Athlete CEO #46: Avoiding Burnout and Finding Wholeness | Andy Maurer
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Episode Summary
It’s often said, “it’s lonely at the top.”
As venture capitalists, business executives, and professional athletes at the highest level, there can often be a mentality that you should just focus on performing and avoid feelings of burn out, toxic stress, or loneliness. However, we’ve all seen examples of - or felt ourselves - this mentality not being sustainable over the long term.
In this episode of the Athlete CEO, Erik is joined by Andy Maurer, licensed therapist and emotional wellness coach specializing in leadership, trauma and emotional health. Andy utilizes cutting edge clinical research paired with therapeutic best practices and strategies to help high performance leaders - including CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs - operate at a higher caliber and in healthy and sustainable ways.
Erik and Andy discuss pursuing wholeness and avoiding fragmentation while leading and give practical steps to starting work on your inner game.
Episode Highlights:
95% of cognition happens at the subconscious level (2:33)
Can we overcome our subconscious? (3:40)
Two kinds of processing (4:13)
Logic vs Emotion (5:29)
Demystifying “emotional wellness” (7:31)
“With emotional wellness coaching, what I'm really trying to get across is I'm trying to help people live an integrated whole life as a leader. So, I focus a lot less on how to get rid of problems and I focus more on how to bring about something in the leader's life. Oftentimes, I see that they're fragmented, they're disjointed, they're lost internally, they don't know what they feel, they don't know who they are in a lot of ways, and my job is to help them reclaim that or rediscover that.” – Andy Maurer
The difference between therapy and emotional wellness (9:37)
The stats on entrepreneurs (12:17)
The big issue that the top business editorials miss (12:45)
The external vs internal (13:16)
Fears about addressing your inner game (17:06)
Defining “wholeness” (18:57)
Battling imposter syndrome (23:43)
Tools and tactics in pursuing wholeness (26:12)
How burnout happens (28:44)
When dialing in fitness and nutrition isn’t enough (29:53)
Taking first steps toward emotional wellness (31:57)
Practicing reflection (36:53)
The impacts of toxic stress (42:45)
How the body deals with stress (46:06)
Resources Mentioned:
Stay Connected
Andy Maurer: LinkedIn | Website | Ted Talk
AWM Capital: IG | LinkedIn | Facebook | AWMCap.com
+ Read the Transcript
Erik Averill (01:20): Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Athlete CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Erik Averill. I'm the co-founder of AWM Capital, where we partner with our clients to unlock the full potential of their wealth and one of our core beliefs is that your human capital is actually the greatest driver of your net worth. And so, this podcast, the Athlete CEO Podcast is all about bringing to you the tools, the tactics, and the thought leaders to help you unlock that potential.
Erik Averill (01:50): And so, today, I'm super excited to have a conversation with a dear friend, someone who has had a tremendous impact on me both personally and professionally, Andy Maurer, and Andy is an emotional wellness coach. His background is actually as a licensed therapist, specializing in leadership, trauma and emotional health. And Andy has spent his professional career really curating the best and most cutting edge strategies and tools to help leaders live emotionally healthy lives and so, this is right up our alley. And so, Andy, thanks for being here.
Andy Maurer (02:31): Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Erik Averill (02:33): So, where I wanted to start is I read something on your website that totally caught my attention. You have this crazy stat that 95% of all cognition happens at the subconscious level. What exactly does that mean? You have it on your site for a reason. Why is it so important?
Andy Maurer (02:52): Yeah, so that study was done by a Harvard research professor and he was looking at consumer purchasing to some degree, but what he found was that the way we make decisions on the day-to-day basis is subconscious, primarily. Okay? So, how the brain is structured is you have your logical brain, which goes over the front and over the top of your head. And then everything below that we can call the subconscious, so that's your emotional brain and your survival brain to make it as simple as possible. So, when he says that 95% of our decision making is subconscious, what he's saying is, your emotion, where you come from and the story from, really from zero to 18, or from zero to 40, whatever it is, shapes and directs how we make decisions and why we make decisions.
Erik Averill (03:40): So, in my thinking, Daniel Kahneman's famous book, Thinking Fast and Slow: System 1, System 2, as much as we really want to act like we can control our day and be so aware of everything, what I'm hearing you actually say is, the majority of your behaviors is just going to follow what subconscious? What are essentially, is that true? How do we combat that? Is it really do we have an ability to overcome that subconscious? How do we walk into that?
Andy Maurer (04:13): Yeah, well, there's two different kinds of processing. There's top down processing and then there's bottom up processing. So, top down processing is essentially, I use logic and I use reason to direct my behavior. And oftentimes that works. Most times that works, but when we're under stress or when we're under fight, flight, or freeze or when we're under what I call toxic stress, which we can get into later, that actually sends energy not up to our logical brain, it sends energy down to our emotional brain. So, when we're under stressed, it's very difficult to tap into the logical, rational part of our brain and much more likely that we're going to be driven by the emotional brain.
Andy Maurer (04:54): So, we see this with a lot of leaders where one of their greatest fears is that, "If I get to the end of my life and I have money and I have success, and I have fame, but I've lost everything that's most important to me, my family, my friends, my sense of identity, my faith, I don't know who I am, and but I have all these things," that's one of their biggest fears. Well, a lot of people, they fear that, but they don't know how to get off of that treadmill. So, they're running through life, they're going through life thinking, "I don't want to lose the most important things in my life," but they don't know how to stop that train that they're on.
