The Psychology of Stress and Success: Dr. Brian Hite

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Brian Hite discusses the concept of high stakes performance, emphasizing the importance of understanding stress and arousal in high-pressure environments. He shares insights from his research on psychological capital and resilience, exploring how childhood experiences can shape our ability to cope with challenges. The conversation also delves into the motivations behind entrepreneurship and the necessity of self-awareness and acceptance in overcoming personal and professional obstacles. Dr. Hite offers practical advice for managing stress and enhancing performance, encouraging listeners to reach out for support when needed.

Takeaways

• Dr. Hite is a high stakes performance expert with a background in organizational and sports psychology.
• High stakes environments are defined by the consequences of success or failure, not by inherent stress.
• Stress is a cognitive response to perceived threats and our belief in our ability to handle them.
• Arousal is a physiological state that can be managed through perception and focus.
• Fear can be adaptive, helping us stay aware of our environment in high stakes situations.
• Positive psychological capital includes optimism, hope, resilience, and self-efficacy, which predict performance and well-being.
• Childhood experiences, such as adverse events, can impact resilience and coping mechanisms later in life.
• Entrepreneurs often pursue their paths due to unmet psychological needs in previous jobs.
• Awareness and acceptance of one's circumstances are crucial for effective action and resilience.
• The interconnectedness of personal and professional challenges highlights the need for holistic approaches to well-being. 

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.614)
Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Welcome to the show, Dr. Brian Haidt.

Dr. Brian Hite (00:12.296)
Thank you, I appreciate you having me.

Christian Brim (00:14.346)
Absolutely, it's been a bit of a struggle for us to get connected and overcome all kinds of stupid technology issues. Automation is great when it's not, until it's not. So I asked you before the show if you're an MD or a PhD, you said you're PhD, so you're a doctor of philosophy with what emphasis or specialty? okay, a psychologist, I love that. So what...

Dr. Brian Hite (00:35.056)
organizational psychology.

Christian Brim (00:43.362)
That's an interesting subject matter. How do you apply that in your profession? Like, what do you do for folks?

Dr. Brian Hite (00:51.602)
Yeah, that's an interesting question too. That's taken me a long time to figure out how to answer to be honest with you and it hasn't been until probably the last year that I had an answer that I was relatively happy with. So I wear a lot of hats and I think a lot of people do, which makes it very hard for them to answer this question too. And I like wearing a lot of hats. I want to wear a lot of hats. I keep getting told, I don't know, relatively consistently.

Christian Brim (01:05.038)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Brian Hite (01:20.252)
Stop wearing so many hats, pick a hat and run that direction. But I like writing books and I like being a faculty member at a university and I like giving keynotes and I like doing workshops and I like being a stuntman. And all of those things are part of who I am, it's part of what I've been. And so when you ask what I do, the answer I give people now is that I'm a high stakes performance expert.

Christian Brim (01:45.452)
Hmm.

Dr. Brian Hite (01:45.873)
Like I said, my PhD is organizational psychology. My master's is sports psychology. spent 10 years as a consultant with the U S army performance psychology consult, excuse me, consultant with the U S army. And I've spent 30 years as a stunt man in film and TV. So all of that seems to fall under the umbrella of high stakes performance situations. And so that's what I focus on specifically pressure, stress, motivation burnout.

Christian Brim (02:06.061)
Yeah.

Dr. Brian Hite (02:12.892)
And then there's a four phase approach to performance that we came up with when I was working with the military that we applied with the military. I've applied it myself in stunts and it's been applied in the athletic and performing arts worlds as well as the corporate worlds too in some pretty creative ways.

Christian Brim (02:28.769)
So I want to come back to that because I've got a question on that. who do you typically work with?

Dr. Brian Hite (02:38.566)
Well, as a stunt man, I work on whatever shows hire me. As a consultant, then I work with, there are five populations. I work with corporate populations, first responders, education. have a middle school I'm about to start working with with the students as well as the teachers and the administrators. Athletics and performing artists.

Christian Brim (02:41.227)
No, I meant as a high performance consultant, yeah.

