The Dark Side of Goal Setting: Unhealthy Hyper-Achievement

This is the light inside. I'm Jeffrey Peasecker. Our goals? They're often thought to define us as human beings. Setting goals and working to achieve them helps us to define what truly matters in life. We see our goals as a pathway to accomplishment or as a means to fulfill a dream. In order to adapt, evolve and grow to reach our optimal self, setting clear, healthy goals with sustainable engagement is essential. It's often said that action breeds results and that momentum carries us through to success.

However, there's also a darker side to goal setting. Why are we often willing to do anything and frequently attempting everything in order to reach our objectives, Expending unfruitful energy and accumulating anxiety and stress? The outcome that panic ridden drive for action as we feel the fear of missing out. Today we look at how the action bias frequently serves as the basis of this fright inducing response to anticipatory anxiety. We also dispel some of the myths surrounding the Less is More ethos, empowering you with a relaxed approach to goal setting that allows you to live more fluidly and with greater Peace of Mind.

Learn how to transform this core pattern that often drives our pursuit for unhealthy hyper achievement when we return to the light inside. When it comes to mobile service providers, with their high rate plans, extra fees and hidden cost or expenses, many of the big name networks leave a bad taste in your mouth. Mint Mobile is a new flavor of mobile network service, sharing all the same reliable features of the big name brands, yet at a fraction of the cost. I recently made the change to Mint Mobile and I can't believe the monthly signals allowing me to put more money in my pocket for the things which truly light me up inside.

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When it comes to money, relative certainty and security about our investments future is something we often wish for as Chief Financial Advisor at Veritas Wealth Management, Chad Hufford. Is helping oil field professionals overcome uncertainties about their financial future. Although these endeavors can be tedious and stressful at times, we often find ourselves driven by anxiety and as a result we're left searching for quick and easy solutions. However, this is not always the best option, and what Chad hadn't fully realized until recently is this his job was always more about behavior management than money management.

Chad, you had quite an adventurous journey to becoming a financial advisor. Would you share a bit of your story with us and how you found yourself as a financial advisor based in the oil fields of Alaska? So my background is about 17 years in the financial services industry. As a financial planner. I started 2007 that we got licensed just at the peak of the market before we sank into the the Great Recession. Right. The biggest market decline since the Great Depression of the 1920s and 30s. Really great timing, getting started.

I had a baby on the way anyway. Jeffrey What I did not realize as much when I got started is my job was more about behavioral management than money management. And over the last 1617 years, I've actually studied more of performance psychology coaching. Various things around that, because that's actually what's necessary in the analogy I kind of give people, I'll make this quick is it's kind of giving somebody access to a gym. Like we all have access to all the investment tools out there. Some of us have better genetics than others, but most people aren't going to get the results.

Not because they don't have access, it's because their own behavior. So that's why I started studying all these things and my I have a weird story to get here. My my degrees, actually, in biochemistry. My plan was to go into medicine, so I was familiar studying a lot of some of the neurological things and that that type of deal. But this type of conversation, this type of study, I've, I found his absolutely foundational to being a better advisor. Because it's the end of day, I'm coaching people.

I'm coaching people to manage their own behavior, to create better habits and to stick to that indefinitely. So that's why this conversation is so interesting to me, because it fits so. Well into some of the things that we do professionally, but it's something I had to learn because they don't teach you this stuff when you go into all the financial classes. They teach you about the tools, but not how to get somebody to use them more effectively. It's kind of neat to see that revolution revelation in human knowledge in general.

You know, we're starting to realize where some of these gaps are in our core existence. So you know that's something I've experienced myself throughout our career path, our career journey, you know, 30 plus years in businesses. Most of those core problems as you mentioned relate to human behavioralism issues we've often over identify with our businesses to begin with and. Take that on as a part of who we are. So it stands to reason that some of that disconnect then starts to creep in. Well, and a lot of people talk about you're being more educated and and you're more knowledgeable and that's important.

But a lot of times knowledge is not our biggest issue. I mean, I my office is right next to a McDonald's, right? And it's it's about just after 8:00 AM. So right now there's a line out the street of people lining up to start their day with a bad decision. Nobody is going in that line thinking I'm going to get something great and healthy for my body. People know, but it's getting them to do what they know to do. It's the biggest challenge now. Education may be a part of it, or it is a part of it.

But it's it's getting people to to choose better, to act better. So again, I could go on on about that stuff. But yeah, it's like I'm interested to have this conversation and listen to a couple of the different shows that you've done recently. And yeah, it's just it's fascinating stuff and I I've been thrilled and honored to be able take some of those. Cognitive type ideas and blend them into the world of finance, where they're not typically welcome because it's it's like a soft science kind of.

