Is Marriage Dying? & How Top Performers Build Confidence

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Is Marriage Dying? & How Top Performers Build Confidence"

Podcast: Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers
Date: June 22, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores two main themes: the evolving status of marriage in modern society, featuring an interview with sociologist Stephanie Kuntz, and the science of building unshakeable self-confidence, led by performance psychologist Dr. Nate Zinser. The episode also includes a quick fact on dog behavior, challenging listeners’ assumptions about reading canine emotions.

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Segment 1: Deep Web vs. Dark Web Explained

[03:11-05:30]

• Mike Carruthers introduces the concepts of the Deep Web and Dark Web, clarifying widespread misunderstandings.
• The Deep Web consists of online content not indexed by standard search engines, such as emails, bank accounts, and private company databases – essentially, most of the internet.
• The Dark Web is a smaller subset accessible only with special browsers (like Tor) and is both a haven for privacy advocates (journalists, dissidents) and, yes, some criminals.
• Key Point: “Despite its spooky reputation, the Dark Web isn’t inherently illegal. It’s really just a privacy tool. What matters is what people do with it.” (Mike Carruthers, 05:16)

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Segment 2: Is Marriage Dying?

[05:30-26:35]
Guest: Stephanie Kuntz, Council on Contemporary Families

The Current State of Marriage

[06:05-08:07]

• Marriage looks different than it did in the 1950s: people marry later, and the percentage never marrying has risen, but most Americans (80-85%) still marry at some point.
• The institution is “more voluntary than it used to be,” and divorce rates have been declining since their 1980 peak.
• Quote: “I don’t think marriage is collapsing. It’s obviously more voluntary than it used to be.” (Stephanie Kuntz, 06:20)

Shifting Attitudes and Expectations

[08:07-10:29]

• Fewer than 10% of people say they don’t want to marry, but many more are now uncertain whether they will.

• The rise in uncertainty is especially strong among young women.

• Women are increasingly unsure if they’ll marry, not because they want to be single, but because their expectations for marriage—especially around equality and roles—are evolving faster than men’s.

• Quote: “What’s going on here is we have much higher expectations of marriage and people are not entirely sure that they’re going to be able to make them.” (Stephanie Kuntz, 08:35)

Marriage and Parenthood: A Complex Equation

[09:18-12:27]

• Young men are now more likely than women to say they want children.
• Women’s desires are tempered by expectations for partnership in parenting—equality and active participation from men.
• Stephanie notes: “They are looking around at what’s happening to their parents and other people in society, and they are saying, I would love a marriage if it really involves a man who’s going to completely share child raising with me, but if not, I can do without.” (09:44)

Work, Gender Roles, and Domestic Chores

[12:27-15:33]

• Women want not just shared responsibility at home, but also value autonomy and development outside the home.

• Traditional “earworms”—gendered assumptions passed down the generations—make it hard for couples to break from old patterns.

• Example: If the mother stays home post-childbirth, it sets a pattern where the man is less involved in daily care, often by default.

• Quote: “We have to actively fight against this happening. And that takes a lot of thought.” (Stephanie Kuntz, 14:38)

The Reality of Sharing Chores

[17:43-23:05]

• Progress has been made, but ingrained habits persist (e.g., “gatekeeping,” where women claim expertise and sometimes redo men’s efforts).
• Solutions involve negotiation and clear agreements—deciding who owns what chore, minimum standards, and making room for differences.
• Same-sex couples can provide models for thoughtful, non-gendered chore division.
• Memorable anecdote: Stephanie shares how she herself swooped in to take her grandson from her husband, realizing she was not trusting him—a moment of self-recognition about entrenched behaviors (18:20).

Regret and Fulfillment Outside Marriage

[23:05-24:34]

• People who choose singlehood by preference, not rejection, tend to build richer friendship networks, which correlate highly with well-being in later life—sometimes even more so than a spouse.

The Future of Marriage

[24:34-26:35]

• Marriage remains common, but its role as the central organizing institution of adult life is declining.
• Society must adjust to support important relationships and obligations, married or not.
• Quote: “We have to adjust our thinking to a way of supporting marriage as partnerships and recognizing that people will live longer lives outside of marriage and incur important social and personal obligations outside of marriage.” (Stephanie Kuntz, 25:07)

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Segment 3: How Top Performers Build Confidence

[27:37-45:53]
Guest: Dr. Nate Zinser, West Point Performance Psychologist

Why We Focus on What Could Go Wrong

[28:48-30:48]

• Mike observes that we usually start with “What could go wrong?” when facing important tasks.
• Dr. Zinser explains this is rooted in human evolution (a survival focus), but humans are also naturally optimistic: “A degree of optimism is also part of the human condition.” (Dr. Nate Zinser, 29:56)

Building Confidence: Making it Concrete

[31:00-32:22]

• Confidence requires more than pep talks; it’s about gathering “evidence” for self-belief.

