Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Everybody is missing something in life. I felt prisoner to my own success. Change is hard. Change is hard. I get it. Change or die.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm going to change things.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: So what the hell can we change? If we can see things differently, we can have some different results.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Only on now Media Television networks.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Welcome to be the Giraffe. I am your host and guide, Chris Jarvis. The show where you can help elevate your business and your life. If you want to elevate your perspective, see a better path and ultimately stand out and be the giraffe, this is the show for you. I am very excited this week to have on the show my friend of God, seven, eight years now, Rick Petrie. Rick, great to be on. Great to have you here.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Hey Chris, thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to be here.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: So we've got a cool show. Rick is a leadership development, organizational development, corporate, corporate culture visionary speaker, leading transformational expert who's done a whole lot of things.
He's also had a bunch of different careers. If you want to get into the flow and learn how to get into the zone and do more in your business and your life, you are going to want to stick around to hear the gems that Rick's going to have for you.
Rick, you had a great career. You've been doing a lot of great things lately. It's been super fun to watch.
What people don't know is that you were a lawyer, you were a trial attorney, you were super successful. You were the guy that national television networks had comment on high profile cases. You went and taught at a law school. I mean, you were at the top of your game.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a time I was, I was definitely at the top of my game. I could get around in a courtroom pretty good and know a lot about the law. Still do.
And on the outside it looked like everything was beautiful.
On the inside, that's another story.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: So for a lot of people in the on the show this is about being vulnerable. It's about getting to that be. The draft is about helping people stick their necks out, see a better path and try something new, do something new that might be better for them, for their families, for their long term legacy.
And you had everything going really well. If there's at least to the outside. And for a lot of people who are watching the show, if you feel like you're stuck, if you feel like what people see isn't what you feel, if you want to make a change but don't know how to do it, then having listening to Rick's story is going to help you, Rick. I know you had this great legal career. Things were going well.
Tell us about.
Tell us about what was going on with you. What was really happening behind the scenes. I think it's really important, not just for attorneys, but for doctors, professionals. Anybody in a corporate world that maybe feels like they've.
They're supposed to be happy, but they're not, or other people are expecting them to happy, or maybe they've heard the. Why can't you just be happy with what you have? I think a lot of that, you know, you've told me a lot of that resonates with you. So I think, think the audience would love to hear a bit about that.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, to your point about on the outside, everything looking good, you know, trying cases, winning cases, negotiating favorable outcomes for clients, you know, big house, nice car, you know, all those things, family, all those things, you know, so on the outside, looks like, hey, this guy's got it going on.
But at the same time, the demands of practicing law, the demand of being a husband, a father to two children, over time started to kind of. It. It kind of caught up with me, right? Like is a trial attorney, you sort of see yourself as this gladiator, right?
[00:03:48] Speaker A: You.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: You take on other people's problems, you're the champion for them.
You can't show any weaknesses, because if you do, there's always this concern that they will be exploited and used against you or against your clients. So you really can't, like, you can't talk about it. Who are you going to talk to it about? Your colleagues, Your peers? No, they would. They, you know, they're probably dealing with the same thing, but no one ever, ever says anything because they're concerned about the stigma that would be attached to it.
And so at the same time, I had an aging mother. She was well into her 90s at 89, she fell and broke her hip and recovered from that. I didn't realize that she was living on the West Coast. I was in the Midwest.
And come to find out she was struggling with dementia.
So I had to move her out here so I could take better care of her.
And so I got all this stuff going on, all this stuff going on, trying to juggle all these balls at the same time.
And, you know, over time, it just. It's just. It became too much.
It became too much. And then things started falling apart.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: So you got. You get to this, what do they call it, the sandwich generation? When you're taking care of your parents, you're Taking care of your children, you're in the middle. And it's.
I semi joke when someone asked me who my client is and I say it's usually a middle aged man with two nipples and 20 people waiting to suckle.
And it's that whole idea that you've got, you got parents who need you, you've got kids who need you, you've got customers and clients who need you, you've got employees and partners who need you, you might have investors who need you, and everybody's leaning on you as the one who's supposed to be strong.