And we want hard numbers and charts and graphs and charts and graphs only go so far. In that regard, I'm so glad that we have that opportunity to share this journey with you today. Let's jump right in. If we can shad as humans, we've. Then thought to be defined by our goals, as you mentioned, we see those goals as a crucial component to our growth and evolution. And nevertheless we sometimes become rigid and steadfast in that pursuit. As a result, we sacrifice anything and everything sometimes to reach those objectives even if it means our behaviors become unhealthy and counterproductive, much like you mentioned in that lead in.

With that choice to engage with a fast fix of fast food using the action biases as our guide today, I'd like to examine how our unconscious pattern, in particular this unconscious pattern of action biases, presents us from forming healthy and balanced perspectives with our goals. So, Chad, when it comes to your perspective on personal development, how would you define the action bias? And why is it important to discuss its impact on self actualization in our personal growth? Well. Jeff, it's a great question.

I think we live in a society and culture where everything is so fast-paced. We're used to activity, we're used to interaction, we're used to things happening. It's kind of a microwave society, right? We're going to push buttons and have things done. And I think there's a tendency for folks a couple things, one, to lack patience. Sometimes we, I think we feel like with more activity, with more action, we can speed up a process, whether that's a a relationship, whether that's learning a new skill, whether that's getting a business off the ground, whether that's education.

A lot of times we lack the patience to go through the steady plotting necessary. But I also think too we are inundated with things that are completely outside of our control. And I believe a big part of the action bias, to do something just to create some activity, who goes back to our need to want a sense of agency and autonomy? We we want to feel like we're calling the shots in our life, like we have control and influence over how our lives are shaped. And I think that tendency. Not forces us, but it it it might compel us to reach for activity that isn't necessarily in line with where we want to be, but it's within our immediate grasp, so we take hold of it.

Yeah, I think that Harkins, back to that fact that the action bias refers to that tendency for an individual to take action. Even in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty, even when the data and information present might say otherwise, when it might not necessarily be the most fruitful outcome. So in that regard, you know, I think it's a fairly common belief to assert that introspection or self reflection is essential for our growth and self actualization. What is the role of the action bias in our decision making process?

And how does that hinder effective introspection and self reflection from your perspective? Well. I think a lot of times that action bias is very much reactionary. We're not acting on a predetermined plan as much as we are reacting to the environment around us. And so it. It allows us to to work outside of a different portion of our brain. And one of the things where introspection and even stillness can be so beneficial is it allows the cognitive part of our brain to catch back up. It allows the thinking, logical, reasoning part of our brain, whereas we can react out of a lot of different emotions, both positive emotions, negative emotions, but.

When we initiate action, when our when our knee jerk response is just to do something, we short circuit that process and we we go into reactive mode. And a lot of times I think we end up losing perspective on what we're actually trying to accomplish and it's really easy to to choose the easy right over the hard wrong. In that regard, do you feel we sometimes might be overconfident in our self assessments? And the introspection illusion as a biased heuristic might come into play in many regards. Does that sometimes limit our ability to self assess?

Oh, absolutely. But I but I think it's interesting you mentioned our overconfidence. I think a lot of times our our overconfidence actually sometimes stems from a little bit of an insecurity and in action, action allows us to to numb or. To drown out some of those insecurities, we feel like we're doing something because we don't want to hear that little voice saying we should take a couple steps back, we should, we should think about this, We should plan, prepare, whatever. Maybe we're not quite ready.

And I know that those those fears can have their their own issues, but I I think action allows us to. To not here to kind of quiet some of those insecurities and we move, we move in a direction and I think action a lot of times or activity I should say is misinterpreted for productivity. We feel like we're accomplishing something just because we're moving around, we're busy. Our Denzel Washington talk about you can run on a treadmill all day. But you're not going to get anywhere. It's something his mom used to tell him.

And I think when we are busy just spinning on that treadmill, spinning on that wheel, we're able to not have some of those difficult thoughts and conversations with ourselves. Sometimes we get on that hedonic treadmill where we're feeding that emotional cycle that is cycle of reactivity where, you know, we ruminate, we overthink, we start to self doubt. Let's look at some key factors that might shape our introspection from your perspective and how that influences how we self reflect or self assess.

Well, I I always like. To bring people back to objectives and before they act, you know, what is the outcome? What are we trying to accomplish with this? In fact, I was just playing football with my my boys. Last night and I was asking my son, why did you do this specific move? Why did you do this thing? And and he didn't really know it was I I to be honest, I think he thought it looked cool. So I actually videoed him to show like, here's what you were doing and he's like, wow, that is ridiculous.