• Dr. Zinser recommends systematically recalling and listing personal successes relevant to the challenge at hand—a “psychological bank account” of positive memories.

• Quote: “I have to be able to look back into my personal history and just like an attorney in a trial, come up with evidence that supports the conviction ‘yeah, I can do it.’” (Dr. Nate Zinser, 31:12)

Daily Practices for Confidence

[32:40-33:31]

• Suggests a formal process: list your top 10 achievements, then reflect daily on small wins—five minutes a day—to cultivate a robust self-belief reservoir.

Confidence Beyond Sports

[33:31-35:28]

• Once taboo even in sports, mental skills are now widely accepted in athletics—and increasingly, in business.
• Dr. Zinser works with athletes, chefs, surgeons, and executives—“white collar athletes”—using the same techniques across fields.

What is Confidence, Really?

[36:26-38:04]

• Confidence is a cultivated “sense of certainty about your abilities so you can perform with a minimum of self-consciousness, fear, doubt, worry” (36:41).
• The goal is to trust your preparation so deeply that performing feels “almost unconscious,” akin to the ‘flow’ state athletes describe.

Practicing Confidence Under Pressure

[38:39-40:24]

• Practice turning off self-analysis in rehearsal to prepare for high-stakes moments.
• “You better also practice stepping up to the starting line…with the thought, I’m just going to burn this up. I’m going to see how good I am.” (Dr. Nate Zinser, 39:08)

Handling Mistakes and Mental Reset

[41:00-43:04]

• The best performers (e.g., Novak Djokovic) practice quick resets after errors—acknowledge, let go, and move on.

• Quote: “They take significant pride in being able to acknowledge a mistake, feel a little bit pissed off about it for less than five seconds, and then they reset themselves and they go on.” (Dr. Nate Zinser, 41:28)

Social Conditioning and Confidence

[43:04-44:31]

• Many people are raised to be cautious, to dwell on mistakes, and “never feel good enough.”
• Dr. Zinser points to public figures like Deion Sanders as models of ‘situational’ confidence: bold on the field, modest off it.

---

Segment 4: Understanding Your Dog’s Emotions

[46:06-47:36]

• Most owners think their dogs like hugs, but dogs may actually find hugs stressful because they remove the animal’s escape option.
• Behavioral signs of canine discomfort: turning the head, showing eye whites, flattened ears, licking lips.
• “A scratch behind the ears, a belly rub, a game of fetch, or simply sitting beside you may be much more appreciated than a big bear hug.” (Mike Carruthers, 46:57)

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Stephanie Kuntz:
  “Marriage is not dead. It’s more voluntary than it used to be.” (06:20)
  “Women are much more likely than boys now to say, well, I have no idea if I’ll actually end up married.” (08:35)

• Dr. Nate Zinser:
  “The idea is to cultivate a sense of certainty about your ability that allows you to...simply execute almost unconsciously.” (36:41)
  “A degree of optimism is also part of the human condition.” (29:56)

• Mike Carruthers:
  “It’s easy to view marriage through your own personal lens and assume that that’s how it is in the world, but clearly there’s a lot of different ways marriage does and doesn’t work.” (26:02)

---

Key Timestamps

• 03:11: Deep Web vs. Dark Web explained
• 06:05: Interview with Stephanie Kuntz begins
• 08:07: Gender breakdown on marriage desires
• 10:29: How parenting affects women’s marital desires
• 18:20: “Gatekeeping” and learned roles in domestic chores
• 23:30: Regret and friendship networks in old age
• 24:46: Future of marriage predictions
• 27:37: Confidence-building segment starts – Dr. Nate Zinser
• 31:00: Systematic method for recalling achievements
• 36:41: Defining confidence: “sense of certainty”
• 39:08: Practicing confidence rehearsal
• 41:28: Novak Djokovic’s mental reset strategy
• 43:04: The challenge of overcoming negative conditioning
• 46:06: Dog emotion lesson: why dogs dislike hugs

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Conclusion

This episode debunks myths about both marriage’s decline and the mysterious roots of confidence. The reality: marriage is alive (but evolving) and confidence is less an inborn trait than a skill you can systematically develop—with the same mental training models now taking hold in more than just elite sports. Plus, a reminder to love your dog in ways that actually feel good—maybe skip the big bear hug.

