Pro Mindset® Podcast

Transforming Potential into Performance with Purdeep Sangha

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 54:48

In this episode of Pro Mindset® Podcast, host Craig Domann welcomes Purdeep Sangha—Business & Human Performance Researcher/Advisor & Strategist. Purdeep shares his insights on overcoming blind spots and achieving harmony in leadership, emphasizing the importance of character and identity. Discover how Purdeep's strategies can enhance your leadership skills and personal growth.

Episode Takeaways:

💡 Performance Psychology—Maximize Potential
💡 Harmony—Balance Life and Leadership
💡 Identity—Rewrite Your Leadership Story

Join us for an enlightening conversation on mastering mindset and redefining success with Purdeep Sangha, a catalyst for transformative leadership.
💬 “True leadership is mastering the harmony between potential and interference.” — Purdeep Sangha

📲Connect with Purdeep:

🌐Website: https://purdeep.substack.com/s/podcast 
👋LinkedIn: @Purdeep Sangha
📸Instagram: @purdeepsangha
📱Facebook: @Purdeep Sangha

🚀 Ready to Build a Mindset That Powers You Through Anything?
If Purdeep’s insights on performance and identity inspire you, the Pro Mindset® Coaching program can help you align your potential with purpose and adaptability.

 👉 Learn more or apply at www.ProMindsetPodcast.com/coaching or reach out directly to Craig at Craig.ProMindset@gmail.com.

#ProMindset #Mindset #CraigDomann #ProMindsetPodcast  #PurdeepSangha #TheScienceofWinning #TheScienceofWinningPodcast #HumanPotential #Potential #Advisor #Strategist #BePresent #Mindfulness #PresentMoment #MindfulLiving

PRO MINDSET (00:

01.836) Hey, welcome everybody to Pro Mindset podcast. This is your host, Craig Domann. Today we're going to dig deep on CEO performance. I've got a gentleman in from Hamilton, Canada. His name is Purdeep Sangha. Purdeep, welcome to Pro Mindset.

Purdeep Sangha (00:

18.744) Thanks, Craig. I appreciate you having me.

PRO MINDSET (00:

20.928) Okay, so I'm going to give you a little intro here so our audience knows who I'm visiting with today. You're an entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, and former TV show host. You thrive in helping CEOs maximize their performance. You founded a company called Executive Lab. It's Canada's premier science and research-based firm devoted to high performance. And the Executive Lab's motto, is feel your best, perform your best, lead your best, and achieve your best. How's that for an intro?

Purdeep Sangha (00:

59.502) I love it. Thank you. A little bit... Now I'm gonna have to live up to that.

PRO MINDSET (01:

04.941) Well, hey, you got big shoes to fill, but I know you can fill them because I've done my homework on you and you've got some great programs. So let's let's jump in here and pretty let's let's look at there's a there's there's a person out there listening right now that may be the CEO of their family. They may be CEO of the household. They may be the CEO of a classroom. They're a teacher. Mom and dad, they could be the CEO. of a division of a company. Or maybe somebody's out there listening and it's a Fortune 500 company CEO. What do you notice that CEOs, where are their blind spots? What are some of the things that you see that they can't see that if they would do, it would totally revolutionize how they show up?

Purdeep Sangha (01:

56.59) Yeah, that's really great question, Craig. And in what we call performance psychology, there's a simple formula that we use. And that formula is performance equals applied potential minus interference. Okay, so a lot of the times we focus on people's potential, improving skill set, even mindset, right? There's an area that we focus on quite a bit, but we don't always look at the other side of the minus interference part. Right? And we got to be really good. And CEOs aren't that great. This is a blind spot at figuring out what their own interference is. So that interference could be simply maybe they're neglecting their health and they're not optimizing how they're sleeping, which impacts your cognitive abilities. For example, your decision-making abilities, your level of energy, your drive. They might not be scheduling their days appropriately to optimize thinking and strategic capacity and energy. Or they might just be neglecting a relationship or For example, these are all real life scenarios, right? We're talking about real life practical stuff here. They have a marriage that they're not super happy about at home and therefore they're leaning and leveraging their business or their role as a CEO to get that happiness and fulfillment. And the marriage side, it's not hurting them per se, but in the back of their minds and consciously, they're not getting any fulfillment from that. And so that does create interference because although they might not be consciously thinking about it,

PRO MINDSET (02:

59.488) Absolutely.

Purdeep Sangha (03:

25.663) unconsciously the way our brain operates, our brain is constantly thinking and processing that information, maybe not bringing it to conscious thought, but it's there. So I say this to many CEOs is what you think you leave at home, you don't leave at home. You bring it to work. Whether you think about it consciously or not, you're bringing that into work. So you got to figure out what's actually happening at home and fix that. So interference, I would say is one of the blind spots. where CEOs aren't really good at finding out, okay, what's actually interfering me from applying my full potential.

PRO MINDSET (04:

01.258) Okay, so what I heard was the idea that men, especially, I'm not picking on guys, but I am, are really good at compartmentalizing. And what they think, what most guys think is, I can have a problem with my marriage, but it's not going to affect my work. Hey, I can be 40 pounds overweight and have issues with my health, but it's not going to affect my work product. And so it's the antithesis of what you're talking about.

Purdeep Sangha (04:

08.951) Mm-hmm.

PRO MINDSET (04:

30.69) Because what they think, they think they can do it and be great and live in their zone of greatness because they can compartmentalize it. And what you're saying is they can't.