I'm like, well, yeah, but before you make a move, before you act on something, have an outcome, what is the outcome that you want to achieve? And I think that just two things, first of all. It forces us to get, again going back to what you said, like being introspective. It forces us to get our actions in alignment with that longterm goal, the objective, The Who we want to become, what we want to do, where we end want to end up type situation. But it again, it also, it pulls us out of the emotional center of our brain and allows the reasoning center to catch back.

It just it slows us down just. Breathing techniques do that same thing. It allows the the thought process to catch back up to the emotions, so we're less likely to act out of emotions. So often we get caught up in those rumination cycles that are driven by our implicit and explicit memory, those implicit memories being imprinted by those emotional interactions, those past emotional experiences, and we store those largely unconsciously. Back there, kind of in a repressed pattern of memory. Looking at that aspect, to me that signals the importance of ego development and our ego filters.

So we have somewhat of a subjective view a lot of times on what we're conditioned to believe ego development involves. But you touched on something super important because it's it's that self-awareness because a lot of our our reaction, our tendency towards a dirt, a certain type of action. I think does come from from past experiences, past behaviors, past patterns that we've developed. And like you said, they're they're essentially habits, they're tendencies or proclivities that we may not even be aware of.

But becoming more aware of that allows us when we are faced with a difficult circumstance, we are faced with a decision, we do need to act. We hopefully take pause and say, OK, I know I am more likely to react. Out of anger or out of fear or more more likely to lean towards this type of bias within that reactivity. And I think that's where being selfaware is really important. And again, that that comes from, from introspection. I think it comes from even talking to people having friends who are are willing to be kind rather than nice to tell you what you need to know, not necessarily what you want to hear and.

Working through something saying you know, hey, when I'm in a stressful situation, how do I typically behave? What do I do? Because those patterns exist and and the brain doesn't necessarily dissociate different types of stress. So when you were stressed out about finances, you're stressed out about a relationship, you're stressed out about work. There's going to be patterns in there based on how you've been shaped and molded. So I think getting clear about. What our natural tendencies are really important we when we're faced with a new situation, it gives us that pause to say, OK, I'm I'm probably a little bit more likely to react or overreact in this type of way.

You made a great point there about that perception of the two different types or different types of stress. So often we get front loaded with that singular concept of stress as either good or bad. That kind of black and white thinking. Rather than looking at healthy stress, you stress in that kind of more destructive stress, for lack of better way to put it today, that we typically associate with chronic stress or distress. Well, there's a there's concept of stress, yeah. I mean, often it's a negative, right?

You think about the fasting, it puts a certain stress on the body, but it can actually be beneficial. We're working out you're you're stressing your body. But how you react to that stress, how you engage with that stress often determines whether that's going to be a net benefit or a detriment to your life. And and I I think that's important for us to look at too, is yeah, how are we engaging with the stress? Because stress is inevitable, right. But what what patterns do we have to deal with that stress?

And going back, you know this idea of action bias too. If we're reacting directly to the stress, usually we're going to get caught up in in some sort of detrimental behavior. Not always, but often times. But if we can harness that moment and look at that stress and what can I learn from it? How can the shape me? I think it it can change how we interact with stress, but also when we do act or when we choose not to act. It's it's more likely to be in line with what we're actually trying to accomplish rather than, again, that knee jerk reaction, that heuristic where we're we're often not even addressing the question that needs to be answered.

We're we're answering an easier question because we're we're going through a mental, emotional shortcut rather than dealing with the problem at hand. You mentioned there that role of emotion. In managing those healthy levels of eustress and what sometimes tends to become those chronic or unhealthy levels of distress, what role from that perspective does emotional self regulation play in forming our sense of agency in that regard? And how might our emotions influence processes of volition and efficacy as a result?

Oh, it's so critical because once the emotions take control. Of of our decision making. There's so many studies that show this. Even looking at the functional Mri's we can watch blood flow the the concentration of blood flow change going from a prefrontal cortex where we process information go to the more emotional centers of our brain and and these can be this doesn't have to be fear. It can be greed as well. It can be a lot of different things. But when it when emotions take over our our ability to make decisions has has a.

Pretty precipitous decline. And, you know, just think of of how you ever met a teenager. You know that emotions don't necessarily help you make great longterm decisions. And that's where we can also, I think, get in trouble with this. Action bias is a lot of times easy shortterm decisions have an immediate payoff. You know, bad habits or unhealthy habits often times have a shortterm immediate payoff. Where you get a dopamine hit, you bite into that that piece of candy, there's that that pleasure sensation, it tastes good and the the long term effects are longer lasting, but they don't show up right away.

And I think that can get us in trouble a lot because a lot of times those healthy behaviors actually end up having a a temporary cost. There's a a temporary price to be paid for that long term benefit. And emotions can cloud that where where it can pull us into making decisions in that moment for that moment, which again are usually not good because we're getting that, that immediate gratification of whatever that that reaction is rather than saying, you know what, I'm willing to make a temporary sacrifice.

