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The Millionaire Real Estate Agent | The MREA Podcast
63. Optimize Your Performance and Mental Health With Dr. Hillary Cauthen
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Foreign.
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Welcome back to another episode of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. I'm Jason Abrams and this is the place where we lift the curtain on the world of real estate like never before. Every week I sit down with visionaries, pirates and mavericks. We're here to document, demonstrate and most importantly, demystify their game changing models and systems. What secrets propel them to the top and how are they living their dreams? This is about passion. It's about strategy. But above all, it's about real, tangible success. So buckle up and let's dive in. This is the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. Welcome to the last Millionaire Real Estate agent podcast of 2024. As you look forward to 2025, what are the most important things to you when you reflect back on the year? What are you proud of? What do you wish you could have done differently? And what do you plan to do differently next year? You see, these are the themes that people bring into their life. As we head into the new year, the theme that I want in your head is how do I go out and have the most mentally healthy year of my life? You're all amazing high performers. And week in and week out we get inundated with emails and questions and a lot of them have to do with ment health. You see, I understand that completely. You're journeyers and part of journeying is wanting to maximize your potential not just at work, not just at home, but also in your mental health. So we went out and we found the person to help you do it. She's the author of the book hello Trauma. She's helped NFL, NHL, Major League baseball and NBA players maximize their potential. She's also helped teams figure out the risk factors of the most important assets they have, professional athletes. Today we're going to sit back and we're going to unpack all things mental health and all things trauma with Dr. Hilary Cawthon. Friends, you could search high and wide and you'd be hard pressed to find more of an expert in these topics. You're going to get strategies and you're going to get techniques. And here's the truth. The vast majority of us have had trauma in our life. Whether or not we dealt with that trauma is a whole other story, as you are about to find out. Sit back and buckle up. This is Dr. Hilary Cawthon. Dr. Hilary, how are you?
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I'm doing great, thank you.
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I ask everyone at the beginning of the show, I say, how did you find your way into the greatest industry in the world? Because it's all about real Estate. In your case, I'm gonna change it slightly. How did you go from Hillary to Dr. Hillary?
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Yeah, I knew that I wanted to be a sports psychologist. And plain and simple, the only way to do that is you have to have a doctorate in psychology. And so I found my pathway at 14. I knew this was what I was going to do, but the educational systems to get there, like, were not easily set up when I was in school. And so I kind of created my own pathway to get literally every educational domain, from the kinesiology to the clinical psychology aspect on this continuum of care model to then have the credentials and be able to say, I'm a clinical sports psychologist.
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Oh, so walk me through the why on that. Because you were an incredible athlete in your own right and competed. I believe it was track and D1. So, like, I mean, was it this quest to better understand your performance?
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Yeah, it's really funny. When I was 14, we moved outside. I used to live outside of St. Louis in St. Charles, Missouri. And then we moved to this really small town in old town Maine. And all the resources, all the, you know, clubs, select teams, every sport, you know, avenue that you'd have as a child just wasn't there. In Maine, like, my dad had to help create like a track team for me, which was just not the same aspect of what I was used to as a kid. So being a really great youth athlete around really great talented athletes and traveling teams to a really small town with out the resources. Winning was very easy for me, and I was kind of bored of that. At 14, I was winning as a freshman in high school and was like, there's a lot of pressure to maintain this and I'm not pushing myself to the next level. And at that point I was like, I really wish I'd had someone who could talk to me. And my mom is a. She's a counselor, so I had access to mental health help. But I knew I needed someone who knew the competitive mind and I knew I wanted to be the person who could provide that for athletes, understand the competitive aspect, the nuances for high performers in their sport domain to then help them reduce the feelings that I was having.
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So this is such an incredible conversation for us because one thing about my audience is that they are wildly competitive. And we believe that real estate is a contact sport. To us, this means you wake up every day and make contacts. And we like to say that the goal in our organizations are to help maximize our potential. So you look up, you're helping NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball players with the mindset to maximize their potential. What's the biggest thing that you've learned working with all these successful humans?
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I think to your point, the parallels, right, like I work with high performers, so athletes is my specialty. But we look at CEOs, executives, real estate agents, anyone who is in a performance discipline, these tools, these mental skills that I utilize will help anyone in that domain in the discipline. And so I think whether it's a five year old athlete I'm talking to or a 55 year old real estate agent, they're all going to have the same continuum problem about performance. I kind of say, well, I'll get stuck in this, like, striving for success mode. And we kind of do just enough to succeed. And you have fear, failure, fear of evaluation on one side, and then you have success on the other. And a lot of people just get stuck right in the middle to do just enough. And when we're in that mode, we're looking to, what do I do not to fail, what do I do not to be judged by my peers? And that will not lead you to success. You need to look to what does it take to be successful, what does it take to strive for that? And that's where we see the growth mindset coming into play. And so my work with all these athletes is, hey, let's stop looking towards these fears and these failures, but looking towards what could happen and what are the successful outcomes and it's success bringing success. And so you have to switch that mindset. But all performers get stuck in this mode and kind of fear the not enough button being pushed.
