Dr. Kyra Bobinet 0:00
Habits only become habits through repetition because you're sending that repeated signal to the brain like, Hey, I'm serious about it. Hey, this is me. This is my new me.
Tracy DeLuca 0:09
results may vary as a podcast and a community to help you design your life. Through our work in the fields of design, innovation, and executive coaching. Chris Kati and I have learned that the creative problem solving strategies we use to help organizations tackle tough challenges apply to people challenges to the design process is universal. Gaining empathy and taking action is useful for every industry and individual alike.
Katia Verrensen 0:39
Our hope is that by sharing stories from people who design their own lives in unique ways that you can take this useful and apply it on your own. So tune in, take note, try an experiment and then try another. We're all born creators, and everyday is a whole new chance to create.
Tracy DeLuca 1:01
Today we're excited to welcome our first results may vary repeat guest and author of well designed life Dr. Bobinet. Her specialty is combining brain science and design thinking to serve the health of whole populations of people and challenge them and herself to live healthy, fulfilling lives physically, mentally and spiritually. Dr. Bob Annette has spent her career working in the healthcare industry building programs and algorithms to change behaviors at the million person scale. Today she is the founder and CEO of fresh try a simple sustainable behavior change approach based on the brain science of habit formation. Let's listen in as Kyra shares her thoughts on the brain behavior gap and why it's so dang hard to do the things we all know we should and how adopting an iterative mindset can offer you a more successful and compassionate approach to habit change. We are here today with Kyra Bobinet Dr. Kyra Bobinet. And we last left you About five years ago when you had just released your book, well designed life. And I'm really curious to have you catch up our listeners on what you've been doing since then.
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 2:21
Yeah, so it's so interesting how the universe works, right? Because Well, first of all, thank you for having me here. And it's really, really one back, I'm really glad that you're that you're back doing this because it's such a powerful podcast and just such a great topic and pulls together all the amazing people in the world. So I had, you know, done the book and went on this kind of tour, if you will, of keynotes and one of my keynotes was in Boston, and a gentleman in the audience was from Walmart. And he approaches me after my talk, and he says, Hey, you know, I want to do something different. I want to like disrupt this whole world of employee wellness and health promotion and disease management, can you help me? I said, Yeah, like, that's my dream. And he said, Well, how would this if you could build this thing? What would you build? And I didn't even know the answer question, but it just kind of popped out of my mouth and said, I said, I have an engine. And he's like, what is it? Yeah, because in the book, you know, I talked about fast brain, slow brain, and you know, for yourself past self kind of designs as frameworks, and also the ability to do your design thinking as a lifestyle, you know, have that designers mindset, that, that way of just, you know, kind of versioning yourself into success. And he's like, let's do it. Let's, let's figure this out. So my team and I went to the areas of the country that have the most health challenges the southern states, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. And we basically sat and watched first of all the store and how it ran, we didn't introduce ourselves until day two in each of the stores. And then the day two, we started interviewing and talking with associates, and we were both observing their unconscious behaviors, you how they held their body that you know, the woman who's talking to us folding the children's clothes, she was tugging this big thing of coca cola and telling us about her health. And so those kinds of observations and and you're the disjointedness between what they said and what they did, you know, and kind of getting those, those things to come to light. And what we realized is that, really, it sounds kind of stupid, easy to say this, but food is the great unifying factor of health that everybody inevitably has to do. Nobody has to work out. Nobody has to do many things. Maybe sleep would be another one. But food is sort of, you know, you can't not eat. And so it has to be dealt with. And it is such a driver for everything mental health, physical health, chronic diseases, everything that you, you know, feel during the day, you know how much energy you have all that kind of stuff. And so we decided to take on this project of designing for food and figuring that out.
Tracy DeLuca 5:26
You know, I'm really intrigued by this idea of a habit engine. Yeah.
But I also wanted to talk a little bit about just the realities of being human. And you said, you know, it's like, what we say about our health and what we actually do. And I feel like, that's another common experience that we all share, where, you know, we do have beliefs, and then we have actions, and they don't always align up. And it's not because we're bad people, or because we're trying to, you know, present ourselves a certain way, what do you think is behind that gap?