Christian Brim (03:01.727)
Okay, so why not entrepreneurs? I'm curious. That seems to be a high stress environment.

Dr. Brian Hite (03:08.272)
I would put that into the corporate, under the corporate umbrella is where that would fall business slash corporate. And the language that you used was interesting. That's the language I'm trying to fight. I don't think there's such a thing as a high stress situation. I don't think there's such a thing as a high stress job or a high pressure environment. I don't think those exist, but people talk about them like they do. And so that's what I get into high stakes environments. When there's a big difference between

Christian Brim (03:11.862)
Okay.

Okay.

Christian Brim (03:22.998)
Okay.

Christian Brim (03:28.929)
So how would you, okay, so how would you define them?

high stakes.

Dr. Brian Hite (03:37.318)
what happens if you succeed and what happens if you fail, I would call that a high stakes environment. Now, whether we experience stress and or pressure in that situation, that's something different. But it's not the situation that determines whether we experience stress or pressure. And that's easy to see in a couple of different ways. One is that two different people put into identical situations.

may experience and probably will experience that situation very, differently. One might experience a lot of stress and pressure, whereas the other one might flat out be bored. It just depends on the individual. It's not that situation. And another example of that is, you know, the concept called the zone or flow or how, you know, however you want to refer to it. When you ask somebody, tell me a time when you were at your best.

Christian Brim (04:19.852)
Yes.

Dr. Brian Hite (04:26.641)
when things were just happening to the best of your ability. And they'll describe a time where they were fully engaged. I was fully present. I was there. It was like nothing else existed. It was like things were just happening on their own. It wasn't that I wasn't putting in effort, but everything was just clicking the way it was supposed to. And if you ask somebody, okay, so how much stress or pressure did you experience in that situation? None, not a drop. So again, two different examples of

of the fact that it's not, we don't have to experience stress and pressure. They are not inherent in any one environment. So part of what it is that I do is educate people around that just to change that belief. You don't have to experience stress or pressure. It is not necessarily part of what you're doing. So learning how to perform with it or under it, talking about pressure, is not something you need to do. What you need to do is figure out how to eliminate it so that you're capable of performing at your best in those high stakes moments when the

you know, when things are, when it's very, very important that we do the best that we can.

Christian Brim (05:33.801)
Okay, I will stipulate in part and I'll play along. If the situation like the military or a stunt man where the stakes are your life. You're saying that that shouldn't evoke stress in a person.

Dr. Brian Hite (05:58.089)
That's exactly what I'm saying. And I'll tell you, I've been in the situation many times where if I did it wrong, I wasn't going to go home that night. Or somebody I was working with might not go home that night. I've 100 % been in that situation. And in those situations, when I'm performing my best, I'm completely immersed in what's happening. The only thing that's going through my mind is what's necessary in order to execute what needs to be executed.

So no, there's no room for stress or pressure. It gets in the way. It tightens our muscles. It changes our cognitive ability. so just you mentioned stress specifically. The theory that I use for this, by the way, for any theory geeks who are out there, is called the transactional model of stress. And essentially what it says is we experience stress when we're in a situation, we do a primary appraisal, meaning we check out the situation. What do we see? If we perceive a threat,

something bad might happen to us. That's the primary appraisal. And if we experience that, we perceive a threat, then we move to what's called a secondary appraisal. And that is, do we have the resources necessary to deal with that threat? So we experience stress when two things happen. One, we perceive a threat, something bad might happen, and we don't believe we have what it takes to deal with it. That's where stress lives. So for me,

If I'm in a high stakes situation, I've got two different ways that I can handle stress. Now you mentioned, and so I'll just jump straight to it. Cause one of the things that, that I, that drives me crazy to be perfectly frank, when I hear people kind of like me who are in the same field talking is just, it's not a threat. It's a challenge. Just think of it like it's an opportunity, which is fine in some situations, but when people are shooting at you or when you're going into a burning building,

Christian Brim (07:49.472)
Yeah.

