In this episode, hosts Frank La Vigne and Candace Gillhoolley sit down with Angus Nelson—author, podcaster, and expert on leadership and human potential in the age of AI. Together, they dive deep into the rapidly changing landscape of technology and work, exploring how relentless market volatility, AI advancements, and global complexity are putting unprecedented stress on individuals and organizations alike.

Angus Nelson shares insights from his book, "Neuro Resilient Leader: The Internal Operating System for Leading at the Speed of Change," challenging the notion that grinding harder is the key to success. Instead, he argues that true leadership today demands clarity, capacity, and composure—and that our biggest challenges are rooted not in strategy or data, but in our internal operating systems and mindset.

Tune in as they unpack the myths of grind culture, the critical importance of mental well-being in the digital era, and practical ways to protect and elevate our collective "brain capital." Whether you're a leader, an independent contributor, or simply navigating a chaotic world, this episode offers hope, inspiration, and actionable advice on how to stay human—and thrive—in an increasingly automated world.

Links

• Angus' LinkedIn Profile -https://www.linkedin.com/in/angusnelson/
• Angus' Website -https://angusnelson.com
• Angus' Coaching Website-https://neuroresilientleader.com
• Get the Book Free -https://freebook.vip
• Get the paperbook on Amazon -https://amzn.to/4w1uHIf

Time Stamps

00:00 Challenges of adapting to AI changes

07:15 Finding internal clarity and value

09:54 Influences on self-belief

13:38 Impact of technology on brain health

16:07 AI and creativity debate

20:03 Changing nature of creativity and work

22:30 AI's role in company differentiation

25:24 Embracing a new lifestyle

29:02 Facing self-doubt on success path

31:22 Embracing change and transformation

35:34 Overcoming self-imposed limitations

41:08 Identity shift realization

42:30 Energetic exchange and authenticity

48:14 Living abroad during COVID

49:05 Download free book PDF

54:38 Finding your inner power

55:32 Thanking Frank and Candice

And like you said, you know, we're living in an era where

AI market volatility, like is it the global

complexity of it all? It's accelerating faster and faster and there's so much

change and people are having a difficult time adapting.

But the leaders that are trying to outwork the velocity are the ones that are

suffering. They're pushing harder, they're grinding, like you said.

And you can't outwork velocity if

grinding harder isn't working anymore. You're not alone Today,

what's really breaking in the age of AI? This is Data Driven.

Hello and welcome to Data Driven, the podcast where we explore the emerging

field of data science, data engineering and

artificial intelligence. Now with me today is not my favorite estate

engineer in the world. He is unavailable. So I brought the most curious

person I know. And I mean that. Not like curious strains, but someone who's actually

inquisitive and

you're quantum curious. But I think you're also data curious and you've also done a

lot of work with neuro

diverse type things. I know you have a blog on

that you're going to reactivate thanks to a little animal

called the dingo. But that's for. That's a show for another day.

I have with me Angus Nelson, who is. He was an author and

fellow podcaster and we're part of a group, mastermind

type group called Podcasters Paradise. Shout out to you JLD

and and you have a book that is

about, I think, something that's very, very timely.

It's stress and anxiety. And as I was kind of

skimming through it, I realized like, you know, he's

right about a lot of this here

because grind culture, hustle culture, can only take you so

far. And I kind of. Candace knows this because I had a kind of a

come to Jesus moment last week with a lot of stress going on in my

life and things like that. And I kind of realized

I was listening to a song by Pitbull. Yes, Pitbull. And he has

a line, a lot of things in his lyrics I can't repeat,

but one of them was interesting. He goes, you know, life is a gift and

a curse. Which one do you figure out first? He goes, it's about

what you leave behind because I've never seen a U haul behind a

hearse. And then he goes

into some Spanglish and some naughty words. But the lesson

there I think is very important. And as we're going through here, it

really. We live in a very stressful time. Obviously,

geopolitical events weigh on our minds kind of subconsciously,

but also that

3am Slack message where you're up at 3 in the morning because you're thinking of

something at work. So welcome to the show. The book is Neuro

Resilient Leader, the Internal Operating System for Leading at the

Speed of Change. Welcome to the show, Angus. Well, great to be here,

Frank. And like you said, we're living in an era

where AI market volatility of the global

complexity of it all, it's accelerating faster and faster and there's so much

change and people are having a difficult time adapting.

But the leaders that are trying to outwork the velocity are the ones that are

suffering. They're pushing harder, they're grinding like you said.

And you can't outwork velocity, you just simply

can't. And I believe that every single business problem that most people

are facing right now isn't so much about, you know,

the data sets, it isn't so much about the strategy and the

tasks at hand as much as it is them finding

themselves from an internal operating system that's,

that's flooding them or overwhelming them. So now they have

analysis, paralysis, stalled innovation, they're

hemorrhaging talent, losing people, people are

disengaging, there's all sorts of stats and we can go into some of that if

you want and get nerdy on the, the data of that particular piece.

But what's actually happening is the internal operating system

is what's breaking down in people. Things are changing and we're trying to run

on Windows 2000 and it ain't working

anymore. So everybody's in this dysregulated nervous system

and they're treating every daily challenge like it's a frickin life

threatening emergency. No, exactly. And that's kind of

how we evolved and that's what got us here. And there are a lot of

good stuff messages in your book, right. Like what got you to where you are.