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 5:24
So I like to call that the brain behavior gap. Wait, I know what I should do, I just don't know why I don't do it, you know, and that was actually the words of somebody in a clinical study that I did, that really, you know, kind of was like my life calling, you know, solve this, figure this out. And so there's a couple of things that are sitting in that gap. One is what I talked about, with the fast brain, slow brain, you know, your, your slow brain sets this goal to let's say, you know, get to a healthy weight, your fast brain shoves the pie into your mouth, I literally bought a peach pie three nights ago, I've been somewhat feeding off of it, much like a lion feeds off of a carcass for multiple days. And, and so but but, but I'm controlling myself, in certain sense of, I do in the middle of the day, I take some cinnamon afterwards to kind of do some damage control. So I know behavior design, and how to prevent myself from doing what I used to do, back before I knew these techniques, is I used to eat the whole pie, then I would feel horrible about myself. And that I would feel so horrible that I would get another pie and then I’d eat that whole pie. And that, that world is what I wanna rescue people from.
Habits are the only like, legit unit of behavior change in your brain, if you were to say, a brain before it changes behavior, and then a brain after it changes behavior, the neuroplasticity around the habits and what became automated is what we are talking about. But it's not the single transactional behaviors, it's not I remind you to go get vaccine, or I remind you to take your pills. That is not if the brain can't carry it as a mindless habit. Ultimately, you have not changed your behavior. How do we do that? It's through habituating, everything we can into true behavior change.
Katia Verrensen 7:58
Yeah, one of the things that I often talk to clients about his behavior is going to be 100% of your information. So you're telling yourself a story, and you perceive things a certain way. But when you really track behavior, you really get the truth of your starting point. And that just noticing that starts to be a revelation for them. I'm curious about this habit engine you're talking about? Could you tell us more about it?
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 8:21
Yeah. So we basically we started out as a design a behavior design firm. And as we finished this project in the southern states, for Walmart, we came back to headquarters, and we talked about, you know, targeting food as medicine. And we started to do some prototyping and figure out, you know, what, what is it that people will respond to what, what's kind of the DNA of behavior change, people are no longer tolerant of monolithic, you know, one size fits all programming, right? They need personalization, they need it to fit, who they are all the little quirks about them, and that sort of thing. So when we started to think about how do we create, how do we target food habits? How do we deal with something that is so new, even from childhood, we needed a way to make it simple, and to make it very bespoke to the person and to really deal with the sensory component of how the brain thinks about food too, as well as the heuristic, which means like how your brain takes shortcuts versus how my brain takes shortcuts. I'll give you an example. The menus that we created inside of our prototypes, we're offering things around, you know, adding vegetables or reducing portions and things like that. And what we found is that certain people tend to gravitate towards a heuristic of this needs to be adding because maybe that person has a deprivation trigger or something that, you know, kind of bums them out if they feel like they're taking away if you're taking away options. And so they apply that same brain shortcut or heuristic to choosing which food habits they would find acceptable to change. And maybe over time, they'll get to the harder ones. But even my own behavior as I've, as I've worked with the software that we're building, I found that I started out with add vegetables, and that was kind of my, my layup, you know, and I would always that was my home base. If I was, you know, getting my butt kicked with portion control, which is my worst category, I would go back to add vegetables kind of build up my confidence for a while. Retone, if you will, that habit that I had built up, and then go and challenge myself, right. So what we did was we created this prototype, we created these versions. And as and just one thing led to the other and we're, you know, getting more and more traction, more more success, more and more input. And we ended up building a software called fresh try and late last year, we just said, Hey, you know what we're gonna go all in on fresh tried, because we also got a CDC contract to turn habits habits out of a big curriculum called the Diabetes Prevention Program, when we did the research in the southern states, and then we expanded that out to Walmart associates, nationwide found these people who had lost a ton of weight, kept it off long term. And in the face of two jobs, Single Parenthood, no money, no time, all the stress in the world, they were able to do this heroic thing and sustain it. We wanted to understand how could you sustain this? Because you know, I grew up in Oklahoma I know what church potluck tables look like, in that area of the country. And everywhere you know? So I was fascinated with this when we start interviewing them. And what we found is that they all had, this was only one thing in common because they had different demographics, different circumstances, different ethnicities, different cultures, different food preferences, and different things. So they were trying different programs, they were trying different wearables, they were trying. And what we found is that they only have this one thing in common, which is what we're calling the iterative mindset, which is a kind of a new naming, if you will, of the designers mindset. Designers will understand what designers mindset is, but the typical person in the world doesn't know that and putting the word iteration in, it really captures that mindset as a distinct and unique type of mindset to use
Tracy DeLuca 12:25
And what do you think allowed people to have that mindset? Is that something they inherently had? Or do you think they learned it along the way? Or like, how did they have it and others not? What, uh, what did the rest of the people need to do? Or no?
