Unknown Speaker 0:00 Nelson, Kurt Nelson 0:08 welcome to behavioral grooves. I'm Kurt Nelson, and today, Tim and I are going to do a deep dive into the human forces that hold us back from true fulfillment and success. Our guest is Dr Bob Rosen, who is a psychologist, Best Selling Author and trusted advisor CEOs around the globe. And his latest book, attached explores the hidden attachments in our lives. Tim Houlihan 0:29 Now, these hidden attachments often manifest themselves as fears and habits that weigh us down. Bob's thesis is about how letting go of these attachments can open the door to greater fulfillment and success. Now, Bob Kurt Nelson 0:43 argues that what we often view as virtues, including our drive for success, our pursuit of perfection or our need for control, that these things can actually become psychological baggage that weighs us down Tim Houlihan 0:56 in our conversation, Bob shares his personal journey through burnout and addiction, and reveals why percent of us, 80% of us, carry an internalized sense of ageism that limits our potential. It's more than that. He also explains why running toward our fears, rather than away from them, might be the key to setting ourselves Kurt Nelson 1:19 free. Running towards our fears, run towards your fears. I don't know that's scary to me. There we go. All right? So Bob's approach is really, really appealed to both of us because it combines this western goal setting psychology with Eastern philosophy that Tim really loves, right? So together, these methods focus on letting go of outcomes, and they create a practical framework for leaders and for individuals who want to get out of their own way. Tim Houlihan 1:45 So whether you're struggling with perfectionism, wrestling with control issues, or simply feeling weighed down by life's attachments, not like we know anything about that, not at all, this conversation offers a roadmap for transformation. I'm Tim Houlihan, and we hope you sit back and relax with a finely detached pour of herbal tea and enjoy our conversation with Bob Rosen, Kurt Nelson 2:08 or maybe it's just whiskey. Tim Houlihan 2:21 Bob Rosen, welcome to behavioral grooves. My pleasure. It's it's a pleasure to have you here, and we've got to start with our famous speed round the couple of quick fun no pressure questions. So first, would you prefer to learn a new language or a new instrument? Oh, a new language for sure. Oh, cool. Does one come to mind? Bob Rosen 2:46 I'd love to learn Spanish. I spent three months in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, January through March, and I'd love to learn Spanish at some point. Is that an annual thing, yeah, yeah. The last couple of years, we've been spending time in Port of Arnhem, and we love it Kurt Nelson 3:08 nice. Yeah, I like that. All right. Bob, are you a coffee person or a tea person? Bob Rosen 3:17 Generally, a coffee person, however, I am a decaffeinated coffee person, because I've had atrial fib for 30 years, and so I try not to put caffeine in my my body. Tim Houlihan 3:32 Yeah, for good reason. Kurt Nelson 3:34 Yeah, I think there's, there's. It's interesting, because I've drank coffee for a while, tea and coffee both. But, you know, I'm not. I had never been one of those people that needed caffeine to start off the morning, but I think I've messed myself up now, and so it's like, my sister drinks decaffeinated, and we were together this past weekend and I drank and I'm like, on Yeah, I'm not, I'm feeling sluggish still, and I'm like going, Oh man, I think I gotta, I gotta wean myself off of this. So anyway, Tim Houlihan 4:09 things to live by. So this is sort of a true, false, yes, no, kind of a question here, Bob, do you believe that we can ever be fully free of our attachments? Bob Rosen 4:22 I No, I don't I think it's a lifelong journey and but we can do a lot of work to free ourselves from them, and I'm convinced at this point in my life that they are the greatest source of angst that we have in our lives. Yeah? Tim Houlihan 4:43 Well, we are going to definitely talk more about Unknown Speaker 4:45 that. Yeah, yeah, Kurt Nelson 4:48 okay, last of our speed round questions. Here you list out 10 different attachments in the book. We'll talk about those, but there's two of them that. Kind of sing seem like a ying or Yang, and I want to ask attachment to the past or attachment to the future, which one, in your opinion, is harder to let go of? Bob Rosen 5:11 Well, it's interesting. We, my husband, I Jay, have a dinner party from time to time, and we ask our guests, do you live? What percentage of your time do you live in the past, the present and the future, okay? And the people who live in the past tend to be sad, sometimes depressed. The people who live in the future are some people who are generally anxious and worry a lot, but most people want to live in the present. I'm definitely an attachment to the future kind of guy, okay? And I tripped up over the attachment to the future and success in my life, and I'm happy to talk about that too. Tim Houlihan 5:56 Well, I first of all, I just got to say thank you for just acknowledging that you wrote the book on it right? Detach is your book. We're here to talk about that, but, but you're also, like, open enough to say this is where I'm at. Bob Rosen 6:10 Oh, definitely, definitely. I was attached to the future and success, and I grew up in a lower middle class family, wanted to get out and be successful, and was obsessed with just my career and ambition, and it led to burnout. And at one point in my life, after a bunch of surgeries, I got addicted to opiates, Percocet and Vicodin, and so I ended up becoming attached to pleasure. So I have my own story, just like everybody else has theirs. Kurt Nelson 6:50 It's always interesting. We talked to a number of authors, we talked to a number of researchers, all across the board. And I think many times the most interesting and the most deep are those people who are doing a little bit of me search, right that little bit like, you know, this is a reflection on me, and did you take that into account as you were writing the book? Or is that just a happy circumstance? Bob Rosen 7:15 Oh no, no, no, no. All my books are personally motivated to some degree. I wrote a book called just enough anxiety in 1996 and it was not a great time in my life. Wow, yeah, I think you got it. You got to have a burning desire inside of you to spend a year or more writing a book and but I have learned that these 10 attachments are so helpful in myself and in other people that I've coached and consulted with that I wanted to share it, and I wanted other people to see that they could get Out of the way of their own angst and become more fulfilled and successful as a result. Tim Houlihan 8:05 Can you give our listeners an example of an attachment if they're if