And you know, your, your book is geared to what I can tell,

towards a leadership level. But this happens I think even at the individual contributor

level. And certainly I think the people who are

independent contractors, I know a lot of folks who you know, listen to show

are independent contractors. Andy is one. Right. And there's always a

lot of stress going on and I think there's a lot of stress that is

induced by AI, but I also think there's opportunity induced by

AI. But the thing that really struck me was I'm sitting there and I have

my best idea as drive in driving around. So I was driving Around I was

listening to, you know, a notebook.

Lm summary of your book because I don't think there's an audiobook yet.

But, you know, it really got me thinking, like.

And, and we think about the best business leaders of the 21st

century thus far, right? The, the name that everyone, almost

everyone will bring up is Steve Jobs. Right. And Steve

Jobs, yes. Was he difficult to work with? People have said that. But he

also saw ahead. And I think part of his ability to see ahead because,

remember, he disrupted not just Apple, Pixar, right.

Filmmaking, music, you know, everything Apple has done.

Mobile. I've been a victim of, of

that when I was working on Windows Phone. I think that he has a

background and I know we did a lot of meditation and kind of things like

that. I wonder if he hadn't had that, would

he have been able to see so far ahead into the future?

Right. And this is part of the piece

of the whole book where we talk about clarity,

capacity and composure. Those are the three core elements

of the 3C or excuse me, C3 protocol.

And what most people don't understand is that what

we're facing as a

dysregulated individual is an inability to

be clear on what's actually happening. And most of us are focused

on everything around us. And it's easy to look at, you

know, certain, you know, elections or political things,

or we can look at, you know, the corporate, you know, change

and Jack Dorsey saying all middle management is now going to be coach

players. You know, like we're hearing all these things that can

feel really, really

scary, fearful, uncertain, et cetera.

And that lack of clarity for what's the next step, because we're

faced on the outside, we're looking at everything external to

translate to an internal state, and it never will.

And those that have always risen to other

heights have taken their own sovereignty, their own

agency, and then become whoever they

became. Whether that's a Steve Jobs who went internal or whether

that's, you know, name any, you know, great movement of

individual from Jesus to Muhammad

to, you know, Martin Luther King to Gandhi to

Mother Teresa, they had an internal

understanding and clarity of who they are and what they're for.

And this is a state most people don't know how to connect to

anymore. We've forgotten our own personal value

and we've instead let everything outside of us, whether it's

through people pleasing or whether through accolades or through

paychecks or the size of our house or the size of our body

parts. We think that's what qualifies us or

gives us value. And it's simply the lie.

And we bought it for so long that in this now dysregulated

state, everything within our decision making now is distorted.

Is what's keeping us from living a life that actually fulfills, that

actually sustains, that actually gives meaning and

contribution. So what part of our

humanity, the human capabilities that

we should try to be relying on more as we

see, for example, AI reshaping workflows and

expectations, you

know, what, what can we reach inside

ourselves for to that we're not gonna, you know, we're

obviously not getting from the AI that's gonna help us.

So you've heard all the like soft skills type of stuff and

people will say, oh you, you know, you need to improve your EQ

or you have to, you know, work on your communication

skills. And so many companies will focus on the

symptom. Oh, you're a terrible communicator, you're not good with people,

you lose your temper. We need you to be, you know, executive

presence, blah, blah, blah. The other side is the question

you're asking is how do you change

what's going on inside? And there's a couple of different things I'll give you just

real quick. One is every one of us live our lives based on

stories we tell ourselves in many ways were our own worst

enemies. And we build those stories based on the

experiences that we've had through life. And if we're going to stay to this

kind of metaphor of our operating system, it's like our minds,

our bodies are like supercomputers. And so all the

data that we've taken in based on that fifth grade

little league coach that told me I never amount to anything, that parent who

maybe challenged me on something, if there was that girlfriend

that rejected me, that boyfriend who said I was fat or ugly

or what, like all those different things that we just take off as part of

life on some level, we built a story around that,

right on top of that are the daily inputs,

the news we're listening to, the people we hang out with, like the movies we

watch, the music we listen to, all of that will have some sort of

agitation. If we're listening to stuff that is either detrimental,

angry, bitter or, or

blaming, that is all input.

Now the supercomputer, our mind and our body is processing all of

that. And now it wants to validate the information it is now

consumed. And so subconsciously on a

very deep level, we will seek to create or to

attract the relationships,

experiences or opportunities that reflect

that belief system. And if that belief is. I'm never going to amount to

anything. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve. I'm not

worthy. You will create opportunities to

validate those beliefs. And that's where people suffer.

That's what people get challenged. That's where they run into roadblocks in their careers

or their relationships, vice versa.

If now I create new stories that all of that was,

you know, that that was training, that was

learning, that was me understanding who I am. The things that

I went through, difficult, good, bad or ugly, were all

shaping me and forming me. They were working for me.

They weren't happening to me. Now that becomes

all the different kinds of things that I've done for this new graduation.

It's like the price that I paid of my tuition.

Secondarily, I start to protect what I'm listening to. I start to protect.

