Hello and welcome. My name is Kyle and this is How You Level Up, a podcast that decodes language
to help you become your best self. Today we're going to be speaking with Carlos Garcia. He is
a JAG officer and a master resilience trainer in the Army Reserve. For over a decade he's worked as
a trial defense counsel and resilience trainer, helping soldiers and leaders tackle judgment and
adversity head on. One of the very difficult things that we all experience is maintaining
composure under pressure. Very often we have a story that we tell ourselves. Carlos helps his
clients, both in the military and outside of the military, to identify what that story is so that
you can make a conscious choice about how you're going to react to a certain situation,
or perhaps just to understand a little bit more about yourself.
I really enjoyed this conversation, and I'm sure you will too.
Without further ado, here's the conversation that I had with Carlos Garcia.
You were in the military, and you were a JAG officer.
My brother actually was a JAG officer as well,
so I have a little bit of context in terms of what you were handling.
Let's start off with that point in your story when you were working for the military.
sure so where uh what branch was your brother in the marine corps
nice okay yeah i i probably should have done the marine corps you know in the marine corps
jags are considered paper pushers they're not really uh jags that's what they call them right
i don't know if your brother told you that you're always a marine first and then a jag second
and i think you were in the jag as well uh in the marine corps as well right i was yeah yeah
Yeah, so I'm in the Army Reserve Jack Corps.
So there's an active duty component and a reserve component.
And I started, I commissioned in 2016 into the Army Reserves, into the Army Jack Corps Reserves.
And I've been doing it ever since, and I love it.
You know, I'm a major now in the reserves, and I work in TDS, which stands for Trial Defense Service.
And essentially it's sort of like being a public defender on the civilian side, except in the military you're defending soldiers with different sort of adverse actions, different sort of crimes.
and it's sort of neat because you can change branches in the legal fields that you're in.
You can work in international law, you can work in criminal law, at law, environmental law,
but I really love trial defense service because I like this notion of working for the underdog.
It's like the whole government is against you.
That's just like in the public defender civilian side.
It's very similar on the military side and I love that.
I love the part about having to really connect with an individual and having to humanize them essentially, right?
Because many times when the charges come all the way up the chain of command, all they see is a piece of paper.
So part of my job is to humanize the individual who's being charged with whatever he's being charged with or she.
and that entails a lot of getting to know the soldier as an individual, as a human being.
Where do they come from? Who are they? Who were their parents or who are their parents?
Hobbies, passions, etc.
And really getting an intimate look into their lives
because it's so important when you go up to separation boards, for example,
and you have to talk to the judges, essentially,
and explain who this person is, that he's just not a piece of paper.
He's a human, and this is why certain things happen,
providing context, because there's always context
that you have to include circumstances surrounding the situation.
So yeah, that's sort of what I do with trial defense,
and I've been doing it for a while now.
I love it.
Yeah, almost 10 years at this point.
Yeah, right.
Wow.
10 years, yeah.
Time flies.
Yeah, so.
So when you're humanizing someone,
there is, of course, you know,
when you join the military,
you become a number.
You become the property of the U.S. government.
I think that's legally what you become, right?
And that's why they don't want you to do certain things,
you know take any sort of legal drugs there's different regulations and laws that apply to
anyone that's in the military and learning about that context for the individual how do you then
relay that to the judge how is it you get their story across yeah it's a lot having to do with
immersing yourself in the experiences of the person, you know, because it's very different
when you prepare, say you're preparing for a presentation. So in my case, I have to do
opening statements and closing statements and, you know, oral advocacy. And it's not,
I have found in my experience, it's not just about memorizing the script. You have to really
invoke and believe in what you say you have to really immerse yourself in in the experiences
that your client had from you have to see things from their point of view and almost like experience
it so that you can really feel you know like you can really associate emotions with it so that when
it's time to deliver and and advocate for your client it's going to come out naturally you don't
have to think about, you know, raising your hands like this or using vocal variety or,
you know, making sure your facial expressions or your body gestures are on point because
it's coming from your inside, right? You've internalized the experiences. And when you
do that, in my experience, I found that everything else comes more naturally. You look more persuasive.