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 12:40
Yeah, I've been asking myself that question. I think that they probably the the nature side of the thing is, they were probably an inherently born MacGyver or designer, you know, and they didn't, they just grew up in an area where design wasn't a career option for them, they didn't know anything about it, or didn't have access to that. So they just kind of do that with their life. But they're super clever. And they're super creative, right? My mom's one of those people. And then the other nurture aspect of it might be that by force of circumstance, somebody who becomes an I was a single mom, 14 years, when you're a single mom, you got to be frickin, you got to hustle. And you got to be super savvy, you know, so that savviness those those environmental pressures and getting things done for, hacking your life, hacking your kids trying to get some vegetables into your kids, when your deadbeat tired, those kinds of things might force people to become more creative in their approach, and maybe even have more pressure to become more time efficient, too. And money and money saving too. So those kinds of pressures, I think are probably, at least with the folks that we met in Walmart, probably the force of circumstance that might have evolved them in that direction as well.
Tracy DeLuca 13:58
Because of, because that sounds like amazing adaptability and creativity and the opposite of perfection. I find that people who want to be perfect, or want to control have a really hard time on that. They're not naturally iterative.
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 14:15
That's right. And actually, you know, my recent Aha, there was a article at the beginning of this year in Harvard Business Review. And it really was a light bulb that went off for me because they did this comparison of growth mindset and fixed mindset, which is the most famous pairing, but they also have this other one called learning mindset and performance mindset.
So I dug into their bibliography and I read this gnarly, long paper around different you know, goal orientation mindsets. And this performance mindset, as near as I can tell, is basically the behavior change operating system that is predominant right now, at least in health and well being type solutions and you may not recognize it, by that name, but what it is, is goals and tracking. So setting these hard goals, smart goals, those kinds of things, and then tracking against those goals or tracking your calorie intake your steps every day, all that kind of tracking behavior. It's all components of performance mindset. And it was kind of an import from business, which came out of education and higher education at that. And the performance mindset and learning mindset learning mindset kind of evolved. Carol Dweck was one of these mentees of the person who first saw articulated performance versus learning mindset. And she took it further. And then she evolved that into growth mindset, which is a belief that it's not over for you, like you can learn you're, it's, you know, you're not, and you don't have to be perfect, you can, you can always learn. The difference between growth mindset and iterative mindset, though, is that iterative mindset is more action oriented mindset, it's try this thing, practice this thing, experiment with this thing.
And then Part two is iterate, when you need, you know, when you get bored, when it doesn't lift off when you Ace it, and you need a new challenge level, you know, so so it's a very much instructional mindset in that way, because you know, what to do, you know, so performance mindset, going back to that, really good for simple tasks, this is from the literature, performance mindset goes and tracking really good for performance for simple tasks, I want to go the grocery store, you know, it's very good in sales, you know, I want to reach a sales goal, I want to be the top selling person this year, salesperson this year. And, you know, once I achieve that, you can't take that away from me, so and it's an area of high self efficacy. So that's the second criteria for performance mindset is that it needs to be only used when you have an area of high confidence, high self efficacy, well, food habits and weight loss are not generally an area where anybody feels confident. And so it's really poor match for that, and health, health changes as well. And then the third thing around performance mindset, where it works is something that's not reversible. So if I go get a college degree, and I use performance mindset to drive myself to do that, then I graduate, you can't take that away from me, you know, and, and so it's permanent. But weight, can always be regained. Yeah, something like that, that can go back or they can reverse is not appropriate for performance mindset, because you risk these failure events.