Based on where I need to be long term. Does that make sense? Yeah. You mentioned watching that role of those shifts happen through videography. You know, through actually seeing where those shifts in the blood flow go. You know, we can watch where we start to shift from that kind of logic based thinking, the reasoning and the prefrontal and those explicit memories, you know, in the subconscious seeping back into, you know, our unconscious areas of the mind. That take us offline to take us out of that reasoning and trigger us into those emotionally reactive responses.

When we watch that processes go further, we can actually see how our brain stem shuts down and we start to react from purely central nervous system autonomic response. All logic is shut down and we're merely acting off of stored past trauma in many regards. We're completely offline from our brain. Well you you had a guest on. I'm trying to remember his name Dustin, he he was talking the author talking about basically blame shifting and and how we are. We're so quick to point fingers not take responsibility and he brought a lot of that back to fear and and and fear causes us to.

Yeah. To point fingers to blame and to kind of victimize ourselves and and I think it it can have a lot of those same repercussions in this in this sense too where fear causes us to to react again is that that action bias we can turn down the alarm of fear when we're active, when we're busy and doing something. But a lot of times those fears stem from past experiences being dredged up. And if we are reacting to that fear, then we're not acting on the situation anymore. And again, back to that idea of heuristics, We're we're no longer dealing with the actual problem at hand.

We're reacting to to a sideshow in a sense. And and I think that's where. That's where people can get derailed very, very easily or distracted, where we, we don't react to the risks at hand appropriately because we've misidentified them. They've been colored or shadowed by past experiences or even the experience of people around us. I mean, just I was thinking about this the other day, like 3 1/2 years ago, the world started shutting down with COVID, right? And we didn't know the impact it was going to have.

We didn't know how it was going to spread. We didn't know. How dangerous it really was. Who is going to get it? Who is at risk? But we all went out and started buying toilet paper for a respiratory situation. Now there were legitimate, like food shortages and other things like we're talking about meat packing plants, shutting down all that. And I guess I'm thinking like, well, if, if, if you can't eat, the toilet paper situation kind of figures itself out, like if nothing's going out, right? But we were reacting to.

What everybody else around us was doing and you know, Jeffrey's buying toilet paper, so I should probably buy toilet paper. If we sat down and logically thought about it, we would have much different choices that I think a lot of us would have made. But we were stressed, we were under pressure, we were in a brand new situation and we often times look to see what are the people around me doing. And acting on that. So I think in that sense kind of that the that herd mentality can often be worked into that action bias too.

When we don't know what to do, we're more likely to just do what everybody else around us is doing. So we're reacting to, yes, those past traumas and emotions and things like that, past experiences. But a lot of times it's we're being very heavily influenced by what everybody else around us is doing. And it's like following somebody else's road map. We don't know what somebody else's goals are. But we take directions from all these different people. When we don't know what to do, we just feel like we need to do something.

So often we use that action in that regard as an emotionally avoided coping mechanism. We think by taking action we're kind of taking control in some regards we're trying to. Respond to the situation. We're trying to sometimes just simply avoid the action of feeling what we need to feel or what might be present in our natural feelings. Sometimes we have to create that healthy psychological space to pause and allow those feelings to be to simply accept them, vulnerably acknowledge them and allow them to process through.

If you if you stop at a stoplight and you'll see people. You're there for 20 or 30 seconds. The first thing people do, they're they're on their phone. They're doing something. And I've seen people doing like videos of themselves at a stoplight, like, we can't even sit with our feelings, our thoughts for 30 seconds, 60 seconds. And I think as society, Jeffrey, we we don't interact with our thoughts and feelings, but we don't feel them. There's so many ways of numbing, and I'm not just talking about drugs and alcohol, but entertainment and busyness.

I don't think a lot of us sit with our feelings. And when we do experience some of those things, we don't know how to interact with those emotions, how to even even name and identify what it is we're actually feeling. We have a tendency to suppress that and then and then move on. You know, Chad, in that regard, when it comes to action bias, do you feel it's learned or innate? And what portion of this pattern arises as a result of either condition programming or selective reinforcement? OK. That's a huge question.

I think it's both, right so. And you you mentioned the central nervous system and the brain stem and some people refer that as like the lizard brain, like this is the most basic part of of of our our brain that is designed to react because you know, if you hear rustling in the bushes 10,000 years ago. It yeah, it might be a squirrel or a rabbit and that's your next meal. Or it might be a lion in your its next meal and you don't have time to like sit there and go through the probabilities and think through and maybe we should do maybe a study and a research to get some statistics and you just react.