Andy Maurer (05:29): So, what that actually shows is that the subconscious part of their brain that needs to be wanted, that needs to be liked, that needs to perform that is their sense of identity, that's driving the decisions they make. And that's why so frequently leaders get to the end of their life, and they've lost the most important things because they haven't slowed down to identify some of the emotional drives that are there pushing that behavior. Now, a lot of them would say, "Well, all I need to do is think rationally or change the way I think, and I'll overcome that." But when we look at it statistically and when we look at it from anecdotal research and my work with clients is that's actually really hard to do because we weren't taught to slow down to focus on what's in here. We are taught to focus on using logic to trump emotion, so it works sometimes to have logic trump emotion, but not under stress.
Erik Averill (06:24): Yeah, I mean, it resonates. I would usually say I have a friend that may work with you, but I think this is the story of how we actually started working professionally together is we've known each other for a very long time and it's interesting. And we'll get into this of being on a background as a former professional athlete, I've used coaches in my entire life, right? Whether it's my nutrition coach or my strength and conditioning coach, yet, when it came to a lot of what you're talking about the emotional wellness, my thought was never to hire a coach, it was just to rationalize it was better strategy, right?
Erik Averill (07:03): And maybe you can go into a little bit of this, about why our minds are so conditioned to think and think we can rationalize it, but it was really interesting. It wasn't until there was a point of maximum stress in the middle of COVID, having our third child move in, having a mother-in-law move in, all of these choices that I rationally made and I knew I could survive, but emotionally, it finally forced me to that.
Erik Averill (07:31): One of the things that I know our audience is listening and thinking because they're professional athletes, they're venture capitalists, they're founders, they're leaders, it's like, "I'm all about coaches and therapists. Not so much. We're talking about emotional wellness, like this goes in this realm of what my feelings. I just want to talk about strategy tactics. If I have better control on those things, I can manage my life." Can you step into that and help us demystify why we have such a hard time hiring emotional wellness coaches or therapists?
Andy Maurer (08:07): Yeah, I think partly because we call it emotional wellness. We use the word emotion and that's just very difficult if you've never been taught. So, most of us have were never taught from... I know I didn't learn how to deal with emotion or how to communicate it, how to feel it, how to identify it, so I'm stepping into a space that is very new for me. Now, for a lot of leaders, they step into new places that are uncomfortable, but they can learn quickly. Emotion and how to analyze it, how to assess it, how to feel it is a long journey. So, it's a long-term investment. It's not like reading a book or taking a course quickly and learning a skill, it's a way of being.
Andy Maurer (08:47): So, that makes it a lot more difficult is because there's a long-term investment into this process. The other thing that I would say is that I think what the hang-up is, is with therapists, you go to a therapist, because you have a problem that's big enough emotionally that you want to overcome. With emotional wellness coaching, what I'm really trying to get across is I'm trying to help people live an integrated whole life as a leader. So, I focus a lot less on how to get rid of problems and I focus more on how to bring about something in the leader's life. Oftentimes, I see that they're fragmented, they're disjointed, they're lost internally, they don't know what they feel, they don't know who they are in a lot of ways, and my job is to help them reclaim that or rediscover that.
Andy Maurer (09:37): So, I think part of the difference here between therapy and emotional wellness coaching is therapy often attacks an issue like depression, anxiety, and what I'm trying to do with leaders is help them reach for something more. I'm trying to help them reach for a sense of wholeness or completeness internally and it's not quite an executive coach because I'm not necessarily working on the business life of the leader, I'm working on the personal leader. I'm working on their emotional, their relational life, knowing that if we can cheer up the leader and research bears this out, if we can help them be more emotionally intelligent and healthier, they're going to thrive better at business. That's how that flushes out long term.
Erik Averill (10:19): Yeah, it resonates with me. I think of we've had Josiah Igono, who has his PhD in Performance Psychology, on here a few times and a lot of the guests have asked me of like you've got a performance coach on there and now, I know with you is, because if we're truly trying to unlock the full potential, as I heard, you say, 95% of unlocking our potential is actually subconscious.
Erik Averill (10:44): And so, but there's this fear, I think of, "If I start to get into this emotional thing, is it showing weakness?" As opposed to your frame of reference of saying, "No, this is actually additive." How do we reframe, how do we redirect some things? And really what I heard from you, and this wasn't even the reason I started working with you professionally, but it's like, "If all I want to do is actually optimize myself, I can't do that without addressing this." And I think that that's a really interesting challenge of going, anybody who says, "Oh, I don't need to work on that," they're never going to reach their full potential.
Erik Averill (11:25): And I think the other thing is, we really don't have to be convinced of the importance of this because when we look at one of the benefits we have here is we're very blessed to work with the best in the world at what they do, whether it's the athletes, the founders, yet there's this history, unfortunately, very, very successful people struggling with things, right? In the last couple of years, we see Anthony Bourdain, we see Kate Spade take their lives and you're literally sitting there going like, "This guy had it all, right? Wealth, fame, the coolest job on the planet."