Katia Verrensen 17:39
That makes a lot of sense. I'm very curious, I remember that you'd mentioned that for behavior change, you need both the motivation, and then a strong emotion. As you were speaking, I was thinking about exercise, which is also a trigger for people. And I realized that the minute exercise became pleasurable, I started working out every day, it just became a no brainer. But if it came from a punishing emotion, which was the way it used to be before, it was much, much harder for me to work out. What are your thoughts are based on your experience around the strong emotions that we need in order to get to the behavior change?
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 18:17
Yeah, I mean, emotion is the decision, fuel, so you cannot make a decision without emotion. And you can't feel strongly about it, it won't, it won't have what's called salience in the brain, which is kind of lights up your self image, like, Oh, that's me, you know. So the stronger match to I am a person who works out that you have, the more emotion juice that you have around that, the more likely it's going to be to become a habit, because you will invest in it, you will repeat it, you know, that there's no way around it habits only become habits through repetition, because you're sending that repeated signal to the brain, like, Hey, I'm serious about it, hey, this is me, this is my new me, this, you know, make sure you pave this with smile. And because you know, I'm going to use this a lot. I'm going to do this a lot, you know, and so the brain at some point takes you seriously makes it easier and more automatic, and then it becomes your new default. Right? So the emotion is the sort of first aid in the in the beginning to make that happen. And then after it becomes a habit, then your emotion dies down because it's so expensive for the brain to sustain. You know, passion around everything. Once you integrate it into kind of a cruise control automated system as a habit, then your brain doesn't need the emotion to fuel it every time.
Katia Verrensen 19:45
Because it's been now it's a habit. It's on autopilot.
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 19:45
Exactly.
Katia Verrensen 19:45
It's an identity level, that I am this kind of person. It's now my identity. So I don't have to it's difficult.
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 19:51
Yeah, it's your default. It's me. It's made it into the me category. And so you'll automatically do it because it's part of what your brain thinks is you
Tracy DeLuca 20:00
So a lot of people talk about, you know, 30 days to a habit or, you know, some somewhere around that area. And, and if you can just cross that barrier, then you won't ever go back. And you deconstruct that a little bit more.
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 20:16
Yeah. So, you know, we kind of have this urban myth, if you will, came from a plastic surgeon in the 1960s, who noticed that his patients who had a nose job took about 21 days or three weeks to get used to their nose. And that became more than all habits and all behaviors and everything that you get used to takes 21 days, when in fact, it takes about a year to fully construct the neural plastic network that you need for that to become your new default. And then you have to keep toning it after that you have to, you have to tone those habits, after they become your default to keep them, like, like maintenance of a road. You know, like, if you think about a road, and you're building a road, if you do 21 days of building that road, you've only got maybe some clearing of the area that you want to build the road in. And so when people give up, it makes me very sad. Because I was like, Oh, you know, you bought into that lore and you had these expectations. And now, now you feel like you failed, you know, you didn't fail. It's just that you weren't given the right information about how the science works.
Tracy DeLuca 21:25
Yeah. And then when you say it takes about a year, then I think, Oh my god, Kyra, like, Please don't make me have to eat more vegetables for a whole year. Like how? So how do I mentalize that because I guess I feel like a lot of the things that we're asked to change our behaviors around or we know that we should change our behaviors around are inherently things that don't want to do, because they just don't feel good. So how do we shift that mindset?
