. Every commercial on television, I want to have access. In this podcast, you want to have access, religious leaders of all kinds, teachers, coaches, everyone wants to have access because that means they can have influence and control.

[26:46.5]
And you actually have the ability, if you want to, after a certain age, decide who you want in and who you want out. And then the second part of your question is about these lenses. It's so interesting how the decision actually changes in front of you as you kind of hold up a lens and look at the decision, in several different ways.

[27:11.8]
The first is we all have this space we call our best self, where we are clearly at our best, where we really are most proud of who we are. And you run the decision through that lens and where does it take you? Another one is we have who are you at your very best morally?

[27:29.3]
The way you treat other people, the way you, interact with others, integrity, honesty, maybe it won't directly relate to this decision, but if you hold that lens up, and look at the decision through that, you won't make a big mistake.

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In all probability, another one that's a very powerful one. It's, I call your life purpose. Why the heck are you here? What's your purpose for being here on planet Earth? Why were you born when you have that down on paper and you've really integrated that into your thinking, make that lens very, very, crystal clear in this decision making process and see if that has any effect on the decision.

[28:13.7]
And then there is this thing we call your tombstone legacy. What do you want on your tombstone? If, if this represented the ultimate life of success for you, and how does that resonate? How does that resonate with the decision that you're about to make, will it influence it in any way?

[28:33.5]
Or is it just something that's kind of, not necessarily relevant to that lens? And then I ask people as another lens to look at your most important core values and beliefs. When I looked at that car.

[28:49.5]
Decision. And even if it's a decision to make to have a divorce and you have to consider your children, should we take out that loan? Should I call them up and just rip them for what they've done? If you go through these lenses, all of a sudden it kind of changes color.

[29:06.7]
You begin to see it in a little different way. And then we have something we call your personal credo, which is, this is how I operate. This is something that I really, I stand behind this. Every great organization, whether it's the Seals or the West Point or anything else, they have a credo.

[29:25.9]
And this is the way in which you expect yourself to perform. And is this in any way going to shed light on the decision you make? And then the ultimate mission in your life is what. How are you going to define an ultimate life of success?

[29:42.6]
So many of these may not relate directly to that decision, but it will help you to establish a foundation. This is what you want your Yoda to reference, because these are the real reference points that'll keep you from making decisions that might be really tragic.

[30:00.7]
To take drugs, to drive and drink, to, do things that when you look back in hindsight, you just wish you had never made that first decision. And that's what we're trying to help, particularly young people, develop a real sense of how to do this and how to do it in a way that's, you know, they can repeat it over and over in their life until they really get good at it.

[30:27.4]
You gave people a very large smorgasbord there of things to think about right now. I get it. And I think in, in looking at it, decisions versus our ability for having choices.

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And the, the reality is we are always given a plethora of choices. It's like, hey, the, it comes in six different colors. It's got this, this, this and this and this. And you knew exactly what you wanted when you put the lenses on, right?

[31:01.8]
What you're actually doing is, aren't you filtering down the choices that you could make in this decision? Because, you know, the reality is, it's like, hey, I, I can go to AI today and I can say, I have to make this decision.

[31:18.0]
Can you give me a pathway toward a better decision making process? And believe it or not, it has enough data in it that actually can start to kind of think a little bit for you. And it does a very good job in a lot of cases. Do you have any kind of comment about that?

[31:35.4]
Because you speak in chapter 12 on managing emotional decisions and what you're trying to do is I wouldn't say remove the emotion from the decision, but when you're given a lot of choices. I remember interviewing professor who was blind and she did all these studies on choices.

[31:56.2]
You know, like when you go down that, I know this sounds silly to you, but you go down the jelly aisle in the store and you see six different choices of jellies and jams and preserves. And she said obviously when you're given less choices the decision is easier.

[32:12.2]
I mean anybody could logically could think of that. But, but today there's this plethora of choices. I mean it's everywhere. There's six different of that and seven different of this. And, and even when it comes to business, it's like there's this deal, there's that deal, there's this deal.

[32:29.9]
How would you give the people who just saw heard your whole smorgers Borg, try and assimilate that into some way to make better choices than a decision to act upon the choice they made. So you raise a number of really good points, Greg.

[32:49.3]
So again we make 35, roughly 35,000 decisions a day. Now a lot of those decisions are very automatic. What, what have you bought in the past that you've been happy with? You go buy on the, that particular aisle in the grocery store and you just instantly go get it.