Dr. Brian Hite (07:50.648)
or when a car is about to hit you. It's a threat. There's no way you can rainbow and unicorn your way out of that. So, and that's okay though, because we can perceive a situation as a threat. Something bad might happen or reframed in a high stakes situation and still go in stress free if we believe we have what it takes to handle it effectively. If we understand the resources we have to bring to bear and we know how to

Christian Brim (07:53.226)
Right.

Dr. Brian Hite (08:18.393)
apply those resources effectively in that moment.

Christian Brim (08:22.967)
So what you're saying is a method or a framework to essentially use your cognitive brain to override your hind brain or your amygdala.

Dr. Brian Hite (08:38.807)
Yes. So, so what I hear you saying is that people experience physiological effects of stress, meaning heart rates increase, breathing changes, muscle tension happens. Yeah, there are physical in my world. I that's called arousal. It's a physiological arousal. It's an energy activation level. It's it's our level of amped upness, pumped upness. And there is a right.

Christian Brim (08:45.899)
Yes.

Dr. Brian Hite (09:03.299)
amount of energy activation for any given task, whatever we're doing, sitting here for this podcast, reading a book, conversation with a spouse, running a company, whatever it is, there's a right amount of energy activation for whatever we're doing. And it's important to tune into that, to recognize what our bodies are doing and be able to manage that, to bring it up if we're a little bit bored and lethargic, to bring it down if we're a little bit nervous and anxious.

and to manage that body. But we can't conflate stress or pressure with arousal. They're different things. So like I said, the stress is the cognitive part. That's the, is there a threat and can I handle it? The arousal is what's going on with my body.

Christian Brim (09:43.017)
Okay, so what is the difference? Okay.

Christian Brim (09:52.65)
Okay, so I'll use my example, my personal example. I'm a private pilot, I don't like to fly. I realized this about halfway through my flight training. To anybody flying with me, they would not know that I was stressed. I don't exhibit behaviors around that I guess you would say I am

controlling my arousal response. But it doesn't change the fact that I don't like doing it because of that feeling. Right? I like the benefit of flying like I can go somewhere I couldn't go driving or I could go quicker or whatever. But you know, the same could be true of driving in, you know, Dallas area traffic like that stresses me out as well. But you know, I want to go to Dallas, I got to drive in that traffic.

But to me, it's always been about controlling the, as you call it, the arousal response. So what is your alternative to that so that I could enjoy it?

Dr. Brian Hite (11:08.103)
Well, enjoying it is a perception. Arousal is a physiological thing. So here's the thing, we talk about mind and body like they're two different things, and then other people will talk about a mind-body connection. I don't think there's a difference between the two. They're just, it's all the same. When you move the needle on one, you're moving the needle on the other. And that's a good thing because if I've got this, you know, the...

the high arousal levels, I can change those arousal levels by changing what I think. So if I'm focused on what bad might happen in the situation, the potential threat that's there, I can expect my sympathetic nervous system to kick in and my physiological, all the indicators to go up and to change in the way that they do when the sympathetic nervous system kicks in. But all I have to do is change my perception. Now it's not a threat anymore, or it's a threat that I can handle and then it turns into excitement, which

Physiologically, you can't distinguish from fear or anxiety. That's something I think that a lot of people don't understand too, because what will happen sometimes is we'll check in with our body, we'll feel the tightness in our chest, so to speak, or the shallow breathing. And we may interpret that as nerves. We have to explain it somehow. Why is our body doing this? Well, it's because I'm afraid. It's because I'm nervous. It's because of whatever.

But it works the other way too. If we can tune into our body, like, cause we're worried about the thing. Oh my God, what if this happens? What if I go into this meeting and everybody laughs at me or nobody answers my questions or whatever it might be. What if we lose the deal and I have to end up laying off however many people, if that's where my focus is and I feel my body reacting, I can do certain physical things such as a little bit deeper breathing. I can drop my shoulders and roll them a little bit. can, I can.

consciously and deliberately target the areas in my body where I feel the tenseness coming. And when I do that, it will change my mentality. It'll change the way I'm focused. It'll change what I'm thinking about in that situation, particularly if I have practiced meditation and I have practiced shifting my attention to the breathing, to the body parts, because our minds are great, but they can only focus on

Dr. Brian Hite (13:26.189)
one thing at a time. So if I'm focused on how bad the thing may turn out if I screw it up, that's one thing. If I'm focused on my breathing and keeping it regular and focusing on my muscles and relaxing them, well, that's a different thing. And I can't do both. So if I shift my attention from the what bad might happen to my body, I can use my body to change my mind. So there's a real, there's a lot of overlap there where we can take advantage of both systems.

how we're thinking, how we're perceiving the meaning that we make in certain environments and our physiology. What are we doing with our bodies? How are our bodies feeling and how are we taking control of that?

