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speaker-0: The quiet around being able to think about and recognize those thoughts. I had to crash before I could go, that's the limit. Don't do it again.
speaker-1: How can we intervene? How can we be there? How can we show up for people in these critical incidents?
speaker-0: Those were the beginning steps that I think really led to a change.
speaker-1: We like predictable. Even if it's uncomfortable, the familiarity is comfortable. I'm Dr. Amy Aitheet. As a licensed psychologist and performance expert. Working with elite athletes, C-suite executives, and high performers operating in some of the most demanding environments, I've seen what it truly takes to perform when it matters most. From supporting members of the Naval Special Warfare community to advising leaders in high stakes, high-pressure situations, One Truth remains consistent. The tools that drive performance are the same. You prepare in a way that allows you to show up ready when the moment arrives. Each week I'll share practical tools and insights to help you strengthen how you think, lead, and perform. Welcome to Still Evolving. There's a practice most high performers are not very good at, and one that I've watched change lives when leaders actually commit to it. The practice of pausing, stopping, sitting with what is going on, and letting what you notice actually inform you on what to do next. I've spent most of my career around performers who do not naturally slow down. Athletes, operators, executives, the people who get to the top of these worlds are wired for motion. Do the next thing, solve the next problem, push through. And that pattern can work for a while. What eventually shows up for nearly every one of them is that the same forward drive that got them here starts to cost them things they were not paying attention to. Their health, their relationships, the quality of their thinking and decision making. The connection to the people who matter most. And when that cost lands, the answer is almost never more emotion. The answer is a pause long enough to see what is actually going on. In my book Moment Ready, I write about the four capacities that let high performers show up in the moments that matter most, which are composure, clarity, connection, and courageous action. What I do not often talk about and what runs through this conversation is Is the second half of the book, which is about the fundamentals that sustain that high performance over the long arc. Reflection and adaptation is one of those fundamentals, and the pause is where it starts. Because you cannot reflect on a life that you are not slowing down to notice, and you cannot adapt to something you haven't honestly looked at. The pause is not a break from work. The pause is where the real work begins. Here is the piece that makes this genuinely difficult. Reflection asks you to sit with things that are often uncomfortable to look at. The choices that did not go the way you wanted, the relationships you have not tended to, the version of yourself that is quietly becoming someone you did not intend to become. Most of us have gotten very good at avoiding that discomfort, whether through work, screens, substances. Or the endless small distractions that let us stay busy enough to not notice. What today's guest names beautifully is that the very stuff that we do not want to look at is often the stuff that carries the most information about what needs to shift next. And what small step is available to us right now. My guest today is Dylan Bost. Dylan is an author, coach, and speaker, and founder of a body of work he calls Sit With It. Which is a practice built around staying present long enough to come back to your own life. His forthcoming book, The Seven Mirrors, releasing late this year, is the formal introduction to that practice. And it is designed for high performers who have built lives that look successful from the outside while feeling disconnected from themselves on the inside. He works with leaders on slowing down, seeing their patterns, and leading from clarity rather than pressure. And he brings a candor to this conversation that is not always easy to find, particularly around his own experience of rebuilding after significant personal collapse, which is where much of this current work was born. Dylan, thank you for making the time and sharing. Let's get into it. Dylan, welcome to Still Evolving. Grateful for you and really looking forward to our conversation.
speaker-0: Thanks so much for having me, Amy.