[33:07.5]
That was a choice, but it was automated. Most of the choices you make are automated based on your experience. But what's important is that you recognize that there are also really critical points that really can change the trajectory of your life or others lives with the decision.

[33:28.6]
And so you want to stop and not use total reflection, I mean reflective, response and automatic response. You really want to say wait a minute, this is something I need to think about. I want to take a little bit of time, maybe 24 hours and put it through a lens or a variety of lenses to make sure that I'm doing the right thing here.

[33:50.8]
And then you actually have some preferences that you have decided. If you're trying to buy healthy food for your family, you have a lens already for that. That certain things you're not going to bring home because you care about the health of your children or your spouse or family or partners and so forth.

[34:09.4]
And so there are a number of issues that have to be brought. But most importantly, you want to understand there are decisions that are really important. And then a lot of those decisions that we have to make every day should be made automatically.

[34:25.4]
And as we experience this worked out, I didn't like the taste of that one or the way in which I interacted with some people. It really upset them. I wasn't that, empathetic. I really wasn't that understanding. I treated them badly.

[34:41.7]
I crossed the line in terms of ethics. And you begin to recalibrate. Wait a minute. That's not who I want to be. If I get that opportunity again, I'm going to make a different choice. But, a, choice is a decision, and Yoda is in the center of that.

[34:59.6]
And there is an, emotional input, there's an input intuition, there's a spiritual input, and there's a logical analytical input. And we want to bring to bear on any important decisions all those assets that are really critical to getting it right.

[35:18.1]
I think somebody once told me, is it a need or a want? And the reality is, a lot of times it's a want, it's not a need, and it's an emotional decision because it was a want. It wasn't. It wasn't a need.

[35:34.0]
There. There was absolutely no need to have a new sports car with a. Whatever thing in it. I didn't really need that. And I think when you really kind of take decision making down, it's what you tell yourself. And you. You emphasize the importance of storytelling and decision making.

[35:51.4]
You know, you can tell yourself a story all day long about an item that you saw on Amazon, and you're like, oh, boy, you know, I. I need to have that. Do you really need to have that? So how do these stories we tell ourselves shape our choices?

[36:07.4]
And how can we consciously craft better narratives? Because it's the, I'm not going to call. It's this selft talk that's going on inside that's honestly saying, hey, you need this because it's going to make you feel a lot better.

[36:25.8]
Or, you know, it's there. People talk about negative self talk. This isn't the negative self talk. This is the self talk that's telling you you need it because it's going to make you feel better. You need it because it's going to make you a better person.

[36:41.3]
Whatever. And the question I have is, if I underline the word need, do I really need it? Yeah, exactly. Sometimes it's okay if you want It, Yeah, yeah, I get it. Just fulfilled that want. I mean that.

[36:56.4]
But then you also have to look at what else are you sacrificing if you do that, Are there short term or long term consequences for con constantly fulfilling that want? That's the issue. Right. And I think it's important that you reframe the stories.

[37:13.7]
I mean, I, I think that. And you being a performance psychologist, you certainly recognize this. I, I remember interviewing Byron, Katie a long time ago, and she used to say, is it true?

[37:28.8]
Is it really true? Like the story that you made up about whatever it is that you thought somebody did to you or you needed or whatever it might be. It's like, I don't know if people really question if it's true or not. They just made up the story. So then they made a decision, they went and did something.

[37:44.9]
Right. So, I would just say that we are storytellers first and foremost. That's how we, that's how we create our reality. We don't have direct contact with the real world.

[38:00.4]
We have all this data streaming in through our auditory senses, our visual senses, the, the five sensory portals, and then our brain has to process that, but it's not really in contact with the real world.

[38:16.8]
It's in contact with the data streaming in from our environment. What's unfortunate about our brains, there's a preference given to data if they're going to bring it in and make it part of our reality. A, preference is given to things that are already in there, and it's consistent, whatever it is, with what you already believe.

[38:39.0]
So if you have been, you know, raised in a certain environment or culture to believe this is right or wrong, and you get information incoming that doesn't really align with that, you just purge it. You just don't let it come in.

[38:54.8]
But we have to be so diligent in trying to get our stories straight because stories represent our reality. That's if we don't make them up. Thinking that, you know, we've got a false sense of reality, or this is, this is what we believe is true and you're 100% right, we can be absolutely wrong in the stories that we have created around certain people, certain things, certain happenings, and those will clearly impact the decisions we make, how we feel, our logic train, even our, sense of right and wrong, our spiritual dimension.