Christian Brim (14:06.273)
So if you're working with, say, a SEAL team, what, you know, I mean, the statement I've heard is they just get comfortable being afraid. Is that a similar concept or?

Dr. Brian Hite (14:26.479)
Hmm. Yes, because you do get comfortable. you know, I can't speak from a SEAL standpoint, although I did work with special operations soldiers in the Army, so I can talk from that standpoint. But I can talk from personal experience with stunts. You get into those situations where there is real danger and there is fear. It's... but it's adaptive fear. It's not it's not a maladaptive fear. In other words, it's a fear designed to do what fear is designed to

designed to do, which is to help us stay safe. So the fear allows me to be a little bit more aware of my environment, to assess the situation a little bit more, up to a point. Now, if the fear continues to escalate, now we start to get into, like if you imagine the arouse of the energy activation like an inverted U, I said there's a right amount of energy activation for any given task. Well, the more you're on the right side of that,

Christian Brim (14:56.375)
Focus you. Yes, right.

Dr. Brian Hite (15:24.519)
curve, meaning energy activation continues to go up, our performance tends to go down. And it's because as we continue to escalate that energy activation, our minds, we can't think as clearly and our muscle tension changes. Fine motor skills start to disappear. So if what you're doing requires fine motor skills, this is big for magicians, by the way, because they have to do a lot of fine motor movements. But anyway, so as the energy activation goes up, we don't tend to perform as well.

Christian Brim (15:55.221)
Okay, so I'm going to pivot a minute. You as a doctor had to do research of an original nature to obtain that degree. What was your research topic?

Dr. Brian Hite (16:13.412)
I looked at the relationship among a construct called positive psychological capital, basic psychological need satisfaction, well-being and performance. And it was a complicated relationship that I was looking at initially, but what the data showed was more that positive psychological capital did predict both performance and well-being through basic psychological need satisfaction.

So that's a lot of terms. Let's throw it out there. Positive psychological, you asked though. So there it is. You asked what the research topic is. But here's what here's what. And it was with stunt people and actors. So was looking at the performing performing artists population and positive psychological capital is made up of four things. Optimism, hope, resilience and self-efficacy, which is essentially confidence. And so the more we have of each of those four things, the higher psychological capital is.

Christian Brim (16:41.835)
No, I did. I-

Dr. Brian Hite (17:05.12)
And the more confidence, hope, self-efficacy and resilience we have, one would expect higher levels of wellbeing and performance, which has been shown multiple times. But why is the question? And I thought that the reason was because of this concept called basic psychological need satisfaction. And that is, this comes from a theory called self-determination theory.

Every one of us has, and this is any one of us throughout history and any part of the globe, as human beings, we have three basic psychological needs. The first is autonomy, which is not autonomy in the way it's typically talked about in the sense of freedom or independence or choice or anything like that. That is a part of it, but it's deeper than that. It's more of

I'm acting of my own volition. I'm bought into what's happening. I'm committed. I'm leaning in. I'm engaged with what's happening because I think it aligns with my values, what I think should happen. So that's autonomy. Competence is not necessarily being good at something, but believing that you're capable of at least becoming effective in an environment. And then relatedness, this is a big one, is in many ways...

This goes along with constructs like belonging or connection. It's the belief that we are accepted and valued members of a group, not because of how many widgets we make or whatever, but because of who we are. We bring something unique to the environment and we're valued for that unique contribution. So those are the three basic psychological needs. So the higher our confidence, optimism, resilience, self-efficacy, the more likely we are to be in situations where we perceive

that we're leaning in, that we're operating of our own accord, that we're effective and that we're accepted. And because of that feeling of acceptedness and competence and autonomy, that's what allows for that feeling of well-being and the performance to be maximized. So that was my research.