they might not be familiar with the way that psychologists use the term? Can you just give us a quick definition? Bob, Bob Rosen 8:18 sure, well, I've always been a fan of western and eastern psychology. And Western psychology is all about setting goals, problem solving, forward thinking, positive, aspirational thinking. And Eastern psychology is all about living in uncertainty and having attachments and learning to detach from the desired outcome so you're not weighed down by it. So an attachment is typically like baggage. It's a set of thoughts, a set of feelings, a set of perceptions, some behaviors that weigh you down. So an example would be, you've had a bad relationship with your parents, and your parents died, and you you hold those negative and difficult memories inside of yourself, and it influences everything that you do, particularly the future relationships that you develop. So that attachment is that story, that narrative that you create for yourself that holds you back and is generally founded in fear. Kurt Nelson 9:33 In in the you talk about the Western versus Eastern kind of focus on this, and in the western component, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but in looking at the book and thinking about things, you argue that attachments sometimes masquerade, or often masquerade as virtue, success, perfection, control those types of things that you talk about. You know, youth is one of the ones that you bring up and like this over kind of. We kind of over index on, you know, youth and various different things. How? How do we determine which is an attachment versus which is actual virtue and what? What do we do about that? Bob Rosen 10:13 Well, the field has recently focused on attachments and in a positive way, it grew out of infant research around infants that were anxious or easy, infants are hard to warm up, infants and that people grow up with their attachment style and and there's been a lot written on this. This book is really the other side. It's the unhealthy attachments that hold us back. Now you're absolutely right that each one of them is positive at some level, but if we have too much of it, it turns into baggage and ultimately an addiction and and so I mean, who would not want to be successful, but when our desire for success turns into a compulsive need for achievement, we've got a problem, because we're defining success from the outside in, based on other people's expectations and not our own, and this is driven, oftentimes by the fear of failure, which drives our attachment to success so and each one of those can be understood from that perspective. How Tim Houlihan 11:32 do we know when we're getting into that danger zone? Bob Rosen 11:37 Well, I think we experience difficult emotions. We may feel anxiety, we may feel sadness, we may feel frustration, we may feel disappointment, we may feel fear and and the first step is really awareness. And I wrote a book called conscious, and it was all about awareness. And when I say awareness, I'm talking about two parts of consciousness. I'm talking about your internal world in terms of understanding your thoughts, behaviors, feelings, as well as your external world in terms of how the world is showing up for you and the impact that those circumstances are having for you, and so the first step is really get yourself aware and and that's one of the problems. There are lots of people who are simply unaware of themselves and what's going on around them. Kurt Nelson 12:37 So which is a really great piece of this, because when Tim and I have talked about this a lot, yeah, it's real, it's really hard to be self aware sometimes, right there we go through life so many times of just being just kind of moving, and not necessarily having any of that meta cognition, of thinking about what's going on In our life or bringing that back home to us. So how if, if our listeners are out there and they're trying to go, okay, great, I need more self awareness. But how do I go about doing that? What are some of the tricks that you can tricks is probably the wrong word. I apologize. It's not tricks. It's what are some of the actions, what are some of the ways that we can as humans who might be prone to just going through and not being self aware? What can we do to be able to become more self aware? Bob Rosen 13:32 Well, I think the first thing is to slow down. We're constantly running, and we run oftentimes to avoid difficult experiences inside of ourselves, but we also run because the world is so fast, moving and so stopping, and that's why meditation is so helpful, or mindfulness to stop and really look at yourself. I think the second reason why we are have difficulty being aware is that we have a very ineffective relationship to change. We think that stability is possible. It's reality when in fact, it's an illusion. And uncertainty is reality, and every time we breathe, we breathe into uncertainty. And with uncertainty comes vulnerability, and it comes an anxiety, because it's scary in an uncertain world, so we run away from that sense of ill at ease around uncertainty, and it makes it difficult to be aware. And the third reason is we are uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. And you know, we all have fears, and when we stop, we oftentimes get introduced to. Our fears, and that becomes uncomfortable. And so we don't want to feel we don't want to feel discomfort. We're running too fast, and we have an old understanding of our relationship to change. And both of those lead to a lack of aware. All three of them lead to a lack of awareness Tim Houlihan 15:18 well. And yet, there's this paradox that you, that you write about, right? That we at the same time, that we value change. We want stability. We you know, we want acceptance, but we have ambition. We want novelty, but we actually really love the status quo, right, right? So how do Bob Rosen 15:35 we deal with that? Well, you get to the first attachment, which is the attachment to stability. I mean, we, we believe we can create stability in our lives, but there's no such thing. There is no such thing. Every time we breathe, the world changes, and that becomes a problem if we don't see life that way. And that's what the Buddhists teach us is that you know life is all about impermanence, and if you change your relationship to change and see that every time you breathe, you're constantly changing, it relieves some of the anxiety when change happens, because change happens, people get anxious. The other thing is that a lot of people think that change happens to us from the outside in. And one of the things that I've learned over time is that if you stay conscious and aware, you realize that change happens for us in order to learn, to grow, to fall down, to get up, to be something bigger and better tomorrow than we are today. So there's