Why High Performers Burn Out: Take Care of the Cockpit

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0:00 Living healthy is very hard. Living unhealthy is harder. If you want high performance results, you can't have average behaviors and average habits. So how often are you supposed to brush your teeth? Twice a day. What is brain hygiene and how do you do it on a day to day basis?

I always say to people, if you see me one time and then you walk away, take away two things, one a and one b and that's get up earlier than everybody and move your body vigorously. take care of your brain. Take care of your brain and which means take care of your body, take care of your health, take care of your nutrition. you know, the cockpit, the cockpit. Take care of the cockpit.

Welcome to the zero friction podcast. This is Terry Coutsolioutsos and today I have a real special guest with me and I promise you it's going to bring right some very good, insightful things for us as commercial leaders and high performers in the medtech space. I have Gregory Salerian. He's the founder and cEO of the Center for Behavioral Fitness. And we're going to talk about a bunch of topics today, but basically, the first thing is we're going to talk about friction. And we as operators, many times, are our own friction.

Greg is a high performance coach. He helps others sort of alleviate. and move that friction from their lives so they can get the most out of their professional, personal, and their health well-being. So greg, welcome Gregory, welcome to the show today. Thank you so much for being here. Why don't hey, you give us a little background on yourself and then we'll talk about what you do and who you do it for.

Background on myself. I am from the DC area, born and raised on the maryland side. went to university of Delaware undergrad, Catholic university, masters, did psychiatric work in the DC area, moved around and then about ten years ago started Center for Behavioral Fitness in New Orleans.

And have kind of you know flourished from there and i'm i'm still developing and evolving into the performance sphere. That's great. And and and when you talk about the performance sphere, what are typically the things that you are helping people sort of break through?

2:47 I mean but probably a lot of things that people know and I I always say like the formula actually isn't that difficult. It's getting people to connect the dots between their behavior and their habits and and the impact on themselves and in a nuanced way. and then getting people to have like well packaged behaviors to implement in their busy lives. Because a lot of the reasons that people don't do things is because they say they don't have time. And it's not that they don't have time, it's that they don't prioritize them.

And they don't have again well packaged behaviors. And they're not motivated because they're not connecting the dots between what they want in their lives and what they're doing. Right. You know, and it's funny because most like of us as high performance commercial leaders or leaders in our organizations, we operate within systems, right? And and what you're trying to do is actually create a system for yourself to actually achieve that same sort of standard, consistent performance day after day after day, correct? That's correct. That's correct. And you know, it's something that I try to think about is that you know, if you're if you're high performance and you're a leader, what you do is going to impact who's around you.

So there's a compounding effect in that way, which is very interesting to watch. So give us a little background on behavioral fitness in itself so we can kind of break off and talk about more specifics. So give us a generalization of what what is behavioral fitness in sort of a you know a one quick paragraph. Sure. It's the intersection of our habits and our brains. and I really want to try and have people understand how their brains operate, have them understand how their goals are impacted by what they do and the habits that they have.

And then again give them well packaged behaviors as they understand that to change. do you want me to get into how how I see habits? Because I can do that. Sure, I think I think end of the day, I mean, consistent great habits always sort of breed others. And I think so, you know, it's all about building systems, building and again, we as leaders typically know that high performance teams operate well within systems, and we tend to neglect ourselves and trying to operate ourselves as a system as well.

Well, oxygen mask on the airplane. I'm sure we all know what that means, right? So if you don't have like if you're not taking care of yourself, nothing else matters. You can get by for a little bit, but in the end, things will start to decay if you don't have good habits. And I will do i'll you know, habits as I see it, it's a wide-ranging word. You have very targeted ways of of moving your body.

5:29 You have targeted ways of nutrition, hydration, sleep, which again I sounds like a lot of your audience does these things. but then you have an an outer rung that you know the more traditional things, practical problem solving, planning, organizing, interpersonal management, assertiveness, not bSing yourself. And then in my practice, anyway, there's a there's an outer rung of what we call trauma processing, overuse word, but i'll use it here, all along the way, trying to follow like scientific rigor, both in like just science is observation. Observation of ourselves, observation of what's happening when we do one thing, what it's his effect what does it affect?

And then from a treatment side, you know, things like EMDR and psychedelics, which are the tip of the spear on trauma process. A lot of what you're talking about actually has come from personal experience, not just a textbook and not just a classroom. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience, your own journey, and you know, how you were sort of be able to create that purpose-driven discipline. Well, mean it's a very know how much time you have, but it's a it's a long story.