Yeah.
You look more persuasive and you sound more persuasive. I don't know if you can resonate
with that.
absolutely yeah you're not overthinking whatever is the points you're getting across you're just
relaying the information in the most transparent and authentic way and you can't do that unless you
truly understand exactly yeah and yeah and it's about just immersing yourself and and wanting to
do it as well because if you're not really understanding where your client is coming from
you're not it's just going to be a memorization sort of exercise and you're going to start
thinking about okay what do i say now versus trying to get you know speaking with more uh
intent yeah or purpose right yeah and that that for me has made a big uh difference you have the
ability to choose your clients outside of your jag work is there any optionality for you to choose
who you represent when representing them as a JAG officer?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So nowadays I do my JAG work as an attorney,
and then I don't really take any clients on the civilian side.
But, yeah, I mean, I think what you're asking is about conflict of interest, right?
conflict of interest or partly you know wanting and understanding their point of view i mean
there's definitely people that you want to work with and people maybe you don't want to work with
but you still have to advocate for them for sure yeah so if i was to work in criminal defense work
on the civilian side which i don't but i know many people who do um one challenge is dealing
with people who are not necessarily fun to work with for various reasons.
They're not good keeping the communication lines open.
They're not good in giving information requested from the attorneys.
And just those two factors complicates things tremendously
and creates a lot of time inefficiencies.
But, yeah, nowadays what I do is I train.
So I'm an Army resilience trainer.
I'm sure in the Marine Corps you have something similar, right?
Every branch has something similar, like a master resilience training program.
You have that as well, right?
Yeah.
So in the Army we have something like this.
It's called MRT.
It stands for Master Resilience Trainer.
and several years ago a psychologist and his team by the name of Martin Zelligman
came and created this program
and the army in conjunction with Martin Zelligman and his team
they worked together to create a resilience training program
that was initially being used on the civilian side
but then the army adopted it
and they created this program that essentially trained soldiers in different units
on resilience topics, how to become more resilient,
how to increase your resilience.
And then soldiers who are trained in resilience,
they become certified resilience trainers,
and then they go to their respective units
and they train the soldiers in their respective units.
And so that's what I do.
And I go to my unit and I train.
And it's challenging because on the reserve side,
not everybody meets all the time
so the challenge is always
how do you inculcate
these important topics
to soldiers who only see you
a certain amount of time, right?
And even on the active duty side
I wish it was a little bit more
prioritized
in terms of
blocking out chunks of time
to really learn this stuff
because often I've found that resilience training is not prioritized like it should be,
but I think it's super important.
There's a perception in the military about resilience,
but I think it's important to understand that resilience for me and how I define it
is about bouncing back, being flexible, but not just bouncing back,
but thriving in the face of adversity, in the face of uncertainty, in the face of change.
And underneath that requires lots of emotional control.
And that means that emotions, if you think about it, what ultimately derails us often are our emotions, right?
frustration, anger
impatience, stress, anxiety, fear
and if we don't know how to control that
then we're going to quit early
we're not going to try
we're going to avoid things
and a lot of resilience is emotional control
knowing how to manage your thoughts
knowing how to manage your emotions
knowing what to tell yourself after you fail or after you make a mistake.
Because if you don't know what to tell yourself, you're going to stay down, right?
You don't want to stay down too long.
Yeah.
The knowing of what to tell yourself.
There's distinctions that inside of this resilience training you likely have in your toolkit of,
this is what you can say to feel a little bit better. This is what you can look for in your
emotional reaction to identify what is it that you're feeling so you can figure out why am I
feeling this, right? That emotional control, even the word control, it's very militarized
in the sense of it's intelligence to understand what's happening. And you're completely right.