I'm turning off talk radio. I'm not listening to the news. I'm stay informed, but

I'm not staying inundated. I'm no longer

associating with people who are critical or negative or

bitchy. I'm no longer associating myself

with environments that pull me down. Instead, I'm hanging out

with environments that pull me up. Now all of a sudden, I've

created new data. I'm reformatting the drive to a new

operating system. And so now my subconscious goes to work you to

now seek to attract or create a higher

caliber of experiences,

relationships and opportunities. And that's when the game changes.

You know, that's a good point. Cause I noticed that,

you know, I think the best thing you could do for your mental health is

not sleep in the same room as your phone. Yeah, right. Because what'll

happen is before you even get out of bed, you check your feed. You can't

help. But these things literally are, I think. I mean, there's a court case

about this, right? They are incentivized to make them addictive.

Right? And those little dopamine hits. And then before you get out of

bed, you're taking on the world's problems. I forget to phrase it that

way. And that's just not good for you because we weren't built for that. Right?

If you think, I mean, you shouldn't at least. Should

you take on all the world's problems? No, but you should at least do it

after you've gotten out of bed and after you've had your first cup of coffee,

right? Whereas I think if people kind of lay, they doom scroll, right? Just that

term doom scroll, I think, sets people up for failure.

Right. And you're right if you think about it as a, you

know, a data problem. Right. Garbage in, garbage out. Right. If you're

consuming junk content, well, you know, don't be surprised if you start having

junk thoughts. Yeah. Or even think about, you know, the people who are

just swiping left or right. Whether it's, you know, TikTok or whether it's

Instagram or if it's dating apps or all that stuff is training your

brain to be highly reactive and highly

judgmental. And so you can't rest, you can't think, you

have no critical thought. And the World Economic

Forum released a 2026 report called

the Human Advantage, which I think is just, again,

uncanny with the timing of my book. And it highlights

that AI handles more cognitive task. Right. But

the global disease that's kind of the burden of

people is the brain health, and that is

a rising increase in what they call brain capital.

And that's the piece that people are not paying attention to is they don't understand

that their proficiency for thinking, their proficiency for

critical thought or decision making is being

hijacked by an amygdala that is

operating in an absolute flooded state. Right. And so

we start to, like, take our decision making and we off board it to,

hey, what do you think? What do you think? Let's bring in the advisor, let's

bring in a consultant. Because people have stopped trusting their gut

or their own instinct or their own genius. And they

don't want to subject themselves to possibly being

criticized or, you know, making a mistake.

And it's because of this heightened state that becoming hypersensitive.

Right. I think that's what's happening. I think that's what's happening to the

baby boomers right now. I think that the information

and the pace of life is just so quick

that they have no idea how

to relate to it, you know, as it's happening, you know, even from,

like, the simple things of, like, okay, someone who's gonna go see a psychiatrist.

Well, don't worry. Coming to my office, I'm gonna zoom you. What the hell is

zoom? How do I find zoom? Do I have it on my phone?

How do I. Is that an app? Like, you know, and I have, I have

these conversations with my mom all the time. She's 80, you know what I mean?

And just her trying to make sure she

has her place in the world still. Right? And, and

you, you, you wonder, like, what are we risking?

You know, what are. What Are we risking in our humanity and

that people aren't paying enough attention to. Yeah,

yeah. What does it even mean? What does it even mean to be human anymore?

Right? Because up until a few years ago, I had this debate with somebody recently.

It was like, you know, up until a few years ago, we had the

monopoly on creativity right up until, say,

early 2021, right? Is when you started seeing a lot of the image

generators kind of coming up. And

now we don't have the monopoly on that anymore, right? So, like whenever you go

back and you watch like, you know, Star Trek Next Generation, which is pretty funny,

some of the things they say now in regards to AI and one of their

things was, you know, well, to be human is truly to be creative, right?

And it's like, well, that's not necessarily. We don't have a monopoly

on that anymore. Yeah, right. And I know someone's out there thinking,

well, you know, AI doesn't really create. It regurgitates what it's already

seen. Like, how many people?

How many people, you know, arguably, you

know, creativity. Even the great artists that you can think of take what

they've experienced and input themselves and then they output it in some new

novel way. Right? There's still arguably a,

you know, there hasn't been an original thought, so to speak, in, you

know, 10,000 years. That's one. One way to look at it. I don't

totally agree with that, but I can, you know, the whole resting on the

idea that only humans can be creative. Those. That's gone. I also think too,

like in terms of what you said about data processing, right.

You know, I don't care how hard you can hustle, right?

A, you cannot process data faster than an AI

can. Right. It's kind of like a bird trying to

outfly, you know, a supersonic jet. You know,

that bird can only grind, but for so long. Yeah,

yeah. And if you look at it from,

you know, the creativity aspect, you know, we

are still tastemakers. You know, it's one thing that

AI cannot do yet is context how this

is applied. What does this look like? I mean, I've been playing with AI. I've

built my whole website using, you know, just. It's all

hard coded, all from AI and thank you, Claude

Code. And you know, I said, oh, you know what, I want to build

this assessment. And I used to use Score app. Well, I just

saved 70 bucks because now I just coded it, you know, with cloud code.