And, and it's, it's, it's really common to get to that place where you feel you're going to be strong. I mean you've been doing, we're going to get to your, your coaching and all the things that you've done. But it's, it's seems pretty common that you get to that. People say midlife crisis, but it seems like it's the, the midweight, the midlife burden of so many things coming on at one point and there's just no outlet.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, in a way it is, it's somewhat of a burden, but it, but it, but at the same time, it's not like, you know, when my mom fell and injured herself, like this is my mom, right. Like she's the one who's been there for me all the time from the time I was a baby. And now she needs me to be there for her. And so I'm not going to turn my back on her. I'm not going to turn my back on my children. You try to do the best that you can for, for these people that I think of who are placed in your care.
And at the same time, you know, you're a human being.
You're not, you're not a gladiator, you're not a machine. You're a human being. And at some point you sort of reach this tipping point where things start to unravel and you're still trying to keep it together. And that ain't always easy to do.
And what I found out along the way is it wasn't just me. I had two very good friends, both lawyers, both great guys. One guy coached my kid and every other kid in the neighborhood is baseball and hockey.
And on the outside with him too, it looked like he had everything going on until he didn't. Another friend of ours text me one day, he said, hey man, did you hear what happened to coach? No, what's, what's Going on. He committed suicide. What coach? The guy who had everything?
Yeah.
And so, you know, this is what happens. And, you know, over time, I started talking to other people about it. I learned that vets have the same challenges. Lots of lawyers, doctors, police officers, all these folks who, you know, supposed to be the saviors, carrying these, these. These challenges and these struggles.
And for me, when I lost those two friends before that, I thought, man, I'm tired of this lawyer thing. I'm sick of lawyers. I fought so many of them, and I just want to be away from them. But when my friends committed suicide, I said, no, I think I'm.
My thinking is bad on this. I think that there's really. I gotta. I gotta figure this thing out, right? I gotta figure out what's going on. And if there's something I can do to help, I want to do it. Some people would say committing suicide is a cowardice thing to do because of the negative ripple effect that it has on your family, your friends, all those. Those things. But I thought of it as, you know, how bad must my friends have felt for them to say, this has got to be the best out for me just to. Just to kill myself.
So my thinking is, hey, you know, what, if I can get involved, if there's something I can do to help, I want to do that. I don't want someone else to have to suffer and feel like that. And so that was the sort of the turning point for me, Chris.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: So in that situation where you had. The three of you were close, two of the guys chose one path, you chose a different path, what do you think was going on there? What was the. What was the difference? What.
What was going on in your life? That or what did you read or what did you do? Or what. What do you think caused those two paths to you guys to go in different directions?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Well, believe it or not, that's sort of what brought you and I together. I was really down in the dumps and I trying to figure out how to kind of pull myself out of it. My marriage had failed. I'm looking around, my. My ex wife, she's moved on. The kids are doing. They're doing okay, but I was the one that was still struggling, like, still stuck in this story and trying to figure out how to. How to. How do I get out of this dark place?
And I saw a thing about becoming a motivational speaker. I thought, well, I can speak. I can. You know, I've been in courtrooms, boardrooms, all these other things.
And this guy named Jack Canfield was at a thing, you know, how to learn how to be a motivational speaker. And so I think I'll go to that and maybe that'll help. And he spoke and he talked about being a teacher in the inner city and some things that he was doing for some kids in the inner city. And after he finished his talk, I literally, Chris, I ran down the hallway to catch this guy and I said, hey, I was really inspired by your talk. And he was talking about self esteem. I said, I could use a little boost in self esteem myself right about now. And, you know, we had a conversation. He said, I think I can help you, and if you want to learn how to be a better speaker, I can help you with that. And he connected me with some of his team members and. And I signed up. And the next thing you know, things started changing. I started learning about his success principles. And the trial lawyer in me said, yeah, this sounds pretty cool, but where's the evidence? Does this stuff even work?
So I wanna. I wanna figure it out. Either I can find some evidence that this stuff is real, or it's not, or maybe I come to a place I don't know. And that led me into studying neuroscience. And then I went down that rabbit hole and I started to find the answers that I was looking for. And I started to understand what it means to be human.
How certain things we do as men and as professionals actually end up causing our biology to work against us instead of working for us. And once I figured that out, look out, man. I was on my way back and I figured out I can help some other people. And now that's what I do.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: That's great. That's for all of you who are stuck, who aren't sure that you have a path out, that your life isn't going the way you want, other people might think you have it. You don't feel like people understand you or they see you for who you are and you want to get into the flow and do great things. Then you've got to stick around after the break to hear Rick talk about what else he did to pull himself up, get to the next place, and actually help change a whole lot of other lives. So make sure you come back after the break. We'll be here.