I'll try and give you a brief. I've been around this stuff a long time. My dad's a psychiatrist. and you know, I I showed signs of depression when I was young and I was medicated at a very young age and it set me on a course of thinking that the answer was always outside of me. And and that turned into weed, that turned into other substances, other, you know. Very difficult things happened in my life, which we don't have to get into today.

And I lost everything. Like that's the truth. I lost everything. I went bankrupt. I went in tremendous debt to the government. I gained a ton of weight. I was put on a ton of medicine by prescribers that were trying to help me, but didn't talk to me about my habits, frankly. and then at some point I I took control. I I said enough is enough. I ended up going to detox and rehab. in houston 12, 13 years ago. And from that point forward, I started moving my body pretty vigorously every day, changing my diet, which you know, changes your brain, changing my relationships, becoming tougher, grittier, not making excuses.

And all along the way, getting getting very healthy and, you know, in a way that I never had been before. And, you know, I started putting this into play, you know, about 10 years ago as as a practice and piecing things together as to what would help other people based on what I had gone through. And it started to just like come together as a system. and as I was saying before, it's it it's not rocket science. It's really not. It's it's getting people to see it and orient them towards it and then take their their excuses away.

8:27 And so I I hope that helped some. Absolutely. And so tell me a little bit about like how do you take your learning experience and how'd you build it into a methodology and a program and you know and so you could bring it to others. What what was that like?

Time doing it, making you know making changes, documenting it, doing research, frankly. Most of what I do I didn't really learn in school. and so, you know, and then formalizing it and then applying it to so many people that were would come to me and say, hey, like I have this problem, i've been taking these meds, i've gone to this therapist, i've done this, i've done this. And when you you start applying these concepts to people and hold them accountable with empathy, I what I call being a clinical dick, people get better.

And for whatever reason, it's always kind of surprising to me. The methodology really isn't out there. and the more you apply it and the more I see it, like the more it's kind of, you know, you start collecting data, like, and you watch people get better. And so, which it gives you confidence in the system, which just makes you do it more.

So talk to me about being an empathetic dick. Because I think that's you know, I I can I can I can I can you know i've always had this challenge of being more on the accountable side than the empathetic side as a leader, and i've always, you know, had a challenge of balancing both. And I think, you know, I think that's what you're trying to kind of say is there's a way to balance empathy and accountability in the same framework. And I think that would be a great topic.

For us to maybe express to others. Yeah, I mean, there's too much look, there's a place for a lot of different things, but I think a lot of people, they need accountability. They need someone to push back on them, particularly, frankly, high performers that a lot of people are, you know, being told what they want to hear by a lot of people. And so being able to to give people a a loving hard time, but also, you know, I obsessively say easier said than done. because I never want to give the idea to people that like doing this is easy, but it doesn't mean that it can't be done.

And it doesn't mean that it's not worth it. and when I apply it to the things that I try to get people to do to do, you know, living unhealthy is hard. is very hard. Living healthy is very hard. Living unhealthy is harder.

11:05 And that's a message that I carry to people. You, if you want to. If you want high performance results, you can't have average behaviors and average habits. And in our society, in the quick fix, all this, like people want to have their cake and eat it too. And you cannot. What I do, I calculate in my life is about, my wife will probably say it's more, but it's about 15 hours of work a week, taking care of myself, staying organized, keeping my brain healthy. Right. And I always say to people, it's a part-time job, 15 hours a week, right?

And you have to you have to choose because i'll tell you what, unmitigated, poorly cared for brain health is a full effing time job. Pick one. Pick one. You cannot have one without the other because again, people oftentimes want to do want results without work, and it just doesn't happen.

And that's tough in today's world because we live in this push button society where everything's easy. You that's know, correct. you can get a pizza in ten minutes, you can buy a car with ten clicks. So another distinction that I try to make with people is the difference between something feeling gratifying and something being fulfilling. Fulfilling things take work.

Saving money, like getting getting to climbing the corporate ladder, meeting an attractive partner, like a healthy partner. They take work. You can quickly get fulfilled, excuse me, quickly get gratified. Fulfillment takes work, and you have to know that. And then again, be pushed it from the from the you know the coaching side or the the the clinical side we have to have confidence in the people that we work with to learn and to do things differently and oftentimes we don't we just in oftentimes endorse healthy beh unhealthy behavior just because because talk me about the high performance trap, right?

Talk to me about how people can perform high in certain areas and then they can be a complete blowout in others. And, you know, how do you work with those driven people that are performing really well in some aspects of their life, but they completely fall apart in others?