Erik Averill (11:58): And one of the things that stuck out with me was I had an opportunity to listen to your TED talk earlier, whether that was this year or last year and you shared some staggering stats about entrepreneurs. Would you mind just telling our listeners a little bit about that research? Because I want them to sink in the gravity of like what's at stake?
Andy Maurer (12:17): Yeah. So, what we found with entrepreneurs is entrepreneurs have a much higher rate of mental health disorder, so twice the rate of depression, three times the rate of addiction, six times the rate of ADHD, and 11 times the rate of bipolar disorder. Now, you have to ask the question, do people with mental health issues get into entrepreneurship or does entrepreneurship mess them up so much that they have these? I think it's a combination of both.
Andy Maurer (12:45): When I was looking at this data, I surveyed 10 of the most well-known business editorials, the Harvard Business Review of Entrepreneur, Forbes, all of these magazines, all of these articles, 5000 articles, I looked through addressing the issue of trauma, okay? And what I found was only about a handful actually talked about the issue of trauma and every single time it was talked about it, it was how the leader can help support an employee with their trauma.
Erik Averill (13:15): Interesting.
Andy Maurer (13:16): It was never about how we are going to help the leader address their mental health, help the leader address their own trauma, and trauma is a hot term, which essentially means that something overwhelming, we experience something overwhelming and that's had lasting impact on us emotionally and psychologically and professionally, long term. So, what we see from the research is that entrepreneurs do have higher rates of mental health. And what you described with Kate Spade and a couple of these other leaders, I think it's important to note, there is a part of them that is lonely and there's a part of them that's not lonely. We often say it's lonely at the top for leaders. I agree with that and I disagree with that.
Andy Maurer (14:01): When leaders go up to the top, and they have wealth, they have fame, they have influence, people want them, they want something from them, there is a part of them, so if I use my water bottle here, there's the external that they put out. That part is not lonely, that part is doing great. They have all the fame, they have all the connections, people want them, they want to be attracted to them, but what's behind that image, that's the part that's lonely and most leaders don't know how to bring that forward. So, when they say, "I don't really, I feel lonely, I don't feel connected. I feel lost," well, it's not this part out in front that feels lost, it's this other part of the leader that they've learned to shut down.
Andy Maurer (14:41): And what I've seen with a lot of my clients is most of the time they come in, because they have this part of them that's a messy, that's acting out that is feeling depressed, discouraged, disconnected from their spouse, their kids and they want me to destroy or take care of or cut off this part that is getting in the way of their performance.
Erik Averill (15:05): Totally.
Andy Maurer (15:06): That's why they hire me. Oftentimes is they come in and they say, "I got this issue going on, can you please help me cut this guy off?" And what I will tell them is, "I will not do that because if I do that, I cut off a part of who you are and that's not what it means to be emotionally whole." If you think of them as co-founders, you can't run a successful company with one co-founder out in front thriving and succeeding and one co-founder in the back being hidden and pushed down and neglected. They both have to come front and center and have equal values, so the part of you that performs and the part of you that is successful has just as much value as the part of you that struggles, the part of you that ask difficult questions inside, and the part of you that emotionally is vulnerable.
Andy Maurer (15:50): Now, if I asked you, Erik, which part of you is better with your kids when you get home? The logical business guy who's successful or the guy who's more emotional connected, who can tap into play?
Erik Averill (16:02): Yeah. I mean, clear answer, right? I think we all talk about it. Your kids could care less the size of the house you live in, what you do for a living, little Levy my three-year-old, all he wants to do is get down and play trucks, right?
Andy Maurer (16:15): Absolutely.
Erik Averill (16:16): He's not facts, figures, professionalism, resumes, he could care less about that.
Andy Maurer (16:21): Yes. So, it's a matter of how do we balance these two parts that have equal value, because that part has value, too for connection and relationships. It's not... if you think about a car, you don't want the performance driven manager part driving the car and you put the more vulnerable part in the trunk. They need to be next to you in the seat. And oftentimes, we'll feel like our emotion is driving the car and in that times, we need to take a step back and we need to assess, "Is my logic or my reason driving the car?" But don't put any part in the trunk, because they each have equal value and they need to go forward in life with you. So, it's not about cutting off those parts, it's about learning how to get to know them, understand them, and value them for what they bring to the table.
Erik Averill (17:06): Yeah. And I think it's helpful when you explain that to me because when I first started my professional work with you, I think there was this subconscious belief like, "Are you going to uncover something about me that is actually going to hurt my performance at work?" And I know that's faulty thinking, but we've heard these studies years and years again of, hey, some of the best founders are actually just highly jacked up people, right? The things that drive the athletes, the entrepreneurs are really, they're super unhealthy, but if you fix that, they're no longer going to be successful.
Erik Averill (17:47): And I think that that's just not true, but it's a fear of this, "You know what? I don't want to even touch that component." And something you said was helpful, it was like, "No, we're going to affirm the things that are healthy and if we can actually get the things that we can correct and heal, it's going to maximize it," right? And I think that that's just something that's really difficult of feeling like, "You know what? If I go into this therapy, am I going to turn into this emotional like puddle of softness?" I know probably I've talked to you about that.
Erik Averill (18:27): One of the things that you've hit on and it resonates a lot with us here at AWM because one of the things that we see is an issue how people treat their money or their life is, it's disintegrated, it's compartmentalize, it's separate. They treat it as if, "Hey, you know what? I can keep my money over here, my values over here, and my priorities over here." And what we always say is, "Money is a means to an end, right? And you're a whole person. You're a human being not defined by one aspect."