We're just taking a quick detour through the savannah. Don't wander off. We'll be back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
Welcome back to Be the giraffe. I am here with Rick Petrie, the man who teaches people and organizations how to get in the flow and get into super high performance.
In the first segment, Rick told us, you know, people who get to great places, who build great character, it often happens by not having the easiest life. And you had some challenges, you had challenges in your career and you, you found somebody with a little spark of hope. When you met Jack Canfield gave you some hope. But as a trial attorney, of course, you were sure. You were quite skeptical of all the promises of great fortune. You wanted to know a little bit more.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, at first you're thinking, well, this is, you know, woo, woo, like a bunch of, you know, rah, rah, whatever. And I knew that it, it helped me, it got me, you know, out of the darkness at least. It gave me a belief that there might be some array of hope at the end of the tunnel. But at the same time, you know, the trial lawyer in me is like, wait a minute, man, wait a minute. Where's the proof of this is, this is hocus pocus, you know, did this guy just, you know, and being around some people, is that what made you feel better?
And so I wanted to figure it out. I literally, I wanted to figure this thing out. The trial lawyer in me showed up and said, rick, can you prove it? If so, what is the evidence? And I wanted to figure out, is there some there or is there not?
And so I started looking and searching and I came in, I kind of stumbled upon the neuroscience piece.
And then after that I stumbled into flow science.
And along the way I started to realize there's 30 years, like I've, I've done the research back 30 years of these studies on attorneys and peak performance is actually, you know, some people are doing great, but there's a whole bunch of people, significant amount of lawyers that aren't doing so well. They're, they're struggling and they have been for at least 30 years. The 30 year old paper that I found cites to papers even before that. These are scientific studies where psychologists and psychiatrists and others have been studying lawyers and they found out people are really having some challenges, right? They have things like depression, a lack of autonomy, there's, you know, drug and alcohol abuse, all of these things. I already talked about my two friends that committed suicide. A lot of the, especially on the suicide part that doesn't get talked about too often, but, but it's happening and it happens a lot more than people realize. And so I wanted to figure out, looking at these studies, were there some solutions in those studies that could help people not have to go through what I call needless suffering?
And one of the things I discovered is part of the problem is the way that the legal profession is structured, especially with regard to this stigma is as I mentioned this earlier, what it's actually doing is it's causing people's biology to work against them instead of for them. For example, the big myth, you know, sleep is for slackers. And you know, you got to build a lot of time, especially if you're working at a big law firm. That's the economic engine that keeps the firm growing and thriving.
And at the same time, you know, you have lawyers that are working 40 or 50 hours a week, 60, 70 hours a week. Well, there's a study that says if you work over 50 hours, your productivity is going to start to decline. If you work past 55 hours a week, then you're really going to be in a bad spot because you're cognitively, you start to not be able to perform very well. That doesn't matter. We have people that, you know, because of this billing pressure, working mad numbers of hours.
There's also this idea, right, that you have to be mentally tough. I think I've mentioned it a couple times. This gladiator mentality. Look at attorney law firm websites, we'll fight for you, we'll be aggressive. All of those types of messages that lead lawyers to believe that you have to be mentally tough if you're going to be a lawyer. And that means you cannot show any weakness.
But the reality of it is when you grind and you grind and you grind, for example, you don't get adequate sleep.
A lack of adequate sleep leads to cognitive decline. So yeah, you might be billing more time, but you're grinding your way through it. If we look at flow science, for example, flow's a four stage cycle. I'm not going to go too deep into it now. Maybe we'll get into it a little bit more later. But the first stage is the struggle phase. Well, guess what? A lot of lawyers spend their entire career in the struggle phase. They never get to the other four. The release, the flow and the recovery. Recovery, like what? I'm a lawyer, I got to build time. I don't have time for recovery, I'll sleep when I die, all those kinds of things. But the reality of it is that is not the way to have sustainable peak performance, consistent high performance, and it's certainly no way to live your life.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: So you've got this, this Crazy situation with the law where like this challenge is being bred. In law school, right, You've got a competitive law school situation, then you compete to get into law review, then you compete to get the jobs, then you compete with the billings to get, to get, you know, to become partner. So it's. Yeah, it's not a collaborative environment for most, for most of your time. Right. Like there's a lot of competition.