Christian Brim (19:03.442)
and you came to the conclusion that that correlation is correct.

Dr. Brian Hite (19:07.524)
Yeah, it was a linear regression with mediation. So the basic psychological need satisfaction mediated the relationship between positive psychological capital and both well-being and performance. There was a statistically significant prediction there.

Christian Brim (19:22.285)
Okay, the reason why I asked that is one of my more recent guests is a new doctor of psychology. Very different emphasis. He's personal friend of mine. His emphasis was on sexual dysfunction. And he did his research on entrepreneurs. And he was equating the emotional attachment to loneliness.

What came from that that I found fascinating was that

entrepreneurship, people that had been in an entrepreneur for a long period of time, tended to be more emotionally attached than the general population. He, he believes this was not his thesis. But you know, further research is is this that the process of entrepreneurship is is one of healing like you have self discovery of like

satisfying that detachment that you developed when you were younger. Do you see any correlation between someone's background, their history, their trauma, whatever, and their I've already forgotten the term with the five elements.

Dr. Brian Hite (20:52.934)
With the forum on positive psychological capital

Christian Brim (20:55.789)
Yeah, do you see any correlation or is there a correlation between those two? In other words, if someone was abused as a child, do they tend to have a well to draw?

Dr. Brian Hite (21:10.278)
That gets into a little bit of the research around resilience and what else comes to mind are what are called ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences, I believe is what the E is. And that does show that those things that kids go through as kids certainly can affect them later as adults. I for sure, that's the case for all of us. And it's an interesting...

Because you wonder, you ask the question, there's a researcher named Ann Mastin who's done some research, a lot of research in the resilience area. And the way she put it is it's kind of like a math equation where the more resources you have available to you, the better able you are to deal with that particular situation, to be resilient in that moment, which I'll go ahead and define because resilience has at least three different definitions. One is when something bad happens,

We don't get knocked down very far, if at all. The second definition is we recover quickly when something bad happens. We get back to where we were fast. The third definition has to do with, this comes out of the post-traumatic growth research, with not only can we recover after something bad happens, but we can be better as a result of the bad thing happening in the first place.

Christian Brim (22:30.295)
Yes.

Dr. Brian Hite (22:30.457)
So those are three different ways of thinking about resilience. And whichever way you think about it, it still applies that the more resource, and when I say resources, I mean physical resources, mental resources, emotional resources, social resources, financial resources, whatever the resources might be, the more of those we have available and can use, because we might have them, but don't use them effectively, the better off we're going to be.

So when you talk about the childhood kids going through divorce or a family member died or, know, they were living in poverty, whatever it might be, all of those situations aren't created equally for all of those people. Some of those kids maybe had a coach, maybe they were an athlete. They had a coach that they could, that they could hang onto that was, that would, be a mentor for them. Or they had a certain teacher at school who really connected with them or whatever, you know, whatever the resource was, they had something different from what others.

had. So it's hard to to know based on experiences. Just say if somebody goes through this, then they're going to have a hard time with that. It's more about how we experience that experience. What's the meaning that we make of it? How did we did we see it as as exciting? Did we see it as as I don't know, something to

Something that was holding us back that we were frustrated about, angry about, resentful about. However, whatever meaning we're making of that event is what's going to determine how that event affects us later. So it's, I don't think it would be easy or even possible to talk about events affecting people later or even situations, a kid growing up in poverty. That's not enough because there are kids who grow up in poverty who do great, who thrive and flourish and come out of it, you know, the better for it. I mean, they'll tell the story.

Christian Brim (24:16.385)
Right.

Dr. Brian Hite (24:21.379)
So, so that's that those are my thoughts on that. It's out of area out of my area of expertise other than the resilience and the you know, the other piece, but those are my thoughts.

Christian Brim (24:26.795)
That's right. I. One of the other things he and I talked about that he did not do his research on, but this is just us, you know, chewing the fat that that a lot of entrepreneurs actually start businesses to control the variables to to solve some unmet need.