a lot of sort of philosophy about change that influences how we deal with it, but the attachment to stability is very, very common. I Kurt Nelson 16:58 find it interesting, as you're talking about this Bob, that this idea that change happens to us. And I think you, you mentioned Buddhism, it kind of has this different thing. And I love that you wrote in the book, you know, the Buddhist kind of component, pain is inevitable. Suffering is not it's how we interpret that. I think there's a bunch of stoicism, you know, work. It's very similar. It's like, you know, it's about how we react to the things that happen to us, not the things that happen to us that are most important in how we, you know, ultimately, you know, show up in the world. So what can we learn? How can we take that and what can we moving forward again? Is, if I'm a listener here, what are the one or two things that I need to be really focused in on in order to make sure that I'm not necessarily just having change happen to me, but I'm looking at it as a learning opportunity or growing opportunity. Bob Rosen 17:54 Well, if you take a snapshot in time, which most of us do we live in the moments we experience things in the moment. We don't have perspective about what's going to happen to us in the future, so we can't see that there the sun's going to come up tomorrow. You know that things will oftentimes get better for us if we do our work and stay aware and learn, I mean, the brain is designed to adapt to threats and learn all the time. Right? When you get stuck in fear, either consciously or unconsciously, which is what these attachments are, the brain stops working. It gets stuck and and suddenly we're not adapting to the future. So the key is to really understand how you are attached to something. So for example, if I'm feeling angst, I will actually go into meditation, and I will go through these 10 attachments and ask myself, What am I attached to, and what am I scared of underneath each of these attachments, for example, I'm trying to control something okay. And one of the things we learned from the Serenity Prayer is you know that you have to distinguish between what you can control and what you can't control. But we were all brought up from early childhood to believe that we can shape our environment. We take control, we influence, we manipulate people, and then we forget that much of the world is uncertain and we can't control it. So what we have to do is recognize that vulnerability is part of living. It's part of change and uncertainty, and that we are vulnerable and it's. Okay, not to be in control, yeah, because the world operates that way. Kurt Nelson 20:05 You brought up a really interesting piece of this is that we don't know the future, and we can't you know that the sun comes up tomorrow, and I see this, at least in, you know, my own life, but as well as others, is that as we grow older, those occurrences that kind of throw us off our thing, maybe some of the attachments that we have, we realize we've gone through this before, and if we can just reflect on, yeah, you know, this feels really painful right now that there's something going on and, oh my gosh, the world is going to end you you get that room ruminating, ruminating. There you go, whatever that word is, right? We know what that word is going on in our head, but you know, as we grow older and experience some of this, I find, at least for myself, that, yeah, I've been through something like this before it came out. Okay, I actually grew from it or it didn't kill me. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I have a better way of being able to respond to that. And is that something that that you've seen as well? I mean, do we? Do we grow that wisdom as we get older to a certain question Bob Rosen 21:17 about it? Let's just look at the attachment to the past I write about I write 30 stories in the book with questions to engage you, and one of the stories is about an executive from a fortune 50 company, recently retired who grew up under the tutelage of A narcissistic father. Okay, many successful business people have narcissistic, hard, charging fathers, and it shut him down. It shut down his emotions. He didn't really pursue the career that he wanted to pursue. He wanted to become a musician. He ended up being a finance expert and the like. But in the process of doing his work, quote, unquote, and becoming more aware, he got more comfortable being uncomfortable about his relationship with his dad, he discovered his deeper emotions and the fear, and then he learned to surrender and let it go. He had an imaginary conversation with his father and basically told his father off and said, This is what you did to me, you know, and it doesn't make me very happy. Then he went to the next step to forgive his father and himself, because forgiveness is so critical to moving from an unhealthy place in the past. And then finally, he rewrote his story. He created this whole story about his father making it difficult for him to make decisions because he was scared of his father. And he rewrote his story because now he's 55 years old, or 60 years old, and he has so much more power and control over his own life. So that's sort of the process that people oftentimes go through if they're attached to something, particularly in the past. Let's stick with Tim Houlihan 23:15 this. Thank you for bringing up that's a great example of a leader struggling with this. You do a lot of work with leaders, and I think this is really an interesting thread to pull on. If we could Bob. We live in a world where hybrid work is, is becoming, well, has become, since the pandemic, sort of a standard, right? There's global uncertainty, like we live in a world where, in the United States, where you just never know what's going to happen from a political perspective. And I'm wondering about trust, and how can leaders build trust in a way that is it's Bob Rosen 23:50 a huge issue in the state of workplace, because, you know, if you're attached to things, particularly in the area of control, you have an attachment to control or an attachment to perfection, you have trouble trusting people, and in a hybrid world, that is really problematic, because how are you going to build commitment and engagement when you don't trust people, when they're not visible to you? And that's a real problem with a bunch of leaders and the many of their responses, let's pull them back into the workplace. But people don't want to come back into the workplace. They have a taste of what it's like to work virtually, and they love it. And so that's a real problem. Leaders also get hijacked by their ambition. They get hijacked by their attachment to perfection. You know, it's one thing to hold standards that are idealized and flawless, standards of perfection for yourself, but when you impose