And then when you finally get to the place where you have some skills and you have some experience now you've got to switch gears. If at least what you're saying is the biology says you had to push and push and push. But if you want to, once you get there, the only way to stay on top and be in a good spot is to recognize that the thing that got you there is a practice you're going to have to change if you want to.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And that's a good point, Chris, because speaking of research, there are a number of surveys over the last.
I probably think I've followed that back about 30 years that show that this stuff does indeed begin in law school.
Most law students begin law school. Like we just had a thing just before we started taping the show, we had a group of students that are going to start law school. Most of those students start out mentally doing pretty well, right? They're on par with the general population.
However, by the time they graduate, 40% of those students are depressed.
A number of them are struggling with alcohol and drug abuse and they haven't even started their legal career, at least not as a practicing attorney yet.
But that's where they start, right? That becomes their baseline and then they get into the profession and again, you got to be this gladiator, this tough guy, all this stuff, and it's just not a sustainable way to live your life. It just, it just doesn't work. And here's the problem, Chris. I'm.
I just think it's really important that we, we talk about the elephant in the room. It's not a situation where the legal profession is not aware of this. The legal profession is well aware of it. In 2019, the American Bar association put together a task force and they released a report on the state of attorney well being and they issued challenges to law firms to start to take this stuff seriously.
So this is, it's not. Awareness is not the problem. People know that this is a problem.
The challenge is how do we do things differently so that law firms can still be very productive, very profitable, provide the highest level of service for their Clients and at the same time have people inside the law firms that can flourish rather than suffer.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Now you've, you've been talking a lot about lawyers and I know we're going to get that, that's your, that's your background, but you've had a chance to speak and work with all kinds of companies. This, this grinding into depression and inability to get or stay in a flow state happens in a lot of other industries too, doesn't it?
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, if you look at, you know, America's a capitalist society, I don't have a problem with that. I, I'm, I sort of favor capitalism. I don't have a problem with people making money, sometimes lots of money.
The problem is what, where we put profit ahead of people. And folks have been talking about this for a long time. You know, Milton Freeman's idea of shareholder supremacy basically stood for the proposition that the primary goal of any business is to make as much money as it possibly can for the shareholders. And so that meant that we can do a whole bunch of things. As long as we're making money, we can say it's just, we're just doing business.
But as things evolve, we move beyond, well beyond now the industrial revolution. Now most businesses are dependent upon knowledge workers.
So it's not, we don't need a whole bunch of people. We still need some that are working in factories and doing those types of things. That's all good. But we have a whole bunch of other people that are knowledge workers. So yes, you're absolutely right. This stuff shows up everywhere because the idea, and I remember I was going to be this motivational speaker, a lot of motivational speakers, they talk about, you know, you're not strong enough, you don't, you want to sleep, you don't want to get up, all these things. And the idea is that you're supposed to be productive all the time.
But the reality of it is if you're truly going to be productive, if you're truly going to be a high performing individual, then it's not about just doing all the time. Look at professional athletes. Here's a great example.
Just I think it was two weeks ago, I went to the Vikings. I'm here in Minnesota. I went to the Vikings training camp.
Those guys don't play football and they certainly don't play full contact football seven days a week. Why? Because that would not work. You'd have a bunch of people that are injured, they would be fatigued and they couldn't perform at their best. So what do they do, they perform, they go hard and, and then they recover and they get treatment, right? They go whatever treatment they need for their body and for their brain. But in business, oftentimes there's this belief that, no, we don't have time for sleep, we don't have time for recovery. All we got time for is just to grind and try to be productive. But the reality of it is your people aren't as productive as they could be. Your company's not as profitable as it could be if, if your people are not.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Well, yeah. So let's, let's take that football analogy. And when we come back from the break, I want to go through the fact that if you think about your life like a football game you've got or your job, you can hit hard and you can play hard and you can try to score and all of that is really important. But the best players, they study film, they study other people, they stop, they learn, they rest.
Those are important pieces to doing the things that you do. And I remember my dad talking about golf and he said it was one of the funniest things that he had been a professional baseball player and said golf's the only sport that people seem to play all the time and they don't practice at all when every other sport, you practice all the time just to play once in a while. So it was this idea that you need to practice, practice things. Practice, practice and prepare more than play. So when we come back, Rick's going to teach us about how we practice and how we, how we prepare so that we can play harder, play better, play faster, and ultimately, ultimately elevate our perspective, See a better path and be the giraffe. Don't miss it.
