Purdheep: [00:00:00] Every decision you make requires thinking power, every conscious decision. And so the more decisions you make, the more energy you actually consume. So this is important, too, because a lot of people make decisions when they don't have the right energy and when they're not in the right state. And that impacts them as well.

Harpreet: [00:00:29] What's up, everybody, welcome to the Artists Data Science Podcast. The only self development podcast for Data scientists. You're going to learn from and be inspired by the people ideas and conversations that'll encourage creativity and innovation in yourself so that you can do the same for others. I also host open office hours. You can register to attend by going to be three dot com forward slash a d. S o h. I look forward to seeing you all there. Let's ride this beat out into another awesome episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave a five star review.

Harpreet: [00:01:10] Our guest today is an internationally acclaimed personal advisor and coach to high performing executives and entrepreneurs. He's also an award winning author, podcasters and speaker since the moment he began managing employees at the tender age of 16 years old. He's been fascinated with business growth, leadership solving complex problems and enhancing growth for businesses. He's been acknowledged as a

Harpreet: [00:01:40] Powerful and distinctive

Harpreet: [00:01:41] Authority in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, consumer behavior. Exponential business growth and optimal performance. And is widely known for coaching leaders in personal transformation and peak performance as a proven consultant, innovator and performance multiplier. He brings immense passion, [00:02:00] drive, communication and collaboration skills together to empower others to lead and contribute to virtually any growth ambition. So please help me in welcoming our guest today, the strategist for businessman, CEO and founder of the Complete Man for the Sangar for the think you so much for taking time out is scheduled to be on the show today. Man, I really, really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to be here.

Purdheep: [00:02:27] Hey, thanks. I truly appreciate it. And I'm honored to be on your show today.

Harpreet: [00:02:31] The man, the honor is all mine. Huge fan of the of the book. You know, you could see here. I've marked it up, man. I hope you don't mind me marking it up in your book. And I've been listening to your podcast for the last couple of weeks, man. And it's been really, really a great experience just researching you and preparing for this interview, man. So I'm super, super happy that you're here. So before we get into some of the stuff you talk about in your book, man, let's learn a little bit more about you. Where'd you grow up and what was it like there?

Purdheep: [00:02:59] Sure. Yeah, I grew up in a small town called Colona, British Columbia. So my parents immigrated from India back in the 70s, and they went to the small town because my uncle was there and I pretty much I was born and raised here. I as far as back as I can remember, I the orchard life was kind of how I was raised because my parents came here. They didn't have any education or education. So they basically were working hard in an orchard and then eventually bought their own. But ever since I remember I grew up, my brother and I just on the orchard, running around, being there, spending a lot of time there outside of school. We were in the orchard. So that's what our life was like, especially for me up until probably my early 20s. It was a you could say it's an interesting experience because there was a lot of work. You could say we got up really early. Sometimes I would get up at three, 30 in the morning and be able to work by four 30. And it'd be long, long days, sometimes till six thirty seven at night and seven days a week in the summer because of the season. So it was tough.

Purdheep: [00:03:58] It was hot. If you've ever been [00:04:00] to Kalona, it's a super hot place in the summers, but also taught me work ethic. And there's another element to it. I think that was really good for us from a family perspective, because we all were it was a family business. We all worked together. Even my aunts and uncles, we were together. So I appreciated that, I think, because I got to learn a lot from them as well, having family around all the time, but also the mindfulness element, because there's something different growing up on an orchard, because you are there with nature. I was there with nature, sometimes working the entire day by myself. And all I would have would be the trees, the grass, the wind, the sun sky. But I was so enamored by it, I would I could literally walk through the orchard for hours and literally just look at the trees and be like, hey, how are they growing? What are the blooms like? What does the fruit look like? And that just kept me busy, which I look back and I say, you know, it was a tough upbringing, but I wouldn't have changed it for the World Bank.

Harpreet: [00:04:56] Cloner is hands down. One of my favorite, probably my favorite, the entire Okanogan Valley, one of my favorite places on Earth. And it's absolutely gorgeous out there. I'm very jealous that you have to grow up there. But I'm sure there's a lot of a lot of hard work grown up. That's a lot of discipline, man. At a young age like did that carry you through your teen years in your early youth? Like, what were you like in high school? Kind of what kind of kid were you and what did you think that your future would look like?

Purdheep: [00:05:20] Yeah, that's I would say discipline was a big part of our family because my mom was a very disciplined person. She still is my wife. And I laugh at that because she is probably the toughest lady I know. And she was out there working as hard as she could. And she she expected the most from us. On top of that, my dad was also in the police force back when he was in India before he immigrated. And so he was a tough guy. And he just made us work hard because he believed that that was important part of just being successful in life. And then my grandfather was also in the military, so they immigrated over a little bit later. But he was a big factor in my life in terms of discipline. He was the most disciplined man I knew. And [00:06:00] so I learned a ton from him. But I can say for sure in my upbringing is definitely what helped me get to the point where I am today, because had I not worked so hard, had my parents not pushed me, I wouldn't be here. They especially pushed me in academics. Because they said pretty much just like every typical Indian parent that immigrates

Harpreet: [00:06:15] Over is, we don't want

Purdheep: [00:06:16] You to work as hard as we do or suffer, so go get an education. We're working for you. Right. That guilt trip that they play on you. And at that time, it was it was a good guilt trip because it just pushed me into academics. And I would say that is one of the catalysts that kind of led me to where I am today.

Harpreet: [00:06:32] That's interesting that they don't want you to work as hard as they did, but it's a different type of work that we do now, which I'm sure we're working harder than they could ever imagine. Right. It's not physical, backbreaking labor, but it's intellectual. It's it's hard core thinking that you have to do for work. I mean, especially with the type of research you do, man. So how different is your life now than what you imagined

Harpreet: [00:06:56] It would be back then?

Purdheep: [00:06:58] Well, growing up, I would say, because my parents pushed me a lot to go into the medical field, because the typical, you can say occupations that Indian parents want you to go is either an engineer or a lawyer or a doctor. So my chosen path apparently was supposed to be a doctor, but I really want to be a veterinarian. That was my dream. That was my goal. But my parents were like, you know, that's not as respectable. And so I thought I would be a doctor when I was in high school. That's literally what I thought I would be. But I am so glad that I'm not a doctor because I get to help impact people from a different perspective. I'm not one that could see blood, I hate saying, but I hate seeing people suffer, especially especially physical pain in high school. I volunteered at the emergency department in Kalona, and I couldn't take it when I

Harpreet: [00:07:40] Just was just not for

Purdheep: [00:07:42] Me. When I saw people hurting and suffering and sitting in the waiting rooms, I was just like, I cannot do this. And so I never thought I would

Harpreet: [00:07:50] Be in business

Purdheep: [00:07:51] As deep as I am. I thought I would be more NUPE. You can see a professional role like an engineer or something like that, or a doctor. But having [00:08:00] my own business and being from an entrepreneurial side, this is something I'm I'm glad I actually did.

Harpreet: [00:08:05] So it was it was a little bit of

Purdheep: [00:08:07] A 180, you can say.

Harpreet: [00:08:09] The discipline, I guess, how does that help you with with like goal setting and defining a path for yourself going forward when that there's so many different avenues that somebody can go down, so many different paths that you can take a doctor or engineer, a lawyer, like how does discipline help you focus on which goal to pursue?

Purdheep: [00:08:28] Well, discipline is important because it allows you to get your goals faster. That's ultimately it, because I see a lot of people and this is one of the premises that I learned from my grandfather. He was an old school military man who had a lot of you can say, philosophical background in education. And he taught me a lot. He taught me a lot about self integrity. He also taught me about discipline. If we take a look at the word discipline and actually do not the origin, but a root of it actually comes from India, which means George, for example, which is the word to bind yourself or to be bound to something that you're doing. And when you practice discipline to the point that it becomes who you are and it becomes part of your identity. It's no longer discipline. It's just who you are. And I'll give an example. Working out for me is just who I am. I don't schedule it. I don't second guess it. I don't think about it. It's just part of who I am. I get up and I work. If I don't work out, I don't feel like myself. So discipline is absolutely critical. If you take a look at some of the most successful people out there, a lot of them are athletes because they have that discipline to get up and do things over and over again and practice and practice and practice and not take no for an answer. And that discipline is ultimately what gets someone from point A to point B, because there's always the roadblocks. There's always challenges. And if you're disciplined enough, you'll get through them eventually. So that's the most important thing, not necessarily for goal setting, but to achieve the goal. Discipline is the most important thing.

Harpreet: [00:09:55] So definitely to get into some parts of your book, we'll talk about identity for sure, [00:10:00] because I thought that was a fascinating bit. But since we're on this topic of goals, we talk early on in the book about goals and a specific type of goal called a premium goal. So I guess what is a premium goal and what separates it from just like a regular core?