Erik Averill (18:57): You've used this word wholeness a few times. Can you define it for us? Can you talk a little bit more about what it means to be whole? And maybe where some areas where you don't see that happening?
Andy Maurer (19:09): I think it's helpful to address the issue of fragmentation first, because that's really the opposite of wholeness. I like to define terms by defining their opposites. So, the idea of fragmentation is that something that was naturally together if you think about a glass sphere, for instance and I dropped it on the ground and it's split into a bunch of different pieces. That is no longer whole, that is fragmented. Now, there might be a large portion that's left, but really, it's not whole until those other pieces kind of get patched back on to create kind of that glass sphere again. So, when we talk about fragmentation, we're really talking about parts of our life, parts of our story, different emotions. It could be anger, it could be sadness, it could be fear, different relationships that we choose to push down or push aside or numb out.
Andy Maurer (19:59): Now, really difficult to be whole when we're taking unique pieces of our story or unique pieces of our life and we're pushing them down, or we're hiding them. And what I see from a lot of leaders is there are two main fears that drive them from not getting close to people. And when I say close, I don't mean professionally, I mean, really letting someone in. And I relate to a lot of this, okay? So, just thinking this morning, I've been walking this journey of wholeness, trying to walk this pathway of wholeness for the last 20 years of my life. How do I feel? What do I do with these parts that are messy?
Andy Maurer (20:35): But two main fears that drive me and that drive a lot of leaders are if someone gets too close to me, they will peel back the curtain, and they will look and they will either say, "Oh, my gosh, there's a lot of messy stuff there. I had no idea you were so put together and professional. Look at all these hidden behaviors. This hidden lifestyle." That's one fear or the second fear is that they're going to get close, they're going to peel back the curtain and they're going to go, "Oh, there's not much there." You are successful, you're a CEO, you make a lot of money, you have a lot of fame, but when we really dig in deep, there's nobody in there. There's no depth, there's no security, there's no identity.
Andy Maurer (21:14): So, it's a fear of being too much or not being enough and oftentimes, what we do with that broken glass sphere is we try to patch it with money and fame and success. And it looks really good, but when someone gets close, they don't realize all they have to do is touch it and it falls apart and then what do they see on the inside. And what's on the inside drives the way you do things externally. So, wholeness is really working from the inside out where fragmentation is patching from the outside to try to get something on the inside and we see this all the time.
Andy Maurer (21:50): I use the analogy of a clay pot. If you've ever done pottery work, you stick it on the wheel and you spin the wheel and it rotates and you apply your hands, you apply pressure externally or tools and that will actually create shape, but the only way to make the inside larger is to actually put your hand inside the pot and push out. So, there's no way to apply pressure outside onto the pot to make it larger on the inside. And that goes, it's very similar to how I talk about with leaders is we like the pressure, we like the performance, we like the "I want to feel responsible to people and that's what drives me." But we're putting all this external pressure and as we do that our internal world shrinks. Our sense of identity, our sense of purpose and meaning.
Andy Maurer (22:39): What we have to do, which is wholeness, is putting our hand on the inside and depositing things in there that push back against those external pressures and really allow us to be Andy at work and not, "Who do I have to be at work?" So, really, I'm tapping into my identity, my sense of purpose and meaning and I'm living from that as enough rather than trying to put on, on the outside to make me feel something on the inside. So, a couple of different ways to look at it, but really, fragmentation is putting on the outside in hopes that you'll get something on the inside and wholeness is depositing something internally, identity, worth and value, purpose and meaning and allowing that to shape us externally.
Erik Averill (23:24): Yeah, super helpful and a few things that resonated with me there was that difference of who I think I need to show up and be based off of all these external things versus "This is who I am as Erik," right?
Andy Maurer (23:43): Yes.
Erik Averill (23:43): And we have this buzzword of authenticity today and I know that resonates with a lot of us, I just don't think most of us know how to show up in that way because our whole life we have tried to construct a brand, right? A perception and there's that imposter syndrome fear that says, whether I'm too much or not enough, that all of a sudden there are these moments that you've asked me or we can ask ourselves of, "When are you most natural?"
Erik Averill (24:20): And one of the things you've really helped me understand is, "That's how you've been created. That's the gift." And you're actually withholding that from your company, from your clients, from your friends, your family when you show up with some assumption of what you think the world wants you to be as opposed to, "No, this is how you're uniquely created and that's authentic."
Erik Averill (26:12): So, Andy, as we move in to this portion of the conversation around, what are some tools, what are some tactics that if I'm just starting for the first time on this journey of what it means to pursue being a whole leader in emotional wellness, where would you point our listeners?
Andy Maurer (26:30): Yeah. Well, if you're listening and you have some inclination that you've been thinking about this for a while, that's a really good starting place. Research shows that most people when we look at behavior change, so I was a personal trainer for 10 years before I got into this work, which means I dealt with a lot of behavior change, very difficult behavior change. Fitness and consistency around your body and around fitness and around nutrition is very difficult to achieve, so research shows when we look at behaviors of change that there's a large percentage of people that are not ready for it.