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Get out of here. So I totally understand that when I'm thinking about my business career, but you're telling me the greatest athletes in the world, like, when I look up, last I checked, there's 216 active players in the NBA and everyone on the planet has access to a round ball. So these people are the best. You're telling me that they wake up in some cases driven by this fear.
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100%, yeah. No one wants to fail, right? And it's kind of when I have, you know, athletes, performers come in and say, all right, my goal is to win. I'm like, yeah, of course it is. Like, that's not what we're gonna set. Like, you don't set a goal to win. Like, that is the object of the game. You're not setting a goal to sell a house. Like, of course that's like the end game. That's the result we have. It's how do we get there that we have to focus on?
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What was your biggest surprise as you started digging in and working with more and more professional athletes?
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The inability to express their emotion effectively. I think that's the hard part, is because we have such stigma and bracket morality around what expressions are allowed to be feel and express in certain domains and disciplines. And so I feel like it shuns the true authentic self of the athlete. And so kind of tapping in and getting them to say, hey, be your most authentic self, feel your emotions, express that, because then you will elevate the optimization you want to have. So you have to shift that culture, and that's a really hard thing to do.
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Why does feeling the emotions and number one, feeling like you have permission to do it, but number two, then doing it have anything to do with performance?
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Because we are humans with a range of emotions, and they fuel us, right? There are drivers, there are motivators. We can't just shut it off and, like, program, like, go score basket, right? There's reactions to other people and thoughts that influence the emotion. And so you have to tap in to understand how do I activate the best emotion to perform my best self, and then knowing how to get into that state and then knowing how to turn it off if something's triggering it and kind of stay in your zone of optimal performance. And feelings are part of that.
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So as I study top performers and we interview them every week, when you dig deep enough, at some point someone told them, no matter what's going on, you just put your head down and keep going. And are you suggesting that way of thinking will keep them from reaching their maximum potential?
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You know, you can't just keep working. Like, again, culture shift, like breaks are essential. Doing things outside of your sport, like, you have to have a balanced life. You have to know other ways to turn it off. And in high performance and in sport, like, that is one avenue of you. But if you only have that, you will not be your most successful self. You have to have other domains that fuel you that you can pour into. So when it's time to have go time in your specialty, you can put all the energy into that aspect. So.
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So you wrote a book recently called hello, our invisible teammate. And what I'm taken by early in this conversation is the book isn't called reaching your peak performance or the psychology of winning. It's called hello, trauma. Why did you choose to write a book about trauma?
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Yeah, it's interesting. When I first thought of writing a book in my early career, I thought I was gonna Write the championship mindset or the winning mindset for each discipline. Right. It's very on par. However, I tend to speak out on topics that are what people talk about quietly behind closed doors and everyone agrees to but won't boldly say things. And in 2018 I'd done a TEDx talk on the toxic culture of sport on athletes mental health. And this was a really powerful statement to come out in 2018 because at that point very minimal people were talking about mental health in sport or high performance. And I specialize in that. And I was really kind of struggling with like why do these cultures exist? Why do we allow coaches and high influence people impact our athletes at a detrimental way and we allow it to exist. And so I spoke about it in my TED talk and then as I got experience in different organizations at high professional levels and collegiate levels, I could keep seeing these trends and see keep seeing impact. And I was touching them on an individual level and I needed to have a bigger impact of what was happening. And so the book came to fruition of kind of saying, hey, like let me help people understand and explain what trauma is without it being a pop culture term and saying everything's a trigger, but actually physiologically explaining what happens when it occurs to you and then making meaning of it very similar to grief and loss. That has stages. There's the first part of this book. There's stages of what a person who's gone through something traumatic or witnessed something traumatic will go through.
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I want to start with this idea of what trauma is because we're talking to the highest performers in the entire real estate industry across the world. But you make the argument in the book that 70 plus percent of adults have had trauma in their life. Whether they've dealt with it or not, it exists. And tell me if I'm wrong, but I Woke up at 3 o' clock in the morning today and said if that percentage holds true, then the vast majority of our audience either has had trauma and not dealt with it, or has had trauma and not fully dealt with it. Would you agree with that idea?
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A hundred percent.
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So you say in the book it takes our voices away, that trauma hijacks our minds. It leaves people feeling alone and scared. It's ugly and it's everywhere. Though we don't often address it because it's hard to look closely at it. What do you mean when you say it's hard to look closely at it?
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Nobody wants to sit and feel the messy emotions or hear the stories of difficulty and sadness. We are not as Humans taught how to manage emotions effectively. We're not taught how to cope with good and bad. Right. And trauma is messy. It's sad, and sometimes it's graphic, and sometimes it's unspoken. There's no meaning to what happened. There's no explanation. It's just bad and it's sad. And, you know, there's this dichotomy of, like, you don't want to feel sympathy or do you feel empathy? And where are you at with this framework? And people just don't know what to do, so they don't want to sit with it. They can't handle it themselves. And so they definitely can't handle someone else's pain or emotions.
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The minute that someone decides to start dealing with it or think about it. You make the argument that we all show up in different phases of dealing with trauma, the first one being the minimizer, the second one being the enabler, and the third one being the moral authority. These were all new words to me. You said, the minimizer is in denial. Talk to me for a few minutes about what it means to be the minimizer.
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Yeah. So this is the first phase when anyone goes through something traumatic. And let's use an example of maybe your father's passed. Right. And you're dealing with that emotionally. That is a trauma. That is something that happened, and it's an event, and it causes and evokes emotion. And the minimizer is going to minimize their emotional expression of how the loss of their father is impacting them. They're gonna kind of move on with their life. They're gonna keep doing their routines. They're gonna act like everything is okay, and they're gonna minimize that impact of that loss.
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And you make the argument that's not a conscious choice. We're actually hardwired to go through this process.
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Yeah. I mean, because we're also socialized to not seek help often or express our emotions at different levels. And so this is just a par for the course. You know, just go about your day, do your business, keep performing, keep showing up.
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Once I get through the minimizer phase, I end up in the enabler. And what you say here is, you say this formation of self tries to make meaning from our experiences. Explain that to me.
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Yeah. So if something significant happens to you, you are trying to understand, why did it happen? Did you have part in that? Did you have a faul in that? And oftentimes, if you're a victim of trauma, you will assume this is my fault. I allow these actions to happen. I allowed this to exist. And so if we use the loss of the father, maybe it's you're grieving the fact that you didn't call the day before and you didn't have a relationship that was good enough. You didn't have a goodbye and it's your fault and you enabled this riff in a relationship. Or you hold guilt around not being present. Maybe you showed up late to a hospital, things that just happened. Right. And so you're trying to make meaning of why did you this death occur? When did it happen? Did I have fault in it? Did I not? Was. Can I make logical sense of the traumatic event that occurred?
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And then finally this moral authority shows up, which is this kind of hero version of ourself. Talk to me about that.
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Yeah, this is kind of. And it parallels, if you don't think about personality psychology, like the aid, the ego and the superego. Right. And so our moral authority is like our social justice. It's the one that says, like, hey, guess what? I'm your biggest fan. And you're not wrong. You're not wrong to feel this way. You're not wrong to try to be making sense of it. But here's the logical reality of what's going on, and here's where we can help save you and get you through the next level to start grieving and healing.
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It's interesting to think about this model holding true for almost everyone that goes through trauma. Although this is the first time in my life that I've ever identified these stages. No one taught me in high school how to handle any trauma. As a matter of fact, you weren't even supposed to talk about the fact that you were having a hard time in my school. Maybe it was different in yours. When someone is going through a traumatic experience, first of all, how do they know they're going through a traumatic experience? And second of all, knowing they're going to go through all these phases, how do they get through it without going completely nutty?
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Yeah. Well, oftentimes the victim, we will say, right, or the survivor, depending on what you want to look at of a traumatic experience, will not identify it as trauma until they've already probably gotten through this moral authority phase and into this healing phase because they're still stuck in that minimizer aspect or kind, the enabler framework. And trauma, if you look at it in society before, was very taboo. We don't want to talk about what trauma is. It's only horrific things. Right? It's things that we don't all experience. It's sexual assault. It's rape. It's maybe gun violence or war, you know, Then we started seeing like, oh, no, I have trauma. And it becomes more relevant, more pop culture, Right? And so it's like everything's trauma, from stubbing my toe to witnessing a car accident, to the way people talk to me and divorce. And it is. It's messy. It's all of it. Right? We can't deny it. But we often fall in a trap of comparing our traumas to each other. And so your trauma will always be worse than my trauma. And so I'm going to make yours the priority. And this is where we get stuck because we're in constant comparison and we're not actually allowing to just sit with our own feelings and process what's going on. And there's a lot of shame in someone who's gone through something traumatic because they fear the judgment of what other people will view of them based on what their traumatic experience was. And this is where your point is. How do they do it? Oftentimes they are isolated. Maybe they go out for like one on one therapy, but oftentimes they're not dealing with it. It's unresolved. They repress it. They just try to pretend it never happened and they don't ever want to talk about it. And that's problematic.
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Well, so you get stuck. At least I did. And you get stuck in all these words. Gaslighting. Shame, fear, anger, awkwardness, confusion. You have all these words. I found myself getting uncomfortable just reading the book and like, saying, okay, I don't want to think about the way those things feel. But you're making this argument that if I don't, I won't maximize my potential. How are those two things not in complete conflict with each other? It doesn't feel good to work on any of this.
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No. And that's why it's, hello, Trauma. Hello, gaslighting. Every chapter welcomes those terms into your world. You have to address them and you have to do it in a way of like, hi, this is real. Let me first understand what's happening and make meaning of it and then figure out what can I do about it. And that's the part I think with any healing phase is you have to just first stop and have self awareness and have grace and patience to say, yeah, this is real. This is what I'm experiencing. And now what do I do? Because that's happening, who do I need to help? Who do I need to contact? How can I talk differently about things so then I can keep going about My life.
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So everyone that listens to this show knows there's a model coming up, and there absolutely is. I want to cover one more topic and then I want to move on to the model. In the book, you say sports is what we do, it's not who we are. And I was thinking about that. And yeah, selling houses is what we do, but it's not who we are. What do you mean when you say it?
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This is the hardest thing for any performer because identity formation exists in what we do. And when we are successful in what we do, we take a lot of pride in that and it represents us and it becomes a part of us innately. Right? So in order for my athletes to be healthy or any high performer, when you can separate the identity from the action and the job, and you have sport being a job, it's what you do. It's one thing you do. And it's kind of what I talked about earlier. It's not the only thing you do. It's not the only part of you. And so I try to take away this powerful medium behind the thing that makes you the most successful, to realize, like you are successful as a human and let's build that up. And the qualities you have as a human is what allows you to be successful in that discipline. But you can be successful in so many other ways and other things. And so we can't just have one thing define us.
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That's gotta be so difficult for someone. I get it. When they're sitting on your couch and for that 45 minutes they're like, I totally get it. I'm this human. But then they walk out of your office and the entire world contrives to define them as a professional athlete, especially a blue chip player. How do you make that live and breathe in your day to day life.
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When you put your uniform on and when you don't. Right. And so how can they be a dad when they're a dad? Like, all of us might experience this. I mean, I experience this as a professional. There's daily habits that you have to turn on and turn off to go into the modes that you're gonna function in. And so when I come home from work, I sit in my driveway for one full song before I turn that doorknob. Because then I'm a mom and I have four kids. It happens every day. I walk in, it's like mom's home, and they come rushing to the door and. And I can't be the psychologist that I just was. Like, I have to be locked in and be in mom mode. And that looks very different. And so that looks for all of us. We have different aspects of what we're doing. And we have to know, okay, when I put that uniform on, I'm going to represent this, and here's my why for that aspect. And then when I go into this domain, I'm going to represent this, and here's that why. And we have to learn how to kind of have coping and phrases and time to kind of regulate and get into those positions.
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I'm going to call it a hack. But there's a difference between a hack and a cheat. And Gary, and for those of you new to the show, when we say Gary, we're talking about Gary Keller. He and Jay Papasan and Dave Jenks, may he rest in peace, wrote the book the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, which of course is the namesake for this show. And Gary always says that a hack are the things you do prior to developing the habit to do the things naturally. And your listening to one song before you go in in order to switch gears is a fantastic hack. So, all right, friends, we're switching into model mode. You do not have to take notes. I'm taking the notes. They come out every Thursday. So if you don't get them, go to mreanotes.com, enter your email address, and we send all this out to you. So if you're bombing down the freeway right now in your Tesla going 120 miles an hour, don't take notes. I got you. On page 135, you lay out a thinking process of dealing with trauma. Before we get into the seven steps, why was it important for you to put this model together? What was the intention?
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To give a framework for people or organizations or those that have power to help make a change. Because oftentimes these systems fail. Those that go through something pretty traumatic and they don't know how to handle it, and, you know, we have HR teams in place, but still the avenue and the transparency really leaves those that are reporting stuff unaware. They don't know the process. They feel left out. And then those that are in traumatic states really want comfort and they need care and they need to know that somebody's listening to them and they're going to take action. And so, because as much as I love sport can be bad, and we see it all the time in these, like, you know, highlight reels and the news outlets that say, oh, this player did X or this did this. But then the punishment doesn't meet kind of what occurred. And I Just really was like, hey, like, I'm not just going to talk about it, but I'm going to give some real actionable steps of, here's how you can fix it at a minimal level to make things better.
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Is this also a model that I could use with friends and family members? Because a lot of us listening to the show are raising little people, and little people don't stay little very long. Is this something that you think is universal?
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Yes. I mean, when you think about an organization, a system, any system, a family system. Right. Like friends and peers, there are social system, a support group. So it's all about empathetic engagement. And these seven steps break down how to be empathetic and, and engage in actual steps to help somebody.
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Perfect. All right, let's get into it. You say step number one, acknowledge that something happened. Seems basic, but I'm sure there's more to it than that. What do you mean?
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When we listen to someone's story, we ourselves will go back into those same minimizer, enabler, moral authority modes as well. And so the first step, unfortunately, is we're going to minimize the experience that we're hearing because it's too hard for us to hear. Then we'll try to make sense of it and figure out, like, did something happen? Did it not? How do I know for sure? You don't need to worry about that. All you need to do in step one is to sit and listen and say, I hear what you're saying. I hear this happens to you. Like, I'm hearing you. I'm listening to you.
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That's so interesting you say that, because I think oftentimes you immediately start looking at the details and trying to figure out whether it's all accurate, and you're putting timelines together, and before you know it, you've kind of missed maybe what you're even being told.
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And you're not an investigator. You're just supposed to sit there and listen at that point and acknowledge, hey, like, like this happened to you. Like, I'm hearing you.
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B
Number two, seek feedback. Consult with experts if action or resources are needed from outside the organization and follow their guidance. What does seeking feedback mean?
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Yeah, so sometimes, and this can be in a family system or in an organization, you might not know what to do. And that is okay. You don't have to know what to do. You just need to say, hey, okay, this happened. What does the person need? What does my family member need? And am I the best expert to fix it? And if not, I'm going to ask People, I'm going to call up a friend, I'm going to call an expert, and I'm going to seek feedback and I'm going gonna figure out the resource needed. And if I need outside help, if it's beyond what I can handle, then I'm gonna work through to go get that in.
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B
Step three, conduct conversations with care with everyone involved. I would've just thought to skip this step and just make it natural, but if you have it here, it means it's not so natural.
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Yes. And I think partly because we get in our own way and we treat people how we wanna be treated in that moment, and we need to stop and say, okay, what does that person need? And also, if you're working through a conflict, let's say with two individuals, because something occurred, one might have done something that was kind of hurtful and the other person, you know, is kind of the victim. In this framework, you might have to deal with both of those, and both of those can be done with care. Right. The intention is to make everybody feel in a safe place, to know that we're trying to resolve the situation because something occurred. And we can do that with care, without judgment and biases that come into place.
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B
Talk to me about judgment and biases.
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Yeah, I mean, if you have someone that comes to you, let's say, you know, you have someone in your team that comes to you and says, hey, this colleague did this to me immediately might evoke an emotion in you, but you have to sit there and know that both of them are employees of yours. And how do you handle this situation? With care, with understanding, and really look at, this is the problem and we know we need to fix it. But both of them are humans and have emotional responses too. And I can still be a good human back to them while holding discipline and action that's needed.
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B
Step four, ask people what they need, including outside resources, time or space. What does that even mean?
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A
Well, we cannot assume we know what someone needs or wants. If someone comes to you on your team and says, hey, this happened to me and I'm really struggling and I need help, your first reaction might be like, take as much time as you need and take time off. Well, that might be very problematic to that person because they might be isolated, alone, and lose all of their routines, and it can be very detrimental to their mental health. Health.
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B
I never would have thought of that.
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Instead it might be like, hey, like, what do you need in this moment? Is it helpful to maintain your routine? Do you need support? Do you want time off? Do you want half days? Like, what looks good for you? And we're gonna set that environment up for you so you can keep being successful.
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B
Gosh, why do you think the instinct is not to ask?
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We don't know how. We don't know what to do. We just are like, oh, go away. You know, go take time. If I give you time, you're gonna be great. But then you're not dealing with it. Like, you feel sorry for people versus empathetically engaging. If someone comes to you and says, hey, my dad died, and you're like, take as much time as you need. I'm so sorry. Well, what if they had a terrible relationship with their father and they don't really care? Right? We don't know because we don't take time to ask.
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B
This term now has come up three times. Empathetically engage. I'd be remiss if I didn't say, what the hell is empathetically engage?
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Yes. So, I mean, the best way that people talk about empathy is like, can you walk in someone else's shoes for a mile? Right? Where it's trying to actually understand what they're feeling. And we can project our own assumptions on that. And that's where people get stuck. You have to engage by asking, how are you feeling about what just happened? Help me understand what you're going through. Because here's how I feel hearing it. And I think the exchange of, oh, man, I feel really sorry. Like, are you okay? I'm not really sure what to do is engaging by saying, I'm not sure what you need, and I don't know how to handle this. Then they're going to say, hey, you know what? I don't know either. And it just alleviates the emotion. And you can feel the calmness in the room by just sitting there and saying, this is what I'm feeling. What are you feeling? How do we work through this together?
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B
Number five, provide a plan of action together with a time frame. The key word here seems to be together. And how do you do that?
- [27:40]
A
Yeah. So this is the biggest tip. The person who's gone through something, who's coming to you asking for help, they need to be a part of that process, but they also need to know that something is going to happen. There is actionable steps in a timeframe. And this is where everyone gets it wrong. Because usually what happens is, I'm going to come to you and say, hey, Jason, this happened to me. And you're saying, okay, I got it. I'm so Sorry. Take as much time as you need. We'll handle it. We'll work through the process. There's no feedback back to them. We don't know what's going on. And the person who's reported this is like, they're not doing anything for me because they're ruminating on all the stuff that they've shared. And so in that framework, it needs to sit down and say, what would you like to have happened? What do you need in this moment? How can we best support you? Do you have any feedback for us? And then say, okay, here's the realistic timeframe of what I need to do to make things happen as well. And we're gonna constantly check in with each other and make sure we're on the same page.
- [28:31]
B
Which sort of leads you into step six, which is openly discuss the action steps and start to implement them. As I'm thinking in my head as you're talking, I think there's been plenty of times where I've taken action, but the person who asked me to do it has no idea that I'm seven steps into a process on their behalf.
- [28:48]
A
And imagine if you told them, here's what I'm going to be doing and here's how long it's going to take. And I'll follow up with you at each step if you need that.
- [28:56]
B
Yeah, I think that would probably remove a lot of anxiety from them.
- [28:59]
A
And that person, knowing and trusting, you're now building trust that you're taking care of them. And now that person can go keep doing their job and performing at a really high level because they don't have to be assuming or worrying or getting angry and resentment if nothing's being done.
- [29:12]
B
Which kind of leads into step 7. Have more check in conversations with care, with any and all team members involved, either in groups, privately or both.
- [29:22]
A
This part for sure. A lot of people don't want to talk openly. We talked about it individually. People don't know how to handle it. But people don't want to talk openly when bad things happen or things that are problematic or grievances. And I'm saying you need to expose those. Because what this does is shows this is a safe and trusting place, that things will happen, we'll take care of you. Here's what our morals and values stand for, and we're not ashamed to say, hey, we're not perfect. Things happen, and here's how we fix it. But you have to have accountability and you have to have engagement. And this last step is really saying, like, I'm confident enough to say when things happen, we step in and here's what it looks like with all parties as visible as it needs to be, while still protecting those that were involved.
- [30:04]
B
In the last line of this book, after you go through this model, you say these things will help right the wrong and will have power to instill the kind of hope that helps to heal our trauma. I think it's a big sentence. Why is hope such a part of healing?
- [30:20]
A
Because we all need to have something to look forward to. We need to know there is a positive outcome or solution in front of us.
- [30:28]
B
And you're making the argument then by merit of that sentence that all trauma is possible to be healed. Is that right?
- [30:36]
A
Yes, but this is where we get stuck, right? So I work through this because I'm looking at another book that I'm kind of processing, writing about, you know, healing and our being our biggest fan. Those that go through things do not want to actually ever say they're healed because if they admit that they're healed, they fear that everyone else will forget what happened to them. It's a really hard place because no one wants to forget the things that happen to them, even if they're painful because it's part of their story and they hold so much anger towards the injustice that was done. Because a lot of times people don't have justice around what occurred to them, them, and they can't make sense of it, right. And they're trying to save themselves, but the event still occurred. And so this essence of healing we really have to work around of. It might just be a continuous process always that we're healing and maybe we are never healed.
- [31:24]
B
Wow, that is a big idea. I'll put this into context for me. I'm a real estate agent, a top performer, and I'm driving right now in my Range Rover and things are awesome. Yet 70 plus percent of us have had this trauma. And I wake up tomorrow and do what to start processing or healing and is it even worth doing or do I just keep it all moving? Like, what do I do now?
- [31:50]
A
Yeah, I think this is part of, like, oftentimes do we need to sit in the stuff that happened to us? If I'm living a great life and everything's perfect, I'll say, well, you probably have learned patterns of behavior that are impacting your relationships and are impacting your communication style and are impacting the way you function without even knowing if it's like a healthy way because of unresolved stuff. So you might not have to go on this crazy big self reflection journey and like go talk to someone. But I would say, hey, why don't you just start with five minutes a day, just sitting and seeking silence and kind of just seeing, like, how am I at? And I always say like, five minutes a day, like neurologically will change the neural pathways in your brain to actually allow you to have more clarity, more confidence, more creativity. And I'm just saying, just sit for five minutes. You will unlock a lot more things and you'll say, hey, like actually I'm pretty good and I can keep going. Or you might say, oh man, why are the holidays so hard? I never thought about it and realize like, oh, well, this occurred in my family like 10 years ago and this is why I hate the holidays. But now I have a better awareness of how I can respond and show up and enjoy my holidays because I took time to think about it.
- [32:50]
B
I love that. Okay, so I'm going to sit in five minutes of silence. Walk me through now. You help people perform the best. And everyone knows when their game are. It's similar in our industry. We know when our listing appointments are, we know when our buyer consults are. What's the best thing to do right prior to a game? In order to get my best performance, do you prescribe any hacks or time management?
- [33:10]
A
Yeah, we have pre performance routines, post performance routines, they're all afraid. So those pre performance routines are very personalized to the person. Right. And it's a matter of some love to sit silence, some love music and kind of activate get in that emotional state. Others I say like lock down one to three things. Just be very intentional. One to three things you're gonna do. So if you have a call you're prepping for, like what's the one thing you're gonna make sure you accomplish on that call that day? And having that in your mind. And it's just kind of your programming, your brain for what I'm gonna go do that day. And that's really it. It's very simple. You know, you do your home warmup, your dynamic. The thing we have to lock in on is what emotional state am I in and what am I gonna go do? And I'm only gonna focus on one to three things in that pre performance phase.
- [33:50]
B
Okay, now I have pre performance. Now it's time to perform. How do you think about that?
- [33:54]
A
Yeah, so literally you have the three things. You might have a mantra that you work through that you constantly go for, that you say to yourself, it's kind of your like like it's either motivational or it's instructional self talk on how you're performing. The biggest thing in my performance frame is kind of a reset mindset. So let's imagine you're on a call and it's not going well and someone's getting frustrated or there's something happening and you need to respond. I say, okay, like can you take a breath and then reset and get back into it? Right. It was one bad call. You still gotta keep going about your day. It's one bad performance on a play. And so I always say the what now mindset versus the what if or the what next. We really gotta lock in what now. What is my role right now in this moment? And so we kind of have a reset mindset to get back into the mode. And then that post performance, this is where people often forget and they don't ever do post performance. They don't do any like reflective practice. They don't do the reflective emotional recovery. And so I always kind of say, okay, after that performance, you know, let's lock in what went well, what do I need to improve on and what's my plan? And this can be for any of our high performers. Maybe at the end of your day, you just sit there and you can say, okay, what went really well today day? What do I need to improve on and what's my plan? And then I really love to end with a gratitude share. And so kind of finding one to three gratitudes of the day because that is going to boost your mental and emotional level, your emotional wellness, the perspective taking of how you're viewing things. And then you can go in with action the next day of the things.
- [35:16]
B
You talk about, if you didn't know better, they sound a little Larry fairy. You're like, oh, I'm going to do gratitude. Okay, it's going to help me. But you make the argument that this is science. Like this isn't just like what you thought of driving on the Uber ride into the next stadium. This is all science.
- [35:34]
A
Yes. This is the crazy part about psychology, right? It's this like science to art, dynamic and how to figure it out. And really the only reason why it works, and we know that 85% of why change happens, is the dynamic and relationship you have with your performance coach, your sports psychologist, your psychologist. It really is the relationship. There has to have trust behind that, that. But there is evidence if you do these things and you buy into it, the results will show up. If you sit in silence for five minutes a day and you have to do it consistently. It doesn't just happen one day, and you're like, oh, five minutes. I don't feel anything. You have to be consistent in this in order for change and to experience to actually happen.
- [36:11]
B
It's brilliant. All right, I want to switch gears. There is a real estate story, and it takes place in ancient Athens, and there's this guy named Epicurus. He goes and he buys this villa in downtown Athens. It's this bustling city. And instead of doing his thing in front of large groups, he's a philosopher, and he brings small groups of people into his garden to discuss the questions of the universe. And it becomes known as epicurosis garden. Will you join us in our garden?
- [36:38]
A
Yes.
- [36:39]
B
Okay. You are a mom of four. You are an author, you are a sports psychologist, and you're living a big life. At the end of the day, you must have trauma. How do you take care of you when you're paid to take care of everybody else?
- [36:56]
A
Yeah, well, I have my own psychologist that I work with because that is important. So I talk to talk. Exactly. And I go and seek someone, and we laugh because I'm like, are you the psychologist or am I when we go in and talk to someone? So it's a little hard. You have to put your ego outside because you're talking to someone who you know logically all the things you should do. So allowing yourself to be vulnerable is really true. I am an avid exerciser, and I train, and I'm constantly competing about three times a year. Music is my go to, and I absolutely love bubble baths. I will take a bath every single day. It is my go to framework, and I really try to preach a lot of what I'm doing. Living the balanced life. Kids knuckles are probably the best, but, you know, being vulnerable and just saying, like, if I need space and tag team, then my husband's gonna step in, and he's gonna be the one who kind of just takes the day because they're like, mom needs a message. You know, they know. But I really do try to take care of myself, and I don't always get it right, but seeking help, talking to people, having friend dates, bubble baths. Like I said, all the time. Naps. I'm a napper. I will nap every day. That is the key to success. All of you. If you're not napping 20 to 30 minutes a day, do it. I'll nap on my couch between sessions. Like, I will nap every day.
- [38:06]
B
That has to be a learned behavior because, like, number one, I find it Hard to go to sleep in the middle of the day. And then number two, if I sleep too long, I wake up groggy. And now it's like 2 o' clock and I'm a mess.
- [38:16]
A
Science behind napping, too. But, yes, it's a learning behavior. My college coach told me that I needed a nap after college classes before training, and so I would he's like 30 to 45 minutes nap. And then I started researching and NASA had these like espresso naps where if you take some coffee and then you nap for 26 to, like, 32 minutes, you'll wake up ready to go. And so that's what I just do. I'm like, all right. Even if you don't fall asleep, laying down for a good 20 minutes just to turn your brain off really does activate you for the rest of your day.
- [38:46]
B
So good. All right, next question. You're raising four little people. You are an expert in trauma and the mind. Do you find yourself waking up and protecting them from trauma, or do you wake up and help them work through it? Because there's a lot of people over there that are trying to protect their kids from ever getting hit in any sort of way.
- [39:06]
A
I'm raising four daughters, which is very different as a female leader in the field. Right. And so I'm very conscious about the way I want my young girls to become strong women and strong, independent women that are also emotional and find their way. No parent wants to see their kids hurt, and no parent wants to put their kids in a place where they could get hurt. But I am very conscious, and we are very conscious as parents that we want our kids to fail. We want our kids to learn lessons, we want our kids to take risks and come from that. And then we have it as a life lesson and we talk through it, and we can only prepare them the best we can. But we also have to let life happen.
- [39:41]
B
Last question. For me, if I woke up in the morning and I decided that I wanted to help people through trauma and I wanted to help peak performers, finding them in professional athletics would seem like the place to be. The other side of that, though, is that's one of the largest industries in the world set up to not deal with those problems. How have you reconciled the two? And which group will you focus on moving forward?
- [40:06]
A
Forward? You know, I'm just going to focus on one human at a time. And I think all of us, if I could give any impact of how do you make change? Because you might be like, I'm not an expert I'm not a psychologist. You're a human and all you need to do is sit and listen. And when you ask somebody, you need to actually sit and listen and ask them how they are.
- [40:23]
B
Okay, I lied. I have one more question then. You said you have a psychologist and you just talked about the fact. Do you believe that having a mental health peak performance coach, call him whatever you want, is something that peak performers should have? And if I'm waking up tomorrow and I've never been in treatment or I've never had a coach like that, how do I go seek them out? And what would I say?