We're just taking a quick detour through the savannah. Don't wander off. We'll be back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
Chris Jarvis, welcome back. I am here with the flow master, the anti David Goggins. He's not just going to tell you to do the push ups. He's going to want you to do them, but not in such a mean way. So, Rick, welcome back.
We were talking about, you were talking about in the last segment, the idea that you can work really hard but eventually it will have an effect on your physiology if you don't rest, if you don't prepare, if you don't recover.
And this isn't just for lawyers. This is for, and it's not Just for professional athletes, and certainly not just for gladiators or people who play them in the movies. But everybody has to figure this thing out. And for you, this was not the easiest transition in your career to go from hard hitting, do the law win. All the cases come out strong, like there was a transition. So tell us about what you do in the research and how you applied this and how this had a significant impact on your career and your life and your health. And I think people who are stuck, who are trying to find a way, they want to know what that path out looked like.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's. It was sort of interesting the way that I. I discovered this flow science stuff. I. I came across an ad somewhere.
Learn how to get into flow on demand. Get in the zone on demand. And frankly, I thought, man, I've been in the zone before. But it just sort of happened. I didn't. I. I couldn't do it on demand. Like, I mean, I've done it a couple of times on the golf course, certainly done it as an athlete.
And I thought, man, if I could do that, that'd be great. And I really wasn't thinking about teaching anybody else how to do it. I was just trying to selfishly figure out how I could do it.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: And what do you mean by when you said get into float? Explain what that means in a work context or in a professional context for people, because you hear about it when you're watching sports, but just help the audience. You mentioned it a couple times. And I want to make sure everybody's on, because this is so important. And I remember the first time you talked to me about this.
Tell everybody what that means to you.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah, so flow, I'll give. I'll just stick my toe in the science just for a second, and then I'll tell you what it means to me. So flow scientifically is the ultimate peak performance mental state. It's that state of mind where you can perform your best and feel your best, where you become fully immersed in the task at hand.
So that's the technical definition of what flow is for, for athletes. Right. If somebody had been around for a while, remember Michael Jordan? He'd hit the shots and be like, I. I don't know, just, you know, things are just going. Gretzky, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, all these guys, when they're just. Things are just hitting, just hitting. Like, I think it was last year or two years ago, I was at a Vikings game, they fell behind the first half by 31 points.
They came back in the second half and had the largest comeback in the history of the NFL. They won after being behind by 31 points because they got into group flow. So that means the whole team got into a flow state.
Action and awareness merge. All these cool things start to happen. Even neurologically, chemically, there's some different things that happen. Dopamine, norepinephrine, all these things. I won't go too deep into it, but what it ended up doing for me is allowing me to get into this hyper focused zone, if you will, this hyper focus, deep work zone where all kinds of interesting things start happening. Right. You get immersed in the work, time flies by. It either speeds up or slows down. For me, it's usually, I can work for 90 minutes. It feels like it's been 15 minutes. You get this interesting pattern recognition where things just, everything connects, all these ideas connect and you can get more stuff done in a flow state of 90 minutes. And the average person who's dealing with distractions and can't focus and all this other stuff, you can get more done in a 90 minute flow state than the average person would get done in in a whole day. And not only get the stuff done, but feel good doing it.
And so once I started learning how to do that and I could do it on demand and also realize, like, there's some people say, man, if I could just be in flow for my whole life, that'd be great. But neurologically and physiologically that's not possible.
So you have to work your way around the flow cycle in order to get consistent access to flow. And if it would be helpful, I'm happy to go into that as well, what that looks like.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, yes, I want you to go into that. I will tell you for me, when I realized that distractions take you away from flow, it had to be, I think it was eight, ten years ago when I read Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Piece of advice I had was that I turned off every notification and my phone literally, literally has not rung or vibrated or shown up on my watch for eight to 10 years.