Purdheep: [00:10:16] Yeah, and I use this analogy in the book as simply if you think about gas, you go to the pump and you can have regular gas or you can have premium gas. And if you take a look at the performance, you're going to get better performance from the premium gas. But also, we have to think about ourselves when we get up every morning and we take a look at why we're doing what we're doing. Are we motivated? Are we driven? Do we have that passion? Because it's ultimately that drive and motivation that gets us through and we get through because there is a goal at the end. There's some kind of light at the tunnel. We have this thing that we want to achieve, and that is a goal. And ultimately we need to have premium goals, which means that we have to be motivated and driven, passionate about those goals. They can't be average goals, because if you have average goals, you're going to run out of fuel. Ultimately, that's what happens. You're not going to be because we all know it's not it's not the easy road that stops us from getting to where we want to be. It's the tough road. And you need that fuel. You need to be looking at your goals and say, I want to do this regardless of what happens to me. I want to do this because this is how I'm going to feel at the end of the line. That's what premium goals are. I see way too many people setting goals. I'll give you a prime example. I was talking to a gentleman the other day, a very successful CEO, and I was asking him about his goals. And he actually pointed out himself. He said he's not very motivated because he uses a strict logic when he sets goals. And it's very logical process for him. And so he's not excited. And I said, you know what you need to do, put some emotion behind it, because you have to be excited. You have to be driven. And this is shown from studies from Stanford that the more emotions you put behind your goals, the more likely you are to execute, the more passion you're going to be passionate, you're going to be the more consistent you're going to be, the more persistent you're going to be in achieving those goals. [00:12:00] So there's a direct correlation between a lot of people think that goal setting is important. It definitely is. But even with goal setting, six months later, over 60 percent of the people drop those goals. And even though that they're looking at those goals every day, for example, they're just not premium enough. They're not exciting enough for them to keep going. That is the difference between an average goal and a premium goal is a premium goal will pull you through. You're not necessarily having to push yourself. You're actually drawn to it.

Harpreet: [00:12:26] And when it comes to the emotions that we need to put behind our pursuit of our goals is it doesn't need to be like some type of like rage or anger. Like what emotion should we put behind ourselves to achieve our goals?

Purdheep: [00:12:40] That's a really good question. And I think everybody is different. There's some people that rage does it. Anger does it because they feel like the underdog. For example, they want to beat someone. They they they want to show that they are the best out there. Some people have emotion tied to ego, for example. Everybody has a different emotion. Some people it's

Harpreet: [00:12:59] Compassion. They're driven to

Purdheep: [00:13:00] Help other people because they have this emotion that they want to be caring and loving and and give to others. Everybody is different. So I wouldn't say that. There is any negative emotion that you can put behind it unless it actually consumes you, right. If you're putting so much anger into a your your goal, for example, that it's trickling over into other aspects of your life, then you need to be a little bit

Harpreet: [00:13:22] Cautious of that, because I know there's

Purdheep: [00:13:24] Times when I just am pissed off. Something just pisses me off. And those days are some of my best workout days because I channel and I convert my energy from that. You can say that type of emotion to an empowering emotion. So it just it's what works for you ultimately at the end of the day.

Harpreet: [00:13:41] So how's that? Because you get into so much amazing neuroscience. I'm like super, super fascinated just about brain science and neuroscience and things like that. So how do we do that when we are in that dark place or that then anger fill place? How do we use that to just kick off another loop in our mind to that of having that be a blocker [00:14:00] for us to just guess let's let's use it for fuel? Like what's the I guess, the trigger that we put in place in our mind?

Purdheep: [00:14:06] The process, yeah. I think the first thing is it requires practice.

Harpreet: [00:14:10] And so sometimes

Purdheep: [00:14:11] What ends up happening is we get anger, for example, and then we get angry because we're angry. Right. We know better that we're not supposed to get angry. So the first part is to remember that this takes practice just like anything else. It's like people that start to meditate at first is they they get so frustrated because they can't do it. So give yourself some space and understand that this is a process. This actually takes some time. And actually you can perfected over time with practice. The second thing is to understand that all emotions are actually convertible. So you

Harpreet: [00:14:39] Have the option, you

Purdheep: [00:14:40] Have complete control over your emotions. And science shows us that it's not the external stimuli that actually impacts your emotions. It's your perception of them. You're actually taking that emotion and putting it through your existing programing and saying, this is how I should feel about it. And when you understand that, you realize that you have power. And so when you become the master of your

Harpreet: [00:15:01] Emotions, no one else can

Purdheep: [00:15:02] Impact you. You can actually take some a moment when someone actually pisses you off and says something negative and turn

Harpreet: [00:15:08] That into a

Purdheep: [00:15:08] Motivating factor. And understand that, first of all, anger is one of those emotions that can drive you. You want to tone it down if you can't think straight. Right. So just pausing for a moment is important because every emotion has been shown that you can it will die down after 60 to 90 seconds if you don't feel it whatsoever.

Purdheep: [00:15:29] So even if you're happy, if you're sad,

Purdheep: [00:15:31] Whatever it is, if there's no additional stimuli, if you're not keep getting bombarded by the same stuff, it's actually going to go away. So you have the option of actually just removing yourself and changing it. But there's a trick that I use. And the trick that I use is I always take that and ask myself, is this anger the way I'm acting right now? Is this going to help me or hurt me from the goal that I want to achieve? And then it comes back to the goal. And so if you redirect and say, what is my goal?

Purdheep: [00:15:57] And then you tell

Purdheep: [00:15:58] Yourself, what do I use to [00:16:00] fuel my actions toward this goal, even if it's anger, you can do that. You just need to convert it again.

Purdheep: [00:16:06] It's your

Purdheep: [00:16:07] Ultimate goal. And those questions that you ask yourself that ultimately have an impact. But there's some other there's one other aspect that I won't talk about. I know we're gonna talk about identity here in a little bit, is you want to tie your emotions to your identity and you ask yourself, is this emotion an emotion that this type of person would have? For example, I just use an example of, let's just say Dalai Lama. He's someone that I look up to. He's a very fascinating man. But and he feels anger at times, too. But then I say, is this a type of person that would wallow in anger? So you can you can ask yourself and say, who are the people that you look up to? And would they feel this emotion? What would they do in this situation and then convert it again? It just takes practice. But those are just some subtle things that you can do to actually change your approach with that.

Harpreet: [00:16:58] It's like that the bit of that so stoic detachment where you pause and then say, okay, this is just an impression. Take it for what it is and don't let that kind of perpetuate and keep you in that flywheel.

Purdheep: [00:17:10] Right. Exactly. And there's another part to it, too, because most of our emotions are based on how we felt in the past, not necessarily how we feel now. If we understand this right now, most of our emotions are triggered by something that's happened in the past. Take a look at someone says something to you. You're most likely going to think of a time that that person said something similar in the past. So you're already ready to have those emotions. And anytime you have an emotion based on the past, you're living in the past. So when you understand that, you say, wow, I want to live today. So what if that happened? How do I move forward from this? How do I actually learn from this? And that's one motto I would say that I that I use with almost everything. And I think this has helped significantly. This is something that I coachmen on is asked a question, what can I learn from this? How can I be better from this emotion? And you'll be surprised that you're brainwashed. You come up with some really good answers.

Harpreet: [00:18:00] Thank [00:18:00] you very much. I really appreciate that. And just continuing on this path of talking about brain science and and, you know, while we're kind of in the topic of. Goals here, I guess you talk about the reticular activating system in the book and the impact it has on achieving our goals. So I guess if you could for the audience, kind of describe what the reticular activating system is and how it impacts achieving our goals.

Purdheep: [00:18:25] Yeah, if I was just simplify it, it's basically a system within your brains made up of a network of neurons that are there. Part of it's in your brainstem. Part of it is basically in other aspects of the stimuli that you take in from your let's just say your site, your taste, your touch, your smell, for example, and you're hearing. And that system basically

Harpreet: [00:18:46] Filters out

Purdheep: [00:18:47] Information that's not relevant to your goal. If I was to simplify it. So if you have a goal in mind, you will actually

Harpreet: [00:18:56] Take in relevant

Purdheep: [00:18:57] Information

Harpreet: [00:18:58] To that. Your brain, that

Purdheep: [00:18:59] Reticular activating system will actually say, oh, this guy, they were, let's just say, has this goal. Let's push this information, because this is relevant to the goal. And here's a simple example. If, Harpa, you and I walk down downtown, let's say, Winnipeg, and we're walking for 15 minutes, and at the end of the walk, I say, how many blue cars did you see? You're going to be like, I don't know, maybe one, two, three. I can tell you right at the beginning of the walk, I said, Harpreet, we're going to go for a walk for 15 minutes. I want you to tell me how many blue cars you see on the way. What's going to happen? Your brain is automatically going to be looking out for those blue cars. So that is what the reticular activating system does, is it aligns your information that you're bringing in from the environment. And there's a lot of it. We're talking about millions of bits every single second. Right. And there's no way that your brain can actually consciously process that. And so what your brain is designed to do is say what's actually relevant to the goal. Let's push this information to the conscious level, what's [00:20:00] irrelevant? Let's just kind of keep it unconscious. So that's what it's what it does. And it's very important. And that's why goal setting is super important, because as soon as you have a goal, your brain is actually structured to follow that goal and attain that goal.