Purdeep Sangha (04:

41.835) No, they can't. That's not how the brain works. It's not how physics works, right? Because a big element of the work that we do is components of energy. In physics, it's impossible to leave that energy at home and not bring it with you, right? Everything in your life is connected through energy, through physics. And so we have to pay attention to that. It's not just men, but men are better at thinking that they can compartmentalize than women can. Now, we're also talking about because you come from the world of sports, right? Where sports athletes... For the most part, right, I'm just generalizing. This doesn't happen. They have a finite period of time where they're playing at the optimal level, right? And then they retire, they've made enough money, hopefully, where they can potentially do other things. Whereas a CEO, that is typically their career. Not every CEO is making a ton of money. There's a lot of CEOs that make decent amount of money. Many CEOs are well off financially because they're good at investing. And then there's CEOs who aren't good at investing. Same thing with athletes. But typically the period of... being a CEO is a longer tenure, right? We're talking about longer term performance. And yes, people can cry and compartmentalize even successfully for a short period of time. You can do it for five years, maybe 10 years, maybe 15. You might even be able to do it for 20 years, but eventually it catches up with you. Whether that's a health concern or issue, whether that's a relationship issue, someone gets divorced and it's a messy divorce. And you might lose half your wealth, for example, and a whole lot of headaches and... and legal issues and battles, that automatically crushes performance. We know that, right? And so we have to pay attention to that. we actually have, we've done our research, Craig, because we partnered with over 20 different universities, research institutions. We did a lot of research in this area. When we took a look at, when I'm using that formula, one of the things that's important is the opposite. So kind of like a math equation, when you take a minus and then you take a minus and you can plus them both. The opposite of interference is harmony. what we equate is, performance is actually equal to applied potential plus harmony in your life. Which means that the better or more harmony you have in your life, the better performance you have long-term. And that's very important because CEOs, and again, athletes do this as well, they will neglect certain aspects of their life thinking that they're performing optimally.

Purdeep Sangha (07:

03.157) And that can happen for a short term. But if you want to be a long-term high performer, you got to keep that harmony in your life because that's super important when it comes to long-term performance.

PRO MINDSET (07:

15.008) I agree with that. think the NFL did some research a number of years ago, and this is still holds true today. 78 % of the guys after they retire within about three to four years are either divorced, broke, addicted, two of the three, or all three. And so they really struggle with making that transition because they go through an identity crisis. And so during that time, the harmony is not there. They're going through a tremendous amount of interference because who they thought they were, who the world told them they were, they're not getting free dinners anymore. They're not getting like, hey, you play for so-and-so. you, yeah, you're good. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't recognize them anymore. And so how would you describe that in your framework?

Purdeep Sangha (08:

12.877) talking about the transition? Okay, yeah, the transition is very important because we do, I would say, 85 % of the work that we do is with men. And this really started from my dad because my dad was an entrepreneur, for example, a business owner. He gave everything to the business, us as a family, and had a little bit left over for himself. So I always saw him struggle with his own personal fulfillment. So if we take a look at the concept of identity, identity psychologically is made up of so many different factors, whether it's the role that you play as a spouse, as a parent, in your community, they're typically roles and titles, right? As opposed to who you truly are. And so the process of identity or recreating your identity is a process. And I highly encourage, so let me just define what identity is. It's who you believe you are. Okay? That's essentially what identity is. It's your belief in who you are and how you show up in this world and what you represent. Okay? And that belief Just like every other belief, there's an old saying, hold your values very tight, hold your beliefs loosely, because beliefs change. People used to think that the world was flat, it's not flat. Or the sun revolved around the earth, well, okay, that's changed too. So our beliefs change, and it's very healthy for us to update our beliefs. And so I don't... No, exactly, because a lot of our research does come from the sports world. We have our own research. Organizations in sports are starting to talk about this more, right? It's becoming more of a holistic coaching perspective rather than just, you know, let's talk about performance on the field. In the business world, this is something that we brought in and it's very significant. We always encourage people, we take people through an exercise of updating their identity every year. And that doesn't have to be drawn-out process, it's really, okay, what are the beliefs that you have about yourself? Are they still relevant and are they still empowering you? And what do you foresee in the near future or the short-term future that could impact your identity? So it is a process. The creation of identity is process. Unfortunately, Craig, the thing that most people, would say 99 % of people, we have this identity that's been created for us by the school system or parents and upbringings and TV and society.

Purdeep Sangha (10:

33.741) whatever it may be, we don't consciously and intentionally take a look at our identity. And then you end up like players or CEOs, like I work with, that don't know who they are. And in fact, that's one of the reasons why I wrote a book in 2020 called The Complete Man. And I wrote it for that very reason, because in 2020 we had COVID and we had these massive shutdowns of businesses and men. And so we'll talk about the difference between men and women because women were losing their jobs as well. Women were losing their businesses as well. But what we do know from a psychological perspective is men tie more of their identity to their careers and their jobs. In fact, there's research that shows that the marital breakdown that happens when men lose their careers and jobs is almost double that in terms of when a woman does because men just lose themselves. They lose their value. And so I wrote that book for a very specific reason to give men the tools to be able to shift their identity through this crisis because if you lose what you believe you are, man, that's a tough world. It's like the analogy that I use is if you are thrown into the water, right, in the middle of freezing ocean and you don't know how to swim, right, you are just literally trying to keep yourself afloat and alive. And that's how a lot of men feel, just psychologically and emotionally.

PRO MINDSET (11:

55.043) Well, I think that we're human beings, but we are identified as human doers and men especially are connected to what they do. And, you know, it's very, very difficult for, especially athletes, people that are performers, people in positions of power, like CEOs, politicians, it's very difficult for them to detach who they are from what they do.

Purdeep Sangha (12:

05.911) Yes, sir.

PRO MINDSET (12:

23.309) because when they, every room they walk into, hey, this is so and so, he's this, and he's labeled. So the average Joe is not labeled as much. The guy that's the electrician, when he meets somebody, he can be who he is. You know, he's John Doe. But man, if he's the chancellor, if he's got some position of authority, it's always connected to the introduction. So he gets trained to believe that his value is in alignment with his label. Label goes away and that's when he's in the ocean.