Andy Maurer (27:05): They don't want, it hasn't been in their way of thinking, they don't think they need it. Now, for those people, it will typically take some crisis in their life, okay? So, the internal pressure will become greater than the cost of stepping in to do this work. So, let me say that again. What's happening in here has to get bigger and greater. The cost, the pressure has to get large enough to overcome that first step of really stepping in and doing a deep dive on what's inside, what's going on inside, so that's a majority of people, but there are a select few of people who are ready to really step in and want to do that work and I think the best place to start is really getting good at acknowledging that you need help. That's really hard to do.
Andy Maurer (27:53): All the work that I've ever done with clients, we will not progress past the first stage, if they are fighting by keeping an image up the entire time. And really, I understand, that's really difficult, because they've been doing that their entire life...
Erik Averill (28:08): Totally.
Andy Maurer (28:08): ... if they're a professional athlete, if they're a leader, if they're a CEO. They're used to this image that they really think is them at this point. So, when I ask them to take that image down, they don't know how to do that because they just think that that's a part of who they are. Now, I can kind of see beyond that. I can see more of who they are. So really, it's getting to a point of at least acknowledging, "I'm ready to let that wall come down and do a discovery. Take a journey to figure out who I am and to own, I know some things that I don't really know."
Andy Maurer (28:44): The hard part about this work, Erik, is with sports, with business, those things literally begin to eat you alive. Okay? As you become successful business and professional life and sports or as a CEO, the higher up you go, the whole industry kind of sucks your internal role. It kind of eats you and you wake up one day realizing, "Oh, man, who am I? What's my drive? What's my purpose? And what's my meaning?" And that's why burnout happens a lot, that's why depression happens a lot, so that's really common. So, it's not just these leaders' fault that they've got to this point. There's a culture of cultural pressure telling them that they have to be a certain way.
Andy Maurer (29:30): And you said it perfectly when you expressed what would it look like for them to show up as is and recognize that that is not only enough, but it is the best thing for people in their life to show up as Andy or to show up as Erik or to show up as Brad or Jennifer. That that is the best thing and they will have the greatest sense of purpose and meaning in that because it aligns with who they are, not who they have to be.
Erik Averill (29:53): Yeah, and there's so many things resonate when you were talking about your background as being a personal trainer. I was actually listening in to one of Dr. Peter Attia's podcasts recently and it was actually body composition, insulin resistance and then Topo Chico, which is his vice. But one of the interesting things he was talking about one of his patients that had the perfect nutrition from an exercise regimen, just incredible, yet she wasn't able to move forward in a lot of her gains. And what it came to find out is she really hadn't dealt with some trauma of losing her dad.
Erik Averill (30:30): And you can feel, especially as a professional athlete that I'm talking to you, it's like you have dialed in your sleep, you have your exercise, you have these other things, yet there's a whole part of your life that you're denying actually exists because you're actually acting as if you're not human and that's one of the things that that really points to doing this work of going, this is what unlocks the uniqueness of who you are and the ability to perform when you do the hard work.
Erik Averill (31:03): And one of the things that you helped me understand when I came to start working with you is also, this is not a transaction. This is not a one-time thing and we should know this as leaders, right? It's skin in the game, the businesses that survive play the long game. The athletes that show up Tom Brady, 43, Super Bowl, again, right? It's the long game. That this is a journey, this is a process, and it's got to be something. It's a lifestyle that we have to commit to.
Erik Averill (31:38): If you've got someone who says. "All right, Andy, I'm willing to start to really reflect on this and have these conversations," are there some tools you would point them towards to start or maybe some rhythms or practices? Can you talk about, maybe what a first session would be like, in sitting down working with you?
Andy Maurer (31:57): Yeah. I think it's really important to recognize that what I'm teaching clients to do is to get on the pathway of wholeness. I'm not teaching them how to fully become whole. I'm not even there yet. What I'm doing is I'm teaching them to get on the pathway to wholeness, and have the awareness to recognize when you get off that like myself, and everyone else who does this work that there are days and there are seasons when you get off and you have to come back. But if you don't know where home base is, if you don't know where home is, you can't come back to it.
Andy Maurer (32:29): So really, I help them identify what is wholeness and how do we get on that pathway, and the first thing that I do is I learn their story. So, typically, we do a deep dive for three hours. I knew you, so we didn't do that. I knew your story pretty well, but I do a three-hour deep dive with clients where we dig in deep on story, on relationships, on where do they want to go, what are their drives and that allows me to understand the client really, really well. Once again, all I ask my client is to be brutally honest and don't bring him BS and we will be totally fine as we start that journey together.
Andy Maurer (33:09): Having a teachable mind, a teachable heart is everything and that's how it goes for everything within sports within business. The other thing that I would say is as a personal trainer, I would never be a good trainer. If I had someone do 10 push-ups and then we stayed at 10. We just kept going. Someone would probably like me for doing that, but I wouldn't be getting them where I know they could be unless I pushed them to 15 and then 20, and then 30, and then 45, and then 60. And you keep pushing your body and you feel in your body, the lactic acid starts to burn, okay? You build up this burning sensation and your body is literally telling you, "Stop now." It's a survival mechanism. Lactic acid is a safety survival mechanism to say, "Don't push your muscles anymore. Stop."