that on other people. It becomes a real problem, and that's what happens when people are attached to perfection. There's a difference between perfection and excellence, because excellence is more flexible and it's more accepting of the truth, which is, we are all imperfect by nature, and it's okay to fall down and make a mistake, and if we don't see life that way, it creates so much anxiety for us and so much worry. So that's a big one. Here's the antidote to this. I find that leaders who are self aware and committed to their own development. Have a very different understanding of their human strategy in the organization, you've got a finance strategy, a marketplace strategy, and operations strategy, and you have a human strategy, and that's really about the purpose, the values, the leadership, the culture, and that understanding enables them to build a healthier culture inside their business, which becomes their competitive advantage. So this deep understanding of self awareness is so central to running a great company today, unfortunately, we're going through a period where we are moving away from the human stakeholder, and we're focusing more on the finance stakeholder, on short term profits and and the owners of the business. And we'll do that for a while, until we realize that it's not a very good strategy for success. It works for some companies that have a business model that is successful despite the mental health of a leader. And there's sometimes business models do that they're so good. But for most you need a self aware leader who knows how to create the environment to bring out the best in people? Kurt Nelson 27:03 So Bob, what do you do when you run into that leader that is not self aware, that is focused in on the financial fully? And I've, you know, Tim and I both do consulting. You know, we work with those oftentimes we don't work with those leaders. But those leaders are the leaders above the people that we tend to work with, right? And it is very difficult sometimes to get past that. And so how do you handle that? What do you do when you run into a leader who says their feelings, their emotions, that trudge through it. I had to go through this, and whatever, all the other things that come with Tim Houlihan 27:41 Kurt, that is such a silly question. I'm sure Bob has never run into anyone like that. Crazy, right? For sure. Bob Rosen 27:50 Well, first of all, my career, really, was spent with CEOs. I got a MacArthur grant when I was 30. MacArthur Foundation grant, I became fascinated with the impact of leadership on people and organizations. And I started interviewing CEOs around the world in about 55 countries of large corporations like Coca Cola and Boeing's and Samsung companies like that, and as I noticed, there are certain ones that really believe their own PR. They've been successful continuously, and they've closed out external information coming inside of their head, so they really believe that they're responsible for their own success, and they become blind to the whole feedback link, right? So how do you deal with these arrogant leaders? Well, fortunately, a whole group of them never hire me because they want to deal with so you're not their guy. That's kind of fortunate for me. However, there is a way to penetrate the narcissistic veneer. I mean, one of the things that we don't realize is that narcissism is a defense against inadequacy, so people pump themselves up because they don't feel fully adequate inside themselves. And if you can get somebody to get in touch with that feeling and to talk about it, it's sort of disintegrates the veneer of the narcissism. Now it's really hard for an employee to do that, because the employee that the leader feels the need to be strong and all knowing in front of. Employees so they would never let their hair down, but they might to a board member and they might to an outside advisor, but you have to be careful about how you navigate around that veneer of arrogance. For a middle manager, an employee can engage other people in a conversation with the leader, and basically approach them in a kind and nice way and say, Look, this is how you are getting in the way of your own success. We want you to be successful, but this is what you're doing to alienate us, and we don't want you to do that because we are in your camp, yeah, so because most of it is driven by fear, fear of failure, fear of inadequacy, but it's very deep seated, so it is a hard defense to deal with When you're working at the top of the company? Kurt Nelson 31:03 Yeah. Thank you, Bob. Because I think that the just the acknowledgement that there is that seed of fear, that some of this is coming from that maybe sense of inadequacy and kind of the blocking out of anything else. Because this has worked for me in the past. I you know, it's what I know you talked about the control all of those facets are there, and I think it's just a really important part to say you have to tread very carefully. And to your point, particularly if you're an employee and you're managing up, because there are going to be potential emotional repercussions that that manager, that leader, is going to feel, and if you don't handle it in a way that could have some negative repercussions for you. Bob Rosen 31:48 So, yeah, absolutely. Now one of you mentioned youth, and a lot of people there's another one of the attachments is the attachment to youth. And this is really a tough one, because how often do we idolize our youth and diminish our older citizens? And nowhere is this more insidious than inside our own minds. 80% of us carry internalized ageism. We hold biases and prejudices against older people so and it doesn't just happen with older people. People who are in their 20s are the most stressed out of any generation these days, career, finances, relationships, really, really high that anxiety level. People in the middle of the or of their careers often get on a trajectory like this, and they become obsessed with the rewards and the money and the goals at the expense of their connections and relationships to other people, and then older people have a difficult time, oftentimes moving into retirement, because there are two paths. There. One is a path of enlightenment and love and connection and legacy and learning, and the other path is one of regret and isolation and loneliness. And there's so much research that shows that people who get the psychology of aging right live between eight and 20 years longer. Oh my gosh, yeah, it's incredibly powerful. They live a healthy lifestyle, they find purposeful hobbies, they build great relationships, they maintain a youthful personality, and they confront and eliminate their internalized ageism, and you can live decades now it's on average. Obviously, if somebody develops cancer in early 60s, it may not happen, but on