Purdeep Sangha (13:

04.173) Yep, exactly.

PRO MINDSET (13:

06.135) Right? Okay. 13.089) Let's go through rewiring your mind, rewriting your story, updating your identity, just real briefly. From my perspective, I feel like our identity and our story, there's basically three stories. I'll use the word story loosely. There's the story you tell people, that's your elevator speech. A second story is the story you tell yourself. that nobody knows you're saying it to yourself. It's the most, honestly, it's the most powerful story. And then the third story is every single person on the planet is here for a purpose. God created you just the way he created you. Had you be born to the parents that you were born to and the time you were born, the year and day you were born. You have a purpose. He gave you talents and interests and dreams. And I think it's important to know, kind of revisit what that is. But the most important one is the one you're saying inside your own mind. Because I think it's, I don't know what statistics say, but I'd venture to say it's 70, 75 % negative.

Purdeep Sangha (14:

28.365) Definitely, yeah. We have a massive negativity bias in our brain. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And the place that we're at in society today isn't helping. Because if we go on social media or the news, 90, over 90 % of it is negative.

PRO MINDSET (14:

46.639) And comparison kills people too, because even when you're not negative, you start comparing yourself. And all of a sudden now you've got that little voice that says you're not good enough and so-and-so passed you up and you're not keeping up with the Joneses, all that type of stuff. So how do you, give us a micro exercise in rewiring or rewriting your story or updating your identity.

Purdeep Sangha (15:

11.981) Yeah, that's a really interesting one. So when we're working with a CEO and this is a real practice that we encourage people to do, and it's not everybody is able to do this or has a means to do this, but we always encourage people to do this. And it's not an easy exercise. We always recommend the CEOs that we work with, for example, to go away for a weekend without their family. Okay, so go away, stay in a hotel or a resort, whatever it is, and spend time with yourself And there's a process that we take people through, right? There's a manual that we give them, but it's really deconstructing themselves first. So we, the analogy that we use is you're like an onion. What you're going to do is you're going to take all those layers off the top and try to figure out what the core is. And that's the self, right? We capitalize the self. The acronym we use is someone exceptional living freely. And what that means is who are you without all of the responsibilities and accountabilities that you have? Who are you when you, if you're not a CEO? Right? Or you don't have the responsibility of being a husband. And this goes to women as well, right? A wife or a mother. Who are you? And this exercise is extremely tough for individuals, right? It's extremely tough. It's not that easy. Because when you strip, most people strip all of that stuff away. The question that they ask themselves is, who am I? Like, okay, who am I? What is, yeah. And so we have to redefine that. And then in those moments or moments where they talk,

PRO MINDSET (16:

35.267) They don't know.

Purdeep Sangha (16:

41.165) start thinking about what is my purpose in life? Because when you put all those other things aside, then the question of the purpose of life, which is one of the biggest questions that we have, right? One is, what is the universe, right? What is consciousness? And what is our purpose? It's a common question that we ask ourselves all the time, an innate question as human beings. And through that process, there's different layers that we get people to put back on, right? And one of those layers, we also talked about ego. we talk about identity and then a process of, what were you like as a kid? What did you always wanna be? Is that something you wanted to be or your parents wanted to be? Without those external influences, let's rebuild your identity. From identity, then we also, there's a layer of beliefs, right? So before stories, there's actually beliefs. Because our stories determine our belief system, or sorry, our belief system determine our stories, right? The core of our stories are based on our beliefs. And then we take people through an exercise of, what are your beliefs? Let's identify them. And then let's figure out whether they're empowering or disempowering. Now, out of all of this, right, Craig, at the center, at the core, because a lot of the work that we have done stems also from spirituality, right? Because I've traveled the world studying spirituality. I grew up in a very spiritual household with a spiritual grandfather. My great-grandfather was spiritual teacher in India for 70 years. We bring that in because we have to figure out who we truly are and what our purpose is and what we're meant to do. And then we test our beliefs, but there's something under there that we have to be really good at. And the sports world does a fairly good job in this. The corporate world doesn't do such a great job. They do a great job from a business perspective, and that is setting goals. Okay. And setting goals is so important. In spiritual practices, we talk about intention. What is intention? Because your intention then directs your focus, your energy, your mindset. And we have to be very clear about what our goals are. Not only from a purpose perspective and what we're meant to do in this life, but goals also direct our brain. Okay, so if you want to change someone's behavior, the number one thing that a person can do is be effective at setting goals.

Purdeep Sangha (19:

03.703) And it's not just as simple as, me just make a goal. There's a process behind it. And so setting effective goals has a big shift because then you ask yourself this question. If I have this goal here in front of me and I've set the goal effectively with my, mainly my goals, not the goals that other people have for me, right? Because that's very important. Most people, what they think their goals are, are actually goals that they have adopted or adapted from society or their spouse or their kids or the board of directors, whatever that is. but they have to come up with their own goals. And once they have the goal, then they can actually change behavior because goal setting effectively, like I said before, is the number one behavior change mechanism that's been shown by thousands of peer reviewed studies. So if someone wants to change their behavior, someone wants to even change your identity, one of the biggest things is what is that goal that you have for your identity? Because you can create that goal. You can create that identity that you want. And then from beliefs, we create the stories. Right? As you talked about, you were talking about the three different layers or levels of stories. But then on top of that are also values, right? Because values are extremely critical because they are your decision-making criteria. And many times we're not very conscious of our own stories, right? These are, this is a practice that requires a lot of self-awareness. And it's just like anything else. It's just like playing football or learning how to throw a ball or catch a ball, whatever it is, it requires practice. There's muscle memory in there. This also is the same process that we go through when it comes to self-reflection, when it comes to our stories. We have to train ourselves to catch ourselves, and that's not easy. And so by this process of training ourselves, catching our stories sometimes isn't easy, but knowing our values is, not gonna say the easiest thing to do, but it's much easier. Because if we are very clear about our values, then we direct our decision-making based on our values, not necessarily our stories. Because our values, like I said, are decision making criteria. And if we can get very clear about our values, because here's something that's very important, our values have to match our goals. And if our values don't match our goals, that's where we have an issue. That's why people take three steps forward and two steps back. Or it's running like it's equivalent to running that three legged race and the person that you're tied to is laying on the ground and just digging their nails into the ground and you can't get very far.