Harpreet: [00:20:13] That's interesting, because I'm kind of another topic is the other side of that coin is when you're thinking thoughts like, oh, my God, like I suck at this thing, I'm never going to get good at it. And this is the talk

Harpreet: [00:20:24] That you have on loop in

Harpreet: [00:20:25] Your mind. You'll just start finding reasons to prove that. Right. Whereas if you start telling yourself, you know what? Actually, I can learn hard things. I can do difficult things, I can learn and grow, then you kind of just see that happening all around you, that kind of the same.

Purdheep: [00:20:39] Yeah, absolutely. Because your brain is actually designed to do two main things. It's designed to do other things, too, but it's designed to predict.

Harpreet: [00:20:46] It's a prediction you can say machine.

Purdheep: [00:20:49] And it's also designed to solve problems. So if you think about this, your brain is constantly solving problems and who's identifying what the problem is to solve. You are as a person. And so problems are solved, in essence, are questions. That's what they are. So if you ask yourself, why am I such a screw up in this? Your brain will answer it because it's designed to solve that problem. It's going to give you an answer. So be very conscious and aware of the questions you ask yourself, because if you restructure your questions, instead of saying, why am I such a screw up at this and say,

Harpreet: [00:21:20] How do I develop

Purdheep: [00:21:21] My skill so I'm better at this, you're actually going to have two completely different outcomes.

Harpreet: [00:21:25] A love that's just like a subtle shift in your self talk that addresses the same question in a sense, but it just has radically different outcomes. I think that's super, super fascinating. So you also talk about systems in your book. So what's the difference, I guess, between systems and goals, or do we need systems to help us achieve goals? How's that work?

Purdheep: [00:21:45] Yeah. Goals are important because that's where you want to get to, right? That's your target. That's your whether it's your revenue target, your career goal, relationship goal,

Harpreet: [00:21:52] Whatever it is. But your system

Purdheep: [00:21:54] Is actually how you're going to achieve it. It's basically it's like the wheels to get to your goal. You have [00:22:00] to have a system. Now, you don't actually let me just step back here. You don't have to have a system, but you're more likely to achieve your goals if you have a system. And the more successful people I know have a system, the most successful athletes I know have a system. Best coaches I know have a system. Everything is about having an effective system, because when you have a system, we use this principle in business as well. Businesses are built on systems. They're built on processes.

Harpreet: [00:22:28] And a system is

Purdheep: [00:22:29] Simply a bunch of processes that are put together. That's all it is, is a network of processes. And systems are designed to be consistent.

Harpreet: [00:22:38] Right.

Purdheep: [00:22:38] And it's designed to give you a little bit more discipline. But once you have that discipline and consistency, here's the magic of systems. You can actually improve them. You actually can see, OK, where's a system not working effectively? Where do I need to change things and how can I enhance other aspects of the system? If you don't have a system that's consistent, it's hard to tell. You're just winging it. Right. And so it's like going

Harpreet: [00:23:01] On a diet. If you say

Purdheep: [00:23:03] If you go on to three different fad diets at the same time and you start losing weight, you're not going to know which one it is that's actually impacting. So that's why it's important to actually have a system of maybe one diet and say, OK, let's see if this works and then start to modify that approach and then you can move on to the next system. So systems are so fundamental because two things, it accelerates your results. But the second thing is, you know, you get to figure out what's not working for you as well.

Harpreet: [00:23:28] Absolutely love that. And I think that's super relevant to, you know, the audience of data scientists that are listening to having that concept of a systems mindset. The systems thinking is super important, not only for the work that we do as data scientists, but to help us in our personal lives as well. So let's jump into this identity.

Harpreet: [00:23:49] I love how you break down identity in the book. It was actually one of my favorite chapters. So talk to us about what our identity is.

Purdheep: [00:23:57] Well, it's simply how we perceive [00:24:00] our self and how we act in accordance to how we perceive ourselves to be. Basically, it's how we represent ourselves to the world and how we the world reflects that back onto us, basically, and the world tells us who we are. Identity is so important because it's this concept. Right? That's all it is, is a concept. It's like a character from another analogy. It's a character within a story. And the important thing there is to understand that that character

Harpreet: [00:24:25] Is the most

Purdheep: [00:24:26] Important, aside from systems. Right. You can have systems, but that character has to execute those systems. So having an identity that aligns with your goals is going to be absolutely critical. And here's a magic to that as you get to create that identity, because it's already been created for you. You just don't know it. Most people go through their entire lives having this persona, this character of themselves,

Harpreet: [00:24:51] And they don't realize that it

Purdheep: [00:24:53] Was built basically by their society, their parents, the school system, everything up until they're a young adult to say this is who you are, but you get to choose this. And so a lot of people get stuck because they get stuck in their identity. They get stuck in who they are, because let's just say we have a goal of doing something. And you might tell yourself, I'm just not the type of person to do that. I just don't know if I can do that. And that's your identity talking because you haven't done that. You don't see that as part of being who you are. And so that is important. Like, I'll give you an example. There's some people that are just part of their identity as being they they love

Harpreet: [00:25:31] To do these. You can say these

Purdheep: [00:25:32] Ultimate sports, for example, like these cliff divers or, you know, guys that go even hang gliding or jumping out of skydiving, for example.

Harpreet: [00:25:40] That's part of their identity. Right.

Purdheep: [00:25:42] That's who they identify themselves as. That's not who I am. That's not who I am as a person. And so for me to actually just go up there, I've always wanted to go skydiving. I haven't done it yet. But it's one of those things that I find tough. But for them, it's easy because it's just part of their identity in terms of who they built themselves to be. And [00:26:00] so if you take a look at yourself and say, who am I, that's ultimately what the question is. You get to identify who you are as a person and who you are as a person. Your identity then determines how you act. It determines your behavior not only consciously, but more importantly, unconsciously, because we're built on habits were built on what we call autopilot or automaticity, which is basically it's a system for our brain to not have to use a bunch of energy. So he creates these patterns and he creates these habits. But guess what? These habits and patterns are aligned with your identity. And so if you're a type of person that has these habits that aren't getting you to your goal, then the best thing you can do is re-shift your identity to the type of person who aligns with that goals. And so any time we do work here, for example, when I work with someone, that's a first thing I take a look at. I take a look at how they perceive themselves to be an individual, what their character type is, because someone will just say,

Purdheep: [00:27:00] Like, I'll give you an example. Here's a big one in the business world. I'm just not a salesperson. That's how they identify themselves. I'm just not a salesperson. That tells me right away whether this person is actually able to sell their product or service or not, because they're identifying themselves as someone who doesn't sell. And so if you identify yourself as someone that doesn't sell, you're not going to sell. You're going to have a tough time selling. And so these are this is just such an important concept in the human structure and even in society. Harp, this is probably the fundamental basis for every human being getting what they want out of life or not getting what they want out of life.

Harpreet: [00:27:34] And it's like you want to stay consistent with your identity, right? Because if you find something or if we discover or uncover something about yourself that goes against your identity or this identity you've constructed for yourself, that could be quite jarring. Right?

Purdheep: [00:27:50] Mm hmm. Absolutely.

Harpreet: [00:27:52] And you talk about this idea of the core identity. So we talk to us about that, this concept of the core identity.