Andy Maurer (34:00): But professional athletes know that when you push beyond that point, that's when the growth begins. It's the same way with emotion. That when you get in this space, if you can value the discomfort, you'll feel in your body, "Gosh, I don't want to do this." That's why I have clients typically sign up for six months to 12 months is because I know they will want to get out of there once they start to feel the discomfort and they have to build the tolerance. They have to work through that. That's why in most exercise programs people fail because they get into it, they're ready to do it and they make it a transaction and then they bail out because the pain gets too great.
Andy Maurer (34:36): What I think is a really good starting place is to take that professional business or sports mindset into a different sphere, which is the emotional sphere and learn when I feel the discomfort, when I feel like my body is getting tense when my heart tightens up when my shoulders tense up, when everything in my body wants to get out of this room right now, acknowledge and name it and move through it. We build resistance to it, we build a tolerance to it, and that's what makes leaders great in that area. It's not just picking up a couple of things, it's the practical, really leaning into it and feeling it and moving through and getting better at feeling it.
Erik Averill (35:13): Yeah. Something that hits me is once again how we are fragmented in the way that we approach life is, is we're brains on a stick. I forget who exactly is credited with saying that, but it's we disconnect, even our thoughts, our emotions and our physical bodies. And so, I know with you, a lot of times it will be these exercises of "Close your eyes, figure out where you're at, deep breath. What's your body telling you?" There's been all this research, Peter Attia, again, 15 minutes of breath work, of meditation actually has some of the best health benefits that there are for longevity and health. Yet, we a lot of times, it's even when you say stopping and close your eyes, my language will be, "Well, I think," as opposed to this is like, "I don't even know what's going on with my body."
Erik Averill (36:10): And so, resources like body keeps the score or something that really helped me was Dr. Curt Thompson's book, Anatomy of the Soul, when he's got this, essentially write your personal story. And I think how unfamiliar we are with our own personal stories is super interesting is there are times I sit and sit down with you or in conversations that you've pressed me to now have with some important people in my life. And I'm like, "Man, I didn't even remember that," or "I didn't even know that that was a thing" because we're not very reflective. And maybe, just talk about what are some of those exercises and things that people can experience?
Andy Maurer (36:53): Yeah. And some of these come out of Sports Psychology. When I taught Sports Psychology at the college level, which I did for two years, there were a lot of these similar techniques that we would use both in the work that I do with emotional wellness coaching with Sports Psychology and one of those is really using your five senses to come into a state of mindfulness.
Andy Maurer (37:16): So, what I'll have clients do is I'll have them close their eyes and I'll have them just listen to something for 60 seconds. Okay? So, if we pause here and we just pause and we listen, I'd hear the air conditioner, I'd hear the cars outside, I hear maybe someone walking by the office and when we can focus on just one of our five senses for 60 seconds, and then we go to smell, we just focus on a smell, maybe put lotion in your hand and you smell that or cologne.
Andy Maurer (37:44): When we do that for 60 seconds for each sense, we're really taking our nervous system and we're recalibrating it. We're bringing it down to baseline, okay? Something at baseline we can work from, but if it's too activated, okay? It's really, really, really, really hard to work with if something is too activated. So, that's one technique is using each of our five senses to really focus on it for 60 seconds.
Andy Maurer (38:07): The other thing, you described it, but having clients close their eyes. Sometimes, I will do entire sessions where my eyes are closed or my client's eyes are closed, because when you don't have to look at someone and you don't have to assess, "What do they think about me? What are they reading from me?" You can now begin to tap into, "Okay, what's really inside?" Not who I have to be, not what I should be saying, but what's actually inside.
Andy Maurer (38:35): So, oftentimes and you know this, but in coaching, I'll close my eyes, because what I want to do in that moment is I want to tap in and I want to check in with you. The simple act of closing our eyes is a reflective process to take us inside. So, you don't need to maintain eye contact all the time, you can have moments where you literally close your eyes and that is a reflective process to slow down and check out what's inside.
Erik Averill (39:00): And I think one of the most powerful things I've been a part of is actually the opposite of where you used a different, part of our five senses and maybe it was vision or I don't know, this probably has a lot more, but I'll never forget. I think, maybe we're... I don't even know location. We're either here or we were in Memphis. I think we were in Memphis. Yeah, it was Memphis and we're sitting in this room of just incredible leaders, some incredible professional athletes, but people worth lots and lots of money and some of the most incredible founders I know.
Erik Averill (39:40): And you circle this up, right? And you said, "Who are the brave volunteers? I just want you to sit in this chair." And you lined up four people on one side, four people on the other and you had them do this exercise of just holding your hands out to one another. And it's hard to describe on this video, but I imagine if these individuals did this, right? And it wasn't long. I mean, I think you had us hold our hands up and look at the other individual for, I don't know, 60 seconds, maybe two minutes.
Erik Averill (40:13): And I remember one of my dear friends, who is just the most kind, just incredible dude, very successful. He's the CEO of a publicly traded company and just tears all of a sudden pouring down his face, and you asked him a simple question of like, "It's really hard for you to ask for help." And in a two-minute exercise, you broke this gentleman. And I think those are the types of things that are going in inside of us that we don't even know is happening.