Purdeep Sangha (21:

27.453) But once there's alignment, fundamentally this is what we're talking about, getting your self, your ego, your identity, your beliefs, your stories, your values in alignment, or more in alignment, you can cruise much further ahead and faster.

PRO MINDSET (21:

43.315) That is awesome. Okay, boss. I want to put you on the spot. Okay. I want you to share with me and I want you to work with me because I don't know this like you do. One thing about you that let's start with one core belief that you have that is an empowering belief.

Purdeep Sangha (22:

04.781) Okay, so one core belief that I have is that I am the person, I'm the only person that can control my state or that has the control over my state. And what that means is, and this is one of the, it's a very challenging belief to have as well, right? It's not easy to keep hold of this belief all the time, but it's one that I put in this head and I practice and I practice and I practice and sometimes I fall off the wagon, right? I fall off at times. but it is something that I have to come back to because the moment I am getting challenged by something and I feel like I'm getting upset where I don't need to get upset, I have to bring this belief back into my mind, right? And it is a belief and it is something that I truly believe. I have control over my mind, I have control over my physiology. So it's something that I've had to practice over the years and continue to practice.

PRO MINDSET (22:

56.141) What is one goal that you have that enables you to change your behavior. So what is what's what's one goal that is like your true north?

Purdeep Sangha (23:

07.853) Okay, so one of my goals is to be a better dad every day. Okay, so that's one of my goals and it's not this grandiose goal, but it is a grandiose goal for me because one of the best things and most important things that I want to do is raise two healthy children that know how to contribute to society, but also take care of themselves and be healthy and happy and successful in society. And that requires a lot of attention. That requires a lot of self-reflection because, and they're only 12 and 10. So every single thing I say, I have to self-reflect on what is the impact of these words? What is the impact of me behaving or my body language? And it's a best exercise because that trains me, A, to be a better dad, but also be a better communicator and be more effective in working with CEOs. So that by far is, would say, biggest, one of the biggest goals that I have, but also one of the biggest goals that teaches me how to be better every day.

PRO MINDSET (24:

10.135) Okay, so what behavior has changed because of this goal and this belief?

Purdeep Sangha (24:

18.061) That's a really interesting one. So being fully present. Okay, so I was a fairly present person before, but this is at a completely different level because just a simple exercise I do with my kids, for example, is try to get down to their eye level or maybe I'll bring them up to my level and just make eye contact. And deep eye contact where I'm not just making it for the sake of making it. I truly am trying to look them in the eyes and see them. and hear them. So that for me was not necessarily a challenge, but even though I thought I was being present with my kids, I wasn't always making eye contact with them. And kids are amazing at being teachers because they will tell you straight up. And my kids, it was really interesting because they used to say to me, look at me in the eyes. Like, I want to know that you're fully present with me. Look at me in the eyes. And that was a good cue for me because I'm like, that's what they're looking for. They want me to be fully present. and be there engaged through my eyes. So that's a behavior that I've had to change.

PRO MINDSET (25:

21.849) So what value matches up with that goal of being a better dad every day?

Purdeep Sangha (25:

26.697) that value is family for sure. That value and my kids, so particularly my kids. And you know, they're all wrapped into, you all these values are very similar, but being the best dad I can, family, raising healthy and happy kids, that's, it's all kind of come into one kind of group of values, you can say.

PRO MINDSET (25:

49.327) Okay, so having a 30 year old, a 28 year old and a 27 year old children that are adults and one's got a kid and the other one's got one on the way. Thank you. What I can tell you is that you could turn the volume down on your voice and all they see is lip singing.

Purdeep Sangha (25:

52.822) Ha ha ha ha ha

Purdeep Sangha (26:

00.482) Awesome, congrats.

PRO MINDSET (26:

17.953) and they still learn everything you want them to learn or not. And so what I've learned from my kids the hard way is that I coach them, I consulted them, I protected them and guided them and all the normal things that parents do. But I didn't always set the example that I wish I would have set. So it's in your, so.

Purdeep Sangha (26:

21.857) Yeah.

PRO MINDSET (26:

42.359) So the thing that I can tell you that I've learned now on the other side of this thing where they've moved out and they're emancipated and they're adults and they're starting their own families is they actually give more credence to what you do, how you respond, how you react, how you treat your wife, how you treat your business, how you talk about your business partner, how you talk about your clients, those types of things than what you're telling them.

Purdeep Sangha (26:

57.357) Hmm

PRO MINDSET (27:

11.215) And you still got to tell them and they're still, they're going to listen, they're going to learn, but they're going to learn more from the other. So, and I think that that that's somewhere in leadership. You know, when you're a leader, they're not really listening to you. They're watching you and that's what our kids do. Right. So, well, that's good. Okay. Was there anything I missed? So what's the story you tell yourself?

Purdeep Sangha (27:

18.477) I agree. 29.399) Yeah, absolutely. That's great.

PRO MINDSET (27:

38.477) In your own head, when you get home from work, if you work at home, you walk into the dinner table and your wife and two kids are there. What's the story you're telling yourself when there's not harmony in the home? The kids are bickering, mom says, hey, Purdeep, I need you to get this guy to do something.

Purdeep Sangha (27:

50.061) Mm-hmm.

PRO MINDSET (28:

08.503) Okay. that she can't get him to do. So what story are you telling yourself then?