Oh, let's get rid of type form. I can build that into and it's like

I'm saving 220 bucks a month just because I learned AI

and I'm not even. I don't know. I don't know Python. I don't know

JSON, I don't know any of this shit. I know. I know

Ruby rails from like 2010 little course, but that's like

it, right? But for the context

of this conversation is to understand that the

AI is here and it's going to continue to be here. But

the deeper question is, what you're asking is like, what does that mean

for us? Who are we going to be

in that time where AI is doing whatever utopian thing

we're hoping it will do? I've heard some say it could

take us back to the times of the Greek. Now, do we agree with why

the Greek had the time on their hands? They had a lot of slaves. That's

not something that's very politically correct. And it's. So let's just say the

AI is doing what the AI is doing. What did they have

available to them? And remember, it was only, it was only

upper echelon who had that. Right, right. You know, was, you know,

somebody, you know, some. Somebody pointed this out.

I'm sorry I cut you off. But like the Spartans, right? We think of. Spartans

are all warriors, right? Well, a lot of them were. Those are the ones calling

the shots. But somebody had to forge the steel. Somebody had to be the blacksmith.

Somebody had to make the shields, you know, the leather and things like that. Like,

you know, there's kind of what we think of as,

as. As the society and there's like, actually how it works. Right.

I think Spartans are a good example of that. Right. Speaking. Well, I would say

there's two sides of this. So, yes, you're going to take me to the second

side of this. But the first one is that creativity,

philosophy, art, like all of that creative

nature was how people filled their time. And then you

get to the other side of the equation, and I think this is where the

employee experiment is starting to change.

Whereas the last 150, 200 years prior to

that, we didn't have a lot of employees. Everybody, for the

most part, on some degree, was an entrepreneur.

You had to bring something of value to the world, whether that was through

farming or like you said, a blacksmith, leatherman, like all these different

things had some kind of value that someone would trade, barter or

buy. And now we're at this equation

where if this does what we believe that is perspected

to do, perspective, that's not even a word predicted to do

is take jobs. Let's just say in

whatever way or fashion, then what does that make me?

If my value and my identity was in my work

and they take away your work, well, then how do you show up?

How do you make a living? How do you. And I would say now you

have to figure out how to actually bring meaning and contribution to the world on

your own. What is your creativity? What is your gift

to the world? How are you leveraging your experience and your knowledge base

in such a way that now that creativity is something of such value

that people will exchange their dollars or by

this time, Bitcoin, XRP or whatever

else for your thing, whether it be a

product or a service. And so people are going to have to bring an

entrepreneurial spirit to the future of their career.

And that's where I think a lot of people are choking, is they don't know

how to do that. Because again, if trust has been

diminished from government, from corporate,

from other people, from our teams follow the line of the

continuum. And where trust is really eroding is

in ourselves. Yeah. Is that because

potentially, you know, AI can

generate all these ideas, you know, instantly.

And does that kind of affect how we feel about our own

creative voice? Well, what do you do

to execute on that? So it's one thing for AI to be

able to, you know, like, I mean, shoot some of this, like

open claw and whatever is going to go in and spin up all of its

own ads and set up all of its accounts and blah, blah, blah, and just

do its thing, right? Cool, cool, cool. And

if we're going to say that AI can do creative, or

it can come up with concepts, ideas, whatever,

the execution now is how do I interact with other human beings?

Full stop. Because if we look at AI,

every person in every industry, not every person, let me reframe

that. Every industry, the companies are going to

be competing with one another, not on anything but

the humanity, because they're going to have the same SOPs

built into the same task, into the same copy,

same sales mechanisms, because the AI is going to optimize it

to such a degree that each industry is going to have a carbon

copy. So then the differentiator becomes who's

behind it? What's the promise they're making to those that they deliver for? And

do they back it up? And then secondarily,

on a cultural standpoint, how do you treat your employees?

What is their. Not just acumen, what is their

temperature on their leadership with one another?

Because that will also tell the customer base what the

company's all for and then follow that up the chain is who's leading? Are they

trusted? Are they human? Are they authentic?

Because that will be the differentiator of the future. Is

that humanity? And in my book, I call that human success.

Interesting. There's a lot to unpack there, because you're right, people do identify

themselves with their career. Right? You know,

this is the cocktail party question. What do you do? Right. It's a very American

thing, by the way. I'd have to throw that out. Yeah, it probably is. Yeah.

No, it really, really is. Because when I moved to Canada,

all of a sudden, I had no idea what anybody did for a living.

You didn't ask people. You found out eventually because you

got to know them. But in America, it's very like, who

are you? What do you do? And that's like the definition, right? Well,

I'm talking to you guys right now from Portugal. Okay.

100%. You're spot on. Like, nobody cares,

you know, from the. It's the expats who are like, well, so what do you

do? What keeps you busy? Because they're looking for the normalcy of what they.

What they're. What they're used to from. From home. Exactly. And

the other thing is, like, people don't care about money here. Like, they. It's

just. It's not so in the States, like, it's like taboo. Let's not talk about

money or whatever. Or if we're talking about money, it's because of investments or

crypto or whatever. And here they just don't care.

Like, you could be a surgeon or you could be,

you know, a storekeeper, and they're all going to hang out

and share a beautiful bottle of Portuguese wine,

watching the sun go down over the Atlantic Ocean.