And yeah, thing is, if it's up and I'm waiting for a call, I'll see it. And if it's not up, if I'm doing something, I turn it over and I have no idea and I get to it when I get to it. And it's been life changing to not be distracted because I think the science is now how many minutes is it that once you get distracted even for a second to get back into the state. I knew it when I was writing, be the giraffe that you could. If I got distracted by something, it took so long to get back into it and be able to, to flow and write that I would write in big blocks and it was great. If I got into the flow, it was fantastic. If I didn't, I knew it was time to just put it aside and go somewhere else because, you know, I just couldn't get anything done.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And the average knowledge worker now is distracted about once every three minutes throughout the day. You know, it's either email or Slack channel or text message or, you know, you get addicted to dopamine, messing around with your ph or you're looking at social media or you got somebody coming in. You know, all these things. It's just constant distractions. To your point about how long it takes to get back. If you're in a flow state and you get knocked out, the research shows it takes about 12 to 14 minutes to get back in. If you can get back in at all, you may not be able to get back in at that time because the distraction knocked you out. So, you know, in terms of, you know, people want to be productive, the key. And you did, you did exactly. I did the same thing. I turned off every notification, none. Because the notifications, those aren't in alignment with my goals. That's usually somebody else's agenda. Right. Somebody else's stuff popping up there. You know, you got marketers that are trying to get your attention and all these other things happening. So I just shut them all down. Now that doesn't mean that I ignore people. Like if I need to return a phone call or return respond to an email, those kinds of things. But I do it intentionally in certain blocks. But the most precious time is my 90 minute flow block because nothing interferes with me there. Nothing. I'm fully focused on the particular task at hand and that's how I'm able to get, you know, the deep focus work, get into a state of flow and be so productive.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: We got a few minutes left in this segment. Take people through the flow cycle. I think that'll be a good thing to share with them. And then, and then I want to get into the really cool stuff you're doing. We get to the last segment, but give us a few minutes on the flow cycle so people understand, you know what that is.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's a four stage cycle. It begins with what we call the struggle phase. And as I mentioned earlier, sometimes people spend their entire life there. The struggle phase is where you are engaged in a task. You're all in, but it's a struggle, right? You're having a tough time trying to uptake all this information. You're storing a lot of information in working memory. Frankly, working memory can only hold seven plus or minus two bits of information at any one time. That's why we have telephone numbers that have seven digits in them, even though most of us don't remember anybody's phone number now because we plug it in our phone. But that's the thing, right? So we're uploading all this information, and that's when your brain starts to be like.
Because it's getting overloaded in the next phase of the flow cycle, which is called the release phase.
The idea is to release, to stop focusing on whatever you've been doing. If you're trying to find a solution to a problem, you let it go for a minute. And what happens neurologically when you enter into the release phase is you allow that information to transfer from short term working memory into long term memory.
Long term memory, at least from what we know so far, seems to have basically unlimited capacity. And the processing speed in your unconscious mind is exponentially faster than it is in your working memory.
While you're in the struggle phase, you know, you're getting tense, you're getting cortisol dump, that's the stress hormone. But when you move into the release phase, you get a dump of nitric oxide, which, which flushes all of those stress hormones out of your system.
And then that sets the stage for the magic to happen where you start to enter into the flow stage.
There's something really interesting that happens in the flow stage with regard to your brain. It's called transient hypofrontality. And what it means in simple terms is part of the prefrontal cortex goes offline temporarily.
So that's the part of the brain that's responsible for the inner critic, the part that's always saying, who do you think you are? You can't do this.
All that stuff, all that negative self talk goes quiet.
Time is also in the prefrontal cortex. And so then that's what causes time to be dilated. There's this magical chemical cocktail. There's five of them. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and three others. I won't go too deep down into that. But it creates this magical neurochemical cocktail that is so powerful. It's more powerful, for example, than morphine. And that's what causes people to feel so good and Then you also get this interesting pattern recognition thing that starts to go on where you start to make these interesting connections. Chris, this is. This is like you all day long, right? Because you just think so differently than most people do. But in a flow state, you start making all these pattern connections, and that's where these create the increased creativity. You know, there's, I think it was University of Sydney did a study and they found with their subjects a 490% increase in creative problem solving skills.
DARPA, in turn, training military people, 290% increase in skill acquisition or learning.
So all of these cool things happen in the flow state. Now, remember, part of what drives that is this neurochemical cocktail that's going on. And you only have so much of that on board at any one time.
So at some point you'll start to notice that things start to slow down. The connections, the creativity, the productivity starts to slow down.
And the reason for that is because you're running out of these neurochemicals, at least for now.