In the military, they, instead of acknowledging whatever emotions are happening, they say,
you don have emotions you strong you are a weapon go out fight the good fight and then come back and you be fine whereas this resilience recognition it hold on if you feeling something let figure out what
it is so we can move past it and through it rather than avoiding it completely yeah we have this
perception that we should avoid our emotions or hide that but doing that makes you know it's going
into your subconscious, but it's going to bubble up when you least expect it, I have
found, and research shows as well.
And so you need to, so there's a therapy that is considered a very highly effective form
of therapy, which is, you may have heard of, it's called exposure therapy or stress desensitization.
And that's what the military actually does, which is doing things that are increasingly
difficult and stressful, and then over time desensitizing yourself to the stress, right?
So if you think about training for actual missions, right, like in the Marine Corps or
special or operators, you know, Navy SEALs, that's how they train.
Olympians, that's how they train.
They train for the mission where the training becomes more difficult than the actual mission
so that when the mission comes, they're ready, right?
They're ready to shine.
And there's a reason behind that
because by making the training highly difficult,
you're desensitizing yourself to the stress
because when it's time to shine,
you need to be able to think clearly.
You need to be able to be creative,
use your intuition, think on your feet.
and I have found that you can't do that if you're feeling highly anxious or highly stressed out
because your amygdala is going crazy, right?
That fight-or-flight response.
You need to train your amygdala by teaching it through stress exposure
that there's nothing to fear,
and over time, your amygdala calms down so it doesn't get activated,
and your prefrontal cortex part, the thinking part of your brain,
can actually do the thinking, right, and be creative.
And that requires, just like the military training,
which is a great way to train, I think,
a very effective way of training for anything,
even in the workplace, you know.
Like, many people make the mistake of training their communication
or negotiation skills or their public speaking skills at the workplace.
but you don't necessarily want to learn those things or take such high risks in the workplace
because you need to be able to shine in the workplace and you have a certain persona you
need to keep right you have a reputation and so you can train for these things outside the
workplace right so if you fear have a fear of public speaking you can train for these things
outside of the workplace by mimicking the environment and expressing yourself essentially
in public speaking scenarios so that you bring that new experience and new confidence into the
workplace, right? Or negotiations, for example. If you need to do a lot of pitches, if you're an
investor or an entrepreneur and you have, you know, you want to negotiate with some good potential
prospects that you have. You don't want to blow it, right? So you want to make sure that you
adequately prepare. How do you do that? Not by doing it in real life, but doing it in other ways
that mimics that stress level so that when it's time to do it, it's easier. You're not so stressed.
It's the same.
If that makes any sense.
Yeah, absolutely. It's the same thing that you're doing when you're preparing
to defend someone. It's getting to know what's happening inside and out. So you're preparing
for that negotiation. You got to know everything ahead of time. It has to be like the back of your
hand. You know exactly all of the details so that you can then move with the flow of the negotiation
or public speaking. I think exposure therapy in general is, it's a well-known topic. And I don't
think a lot of people know how to do it, how to prepare for it, even if they think to themselves,
oh, like, okay, I have a presentation. And so let me present to my friend, or let me present to three
friends over zoom. Nobody's taking that step to do the preparation of let me call up three of my
friends or text them and say, Hey, can you hop on a zoom? I'm going to do a bullshit presentation
for you. But it's really important for me. Yeah, I think just rehearsing or recording yourself,
it's not it's not enough. I found in my experience, you have to actually feel some adrenaline.
Because it's easy when you're, you can be your best self when you record yourself, right?
That's great.
But when you have eyeballs on you, it's a completely different story, right?
Because we have this tendency to worry too much about what people think.
And when we do that, we're worrying, i.e. it's creating anxiety.
And when we're feeling anxious, we can't think clearly, right?
And so really it's about being calm under pressure.
And I have found that the way to be calm under increasing pressure is to feel the pressure, right?
Sit in the anxiety, which is what exposure is, and realizing that there's nothing to fear, essentially.
I say essentially a lot.
I've got to stop saying essentially.