Because it kept you alive in the moment. So I think that that lizard brain, it, it does obviously a lot of good things for us like you don't have to put your hand on a stove and think about, I wonder how hot that is. It pulls your hand off before you've had time to process it. So that reactivity is very, very important, but it has to be managed. So I think it is, it is very much innate. It is very much ingrained in each one of us we're born with that you can look at. A little baby and and see how a baby is wired for action.

I've got six kids, I've seen it a lot. So there's a lot of activity at our house, but I think also it's very much a learned behavior, like we were just talking about a few moments ago with watching the actions of everybody else. One of my favorite illustrations of this, I'm not sure if you're familiar with, with Fabius Quintus. Fabius Maximus. Was a a Roman general and he was basically appointed dictator. You are the most powerful guy in the world, appointed by the Roman Senate. And this was at the time that Hannibal was trying to invade Italy.

He was crossing the Alps and Fabius's strategy was to engage Hannibal a little bit, little skirmishes, almost baiting him. But he refused to go take his army and meet Hannibal. His plan was to let Hannibal come through the Alps, and it was really a battle of attrition. So Hannibal had a lot of things up against him. He had the conditions, the the geography. He was cut off from supply lines. He also had his army was a lot of Spanish mercenaries. They weren't about the mission, they were about. They wanted to plunder villages.

And what Fabius did is he had people pull all their possessions. They were burning crops, basically. They didn't give Hannibal anything along the way but the Senate. The Senate became increasingly frustrated with Fabius because they felt like he wasn't doing anything, he wasn't taking enough action. And to speed this up, just make a Long story short with with the Senate, does they eventually remove Fabius from power? And they replaced him with a guy named Gaius Baro. And under pressure of the Senate, Gaius goes and takes this army and engages Hannibal directly.

And it's a catastrophic defeat. His army is decimated. They're embarrassed, and only too late that they realized that Hannibal was like this storm, like a like a hurricane coming across land the further he came. The less power he had, he was he was losing steam as he came through the Alps and if they had simply waited and prepared, they would have been so much better off. But it was that collective action bias. So I think to your question it is, it is very much innate. But it's also learned behavior.

We see it going around and you look at this, you think of this Senate, all very smart, educated men, but they were all feeling this tension, wanting to do something. It was really hard to sit there as as one of the most powerful armies was crossing the the Alps. There's a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety, a lot of trepidation they probably saw in each other and they collectively let their action bias. Take them astray. So I I if this may be a very long way to way of of answering that question. But I think that illustrates both the the ingrained nature of that but also how it can be learned from others because everybody respond.

The Senate responded very much to what they were feeling emotionally rather than the the best way to to to execute their objective. We'd like to offer a shout out to our affiliate matching partner podmatch.com. Podmatch is the revolutionary podcasting matching system driven by AI. As an industry leader in podcast guesting and hosting, there are go to solution for creating meaningful podcast interactionspodmatch.com makes finding the ideal guest or host effortless. Stop by and visit our affiliate link today at www.thelightinside.us.

We often view life as that rush into battle, the call for immediate action and response. There are times, however, when we should pause, reflecting on our actions and decisions, when introspection and consideration call into question our strengths as humans and the need arises to take a breath before we charge ahead, as we consider how our choices will affect us and the people around us. It's in those moments that we gain insight into our true motivations and what we value most. Doing so allows us to make more conscious decisions that mirror our values and take into account the consequences of our actions.

Deliberation and calm contemplation help us to take the time to consider our decisions more thoroughly and weigh the potential outcomes that result. And it is within these moments we truly rise. I think that's an excellent story to interject today to illustrate how we often leverage the action biases to engage that illusion of control. You know, And here we see how that effective action would have transpired had we engaged a healthy window of emotional tolerance, had we quieted some of that inner voice of doubt and allowed the action to play out, allowed for healthy risk to take place.

In that regard, chat how does the action bias affect our willingness to take healthy risks? So how does the action bias interplay with our taking of healthy risks? That's what you're asking. OK, that was kind of ambiguous. The action bias can distract us from the the true risks and and I think it can cause us to misidentify. Risk and I'll, I'll just, I'll just give you an example from my field. So every time the stock market goes down, everybody knows about it and if we are in a prolonged decline, it's all you see on the news.

I mean last year it was every single day the the market did this market's going to do that and the the end is coming and the sky is falling and Chicken Little is running around and all these different things but a lot of people don't realize is. The markets are always bald and the the S&P 500 if we use that as an example and that's just the the broad U.S. stock market. It's kind of the the barometer for the US stock market since 1980 has gone down on average almost 15% a year on average is there's a decline of of almost 15% a year, but that's what everybody's paying attention to and until a couple of years ago.