And so the idea there is, once you start to notice that, that you pull yourself out of a flow state and then you move into the recovery phase.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: And it's not that we're going to give the audience a chance to recover at the break and then we're going to come back and you're going to tell everybody how important it is to not only recover at the break, but recover in business. And then we're going to move into the really cool advice that you have. So don't miss it. Go do your recovery and come right back for more Be the Giraffe.
We're just taking a quick detour through the savannah. Don't wander off. We'll be back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
Welcome back to Be the Giraffe. Now that you recovered, you're ready to get back into Flow with my guest, Rick Petrie. Rick, tell us so after you've been through the major stakes, we'll recap the three, the three stages for everybody and then tell us the importance of recovery. And then I want to get into how do we get back? How do we get people into flow right now?
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Yeah, you bet. So remember, it starts with the struggle phase. From struggle, we move into the release phase. From release, we go into flow, and then when we're coming out, we move into the recovery phase. And recovery in this context, we encourage people to use active recovery protocols. Not the typical thing that a lot of people would do, sit on the couch, maybe grab a beer, watch television. That's passive recovery. And your brain's not really at rest at that point.
Maybe another day we'll come back and I can talk about the science of that. But for now, active recovery would include things like getting in a hot tub, getting in a sauna, yoga, spending time in nature, those types of things where you can actually recover. Well, cold tubs, that's, that's another thing. You know, those are the same types of things that these pro athletes engage in because they, right. They, they need the recovery time, but they need to recover, like recover physically and, and mentally at the same time.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: So something you just said that I think is really if I got it right and I want to know if this is what it is.
We stress so hard with the things that we think and the things that we do. And jobs are now knowledge based jobs where we have to do a lot of thinking and a lot of communicating and it's a lot of work on our brain.
It sounds like from what you just said, the recovery is very physical and that there could be that, you know, the whole sauna, the cold tub, the hot tub, the yoga, the thing of getting the body moving. There's something about the body moving that there's a physical pathway to actually healing the brain. Is that or feeling the stress hormones in the kind of the inner neurological system?
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's why things like the hot tub, you know, you're going to, let's let everything slow down, calm down, your mind is going to slow down, you're going to move out of high beta, you know, the really fast brain waves into delta or theta brain waves. For people that are interested in, you know, meditation, same thing happens there in the flow state. You're in that same brainwave state, those really slow brain waves. So all of that is important. And another piece of recovery that often gets totally overlooked is the importance of sleep. You know, there's all this talk about sleep is for slackers, I'll sleep when I'm dead, all this stuff.
But if you look at the science of sleep, there are so many important things that happen when you're asleep. That's when your brain cleans out the trash, so to say that's when memory gets consolidated. All of these important things happen while you're sleep. Muscles recover and heal while you're asleep. So you know, all of those things which are super important and we've been trained for a long time culturally that yeah, you don't do that. Sleep's for slight. You don't want to do that. We ain't got time for that. So. Yeah, you're right, Chris, that there's a lot of physical activity that's going on in recovery along with a lot of things going on in your brain that are critically important, important for peak performance.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Okay, so tell people we've got about five, six minutes left. What do we have for tips to get into flow? Tips to recover? What are some things people can do right now? What kind of stuff are you teaching people who are asking, this is what you get paid to do?
What are some of the tips for getting into flow? What are some of the tips for staying in flow? Getting back into flow, getting into flow more often?
What are some good things the audience can do?
[00:41:35] Speaker B: Yeah, the first thing is something that we talked about earlier, and that's get rid of the distractions. Eliminate distractions. Like in my office, I will close the door. And when I close the door, people know, oh, he's flowing. Don't go in there, because I just, I just don't. That's a boundary that I've created.
Another thing would be to learn what your flow triggers are. Flow always follows focus.
And there are a number of flow triggers that you, especially if you stack them, that are make you more prone to get into flow. So for example, there's something called the challenge skills ratio, which says down here, if it's too easy, it's going to be boring.
If it's up here above, it's going to create too much anxiety. But there's something right in the middle called the flow channel. And if you can, try to engage in tasks that are about 4% above your current skill set. Now you're right there. You're right on that leading edge.
Clear goals is another example. Right very.