Purdheep: [00:27:59] So the core identity, if [00:28:00] we take a look at ourselves, is inside. We have this core identity. This is the way we are and way we perceives ourselves to be in. Pretty much every situation, we're not going to change that. So, for example, Harp Pete, you're a nice guy. You're probably not going to go out and kill someone. Right. Even if someone gave you a million bucks because that's part of your core identity, you're so ingrained in you that it would be it would be almost impossible for you to change that. That's what a core identity is. Right. And so we all have the we all have this structure inside of us that tells us, no, we're not going to

Harpreet: [00:28:34] Do this or yes, we

Purdheep: [00:28:36] Will do this. Because the other important thing that I didn't mention when it comes to identity is your brain will tell you to behave in alignment with your identity and it will stop you from behaving in ways that are outside of your identity. And again, I talk about this in the book. If you feel like you're an introvert, is that if that's how you identify yourself, you go to a party, you're going to be an

Harpreet: [00:28:55] Introvert unless

Purdheep: [00:28:57] You may have a couple of glasses of wine or alcohol or whatever it is. And that will actually inhibit your brain from or allow you to step outside of that identity. So that core identity is pretty much built in us that allows us or doesn't allow us to do something in every single situation outside of that. We also have what we call a fluid identity, which is an identity that we need to change and to adapt to the situation. And so this could be adapting to your work culture. It could be adapting to going from work to home. At the end of the day, you have to change who you are. You can't like I can't when I go and I'm speaking to my team members, I don't use the same approach that I do with my children. I'm not the same person. Right. I'm more goofy with my kids. That's part of my fluid identity. But it's important to actually even if you can name your identity, it's important because once you put a label on your identity and actually you can actually step into that, it's almost like a character. And so some people I've seen men say I'm Batman. Right. And that's their identity [00:30:00] or The Dark Knight or whatever that is. So they feel

Harpreet: [00:30:03] Like like they're

Purdheep: [00:30:04] Embodying that type of a character in a certain type of situation. And so it's important to have a fluid identity because you can't be the exact same person in every situation. You're not going to be functional life you want. Your marriage would fall apart. Your kids be like, who is this person? Everybody would just be looking at you like something's wrong. And so the more fluid you are. The more successful you will actually be, because you can change yourself and adapt to situations. I actually learned this. You could say early on in in in my life is I almost saw myself as a chameleon or I could adapt in every single situation because that allowed me to learn from different groups of people, for example, and different individuals. But then I started to realize I'm like, wow, I'm not who I necessarily think I am. I can be whoever I want to be. And it's a very powerful thing when you actually embraces a lot of guys or Gals will think, well, I'm not being genuine. You're absolutely being genuine because you create who you are. You might as well do it with intentionality, you can say.

Harpreet: [00:31:09] And so talk to us, I guess, about the relationship between our identities and our goals. Do they necessarily line up with each other or how does this work?

Purdheep: [00:31:19] Well, if you if you want to hit your goals, you definitely should line up. That's the first thing that we take a look at is

Harpreet: [00:31:25] What's your goal

Purdheep: [00:31:27] And what's your identity? And does your identity align with your goal? So, for example, you could you could you know, your goal might be to make a million dollars. But in order, let's just say you're in a business that you're going to have to spend more time selling and you're going to have to maybe go on the edge of not being unethical.

Harpreet: [00:31:46] But let's just say you have to be a really,

Purdheep: [00:31:49] Really good salesperson and you might have to make pitches. Well, if your identity

Harpreet: [00:31:54] Doesn't align with that, if your identity isn't

Purdheep: [00:31:56] That type of person, you're not going to be able to be successful in that realm. I don't care [00:32:00] what you do. You're going to have the toughest time doing it because your brain will literally stop you from doing it. And so a lot of people, when they say, I just can't do it, what essentially what they're doing is either either doubting their skill of being either they're doubting who they are as a person. Do they identify as the type of person that can actually do that? Is it a line? So to answer your question in short form is yes.

Purdheep: [00:32:25] If you have an identity that's aligned with your goal, you will be way more likely to achieve it than if your identity wasn't aligned with your goal.

Harpreet: [00:32:34] And like, for example, for me. Right, like I tell myself. And the jury's still out on this, but I tell myself I'm the greatest podcast host there is, right. This is just something I tell myself. But then for that to be true, there needs to you know how the greatest podcast host, research

Harpreet: [00:32:51] Guests, how would he come

Harpreet: [00:32:53] Up with the questions? How do you do this right? How would he make the experience for his guests? Absolutely amazing. Right. So by asking myself those questions, by saying, OK, this is my Identity Graves' podcast host ever. Great. Now I have to live up to that. I have to be that that person, how to act, how to move, how to how would I be the greatest podcast host ever? So I guess can we shape our identity around the things that we want to become? But don't be like we are yet.

Purdheep: [00:33:20] Yeah, absolutely. And that's where it starts, right?

Harpreet: [00:33:23] That is the

Purdheep: [00:33:23] Fundamental thing, because you might have two challenging beliefs at the same time, you might still have that old belief that I'm kind of an average podcast host. Right. But I can tell you from my experience with you, you're pretty darn awesome because you've done so much research. I'm actually very impressed by that first hand. So I think you're there about I think you're get you're pretty awesome in terms of your journey. So I appreciate that. The when it comes to the next step, you can say is believing in your skill, because that is another important thing. You can want something. You can you can say I am this type of person. But then you have to take a look and say, I can [00:34:00] do that. And in order to believe that you can do that, you have to have the skill to do that. You have to have the habits to do that. So the things that you talked about,

Harpreet: [00:34:09] Like the research of the guests

Purdheep: [00:34:11] That you've read my book, for example, you've made notes, all this kind of

Harpreet: [00:34:14] Stuff, that

Purdheep: [00:34:16] Is the skill that it takes to be the best podcast. So you're actually acting it out. And it's those actions, those small wins, for example, that you're having that will then reinforce that identity. So here's what ends up happening, is your identity creates your behavior. And then when your behavior aligns with that new identity, then you complete that circle and that that circle gets bigger and bigger and bigger and your identity gets stronger and stronger and

Harpreet: [00:34:45] Stronger and reconfirmed.

Purdheep: [00:34:47] So for someone out there that's saying, I don't know if I believe in this, the first thing you need to do is act and act in a small step towards that, because every action you take will reinforce that identity. If you sit there and you question yourself, that's when you're going to stub your toe and say, you know, you're going to be thinking, I'm way too much about it. A way to stop overthinking is by simply acting and moving in that direction.

Harpreet: [00:35:12] Yeah, it's like once you shut your mind down to the possibility that you can achieve something, then like you just shut up all possibility that it could actually happen. Right. Yeah, I think that's that's interesting, because that's a belief that you kind of have that's tied to your idea yet. So so I guess jumping into the next part of your book here, the performance framework, where we talk about belief stories, decision making, performance optimization, those things that want to dig into to belief, I guess. Mm hmm. Starting with, I guess, what they are and why are they important?

Purdheep: [00:35:44] Yeah. Beliefs, again, just to simplify it is what you think is true. That's ultimately what it is. It's what you believe to be true. And that could be an actual fact. Like, let's just say the sun is so many, you know, millions of miles away or whatever that [00:36:00] is. You know, the sun comes up in one direction and sets in the other direction, for example. Fact is, you live in Winnipeg and I lived in Hamilton, for example. That's a belief. Or it could be, hey, look, I believe

Harpreet: [00:36:12] That teachers are important

Purdheep: [00:36:14] To society, or I might believe that teachers aren't important to society. Hey, I might think or believe that the political system is corrupt or the political system is just it's just what you think is true. That's ultimately what a belief is. But here's the thing that's very important. Believing is seeing. And what does that mean? That means what you believe is what you see and your brain again. And here's an important thing when it comes to belief. People think that our brain just records everything, right. It's like a video camera and that presents it to us on a screen. That's not how your brain works. Your brain actually takes in this information and actually constructs what it believes to be the reality. So it actually compiles all this information and builds this reality. It's not like a video recorder that's taking it straight up and actually just feeding this information. And so what it also does is it actually creates when there's when there's information missing, it will actually fill in that information unless you fill it in with what it believes to fit the scenario. So what you're seeing isn't necessarily reality from a factual perspective. It's how your brain is perceiving it to be. And why is this important is because a lot of people have such strong beliefs and it's good to have strong beliefs if they're empowering you. But if they're not empowering you, then you need to rethink those beliefs. And so beliefs are at.

Harpreet: [00:37:38] The end of the day,

Purdheep: [00:37:39] Your belief system is how you see the world and how you see the world determines how you act. And most of us have had our beliefs instilled into us by other people, whether it's religious beliefs, whether that's beliefs of the financial system or school system or whatever that is society. Right now, a lot of people's beliefs are being built around social [00:38:00] media. And so other people have built our beliefs and we haven't had a chance to really say, what is it that I truly believe or I want to believe because our of our beliefs come our stories. And that's the next level, because if I believe something, I will create a story around it. For example, if I believe I see a lot of entrepreneurs talking about this, you know, my clients are so cheap, for example. And if you have a belief that your clients are cheap, you're going to treat them a certain way. You're going to create a story about your clients that because my clients are cheap, they won't buy my service or my product. That's not necessarily true. That's yet an extrapolation of your belief.

Harpreet: [00:38:37] Right.

Purdheep: [00:38:37] And so your beliefs actually determine your stories and your stories. Wow. That is a powerful one, because we're all living in a storyline. We're all living in a storyline that we've created. And so we are the main character in our story. Every single person is a main character. And here's, for example, if you give someone a picture of their family and they're in it, their eyes automatically gravitate to themselves first.

Harpreet: [00:39:04] And they get

Purdheep: [00:39:05] Hooked on that image of themselves. They'll look at other people, but they're more interested in themselves, because that is the main character of the story. And so you have to ask yourself, what is the story that you're telling yourself? Is it a powerful story, is an empowering story, is a story that's actually getting you to where you want to go? Does it align with your identity and does it align with your goals? And so everything when it comes to I'm going to come back to that goal, and it's not necessarily a goal of I want to make X amount of money. It's about having a goal of what kind of life you want to live. Does your story align with that? Does your story empower you to live that out to the fullest every single day? And a lot of people don't because we're not superhuman. And let's talk about the reality of that. We have anywhere from 10000 to 80000

Harpreet: [00:39:52] Thoughts a day. And a lot of those

Purdheep: [00:39:53] Thoughts can be self-defeating.