Probably unconsciously. don't don't you know, I don't think people say yeah, I'm going to Start a business so that I can make money so that I don't have to endure the poverty that I had When I was growing up for instance That may all be not at the conscious level Which which kind of led us to this statement that in in a lot of cases Entrepreneurship is the coping mechanism

that people deal with things. So your general thoughts on that statement and what your experience has been working with other entrepreneurs if that comports with your experience and your understanding.

Dr. Brian Hite (25:42.844)
Yeah, I'll tell you, I mean, if we're talking about needs, I we were talking about basic psychological needs earlier. I can 100 % say that the reason I'm an entrepreneur, at least a huge one, is because those basic psychological needs were not being satisfied in the job that I had before. And so I left it and I started my own job. And now I get to...

take the information that I have and move it in directions that I care about that are aligned with my values and beliefs. I don't have to align my values and beliefs with an organization and try to make my stuff fit their stuff. I get to make it myself. So autonomy is satisfied. Competence. I'm able to pick and choose which things I do. I love speaking. I love these podcasts. I love workshops. I get to decide which things I'm going to do that allow me to feel effective and then hire out the other stuff. I hate marketing.

I hate the bookkeeping. I don't have to do all of that. I can hire out. get to, so competence is maximized and relatedness. get to create the culture of myself, of my organization, and then hire and train to allow for the type of connections that allow for relatedness to thrive and flourish as well too. I get to put myself in that situation because I'm creating the situation.

So those are my thoughts on that. That 100 % makes sense to me that entrepreneurs choose that path often because those basic psychological needs are thwarted in some way by their other circumstances, whatever those might happen to be.

Christian Brim (27:18.688)
Did you make that decision with a conscious understanding that you were meeting that need?

Dr. Brian Hite (27:25.031)
Yes, because I understood those needs. I would agree with you that most people probably don't, but they know something's missing. They know that they're not really getting... and this is kind of gets into the burnout research of... are three... this is according to Maslach again for the theory people. Maslach's theory of burnout and there are three different components to burnout. Each is important in its own way. Emotional exhaustion is one. That is...

Christian Brim (27:27.188)
Right, because that's your background.

Dr. Brian Hite (27:52.082)
feeling just like you've given everything you have to give. There's nothing else you've got. You've put all of your whole soul into what it is and you're drained completely. The next is called cynicism or depersonalization. That's where you start to believe that nothing really matters. what you're doing is not important. That the business isn't really accomplishing anything. What you're doing doesn't really matter. And that's where that falls.

And then the last one is personal accomplishment, which is the idea that it kind of aligns with competence in a way. It's the idea that I'm not really accomplishing much, not really moving myself in a direction, not really improving. I'm not really growing. I'm not really bringing what I've got to the table. He's damn not, I'm not able to. So it's not that I'm not doing it. It's that I'm because of my circumstances and situation, I just don't believe that I'm allowed to, or that I'm able to. So that's where burnout comes from.

And so I think that a lot of people start to feel that. They start to feel that something's missing. Something's just not quite going right. I wish that I could do this or I wish I had more of that or whatever. And they don't know how to put it into the language of the needs, which I think is incredibly important. When I talk about motivation and burnout, people walk away with this information. They walk away knowing what the three basic psychological needs are, and they walk away knowing exactly what those three components of burnout are.

so that they can assess their own situations, their own environments and really tune into those things for themselves to see which environments feed those needs and which ones maybe suck them out.

Christian Brim (29:31.83)
So when you work with corporate or entrepreneurial types, do they generally come to you with some type of awareness? Or is it just the symptom of dissatisfaction at some level? Like

Dr. Brian Hite (29:48.784)
Yeah, they come with varying levels of self-awareness and I love that you use that terminology too because when I talk about resilience, we've talked a little bit about it already, but I think it requires three things and the first of them is awareness. You have to be aware of what you're thinking, what's going on with your body, how you react in different environments, interpersonal situations, etc. There has to be a level of self-awareness that gets developed and then

From that comes acceptance, meaning we have to accept what is going on, not acceptance in the standpoint of, all right, well, this is it. I guess we just got to deal with it. It's not that. It's an acceptance of this is just the reality right now. I mean, I've got red in front of me. Let's call it red. That's what it is. So, I mean, I can like it. I can not like it. But I at least have to be honest about what the circumstances are, because then I can do the third thing and that's change it. I can take action.