speaker-1: I am really intrigued by your journey, your story. Also, when we I work a lot with executive leaders, high performers, I've been in the sport world, the military world. And to suggest the word grind is part of our journey, I it almost minimizes it, I think. because many of us are in many, many decade-long careers. many of the executives I work with now. are are looking at that last the last push. and it's been a long ride. So I'm really curious in your journey and your lessons learned and how reflection, renewal has been a part of that and and what you've seen shift for you in that experience.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a big question, right? I think that
speaker-1: Tee it up. I'll just I'll just start from the beginning and throw a big fat one over the plate.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think you you hit it. That is I'm getting goosebumps. I think that the reflection is the the biggest key. for me, it has opened up I mean, I honestly I'm 56 and I look at right now as not really a starting over, but a whole new beginning to so much. where it's funny I've been reflecting on this a lot in that, you know, our parents and grandparents got a career or a job and they worked for twenty or thirty years and they got the pension and then they supposedly retire. And I don't really understand that today. Not from a grind standpoint. We'll get to that, I'm sure. But from just an enthusiasm about creation. And you know, I look at it like I I think, you know, we
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all wish, right most of us I think wish. I wish I knew then what I know now. but more importantly, I'm really Feeling a lot of appreciation and gratitude for everything that I've been through because now I'm sitting on the precipice of so much. And I couldn't do that without all that experience. Just I couldn't. I I couldn't process in my head the feelings that I have, the emotions, the information. because I'm it's I get to use all that, right? It's like I have this giant library behind me. that I now know and is a part of me. And so that's been an exciting thing for me is to is to use, honestly, all of the things that I don't really enjoy about my past to my benefit now. and I celebrate those things and I encourage other people to do the same things. You know, for me that was alcoholism. That was bankruptcy. and would I want to go through that again? No. But I'm I'm And would I want to put the people that were close to me through that again? Absolutely not. But I'm enthusiastic about what I've understood about myself from those things. I grew immensely and expanded immensely through those experiences. And for me, I'm a learn-by-doing person. you know, I'm not one of those few people I think on the planet that can. get mentoring and and or read a book and go like, I'm just not gonna do these things, right? I had to crash before I could go, that's the limit. Don't do it again. Right. so no, I think the reflection part is and it sits at the core of everything that I talk to, the people that I coach now. It's a huge part of that. I mean, the entire book is a guide to remembering yourself, right? I mean it's the seven mirrors, but it's literally what you said. It's a remember those not remembered only the things that you've been through, but also truly where you came from really before, right? The the core aspects of you that I think that we forget from that time that we're born and we're naturally conditioned. you know, and it's about stripping away all those things that aren't yours to really understand, that's Dylan. That's the person that I really feel like at my core. Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: I'm reminded I so a little bit about me. I yes, I'm in this world of high performance sport, military now, in private industry, but way before that, my earliest career actually began in the field of crisis intervention, disaster psychology. So my earliest work was looking at how can we intervene? How can we be there? How can we show up for people in these critical incidents? And in the 90s, I think a lot of us were looking for interventions, supports around helping people who've been in experienced trauma be able to regain that that quote normal level of functioning, right? So it had an impact. Maybe it was on their sleep, maybe it was on their arousal, maybe it was around remembering, maybe it was around their mood, anxiety, et cetera. And then what I noticed, I responded to Ground Zero in December and with my mentor and support of NYPD and Fire. And around that time, a shift started happening in the literature and the practice, where we you started hearing more about post-traumatic growth. And I have to give a shout-out to a very good friend, Dr. Rob Fazio, who started a nonprofit called Hold the Door. Honoring his father who held the door in Trade Tower too, to help his colleagues, people get out of that building. Rob's father died on that day. And Rob really took the initiative in forming this organization that helps people not just survive loss, challenge, adversity, but grow. through that. And so when I hear your your philosophy and a little bit about the work that you're you're sharing, I think of that. I think of how when we are struck with adversity or challenge that we do have an opportunity, even though it really I mean, suck doesn't even capture it, right? Like some of these dark places w we end up are are, you know, intense and they're they're it's it's hard even see a crack of light on what where the next turn is. At some point in that process, that there is though that light that shines brighter, that we have an opportunity to then with reflection and maybe some distance, have those takeaways that then lead to new actions or shifts. So talk to me more about that process for you. You you mentioned your book talked about the seven mirrors in reflection. I'm really curious for you to kind of take another step further in understanding that process, what it looks like and and how others in your life now have come to use that to to grow through challenge.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think I get asked this question a lot. It's what what was the turning point? Right. And and I think that I'm a child I'm a latchkey kid, a child of television. And so I d have a lot of T V and movie references. And I think we see all the time, right, that the the hero of the story, the protagonist, you know, fails miserably and then just turns around, right? Something hits and and while that might happen, I don't think that's reality. and obviously you gotta squeeze all that into two hours. So for me it was I had to really think about that. and it was deep into the book and I'd written a lot about that. A friend of mine asked me that question and I was like, and it took me a couple of days to really think what it was for me was the time around being able to really sit with it, right? Sit with what had happened, to maybe paint a picture. it was A good year after the bankruptcy, so you know, my wife didn't hate me at this point. I was starting to be out of a fog. I had quit drinking. and and for me, the drinking, just to paint a picture of it, it wasn't, you know, I I was a functional alcoholic, right? So I I could I could drink, but boy, I could still do all the things. But there was an abstraction in that from what who I was. So when I finally let go of that. probably even another year went by of now I had enough work, we were making enough money to survive. And there were these long periods where my wife was out working,