It's really an amazing kind of culture. And it's why

my family and I, we've been here for the last four years, is because we

chose to change the dynamics of how we interacted with life.

And we created an existence that gave us the

freedom to be able to work from where we are and which, you know, the

power of being online and then secondarily is my

kids made this transition being 10 and 12 year old

when we first came here, and now they're 16 and 17

and they're speaking Portuguese. Their friends are

from all over the world, so they're

exposed to different languages, different foods, different ways. And for

us, and this is kind of my world, is. I

think life is about expansion in Whatever way

you want to define that. And so as we look at

all this change and transformation, if you go to

scarcity, to fear and to constriction,

you're actually choking off life.

But the whole premise of the neuroresilient leader. And by resilient,

I define not as, like, white knuckling, not as pushing through, not as

surviving. But it is part of the expansion, which means as

the pressure comes, the pressure only gives more power.

You absorb it and you turn it into leverage,

you turn it into opportunity. Because every challenge you face,

one of two things. One is it's an invitation to a new reality,

because the second piece is the universe has this

uncanny ability to show you areas of

your life where you are not yet free.

And when you face a challenge, the challenge is not the

actual thing. It's the confrontation that that challenge brings you.

What does this challenge say about me, and am I

willing to face it for its truth? Or will I

deny it? Will I ignore it? Will I try and

push it off on somebody else? Or will I look

at it and say, this is not the kind of person I want to be?

Or this is calling me up to a different realm, or this is my

opportunity to move from where I'm at, to go to where I should be.

Learning to release. That's when we start to connect to it. Exactly. No, that's it.

No, I'm sorry. No, I just thinking, like, learning to release what's

inside of you that is holding you back or

causing you dread or trauma so that you can,

like you said, live a life of expansion. Yeah.

So. So let me. Let me unpack this just a little bit more. Remember, I

said those. There's three things I threw out there real quick early in the conversation

where I said, I don't deserve. I'm not worthy. I don't have what it takes.

And these are like three little gremlins in our heads. There's a lot to

unpack there. In the book, I talk about the Guardian, which is like your

overprotective parent. That's that inner voice, the inner critic. It's not

there to be an enemy. It's actually there to try and keep you safe.

Right? So when you step into something, it's going to be that

overprotective parent or the auntie that's like, oh, who do you think you

are? What do you think you're doing? You know? And that's

that voice where what it's really trying to do is say, hey, that other

thing that you're seeing or facing looks scary. And I

don't know if I want to go. I would rather stay here in my chaos

or complacency, because at least here I know what to expect,

right? So now, as we're going towards this thing called success,

you're going to be faced with those three questions. Do I deserve?

Am I worthy? Do I have what it takes? So as I'm walking up, like,

do I deserve this opportunity? Do I have what it takes

to make this happen, to get this role, to work with these people?

Like, those are the questions you get up to this thing you call success.

Whether it's the money, whether it's the role, whether it's the company, whatever, whatever. You

come onto the other side and the exact same questions come up.

Do I deserve to make this kind of money? My dad never made this kind

of money. Am I worthy of this accolades,

this visibility, this role, this corner

office? Do I have what it takes? If I had an

exit and I made all this money, I can't do the next thing, because what

if people finally find out I'm a fraud? What if this next thing

doesn't go as successful as the other one? What if I screwed up? What if

I lose it all? And really, the root. I'm

sorry I cut you off. Is that really the root of imposter syndrome? You think

so? Imposter syndrome, I think at its

core is actually the

distance between who you know you can

be and who you're actually living as.

Ooh. Oh, I really, really

like that. We struggle

to believe in our own greatness.

We've allowed whatever your

circumstances, your environment or whatever, to

impute upon us a belief that we are

smaller and weaker than we are actually capable.

And so the clients that I work with, the people that

I walk these journeys with, will

tell me moments where they feel like they're inauthentic because they

see something great that they're doing, they're building, they're creating

in some form and expressing. But right now,

they can't see it, feel it, touch it, or taste it.

And so my question to them is, you know, twofold. One is,

are you waiting to be the beautiful butterfly? Because you're the

squishy middle in the middle of your chrysalis, because

this is the formation and it's a necessary part of the journey.

And then number two is the reality is what

you see out there, you have to possess and pull

into now. And suddenly when you

do that, your identity shifts. The way

you carry yourself, the way you talk, the way you make Decisions is

made in light of where you're going, not

where you are or where you've been.

And that's the dislocation. We think

where we are is truth. But what we're living right now is a product

of the past. It's the decisions we made, the way that

we acted, the chances we took, the challenges we

faced, and we defined ourselves by that. So where we

are right now is only an expression of the past.

And if you want to change the future, you have to do it different.

It's that thing where we say you're doing the same things over and over again,

expecting different results. That's that definition of insanity.

So this neuroresilient leader is painting that picture

emotionally, psychologically, and in some ways

spiritually of an identity of who you

know and see yourself to be. So suddenly now

your eyes are open to all the promise, all the hope.

And I challenge everybody, every conversation with what I call the Spice Girl

principle. Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

Because the moment you get clear on that, your future

has now a bridge because you finally gave

yourself permission to become the greatness.

And that's where most people are hung up. And all

of this external stuff is keeping us distracted of

the power and sovereignty and agency we already possess.