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Listen if you want:

• Research-backed perspective on the changing landscape of love, marriage, and gender roles
• Step-by-step insight on how high achievers build and maintain performance confidence
• Quick life lesson about communicating affection to your dog

Recommended by Mike Carruthers—and us.

Transcript

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[Mike Carruthers]

Today on something you should know. What's the dark web or the deep web and who's using it? Can you use it then? Is marriage dying? Apparently not. But it is changing.

[Stephanie Kuntz]

Let's put it this way, fewer than 10% of people say they don't want to get married. But what you have increasingly is quite a number of people who say they have no idea if they actually actually will get married.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also, you may likely be misreading your dog's emotions and one of the world's leading experts on how to build and maintain an unshakable belief in your abilities.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

The idea is to cultivate a sense of certainty about your ability that allows you to bypass or ignore a lot of conscious analytical thought and simply execute almost unconsciously.

[Mike Carruthers]

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[Dr. Nate Zinser]

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[Mike Carruthers]

Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. You've probably heard of the Dark Web or the Deep Web, but do you really know what those terms mean? I didn't. So that's what we're going to start this episode of Something YOU should Know with. So when you hear the term the Dark Web, it sounds like some sinister underground version of the Internet where criminals are buying and selling illegal things. And while some of that does happen, the reality is a lot more interesting. First, the Dark Web is not the same thing as the Deep Web, even though people often use the terms interchangeably. The Deep Web is simply all of the online content that search engines don't index your email inbox online bank accounts, medical records, subscription content, and company databases are all part of the Deep Web. In fact, most of the Internet is Deep Web content. The Dark Web is a much smaller piece of it. It consists of websites that require special software, most commonly a browser called Tor, to access. Tor routes Internet traffic through multiple computers around the world to make it much harder to identify who is visiting a site and who is operating it. That anonymity attracts criminals, but it also attracts journalists, political dissidents, we whistleblowers, and ordinary people who simply value privacy. In countries where governments censor the Internet or monitor citizens, the Dark Web can provide one of the few ways to communicate freely. So despite its spooky reputation, the Dark Web isn't inherently illegal. It's really just a privacy tool. What matters is what people do with it, and that is something you should know. Marriage seems to have an image problem these days. Fewer people are getting married, many are waiting until much later in life. Birth rates are falling, and more people are choosing to remain single altogether. If you listen to some commentators, marriage is becoming obsolete, a relic from another era that is slowly disappearing. But is that really what's happening? Has marriage lost its relevance, or is it simply evolving into something different than it used to be? Joining me to sort out the myths, the realities, and what the future may hold is Stephanie Kuntz. She is director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. She's written extensively for publications including the New York Times, cnn, and the Wall Street Journal, and she's author of a book called For Better and Worse, the Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage. Hi Stephanie, welcome to Something youg Should Know.

[Stephanie Kuntz]

Thank you, Mike.

[Mike Carruthers]

So despite what you hear people say, what is the state of marriage today? Is it going the way of the dinosaur? Is marriage dead? Is marriage very much alive? What is it?

[Stephanie Kuntz]

Certainly marriage is not dead. Yes. Back in the 1950s, more people married. So 94% of them married before they reached their 35th birthday. Only 5% of them never married at all. The average age of marriage was under 21 for a woman and under 23 for a boy. So when you look at what's happening to now, you still get 80, 85% of Americans half wed at some point, but that's not until they reach their 50s and 60s. So of course it looks like marriage is collapsing if you just say how many, you know, what's the rate of marri per single people in the population? So I don't think marriage is collapsing. It's obviously more voluntary than it used to be. Divorce rates have been falling since 1980, since they hit their high point in 1980, but they're not going to disappear. What's interesting to me though is that for all the talk about marriage being obsolete, most people still believe it is the most rigorous, highest commitment that they can enter into. Parents whose kids marry respect them more than if the kids are living together. And that goes for the parents of same sex couples and heterosexual couples. Most people still say they want to marry. Only 8 to 10% say they definitely do not want to marry. But what we have seen that's interesting is a big increase in the number of people who say, well I, I don't know if I actually will get married, even though I might like to. And that increase has been the greatest among young women. That's a real, a real turn because it used to be that men were the ones who were saying, well, I don't know if I'll get married.