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 21:55
I'm going to switch that up. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer that unpredictably here in a second. Okay, one thing that caught my attention is that you basically said, Oh, no, well, if you're gonna go- Oh, no, about something that is not your starting place anyway. Because if you're agonizing through something, you're not in the right spot, and that's something that I think, you know, has come with performance mindset, that kind of grit it out, you know, no pain, no gain kind of mentality is a performance mindset spell that has been cast upon everybody. And I just want to undo that and put it in its proper place for its proper uses. It's like using antibacterial cream for a fungal infection, it's never going to work out, you know. So we have to use the right methodology with the right mindset, which is this iterative mindset. And if you approach, you know, just like, as a designer, if you were designing something that was just not had no signs of life, you would abandon that in a hot second, right? So when you apply that same philosophy to your own self behavior change, then you start to see, Oh, that's, that's wisdom.
Katia Verrensen 23:00
I love how you talked about that, that no pain, no gain, that's that that's really I have such an issue with that, too. And I always have to distinguish with people and explain, listen, there's a difference between hacking and the beauty, and the joy of creating from a constraint, and just being blinded by the grind. And those are not the same emotions, and those are not the same mindsets, and you're not going to get the same results.
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 23:26
You know, it's, it's just really, and if I could just deviate a little bit off of that, like, it's our relationship with gentleness, you know, I have this, you know, I grew up really getting it, like, I had a dad who was, you know, tough it up, you know, like, you know, tough it out, suck it up. And Oklahoma is not a kind place for little girls who cry, you know, when they're little, you know, turtle dies or whatever. And so, you know, we all kind of have our own version of this. And we have to change our relationship with gentleness, kindness, and really understand how effective that can be. And I I am definitely in some sort of rehab around that because I was somebody who worked out until it hurts I was somebody who wouldn't go to a massage therapist until unless they bruised me. I was somebody who, you know, went to tough schools and tough careers and, and did tough things. I like hard things to do and hard problems. And yet, we really have to question what is most effective, because if we're just doing that, and we're getting all kinds of rebellion, self sabotage, as a nasty, subconscious way of, you know, alarm bells going off like, Hey, stop, stop abusing me, stop hurting me, you know, I'm your body, you know, take care of me, then we really are going to end up with some sort of disease that's going to dial that to 10 and get our attention that way. Right. So we have so many warning shots before we get there,
Katia Verrensen 25:02
I agree I've actually seen that in in with executives, if if their body will start to signal, they have to change their behavior. And, and then we get into meeting resilience with self compassion, which is a wonderful tool.
Tracy DeLuca 25:18
I feel like though we also live, we live in this performance driven world. And Kyra would I think is so fascinating about your work is that it makes so much sense. And then when I go out into the world where I do behavioral change projects, and work with clients who are focused on this, and they've got all these brilliant minds, I feel like they're doing the opposite. They're doing that goal and task oriented pursuit, and there's no talking them out of it. And then I feel like it has such an impact culturally on all of us, because we're putting products and services out into the world that are perpetuating this approach, and we're continuing to fail and continuing to fail. And so what do you feel like needs to happen in order for us to really be open to this more gentle, compassionate approach for behavior change?
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 26:10
I think that we need to have a long conversation, you know, this whole 140 character or 240, character, whatever life does have its role does have its place. But I think we're realizing with podcasts and relationships, and a lot of things in our culture, that sometimes the long form is required. And I believe in people's learning curve, meaning that I know there's enough people out there who've been burned by misusing performance mindset for the wrong thing, ie healthcare, behavior change, that, that I can see the scars, the scars, you know, they're battle worn, you know, they're like, Why? Why has no country in the world reversed today? Why are we all going off a cliff with our health? Why are we you know, being so disparate in ethnic disparities of health? Those kinds of questions, and perplexities are causing people and I think influential people to start to look for something different, or start to look for something else. And that's kind of metaphorical for me in how I do horses these days, because I have a horse. And I grew up, you know, shame. shamefully, I'm going to admit here, that I would hit my horse on the neck when or on the butt when he wouldn't do what I wanted to do. Because I was taught that that's how you treat a horse because they're big, and you have to dominate them. And I'm sure a lot of people were taught the same thing. But as I grew older, and I and I had 30 year break from horses, and then I wanted to have horses back in my life, I really instinctually could not bear the idea of hitting an animal. And so I found a woman who does a specific type of not only natural horsemanship, but horse communication, where you really are working on the mindfulness of the horse, are they with you? You know? Or is there are they carrying out their thoughts somewhere else. And when you're training a horse in this way, training with them, and they're teaching you as much as you're teaching them, they will make the slightest effort towards what you are wanting. So you make a request or an invitation. And they go Is it like this, you can see like, maybe they'll move their home just slightly, or something like that. And my teacher says, You praise that because it was it was a tiny gesture in the right direction, and you can build on that. But if they don't see praise, or they don't see some feedback loop, you know, ding, ding, ding, then they will get discouraged and give up. And then you've got a horse that from a human perspective, looks resistant, looks rebellious, looks aggressive, looks shut down. Looks like they won't do what you want them to do. You know? So it's a real, it's real metaphor for how we as humans, train ourselves. Any little gesture like Yes, good direction, directionally positive, and being able to catch those within ourselves and really pause and praise ourselves, frankly, to get that encouragement happening on a subconscious level.