Erik Averill (40:47): And going back to even if your intent to start this is, "I just want to be the best," right? "I want to be the master of my craft, I want to move our company forward." For me, "I want to move my family for it, I want to have an impact on my communities, and the world at large. Yet, I can't do that if I've got these things going on." So just a powerful story that I was able to be a witness of was super helpful.
Andy Maurer (41:15): Yeah. And I do that frequently when I go and speak that exercise and it's a very common experience, so that wasn't the only one. There are lots of experiences like that that happened and the reason why I was able to do that exercise was because six months before, I had to do that exercise in my own work with my therapist, and she asked me to put my hands out and I literally cannot hold my hands out, like my hands would drop. And there's something that when we put our body in a certain position, so for instance, putting hands out, we can say that we don't need people, that we're okay, but when we put our hands out, our body is engaged and that's a very vulnerable experience.
Andy Maurer (41:56): What do children do at a very young age? What does this mean? This means, "Pick me up. I need help. Will you comfort me?" And we learn as leaders along the way that either we were never picked up, not physically, maybe physically but more so, metaphorically. Our emotions weren't attuned to, people weren't there for us, our fathers left us or our parents divorced. People weren't there to do this, so we decided that we are going to take care of ourselves. We are going to actually use our hands and no longer reach out for help with our authentic self.
Andy Maurer (42:27): I had to learn that myself in order to give that to my clients and to give that to other people. But yeah, when you change your body, and that's another thing, it changes your mood. It changes, you know. You can't just cognitively talk about something, your body has to be engaged with it as well.
Erik Averill (42:45): One thing, this is more specific advice. I know for myself or for listeners, one of the things that I struggle with is saying, I have a pretty incredible life, right? I've been very fortunate and blessed. I've had a lot of favor and luck that I have incredible clients, we have a great company to work out, an incredible family, that a lot of times it's like to use the word trauma seems overblown, seems intense.
Erik Averill (43:20): It can almost feel like, hey, in the middle of COVID, I found myself saying this a lot in the last year and it's true. It's like in the middle of COVID, it's impacted our family, it's impacted our business, but there are a lot less. There are a lot worst situations, right? Whether it's those that have food insecurity that have literally lost loved ones. How do you deal with that tension of what is trauma personalization, kind of that guilt factor?
Andy Maurer (43:55): If it's easier, I'll use a different term other than trauma that typically means the same thing. I'll use toxic stress. Toxic stress defined is prolonged and elevated levels of stress in the absence of deep connection. And when you think about COVID, prolonged and elevated levels of stress, check, in the absence of deep connection, check. And what it means is, I want every single one of my leaders to experience stress because I know they will thrive. Professional athletes thrive off of a certain type of stress.
Erik Averill (44:24): Totally.
Andy Maurer (44:25): Okay? It gets them in the zone, but when stress goes up and it's prolonged or it's elevated, and it does not come down, we call that toxic stress and that comes about through. Trauma could be a difficult labor and delivery, it could be a car accident, it could be a parent who struggles with substance use, it could be a dad who is a functional alcoholic his whole life, but you just knew, just subtly that he was always drinking. He was kind of the same person, but you never really knew dad. You always knew who he was as an alcoholic.
Andy Maurer (44:55): Those things jar our nervous system, and those are prolonged and those are elevated and they stick with us? And oftentimes as kiddos from zero to 18, we don't have someone to sit down and say, "Hey, this is what's going on." We don't have a confidant to express emotionally and have them respond back to us, "Yeah, that sadness," or "Yes, I identify that as anger or that's fear." Helping us make sense of that. So, we shove all that down inside and that's just a way of being then and we keep going as leaders with that way of being, so it no longer becomes a sense of stress becomes a way of being and stress becomes a way of survival.
Andy Maurer (45:38): Most leaders, they are not thriving, they're in a constant state of survival, trying to protect the image that they've constructed, so that people won't either look inside and see nothing or look inside and see, "Holy crap, there's a lot there." So, trauma is toxic stress, it's prolonged, it's elevated, and it can be a whole list of different things based on who you are based on your personality, and based on how you're wired.
Erik Averill (46:06): Yeah, and I think for our audience, the truth is in the last 12 months, the conversations I've had with our clients that are in the NFL and the PGA and the MLB, for a lot of them, I know they can feel like they shouldn't talk about it, because they're professional athletes who made millions of dollars, but these were very stressful situations. I know a lot of our clients were displaced, away from family for multiple months, going through health scares of their wives or parents or extended family calling and then being quarantined that they can't even reach out or see them during these times. All the while trying to perform a very physical task that impacts their family's financial future. And I think a lot of that prolonged stress for the athlete, it's very hard to show up and be your best performance going forward.
Erik Averill (47:02): And then I think of some of the founders. We had, and I won't name them by name, but we've had a couple of guests on this show in the past year that lead some huge organizations and they've had to let people go, which has been just horrible. I guess one of the questions I have is, is stress something that can just like kind of go away or is it always going to be there until we deal with it?
Andy Maurer (47:29): No, stress can go away and it should go away. If you think about, so I have an air compressor at home and I've been doing a lot of carpentry lately and I have a nail gun that uses compressed air, pneumatic air and that air compressor, you start it and it builds up pressure, okay? It builds up to 90 psi, 120 psi and after you're done, there's a little valve at the bottom called a blow-off valve and you turn it and it leaks all the air out because if you keep that air in there, it can be either dangerous or it can cause decay or it can cause rust.