Purdeep Sangha (28:

14.925) Yeah, there's two things. There's a default story, right? We all have default stories that we go to, which is how do I take control of the situation? Right? That is a default story, particularly for men, right? We want to take control. We want to make sure there's a dominance aspect to that as well. But then the other story that I have to shift to very quickly is sometimes the situation doesn't need control without a shadow of doubt. Sometimes you just got to say, okay, no, stop. That's it. You know, don't talk, stop this behavior. That's it. But then there's the other side, which is wanting the kids to learn, right? And like you said, modeling behavior. So that story that sometimes, and many times I have to shift over to, is how do I change my behavior? How do I shift my energy so that it then diffuses into whether it's my son, my daughter, know, whoever it may be, so that we actually start to shift each other's energy. So that is a subtle shift in terms of story. But it has a big impact. because my background is also in neuroscience, this is one of the most important things here that we have to realize. And neuroscientists have talked about this for the last 10 years or so where they've openly come out, not all neuroscientists, but many have said, hey, our external environment, our situations are a reflection of our internal environment. Because over the decades, over the millions of interactions with the environment, we have our internal environment has, let's just say, if I react one way, my kids will react in response to that in a very particular way. If I respond differently, their reaction will be different. It may be slightly different, but it will be different. So my internal environment, if I walk in and I'm grumpy already, right? And my reaction is to be grumpy, they're gonna respond accordingly. But if I can speak to them, maybe in a loving and a firm manner, for example, it's gonna be a different response. So my story, is really how do I shift my energy and my behavior to have as much impact that I can to get other people and influence other people rather than control.

PRO MINDSET (30:

23.343) Okay, so let's go through, let's take that whole scenario and you just have a antagonistic conversation with somebody in business right before the end of the day. And it's very frustrating for you. Maybe somebody stabbed you in the back, somebody reneged on a promise, whatever the case may be. How do you get in your zen and be able to walk into that kitchen or into the dining room for dinner? when you're still got that stuff in the back of your mind that just happened 10 minutes ago, 15 minutes ago, and not bring that negative energy to the dinner table.

Purdeep Sangha (30:

58.925) Mm-hmm.

Purdeep Sangha (31:

06.989) Okay, so that's a really good question. there's a protocol, for example, that we have, that I use particularly for myself because this is something that I train, something that I practice. So it's much easier for me to do. So when someone gets me in that mood, so for example, what I do is, A, I take a moment to actually reflect, right? So I'll take 30 seconds, a minute, a minute and a half to actually process. And then immediately what I have to do is I have to shift my focus, right? Because everything is based on focus. Okay, so our energy will be diverted and direct into where our focus goes. So I've trained myself to be able to shift into, okay, this is bugging me or this is something that's really crappy to what do I need to focus on next or what's really good in my life? Because our brains naturally what we do is we contrast. right? We contrast things. So I'll immediately shift my focus and then I'll shift my physiology. I'll shift my body. in some movement or another. So it could be a Tai Chi practice or Qi Gong practice and breathing. So these are physiological means of shifting my state, because that's ultimately what you're talking about is we're shifting our state. And once I can shift my state, there's other practices as well, because I grew up, like I said, I do spiritual practices that really, just like anything else, it's like taking a shower, right? If we go out in the mud and we roll around the mud or someone slings mud at us, What's the first thing we're gonna do when we walk into the house? We're gonna take shower. We wanna wash that off. There's a spiritual way of doing that as well. And many of us don't really do that. We'll harbor the energy, we'll hold onto it or let it stick to us without actually taking that, you can say the shower of releasing that energy. And that there's practices that I do, there could be breathing practices. Like I said, typically these practices come from Asia. And so these practices are what I do and essentially I will go into what I need to do next without having to carry it. But then at some point I have to return. Right? It's not something that I can ignore. I have to go back and return to that same issue. But I'm doing it in a state where I'm actually optimal, not in that state where I'm upset. So it's not that I ignore it. I just time it appropriately so that I can deal with it in an optimal state and an optimal mindset.

PRO MINDSET (33:

28.699) and you set it on the shelf for three or four hours while you're fully present with your kids. And then when they go to bed, maybe you revisit it or maybe you table it until the next morning. yeah, your subconscious is trying to figure out solutions and responses the whole time. And it's, right? I mean, it's just the way we're wired. it's like, we've got, you know, I find it almost comical sometimes when You get a TV remote and you just push it as fast as you can and you see like channels are switching like that. You can still see them all.

Purdeep Sangha (34:

07.245) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

PRO MINDSET (34:

08.493) Because if there was like, let's say you love baseball and there was a baseball game on you, you just go back to it because you saw your baseball game. And so our mind is so fast. And so I think I don't know. I haven't done the studies that you've done, but I, I know that our mind is so powerful, especially the subconscious that it can. It can, it can do things that weren't sometimes we're not even aware of because we've put it on autopilot, you know?

Purdeep Sangha (34:

35.783) yeah. Yeah, and this is well, we're on autopilot roughly about 47 % of the time. So the interesting thing here is if you take a look at the studies, there's one practice that has been shown and this is used in sports. This is used in the military. We use this with our CEOs that we work with, which is mindfulness. Because mindfulness, is just that, right? It's a practice of teaching us of where our awareness is, right? Where our attention is going, when it's drifting, and actually to pull back into the present moment. Because in the present moment, our mind doesn't need to be active and thinking about those things that have gone wrong. So it is a practice. And the better we get at that, actually there's incredible studies that actually show, you know, because when you train at being present in the moment, you are more present in the moment. Therefore, you are not thinking as much about the stuff that you, the crappy stuff that just happened, or the stuff that might happen in the future. It is a skill set by far. Right? And so if we actually lived in the moment, which is like you said, and we talked about our brains naturally go into what we call a default mode network, which is kind of like you can call it daydreaming, right? And typically when we're in that daydreaming mode, or some people will call it, there's a difference between autopilot and default mode network. But let's just say we're going to, we're going to lump them into the same thing where the person is not just fully conscious of and being present in the moment. There's the thing with that is it takes a lot of energy. And when we're in those states, here's what studies show. Most of the time it's negative thoughts. Most of the time, you know, as a kid, you might be able to daydream about all the fun stuff, right? Like all the toys you wanna get and all the candy you wanna get. But as adults, it's not as fun anymore. We're not daydreaming about the fun stuff. We're daydreaming about all the crappy stuff in our life. And so when we get into those states, we start to drift into a negative space. just... It's a great exercise just by being more present. You can reduce the negativity out of your less. You could be less reactive, but remove a lot of negativity out of your life.