Katia Verrensen 29:30
Yeah, a lot of, that is that's so so important and so accurate. And and one of the ways when I'm working with people in their teams is to have them do you know really celebrate the micro wins. Really, if you're going to go out and invent the future, you need to validate what you've already done so far and build on that momentum. Even the micro wins and that will shift a team so fast. It's it's really phenomenal. I wanted to bring up a point that you speak of a lot, and I think is really key you were mentioning in your book, that the three steps for change involve really understanding that I'm not a bad person, that others are experiencing this too, and that there's a way out. And I find that across the board that I'm not a bad person is just this horrific shadow side that so many people have, and really takes people out in terms of achieving their goals. It fundamentally feels like there's this sort of toxic societal, cultural groupthink, that says, Yes, everyone should feel like they're wrong or bad. It's just it's such a reality distortion.
Tracy DeLuca 30: 58
And yeah, leaving that really stops people from designing the life they want for it from really shifting behaviors. And I was wondering if you could speak to that, or how we might make that right. Again, this inner goodness, this, this just being very objective and neutral with yourself, right,
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 31:11
Right, what also doesn't work is you can't just say, hey, Katya, you're actually good inside, right?
Katia Verrensen 31:17
No, yeah, that's the same binary, right? Yes. Get out of the duality. Yeah, yeah,
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 31:23
it's a real journey. And, and I actually, I actually did a camping trip or a solo wilderness track, once when I was 30. And I went to the four corners area of Colorado, New Mexico, and did a 22 mile hike. And when I was going in my, my intention was, I want to understand self love, I want to understand what that means. Because it sounds like such a corny, cheesy concept. But it was reflected back to me by my friends and my loved ones, how much me being critical of others and myself was being toxic to them and and to everyone around me and including myself, because I didn't feel good about myself, because I did feel like I was fundamentally bad or wrong, or I imperfect or those kinds of things. And so what I realized in really questing for self love, is that you need to quest for it, you have to want it, it's the it's like the holy grail, you have to go on that search. And just the searching energy, conjuring that up in yourself of, okay, so I may not believe that I'm not bad. But I want to not believe that I'm not bad, you know, that I'm bad. And so I want to be free of feeling that I'm bad. And so I need to just start setting an intention of show me Show me how to get out of this feeling, show me how to move one step further towards what other people call self love. Even if I don't believe in it, even if I'm skeptical, even if I'm so mired in my childhood grief that I don't know where to start, you know, and that's where people are there. It's just childhood grief, and no baby would ever if you grew, if you didn't interact with any other human and it was raised by wolves would ever think that they were a bad person. It's put into them by other human beings. And so it's a quest of how to shed those layers, how to shed those injections into your bloodstream and get those out cleanse your system of those toxic messages that you took in and that you believed and that you operate from. And and, you know, it's it may not be obvious, so I'll just point it out. The people that you're working with, because they are high performers, they have been using performance mindset forever. That's
Tracy DeLuca 33:58
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, yeah. Oh, and
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 33:58
so so one thing I know about high performers is that they are running from this they're running from they outperform because they don't feel right or they don't feel they have impostor syndrome, or they don't feel like you know, and there's a lot of just running from the pain that drives somebody to be in that performance mindset and also drive somebody to perform at that level. When I got to UCSF for medical school, I looked around my classmates hundred 40 of us. And I said and I after I met them for a while and I spent about a year with first year before I concluded this as like, oh, what we all have in common is just we flogged ourselves to get here we flogged ourselves to to do the extra things and to jump through those hoops and to to become superhuman, so that we could have acceptance so that we could be somebody so we can have an ego trip so that we could have status, whatever the case may be or power You know, and that's what's driving everybody.