That's okay.
I feel as though, if I could jump in, I feel as though this is a good bridge for the True Progress Lab, where this is something that you're attempting to help people achieve, building resilience outside of the military, right?
This is more for civilians.
Can you talk about the mission of the True Progress Lab and then maybe some of the tools that you're providing to clients?
Yeah, so the mission is get calm, get bold, and then get after it.
And to get after it means to be able to seize opportunities
and not let your ambition be quenched unconsciously or consciously by your emotions.
And the way you do that, I found, is by learning how to remain calm in situations that stress you out.
And once you learn how to remain calm and think clearly, then you can start to expand your capacity for risk-taking and boldness, courage, right?
And then you can actually start getting after it.
So in that order, right? And the way I do that is by putting people through an experiential journey where they undergo identity expanding experiences that help create proof of their capabilities, evidence.
by going through experiences that stress them in an increasing level.
So we have two avenues for that.
We make them go through physical conditioning training and mental conditioning.
Physical conditioning is about engaging in physical rigorous activity,
whether it's running or rowing or strength training.
because I found that using your body is a perfect vehicle for learning how to train your mind,
i.e. learning how to manage counterproductive thoughts and emotions
from getting in the way of doing what you know you need to do,
even though you don't want to do them.
because physical training helps to remove variables like other human beings
where it's just you and your shoes and the road you have to run on
and learning how to manage your emotions.
And the way we help them do that too is by giving them techniques and protocols
that are an aid for them to use.
Ultimately, you want to decrease the number of tools you have in managing your thoughts and emotions because they can also become safety behaviors.
You can over-rely on emotion regulation techniques.
And in effect, you're trying to get rid of the anxiety when in reality you're supposed to sit in the anxiety and teach yourself that it's going to be okay.
And then we have mental conditioning exercises, and that consists of getting creative in terms of mimicking the situations that trigger the anxiety for people, whether it's public speaking, whether it's difficult conversations, giving feedback, networking, being in the spotlight as a leader, leading meetings.
And we get pretty creative with that, which is very effective as well, our intentional embarrassment training.
And that sort of thing consists of putting yourself in potentially embarrassing situations.
Do you have an example I need to know?
Yeah, like going into a restaurant and asking the manager if you can take a look in their kitchen before you order something.
Or going into Starbucks and making an announcement that you're an awkward and socially anxious person.
Things like that.
And what I found is that it's a highly effective form of exposure therapy, by the way, as well.
They call it different things.
I think they also call it same attack exercises.
But essentially what you want, because if you think about it, what we fear often is it's the people looking at us and judging us.
It's the fear of being negatively judged or evaluated because we have this innate desire of being liked.
But we take that to an extreme where we modify our decisions, we modify our actions to a point where we do things to be liked.
We don't want to be disliked.
and we fear making mistakes in public
because we fear retribution of,
okay, they're going to judge me if I fail.
So what happens is that we start people-pleasing.
We start staying in our comfort zone.
We only do things that confirms our competence
and shy away from things that will be potentially risky for us
where we might potentially fail, right?
And that requires a mindset shift.
You know, a lot of people I help, like myself, you know,
I was a take myself too seriously.
I'm a recovering take myself too seriously guy.
And when you do that, you are trying to upkeep or maintain a persona or image vis-a-vis other people.
And that can be very exhausting, right?
Instead of focusing on learning, instead of focusing on being okay with making mistakes.
Because to learn, you have to make mistakes, right?
and laughing at yourself on the way down as you make mistakes being okay with looking silly and looking foolish I think you have to adopt that mindset instead of trying to maintain this persona
Because it is exhausting, right?
To maintain a persona, it's exhausting.