[39:35.1]
And it all starts with flawed stories that got kind of locked into our brains and now they're very difficult to get out. And in fact, you may die with those flawed feelings. Even though you're getting contradictory evidence all the time, that is one of the great vulnerabilities we have as a human species.

[39:56.3]
Well, one of the things that comes up for me in storytelling or, or looking at decisions and choices was I, I almost like imagine in my head if there was a, somebody took a picture of me, but I was standing straight right in front of the picture, I wouldn't see it very well because I don't have perspective.

[40:15.1]
I've got to step back from the picture. Right. If it was a mural of me, right. And I need to actually step back. I need to step back quite a bit to get a new perspective. Because if I'm so close, everything is fuzzy.

[40:31.3]
Right. And so I think sometimes making decisions is about taking that step back and looking at your perspective about how you're seeing whatever it is that you're looking at. Right. And I sometimes think we don't step back enough.

[40:50.0]
You're 100% right. Perspective is everything. And sometimes it's very difficult to get perspective or to have people start looking at this from a different perspective because they believe their story is right. Even though you give them show, them a different perspective, it's contrary to what they've come to believe maybe for years and years.

[41:10.6]
But you're 100% right. If we can get a new perspective, we can rearrange the furniture between their ears and that story begins to change almost instantaneously. That's like the lenses, but the perspective is, you know, the same way you'd put on the lens.

[41:27.9]
Now you say in, kind of it's one of the later chapters in the book. But you talk about this Goldman dilemma example in chapter 18. And it's particularly striking the idea that many athletes would take a pill that guarantees success but shortens their life.

[41:49.4]
That's the question. Would they. What does this reveal about human decision making, that we all should be wary of? You know, I mean, look, you're the performance psychologist. How many people are going to take a pill that says, it guarantees my success but it shortens my life?

[42:11.0]
Yeah. I mean, our brains were very fragile, our sense of right and wrong. And if you lived, in this culture that we all live in, certainly here in America, that winning is the, is the ultimate standard of a successful life.

[42:27.4]
And parents buy into that. That's their measure of success as parents or how high achieving are their children. And then, you are given a very simple test, which Goldman gave 10 consecutive years, where first of all, you can take A pill that you will never, ever get caught.

[42:47.9]
But it's illegal, it's cheating, but it will enable you to fulfill all of your Olympic or all of your athletic dreams. You'll become a superstar. The only downside is that you will die from the pill in five years. Over 50% of all the people who are, you know, sampled, and these were all elite athletes, over 50% of them said they would take that deal.

[43:16.6]
And what that means is the society's conditioning that we are so much a function of the culture we were raised in. And that's why parents have to be very careful about the cultural influences of where things are moving, in terms of the right, what is right, what is wrong?

[43:38.2]
There's a very fluid sense of morality based on what these cultural norms have been, and what is right and wrong in terms of this particular situation. For me, the biggest issue, and this is one of the big things we're trying to do with the Youth Performance Institute.

[43:56.7]
No one teaches decision making. No one teaches at school and elementary school and high school and graduate school, even in doctoral programs. Very little attention because no one really knows that much about where is it that, the decision making process originates in the brain and how it flows.

[44:17.8]
We did a lot of work with, neuroscience, trying to understand the process. But the more you can access all the regions of the brain that have built in intelligence, your Yoda will do better. From the earliest stages and ages of, of developing, boys and girls, help them understand decision making.

[44:43.8]
It is a learned skill, and parents need to teach their kids. Coaches need to give people choices, hold them accountable for their choices, and allow them to learn. We don't have any formal classes that I'm aware of that actually go around this entire circle of decision making and understanding how this is a trained response and getting it right from the earliest stages, whether it's a crying baby at a restaurant all the way through to making decisions in the later part of your life about what should I spend my money on?

[45:24.6]
Healthcare? What are the things that actually will make me, fulfilled as a human being at the end of my life? These are all critical decisions that actually started in the very earliest stages of, decision making, even in infancy and early childhood.

[45:46.4]
I'd like to add to that just for a second before we give you this last question here to help round out the book and for my listeners, we'll have a link to Wise decisions, the book. Dr. Jim Lahore and Sheila Olson. You know, my personal perspective now at someone who's 70 years old, going to be 71 is the decisions I made that resulted in what I'm going to call learning lessons, not failures.

[46:20.3]
Learning lessons. They're okay because they've helped to shape the new decisions that I might make about things. And I want to tell people I don't, don't want them to be afraid about making a decision if it ultimately ended up in some kind of learning lesson.