PRO MINDSET (36:

41.849) Well, with athletes, I talk about time traveling and it's very difficult to be in the moment. And that's what you're talking about. Be fully present. It's much easier to think about the past. The last time you played this team, the last time you were in this situation, the last time the coach yelled at you this way, that that last time this game situation was the same. And most of the time you do go negative or you start diving into the future.

Purdeep Sangha (36:

45.186) Mm-hmm.

PRO MINDSET (37:

09.985) expectations, outcomes, results, you know, what are you going to say to the media? All those kinds of things. What, what, what are you going to tell your coach when he screams at you because you made a mistake? You're already thinking that before the play. Let's take football for example, in that, know, there's generally about 30 seconds in between plays in those 30 seconds. If you're time traveling, you can have a million thoughts in 30 seconds. Then most of them are negative and you're not even thinking about what you're supposed to be thinking about. So it's like, if you can train yourself through breath work or whatever it may be to be in that moment, your performance is going to go up because you're focused on what you're doing. So one of the things I saw in your work is that you guys teach people how to have morning routines. I do a morning routine. I haven't done it, but for about five, six years.

Purdeep Sangha (38:

05.197) Mm-hmm.

PRO MINDSET (38:

10.157) Wish I would have done it 25, 30 years ago. But what is the purpose of a morning routine? What are the benefits? What are the components? How do people get started? Because a lot of people don't. A lot of people do, but a lot of people don't. Take it away.

Purdeep Sangha (38:

28.813) Okay, so the purpose of having a morning routine is twofold. One is to get yourself in an optimal state. Okay, so that's important. it's kind of like pre, it's a routine that you get into before you go into the game, right? That's essentially what it is. And there's a lot of studies that show that routine actually impacts your performance, right? So pre-competition routines are actually very effective to get people into that head space. The second purpose of having a morning routine is to set the intentions for the day. Right? And that's what we take a look at when we're talking about strategy. How are you going to tackle that day? What are the most important things that need to be done during the day or that you want to have outcomes come out of the day? And that is very powerful because that performance all starts with intention. Okay. That's a number one thing, clarity of intention. That's the starting point. If you don't have clarity of intention, you don't have performance, bottom line. Right? That's why, whether it's football, whatever it is, you just say, get that ball to that player, right? That's what you're trying. That's what your, that's what the clarity is. That's what the intention is. And so for CEO or just, you know, everyday person, you got to set the intention. So get yourself in the optimal state and then set the intention for the day because intention actually allows you to be a focus, but also perform more effectively, efficiently, and have a higher level of productivity.

PRO MINDSET (40:

01.975) I agree. think in sports, it's so obvious for everybody. If you're watching a competition and let's say basketball, like March Madness in the U S right now. one of the biggest comebacks ever was, Yukon coming back against Duke last weekend. And a young man made a shot from about 35 feet with 0.4 seconds to go on the clock. And most people think that's the first time he's ever made that shot. And it may be the first time he's ever made that shot. in the game or in a game, but it's the millionth time he's made that shot in his mind. Because I really believe that his reaction, his intentions, he'd been there before. Mentally, he'd been there before. He'd been successful in his own mind before. So was just a very natural flow for him. Phenomenal play. It will go down in history. They'll be talking about this shot for the next 30 years. But what they don't What they won't talk about is the mental preparation that this young man did before he ever got in that situation. Your thoughts on that.

Purdeep Sangha (41:

11.627) Yeah, we're actually doing some research in this area, particularly I am as well, what we call mental imagery. that applies not only to sports professionals, it applies to everybody. If I was to take a look at someone asked me, hey, what are some of the things that I did as a kid? Because my journey has been based on this. I've been doing this for 40, 30 something years at least, but it was my life's passion. I just tripped upon it as a kid. You we all have our paths. This was my path. And there's a couple of things, practices that I used to do as a kid. One is meditation. Okay, so I live by that. I do that every single day because it is a performance thing and a quality of life thing. It's a practice. The second is what I call visualization. In sports we call it mental imagery. You just put it all into the same thing. But that is extremely powerful and it's extremely powerful for a number of reasons. A, because If you're basically, you're playing that routine and studies show that you can get higher level of performance by doing mental imagery. So the studies have already shown that, proved that. So you can perform better, make that shot if you actually practice physically, but also through mental imagery as well. And there's something else here. So it's not just your body following the routine. The other thing that's phenomenal about this, Craig, is that it's how you feel during that period of time as well. So you can train yourself to be in a state, so if you're sitting there picturing yourself throwing a free throw, for example, what is that feeling? What is that emotion behind that? Or what emotion do you need to feel? So not only are you programming your body to throw that ball a certain way, but you're programming your emotions. Perhaps you might naturally feel nervous, but now you're gonna go into perhaps a better state, which could be excitement. Right? And so, or even be calm, depending on how you wanna train yourself. So mental imagery is extremely effective. And again, it applies to every single person. So when we're working with a CEO, I take them through a mental imagery exercise based on the goal that they have. Their goal could be, hey, I want to be able to come home to a crazy chaotic home life. Maybe they have kids, having kids or whatever it might be. And not lose my stuff, right? Not lose it. So take them through the practice where all of this stuff is happening and they're as calm as possible.

