Ep241 Billy Mullins—Break the Seven-Second Chain and Lead with Intention

Billy Mullins 0:00

The second tool that I built is a salt seed, and it's built to help you remember to program your brain on the positive aspect, your reticular activation system, to look for the positive things instead of negative. You can't behave your way out of a thinking problem, you have to change your thinking.

Mike O'Neill 0:24

Welcome to Get Unstuck and On Target, the weekly podcast that offers senior leaders insights and strategies to not only lead with confidence and vision, but also to achieve groundbreaking results. I'm your host, Mike O'Neill. I coach top-level executives on the power of ethical leadership to forge teams to be as united as they are effective. In each episode, join me for insightful conversations with leaders just like you, providing practical advice to help you get unstuck and propel you and your company forward. Let's get started. Most of the leaders I work with don't have a knowledge problem. They know what good leadership looks like, and yet under pressure they still react in ways that don't reflect who they are or what they believe. That's not a character flaw, that's neuroscience. My guest today, Billy Mullins, has spent decades studying exactly what happens in the brain in those seven seconds between stimulus and response. He's mapped it, named it, and he's built practical tools to interrupt it. This conversation is going to challenge something you've probably been told your whole career. Let's get into it. I see this with senior leaders all the time. They know what they should do, they've made the commitment, and still, in the moment that matters most, they react instead of respond. The chain fires before they even knew it started. My guest today is Billy Mullins, author of Salt Your Thoughts. Billy has mapped the exact five step sequence that hijacks capable leaders, and it runs in seven seconds. By the time you thought I should pause, the chain has already finished, but what makes Billy's work different is he doesn't stop at diagnosis. He has built practical tools designed to go with you, because most leadership development lives at a desk. The worst has to come to you. I've been looking forward to our time together. Welcome, Billy.

Billy Mullins 2:40

Good to be here. Good to be here, and really, before we get started, I just want to acknowledge that we've been partners in this effort for leadership for 40 years. It's been a pleasure to watch you grow, Bench Builders, and your podcast, and you're doing a wonderful work. I just thank you for being a part of it. Well, what makes this such fun is I get to either rekindle relationships that go back literally decades and or meet new interesting people, and you fit both of those descriptions. Thanks, Billy. You have the ability to talk on a wide variety of topics. I mentioned your first book here, Salt Your Thoughts, but what I would like to

Mike O'Neill 3:30

do in this conversation is kind of focus on one specific aspect, if you don't mind, and that is you open this book with a pretty bold claim that willpower never works, and for a leadership audience that's been told the opposite the whole their whole career, why is that true?

Billy Mullins 3:52

Well, it's true because we have failed to really talk about and deal with the neuroscience that happens in your brain, we do all sorts of leadership training, and, and I've, I've coached leaders that can quote every leadership book there is, but they make mistakes not because of knowledge or lack of knowledge, we all make mistakes because we don't really understand the neuroscience behind what happens when we get under pressure,

Mike O'Neill 4:30

you know. This conversation is going to dig into it. You introduce in your book a chain, you call it the five step chain, and so to kind of frame up what we're going to be talking about, would you mind just kind of giving us a walk through what each of those steps are, and then we'll go back through each in turn. So, for those listening, I want you kind of an idea of kind of how Billy's brain works and how. Substantive, the content you will find in his book, and the things that we're going to be discussing. So, walk us through those five steps, please.

Billy Mullins 5:07

Okay, I think first it's really important to understand that I'm not saying anybody is sick or anybody has a problem, I'm talking about normality here. We, in this day and age are bombarded with an enormous amount of information, and what happens in our brain is we truly get information overload, and that's really step one. And when we get an information overload, it collapses our ability to think intentionally. Step two will go into in detail, but there is a part of our brain called the reticular activation system, and when we get brain overload, then the reticular activation system runs on autopilot, which causes step number three, which is our belief system and our value system gets suppressed, it doesn't mean it goes away, it's just not in the room when we make decisions, and then because our value system and our beliefs are suppressed, that causes unmet needs, which is the primary source of chronic stress, and then that results in step five, which is a behavior that becomes reactive instead of proactive,

Mike O'Neill 6:35

so before we go through these each in turn, having an understanding of those five steps, if we understand them, what's the end goal here?