Harpreet: [00:39:55] They can

Purdheep: [00:39:56] Be these. Are you really good enough to do that? Do you really think [00:40:00] you know a lot about neuroscience, for example, like all of these thoughts? Like who are you to talk about this? Right. All of these thoughts will run through your mind, and that's OK, because that's your programing of your mind. There's a natural evolutionary element of your mind trying to keep you away from harm's way. It keeps telling you to second guess yourself, be conscious of that. And so stories are a prime example of that. Your stories will keep coming back to keep and protect you. If you're not careful enough, you can have an empowering story or disempowering story.

Harpreet: [00:40:30] But the key is

Purdheep: [00:40:30] To realize you get

Harpreet: [00:40:31] To create it. You are literally

Purdheep: [00:40:33] A writer of your storyline. You get to predict what the outcome is. Not perfectly right. There's always these things that you never know in your story. You know, these situations are going to come across that are going to throw you off track. But for the majority of of your life, you get to choose how you want to act and how you want to behave.

Harpreet: [00:40:53] Yeah. You can either be the hero of your own movie or the victim of your life. By the choices is yours. And that's the tricky part. And not knowing if you have empowering or disempowering beliefs and this is coming from somebody who spent like 35

Harpreet: [00:41:09] Years with a disempowering

Harpreet: [00:41:10] Belief system and then just decided one day to just deconstruct it all and build up an empowering belief system. And, you know, I feel like I'm a brand new man over the last few years, but like that's the hard part, like because I know people out there, friends, whatnot, and they have a belief system installed that. This is limiting them and their opportunities in everything. So how do we figure out if our beliefs are empowering or disempowering, if this is all we've had our entire life?

Purdheep: [00:41:42] Well, there's there's two elements to that. One is how you feel, right? If you're getting up and you're not feeling good about yourself, if you're not feeling good about life, if you're not feeling good about the direction that you're going in, that's a sure sign. That in itself is a biggest sign. The second element is I should take a look and say, do I have goals? And [00:42:00] what kind of goals do I have? A lot of people don't have goals or they have kind of these goals. I want to, but they're not committed to them. They're just goals. They're to tell yourself that you actually have goals. And so that is one of the important aspects to you. And then ask yourself who you're hanging around with, because that's another element to supporting your belief system in your stories. It's very empowering to hang around with people that lift you up, that encourage you, that support your new belief system. But a lot of people

Harpreet: [00:42:27] Will not, because they

Purdheep: [00:42:28] May feel like you're moving ahead, that you're not being genuine, that you're you're changing. Well, what's wrong with you? You're different

Harpreet: [00:42:35] Man now. You know, what's

Purdheep: [00:42:36] What's going on? And so it's important that you may even have to change your social circle a little bit or even a lot. These are all aspects that you have to ask yourself. But here's an exercise that I do with with gentlemen. This is one of the most important things you could ever do is go into a room. And take some time out, you could even go away for the weekend if you want, or Data or whatever that looks like, it's a little bit tough now, obviously, with Covid. But sit in a dark room. And just shut all the lights off and don't think about your parents, don't think about your spouse, don't think about your kids, don't think about it, any of them think about yourself. What do you really want out of life? What do you really want? What do you want to your life to be like in 10 years from now? If there is no social pressures? Right. As a gentleman who is married, also has kids, a lot of what I do, if I'm not careful, can be influenced by my family. And the expectation of being a good husband and expectation of being a good father, and that can take me around off the path that I want to go on now.

Purdheep: [00:43:41] It just so happens that that is part of my path that aligns with who I want to be. But there's other influences that stop me from living the life that I may want to live. For example, if I take those into consideration. So as for every human being, you have to sit down and say, what do you want? And that's ultimately [00:44:00] what will give you more clarity when you take all those pressures off, you take all the weight off your shoulders and you go back to that. Who am I? What do I want? You'll be able to get some clarity. And this isn't an overnight exercise like Harp. Let's be serious about this. Right? To create your life. You've been programs for so many years, for decades, to be a certain way to think, a certain way to behave, a certain way within a certain pattern. You've been carved to be who you are. It's not overnight that you can carve yourself. So this might take it could take a weekend. It could take a few months. But I've also seen people do it very fast because they're just tired of it. They just don't want to live that way anymore.

Harpreet: [00:44:39] Yeah, there's definitely some that happened to me. I just

Harpreet: [00:44:42] Like a

Harpreet: [00:44:43] Drop of a dime. I was like, man, this is not working. I can't I can't have this whole belief system anymore. It's not it's not serving me. And I think part of that was just not partnering with the cynics or pessimists anymore. Right. Because their beliefs tend to be self-fulfilling. Right. Because these cynics and these pessimists and, you know, they're just saying they're basically saying, I've given up. I don't think I can do anything. The world, to me, just looks like a place where nobody can do anything. And so why should you go and do something? Because if you fail, then, right. Which is great. But if you succeed, just makes me look bad. Right. Yeah. It's just like it's an excuse for them not to even try. That makes sense, right?

Purdheep: [00:45:22] Well, let's let's take a look at how powerful beliefs are because they are so powerful. I don't think a lot of people don't understand how powerful they are. They are the fundamental elements of of how people behave. I'll just give you an example. And we're seeing it actually right now. But there are a lot of studies done

Harpreet: [00:45:36] Before and that we're not going to get we

Purdheep: [00:45:38] Don't need to get in the political aspect. But we take a look at Trump's leadership style, for example, and people wonder, like, why are people following him? Why do they believe all the stuff that we know is not factually true? Well, guess what? They've done studies on this prior to his era where they've taken people who have a strong belief and whether they were Republican or Democrat and showed the opposite side actually on video committing crimes. And [00:46:00] the people went on the opposite side and on the same side. Here's the interesting thing. A Republican, for example, will take a look at another Republican actually committing a crime and say, no, that's not possible. That video is faked. It's doctored. It's not possible. That's how strong belief systems are. It actually stops the information from flowing to the brain. There's actually some studies that's not conclusive yet that show that information might not even reach. You can say the higher level thinking part of your brain because it's shunted off prior to that. That's pretty powerful.

Harpreet: [00:46:30] That's crazy, man. Beliefs are mean. The stories you tell yourself are super, super important, I think. You can adopt a mindset and a belief system that is empowering. Your life can change dramatically. I think one belief that I've kind of adopted from from Tom Billu, it's you know, because of the one belief that matters is that any energy you put into doing something will be rewarded with something new learned or new skills gained. Doesn't matter. The outcome is not what you want. It's the process that you go through. You'll still gain something from it, even if the outcome isn't what you had wanted. So speaking of outcomes, going into decision making, and you talk about the three step process that the brain goes through when it comes to making decisions. Talk to us about that.

Purdheep: [00:47:20] Yes. And so decision making process, why it's so important is because decisions are one of the most important elements. If I was to say, okay, there's two parts to success.

Harpreet: [00:47:29] One is decision making because you have to

Purdheep: [00:47:31] Decide if you go to a fork in the road. And we're constantly doing this every single day, hundreds of times. We just don't know it. Our brain is actually doing a lot of it on autopilot. But we go to a fork in the road, we have to choose Pathé or B, sometimes it's A.B.C. or D. So what path we choose is going to tell us or dictate basically whether we go to that end up at that goal or not. Because if we're making hundreds of decisions

Harpreet: [00:47:52] A day, which ultimately lead

Purdheep: [00:47:54] To

Harpreet: [00:47:54] Thousands and tens of thousands to get to

Purdheep: [00:47:57] That goal, you know, the better you are at making decisions, [00:48:00] the faster you actually get to that goal. It's like going through the maze. When you get better at going through the maze, you actually get there faster. You make less mistakes, you get to less dead ends. That's what how decision making impacts you. The other element is make taking effective action. But it doesn't matter how effective your action is if you've made the wrong decision. But I don't like to say any decision is really wrong because you can take a bad decision, actually learn from it. What I like to say is an empowering decision or is a disempowering decision. And that just depends on whether that's getting you to a life or the goal that you want to get to or it's not. And again, a

Harpreet: [00:48:34] Decision in a direction that you don't

Purdheep: [00:48:36] Want can actually help you get there because you might learn something along the way. But the process, if I was to numb it down because it's not linear, is basically you get information into your brain and that is information from the environment most likely. And then you compile and you appraise that information based on what you already know. You take a look at that information and you say,

Harpreet: [00:48:57] Ok, here's what I know.