Purdeep Sangha (43:

35.681) and reacting proactively rather than reactively. Or it could be they're going on stage or maybe it's a board presentation or whatever it may be, but it's extremely effective. I highly recommend everybody do that because if you're gonna daydream, do it intentionally and do it in a positive manner, which you can use mental imagery as a tool.

PRO MINDSET (44:

00.503) And I think that that tool is best used for future performance, not revisiting the past. And one of the things I, you you go.

Purdeep Sangha (44:

07.319) Mm-hmm. Yeah, or from us. Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was gonna say, this is, when you're saying not going into the past, and this is where rumination comes in. A lot of people go back into the past and replay their mistakes. But this is where you can get into things like cognitive behavioral therapy or hypnosis or whatever it may be, NLP. There's a lot of practices out there where you can actually go back and change the replay, right? To be in your favor or to learn something. And so if you're gonna hold on to the negative stuff and feel guilty and shame, I wouldn't do it. But if you can go back and figure out how to learn things and shift your emotions based on that, then it can actually be a very positive thing.

PRO MINDSET (44:

54.103) I agree with that. what I coach my guys on is the simple concept of go ahead and relive all your failures. You only remember the ones that have an emotional charge. So you've had more failures than you can remember, but only the ones that have a negative emotional charge are the ones you remember. And on those, get a lesson. That's all you want to do. You want to experience that again. And then once you get a lesson, you naturally reframe.

Purdeep Sangha (45:

15.309) Yes.

PRO MINDSET (45:

22.275) the emotion attached to that failure. And sometimes you'll even forget that failure because now it doesn't have the emotional, like, you know, like the presence in your mind that it, that it did before, because you've got the lesson from it. So you turned it from a negative to a positive. But what I tell guys to do is like, let's just take golf. If you're going to visualize, you should feel the air blowing on your face. You should smell the green, the freshly cut grass, you know, Even like think about the conversations you're going to have with the guys you're talking you're playing with the whole thing. And you know what play out. Hey, your ball goes right in the middle of the fairway. It hits a sprinkler head and bounces. Let's say the wrong direction in a bad place. It happens. How are you going to respond to that? You nothing you didn't do anything wrong. You had a great shot. And so if you can use imagery.

Purdeep Sangha (46:

11.016) SF.

PRO MINDSET (46:

20.089) to go through not just like this fairy tale of all the things that could be great, but how you're going to respond to everything, good, bad, and in between. Because when you get in a game and you get in competition, you get everything. You get good, bad, and everything in between. So if you only prepare yourself visually for the positive, when the negative comes, it throws you off your game.

Purdeep Sangha (46:

33.771) Yeah, yeah, yeah. 45.271) Yep, I completely agree.

PRO MINDSET (46:

47.351) Okay, so let's, I want to stay on morning routine for a little bit longer. You do meditation. What else?

Purdeep Sangha (46:

57.402) So I set my intentions for the day and typically my morning routine includes a workout as well.

PRO MINDSET (47:

04.185) Okay, physical exercise of some type.

Purdeep Sangha (47:

05.389) and then time with my kids. So those are before they head off to school. So those are all parts of my morning routine. I set my, not in this, well, in this order, I typically meditate first, then I set my goals and I work out. And typically my kids are around that time too, because I have my home gym. And so we're spending some time in the morning before they head off.

PRO MINDSET (47:

28.097) Let's talk about meditation specifically. People that meditate and that do it regularly, they know what it is. But a majority of the people don't. They've tried it, they've heard about it, but they don't get it. What's the process for getting competent and getting benefit from meditation?

Purdeep Sangha (47:

52.462) Okay, so there's two things here. to simplify, I'm gonna give this answer and then I'm gonna expand on this. Number one, and I'm a firm believer in this, if someone is going to do something, find some of the people who are best at doing it and learn from them. So there's a lot of teachers out there when it comes to meditation. You can go onto YouTube and there's literally thousands, right? You can pick up books and you can read on it. The thing with meditation, let's, We're going to talk about meditation a little bit differently than mindfulness because they are two different practices. They overlap, but they're not the same thing. so meditation is a practice. Mindfulness is a practice too, but it's not. And this is the most common thing that I hear from CEOs is I can't meditate. I can't sit there for five minutes and just not think about things or whatever it may be. The interesting thing with meditation is there are so many different forms of meditation. There's walking meditation, right? There's transcendental meditation. There's guided meditation. There's empty thought meditation. So you could be guided through a process to think and have certain thoughts or you could be in a state of literally being void of all thought. Like that just feels weird that a lot of people think about that but it's one of the most, I would say for me personally, because I'm talking about my own personal experience here, one of the most blissful experiences ever because there's no responsibilities, there's nothing, it's just pure love because it's just consciousness, right? It's just awareness. So, and the interesting thing with meditation is it's gonna take time. Just like playing a sport, it's gonna take a person a while to pick up the sport and be good at it. And you're gonna have off days. There's days that I have where I'm just trying to get into that meditative state. I can't get into it. I just can't get into it. And so I just gotta be like, okay, that's okay. Maybe the... the clock is ticking and I gotta get up and I gotta go to work or do my thing. And so maybe I'll pick up on it tomorrow and I'll do better tomorrow. Right? And I learned from that. So it is from my experience, you know, it's not perfect. It's a learning experience. My journey, what used to work 10 years ago from a meditative practice, isn't working for me today. So things change, right? My body is changing. My mind is changing.