[Mike Carruthers]

You had said that 80 something percent of people still say they want to get married. But how does that break down by gender?

[Stephanie Kuntz]

Let's put it this way, fewer than 10% of people say they don't want to get married. But what you have increasingly is quite a number of people who say they've no idea if they actually will get married. And what's interesting to me is that that also goes along with a lot fewer people are saying that they are absolutely confident they would be a good spouse. So I think what's going on here is we have much higher expectations of marriage and people are not entirely sure that they're going to be able to make Them. And one big reversal in history is that it's now women who are less certain that they will actually end up married, even though they don't necessarily want to stay single. They're much more likely than boys now to say, well, I have no idea if I'll actually end up married. And I think that's in large part because that women's expectations of marriage and their relationships to men are changing faster than men's relationships with women and their expectations of themselves and of women.

[Mike Carruthers]

So how in this discussion, because a big part of marriage is parenting, how much is the desire to be a parent tied up in this desire or not desire to get married?

[Stephanie Kuntz]

Well, that's a very interesting question because both young men and young women tend to want to have children, but young men want it much more than young women. And I think, again, it's not because women don't necessarily want them, but because they have higher expectations of sharing the work of childcare and the joys of child care. So they are looking around at what's been happening to their parents and other people in the society, and they are saying, I would love a marriage if it really involves a man who's going to completely share child raising with me, but if not, I can do without. And some are saying, well, I can do it alone. But many are saying, well, I just don't need to have children if it's just going to be the kind of hassle that I hear it is with so many older women complaining and leaving their husbands.

[Mike Carruthers]

That really surprises me and a lot of other people listening. I think that women are less likely to want to have children than men are, just because my sense is that the maternal instinct is stronger than the paternal instinct. But, but, you know, I don't know why I think that, but I do think that.

[Stephanie Kuntz]

Well, I, you know, I don't deny that there are instincts, but I think so much is socially embedded in us. And I think that men and women both have the potential to want to be with babies, and it has remarkable effects that we can talk about at some point. Caring for babies actively, not just looking on while your wife changes diapers, has tremendous effects on men's horm and their emotions. But I think the reason women are having trouble with it is because they are now expecting to play a role in the outside world much greater than we have been assigned for the past 200, 300 years. And so if they're going to play an equal role in the outside world, they're expecting that they want help and equal help in the inside world and with kids. And so a lot of the young people I talk to, a lot of my students over the years have said to me, yes, I want kids. And when they find a guy who wants them, too, and who they think is really going to step up to the plate, they tend to have them. But they also tend to wait and see how the relationship is going. They watch other people whose relationships founder. And in fact, having children, which used to be, you know, bragged about bringing parents closer, is now triggers a lot of extra conflicts in a marriage. And so when they see that, they begin to say, well, maybe not, maybe not.

[Mike Carruthers]

When women say that, you know, now that I'm required to do more outside the house, I have a job and everything else, so I want a man who's going to share in the responsibility. In that conversation are women saying that they would rather not have more responsibility outside the house and they would be content to be a wife and a mom, or they like having the responsibility outside the house. They just want more help inside the house.

[Stephanie Kuntz]

There's a lot of variability in that. And of course, we're hearing a lot now from people who think that it's just too much trouble to get the men to help them out. But what I see most frequently and read about in terms of people's complaints about marriage is that women really do want. They have the same sort of aspirations to develop themselves and their talents as men have always been encouraged to have. And when a child comes, they really want to dig in and help that child, but they really want more of their father to. And unfortunately, because of all the years that we have organized families differently, it's very hard for men to learn to do this. I mean, a lot. I. Maybe I'm a softie on this, but a lot of women talk about how lazy men are and how they're not in tune. And I just think to talk to people, explain to people the kind of earworms that have been handed down to us, all of these traditions, assumptions about who likes what, who can do what. I call them earworms because they echo in our heads and they kind of get in the way of building new melodies and new rhythms to work together. So it may not always be that the men are intentionally not stepping up to the plate, but they. And the whole way that society is organized means that they can't step up to the plate. Let me give you an example. It makes a lot of sense in a heterosexual marriage for the woman who bears the child to stay home in the early days. You know, you've got, you know, it was quite a physical thing. You may be nursing. And so it makes a lot of sense. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be that way forever. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to not be able to continue your work. But the longer it goes on, the more tempting it is for people to see the mother as the one who is the person in charge of the child. And if the man is out of the home, even with the best intentions, he doesn't understand just how much work and how urgently that work has to be done. So you begin to get into this pattern that may not be at all conscious on either people's part. But if you don't actually say no, this is something that will happen to us. Given the way our work is organized and the way childcare works in society, we have to actively fight against this happening. And that takes a lot of thought.