I think that I'm finding myself, as you're saying this, definitely falling into the bucket of I either take myself too seriously.
or it's the other side which is I'm a complete goofball and I don't care about anything or
anyone's opinion and I don't always know what's triggering me to flip between the two there's of
course going to be a middle ground I should be walking if I was to be one of your clients at
True Progress Lab how would you work with me through that because I would like to also be
a recovering person from taking myself too seriously. Yeah, you have to start with like
low level challenges, you know, and, and understand and change your definition. By the way, just
side note, do you know MBTI? No, the MBTI? No, it's a personality assessment. It's a personality
assessment that tells you what your, your stress triggers are, and your natural inclinations in
terms of how you think and communicate. But it's interesting when you said that there are times
when you take yourself too seriously and times when you're a goofball, because I sort of identify
myself like that as well. Like I'll be super serious to the point where people will think that
I'm like just a standoffish, serious guy. Other times I'll be a complete goofball. And so that's
interesting. You might be, you should look it up on, you know, after the episode, you might be an
INTJ, because that's what I am.
But anyway, yeah, so the first thing would be, you know, one of the first things is changing your definition of what failure means.
Right?
Getting really clear with that.
Failure does not equal failure.
Failure does not confirm your competence.
Failure is just a data point, not a confirmation point.
and starting with low-level discomfort challenges where you start to realize that okay I'm this is
okay right like I'm winning I'm I'm succeeding in these challenges I'm putting myself out there
and it's okay and then failing as well increasing the stress level where you're actually
failing and then knowing what to tell yourself after you fail so reiterating the fact that this
is going to be okay this is part of the process it's a lot of a lot of it is changing in the
beginning i found people's definitions of what things mean it's it gets as basic as that because
they come in often people you know they have they come with this persona and they have this
definition like I have to succeed I have to succeed but they don't realize that no you don't
have to succeed what you need to do is put in the reps and desensitize yourself to failure
essentially right they need to understand that failure is part of the process and that failure
is okay it means you're learning so and we do that just through reps putting in the reps
I might go into a Starbucks and make some proclamation in the near future I'm not going
to be bringing my wife though because it will embarrass her to death no it's a it's a i do it
once uh i try to do like every i would say every two to three weeks i try to do something just
completely humiliating um like last time i went into a target and you know i asked some people
random people to hold my phone while i sing some some songs some some kid songs and the other time
I asked some people to take pictures of me while I was modeling on the floor.
Oh, my God.
Like just in the aisles, you know.
Yeah.
And just things like that, you know.
And you have like a memory.
You can look at your phone and be like, oh, I did that.
No, but on a serious note, it helps you loosen up, you know.
It helps you loosen up and not take yourself too seriously.
Like you're not this serious robot.
You're a human being.
You got to keep things playful.
Yeah.
You got to keep things playful.
And it's a way to – when you do these challenges, I've found that you expand your perspective on what's possible, on what you can do.
If you can do humility and things like that, you can probably do other things.
And it keeps that playful mind so that you can be creative and think about things.
because I feel like when you expand your self-perception,
you expand your perception of what's possible,
and therefore you're expanding your thinking, your creativity.
You're thinking about things that you didn't think about before.
So it's a creative exercise as well.
Yeah. I want to loop this.
Wouldn't you agree?
I completely agree with you.
And I can't help but notice this is, well,
this humiliating performance and application
this along with the strength training or the body training this feels like such a distinction that
separates a true progress lab from other organizations when trying to reach a a level
of self-development that your client is seeking there's not a lot of organizations who will focus
on the physical part they might do you know if they were an officer a jag officer for example
They might do mock trials, right?
But the humiliating part, the physical part, these are big distinctions.
Looking at the five ways that True Progress Lab functions, the Inner Fortress program,
the Inner Fortress for Teams, Endurance OS, True Progress is a newsletter as well, and
then Daily Tips and Insights, these five different things, when we look at them, is all of that
included?
at the physical, the mental preparation, the humiliation exercises,
is that all inside of the Inner Fortress program?
So the Inner Fortress program, great question.
The Inner Fortress program is my flagship program.
So that's the physical and the mental conditioning.
The Enduro OS, that's more on productivity where I help attorneys get organized
because as you may or may not know,
attorneys are highly unorganized.