Purdeep Sangha (50:

11.789) So life is changing. So meditation practices change if people are doing the same matter meditative practice for decades I don't think that's real. I don't think that's realistic. So you have to adapt your meditation practice as well the most important thing I can say for people is just try just keep trying keep trying keep trying and I Promise I say this to everybody. I promise when a person gets that moment and feels that state whatever it is for that person and they're like, aha, I get it, I felt it, I was in that state. It's like a light switch goes on and they're gonna want more of it. It's that period of frustration at the beginning that gets people turned off.

PRO MINDSET (50:

59.275) I agree with that. I do a lot of guided meditations and I do think that I do breath work as well and you can't keep doing the same thing. You to keep evolving and experimenting with different ones and different people and different ways to breathe, etc. Okay, here's where I'm looking at the clock. We could do three of these, my man.

Purdeep Sangha (51:

07.853) Yes, sir. 26.805) Yeah, I'm sure we could.

PRO MINDSET (51:

28.237) Five. This is version one. This is like the first one. But I want to bring this to a close with a very important concept. And it's something that they don't teach in schools and a lot of parents don't teach their kids. And that's character. And you talk about character is more important than personality. But I also want to know how character influences performance. pretend like you're talking to people that don't know what character is. Everybody kind of has an idea what it is. But what is your definition of character? And why is it more important? And how does it show up?

Purdeep Sangha (52:

07.213) Okay, so let's talk about the difference between personality and character. there's, it's not, you know, in psychology, it's not 100 % agreed upon because they overlap, right? So that you can't make a clear distinction between the two, but they are different. And so personality is our natural way of behaving in situations, our natural way of thinking, behaving and reacting to situations. And a lot of people think that our personality is fixed. I don't believe it's fixed just based on our research and the work that we've done. But there's also character. Character is how we choose to think and behave. And that is a choice, and it's a practice choice. Right? And it requires, that's a hard part. Reacting naturally is easy part. Reacting consciously with intent is a tougher part. And that, just like anything else, remember I was talking about identity? Well, character is the same thing. You have to develop it. You have to know exactly what kind of character you want, what type of person you want to be, how you want to react to difficult situations, how you want to react under pressure. And that is designed. It's designed with intent. It's something, if I just talk about it from a real practical perspective, I grew up with a military grandfather. He was in the military for 30 plus years. But also the very most spiritual person I knew, as I mentioned, his father was a spiritual teacher in India. And it was really interesting because he taught me about character. And he said that was the most important thing for me, particularly as a man was character, because that's the one thing that no one could take away from me. You know, they could, and he talked about, because he saw this throughout his life. He grew up in India and there were some challenges during that time when he was there. And he said, people could take your house. They could take the shirt off your back. They could even take away your family members, right? Cause that's, that's what happened, but they can't take away your character. And I still remember those moments. I still remember that. Cause he said that over and over. with me, character principles, be a man of your word. And we don't talk about character as much these days as we used to. In sports, there's some conversations that are happening about it, but outside of that, it's not happening. And I am of the firm, how do I say it, understanding and observation that much of our challenges in society today, whether it's happiness or conflict, whatever it might be, is based on character.

Purdeep Sangha (54:

31.467) If we actually taught character more and mentored our kids more about character, I think we would just be a happier society, healthier. We'd be there to help each other and we would have far less conflict for sure.

PRO MINDSET (54:

47.481) Well, character at the most elementary level is, you know, doing the right thing when people aren't watching. You know, and it's making the right decision to treat people right, treat yourself right when nobody knows.

Purdeep Sangha (55:

06.413) Can I just add something to that? Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say there's something that's super important as well. And I did put this in an article that I'd written. So I come from the banking industry originally. So when I was an executive, I was in banking. And back at that time, when we were taking a look at lending money to people, one of the key, what we call the Cs, right? We took a look at cashflow, we took a look at capacity, we took a look at credit. Character was one of the top things.

PRO MINDSET (55:

06.581) And no, you go, you go.

Purdeep Sangha (55:

36.706) That was a key thing to look at when it came to lending money to someone. It was based on who's sitting in front of you, what is their past character, and what is the future character of this person that you think they're going to be or live to. And so that just went out the window. And now we're all about algorithms. So we replaced character with algorithms. And that's exactly what's happening in society today. Right, we're replacing people of good character. Listen, if we're just talking about social media, I don't want to get too much into that side, but if we're talking about social media, now we're replacing people of good character with people that get bigger hits, more likes, right, longer views, because it's all about algorithms. So I agree, you know, for myself, is character is so important. It's one of the fundamental things of being a human being, particularly being a man. being happy and healthy in society. we just, I would love for everybody just to have a small conversation about character with their children and the people around them.

PRO MINDSET (56:

44.335) Where I had conflict with my kids from time to time on character was in their dating. I would tell them that, you know, let's say they're in high school. I would say, hey, treat that person like you're not going to marry them because they're not most of the time. And that person's going to respect you enough to invite you to the wedding. And so that's a whole different perspective. When you're dating someone and you're treating that person with integrity and and with respect and not doing something that is going to harm your relationship once you break up because you're going to break up. Okay. Compared to, you know, treating him right, staying friends throughout it. Right. And maybe they teach you a little bit about life. Maybe you teach them a little bit about life. They learn about how your family does things differently than theirs and vice versa.

Purdeep Sangha (57:

29.965) I love that. 43.767) Yeah, I think that's beautiful. That's absolutely amazing. I love that perspective. It's absolutely important.

PRO MINDSET (57:

52.035) Well, my man, I want to thank you very much for being on Pro Mindset. Where can people find you?

Purdeep Sangha (58:

00.169) simplest way to find me is you can either connect with me on LinkedIn or you can go to my website which is purdeepsanga.com

PRO MINDSET (58:

08.857) There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, Per Deep. Thank you very much, all the way from Hamilton, Canada, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. And I want to thank you very much for being on today.

Purdeep Sangha (58:

19.521) Yeah, thank you for having me. Great conversation and thank you for being a great host.

PRO MINDSET (58:

23.587) Thank you.