average, so this attachment to youth is really a powerful one. Kurt Nelson 34:06 So So Bob on that. It doesn't reflect on me when I dream that I still have hair. And sorry, Bob Rosen 34:15 that was just enjoy your fantasies. Tim Houlihan 34:20 I think, I think the question is, how often are you dreaming about having hair Kurt, Kurt Nelson 34:27 probably too much. That's all I have to say. I finally think I've gotten to the point where I visualize and I have no I'm gonna let this drop here and we'll just, we'll, we'll move on. Tim Houlihan 34:39 I love this, this topic about our Kurt Nelson 34:43 about my hair, what no Unknown Speaker 34:47 about youth. Tim Houlihan 34:51 But I'm also, I'm curious about, you write about aspirations, and you talk about replacing attachments with aspirations. And by the way, I love that. EPS. Love that concept, Bob, that's a really cool way of thinking about it. What kind of tips could you give leaders to to think about ways of reframing attachments as aspirations? Bob Rosen 35:15 Well, each attachment in the book has its own aspiration. So for the attachment to stability, it's really changing your relationship to uncertainty and change and being more agile. For the attachment to the past, it's really around forgiveness. For the attachment to the future, it's really about learning to be content in the present moment. For the attachment to control, it's all about vulnerability. It's all about accepting that you are not in control of a lot of parts of your life that is okay, and that we are all vulnerable for the attachment to success. It's about moving from a scarcity mindset to living to a mindset of abundance. You have everything that you need in life right now, but oftentimes, because of our fear of failure and our anxiety about our own success, we feel that the cup is half empty versus half full. And if people could just accept the fact that you have everything that you need right now, and people might say, well, I don't have as much money as I want. I want a new boat. And that may be true, but you don't need that boat to be happy. In fact, oftentimes it's the opposite. People say the first day that you have a boat is the best day of your life. So to deal with the attachment to perfection, you got to limit and pursue excellence, not perfection, and and fall in love with your imperfections, to confront your inner critic and to lead by constructive impatience. The attachment to pleasure is an interesting one, because many people are attached to pleasure, and it could be alcohol, drugs, social media, cigarettes, overeating, gambling, shopping, you name it, and it's all related to the dopamine inside our brains. And what happens is, when those desires are driven by dysfunctional grasping, we got a problem, because what happens is that we don't understand the difference between desires, habits, attachments and addiction, and we're not comfortable with being uncomfortable, and life is uncomfortable at times. It's reality if I don't have anxiety, just enough anxiety before I'm giving a speech, there's a problem, you know, there's a problem. So the attachment to youth is really about Aging Gracefully and developing what I talked about, the attachment to self is really about learning to be alone in the world and connected to the world at the same time. But many people get stuck in an isolation tank with their own thoughts and feelings and needs, and they don't connect. They're not generous, and they have trouble building relationships, and that's a problem, and the secret is to learn how to love generously. Kurt Nelson 38:47 Can you expand on that? Because I think that is an interesting concept, this idea that it's this element of we need to be enough with ourself, but we can't be too much with ourself. We need those connections and variety of others, and how do we manage that? Bob Rosen 39:07 Well, a lot of people can be self absorbed and they lose perspective. A lot of people are fearful of being hurt or rejected, and so they stay inside their own psychological house and don't tiptoe outside, and they never get to build the relationships that they want. Emotional maturity and caring relationships come from loving yourself, which is, I think, one of the most important things that we do, we have to love ourselves. Tim Houlihan 39:47 Fortunately, it's one of the easiest things we can do, too. Just love yourself. Snap your fingers. You're done right, right? Bob Rosen 39:54 And so many people don't so many people don't love themselves. And. It's the cause of a lot of problems. So first of all is learn to love yourself, and that will free you up to love other people. And then the last one is the attachment to life, which is really a very important one. We're not told and taught how to live life's ups and downs. Nobody teaches us really about how to do that, unless you have a really good parent who does that. And so there is a natural process of birth and growth and loss and death, of projects, relationships, philosophies, our own life, the death of an animal, a pet, and we have to learn how to live in that cycle of life and death. But many of us are too attached to life rather than dealing with loss and death, and that is a real problem too, because life doesn't work that way. It has its ups and its downs, and so we got to let go of some of these old philosophies that don't work and they create fear for a lot of people. Kurt Nelson 41:18 Hey, grooves, quick break from the conversation to talk about something we don't bring up enough on the show. Tim Houlihan 41:23 Yeah, that's right. When we're not behind the mic, we're working with organizations to apply behavioral science in ways that actually move the needle for leaders, teams and whole cultures. Kurt Nelson 41:35 So whether it's designing smarter incentives, boosting engagement, setting goals that actually stick or helping teams navigate change. We bring real science to real workplace challenges, Tim Houlihan 41:46 and we don't just talk theory. Our approach blends research backed insights with hands on strategies that drive results. And we've seen small behavioral shifts lead to big wins in Fortune 500 companies and scrappy startups and even in mission driven nonprofits, Kurt Nelson 42:03 yeah. And we bring the same curiosity, creativity and care to our client work that we bring to every episode of the show, really, I Tim Houlihan 42:11 think people might want more than what we bring to the show. Kurt Nelson 42:17 You probably have a point there. You're probably right. Tim Houlihan 42:20 Okay, so we'll bring more care and creativity to our work with you and your teams than what we do on the show. Kurt Nelson 42:27 Yes, more care. So, so if you're ready to build stronger motivation, better team dynamics, and maybe even make your workplace a little more groovy, Tim Houlihan 42:36 yeah, reach