Wow, I'm feeling very uplifted. No, for real. I

mean, I mean, and I think it's good to hear that even

successful, high performing leaders

still feel stuck. Right. 100. You know, you see them,

you know, sometimes, you know, you mentioned crypto, right? Like you see the crypto

bros. And you know, you see that kind of, you know, people flexing with

the, whether it's luxury car, whether it's this. And

I mean, I wonder what goes through their head.

And you know, I think sometimes the more

arrogant somebody comes across and maybe they're

overcompensating to that. I don't know. Like, I mean, it's 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's just fascinating to kind of see. And I wonder how many people

are kind of stuck in their own head. Probably all of us to some

degree and not aware. Yeah,

so most of my clients are high net worth.

They're on some level of

achievement that they got to a level

where what they were doing no longer works.

Right. And as I stated before, most people are

operating from that path. So there's a, a chip on their shoulder.

They're trying to prove something to someone. You know, there's some kind of

dark energy, you know, that's empowering. Them to

move mountains and change, you know, the face of life

until they get to a point where that stops being the fuel, that fuel

no longer works, right? And so they need a new translation. So

that's one piece for some of the people I work with. The second piece is,

if you notice every high performer, every great

orator speaker, every great politician, every great

athlete, every great actor, all had coaches.

Some mentor, some. Someone was given

permission to hold a mirror up to him and says, see this? This is your

bullshit. And how would you like to fix this?

Right? Let me show you the way. Because to

your point, what divides us from where we

are to where we want to be is the friction of

the belief, the permission,

and that qualification that we've defined for

ourselves. And that's the problem is

we set the bar too small for what we deserve, what we're

worthy, or what we have. Do we have what it

takes. But now you have some outsider come and

start showing you a different perspective, starts helping you reframe,

reshape the stories, all of a sudden,

the shackles have been set free, right?

And every one of us do that. I have coaches. I've spent over a hundred

grand on people to help me get out of my own way.

I went through a season where I blew up my business. I went through

addiction, I went through a divorce, I was an alcoholic,

I blew up my life, something royal. And then

I started seeing a counselor, and I learned about human behavior

and psychology and emotional

intelligence and all this stuff. I had no idea what that stuff was.

And once you see, you can't unsee it anymore.

That's true. And it's kind of funny. We talked about this a little bit in

the virtual green room. You know, I'm a survivor. Listeners know this. I'm a

survivor of the World Trade Center. And, you know, I was late

for work, right? And horrible

thing, horrible thing. That day was bad. The following two, three years was really

bad. But it wasn't until I kind of did get counseling and kind

of, like, did realize, like, there's a gift here that I was

inadvertently given was,

you know, the ability to just stop and pause and kind of step outside myself,

Like. And that's helped me in

a lot of ways because I think there's a lot of

biochemistry that happens that we're not consciously aware of,

even to the point where some philosophers are wondering, do we really have free will?

And that's a whole other thing, right? But like you mentioned the amygdala. The amygdala

will process signals kind of like BIOS in a computer. Right. Like before,

before the CPU even sees anything. Right. So to speak. We like

to think that we live in our heads. We are the masters of our

domain. Clearly that's not true.

But the amygdala will process things before you even

are consciously aware. One story I give was we were on a

cruise ship and it's the first time we went cruising. All of a sudden

we were at dinner. I feel incredibly anxious

and I'm like, sometimes I'm good at it, sometimes I'm

so good at it, not so good at it. But this time I really was

self aw aware to the point where I had a Fitbit I was tracking.

I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I'm like, we're at dinner on

a cruise. Like why am I, why am I freaking out?

And I kind of like took a couple deep breaths, kind of

realized assassin might in imminent danger. Right. I'm not.

And I kind of realized it was the way that the engine was

thumping the waves or something like that was exactly the same

tone, pitch, everything, cadence as

when the towers fell. Yeah. And I felt that in my

feet. And I kind of, once I

realized that like, oh well, one, I'm not going crazy, so yay me.

And two, I was able to kind of walk back and get my heart rate

back down to like normal and enjoy the rest of the meal. Right

to the point where my wife knew that something

was definitely up with me and my kids were there. I had to time. I

only had the two kids. But then I realized like, this is what this is,

so I can kind of like walk it back. And I was able to like

rejoin. But that level of self awareness didn't,

did not come easy. You know, you talked about blowing up your life.

Been there, done that. But like,

you know, just in a strange roundabout way, it's kind of a

gift. Yeah. Yeah,

I treat it as that too. Is, is, you know,

when you go through stuff, right. This shapes and

forms you. And in some I say that,

you know, it made me fearless because when you lose everything,

you're not afraid to lose it again. Right. Most

people have again hung up their identity on all these, these different

factors. Thank you so much for sharing that the

story. And I think, you know,

there's so many people who probably still walk around with a lot of the

weight, you know, from, from going through that.

And part of, you know, this concept of this

clarity and capacity is that element

of reframing those stories.

In my book, I talk about when I Went to work

with a buddy of mine, Jeremiah, and we built a company

together called Crowd Companies. It was a Fortune 500

brands coming together in an innovation association.

And when I first started with him, I didn't know anything about the industry of,

like, Airbnb, Uber Lyft. We were tracking all the

investments coming into this peer to peer space, and then that spun

into crypto, then autonomous vehicles and drone

delivery and just crazy innovation. Cool stuff.