What people miss, what they don't pay attention to, is the slow and steady decline of purchasing power. So in the last 62 years, the dollar has lost 90% of its value. It takes $1000 today to buy what $100 did 62 years ago. I'm using 62 just because that's the average age of a typical retire, somebody retiring this year and the volatility, that's what gets our attention, it's what gets our emotions going. It's what the media plays up. But that's not what keeps us from our long term goals that those temporary declines do not stop the permanent advance of of capital and and long term investments.

But it's that slow erosion of purchasing power for most people that is one of the biggest if not the primary risk to their long term security. But it's not what gets our attention because it's slowly happening in the background. It's subtle. And what the action bias does, it caused us to, Oh my goodness, the sky is falling. I better pull out, put all my money in cash or bonds or something like that. And what it does, it's like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire because you're you're jumping out of something that is very volatile but can grow net of inflation into something like cash that gets eaten alive by inflation.

So you actually make the situation worse. You're going in the exact. Opposite direction because the action bias, I I think short circuits that pattern again. We get that immediate gratification, we get relief from the volatility, we get relief from whatever stress we're feeling in the moment. But it often causes us to be even more exposed to the real risk. So it clouds our vision and I think a lot of times. Doesn't allow us to helpfully identify risks because we're looking at it through an emotional lens rather than through objective lens.

Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah. I love how you pointed that out in our pre conversations, how that kind of hyperbolic discounting or reaching for that quick, easy return sometimes diminishes our ability to return on that consistent, emotionally regulated invested. Longterm outcome. Was I think the action bias often times gives us temporarily relief if it if it doesn't give us some sort of temporary payoff in the sense of pleasure. It oftentimes gives us a temporary relief and and pay off in in those terms.

So whether it's you're having a difficult conversation with a loved one, maybe a spouse or a boss, something like that, we choose not to have that. We know we should, but there's relief in that moment. We're not in conflict anymore. We're taking a break, whatever. And sometimes that may be necessary, but a lot of times we that relief is extended for way too long. Think about somebody maybe trying to get in shape and. You know it's it, it's a lot easier to have bagels for breakfast than it is to have kale or whatever.

Whatever you do with kale in the morning, I don't know to have breakfast with it. But there's a relief from some sort we talked about stress earlier, there's some sort of stress or some sort of pressure that we're often feeling. And I I think when we are reacting to that again taking in the the the action bias as as our our subject for today. What we're often seeking is remediate immediate relief from something, but it rarely solves the problem. It's like it's like giving a gunshot victim morphine.

It doesn't solve any of the issues in it fat. In fact, it may exacerbate the issue, but it does give temporary relief and that's why we're so drawn to it. In that regard, what role do you feel as an unconscious factor? Social conditioning plays in how we view? That ability to take healthy risk and then also maybe address it with direct action. I think that as a society, we've conditioned ourselves to very much live in the short term, very much live in the moment. So that conditioning is very, very strong because we see it all around us and it's very easy for us to justify that seeking of relief in the short term, even if there's a long term cost.

You know, it's it's it's like the the payday loan, right? It relieves temporary financial stress at the cost of much, much more stress spread out over the long run, almost like it's happening to another person. So I think there's two things at play here. So #1 because. Our society at large is very prone to making those same decisions. We can easily justify it because we know somebody that's done the very same thing. We've seen it modeled around us. It comes back to your question about nature versus nurture.

So I think that's one part, but the other part is a lot of us don't have a great relationship with our future self. We we make decisions for us in the moment. Almost as if the person in the future like Future Chat Future Jeffrey, as if they're different people than us. And Jerry Seinfeld had a hilarious bit about Morning Time Morning guy versus night time guy, and how Night Time Guy is always making life more difficult for Morning guy. And it's funny because it's so true. We look at this in these, you know, the the Today version of you and the tomorrow version, they're they're 24 hours apart.

Not even 24 hours apart. But we're still, we're still so tempted to make decisions that make our life not harder 510 years from now, harder tomorrow, and we still do it. So I think that goes back to that just how we're wired. We are wired to react, to survive in the moment, to do it's easier in the moment and let longterm consequences work themselves out almost as if longterm consequences are being. Paid for or dealt with by a different person as if if the future me is a different human being. Now it's easy to look at that and see how something like dissociation and unhealthy overidentification comes into effect.

We see ourselves in that regard as two different people, even though essentially we're the same core person. I see that playing out for you a lot, perhaps as a financial guy. That idea of social conditioning with inflationary practices in particular, that kind of Chicken Little effect where, you know, inflation's going up, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. What do we do with our finances now? So often we're stimulated by that bandwagon effect to take some sort of action. We realize this kind of assumption of everybody else's collective anxiety.