Purdheep: [00:48:59] Here's what I already know about this situation based on my past experience. Here's how I feel about this, because emotions are massive influence are on your decision making. Then you also say, OK, so what are the potential outcomes you're going to predict? Some predict potential outcomes as well. But then there's all of these other factors that come into decisions. Who who is influencing you at that time of making that decision, even if they're not physically, you might think, oh, what would my dad say about this or what my kids say about this? All of these influence are literally just getting compiled into your brain and then your brain is saying, OK, which way do I go? And it will choose the best path. Best path. Interestingly enough. Based on mainly emotion, because ultimately that's what you're making a decision on, is when you make a decision, you want to feel a certain way. When you reach a goal, you want to feel a certain way. So emotions have a bigger part. I should say feelings overall, because emotions are components of feelings that [00:50:00] have an impact on your decision making. Now, when you understand how you're making decisions and whether they're being effective or not, and you start to tweet that that situation and or how you're actually making them, you actually reflect back and say, how was I making that decision in the past? What could I have done differently? And you slowly get better and better at making decisions.

Purdheep: [00:50:20] You're actually going to start improving your execution and you're actually going to get your goals faster and easier. As I mentioned before, so it really is taking the information in and saying, OK, upraising that information and then your response to that information. Now, there's other elements to that, too, which I allude to in the book, which is based on Daniel Kahneman work in terms of the system one and system two, for example, is you have a number of different systems and we don't have really get into it. But just understand that you have basically an unconscious decision making system, which is making decisions all the time without you even knowing about it. For example, you're sitting upright, and that's a constant decision. Whether you lean forward, you sit upright, whatever that is. You're not consciously thinking about that. You're unconsciously doing it. These are all the things that are going through your mind. But then your higher level of thinking is done by, let's just say, your neocortex, for example, or your prefrontal cortex,

Harpreet: [00:51:14] Which is your executive

Purdheep: [00:51:16] Thinking. It's the one that says, now maybe you shouldn't do this. Maybe you should think about this a little bit more. Maybe you should take in other factors or get more information before you make this decision. That's basically a higher level decision making. And here's an interesting thing. People like Obama, people like Mark Zuckerberg, they've talked about a lot of high level people, for example, don't change their clothes, you know, the same set of clothes. It's not that they wear the exact same the same clothes every day, but there's a same set of clothes every day because they don't want to make too many decisions, because they know that every decision is energy out. So your brain consumes 20 percent of your daily caloric intake, basically, which means it's a it's an energy pig. It's a hog. And so every decision you make [00:52:00] requires thinking power, every conscious decision. And so the more decisions you make, the more energy you actually consume. So this is important, too, because a lot of people make decisions when they don't have the right energy and when they're not in the right state. And that impacts them as well.

Harpreet: [00:52:16] And that's also, I guess, the important. Thing about having good habits and good routines and good discipline in place is because it frees up more mental space for me to think creatively, what have you. Right. So, for example, like, you know, I wake up in the morning for thirty a.m. every morning, come downstairs, and I spend an hour writing. I spend an hour reading. And, you know, the first two hours my morning is just completely automated. And it just allows me to think more creatively, more freely about deeper things that I have to do later the day.

Harpreet: [00:52:51] Yeah. Daniel Economists',

Harpreet: [00:52:52] Work that thinking fast and slow. Highly recommend it to everybody listening. It's a big book, but it's good.

Purdheep: [00:52:58] Yeah, it's actually he's he's well, he's one of the smartest men out there. He's is also an economist, for example. Right. That he and he got into why people make decisions in terms of the financial aspect from an economic standpoint and people's adversity to losing versus gaining very phenomenal work that he's done. And it's actually opened up a lot of people's eyes into why people make just some funny financial decisions

Harpreet: [00:53:24] In life, but really

Purdheep: [00:53:25] Interesting work. I would highly encourage anybody take a look at it. And if you're not really above into that space, just know that that you have two levels of thinking and to get the most out of it, it requires energy and it requires conscious thought and focus.

Harpreet: [00:53:37] And for anyone listening to an end to the interview I did with Jeff Chrisler, who wrote a book with Dan Ariely, all about behavioral economics, we talk all about financial decision making and things like that. So just shameless plug on my own show. I guess. That's awesome. But you talk about the four hours of decision making. Can you walk us through that?

Purdheep: [00:53:59] Yeah, essentially, [00:54:00] you're taking a look at elements that influence your decisions. So things like reference points, and I'll get into that, things like your resources, also your reduction, for example. These are elements. If you take a look at why we and reasons why we do what we do. So let's take a look at the first one, which is reference points, for example, is everything that we do. Our brain is actually working on a binary system, which means that it's always comparing things. It's always taking a look at option A, B, it could be potential, but basically it's comparing it's a contrast system. And so when you're taking a look at making a decision, whether you want to do this, you're also actually taking a look and saying, I don't want to do that. And so it's constantly comparing. And again, I use the example in the book of gas station. If you drive down one and the price is three dollars. But you need gas and you drive down to the next one of those 250, you're going to be like, OK, I'm going to put gas here.

Harpreet: [00:54:51] Right.

Purdheep: [00:54:52] The odd chance, you might say, and maybe I'll drive a little bit further, maybe it's two dollars, but a lot of times when you reference

Harpreet: [00:54:57] Point is that much

Purdheep: [00:54:58] Larger, you're going to be like, OK, I'm going to do this now. So your comparison into when you're comparing things is an important factor for decision making. And most people don't realize that people are either happier or not happy in life because they contrast. And so you have to take a look at what you compare yourself to. I'm very thankful. My parents taught me a lot of great principles. Some of the principles I challenge when I got older. But one of the principles they taught me is to take a look at the less fortunate people. Right. There's people out there in the world that don't have what we have. So I've always have an appreciation for things in life. A reference point is the first one. The second one, let's just say, for example, is is reasons. We all do things for

Harpreet: [00:55:36] Reasons either we want

Purdheep: [00:55:37] To gain pleasure, we want to avoid loss, we want to stay neutral, for example, or we want to basically we don't want

Harpreet: [00:55:45] To miss out, which we call

Purdheep: [00:55:46] A formal rate fear of missing out. And a lot of people make decisions. Its stock market is a prime example. People talk about the hype in the stock market, how people are making tons of money. And most of the people at the trailer end will be like, I don't want to miss out on this. So they start investing [00:56:00] and they're not making anything because they they were the last ones to invest. The reasons are important to take a look at know, are you trying to gain something? Are you trying to avoid the loss?

Harpreet: [00:56:11] Do you feel like

Purdheep: [00:56:11] You're missing out on something and that's why you're doing it? Or you just don't want to do anything at all because you just don't want to move. You want to be neutral. The next element is an interesting one, which is resources. It's one of my favorite ones, because I think this year we've actually we're really focusing on this because there's an energy aspect to this, which basically means are you in the right state to make the decision? Do you have enough energy? Like are you feeling good about yourself or are you do you have feeling clear, for example? And again, it comes back to the energy that you have in your system. If you have less energy, you're not going to make effective decisions. We already know that you might not have.

Harpreet: [00:56:46] Maybe time could be part of that resources element.

Purdheep: [00:56:49] If you're stressed for time, you might not make an effective decision because you might not have enough time to make it. So resources are important. You might not have enough information. Right. That's another element of resources. But then the last element,

Harpreet: [00:57:02] Which is I would say

Purdheep: [00:57:03] One of one of the main factors, just like reference points, is reduction. And that basically means that your brain is taking all of this information and saying, I'm going to simplify this into what I can understand. And that's a very important, because your brain will avoid complexity. And go to the simple things. So, for example, on advertising, you can have a whole bunch, a list of all of the technical specs of a product if you're going to go buy a TV, for example. But you're not going to buy it off that you're going to buy it off of. Well, it's a eighty five inch TV or whatever. That is something that's simple for your brain to understand. And so that's where reduction comes in. It's a very something to be very cautious of, because we have to understand that our brain will just unconsciously avoid things that are complex and there might be some really important information in that complexity there. So those are the four elements.

Harpreet: [00:57:52] Absolutely love it. And that's another favorite chapter of mine in the book.

Harpreet: [00:57:56] I just I love

Harpreet: [00:57:57] Decision making keeper of data science as well. [00:58:00] So it's making a decisions and not only decisions using, you know, whatever data that we have for whatever models we're building, but just decision making process in the brain is super, super fascinating to me. So another emotion in the chat. When your book is fear, it's something that we all face, I think is like the most powerful of emotions. But I don't think many of us really understand what it is and the purpose that it serves. So what is fear? What's its purpose from the brain science kind of perspective?