[46:40.8]
Because that is the way the mind sometimes get programmed. But if you can have somebody as wise as Jim here provide you with techniques, please go out and get the book. Because some of those lessons can be quite painful.

[46:56.5]
And if you can circumvent and rewire your brain without making those painful decisions, I would say please do it. Sometimes it's going to work, sometimes it's not. And that leads me to this question, looking ahead, where do you see the science of decision making headed and are there emerging research areas that might further transform how we understand wise choices?

[47:25.9]
Again, another great question. It's so interesting. We've learned clearly that decision making has to be practiced and taught. Everything that happens, that's a crisis or a storm or kind of, an opportunity for intentional decision making practice.

[47:49.6]
This happens multiple times during the day. And for me, that car was an opportunity for me to sharpen my decision making. That was a meta moment for me to test my decision making ability.

[48:05.4]
And I'm always, every time there's a crisis, a person that has, really gotten a very, very dire diagnostic, kind of evaluation from a physician or something, everything, a traffic jam, anything that's going on that kind of pushes you out of your normal convenient comfort zone can, be a meta moment to practice a great decision.

[48:35.4]
An intentional decision I'm intending, I'm going to stay calm and relaxed. I'm going to use this. I'm not going to have a lot of stress overwhelming me here because of all this traffic. I'll make a call ahead. I'm going to relax. And so I intentionally turn the situation around, which could be very, very, you know, upsetting and irritating and kind of ruin the rest of my day because I'm going to be an hour late in traffic or more at Newark Airport or wherever.

[49:09.1]
You actually convert that into a meta moment to help you make a decision that keeps you more aligned with who you want to be. And it becomes a teachable moment for others as well as they watch you do this. Probably the biggest areas, and you said it in the beginning, the decision making is holistic.

[49:28.9]
It involves the whole person. It's not just following your emotions or your logical analytical thinking. It's not just trusting your gut, it's not just looking at certain values and beliefs, that are important to you, but it really is a process of taking note of all of those and then making a decision after you have properly done it.

[49:57.2]
And then the most important part after that is to act on that decision. There is the decision making process that's separate from actually following through on the decision. And sometimes that takes more courage and more of a sense of commitment than actually we can make the decision but then we just simply don't do it.

[50:19.2]
But we knew that was the right thing to do. And both of those are critical to, and becoming an extraordinary person of high character and high performance, particularly with children. Well I think your emphasis on starting people young is very important.

[50:39.0]
I'd love to see the. I know you guys were saying you were working on a workbook or something you could provide to children in there. And I want to direct all the listeners. Number one, if you're going to make a decision about a book, decide to get this one.

[50:57.7]
Wise decisions. And the reason is, is that if you're making 35,000 decisions a day and even two or three of them are important, having the Yoda, understanding how the Yoda works, understanding how your system is wired and fires is so important because it, how your emotions and the spiritual side and the emotional side and the health side, it's all going to make a difference.

[51:26.6]
And from somebody like yourself, Jim and I so appreciate you who's coached, high performance athletes and people who are sitting in high positions inside of companies making very important decisions every day. Obviously you wouldn't be here today if some of the decisions you made were incorrect.

[51:48.0]
So again for my listeners, go get this. To learn more about Jim himself, the how many books is it now? Is it 30? I don't know how many? Oh no, no, God forbid. It's 19. 19.

[52:03.4]
Okay, just go to Jim Hyphen l o e h r dot com. That's jiM-L-O e h r dot com there you can learn more about him, the books, the concepts, the tools. He has a plethora of, of information up there that you can rely on.

[52:25.8]
He also is there and we're going to have him on, on another podcast about his book called Sapiens Reinvented. He said that was one of the toughest books that he ever wrote. And so I want to thank you Jim for being on the podcast, for sharing your, knowledge and expertise and your wisdom, about this, it really was important.

[52:50.5]
Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Greg, for having me again on your podcast. You do an amazing job. The thing that I most appreciate is that you really, you're very thorough. You went through every part of the book, all your questions are relevant.

[53:06.5]
You understand the issues, that for me, makes the interaction between me and a host so much more meaningful because you've actually done your homework and, you're very thorough, in what you do, and, you really care about your ability to connect meaningfully with your listening, with listeners, with those that you represent.

[53:30.9]
So thank you for the opportunity, and I hope we created some value today. And, I wish you very best, Greg. You certainly did, because you helped me think about the way I'm making decisions. And I think if that helps one other person or ten or a thousand other people who listen to this show or thousands who listen to this show, more power to them.

[53:54.0]
So thanks for you being on the show and for you spending your time with us today. Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me.