[Mike Carruthers]

If I heard you right, you said that many single women fear that in marriage men would take a backseat when it comes to housework and child rearing. And I want to explore that a little deeper in just a moment because I think or I thought that that had changed.

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[Mike Carruthers]

We're discussing the state of and the future of marriage with Stephanie Kuntz. She's director of research in Public education for the Council on Contemporary Families and author of the book For Better and Worse, the Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage. So, Stephanie, I want to explore more about this idea that women are concerned that men will leave most of the housework and the child rearing chores to women. Is that still the case? Because it seems like that that has changed somewhat in the last 50 years. 60 years, yes.

[Stephanie Kuntz]

The usual claim about men is that they often say, well, I'd like to do this, but I need teaching. You know, that the learned helplessness. But, you know, we women also have a learned helpfulness. We, you know, get to be the experts in the early days of child rearing. And sometimes we think that everybody should do it our way. You know, it's called, it's called gatekeeping. You know, Mike, I've talked about this problem for years, and yet just last, a couple years ago, when my grandson started, fairly newborn grandson, started crying in the other room with my husband was there. I swooped into the room, took the baby out of his arms, you know, and he just looked at me with his jaw open like, what's wrong with you? What kind of feminist are you that you wouldn't trust me to hold the baby? And I said, oh, so, you know, I sometimes reload the dishwasher. So we're trying to do something that has not been done before. And we have to get out of the habits and assumptions and the ways that society is organized that encourage men not to notice the little things that need doing, not to plan for them, not to do the emotional and planning work of family life and that and keep being earworms in women and making them do that even when they need to maybe walk away and let the man do it as best he can until he learns to do it.

[Mike Carruthers]

But it's not just necessarily until he learns to do it. And you just said a moment ago that you felt compelled to take the baby from your husband as if he didn't know how to do it. And then you also said you sometimes reload the dishwasher And I infer from that that your husband loaded the dishwasher and you felt compelled to somehow fix that. That somehow the way he loaded it, the dishes wouldn't have gotten clean. So it isn't just a matter of men learning to do it, but it's also about women learning that men don't always do it their way or maybe up to the same standard. And that's important.

[Stephanie Kuntz]

Well, yes, it is. I'm fortunate to have grown up so that I really don't care if the bed gets made every day. My husband does care, so he makes it. But it is also true that we need to have a little kind of negotiation about that. I think that there's a book called Fair Play that Hayley Swenson from the Better Life Lab, who wrote a wonderful afterword for my book, talks about in her little piece about how you. You have to divide up the chores or redistribute them in ways that the person doing it takes full responsibility for all of that chore. And you have to decide on the minimum standards for those chores. So that's a negotiation process. What are the minimum standards for cleaning up after dinner? If someone wants to go further than the minimum standards, fine. They can't pretend that you need to do that too if they want to do less. However, you did have an agreement and you got to live up to that. So that's that important part of negotiation. I mean, I'll just use my own marriage as an example. I really don't care if the bed gets made. But I am an avid cook and I spend lots and lots of time on cooking and cooking preparation. And there was a period when I felt kind of resentful that my husband didn't come in and when I was cooking like a major meal that he didn't care about having and help along and do the grunt work for me. And then I realized you can't do that if he doesn't care and he doesn't want that. You're doing this mostly to give pleasure to yourself. You can't just assign the grunt work to him. It has to be. If you're going to get pleasure out of this meal, you have to be able to say, I can do the grunt work as well as the fun fancy stuff and flame it at the end and get all the applause for it. So that's the kind of negotiation self examination both partners need to do and the kind of negotiation and compromise they need to do when they're talking about chores. One thing that same sex couples can really teach heterosexual couples is they don't have the same sort of expectation that one parter because because he's a boy and one because he, she's a girl, have certain kind of skills or interests. So they tend to divide chores much more thoughtfully.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know what statistic I would love to hear, and I don't know if anyone's ever done this, but people talk about, and you've talked about those who think they will get married or they won't get married, or they want to get married or they don't want to get married. But I wonder, towards the end of a person's life, someone who did or maybe didn't get married, was there a regret?