But I can't take effective action unless I really know what it is that's going on, awareness, and accept it as just this is the truth. So for the entrepreneurs and the different corporate people who I've worked with, there are different levels. Some of them, it's just a general dis-ease, a general dissatisfaction with things that are going on. Other times, they'll come in saying very specific things like, this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm thinking, this is the problem.

but it turns out later on after some conversations, maybe that's not necessarily the problem that the problem might exist somewhere else. although there is, mean, they're it, I'm gonna say that there's a level of self-awareness in the sense that they've really thought about what they think and what they're feeling. They've just not quite dug deep enough to really get at the heart of where that's coming from. So I'd say those are the two main.

circumstances and situations that I run into when I work in those corporate environments.

Christian Brim (31:52.481)
Yeah, because I think about the namesake of the show Chris, where in his situation, I don't think he had any awareness other than, you know, an animalistic and he was very he was not. He was a very low key low emotion guy for the most part. To the extent that an ex marine could be. But he he had all the most an animalistic

understanding like my leg is in the trap I want out of the trap. Like, but there wasn't anything beyond that, about like, why he got in the trap or, you know, what's he going to do when he gets out of the trap? Or it was just that in the moment, like I got I got to stop this pain. And I think when you get to that point, it does limit your choices.

but maybe you would propose a different approach. So if you were talking to somebody in that situation, like I just gotta get out of this trap. How do you coach, how do you consult someone like that in that situation?

Dr. Brian Hite (33:09.074)
Hmm. Well, that's, that's hard to answer in the general. mean, there would be a lot of defining that happened. A lot of beginning with the Socratic method of, what do you mean by trap? Why is it a trap? And, and what is the ideal situation? What do you want? And, really start to, to, to pursue those things. And once, you know, depending on the answers there, then we take them where they lead. But, but you got to really understand what,

Christian Brim (33:21.046)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Brian Hite (33:36.806)
why do you feel like you can't, like you don't have any options? Because most of the time we do have options. Now they may not be great options. They may not, it might be choosing between bad and worse, but we do have some options. And, and so really getting into that, but, but it's, it's when you're in react mode all the time, when, when you're used to being in just here's the circumstance. Let me just

figure out how to react to what just happened as opposed to being proactive in the sense of I see where I want to go and I'm taking proactive steps to create conditions for that outcome to happen. Those are two very, very different mindsets. So sometimes it's really just a it's an exercise in shifting somebody out of the fear and reaction mode and into the pursuit proactive mode.

Christian Brim (34:34.218)
Yeah. And I think, you know, I think for entrepreneurs who have to have a lot of that autonomy and confidence that you speak of in order to be an entrepreneur, like they're used to creating their own options. And like when they get to a situation where they don't perceive any options, it probably is a more desperate place than a normal person because they're not used to having options, right?

But the entrepreneur is like 180 degrees from the normal situation. And I have seen where it can spiral real quickly. mean, you know, Chris is not the only person entrepreneur that I know that that is either killed themselves or considered killing themselves like that they got to that point where they had no choices. That's what they perceived, right? But I think to your point, like really understanding what it is that they think they don't have a choice about.

Right? Like, because for me, when I started working with my business coach, ostensibly, we were talking about the business, but at that point in my life, my marriage was in crisis and we spent six months as, as coaching together. and

It was it was almost exclusively on the personal and I found this very strange because I'm like, why aren't we talking about the business? But what I came to realize was that the the problem that was me was showing up and the and the symptoms that it caused at home were very different than the symptoms that it caused at work. But they were the same underlying issue with me. And I don't think I could have.