And I always believed

that I got lucky, that in 2013,

Jeremiah gave me a shot. And

I'm writing this book last year,

and I was going through that story in my head as I was writing it,

and I got this revelation that

I didn't just get lucky, that he didn't just choose

me, but he needed someone with my

skill set and I was just the right person for the job. And he

was the vehicle to help me get in front of the right people to deliver

my gift to the world. And it

completely shifted my identity because the

story changed. And so as I'm sitting here in front of my laptop,

I'm bawling in the middle of fricking Starbucks

as I'm writing my book. And I just felt this

huge release. And it was, you know,

yeah, I was invigorating, yes, it was liberating, but

it was the shift of identity. And as I tell people,

as I wrote this book, this book wrote me. And I

could not have released this book six years ago or five years ago

because Angus wasn't ready. Right. And

I had to be shaped so that I could articulate this world, this.

This book, into a world from a place that I could

not just say, hey, here's some intellectual, you know,

pontification. Like, this is a lived

reality and the

authenticity. And I'm going to go back to what you were saying before when you

felt that thing on the cruise ship, right? There is a

legitimacy to an energetic exchange. When you

talk to someone and you're looking them straight in the eyes, they're talking, you're like,

you are full of shit. You don't say that because you're polite,

but you just know something's not right. Or

you're in line with somebody and you suddenly feel

like everything inside you is like, oh, God, I just feel stressed. And you're like,

this person in front of you has some weird vibe

and energy they're giving off. They're just agitated and it's

coming off, it's slopping on you.

So we are communicating on these different levels that

are beyond just our conscious thought. And the more that we start paying attention. I'm

not saying this to be woo. I'm not saying this to be all New

Agey and we're not going to like, you know, talk to our ancestral

whatever peoples. I'm saying this is real

science, that the more that we know about this,

the more brain capital

we possess. Yeah,

you're absolutely right. Like, and, and you know, there's a. There's a tendency

to kind of dismiss this. And maybe this is people's inner, inner

ante, I think, is the word you used, right? You know, like, oh, this is

just hocus pocus, right? You know, this, you know, we're not talking about going to

Peru and smoking ayahuasca or whatever and singing Kumbaya. This

is very real. One phrase I kind of came to terms

with in the last decade or two was like, no matter

what happens to you, what happens to you to the

day you die, you're stuck with you. What happens to you after

that, I mean, that's up for the interpretation. But as long as I'm on this

earth and I'm breathing, I am stuck with me. I might as well make me

someone I want to spend time with. And you know,

I haven't quite gone so far down the personal coaching path

as you. Although I do aspire to that. Because, you know,

ultimately, if you invest in yourself,

that's an, that's an investment that you are going to

benefit from for as long as you're alive, right? At least

that. Who knows after that, maybe, maybe you'll come back and you'll benefit. I

don't know. But people, I think, underestimate

that, right? I think we live in a very

empirical society, right, where only

the physical exists. And I think

there used to be a rich esoteric tradition, right? You talk about

ancestors. My grandmother, my great grandmother would always tell these kind of weird,

kind of crazy folk tales and things like that. We kind of

thrown that all out. We thrown the baby out with the bathwater. And we live

in a very empirical, very physical world. And I think that once you get to

a certain point, that's very empty right

now. Obviously the good thing is we don't burn people at the stake for

witchcraft anymore, you know? You know,

generally that doesn't happen. That's good. But I think we also lost a certain amount

of flavor and soul to that.

I agree with that. And I'm listening to everything you're saying. And I'm

saying I'm an adult and I can take in this information

and I can Think about, you know, trying to, you know, really

listen to my intuition, to what I feel is right for

me. But what I keep on coming back to in my mind is

Generation Z. And these children,

I have, two of them were raised in

such a traumatic experience

with COVID that they're all walking around with

PTSD and nobody is

doing anything about it. Like, and. And they're.

And they're suffering and their children

who are trying to understand all this when there are adults

that don't even understand it. Right, because you've seen. I mean, because you said

you, you know, you moved. It was right. Right around, I believe, when the pandemic

happened. Right. And you said, I'm getting the hell out of Dodge,

you know, And. And that wasn't a bad idea, you know, and it was like

the first time since I'd moved to Canada where everybody stopped saying,

why? Yeah. Every time. Because I'm from New York.

New York is amazing. You know, I'm saying I'm in New York. Right. But no

one, no one, no one questioned me once. Once Covid hit.

And then you have all these children who, like, couldn't go

to school and didn't learn how to properly

socialize. Right. And completely

addicted to their phones because that was their

only outlet. Right. Well, we had

kids going to school on Zoom. They had kindergarten in our

old school district on Zoom, which sounds like the punchline to a Saturday

Night Live skit. Oh, yeah. Right. So think about, you know,

the human side of this. And this is why I believe this work is

so critical and so important, is we're having to retrain

people into a way that's always been. That

has become so foreign and

to your point. Yeah, we were actually. Our vision board to move to

Portugal was. Well, actually just to move to Europe. Portugal wasn't even on

the map. In our brain was 2024. And

in the middle of COVID we're like, what are we waiting for? Let's just go.