Andy Maurer (47:59): We are built as human beings to experience stress and then to release that stress through our body. So, if it's anger, oftentimes what I'll do when I'm feeling a lot of anger is I'll literally go in the shower and I'll push against the sides of the shower, and I'll blow off. Okay, I'm using my breath, I'm using my body to expel that energy. Now, there's some benefit in doing some mindfulness exercises and calming or going into Zen, but that typically doesn't work with anger for me. I have to literally expel that energy out through exercise, through pressure, and through breath, I have to breathe it out and if I don't do that, or if I don't talk to my wife, or a best friend about those things, they will naturally build.
Andy Maurer (48:40): And it's like a cup, so if this cup was completely full, a couple drops of water, a couple of drops of stress is going to overflow it. It's going to cause it so much disruption, but if you can drain it, then you can really handle a lot more stress, but we don't know how to drain stress. We know how to cope, we know how to check out. We know how to numb through addictions and different things to cope, but we don't know how to let out stress through our body, through conversations, through coach and through these different ways. And if we don't have blow-off valves in our life, not coping mechanisms, if we don't have blow-off valves in our life where we can really get out what's inside, we won't last because we'll be in a constant state of hyper vigilance, constant state of toxic stress.
Erik Averill (49:25): Yeah, one thing and I want to be sensitive on time, but something very tangible that I know so many of us leaders and those in the professional athlete community, the coping thing you just hit on is huge. I was having this conversation with two of our clients. They said, "Hey, you know what? Most of our games start at 6:30 to 7:30 PM. We play for two to three hours. Then all of a sudden, we've got to get on an airplane and fly home and I'm charged up, but I know I need to sleep, so I start taking, I take some stuff to help me go to sleep. But then I wake up and I know I don't have good sleep patterns." And then it's just this perpetual thing of when they don't know how to manage stress, it becomes just coping mechanisms, right? And at some point, it's like, "When's this thing going to explode?"
Erik Averill (50:21): Whether it comes out as an injury, a fractured relationship and those type of things, one of the things that you've introduced was just a book called Permission to Feel. That was super helpful because one of the things that also helped me do with raising my children and me at the same time is figuring out labeling and how to communicate these things because I would have never thought about like that situation of stress that I need to deal with. It's kind of like an inconvenience. I play games late at night and now all of a sudden, I've created a coping mechanism. I've got prolonged stress. I've now essentially created trauma, because I don't know how to blow off steam.
Andy Maurer (51:00): And that all carries in the body. Injuries are not just because we pushed our body too hard, it's because our body oftentimes is already overloaded with so much toxic stress and tension. When you think about tension in my back, if I'm under high levels of stress and I'm unaware of how to blow that off or get that out, I will do a lot of chest breathing, which is shallow. It's not diaphragmatic breathing, it's shallow, and I'll use a lot of my shoulder muscles and a lot of my chest muscles. That's going to cause me to be really tensed and overuse those muscles over and over again.
Andy Maurer (51:34): Maya Angelou says, "I did what I knew, but when I knew better, I did better." When I slow down and I notice, I have tension in my neck, I have pain in my back, and I recognize this because I feel insecure or I'm scared or I'm afraid. That acknowledgement and that awareness, to name that, to identify that gives me the power to now change and adjust that. If I just pass over that, shove it down and don't own it, don't acknowledge it and don't name it, it gives it power to disrupt my body. So, we're really talking about power over our body, we're talking about power over our life, and when we slow down and we name and we identify what that gives us is power to shape and direct where we want our life to go.
Andy Maurer (52:16): And instead of what I described earlier, which is the treadmill of, "I don't want to be alone at the end of my life, I don't just want money, I don't just want fame, I want deep things, purpose and meaning, but I don't know how to get that because I'm on this treadmill." If you don't know how to get off the treadmill, you will end up there. So, really, I help my clients kind of identify one, that they're on the treadmill and then two, I walk with them. I don't know all the answers, but I walk with them on that pathway to wholeness to help them discover what that looks like for them. And it's different for every client. Right? It's different for you, it's different for someone else, but if we can't identify it and name it, we can't change it.
Erik Averill (52:58): Yeah, that's powerful and I think that's actually a great place to stop because it's also a great place for everyone to start is to identify it, to name it, to recognize it. And so, Andy, thank you so much.
Andy Maurer (53:13): Thanks.
Erik Averill (53:13): This has been a ton of fun. I know for you, audience, if you truly are looking to unlock your full potential and to invest in your human capital, I think we've all been convinced here today that we need to be whole human beings and to not allow ourselves to be fragmented. And so, Andy, one thing I would love for our audience to figure out where to connect with you, where to find you, where can they connect?
Andy Maurer (53:39): Yeah, LinkedIn is the best. That's my professional space. They can go to andymaurer.com. Maurer is M-A-U-R-E-R, so a lot of often misspelled spelling there, but andymaurer.com or they can email me at andy@andymaurer.com.
Erik Averill (53:56): Great. Well, thank you very much and for you guys, I'll make sure to include all of those links in the show notes. We all know how misspellings happen, so I'll make sure that you have Andy's contact information. We'll also link to any resources that we've talked about from quotes, books, those types of things. And as always, we appreciate you. We love you. Stay humble, stay hungry, and always be a pro.