Perceived my way out of that without help from somebody else like I I mean That that was too tangled for me

Dr. Brian Hite (36:37.543)
Yeah, that's interesting that you talk about that because two things came to mind. One is I've worked quite a bit with teenage athletes, mainly 15, 16, 17, the high school kids who are very, good at whatever sport they are to call it swimming. And and they're wondering, do I go to college? You know, do I pursue the college scholarship or do I do I not do I do I drop out of swimming?

And right around that junior year of high school age is when a lot of that comes to the head. And to go along with college is not just about their swimming, you know, whatever their performance is and whatever the sport is, it's all about, it's also about the school and the various tests that they have to take and the classes they have to do and the extracurricular activities that the colleges want, et cetera and so forth. So one of the things that, again, as you were talking came to mind is

When I, when I work with these clients and especially these kids and their parents are there when we have our first meeting, I let them know right off the bat. Look, I don't, I'm not really interested that much in whether you win trophies or medals or ribbons or whatever it is. I am interested in helping you be the best that you can be. Now we're going to use swimming as the vehicle for that growth.

but just know that everything that we're talking about can be applied and generalized to other areas of life. So, so yes, we're going to focus on swimming. And if you do what we're talking about and you improve in these ways and you use these skills and concepts, probably you're going to win more trophies and medals, but that's not the point. That's what it'll be a by-product of what it is that you're doing. So yeah, yeah. So, so that's, that's the one thing. And then, you know, like I said, the,

Christian Brim (38:11.148)
Right. It's a byproduct. Yeah. Hey, jinx.

Dr. Brian Hite (38:24.625)
just the idea that there are other things going on with these kids, we would spend a lot of time talking about tests or about a girlfriend, you know, that was some social situations happening at school. And because all of that affected their ability to perform in the pool or in the gymnastics gym or in the tennis court or wherever. Sometimes the parents came up and relationships with siblings. Yeah, it because we're whole people.

Christian Brim (38:42.22)
I would imagine you talked about their parents a lot.

Dr. Brian Hite (38:50.139)
Like I said, you know, with the mind body thing is same thing with everything. We can't, we can't separate these different aspects of our world completely. We can compartmentalize and we can learn to become better at that through some attentional awareness and different things. But at the end of the day, what's happening in my social life is going to affect me in other ways. What's happening in my own personal things away from business is going to affect how I interact with people in that business environment. And as an entrepreneur,

interacting with people is what you do. mean, I don't know how many entrepreneurs there are that sit in office by themselves and don't talk to anybody. That doesn't seem to be the job description. So if things are going wrong out in the real world, they're going to probably go wrong in the business too. And that overlap is going to happen pretty quick. So I 100 % agree with what you said. I understand.

Christian Brim (39:38.348)
Brian, I'm sure our listeners would like to learn more about you. Maybe hear some of your talks, maybe read some of your books, how best for them to find out more about you.

Dr. Brian Hite (39:48.487)
I'd encourage you to do two things. One, start on the website, brianheitglobal.com. B-R-I-A-N-H-I-T-E, global.com. Go there, check it out. It's in the process of being updated. I don't know when this is gonna air. Might be updated by the time this comes out, but if not, the information on there is pretty good as it is, but it'll be better in a month or two.

Also, you can email me and please do if anything that I've talked about struck a chord with you if any of this stuff is are things that you're struggling with please reach out. It is a hard situation to to go through on your own, particularly when you don't even know what you're going through. But if you're somebody who operates in high stakes environments and and your performance, not high stress, not high pressure. No, those are two different things. But but in.

Christian Brim (40:25.898)
Mm-hmm.

Not high stress, not high stress.

Dr. Brian Hite (40:35.291)
but in those high stakes environments where, and where your performance doesn't just even affect you. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're running a business, it affects other people too. So the stakes are ones that we can learn to handle, learn to be at our best during, but it really does require some, some deliberate and intentional effort sometimes in some directions that we may not know about.

So please reach out. I'm happy to have the conversation. We can have a meeting. It won't cost you anything. Just tell me what's going on and I'll see if there's something I can do or some direction I can point you toward that might be helpful.

Christian Brim (41:09.836)
Thank you. I appreciate that. Listeners will have that link in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.