[Stephanie Kuntz]

There's a lot of debate about that and it depends what the reasons for, for your choice. But there's actually very solid research that shows that people who choose not to get married because they want to, not because they've been rejected over and over again, or are the kind of person that don't have friends, those people tend to build very wide friendship networks, wider than most married couples. And to the extent that they have done that, that's what counts. And in fact, I quote research in the book that it's really, by the time you get into old age, it's your friendship networks even more than your marriage partner that decides how you're doing. A good marriage partner will help you sustain good friendship networks. But many times couples fall into this kind of isolating thing that can be quite bad for them because they are not reaching out and getting that feedback and revitalization from people with new ideas and different things to do.

[Mike Carruthers]

So wrap this up and just based on all the research you've done, what do you think of marriage today and maybe looking off into the future?

[Stephanie Kuntz]

I don't think that marriage is dead. Most people do continue to marry, though, at much older ages. Two thirds of people who divorce go on and marry again. But what we have to understand and what so many of the family values promoters and you know, the ones who are having hysteria about all the choices that are left, forget marriage at this point is never again going to be the main institution that organizes people's lives that society can count on to say, oh, I know what you are doing and what you need, it's not going to be the main institution in which all people's major life decisions are made or their major personal responsibilities are carried out. So we have to adjust our thinking to a way of supporting marriage as partnerships and recognizing that people will live longer lives outside of marriage and incur important social and personal obligations outside of marriage. And maybe we need to take responsibility and start thinking about how we serve all all our people's needs, whether they're married or not.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know, it's easy to view marriage through your own personal lens and assume that that's how it is in the world, but clearly there's a lot of different ways marriage does and doesn't work. And I appreciate you exploring that with us with some real research. Stephanie Kuntz has been my guest. She's director of Research and public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families and author of the book For Better and Worse the Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Stephanie, thank you for being here.

[Stephanie Kuntz]

All right, thanks so much, Mike.

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[Mike Carruthers]

There are people who seem to have an almost unshakable belief in themselves. They walk into a job interview or give a presentation, compete in a sporting event or face some other challenge, and somehow they just seem certain they can handle it. Most of us look at those people and assume they must have been born that way. But according to my guest, confidence isn't something you're born with. It's something you build. And there are specific ways to strengthen it and make it more reliable when you need it most. Dr. Nate Zinser has spent decades teaching soldiers, athletes, executives and first responders how to develop confidence and mental toughness under pressure. He's director of the Performance Psychology Program at the United States Military Academy at West Point and has consulted with the FBI Academy, US Army Recruiting Command, and the New York City Fire Department. He's author of a book called the confident a battle tested guide to unshakeable performance. Hey, Nate. Welcome to something you should know.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

Hello, Mike. What a delight it is to be on with you.

[Mike Carruthers]

So I don't know if it's human nature or what, but I think it's a very common experience for people to, if they have something to do, something important, the outcome matters that one of the first things they do is think, what could go wrong? How do I keep it from going wrong? That the focus is on what could go wrong.

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And.

[Mike Carruthers]

And I think people do that. Well, I know I've done that many times, so I want to get your thoughts on that.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

Here are my thoughts. I'll start out with the very first thing that you mentioned. We're about to do something that has a certain degree of importance and our default seems like it's okay. What could go wrong? How can I prevent it from going wrong? We have this almost characteristic habit of anticipating difficulty. This is a very human thing to do. This is a certain degree of biology for us, Mike. We have lived on this planet as human beings for hundreds of thousands of years under somewhat precarious survival circumstances. Our primitive ancestors, we're constantly looking over their shoulder, where's the fresh water? Where are the tracks that will lead us to something that we can eat? So to a certain extent, imagining what could go wrong and what are the difficulties and what do I have to be careful about? In a way that's been wired into us biologically. Now, on the other hand, and this is the good news, we are also, to a degree, biologically wired to have a streak of optimism. We will find the pure water, we will find the tracks that will lead us to the prey. A degree of optimism is also part of the human condition.

[Mike Carruthers]

So rather than thinking about, or maybe not rather, but in addition to thinking about what might go wrong, thinking about, I have what it takes to make it go right.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

Indeed, I have some capabilities. There are possibilities. But rather than just telling yourself, oh, I've got it, I've got it locked up, I can do fine, everything's great. No, I think you have to be a little more systematic about that and be able to take whatever time and energy is required to look back into your past and say, okay, I have accomplished this task, which is somewhat related to the task before me. Now I accomplished this other task. I have to be able to look back into my personal history and just like an attorney in a trial, come up with evidence that supports the conviction. Yeah, I can do it. To simply tell yourself, yeah, I can do it, yeah, I can do it. Yeah, I can do it. Without a sense of some underlying rationale that's not particularly effective. But if I've done a good job reflecting on my previous experience creating a sort of psychological bank account of constructive memories, et cetera, et cetera, then I can approach this new, somewhat challenging important situation with a sense of, okay, I've got reasons to believe in myself.