Tracy DeLuca 35:03
What do we how do we look at that from a positive direction, like leave us with some, some hope for the future around changing that, that mindset and walking away from imposter syndrome?
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 35:18
Actually, there is no hope.
I'm just kidding.
Tracy DeLuca 35:22
I love it!
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 35:23
The hope the hope was, the hope was embedded in my my description of the iterative mindset, or designers mindset like you iterators never fail, they never stop. And if I had one wish, for everybody it was to it would be to render them unstoppable. Because you know, once you understand that there's an area of your brain that have vendula, that detect failure, you will think twice, about putting yourself in situations where you will think you failed, and you will think twice, about putting in place a mindset and rejecting the performance mindset. In that case, because the iterative mindset is safer, it's more protective of you, it'll keep you safer long term in your efforts will keep you in effort long term. And at the end of the day, the only hope I can offer is that you need to stay in some sort of exploratory search iteration mode, as often as you possibly can get yourself to do that. And I don't mean grid out, I don't mean just like, just keep trying, I mean, solve problems, experiment, play with it be creative, you know, be be, hack it. You know, like those kinds of things. That's how you feel better. That's how you feel more capable, more, more of a base of, Oh, I have confidence in myself. And I have faith in myself. And I, I love myself for getting myself out of these binds all the time. And I just like me with the peach pie. Like, I know, I'll get out of that. I'm actively relapsing, I am admitting this outwardly, to a bunch of people I don't even know. And yet I know, because I've adopted this iteration methodology that I cannot be stopped, and I will not gain weight during COVID. And I will, I will be okay at the end of the day. And that that loop with yourself creates that love and that confidence and appreciation and, and really rewires you completely.
Katia Verrensen 37:17
And that's really going from a controlling perfection mindset to actually a creative mindset, a mindset of possibility and iteration.
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 37:27
Yeah, I mean, that that's why I think, you know, having the words iterative mindset is so directional and guiding on just inherently in the words. It's like, Oh, I need to think about iterating here.
Tracy DeLuca 37:39
Yep. Beautiful. I love it. Kyra. I could talk to you for days and days and months.
Katia Verrensen 37:46
I know, I was thinking, of the same thing.
Tracy DeLuca 37:51
I love it.
Tracy DeLuca 37:52
Thank you so much. Yeah,
Dr. Kyra Bobinet 37:54
My pleasure, my pleasure, ladies. And thank you so much for doing this. Like I said, it's such a great conversation. I'm so thankful for the, the audience that's being gathered around this really important discussion.
Tracy DeLuca 38:07
Kyra is so amazing. I love like last time she was on the show was an amazing show. This time is an amazing show. I've heard her on other shows. And she just always brings such incredible depth of knowledge about the brain that I feel like is so relevant and relatable. So, So glad for her to be on the show. And so glad to have a chance to do this episode with you. Katya.
Katia Verrensen 38:32
Yeah. And what a powerhouse she is. And I loved how, well, being so impactful in the world and the way she was raised and all of that she's created. I just was so moved when she talked about our relationship to gentleness, hmm, that was a true treasure.
Tracy DeLuca 38:53
We don't hear that enough. I mean, it's the opposite. It's to be strong and powerful and dominate.
Katia Verrensen 39:00
And that's not really how things work. Absolutely. And so it led me to, it leads me to believe that that might be the next wave of her journey. So it'll be exciting to hear where that goes. But it made me think a lot of you know, in the US, we often have this thing about productivity and to do lists. And in France, we have this thing about gentleness and -tout doux- which means all things gentle, and, and relationship. Yeah.