But the Inner Fortress Program,
the physical conditioning I found is super important
because it's not just about being good at your job
because often people identify themselves with their job.
Their confidence comes mainly from their job.
But if you really want to shine,
in situations, in times of uncertainty where you don't have all of the control, you need
to bring confidence from other areas of your life that are not just your job. You need
to push yourself physically. You need to create proof that you're a badass, right? Like anybody
who works out or pushes themselves physically, they create proof that they can do hard things,
right?
Not just be a good lawyer, a highly intelligent analytical lawyer or a successful doctor.
I mean, people who are good at communicating, I think are good at communicating not because
they use fancy tactical language but because they bring this there's this aura about them
that is internal and that aura comes from having certain experiences that teaches them
that they're able to do difficult things yeah which is why you i'm sure you're you're you work
out as well right you don't work out to you know looking good is is a side benefit right but it
you know i'm sure you can relate yeah in terms of the reasons why you you you push yourself yeah
the more physically yeah the more strenuous my exercise is the calmer i also feel throughout the
day it's it sets the tone almost and in my personal experience i actually injured my back at some
point. I'm unsure when. And when I was in a lot of pain a number of years ago and was trying to
figure out what the pain was coming from, it definitely took a hit. My confidence took a hit
because I wasn't pushing myself. I wasn't working out. All of a sudden I couldn't lift
above a certain weight and put it on my shoulders to squat it. Or, you know, I couldn't do certain
workouts. Like I haven't done a crunch in six years just because that movement hurts me.
a couple of days later as my body is healing, as my muscles are healing.
So, you know, throughout time and learning how I can work my abs without actually doing
a crunch laying on the ground, that then gives me the confidence to go, okay, well, I overcame
that.
I can overcome something else.
And then, yeah, it's nice to look good.
Always a nice perk to working out.
Yeah, yeah.
You definitely feel calmer, you know, because it's, I don't particularly like to work out.
I don't know if you do, but going to the gym or working out, there are times when I don't want to do it.
And I found that when I do it after the fact, you feel like you've really accomplished something.
You overcame that internal dialogue where your thoughts were trying to get the best of you by telling you not to work out.
And so that's a rep.
Yeah.
That's a rep.
And teaching yourself to do things you don't want to do,
but you know you have to to get to your objective.
The sigh that you just did.
It feels as though you were thinking about a thing you didn't want to do in the past.
Yeah.
I mean, so I also practice judo.
I'm an avid judo player, and I've been doing that for about five years.
And I like it to do it, but there are times when I just don't want to do it because it's hard.
But I found that every time I do it, I feel much better afterwards.
Like I really accomplished something.
Yeah, and I would encourage everybody to do something physically difficult,
whether it's a marathon or an ultra marathon or a combat sport or martial art.
I think the world would be a calmer place.
We would all be kind of in a zen mode,
just improving our relationships with one another.
We have all this internal baggage inside of us as we're going along our day,
and people don't have an outlet to release that.
You get into road rage.
You shut down, you go into your corner, or you're physically present, but you're not fully engaged.
And when you exercise, I have found, you combat that.
It helps in addressing those things so that you become calm and then you can actually be engaged.
Yeah, there's a big difference between athletes and non-athletes.
And that's not to say that non-athletes, those who aren't finding the time to push themselves physically,
aren't also extremely resilient.
They can find resilience in other ways, but it's a really simple way to move your body,
to check off that first box of, okay, I did a workout, now what does the day have for me?
Because I'd like to tackle it.
I completely agree with that.
For True Progress Lab, what does a client intake look like?
Who is it that's reaching out to you most often and seeking your guidance, your expertise?
It a combination of entrepreneurs attorneys managers leaders and different industries really who come with a problem and they think they have this problem
regarding some sort of anxiety but they can't really pinpoint it.
And we do an assessment and ask them some questions.
And the more open they can be, the better for us, right?
And the anxiety is really consuming because often people don't want to admit to having anxiety.