out to us. Grab us on LinkedIn or Facebook or just drop us a line. We'd love to help you and your team find your groove. Kurt Nelson 42:46 Yeah, that, that last one you talked about, and you kind of reframed it as this, we the loss. Part of it, right, is we are not good with the loss, and I think that is a huge aspect. And again, we go back to the behavioral science of this, and we go back to Kahneman and Tversky, and they talk about loss aversion and how losses feel that much more painful than an equivalent gain. All of those factors play into that. So what do we do? How can we overcome that sense of forebode, of letting something go of that, whether it's a life or just a loss, of of something else. Bob Rosen 43:28 Well, some of this just comes down to acceptance of reality. You know, just like with change, we we have to get in, we have to embrace the reality of uncertainty. The same thing is true with loss. You know, life is full of loss, and it's okay, and it comes with difficult feelings, but the feelings don't have to last, but you have to stay with them. So the problem is that people run away from those uncomfortable feelings, and they never go away. They're always there unconsciously, and that's why dealing with the fear underneath each of these attachments is so important, and that's where awareness comes in. We're not running away from our fears. We're running to our fears. And our fears will set us free. Tim Houlihan 44:32 I'm just like, had to just take a moment there, just to, like, let that resonate. That's that's really beautifully said Bob, you know, on this, this show, we talk with a lot of people about finding their groove, about living your groove. You have lived, you have lived a full life. You haven't lived like this, about that, right this. Nor have you lived sort of this perfect, straight line experience of success, success after success, after success, after success. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's been a curvy line. It's been part of the wabi sabi that you've you've talked about, right? Some, some of the the successes and losses in when it comes to your own life. How, how do you get back in your groove? How have you found your way to to when you realize you're out of your groove, to get back into your groove? Bob Rosen 45:26 Well, it's a great question. I stick Step one is to know yourself. Okay, you got to know that you're out of your groove, and that's okay, okay, you don't have to run away from it. It's just part of being a human being is that you're going to be out of your groove. And so I think knowing yourself is very, very important. I think the second thing is to is to be yourself and be yourself is accepting where you are and accepting who you are in the moment. And a lot of people run away from the truth about who they are. And then the third thing is to love yourself. So because if you don't love yourself, you won't be able to get through the first two and I believe that there is here's the thing. I believe that every moment of our life we experience, consciously or unconsciously, the moment in fear or love. And when we experience the moment in fear, it takes us down a path that is uncomfortable, and we either deny it, we get stuck in it, or we move through it. When we experience that moment in love, it frees us, it allows us to see the sun shining and and I know that's metaphoric, but I think it's really true, and so I'm always searching for those moments of love, and when I feel fear, I don't run away from it. I allow myself to experience it, and eventually it goes away if I experience it fully, because and it's just your philosophy on life a lot of times, and people carry a lot of baggage that gets in the way of their happiness and success. Tim Houlihan 47:54 Hence detach. Bob Rosen 47:57 Hence detach. That's why I wrote this book. I wrote this book because it was an accumulation of my life lessons and the lessons that I've learned from the people that I've met. I interviewed 30 people for this book, so and they were mostly a couple colleagues, some friends and a couple family members who I've seen go through the process of detaching and moving from unhealthy attachments to positive aspirations, and sometimes we learn best from stories that tell the truth, And frequently their stories and books that just prop people up versus tell the truth about what life is really like, and so that's why I wrote the book. Now, now what I've done subsequently to that is that we created an assessment that measures your 10 attachments and gives you feedback on where you are, and the research that supports that. And then we created 10 workbooks for each attachment that takes you through that four part process of awareness, attachment, aspiration and then action. And we have a little video that goes with it, and a book club guide that teams and people can work together on this. So I really wanted to make the book practical for people so they actually can change their behavior. And I'm excited about that. We'll Kurt Nelson 49:32 make sure, yeah, we'll make sure to put the links to all of that in the show notes. And so listeners, we encourage you go out, get the book and look at those and take the assessment and make sure that you know, if there's a workbook that you need as well, we can I Tim Houlihan 49:49 appreciate that. Yeah. So imagine that you're on a desert island and you've got a year and to bask in. Love of the desert island experience, and you've got a music listening device that has two artists on it. Which two artists would you put on that device? Wow, and Kurt Nelson 50:12 you get their entire catalog. So every song that they've ever been a part of, every joint collaboration, Bob Rosen 50:22 well, there's a song that has always been my favorite from my teenage years, and is by Procol Harum. It's called a whiter shade of pale. I love that song because it really talks about, you know, this whole process of seeing light at the end of the tunnel and and experiencing love over fear. The other thing I would listen to is I would just listen to a compendium of disco music. I grew up with that when I was in my 20s and 30s. And today, I work out five times a week in the gym, generally on a stationary bike, and I lift some weights and but when I'm on the bike, I go back to that disco music and to me to get through my 40 minutes with intervals. Kurt Nelson 51:14 Do you have a favorite? I mean, is it the Bee Gees? Is it some, you know, where? And again, I was a little young on the disco age at, you know, but I was, I caught it at, you know, at a younger age. But, you Bob Rosen 51:26 know, I love them all. But you know, every time the song Gloria, by Laura branigan comes on, I can't help myself, you know, my heart goes up as much as it can. I have a pacemaker now. From my age, my heart slowed down too much, and they put a