[Mike Carruthers]

And what is the best mechanism for doing that? Because you could think of things that you've done in the past that were great and they're thoughts that come in your head and then they disappear and then you're back to thinking what could go wrong again. So what's the format for doing this so that it sticks?

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

I think the format is being somewhat formal about it. I encourage all of my clients to do a fairly deep dive into their professional past and come up with a list of their top 10 moments in of performance, those top 10 moments in your career, and then be equally formal day by day by day, reflecting for five minutes. That's all it takes, five minutes on your day. What little things did I get right? If you're formal in that discussion with yourself, you're kind of creating a larger, larger psychological bank account.

[Mike Carruthers]

A lot of what you talk about and a lot of the work that you do is with athletes. And I think what you're talking about seems to be more accepted in the sports world in terms of, you know, individual performance, team play, that kind of thing. Less so in the non sports world where people think that. Well, I think they, I don't know what they think, but it's less accepted that that's not the way to do it. Maybe it is to improve your sprint time, but that's not the way to do it at the office.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

Well, it's funny that you mentioned that, Mike, because 30 years ago it wasn't well accepted as a practice to improve, as you put it, your hundred yard sprint time. When I began work with eli Manning In 2007, we had to keep it quiet. There are very few people in the New York giant pro football organization who knew that I was advising this rising star in these kinds of cognitive skills. But in the last 20 years there's been an explosion, especially in the competitive sports world, in applied sports psychology. So there's been a dramatic increase of acceptance of this kind of practice in that world. To your question though, is it less acceptable in the business world? That is rapidly changing even as we speak. I have dozens of clients who are venture capitalists, sales managers, VPs of engineering and the very same process is extremely valuable to these people in their. I call them white collar athletes.

[Mike Carruthers]

Mention some of the people that you have worked with, certainly.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

I spent 12 seasons mentoring Eli Manning of the New York giants. I spent 12 seasons mentoring various members of the Philadelphia Flyers hockey program. I am currently mentoring celebrity chefs, orthopedic surgeons, ophthalmologic surgeons, other professional football players, hockey players, basketball players. The list is very, very broad. And some of these people have been working with me for years and years just to maintain that competitive edge, to maintain that little bit of confidence and ease of being that often spells the difference between smashing success and an also.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it is the title of your book and we haven't really talked about the word confidence. We've been talking about, you know, getting better at something or not sabotaging yourself. But where's the confidence? What are we trying to do with that?

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

We're trying to establish a sense of certainty about our various abilities so that we can perform those tasks, we can execute those skills. We can show what we are able to do with a absolute minimum of self consciousness. Fear, doubt, worry. The idea is to cultivate a sense of certainty about your ability that allows you to sort of bypass or ignore a lot of conscious, discursive, analytical thought and simply execute almost unconsciously. I have yet to meet someone who says that in the moments when I know I was absolutely at my best, there was this paradoxical sense of ease and energy. I didn't have to think about my next step. It kind of just happened. And I was almost a passive witness to something, yet I was completely engaged. So there's this wonderful paradox about being absolutely certain to the point where you are almost unconscious about what you're doing when you're doing it.

[Mike Carruthers]

There is a point, and you write about this, and I found this particularly helpful for me is that you get to a point where you have to stop trying that when it's time to. When it's time to perform, when it's time to go run your sprints, whatever it is, you stop the analyzing and you just do it. And I think that's so hard for people to stop saying, what's wrong now? What could go wrong now? It's just so hard to turn that off.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

It can indeed, Mike, be a challenge to turn that off, which is why when, again, we're just. We'll use the sprinting analogy. If you're a high school or a college sprinter, well, you better practice turning it off in practice so that you will have had the experience of doing it before you arrive at a competition, before you attempt to do so in a track meet. Okay, yes, by all means, be somewhat analytical and judgmental and even self critical in practice for part of the practice. But you better also practice stepping up to the starting line, kicking yourself back into those sprinter blocks, taking your ready position with the thought, I'm just going to burn this up. I'm going to see how good I am. Let's see how fast I can be. And you approach several repetitions in practice with that. Let's just see what I got. Let's just see what I got. Let's just see what I got. And by doing so, you give yourself practice in rehearsal, in trusting the level of fitness and skill and competence that you have. And that's what you get to rely on when it's time to perform in a competition or a meet or a important discussion in the workplace.