the kids were gone, and I worked at home. And I had these moments where I literally, you know, would get done with everything and nothing was there. There were no there was no more drinking to to distract me. There was really no buying things, right? That's another great distraction that we buy from Amazon all the time. And and I remember, one day thinking, you know what, this could be my reality. We're making it, right? I'm playing video games at night to distract, and and I'm being there for my kids. I'm at least showing up. I'm in the room, but but not really there. And and I kind of went down that path for a while and thought, you know what, this is I kind of get it. You just exist. And I honestly remember one day just thinking to myself, you know what? I have more for me to give. You know, I I want more for my family. yes, more money, but more importantly, like I started to understand what a connection was to my wife and to my children. And God, this was after nearly 20 years. so that was kind of a hard pill to swallow. I got to really think deeply on a daily basis for moments about. what I'd been through. And it was honestly, it's that it's really being able to you know, it yes, there was meditation, but more importantly, it was just the quiet around being able to think about and recognize those thoughts and recognize what I'd been through to really integrate it at that point. And these are things that I've learned now, right? At the time I was just doing it. At the time I was just like, but you know, that the power of sitting with your own thoughts and not running from them. And that honestly was the beginning because it was at that point where, enough days went by that I sat with it that I said, you know what? I can do this forever or I can move forward. I can choose. And I talk about that a lot. the we all have this power. No one's going to do it for us. And honestly, it is simple. We can choose to continue the way we are, or we can choose to make it to do something different. And and whether that's leaving your partner or being better for your partner or you know, changing your position and your job or whatever that is, those may be hard decisions, but I really started to look at do I want this to me to be, do I want this reality to be in 10 years? And that point when I really got to expand out, I said, no, you know, I don't want that. I And I didn't know how to do it. I didn't, there was no guidebook for this. but I literally just started down this process of reading more, sitting with it, right? More meditation. And once I kind of got that idea of, well, the more silence I can give, well, the harder it is to think about these things, but the more the more opportunity there is to take an action on those because I now I know what this is, I don't want it. Okay, I'm gonna do one thing to change. And then I did that, just one little thing. And then I added another little thing. So whether that was, meditation regularly, whether that was more movement in my day, entering in a mantra or a prayer. and those are the beginning steps that that I think really led to a change.
speaker-1: I appreciate, we I talk a lot about that behavioral change process with leaders I work with, right? and I find it fascinating, especially in high times of stress. So significant transitions, MAs, IPOs, a new executive team or a new boss, right? the human does not like that shift. Right. we we predictable, comfort even if even if it's uncomfortable, the familiarity is comfortable. And so when I talk about, like for example, in sport, an athlete camp comes to me two weeks before, you know, March madness starts, and all of a sudden we want to talk about like how reactive and maybe picking up careless fouls on the court. how would like to be more aggressive on defense, but then kind of gets caught up in their head. like and starts rattling off challenges they're having on the mental side of their performance two weeks before championship run, right? Like So you're at the height of stress, and now you're coming in and you want to make these changes in your life, right? you're you've got a new job and all of a sudden you want to make these changes. And I really appreciate in you sharing your story that in the height of this distress, even a year later, like right, like the the wounds of bankruptcy aren't yeah, they're starting to heal, but it's not, you're not totally on the other side of that. So in this distress, what worked for you were a couple of things that I want to reflect back for our audience because oftentimes I get asked, yeah, this all sounds right, but what the hell do I do? And I want to highlight what you did. First of all, you took a minute and you paused and you just listened. Yes, you could argue you listened to an audiobook or a podcast and you that external, but you listen to yourself, right? Which prior to that I heard a lot of distraction, whether it was Alcohol, video games, et cetera, right? So you paused and you listened. You listened to yourself. Perhaps you listened to some external voices, if you will, that were deemed credible, trustworthy. And then my guess in the reflection is you asked some questions, right? And they probably weren't always comfortable. and yet in that honest answering, you took that in. And so in that active reflection, it empowers you then with greater resource to feel prepared to make a shift. If you're not asking the questions, you're not raising your awareness to not only the risk of staying where you are, but also the benefits. And then in that analysis, tapping some motivation to make a shift. And then when you went to make the shift in the midst of this distress, you didn't try to hit the fastball in the World Series. You've described it as taking one thing really small at a time. And I I just really want to capture for our our audience or listeners who ask, okay, shit's hitting the fan in my life or at work. Like I don't even know where to go. The
first thing's pause, listen. Then in that reflection, that honest answering, you are gaining momentum to then adapt. And I I really appreciate you sharing back so candidly about what that looked like for you.