pacemaker in, but it doesn't affect my life. I mean, it just it just real. It just means I gotta work harder, because my heart never goes up too high, and so my metabolism is a little lower. Tim Houlihan 51:57 But Laura branigan does impact your Yeah. Bob Rosen 52:02 What can I say? Tim Houlihan 52:04 Oh, that's fantastic, Bob, thank you so much for being a guest on behavioral grooves today. Bob Rosen 52:09 Oh, my pleasure. It's great talking to you guys, and thanks for all your work. You're doing some great work. I mean, so much of my life has been about bringing behavioral principles to the workplace. I mean, I had a headhunter once early in my life who I didn't have any money to pay him, but I went to him and he said, Why don't you just do what you were trained to do, just stand up, and that's what you guys are doing. You're just standing up and telling the world about what we know about human nature, and there's nothing better than that. Unknown Speaker 52:46 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Kurt Nelson 52:57 Welcome to our grooming session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Bob. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our running too fast brains. Tim Houlihan 53:08 I like that. I like running too fast. I don't like running too fast. I like the idea that you capture that and to call it out, because I think that that's a great thing that we should focus on today. Kurt Nelson 53:18 See now I like to run fast, which I don't do, but my brain running too fast, Tim Houlihan 53:22 you'd actually like to run fast. If I could, Kurt Nelson 53:26 I think it would be fun run fast, Speedy. Gonzalez, Tim Houlihan 53:29 yeah, Superman, yeah. He's a fast runner, Usain Bolt. You know, there you go. Usain Bolt. Kurt Nelson 53:37 But running too fast is not something that is good. And I think it's a really important piece that Bob brought up. I think this idea that we are really trying to do too much too fast with these perceptions, it kind of ties into some of the other conversations we've had recently about the where what we think might be a virtue isn't actually a virtue. Tim Houlihan 54:03 I think you've got something there, like we misplaced this stuff, and we end up thinking that it's one thing when reality is another. He pointed out, I think that this whole stop running thing has some really wonderful implications, and we start by reframing stop and running by thinking about it as awareness rather than laziness like that, that could be a great place to start. Just to go, I'm going to stop running because I want to be more aware. I want to actually dig a little deeper into what's going on in my life or my job, rather than just saying I'm lazy. I think that reframing that could be a great place to start. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 54:39 and I think there was a key piece that he talked about, which was this idea that maybe we have that constant running because it keeps our mind going so we don't have to slow down and fear the uncertainty of not knowing, the idea that okay, this may not go as I like, or various different pieces and that uncertainty and. Yeah, the other piece, I thought was really interesting is Bob talks about like by by stopping or slowing down, right? Is that's where growth starts. It's where we start to have that self awareness, that self reflection, right? The ability to stop, not because we're lazy, because we're actually trying to understand things at a different level. Tim Houlihan 55:25 Yeah, how and how often do we do that? I'm just thinking about when we take vacations. You know, most, most people take some kind of a vacation, a step away from work, to rest and recuperate, recover. But how often are we actually being reflective in that time as well. Yeah, I think it's an Kurt Nelson 55:42 opportunity. And, I mean, I know myself, like many of my vacations are Go, go, go, go. It isn't a vacation where it's like, oh, I'm having this time to be reflective and to think about what I do. And it's not, I don't even know if it's like a vacation. I think there can be a component of this, which is, we should hold these reflective times as an individual that, hey, what am I doing in my work? What am I doing in my life, that I need to think about, because, is this the best thing for me, or is this as we, you know, we're talking about, are these moral, you know, sacred beliefs that I have? Are they mine, or am I borrowing them as from my community? Yeah, and so understanding what's truly true for us versus what we've just adopted because it's easy, because that's what my community around me believes are various different things. And too often, I think we when we're running that fast, we don't stop to reflect on that. Tim Houlihan 56:51 And I get it from a cognitive load theory perspective, like we only have so much capacity. We're cognitive misers. When we feel like we're getting too much we don't want to start to add additional thinking time to have to reflect on it, exactly right? So I kind of get it from that perspective. But running really does deplete our mental resources, all the switching costs involved. It's not really healthy for Kurt Nelson 57:16 us, no. And so we'll talk about some of those aspects. But I think there's also this idea of, we talked about reflection, and it's that metacognition, right? It's thinking about how we think. It's thinking about the patterns that are being exhibited in our lives, thinking taking that time to slow down, to a hopefully reduce some of that cognitive load, but then spend that time thinking about how we're showing up. And that can help too. From a perspective of emotional regulation, there's that aspect of yes, we right, we don't understand we're running so fast that the emotions don't get so we don't understand that, Tim Houlihan 57:59 right? And always being in this reactive mode doesn't really lend itself to emotional regulation. It just lends itself to emotion just being blah, you know, this big vomiting us thing. So I don't even know if that's work, okay, vomiting Kurt Nelson 58:12 or identity, I can't even pronounce it. That's how it works, Tim Houlihan 58:17 okay? So some practical takeaways, okay, right? There is something that I want to just start that my brother does when he travels. And he does this with, with everybody he travels with, and he and his wife the end each day, and they say highs and lows from the day. Okay, it does. It doesn't take long. This is not a hour long discussion. This is like a just a very quick little recap that they do where they just say, name, name, two or three highs for today and two or three lows. And it just causes the brain to kind of go back and go, yeah, what was kind of low? Yeah, I remember that low that was really prominent. Or, you know, there were those times that that was really fun to