And feel that need to act. Yes, the idea that everybody else is doing it, therefore it must be OK And I don't remember who said this, Jeffrey, but there's a there's a quote that I read recently that most people would rather be wrong in a crowd than be right by themselves. And it very much plays into this too. And you're right. I think dissociation plays a big part in this, right? Like I've never met the future version of me. I don't know him. I hope he's a nice guy. I I would. Like to think that he is, but I've never met him.

So I'm going to make decisions based on me here in the moment today. And you mentioned, you know the the some of those financial decisions. I'll just give you a couple other examples. Like if we do dissociate from our future selves, you know, you you see a couch on sale and it's like, you know, no payments till 2024 and it's like, well, 2024 that's happening to somebody else. To me it's a free couch and 2024 Chad can pay for it. And then on the other side of that, whether you're paying down debt or where you're adding towards retirement, that can feel like a cost in the moment.

I'm when I put money into my 401K, I'm paying the future version of me. But if I don't have an association, a connection with that, it does. It feels like a cost. It feels like a payment I'm making. To somebody else, not building my own future. And and then when you add the stress of what's going on in the world, people worried about recession, people worried about China, people about Russia, people. People worried about whatever it is they're worried about, it causes that dissociation to be even wider, I think.

And we double down on the here and now. And we are even more distance from the future and what the long term consequences are. I don't think people naturally look at 2nd, 3rd order consequences. It's hey, I'm going to act now. This is the immediate payoff. This is the immediate relief. This is the immediate pleasure. And we often don't go very much further than that, especially. When we are acting out of emotion, they go circling back to what you and I were talking about. Begin this conversation.

That reasoning, logical part of our mind gets quieted the the emotional centers get really, really loud. And a lot of times we aren't thinking past that, that immediate action. You know, to me that signals from my perspective, my awareness where we kind of engage some of those ego filters of pre and post conventional ego development where? Everything is happening to me as we embrace an awareness of post autonomous ego development. Post autonomous meaning we're not associating so much with that sense of self and we're able to see ourselves through that filter of a fourth person perspective.

We're able to see ourselves separate from that interaction. And simply see the various possible outcome. But I think I think that is a great point Jeffrey and in the idea of things happening to me. So we talked about agency a lot and and I think having that outside, looking at that outside perspective, you're able to see like what is a positive step you could take. It might not solve the problem, what is a positive step you could take towards a resolution, but we often don't get there especially when we are looking at AS.

Everything happening to me, there's a sense of victimization that happens. And I think that when it taken to extreme, if we get in the habit of of relinquishing our agency, we can get to a point of learned helplessness where we are no longer looking for solutions anymore because we don't believe we're in a position to bring those solutions to fruition. And I think it's really easy to focus on what we can't control rather than looking looking introspectively at the behaviors, the variables that we can influence and just look at look at the news on any given day.

I mean it's so much is focused on the things outside of our control. And I think that that does lead to that that victimization, that sense of look at all these things happening to me. From that perspective, we're so often making a lot of our life decisions based on our self concept, our sense of agency. In that regard, what role do you feel healthy, constructive and empathetic outside feedback play in shifting our perspective and maybe disengaging from some of that action we feel to take on? Around I think going back to what you already said about about viewing.

From trying to view your situation from outside perspective, we're never going to be able to view it completely objectively, but I think it helps, it helps us filter feedback when we are trying to view it from that Lisa that like fourth person perspective. But we're less likely to react defensively we're we're less likely to push back against that feedback. And I think I think I we talked about this in the pre conversation, you know my background was in biochemistry. And it was we always, we're always doing experiments and we weren't.

So we weren't so married to the outcome. It was about learning from the process. And there we we realized there was a lot of variables we either couldn't control or we just didn't know how those variables were going to interact. So it wasn't so much what the outcome of this experiment was going to be. It was learning from the process and gaining that feedback. And I think a lot of people. When they're engaged, especially in maybe a stressful situation, they aren't looking at the feedback and what insight they can gain from the process as much as they are trying to leverage an outcome that may not be completely in their control.

And what ends up happening is we get outcome focused and we lose the attention of the inputs, The inputs being the actions and behaviors. That we can influence the variables that we do have some control over and it it leads us to this this place of again that loss of agency. But when when we are trying to control things we can't control like the outcome of a situation, I think that's where action bias gets really stirred up because we just we're trying more things and sometimes we're just doing more of the wrong thing.

It's like finding we're going in the wrong direction and figuring well we better go faster like. What we're doing isn't working. Let's do more of it because maybe that will help us and and we end up we end up losing sight of what are the things that I can do in this moment that can actually bring me closer to where I want to be and and we have to be willing to take in that feedback to learn and looking at our life. Almost as an experiment of sorts and not taking those things personal, that's super hard.