Purdheep: [00:58:33] Yeah, fear is probably the strongest emotion you can say. Naturally, that's built into us from an evolutionary standpoint, and it was designed to keep us safe. Ultimately, that's what it was designed to do, is keep us away from harm and put distance between us and what we perceive to be of harm, which means that if we see the scary object or this animal, we need to run or hide or whatever that is, play dead. That's what fear will cause you to do. And it's cause, again, it's a safety mechanism that's ultimately it wants you to survive. But a lot of times it will tell you things that aren't necessarily factual, not necessarily true or not appropriate in this situation, because you may fear something, something that's not an actual threat to you. And we see this a lot. Right. Whether it's relationships or whether it's your

Harpreet: [00:59:18] Job, a lot of people will

Purdheep: [00:59:20] Fear losing their job when in reality, if we take a look at it, there's no physical harm happening and losing your job. But it's a fear that, hey, look, if I lose my job, I'm not going to be able to provide for my family or whatever that looks like might be out on the streets. How am I going to feed my kids? All these different fears that go through your mind? It actually creates a domino effect. It's there to keep you safe, not keep you happy, and definitely not there to make you successful. That's the most important thing to understand with fear.

Harpreet: [00:59:49] It's interesting because like physiologically, biologically, I think fear is the same kind of response in your brain as like excitement [01:00:00] to my right about that, right?

Purdheep: [01:00:01] Yeah, very similar.

Harpreet: [01:00:02] And it's people that say going for a job interview. Right. They might be super fearful or super nervous about this opportunity that they're sitting in. Right. But if you just reframe it and say, actually, you know what, this is not here, this is actually excitement. This is something that could potentially change my life for the better. I should be excited about this, should be feeling this. This is good that I'm feeling this way. You reframe that fear into something more positive. I think that becomes very, very powerful. Do you have any other tips to wrestle that fear so that it pushes us from behind rather than stand in front of us?

Purdheep: [01:00:40] Yeah, the fear thing. Well, there's there's a number of tips, as is fear is actually one of those emotions that if it's not doing you any good, you have to learn from it and understand why you're fearful. And there's definitely a reason for it. And I would say out of all the emotions, fear is one of the ones that can be your biggest teacher. That's how I to take a look of fear. And I say, OK, what about this? Why am I feeling afraid of this? What is it? What is it in me? Is it a lack of skills that I that I feel I'm lacking? So there therefore I'm feeling this fear. If I am I thinking too far in the future and my being too pessimistic, there's always something that you can learn from fear. So ask yourself that. The other thing is, understand that most of your fear, unless you're actually being held at gunpoint or you're getting robbed or is is just an illusion of your brain. And understand that. So most of our fear, it's actually not based on the present moment. Most of our fears are based on future. If we take a look at worry, it's a it's a future based fear.

Purdheep: [01:01:38] That's basically all it is. And so if we bring ourselves into the present moment in terms of what's in front of us right now, which we're being trained not to do from society, society as a result of technology as well, and this fast pace. Go, go, go world. We're being trained not to be in the present moment. And that's why a lot of people have more anxiety, have more depression, have have more fear, you can say, is because [01:02:00] we're not living in the present moment, because that a lot of the fear does isn't present there. There's other things that you can do to you can distance yourself from fear, because if you're going to feel fear, you can say, OK, what is that fear? And I'm going to physically this is what we call an NLP technique. Nearly neurolinguistic programing, which works very well, is distance yourself from the fear. Actually, visualize your fear being at a distance, because a lot of people, when they feel fear, it's like right up close. And the closer you are and they're more vivid about the fear, like the detail, the furo,

Harpreet: [01:02:32] Less

Purdheep: [01:02:33] Details you give, the further back

Harpreet: [01:02:34] You push it, the more likely

Purdheep: [01:02:36] You are to overcome it. So and realize that the fear is not you. A lot of people have attributed fear and made it part of their identity. I'm just a fearful person. I get fearful in this situation once you attach fear to who you are as a person. Oh, it's tough to get rid of. That's why you have to detach and say, I am not fear. Right. I'm just feeling fear. This is just an emotion that I'm feeling as a result of this. So there are some techniques that you can use definitely to separate from fear. One of my favorites is definitely it's called worry time scheduling it. And that is you can literally just because people like, Ok, here's one of the things, the

Purdheep: [01:03:12] Most common thing, if I don't worry about this or I'm not fearful about this, I'm not being responsible, I'm going to miss something. I can't be optimistic all the time that's just not being responsible enough. Well, if you're going to worry about it, if you're going to be fearful, schedule to

Harpreet: [01:03:25] Schedule a time in your day and be like, I'm

Purdheep: [01:03:27] Just going to take the 15

Harpreet: [01:03:28] Minutes and just worry the

Purdheep: [01:03:29] Heck out of myself. Think of every negative situation that I can, but then set a timer and say, after that, I'm not going to think about it anymore. I'm not going to have that fearful emotion. And when you start to do that, then you can slowly reduce the time until you actually you don't need any time anymore. So it's a very simple technique, but actually works.

Harpreet: [01:03:45] I love that. That's part of what I do in the morning. I've got a few different journals that are right. And one of them is three pages long journal, just dumping everything out of my brain. And a lot of it is just fear based, worry based stuff and just just getting it out [01:04:00] and just putting it away that way the rest of the day. I don't have to deal with it. I've dealt with in the morning. I've got it out. I can go on about my day with some tranquility. So I love the section in your book about combining skills or talent stacking. This is it's something that I keep hearing over and over in Endino, the work of a lot of great people like Scott Adams, and they've already got the James Altier. They all talk about this idea of combining skills and talent stacking. And that's I'd love seeing that in your book as well. So talk to us about this. How can we combine our skills in such a way that we can multiply the value that we're able to create?

Purdheep: [01:04:42] Yeah, and so there's two notions of thought out there, and both of them actually work very well. There's the notion of a, if you're at the top five percent of something, if you're the best, that's something you're going to be super successful. And we see that with a lot of professionals, whether that's the they say surgeons, for example, professionals out there, if you're the best of the best, you're the cream of the crop. You're going to you're going to be rewarded very well. But then there's the other aspect to say,

Harpreet: [01:05:05] Okay, maybe you can be

Purdheep: [01:05:06] In the top twenty five percentile of people who have combined some skills, and that is. Actually, really great approach and because you can create your own niche from that. And again, I use myself as an example in the book where I've created this niche specifically for men in business that focus on not just the science aspect, but also the performance psychology, the spiritual aspect. So I built these building blocks

Harpreet: [01:05:31] Over where I can literally

Purdheep: [01:05:32] Say I'm one of a handful of people. I can count on one hand that have this expertize in the world. And I did this very you can say strategically it doesn't happen overnight. And so for our listeners, I would say pick a few areas that you have interest in. That's the most important thing by far. You have to have an interest in it and say, if I combined some of these things, what could I do? Who could I serve? That's ultimately what it's about. You could do it for fun and just for your own sake, because I think that's cool [01:06:00] to do. But then if you're trying to monetize it, if you're trying to make a living out of it, if you're trying to make a career out of it and make a life out of it, then you can say, OK, who can I serve? Who is the clientele that I can serve as a result of combining these skills and find out what their problem is. Once you find out their problem, it's a lot easier to be able to serve them. But it's really it's just like building. It's like Lego. You say, OK, if I'm an expert in this, whether it was Data science, for example, and you say maybe I want to become a an expert in sports psychology to azzi, combine the two. Right. Data in sports right now is huge. Maybe you want to combine another element of it as well, whatever that might look like. And so the more you can combine, the more you're going to niche yourself and you'll find that you'll become very unique compared to your competition. And that is the benefit of that also is you can pivot into different areas where you can pivot also into not just one area, not pigeonholed, you can go into any one of those because you will be in let's just say the top 25 percent are obviously government.

Harpreet: [01:07:03] That's a powerful notion, like combining skills. It does take some deep introspection for somebody to think about what it is that they actually are good at. What are the few things that they're uniquely good at that they can combine together, just own that kind of intersection of those two things.

Purdheep: [01:07:18] Just on another note, if I could. The other thing is you'll find that things just naturally come together. And what I mean by that is you'll start seeing that there's ties in completely different disciplines, like who would have thought that there's a tie between neuroscience and business results, for example. Right. But I've been able to find those ties in terms of how people perform, for example. And so when you start finding those ties, things just it's like the neurons in your brain. If you're familiar out there with neuroscience a little bit, your brain cells. They actually grow and they actually connect together. That's the same thing that happens with disciplines, is you'll start naturally seeing these connections that other people don't see. That's what makes you extremely valuable.

Harpreet: [01:07:59] And [01:08:00] again, reticular activating system at work. Right. If you're just opening your mind to seeing things combine. How can I combine two things? How can I create serendipity, if you will, or my circumstances so they can create my own luck? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely fascinating thing. I love that concept of stacking. So ask you, man, what is the meaning of life?