do, and they have this. And of course, it helps us cement in our memory what it was that was important. And, you know, not so ideal. But I also think it's kind of a wonderful thing just to have that sense of reflection. It's a very short lived reflection. It doesn't have to be deep, doesn't have to be journaling for an hour, but it's just a really nice little piece, okay? And I don't Kurt Nelson 59:19 have anything against journaling, by the way you talk about that, being on vacation and various different things, I think you can do that in an everyday moment. I think we can do that as part of the habits that you the rituals that you have for yourself. I think there's also part of that could be that could be a 67 thing, or it could be a five or a 10 Minute reflection. It could it gets a little bit deeper, because I think there's something about writing, and I will, I will emphasize the journaling part, the writing down. It doesn't know it doesn't need to be in daily shift, but it could be. It could be a new one that we're building specifically more for that. But it doesn't have to be. It can be anything that you. Strike down. Because what it does is, then you start seeing the patterns. You start seeing, where are those things continually? What are the lows in my day? What are the highs in my day? Yeah, and that changes then, because too often we buy some of those and we don't see that it's reoccurring on a regular basis, the pattern is continually coming back into fold. So I think that's a really important thing. So what are some other practices? Tim Houlihan 1:00:31 I think we could also just try to reduce them. The idea of multitasking, no, because multitasking, first of all, it doesn't exist, right? We are literally we cannot actually do and focus on two things at one time. Our brains focus on one thing. I'm sorry, focusing on one thing at a time, but we switch really quickly. Yes, and the in this switching, we know from FMRIs has a cost, has a cognitive load cost to all this switching, so the better we can do at staying focused on one and our brains are going to wander, and that's okay, but actually switching tasks works against us. So staying single, focused for however long we want to stay focused is really, really generative for both the work that we want to do and for our Kurt Nelson 1:01:21 brains. Yeah. So use time blocking, this schedule this time. When you do that time blocking, I can focus in on a single thing. Take your phone, turn it off, put it away. Don't just put it in vibrate. Get it away from you. Make sure that you lock out, like if you close out of other windows on your computer, really focusing. Don't have to use a computer. If you can do something without even using a computer. There's good research that shows that you can have that concentration more and don't set like a three hour concerted piece. Make sure you you know, basically, what was it 90 minutes? Is kind of the about stent and maybe even much less 30 minutes to really focus in on something and then give yourself a brain break. Make sure you allow yourself to stop thinking and stop focusing in on that and focusing on something fun, something else, rejuvenate your brain. Give it that pause, and then get back into it if you need to absolutely and with that. So there are these aspects called micro pauses that you can do, right? So breathing exercises can be one minute, two minutes, three minutes. There's nothing like it's not a 10 minute piece, it's just micro pauses. Give yourself that break. Find a quiet place, look out a window, make sure your gaze is further than the screen that you've been focusing in on right, look towards the horizon, and then close your eyes for 60 seconds and focus in on your breathing, deep breaths in long tails out Tim Houlihan 1:02:50 you you've practiced Kurt Nelson 1:02:53 a Japanese model in the past. Right where it's before you make a decision. That's, oh, that's a decision making. The decision making model, yeah, two breaths, seven breaths. So it's make sure that you take so before making a decision, make sure you take two breaths in. So kind of remember that. But then that's so that you don't make too fast of a decision. And hopefully you can activate your system to thinking. But there's also this aspect of make sure that you make a decision before seven breaths. Now this isn't like buying a home or who you're married to, but it is those everyday decisions that come to you in various different things, and too often we get analysis paralysis. So if you set this kind of a Don't, don't make the decision before you finish two breaths, but make sure that you make the decision before the end of seven breaths. Yeah, fantastic. And don't hold your breath at the end of seven Tim Houlihan 1:03:47 Good call. You can keep holding your breath. Just nod. Is there anything else we want to say? No, you're doing good. If you're listening. Kurt is just holding his breath. That's, that's all he's doing right now. Okay, here's an observation. Slow keep holding, by the way, yeah, slowing down isn't about stepping off the treadmill. It's about stepping into your own awareness. That's about that. Okay, now, now, you Kurt Nelson 1:04:21 alright? Similar. It's similar in the subtraction, right? And you can add a lot of value in your life by subtracting some of those negative things, whether that be running too fast. I constantly Tim Houlihan 1:04:35 go, go, pausing. Check out our conversation, which we love, love, love, love, love, so much. With lady Klontz from a couple years ago, we'll have a link to that. So also join our sub stack. Get more insights from the episode, as well as additional ideas on related topics in this week's newsletter. And what's coming up in October 2025 Kurt Kurt Nelson 1:04:57 a week. And. Tim Houlihan 1:05:00 Uh, something something here, which is something related to behavioral grooves, something something related to, we're gonna hold our breath our anniversary. Kurt Nelson 1:05:08 Oh, that's great. We're having a live event in uh, Minneapolis, yeah, for our 500th episode. It won't actually be the 500th but it'd be right around. We're gonna be we have 500 episodes that we have done in our and we're in our eighth year, where we've started eight years, actually, at the beginning of October. So that's crazy. It is crazy. Yeah, we've been together, but we're gonna have a live event. More information to come. Hopefully this episode will be out before that. If not, it's like, yeah, unless you were there, then it would be awesome. Hope you're there. Tim Houlihan 1:05:42 Maybe the biggest surprise though, isn't it, by doing less, you can actually focus better, and you can use that new power that you acquired by doing less, by slowing down, and use it this week as you go out and find your group. You you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai