My Areas of Interest
I focus on helping people in 5 related areas:
#1: Stress
My initial area of interest — what I wrote my first book about — is stress.
But it’s not your typical stress management approach.
I want people to understand that the man who built the modern stress concept made a fundamental mistake, with devastating consequences on the coping skills we use today.
Stress doesn’t come from what’s going on in your life — it comes from your thoughts about what’s going on in your life.
The key is a 7-step guided worksheet called Active Insight© that flips your perspective in minutes, with no stigma or “touchy-feeliness.”
This radically changes how you feel and how you address challenges, which leads to my second area of interest…
#2: Relationships
Once you learn the truth about stress and the dynamics of re-thinking, you can take on one of the most important areas of human well-being: relationships.
And I show people how to strengthen relationships in a surprisingly different way by using these 7-steps to increase empathy, compassion, and accountability without blame.
This opens the door to area #3…
#3: Crucibles
Literally, crucibles transform metals, but figuratively they transform us into better versions of ourselves.
They are adverse experiences that make or break us in life.
I explain how crucibles work, and why they are especially important for leaders.
You become a better leader, a better partner, a better human.
That leads to my fourth area of interest…
#4: Parenting
One of the biggest crucibles in life is the fire that forges us as children.
As a father of two young kids, I spend a lot of time exploring how to parent better based on data, not tradition.
And I’ve put together tools to make this simpler for myself, and others.
(I’ve also put together similar tools to improve team dynamics, since happy families and high-performing teams share many of the same needs.)
So far we’ve covered stress, relationships, crucibles, leadership, and parenting/teams. These have been my main areas of interest for the past 19 years, both in executive education and in my own life.
But there’s something new in progress…
#5 Broad Social Change
The world is more polarized than ever. How do we fix it?
Human beings are alive because of our dependence on tribes. Tribes are how we bond, how we stay safe, how we overcome challenges.
But today, social apps and the media are hijacking our tribal brains to divide us.
We can keep shrinking our circle of friends, drawing deeper lines of division. This is now the default setting. Thanks to technology and geography, if we do nothing, this will get worse.
Or we can stretch our minds to recognize our shared humanity — without condoning harm — while working together to restore justice and foster deeper accountability.
But this transformation won’t happen on its own, and it won’t happen because of governments, organizations, or social media.
It can only happen through individuals working on their crucibles and transcending the forces dividing us.
This is what I’m most interested in working on.
Putting it All Together
The biggest thing that has changed for me over 17 years of teaching is recognizing how personal growth and broad social change are connected.
As we show up differently in our marriages, with our kids, and with our colleagues, we change the bigger picture.
The Resilience Academy gives you tools to begin change on a personal level— with your husband, your daughter, your mother, where you experience stress and friction on a daily level.
And then you expand your skills to take on bigger challenges in your organization, your community, your country.
But it starts with you and your (mis)understanding of stress, because until your head gets clear, you’re not as effective as you want to be.
The world benefits from as many people as possible to think as clearly as possible. To get started, visit here.