What's are are are there specific things that you're you're alluding to or? I just like what's the pattern repeatedly with these high performers that are are finding ways to sort of things that drag them down over time? I mean, what you're usually hearing from high performers is they're either neglecting their health, or they're neglecting their social lives or their family. And look, these are hard needles to thread. in the world that we live in where we always have to be on, it's hard to do wear all these hats and be high performer parent, high performer business, high performer friend, you know.

14:11 And I think social media really puts all this stuff on fire because when you're looking at social media, you're looking at the magazine cover that people put out there and it makes it look like everyone's life is just grand. And I always joke with people that, you know, people that put pictures of their food on on Facebook or Instagram, they don't show you the 10 that are burned. They only show you the nice one. Right? And that's that to me, per perfectly plated the whole thing, right?

Right. That illustrates to me like what people are kind of doing out there on social media. People are in pain. People have difficulty in their lives. and I mean, look, i'd be lying if I said I I don't get it all right. I I don't. this stuff is hard, but it's worth it. there's great freedom and discipline. but you know, trying to do all of it at once is hard. It is. I I think you just have to I I love like analogies and metaphors. You have to nudge a lot of balls down a field.

If you pay attention to any one of them too much, you leave some behind. So the key is how can you nudge them down the field? And to me, it comes back to the core of our conversations that if you're not in good health, you can't do that. Not in this world. We still have caveman brains. And we're trying to operate in this world that like we constantly have to be on. So you have to match that. So let's talk about like what are the top three or four things people can do to be to optimize their brain, to optimize their mental performance?

Talk to me about like, you know, some things that we can do on, you know, you and I talked about brushing your teeth, right? And how we brush our teeth twice a day and we go to the dentist twice a day, and they become a disciplined habit over time. What are some some things that we can do to to do the same thing to take care of our brain and our body. Well, I mean, some of it and we you know, it's again, it's kind of common sense stuff.

And as my understanding of your listeners, they're probably doing a lot of this stuff, but I I think it's it's you know, it's waking up earlier. I always say to people, if you see me one time and then you walk away, take away two things, one a and one b one b. And i'm always, you know, kind of conversing with myself as to like sorry, let me just turn this up. I apologize. as to which one is one a and one b, and that's get up earlier than everybody and move your body vigorously.

Because when you do when you so anything in life that you're prepared for, you do better at, right? Fair? And so when you get up really early, you're building preparation into your life, right? And when you move your body vigorously, you're setting your brain and your health up for success. Your the cockpit of the airplane is now running better. I'm up early, i'm preparing, and everything flows from there. And I joke, if you want to rob banks, now you can rob banks better, right? But if you want to be a parent, if you want to be whatever it is, the everything is gonna go better from there.

17:01 But you know, if you don't mind, we can hit on the the analogy of teeth brushing. I think it's yeah it's pretty it's pretty fundamental and it's pretty striking to people when they hear it. and so I mean we can kind of go through But we'll just go over the main part now. You can you can play the part of client. ahead and and play with me. Go ahead. So we'll just we'll role-play it. appreciate. So yeah, so there's a there's an analogy in my practice that I use and I kind of come back to repeatedly.

And the analogy is this if as a society we were to treat our brains like we treat our teeth, we would be in a fundamentally different place. So how often are you supposed to brush your teeth? Twice a day. And how often are you supposed to go to the dentist? Mm two, one, somewhere in but I think twice a year. That's correct. And I do this with everybody that I meet with and no one's ever gotten it wrong. Now why is that? Well, it's I think it's because I can remember i've been I was taught in elementary school how to brush my teeth.

It's just sort of that's what it's always been. Twice, you know, TV commercials growing up, the whole thing, right? Correct. S society is prioritized. I mean that in the end that's what you're saying. We've dumped resources, tons of money, et cetera, into it. And that's why, you know, most people know this. What is brain hygiene and how do you do it on a day to day basis? don't know if I could define brain h brain hygiene, but i'm thinking just some thinking exercises, whether it's you know, maybe puzzles, maybe meditation of some sort, something that is exercising your brain in some way.

Correct. And those things have merit. They they do have merit. and when I first started doing this, you know, i'd always take more time and have people answer it. Popular answers were some of those, but then you get journaling, which I again, I don't know why that's a a popular, but it was always popular.

But bang for your research backed buck, and you know, the d the research is developing on this, but the bottom line is that movement and particularly intense types of movement help the brain operate in a healthy way acutely and then over over time, right? and so there are there are other things that are rooted in science like meditation. and so to me meditation maybe is like scope or flossing, right? Important to do, helpful to do. If you don't do it on a day-to-day basis, it's not the end of the world.