speaker-0: Yeah, the power of the pause is, is so important, right? I mean, I this is a daily practice I have, not just in the morning, but throughout the day. that pause before a phone call, that pause before a podcast, before an email. I spent the previous, let's call it, you know, 15, 20 years like just moving fast, right? Because there's your grind, right? The the harder I'm working, the faster I'm moving. yes, you get a lot done. But you also never tap in. You are you are teaching yourself to be reactive to everything around you. And I spend more time slowing down. I learned this from Tiknan Han, this beautiful Vietnamese monk, right? and he talks about walking meditation and and and I practice lots of different meditation that is not sitting quietly, right? If I'm if I'm making coffee in the morning, I make, I grind the coffee, I make it, you know, in a craft and And I literally sit there and breathe while I'm pouring the water slowly. Or if I'm opening a door handle, this is a great technique. because we the the act of walking in and out of door, we do it hundreds of times a day, right? Well, the next time you do it, take a deep breath before, right? And reach for the door handle and feel the door handle, right? And turn it and hear the sounds. If you're walking outside, as you open the door, hear the creak of the door, listen what happens outside, notice the smell, feel what it feels like on your feet. That to me, those things teach you how to be more present in the moment and how to slow down. you know, we're so fast at moving that we don't and in that moment, right, then I start to learn more about myself. and and and so the the power of that is is so immense. it's funny, all these tools, we all have them. It's just like you said, I think it's picking one and trying it, and it's like a gateway. to once you nail that one, you're like, I can do another thing. And then before you know it, you're you're winning hard. it's amazing.
speaker-1: I love it. In my book, Moment Ready, I talk about the four tools to help us show up in our moments that matter with composure, clarity, connection, and courageous action. We've talked previously and earlier in our conversation about the fundamentals that help us sustain that with the power of reflection and adaptation. But you bring up a great point that that power of the pause can be used so with such impact. In those those moments that matter. And sometimes they aren't the ones that are on our calendar. They're the unplanned ones. And I love you highlighting that the tool of connection, most of the time, first off, people think about connecting to people in the room. Yes, please do. I need you to connect with the people in the room and be present and listening and connecting with them. The connection is also twofold has two other Two other meanings. connection with self. So I heard you talk about just the connection with the power of the breath when you were pouring your coffee. There's nothing more present than our breath. and then also connection to something greater than ourselves. And for many people, perhaps that fits into a religious framework, spiritual framework, right? but the connection to self to others and to something larger than ourselves truly. is a core c capability for us to be able to show up in those key moments that matter. and I think also just it's an it's another tool that complements the others, right? if you are more present, it it enables you to maintain composure, to be able to refocus away from the noise, but mo more to what matters most in that moment. and then certainly to be able to take that courageous action, whatever that might be. so I I yeah, I love I love what you're sharing, just not only and how we can sustain in our journeys, but truly in our moments, how to be present and impactful.
speaker-0: Yeah, the irony, right, is that's really all we have. The funny thing I spent and we know, right, there it's two camps. There's people, that that that spend time in the past, and there's people in the future. I spent the majority of my early life and midlife in the future. I was constantly planning for what was about to happen in an hour, in five minutes, in two weeks, in a month, in a year. And that pulled me out of what was happening now. And so all you're left with in that moment is pure reaction. You know, we're on autopilot. Yeah. And the more you draw into that moment, the more you realize how large it is. Right. I mean and that's the that's the way you can't connect. Right. And that's and otherwise and and I couldn't. And that was a big issue for me. I learned how to connect honestly at a profound level when I was probably, you know, 10 years ago. and and and I thought I was doing it. It's funny, right? I I I thought I was doing it. but you know, then all of a sudden I thought, wow, that's amazing. This person truly wants to know something about me. And more importantly, I want to know something about them. and whether it's a family member or someone you've just met on the street, I wasn't thinking about, okay, here's a checkbox. That was me, right? I had check boxes for my family and everything else. I've checked, I've talked to my daughter, checked, talked to my son, check, I've done this. And, you know, because I was thinking about what I had to do for them tomorrow, or you know, and so it's a it's a trap, right? To to to the more and it's it's funny because it's fleeting, because it's present, but nope, that one's gone, right? And so it's a it's a funny thing to try to realize. But once you start to the only way it happens to me is with the pause and slowing down and entering into that. That moment where you can start to expand on what's happening right this minute instead of constantly thinking about and planning for what's about to be.
speaker-1: what a powerful place to to come when leaving with our to our audience around like what do I do now? So let's just practice the pause and slow down. I love it. Dylan, thank you so much for this conversation. I I sincerely appreciate you and the work that you are sharing with many. So thank you. Where can people find you?
speaker-0: Just Dylan Bost.com. And there's all the information about my book. You can sign up that's published in the next month, first of October, which if you sign up now, you'll get notifications and I'm sending out the first chapter in a couple of weeks to everyone.
speaker-1: Fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you for sharing with so many. appreciate you.
speaker-0: Thanks, Doctor Amy.