And we lived here for a year. That was the plan. And then we turned

to the kids, said, what do you think my kids are like? Why would we

go back? Because the level of safety and independence they have

here, etc. Etc. But that point that you just

made about children not knowing how to connect,

but at the same time, the adults not knowing how to bridge that,

that's the problem we're talking about. This is such

a massive issue.

And I'm going to say this, too, if you're still listening to

us, like, pontificating here right now

is More important to me that you get this movement than you buy

my frickin book. I would love for you to buy my book. And then when

we have the audio, buy my audiobook. Cool, cool, cool. But

go to Freebook VIP and download

the PDF for free. My gift to you

because I want you to wrap your brain around this. It's

this important.

The first five chapters, you will immediately know

what we're talking about. Because

I was very intentional not to make this

psychobabble, very intentional not to make it academic

and use all fancy terms, but your nervous

system is driving the car

right now. And I opened the book to

imagine yourself as the driver of an F1

vehicle with a $15 million engine in

your chassis. And everything's clocking, everything's going

great, except there's a rattle in your dashboard and you

don't know why, and the rattle is keeping you distracted and

suddenly you're missing your lines, you're not taking your turns, you're hitting your brake too

early, you're not punching when you should,

and therefore you're not performing in the way that you are capable.

And this book, this mission is not to

fix the car, it's to fix the driver.

Yeah, no, I, I, I, I, I love that

analogy. I think it, it sums it up perfectly, right? There's

a, there's a he since passed away, but there was a

guy who was a, like an industrial designer type guy at Microsoft

and named Bill Hill. And he would, he would say like, you know, when you're

writing apps, you're not writing it for Windows, you're not writing it for the Mac,

you're not writing it for iPhone, you're writing it for the human operating system. And

anything I've done since I heard that, and it was a stupid, like little

five minute video that he gave talk that he gave in 2004.

I still think of that to this day. When I build something, I still think

about whether it's a book, a slide deck, a podcast.

I think about that, right? Because the human operating system is something we're stuck

with. There's no update in sight. Best we could do is patch

it, but we have to work around it. And I do want to. I could

talk for another hour or two because there's a lot of stuff we didn't cover.

But I definitely recommend. Folks, it's Freebook vip.

Yep, I have gone. I skimmed the book and I had

AI kind of process the summary for me, but I'm definitely going to

read it now. I eagerly await the audiobook But

I want to be respectful of your time. I could talk for another hour, but.

And as a fellow podcaster, you know who's going to be doing the audiobook.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I like writing. I, you know, even though I do augment my stuff with

AI, writing is very cathartic. Right. It helps you process things.

Right. It takes a lot of that, like your experience. Right. It takes a lot

of that stuff that's in the undertow of the subconscious. Kind of brings it up

and you wash it off and you kind of like, huh, I can learn something

from that. You know, it's a very cathartic process. I write for

therapy. Literally, I write a lot. Even before AI, I

love that. And somebody taught me this. I

wrote a, two other books before this one. I released one

just sitting on a hard drive. And

my, my coach, my writing coach said, get it

written, then get it right. Because what you just

said, like, get it all out, flow,

right? And then you can go. And that's when you shape it, that's when you

make it what it needs to be. But if you don't go through that process,

you'll never get to the end now.

Exactly. I like that. Well, we could talk for another hour. I want to be

respectful of your time. Any final thoughts, Candace? I'm just

blown away. I've already gone to the website I'm downloading as

we speak. I, I, I

found this to be not just

intellectually stimulating, but like soulful,

you know, hopeful, really hopeful, which I think is

something that people aren't having right now and they're struggling with.

And so I think that you have really,

you've really, your fingers on the pulse of something just vitally

important for us all, all to investigate and understand better

than you. 100%. Thank you. This is, this is where you

have to leave your role and attach to

your soul. Oh. Because that's the

important piece. And we've forgotten that part of our

society. Everybody is so agitated

and so irritable and so reactive,

so fearful. Yes, because they're operating from

some role that they think they're supposed to play.

And my ambition is to get people to reconnect with their soul.

Right. The, the market is not rewarding your effort

anymore. It's only going to reward

when you stay regulated, when you stay human.

Right. And the AI is just going to get faster and faster. It's going to

do more. But can you be calm? Can you be

conscious? Can you be present?

Because your humanity, when it's properly regulated, like that's the

competitive advantage. And

I think when increasingly more so. Sorry I cut you off recently.

More. Right. And so when we get to that

stage and we get to connect with ourselves,

to give ourselves permission to step into our power, to give ourselves

agency, to take on our sovereignty,

then we're actually going to step that last piece, which is the composure.

And in that composure, the power that we possess in that

moment is that person who has nothing, nothing to gain,

nothing to prove, nothing to lose. And it's the most

powerful person in any room. And my hope is that

you, as the listener, learn to connect to that.

Wow, that's powerful. I can't come up with a better ending

thing than that. Thank you, Angus, for coming on the show.

It's freebook vip, definitely check it out.

I'm going to load it on my Kindle as soon as this call ends, actually.

Well, thank you, Frank. Thank you, Candice, especially Frank.

Just reaching out and just saying, hey, want to be my show. I

just love your generosity and your spontaneity. So thank you. Awesome.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And with that, we'll play the outro music.