- [40:49]
A
Yeah, I mean, do I think everyone should have one? Yes, it's my job. So I'm trying to get, get people to come in. But here's what I want to say is you don't have to have problems in order to go talk to somebody and have someone help you. In this high performance domain, I work on athletes and performers that are succeed meeting and they're amazing and they're like, hey, I just want to have someone I can talk to and help me get better. Or I have people on a continuum that really are struggling with anxiety, depression and difficulties and we work on that component as well. So if you're curious of, hey, I just want to get better and have a coach who can help me, there's definitely resources, there's mental performance coaches. You're going to want to get someone who's actually credentialed. Right. So we have the cmpc, It's a certified mental performance coach. Like that brand will tell you that they are trained and have the competency to do performance optimization. If you want someone on discipline who can also do the mental health, you want to have a psychologist, a licensed level practitioner as well. So you know, sport counselor, sport therapist, sport psychologist, you're going to want to look for those credentials for sure. And the first step is go in and say, hey, I'm just here, I'm not really sure why, and let them take the lead and educate you on what their process could look like with you.
- [41:54]
B
It is so good. All right, Dr. Hillary, where can they get the book?
- [41:58]
A
Yeah, you can get it on Amazon or at Barnes and Nobles and it's also on Audible for the audiobook. And you can hear me read it to you.
- [42:05]
B
There it is, friends, it's a no brainer. It's a great book. It's called hello our Invisible Teammate and I'm giving it two thumbs up. Dr. Hillary, thanks for pouring into us and helping us all with our mental.
- [42:16]
A
State, thank you so much.
- [42:19]
B
I don't even know what to say. I mean, there's so many things that you could say. Suffice to say, I have trauma in my life, and I'd venture to guess that most of you have had trauma in yours. What I didn't realize is that we were all pretty much hardwired to deal with trauma, at least at the onset. The same way the question becomes, how does that trauma show up in our life as we're moving forward? You see, leadership, Gary Keller told me, is about teaching people how to think so that they do the things they need to do when they need to do them, so that they get the things they want when they want to have them. My question to you is a simple, simple one. Are you leading you? Most people think of leadership as jumping in and leading others. The truth is, it all starts with ourselves. Do we jump in and do the things that we need to do? How do we feel while we're doing them? And then as trauma hits, which just happens, how do we then handle it? See, the reason that this episode was my gift to you is because here's what I believe. Every one of you is a journeyer. And here's what else I believe. Every one of you is high performing and high functioning. Here's what I know. Our audience comprises the greatest real estate minds of our day. That's not to say that all of our minds are clear. Now. You have a playbook. You have a model to unpack and work through the trauma in your life. You see, next year is going to be made of your own design. That's the truth of every year. If you haven't delved in and listened to to last year's episode at the end of the year where we talked about Gary Keller's 10 Questions for Life, I urge you to go do it. If you want to have a life by design, you are going to need to figure out exactly what it is that you want. Step two, you're going to have to deal with the mental health and the trauma that might be standing in the way of you getting it. And that's it. There are no more steps. Life is about the thoughts that you think and the actions that you take. Friends, as we look back on 2024, we just want to say thanks. Thank you. You see, all of us here at the podcast, Anna and Joy and Sean and the entire crew are amazingly grateful. You've made us the number one podcast in our space. You earned the Inman Innovator of the Year award in the podcast space. You were the reason we made 52 episodes. You were the reason we made 52 one pagers. And you are the reason that this show persists. You see, without you, there's no us. This show has given us an amazing amount of purpose, and we'd like to think that it's giving you an amazing amount of entertainment. Special thank you to Gary Keller, Dave Jenks, may he rest in peace, and Jay Papasan. Little did you know that when you sat down to write a book many, many years ago, it would still be driving the industry forward today, as relevant as it was the day that you wrote it. We are grateful, friends. Have a happy and a healthy new year. We will see you back next week as we kick off 2025. There it is. That wraps another episode. Friends, I don't know what you're taking out of this. I really don't. I'll tell you what I want you to be taking out of it, which is these are the people that are having tremendously big lives. And the reason it's happening is because they're setting up the models and systems to do just that. Gary Keller told me that leadership is teaching people how to think, so that they do the things they need to do when they need to do them, so that ultimately they get the things they want when they want to have them. And that's what I want for you. You're all leaders, but it begins with leading ourselves. If you're enjoying this podcast, I want you to click the subscribe button anywhere that you get your podcasts. We want to be the voice in your head every single week. Week. And every week we're dropping new content. We also send out a newsletter at the conclusion of every show to make sure that you get the highest points and the models and systems that were discussed. So if you want to sign up, I need your name and your email address. Head over to themillionaire agent podcast.com millionaireagentpodcast.com Enter your name and your email address and every week that newsletter will be in your box. Friends, you just went on a journey. I hope that what happens between now and next time we meet is absolutely wonderful for you. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.
- [46:39]
C
The information provided in this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not to be interpreted as a recommendation for a specific treatment plan, product, or course of action. Information in this podcast does not replace consultation with a qualified health or medical professional who sees you in person for your health and your medical needs, the views, thoughts and opinions of the guests represent those of the guests and not KWRI and its affiliates, and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax or other advice.