[Mike Carruthers]

So there's a point that people hit sometimes, and maybe a good analogy or a good example of this is like in a tennis match where you're playing tennis and you miss a shot that you should have gotten and you can't let it go. You just beat yourself up and it screws up your play for the rest of the game. And it's really hard not to do that for a lot of people. But you'll notice that the real great tennis players don't do that. They move on and they don't sit and pout about the shot they missed. And it's hard to do.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

It's hard to do because they practice that. Okay. In a most revealing interview a couple of years ago, Novak Djokovic, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, stunned the 60 Minutes interviewer when he said, no, no, no, no, no. My mental strength is not a gift. It's something that I work on. And the interviewer said, you mean you work on it like you work on your serve and your forehand? And Djokovic said, yes, absolutely. Djokovic and the other great players take significant pride in being able to acknowledge a mistake, feel a little bit pissed off about it for less than five seconds, and then they reset themselves and they go on. Okay. And that is a skill that they practice so that when they are playing at the US Open or playing in Wimbledon, they have had the experience of acknowledging a goof, even a significant goof, taking a breath and then resetting themselves. And there are as many different ways to reset oneself as there are human beings on the planet. You just have to be willing to do the work to Establish for yourself a proper resetting sequence. One, two, three. Now I'm back. Everybody's got to be able. Everybody can do that. If you're willing to put the work in and do this kind of self reflection and admission and examination of your own mental habits. If you're willing to do that, then you can cultivate considerable mental strength, the likes of which we see from the Novak Djokovic's of the world.

[Mike Carruthers]

It is, I think, very hard for people to imagine, if you're someone who tends to dwell on your mistakes or worry about what's going to go wrong, to hear that there are people who can just say, let's see what I got. Let me go for it, and not think about the negative. But boy, those are two very different ways to approach anything. And clearly one is better than the other, it would seem.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

Yes, you're quite correct. Clearly one is more effective. We have to face the reality that much of our social conditioning, much of the messaging that we are subject to in elementary school and middle school, much of that messaging is be careful, think about your mistakes, always be questioning yourself. And it almost encourages this overall vibe, this overall sense of oneself that I'm never good enough. And we gotta be careful about that kind of socialization.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, that is so valuable. You know, speaking for myself, I mean, I was raised that way. I mean, you know, fit in, don't make waves, watch yourself, learn from your mistakes. Rather than, as you write about in your book, like Deion Sanders, who is so not that he's so.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

He's so so not that indeed. And he comes across as this outspoken, really enthusiastic, uber confident individual. A lot of people listen to him and go, oh my God, this guy's crazy. But if you ask Dion and you go a little deeper, you'll realize that he reserves this uber confident attitude for when he's on the playing field. But he is a careful, somewhat respectful, somewhat modest gentleman off the field. He's a great example of some of the attitudes and thought processes that are very, very useful for folks in this day and age. But they are, as you point out, Mike, a little bit unusual.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, anyone who's looking for some more confidence, some more certainty in their ability could certainly benefit from your advice today. I've been talking with Dr. Nate Zinser. He is director of the Performance Psychology program at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and he's author of the book the Confident A Battle Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance. And there's a link to his book in the show Notes Nate, thanks for sharing this.

[Dr. Nate Zinser]

It was a delight working with you. Mike. I look forward to the release of this podcast and my best wishes to all your listeners.

[Mike Carruthers]

Most dog owners think they're pretty good at reading their pet's emotions, but research suggests we're often wrong, especially when we think a dog is enjoying something that it is actually just tolerating. A good example is hugging. Humans love hugs because they signal affection and closeness. Dogs don't see it that way. Animal behavior experts point out that when dogs feel uncomfortable, their natural instinct is to often move away or run away. A hug takes that option away, which may increase the dog's stress and anxiety and could even lead to a dog bite. In one study examining hundreds of online photos of people hugging their dogs, researchers found that most of the dogs displayed at least one sign of discomfort things like turning their head away, showing the whites of their eyes, flattening their ears, or licking their lips. Yet the people in the photo almost always believe their dog was happy. The lesson isn't that your dog doesn't love you, it's that dogs express affection differently than humans do. A scratch behind the ears, a belly rub, a game of fetch, or simply sitting beside you may be much more appreciated than a big bear hug. And that is something you should know. Our podcast is produced by Jeff Haveison. Jennifer Brennan, Executive Producer is Ken Williams. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

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