But if you don't brush your teeth, your breath is gonna smell on a day-to-day basis, and then over time your teeth are gonna rot. Right? and so why do I do this shht? One is to make a societal point, a sociological observation and point that the cockpit of the airplane, the thing that runs the show, there's no real system for it. There's not real good education and on it. when there is, it's a lot of conjecture and pseudoscience stuff that doesn't really line up and doesn't really get anybody anywhere.

20:01 That's the that's the sociological part of it. then there's the functional part. If people don't say, well you know, I have to find a you know fun way to brush my teeth, or I don't have time to brush my teeth, or you know, when I go to Hawaii, i'm not gonna brush my teeth. I'm gonna take some time off from brushing my teeth, or down here in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, i'm not gonna brush my teeth. It's an independent hygienic behavior that just happens. And that is how I try to approach brain hygiene and and just healthy behaviors, that we don't make excuses.

And what I try to do with people. Is have them understand this and then give them well-packaged behaviors to fit into their busy lives. Because one of the reasons that people aren't doing some of these things is a, they're not connecting the dots.

A lot of particularly like physical fitness has historically always been about your your ass and your abs. And when you take a brain forward approach, your brain gets healthier and your ass and your abs follow, which is a nice secondary part. And so, yeah, I mean that's the there are are again, there as said I beginning, there are tentacles to the analogy that get into relationships, that get into all kinds of different things in business, but that's the main part of it.

The no-nonsense, you just do these things, you create habits, and you don't make excuses. And how does that impact like, you know, those like so you're and I think just the aspect of the physicality part is great because I I I exercise every day but I never really thought about the brain hygiene component that went with it, right? It was more of and I always know healthy body, healthy mind kind of thing kind do flow together. But I mean, i'd love to come back and and, you know, you know, I because I can't cite it offhand and go over research with you.

I mean, this it's it's quite striking to i, me. you know, I I will quiz people, just because I am who I am, you know, people that are seeing psychiatrists, people that are seeing, and I ask them, i'm like, is your doctor talking to you about exercise as as a medication? They're like, yeah, my doctor says I should get some exercise. I'm like, that's not what i'm saying. You must exercise. This is not a like a cho I don't like exercising. I do not. I do it every day.

I do not like it. I like the result acutely and long term. right. so I kinda like the drug I get out of exercise, you know, that endorphin for me is a is is is a big thing. 'Cause I do get we jacked do get up. I mean I g you know, for me like it's it's I can't you start my day without, you know, a serious, you know I know, I know. And people say this to me and i'm like, I hear you. But they call it the exercise high.

22:54 And i'm like, I I hear you, but it's more than that. course it and is, that of course it is, but it's, that's and that's what but but but it's very as you can see i'm very passionate about this. I want people to understand that it's more than that. of course, people will say people will say to me things like, builds you know, confidence. exercise I mean you have a if you have a nice if your body is strong, your mind is strong, it brings confidence.

There's correct. all all sorts of things that come with looking better and not looking shabby. And I mean it it it enhances your whole but, the you know, frequency for and vibration around you, by the way. Like that's it exudes out, right? Yeah, absolutely. Confidence, co confidence in your ability to do it. know, you people will say to me, you know, exercise may may work for you, but it doesn't really it probably's not gonna work for me. I'm like, this isn't journaling. This is science. It's good if you have a brain, this works.

The how much it works for different people for different reasons, fine. But this is not it it to me, it's not a matter of debate. It's a matter of doing. Right. So so talk to me about your practice a little bit. So now you have this methodology, you have this high performance program, and you're moving into a whole new brand and movement. Talk to me about your business and where this is going and and and what you want to do do with it. Well, historically, you know, i'm, you know, the the common language that's used is i'm working with people that have ADHD, OCD, you know, depression.

And you know, those are those are things. you know, the DSM-5 language is another probably podcast we could do. I'm not a big fan of it. I use the language because people understand what I mean, but I think it really boxes your thinking in. and we over pathologize. That's historically what i'm doing. And this methodology works to get people out of a hole. It does. and I will always continue to try to have a portion of my business that does that. But there's this other side of thriving, of performing, that I really want to try and get more and more into.

I have been doing it, frankly, for a couple of years, and I didn't realize I was doing it. And i'm like, well, hold on a second here. Like, this person doesn't have any like psychiatric issues. They don't really have any clinical issues. And yet here we are. And right, and i'm watching their businesses pick up, i'm watching their relationships improve, i'm watching. All of these things, performance things. And so the methodology works for that as well. And that's the part that i'm super excited about. I'm also, but i'll always be passionate about the other because I l in the end I love helping people.