Tracy DeLuca 39:28
What? There should be a list of gentleness. I love that.
Katia Verrensen 39:33
All things, you know, I'm designing around a very optimized, nervous system that feels safe and mattering and performing at its best in that way. So ..
Tracy DeLuca 39:51
yeah, that's just so interesting. I, um, this past week, I've been trying an experiment that my business coach gave me where she said Instead of making a traditional to do list to sort of, I'm calling it a monkey mind to do list where I wake up in the morning and I just like allow my anxiety to create the list like, Oh my gosh, I have to do this that that. And it turns it into something that's actually more playful than like a real to do list, which I think of as, you know, oh, I have to be responsible. And I have to get all of these things done, lets me include my emotions in it. And then I found that one, it takes things out of my short term memory and does put it on the page. So it's easier to remember. But to it also just helps me get through it because it feels playful. So I'm curious about like the gentleness that seems like another layer to take it down to how do I look at it from that perspective,
Katia Verrensen 40:48
I think that's a really fun exercise. And if you if we take it to behavior change, which is a lot of what we talked about, with Kyra, I loved how she mentioned that behavior change really sets in, when it becomes part of our identity. I am I am this kind of person, I am gentle with myself, I am etc, etc. And that's a good reminder.
Tracy DeLuca 41:11
Yeah, I just in her conversation. And then also another podcast I was listening to was talking about that part of the brain and just how powerful it is. So I'm curious to explore that concept more of just identity and how do I make something be more me?
Katia Verrensen 41:29
Mm hmm. Really only that. I so loved her real explicit explanation about performance mindset versus iterative mindset. Boy, was I happy she shared that.
Tracy DeLuca 41:41
Yeah, I think that also ties back to the like, strength and competition side where, you know, it's like, how do we look at that differently? So what what stood out to you about that one? Well,
Katia Verrensen 41:52
In my worldview, this performance mindset tends to put people in fight or flight. And so I loved how she explained. In some areas, it's good to use it right? If it's if it's a simple task, or if it's a place of high self confidence. So there's a place when you can use it. But the truth is the iterative mindset, and as a designer, you're so familiar with it, it's how you breathe. That's an I am for you. Yeah. But that, you know, with an iterative mindset, you will always get to your destination. Yeah. And then if we add gentleness to that, well, you can get to a destination and enjoy it.
Tracy DeLuca 42:34
Yeah, I also, I thought that, you know, looking at food, food is such a fraught topic for people. And the reframe that she made for me was thinking about, you know, food is the perfect place, like your plate is the perfect experimentation platform, you get so many tries over and over and over again, daily basis, to adopt new behaviors, to experiment with things to iterate what you want to eat, and how you want to eat and how you want to feel from the food that you consume. And that just, I had never thought about that before. I only have thought of it through the lens of, you know, restriction, and just the whole diet culture and the United States and around the world, too. And yeah, it just makes me hopeful about the next meal.
Katia Verrensen 43:23
That sounds really exciting. Really exciting.
Tracy DeLuca 43:27
Yay.
Tracy DeLuca 43:29
All right, anything else? Oh, you know what? I feel like all of these, like, I feel like all of these ways that we've been taught the world works are being dismantled. So when she was talking about when I asked her about the 21 days to break a habit, Mm hmm. And saying that that was formed off of like, how long it takes you to get used to your new nose when you have a nose job like
Tracy DeLuca 43:59
Like that is so crazy. Oh, that is what
Tracy DeLuca 44:01
we have based entire companies and organizations and strategies on around behavior change, like, Oh my gosh, just silly.
Katia Verrensen 44:13
That's something I really enjoy about Kyra is how deep she goes into her research. Yeah, and so um, I typically say to people listen, test your assumptions, like where are they coming from? You know, and and that's what's so satisfying about this interview is how deep she goes and and how much truth comes out. Totally.
Katia Verrensen 44:34
Awesome. All right. Well, that's it for today.
Tracy DeLuca 44:37
Yay.
Katia Verrensen 44:38
Thank you.
Tracy DeLuca 44:40
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