They just know they have some anxiety.
They're almost judging themselves thinking that they're weak for having anxiety when it's just a natural thing to feel.
Exactly.
Right.
And they're almost ashamed to admit it.
And, you know, one of the first things we do is like, okay, understanding emotions are a tool.
They tell you things and you have to learn what it is.
You have to recognize what it is, what it recognize and understand.
And then be able to label the actual emotion.
Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it frustration?
Being able to express your emotions.
Mark Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, has this really effective framework for thinking about your emotions.
And he calls it RULER, the RULER approach.
It stands for Recognize, Understand, Label, Express, Regulate.
You need to recognize that you are having a certain mood.
Is your mood up or is your mood down?
is your energy up or is your energy down and then start to ask yourself questions to to better
understand your mood and then being able to label the emotion that you're feeling just by labeling
the emotion and getting specific you know as to it because it's not just sad or happy right there
are many many many emotions so being able to label the exact emotion that you're feeling helps to
create distance between yourself and the emotion. So that's already, you're already regulating
the emotion by creating distance, right? And then being able to express that emotion,
those thoughts, either via journaling or with somebody else where you can talk to somebody
else that you trust. And then finally regulating that emotion. And we have different techniques
for that, different protocols, breathing techniques, paradigm shifting techniques, etc.
But yeah, to answer your question, it's about getting comfortable with opening up and explaining exactly what it is that people are coming with anxiety about and understanding that it's okay to feel anxiety.
It's part of the process.
Some anxiety is good.
You can't eliminate or seek to eliminate anxiety.
you have to feel some anxiety because anxiety helps you perform, helps you shine.
Yeah. The distance that you're creating in that framework from the emotion itself,
it's making me think about a therapy modality called internal family systems. Have you ever
heard of it? Yes, I've heard of it. Tell me about it. Yeah. So internal family systems,
I'm forgetting the psychologist or therapist who created it. It's about recognizing internally that
there are different parts of you that feel different things. So the very common convention
that we use is, oh, part of me wants to do work, a part of me doesn't, a part of me in the morning
wants to work out, but there's another part that, you know, definitely doesn't want to work out,
doesn't want to put on the shoes, go to the gym, whatever it is, step outside and go for the jog.
and by recognizing, hey, you don't have to be a psychotic person to feel like there are different
parts of you, right? This isn't, you know, split personality disorder. This is just, hey, there's
a section of my being that is not 100% in the action and maybe that's because I'm tired. Maybe
that's because, you know, one of them, one of those parts is stepping forward and wants to
manage the situation because I'm feeling anxious. So I'm definitely not an expert at all at IFS.
It's just a great way to create distance when you talk about there's a part of me that is feeling
really upset that this client didn't just say yes to my proposal. They're pushing back. And now I
have to deal with that upsetness and sadness and perhaps anxiety of what am I going to do now? How
am I going to respond? So you're using this without even, you know, applying the framework
just because you are creating that distance to then feel it and talk about it and move through
the emotion. That's interesting. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense because I mean, sometimes
you, you're feeling confident about a situation. Other times you're feeling like you just want to
cozy up you know there we're a complex being you know there are different parts to us that
act in different ways depending on the on the situation and so yeah i understand that that
makes a lot of sense ifs right internal family systems yeah the uh the goofy by the way the
goofy part of me is i refer to it again i i don't have split personalities but i refer to it as little
Kyle. It's this young version of me where he's like five, six years old. And when he gets into
arguments or when rather I get into arguments with disagreements with my wife, he comes forward
and he likes to smile. And I can't help sometimes, but smile when I'm having a conflict because I'm
like, okay, this is a way for me to manage my anxiety. I don't want to feel upset. Let's just
smile through it. Everything's fine. And for me, I have a great visualization of it. Other people
more hear voices or just understand that like there's a presence when you get really deep into
IFS. But for me, I can picture them. I can't really hear them. And it's fun to play with that
because that's 100% the goofy side of me. That's like, hey, let's just play. Let's just fool around.