As I'm saying this to you, I'm realizing like even in my own life, that's so hard when when you get feedback you don't want to hear and looking at it from almost like you're reading this in a narrative in a book and and not looking at. At not reacting out of my own self preservation, my own ego, my own hurt, and looking OK, What can I learn from that experience? And we've both heard the phrase you learn a lot more from from losses than from wins and. But I think that's only if we're willing to. So often, as we mentioned earlier, we get caught in that Chicken Little effect and we eventually are running around like that chicken with our heads cut off simply.

Trying to find a way to suppress what's going on. Chad, this has been such a great talk today. I want to take a moment if we can. And as we're creating kind of this healthy psychological distance to step back from things and allow some space for action to happen, What are three tips or three insights you can kind of sum up today that allow us to more effectively engage that state? The first thing I would say is. Focusing on inputs and not outcomes, kind of like I just mentioned, taking a step back from the desired outcome and looking at what can I do to better leverage that.

So I'm just going to give you a quick example like let's say my desired outcome is I need to lose £10. That's not completely under my control. There are a lot of things that are going to influence that. But today what I can do is I can, I can not have. The soda for lunch or I can go to the gym after work, or I can not eat after 6:00 o'clock or whatever it is, but those are the inputs that I can control. I don't necessarily have complete control of the outcome, but it's looking at what are the inputs that I can leverage that do work on the outcome, even if they don't completely control it.

Hopefully that makes sense. So it's focusing on inputs rather than outcomes. I think the other thing would be to to take time of self reflection. For some people, that might be meditation, for some would be breathing. For some people might be working out. Sometimes it might be just counting towards three in the middle of a difficult conversation, but learning a technique. And again, there's a lot of ways to do this, breathing techniques, a lot of different things. There's allow that cognitive part of your your brain to to catch back up so you are less likely to react on the whirlwind around you and you're better able to take appropriate action even in the midst of uncertainty.

Third thing I would say getting clear on on what you want the outcome to be. So even if you can't completely control it, it's like having a if you're building a house, it's like having a a sketch or rendering. Of what you want that house to look like when you're done. So if you do make a decision, you can see does this decision align with what that future product is going to look like knowing that that's that future product that might evolve, that might change that house might not look exactly the way that I've designed it the way I wanted to.

But does my action today line up with that? And again, it's pulling us out of the moment and. And trying to to close the the gap between who we are today and where we want to be, who we want to become in the future. So there isn't as much dissociation. So what is, where's the objective? What am I hoping to gain from this decision, this outcome? And I want to thank you for such thoughtful and encouraging insight today. We all want our numbers to add up as we travel this journey of self actualization and personal growth our financial.

Situation playing a large role in that, Where can our listeners go to to reach out to you Chad and get some insight on how to make their financial numbers add up for future growth? I. Appreciate you asking that at our website is veritasalaska.com just because we were founded here where we have folks all over the nation and if if you folks internationally as well and our biggest social platform is probably LinkedIn, you can just search Chad Hufford, Veritas and you'll find us on there. And one of the things that that I've seen, Jeffrey, is finance such a big part of life and if and if we can make better financial decisions and create a better relationship with our finances, our money, it requires so much discipline, perseverance and patience to do that.

It's amazing when we see people take control there, how other areas of life start falling into place. So finance is just a tool that I've been able to use to help people. Pursue a more fulfilling and a more intentional and purposeful life. I love a lot of what you've done on your show doing the same thing and and you're you're using different mediums, but I think we're both after the same goal. So it's been a pleasure to be here and to chat with you and to speak into the lives of your audience, and this has been an honor.

Thank you my friend. This certainly has added up to a very enlightening and engaging conversation, so thank you for sharing that, my friend. Namaste. Lighten me, acknowledges the lighten you. Let's do this again soon. I would absolutely love it. This has been a lot of fun for me. I appreciate your question. Some were very challenging. Hopefully I was able to give some good answers. You kept me on my toes and this this was a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have to likewise my friend. I look forward to having many more conversations.

Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Many blessings. Exploring the unconscious patterns that drive this behavior, Chad and I have shared how the action bias often hinders our goals and inhibits our ability for self actualization. Using the skills of behavioral management frequently utilized to grow our monetary assets, we've illustrated the impact this detrimental heuristic place in our ability to make more effective decisions and take more assertive action. Chad also shared how healthy risk assessment and taking the time to pause often create more beneficial outcomes throughout our life, empowering you to engage in calmer, more confident and fruitful action.

Now we'd like to hear what you found meaningful in today's show. Tag us at social media at the Light inside podcast. Sharing your key takeaways and insights will share us with a friend or loved one who you feel will find value and meaning in this message. As always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been the light inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.

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