Purdheep: [01:08:22] That's a deep point, isn't it? And I'm going to speak about this because this is very you can say personal, and it's based on my own belief, because that's pretty much what it is. But there's two things that I really take a look at. And this is probably the biggest question that most people face in life. There's three main questions that people have in life. What is the world made of? Like, what's the universe made of? What is consciousness? And the other one is, what's the meaning of life? And meaning of life is such a tricky one, because no one really has the answer. But I'm going to give the best guess, which is I believe that the first part of it is to live life to the fullest. I just don't believe that we are put on here just to go through and just cruise along and not enjoy it. So a lot of people don't believe that they deserve it. I think you absolutely deserve it. You were put on this earth to live the fullest life. Now, if you're hurting other people, if you're committing crimes, that kind of stuff. Maybe you don't deserve it. But if you're just a good person that's out there to live your life, you deserve to have what you want. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with wanting money, big cars, fancy house or whatever it is. Right. A beautiful wife or husband or whoever you want to be with. Nothing wrong with that. So the first part for me is really living life to the fullest.

Purdheep: [01:09:37] Enjoy it. Life is an experience.

Purdheep: [01:09:40] Take a look

Purdheep: [01:09:40] At what how

Purdheep: [01:09:41] A lot of scientists define consciousness. It's our experience of the world. So if we're going to be conscious, we might as well experience it the way we want to experience and experience it to the fullest. Now, the second one is something that I have no clue what this would be for you, but each person has their own

Purdheep: [01:09:56] Individual meaning of life,

Purdheep: [01:09:57] Like their purpose in life, what they're meant to [01:10:00] do in life, what they get satisfaction from. That is for each person to find out for themselves. And sometimes it's a journey. Sometimes people know just from right from the beginning. I think it's important to find what we identify as the purpose or the why. But there's always some kind of whatever that meaning is, is what's going to drive you through life. It's what's going to give you the fuel to do what you do. My my purpose right now is to be a good father. My that's the number one. I want to raise two good kids

Purdheep: [01:10:30] That are contributors

Purdheep: [01:10:32] To society, but are also happy and healthy and live a happy and successful life. But the other one is to help other people. That is my

Purdheep: [01:10:38] Meaning. That's what gets me going.

Purdheep: [01:10:39] And there's times where I just have tough times. Whether it's from a business perspective or a personal perspective. But I say. It's going to stick with it because this is my meaning. This is what gets me through.

Harpreet: [01:10:49] Absolutely love it, man. So last question before we get into a quick random round here. It's 100 years in the future. What do you want to be remembered for?

Purdheep: [01:10:59] Wow. Yeah, that's a that's a deep question. First part, I guess I would just like to be remembered by my family. I think it's so easy. My wife and I were having this conversation where like, do you realize that maybe five generations down the road, your siblings like my my wife has a brother. Our kids and his kids might not even there's no connection whatsoever. Like it's going to be forgotten, this lineage, this connection. So I think just having that family connection, it'd be nice to know that I existed. I think every person wants to know that. I think the other part is we are at a very interesting time in society right

Harpreet: [01:11:36] Now in life where

Purdheep: [01:11:38] Men are very challenged. And there's a lot of pushback when it comes to what it means to be a man and masculinity. And there's these movements out there like toxic masculinity or

Harpreet: [01:11:49] Metoo, which I'm not taking anything

Purdheep: [01:11:50] Away from. I think they had to happen because there were things that were happening that weren't being addressed. But women and men right now are at odds in terms of overall. Right. We're bumping [01:12:00] heads. And I think if I was to look back, I would say I helped resolve that a little bit, give a little bit more clarity. I want people to live happy, fulfilling lives, especially in a relationship with their significant other. That, for me is a big thing. I want people to be empathic in relationships that have a ton of passion.

Harpreet: [01:12:17] Absolutely. Love it, man. So let's jump into a random round here. What are you currently reading?

Purdheep: [01:12:22] I have it sitting next to me. It's actually the first volume of the grant stuff. And I'm reading that from a philosophical standpoint. It's translated into English. My grandfather, again, my grandfather

Harpreet: [01:12:33] Was a big, big

Purdheep: [01:12:34] Factor in my life. He was a big mentor and he took me through a lot of it. But I want to read it for myself. So this is the first time I should going through the volume, the first volume myself. And it's very interesting, very interesting. Read a lot of I would say a lot of philosophy in it, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Harpreet: [01:12:50] And, you know, for anybody listening doesn't know like a Punjabi or the PC as well, we sic heritage. That's kind of our religious upbringing. And I don't know, like I've found figures erm as very spiritual, I guess have to read a little bit closer to get into the philosophy. Like recently I've turned to mostly stoicism as my philosophy of life, my operating system of life. Um, but I'm definitely, definitely interested maybe. Chowdry, through email or whatever, to to see what you've gotten from from philosophical perspective, from from some of that love to enrich my understanding of it from that perspective. So what song do you have on repeat?

Purdheep: [01:13:29] I don't know if I have any song on repeat, but I have the theme song to my podcast. It's kind of like a rock song. And I

Harpreet: [01:13:34] And I, I play that

Purdheep: [01:13:35] Over and over again because that's mine. That's mine. That represents me. It's the one at the beginning of the book as well. The intro to the book. Like, I just I love hearing that because it just takes me back to I'm I'm a rock guy myself, and I enjoy that.

Harpreet: [01:13:49] But it's it's not fitting into the

Purdheep: [01:13:51] Stereotype I enjoy, because if you see a video, I'm wearing a blazer, I'm wearing a shirt, for example, I'm trying to look professional. But [01:14:00] inside, I'm you know, I'm the right guy. I like to party as well.

Harpreet: [01:14:03] And I highly recommend everybody listening to check out his podcast. I've been binge listening to it over the last week or two. Nice short episodes, which is radically different from my one to two hour long, long episodes, but that amazing information, dance value add podcast, absolutely love them. Don't listen to many podcast, but this is one that is definitely one that is now on my heavy rotation. So let's go ahead. And this open up the random question generator here and we'll get a few questions.

Purdheep: [01:14:36] I love that random question generator. Yeah. Okay.

Harpreet: [01:14:40] Let's see. Pet peeves.

Purdheep: [01:14:43] Oh, pet peeves, inconsiderate people. I just do not like people who treat other people badly.

Harpreet: [01:14:52] Would you rather be stuck on a broken ski lift or a broken elevator?

Purdheep: [01:14:57] Oh, a broken elevator. I think there's something about open heights that I'm not a big fan of.

Harpreet: [01:15:05] That's yeah, that's funny, my mom was stuck in an elevator yesterday. Oh, yeah. But yeah, broken ski lift. I mean, I was I were recently in Whistler and we're on this gondola that was taking us between like these two peaks, I think it was called between the peaks

Purdheep: [01:15:19] Of Peak Topeka. Yeah.

Harpreet: [01:15:20] I could just imagine, like if we're stuck on that gondola, like, oh, my God, dude, that'd be freaky, wouldn't that? Wouldn't I have to have that? What are you interested in that most people haven't heard of?

Purdheep: [01:15:35] Honestly, right now, I'm going to kind of geek it out, but doing a bunch of research on the synapses between neurons, which are basically between the brain cells. But here's the interesting thing, that they found out that there's literally thousands of types of synapses and proteins within that, which means that even within the brain connections themselves, there's so much diversity that scientists are looking at me like this is this brain. Every [01:16:00] time they pull the layer back, they find three other layers. So right now, it's it's synapses and proteins, which is which is a little bit geeky.

Harpreet: [01:16:07] Other than that, though, let's do one last one from here. What dumb accomplishment are you most proud of?

Purdheep: [01:16:17] Well, Adam, accomplishment? Well, you know, this is this is kind of, I guess, a funny one. But back in in the high school, when I used to have a lot of hair, I used to be a hair model. The hairdressers actually won a lot of competition. They used to love my hair because my hair was so thick. Without exaggeration, it was like wire because you could turn it, bend it, twist it, twirl it, and it would just stay there. So not that I won the competition, the hairstylist did, but you can say I was kind of I was kind of part of that as well.

Harpreet: [01:16:47] Pretty awesome. And so how can people connect with you and where can they find you online?

Purdheep: [01:16:53] Yeah, you can simply go to purdeepsangha.com, that's the simplest way to connect with me. You can reach out to me in any social media channel. I'm pretty much active on most except for tick tock. I'm not a big fan of that. But feel free to reach out. Are most active on Instagram and LinkedIn, or you can even reach out to me via email. More than happy to chat via email. You can reach out to me if you reached if you email me at team[at]pardeepsangha.com, my assistant will get that to me and I'll be more than happy to personally respond.

Harpreet: [01:17:22] Purdeep thank you so much for taking time out your schedule to come on to the show, man. Really appreciate you being here.

Harpreet: [01:17:27] Thank you.

Purdheep: [01:17:27] I thoroughly enjoyed this. And as I can tell that your goal to be that best podcasters. Awesome. I'm honestly saying that very few times have I met anybody, I don't think I can recall that has gone through in so much detail as you. So that is awesome for me.

Harpreet: [01:17:42] I thank you very much, man. I appreciate that.