We don't need to be serious. That's interesting. I think that provides a lot of clarity too as to why
you do what you do, right? Like you just said the smiling that comes from when you're five
or six and
yeah I think
there's so much power
in just having awareness because
you can't tame
the monster if you
don't shine a light on it right you have
to be able to see that there's
you tame it
by shining a light on it right and that
essentially means that you need
to get clarity on
a lot of things in the beginning
to
carve the
the path forward. Yeah. If, if I could ask you a selfish question,
what sort of tools are you using from your professional world with your kids?
With my kids in terms of how to help them build resilience. Yeah. So I have a, uh, a boy who's
going to be six, uh, this month and then my two year old, right? So my two year old, uh, I think
she's still a little too young, but my six-year-old, you know, I'm already inculcating the importance
of physical exercise, you know, he does engage in physical exercise, and then the most important
thing, I think, or one of the most important things is inculcating a growth mindset, right,
that if you want to get to a certain objective,
you need to put in effort, right?
You need to get feedback.
You need to get the right resources.
You need to practice and put in the reps.
And over time, he starts to learn that,
okay, I'm getting better.
You know, like when he first started doing push-ups,
for example, he could only do three.
Now he could do like eight to 10.
And he's building that self-confidence already.
And you could see it in his eyes
that he's starting to feel this self-pride, you know.
And also teaching him or making him aware that it's not about me, you know.
It's not, I'm not, I don't want him to work out to please me.
It's not about pleasing me.
It's not about pleasing his mom.
It's not about pleasing his little sister.
It's about pleasing himself so that he can feel the pride, right.
and that's that's really important because if i don't do that what i don't want to condition in
him is that he has to do that to please me right or that my love is conditional yeah that if he does
that i'm going to love him no it has nothing to do with me it has nothing to do with my love
to him it has everything to do with him and building himself and um and building that
self-esteem and self-trust that he can you know start doing difficult things and um yeah building
that uh that self-belief super important yeah are there any parallels and it's okay if the answer is
no are there any parallels that you have discovered between raising your son and daughter although
you're you're mentioning that she's a little young raising them and then working with your clients
Any parallels? Yeah, when I see my son in his face and he completes, you know, like he, I have a routine for him, which is calisthenics. It's like 11 different exercises. And he started with just completing one set of each exercise. Now he's, he's up to like four sets. He can do four sets.
and seeing just as simple as that, you know.
It's the face that he has in terms of building that self-belief and that pride.
It's the same thing with adults, you know.
And it's very simple.
It's about engaging in certain training exercises,
whether it's physical or the mental condition that we were just talking about,
like the intentional embarrassment exercises.
It's about putting in the reps and creating evidence,
It's creating proof so that you have those evidence-based thoughts when it's time to have your power statements and self-talk,
that you actually have productive conversations with yourself and infuse the right thoughts,
not just basis thoughts but evidence-based thoughts, that you can do these things, right?
And in that respect, the parallel is that it's just about the repetition, whether you're a child or whether you're an adult.
and creating that self-belief and that self-trust and that,
that proving that evidence that you can,
that it's going to be okay,
that you're going to get better.
Yeah.
If somebody wanted to reach out to true progress lab,
where is the best place for them to go?
So you can look for me at www.trueprogresslab.com.
And I'm on most of the social media platforms and I'm at,
True Progress Lab.
Okay. And if you could leave the audience with one question
that they can ask themselves to help them level up, what would it be?
Think about how you
are behaving vis-a-vis
your job titles
and what you do on a regular basis.
Are you playing in the safe zone?
Are you working in your comfort zone?
Or maybe you can start thinking about ways to get outside your comfort zone and play a little bit
so that you can start feeling this feeling of invigoration, this feeling of aliveness.
Because if you want to feel that way, it comes from stepping outside your comfort zone.
Awesome. Thank you, Carlos.
Thank you, Kyle. Pleasure.
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