25:27 I do. I I love people. I love watching them get better. and then I love watching them thrive. You know, that's that's really what what it's all about. You're you're helping people transform themselves, right? And from one stage of being into another stage of being. And that's always, you know, as a coach and a high performance, you know, motivator for other people, that must be quite, you know, an amazing experience for you as well. It's it's awesome. It's it's amazing. And you know, as you're picking up, I love analogies and metaphors.

They help illustrate things. But one thing I talk to people about is rebranding themselves. I knew myself as someone that you could get high with, you could get pills from, you could stay out and get drunk with. that's how I knew myself and that's how people knew me. And i've rebranded myself and what how I know myself and how other people know me. as someone that gets up early, exercises, doesn't drink. you know, and goes to bed or all those types of things. And you can you can rebrand yourself and you can take that brand and you can flourish and you can spread that.

You know, there's brands of family. This is what I I talk to people about this. I'm like, change your brand. Act today the way that you want to act today. Act today the way you want your kids to act when they're your age.

They're watching. They may not be able to do it now. But they will and they're watching. So the idea of developing a brand as a company, as a family, even as a neighborhood, I it's just I love this stuff. That's great. where do you go now? Like you're building this practice. You know, what would you like our listeners and viewers to go walk away with today?

That is an incredibly difficult question. I appreciate well, it. I no, couple no, no, frame no, no. you. No, no, no. I you can even keep this. I I I appreciate the question. I love it. What do I want people to take away with is take care of yourself. You're welcome. Sorry. Take care, take care of yourself. Don't bullshit yourself that you can't take care of yourself.

And follow observation. Play with variables. but don't bullshit yourself. Take care of yourself and don't bullshit yourself. So don't kid yourself. Don't talk your in yourself into it's okay. be honest with yourself, give yourself the honest analysis. And frankly, you know, I think coaching and and having high performance coaches is always a way to get to another level. I mean, I always have spoken to all my teams and over time that highest performing athletes i'll get and I love to use Tiger Woods as the sort of the the epitome of this is that he's arguably the greatest golfer of all time.

28:22 And for a number of different reasons over his career, he has really literally overhauled and completely remodeled his golf swing three or four or five times because of either you know, wanting to be able to play golf for longer and not put as much stress on his body or because of injury or because of multiple injuries, he's had to literally change, not just modify, but completely revamp what he does. And he's gone to high performance golf swing coaches in order to do those things. So even the best of the best of the best consistently seek others to perform at a higher level.

And I think that's the one thing i'd like the the viewers and the listeners to go through today is that like even when you're riding high and you're the greatest of the great, everybody needs somebody to assess and revalue and help you optimize yourself, whether it is, you know, personal or professional or other, you know, somebody's always there that can help help you enhance yourself in a big way. Yeah, and you know the the the thing about Tiger Woods, you know, he's collecting data and making alterations.

He's evolving. And that's what we all have to do, frankly, in my opinion, until we pass, is observe, don't bS yourself, make adjustments and keep moving and and have grit. One more question for you, and this is please. a curvy knuckleball that we haven't discussed in the past with intentional purposes. But so greg, you've had a lot of experience and you had tremendous amount of evolution of yourself and transformation. So what would current day Gregory go back and offer to that graduating student from I believe he said the university of Delaware, right?

College, yes, Catholic university of america for my masters. right. So so what would you go back and offer yourself if you have one piece of advice? Can't be two, can't be three, can't be four, just one piece of advice, whether it be personal, professional, or other, what would be the one thing current day Gregory would go back and offer to twenty-two-year-old Gregory based upon the experiences that he's learned over his life? That is a knuckle ball.

Take care of your brain. Take care of your brain. we there go. Go ahead. follow the follow the research, but yeah, take care of your take care of your brain and which means take care of your body, take care of your health, take care of your nutrition. you know, the cockpit, the cockpit. Take care of the cockpit. Good. Well, Gregory, thank you so much for being here. Great energy.

31:12 You know, we look forward to, you know, learning more. And I and I think, you know, maybe we'll have a couple different episodes where we can talk about, you know, the mental health, we can talk about the physical health, and I think the other part is nutrition as well. I think they all go together on how we can really optimize our own personal and professional performances in life. So Gregory Salerian and from the our behavioral fitness high performance coach, great to be here today. Thank you, Terry.