You have big goals and you take them apart and break them into smaller goals so that you know during this 90, 60 to 90 minute block, you're focused on one thing, one clear goal. So your brain knows exactly what it needs to stay focused on and you focus on that one thing. There are also things called flow blockers. Like distractions are flow blockers. And they're like, I could tell you what mine are, but that would be based on my personality. So everybody's personality is going to be a little bit different in terms of the flow blockers, but distractions is certainly one of them. So eliminating those. So I would say if people want to learn how to get into flow more frequently, figure out what your individual Flow triggers are everybody has some. Right. It's the thing that you do that makes you feel great where you just lose track of time. Maybe it's working in your garden, maybe it's working on your car, maybe you're into arts. But whatever it is, figure out what those flow triggers are and then leverage those more often. Eliminate those distractions. Get good recovery, get adequate sleep, because if you're too tired, you're not going to be able to get into flow. So those are a couple things.
[00:43:50] Speaker A: That's great. And tell us, what are you doing now for people who want to know more about what you have going on?
They're looking for a speaker, they're looking for someone to work with their company.
How do people find you and what else do you have going on?
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so one of the things that one of the projects I'm working on right now is a community called Straight Talk for Attorneys. It's a place for, for lawyers to come and be with other like minded attorneys and eliminate the stigma. Right. We're going to get rid of the judgment. We're actually going to figure out what we can do to support each other. I'll introduce them to all this peak performance science stuff and share with them a number of tips. Also created a program called Success Choir.
This is like the Mac Daddy program that contains all of all the modules that not only help people get into flow, but really well positions them for sustainable peak performance.
In addition to that, I have a hybrid program that involves some online coursework along with group coaching. I do talks, I do workshops.
So if people are trying to figure out how do I get increased productivity without burning my people out, I'm your guy. Now I'm be honest. If all you want to do is check a box and say we brought a guy in and then we say we did it, I'm not your guy. But if you really want to create those kinds of results, I'm sure I can help you.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: And where can people find you for that, Rick?
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so if for the lawyers go to straight talk for attorneys.com for others, you can go there too. There's contact information there. Reach out and more than happy to, to help. We can have a conversation and see, you know, if I can come in. I've helped lots of companies. If you want to get into leadership, we can talk about that as well.
Because the, here's the reality. The performance of any company is always going to be based on the quality of the leadership. I don't care what company it is. The quality of the company is going to be based on the quality of the leadership. So those are things I can help with as well.
[00:45:59] Speaker A: So you help companies do this by helping their people get into flow. So the people who work there are more productive, happier, more satisfied, getting more out of them in less time. So you're really aligning the corporate goals with the leadership goals with the individual goals.
And you've done a lot of work in the transformational space. So you understand the human. You know, the human dynamic better than most.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, talking about leadership, one of the things that I think people often miss in terms of leadership is that you're leading people.
So if you're going to be leading people, you know, as a leader of an organization, you're always trying to get the best out of your people in terms of productivity. But if you don't understand how people work, the conditions that they need in order to achieve the highest level of productivity, then you're really not going to be a very effective leader. I mean, there's lots of different leadership styles from command and control.
There's. I have a program called the Seven Levels of Leadership that talks about relational leaders and all these other types of leadership skills. And it's really no different than, you know, you and I both have kids. You know, things I do with one kid would work great for that kid, but it would work terribly for another kid.
But we always are trying to, you know, if you don't. If you don't have good leadership skills, you might be just trying to do the same thing to everybody. And now you're frustrated because it's not working. Well. Yeah, that's because you don't understand people and how to get the best out of people. So, yes, you're right. It's lining up the organizational goals with what do I have to do to get my people to be able to achieve those goals?
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Rick, this has been always fascinating. It's always great when I get a chance to talk to you and you talk about bringing the best out of people, and you always bring. You always bring the best to me, to my team, and now to my show and to the audience. So for that, I want to say thank you, brother. It's great to have you.
[00:47:59] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. It's always a pleasure to be in your company and to have these great conversations. So thank you again for inviting me to join you.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: Pleasure, everybody. Make sure you come back next week to see the next episode of Be the Giraffe. But until then, please, please, please elevate your perspective and see a better path, which includes you getting into your flow so you can get more done in less time, so you can lead people with your big, huge heart, so you can find a new path and lead those people in your organization to get more out of their careers, out of their time, and ultimately help you, your customers, your family, your community. So come back next week, elevate your perspective, see a better path, and be the giraffe. I'm Chris Jarvis. Thank you.