Billy Mullins 6:45

The end goal is to interrupt this natural process, and you mentioned in the opening that it really only takes seven seconds to for this whole sequence to run, and and our goal by the end of this program is to share with your listeners how to stop that before this the sequence is complete. Gotcha. So, let's go through those, if you don't mind. I think step one is pretty straightforward, information overload. I think we all can kind of identify with what that might actually entail in your experience, are we bombarded with more information than we ever have in the past? Oh, absolutely. You know, you know, I've silenced four or five different things to have at this podcast, because I mean, information comes on news, you know, people, I mean, it's, it's crazy, I mean, it's the information age is fantastic on one hand, and it's very disruptive on the other. Got you. I hope I only have to say this once, because it's a tongue tying phrase, but you introduced us to the reticular activating system. I'm going to call it the RAS. Tell us a little more about what that means. If the brain is supposed to filter and protect, so how does it become part of the problem? Well, and this is one thing I would just really encourage your listeners to, to really do some research or read my book on on the subject, because it is life changing. The reticular activation system is a piece of your brain that's at the bottom of your brain just touches the spinal cord. It's about the size of your little finger, and it is the filter for your complete brain. So, I won't, I won't bore you with 1000 details, but your skin, your eyes, your ears, all parts of your body take in 1000s and 1000s of pieces of information every second. Our cognitive mind can only really process somewhere between 40 and 100 The reticular activation system decides which 10 to focus on, so I'll give you an example. Years and years ago, in my 20s, I saw a red Toyota four-wheel drive pickup truck that I wanted. I'd never seen a red one. I'd only seen tan ones. I drove 40 or 50 miles away to buy one, and on the way home, I saw five, and so what happens with your reticular activation system is, if it's running on autopilot, it picks up, based on your feelings and emotions and your thoughts, what it thinks you believe is in. Important, and it tells you about them, and so what I'm going to teach you before this is over is instead of letting it run on autopilot, we can program it,

Mike O'Neill 10:12

so thus far we're acknowledging we're all subject to information overload, that we all have this particular activating system, but it has a limited capacity, and what you're saying, though, it's but when it kicks in, it also can you use the term suppress your beliefs earlier, you know, my sense is our core beliefs, they feel stable, but you're saying they can go kind of quiet at exactly the wrong moment.

Billy Mullins 10:48

Absolutely, because what we believe is important isn't always what we do or what we say, you know. We can have, we can have the belief that, you know, an exercise bicycle will help us stay in shape and lose weight, but if it sits in the corner of the room and we never get on it, it never does anything. So, the there's a gap with all of us between what we believe is important and what we do is important. You know, what just popped in my head, I should be listening fully, but when I, when you mentioned the exercise bicycle, I compared that to a treadmill, and for, for many folks, it's better to have a bicycle, because that's where you can hang the hangers for your clothes, but the new treadmill don't even have a side rail. Fair enough. All right, so you're, you're pointing out that these things kind of go quiet, but then you said that Gwen, well, I just want to make one other point. So, what happens is, when, and I would say that these five issues are they cascade on each other, so the information overlay load causes the reticular activations that are sent to run on autopilot, and that causes your belief system to go silent. And then the next system after that is it causes needs to be emit, so pressure outside pressure then puts internal pressure on in your brain, and so it's, it's like becoming frantic, and then those unmet needs that then arise cause the reactive behaviors that that's why we something, a stimulus happens, and we send an email three seconds later that we wish we would have never sent, or we say something that we wish we would have never said, because again, like I said, it only takes seven seconds to run this process, and and our brain doesn't work fast enough to stop it before it's out of our mouth. Fortunately, about 50% of the population are introverts. They tend to be able to stop their mouth before us extroverts. Most extroverts, once you think it, it's out your mouth before you can stop

Mike O'Neill 13:13

it. Guilty as charge.

Billy Mullins 13:15

Yeah,

Mike O'Neill 13:16

I like the way you're kind of layering on this, and you mentioned how it tends to kind of to cascade I have read your book, and I do have a lot of books. I can't say I've enjoyed books to the extent that I have with this, and I think Billy, I've already told you this. Not only have I bought the book, I've actually been listening to you talk through the book, and because of that I think I've begun to internalize a lot of things that you're sharing with us today, at least knowledge wise. Now, that's that's important, but what's more important is what you put in to actions. See, if I remember this correct, that those unmet needs, I had the sense that that step sometimes lands the hardest.

Billy Mullins 14:03

Yeah, I think so too. You know, there's the number one killer in America is chronic stress, and even though my book, and what we're talking about today, is is really about stopping this five step sequence, the sad product of that is it will alleviate chronic stress,

AI VO 14:28

because

Billy Mullins 14:29

every value that you have has a need associated with it, and when those core values are suppressed, then what that means in a cognitive term, is that we live an incongruent life, and when we live in congruently, then it causes internal stress. We may not know it, we may not see it, but there it's like walking around with homework. You remember when you've got a homework assignment and it's you. And and maybe due two weeks from now, but you carry that with you until you get it done. That's what chronic stress is. It's just a weight, a piece of baggage that holds on to you that you don't know is even there until you get rid of

Mike O'Neill 15:17

it. Billy, I know the business you built and the people that you worked very closely with, senior leaders, in many respects, same type of clients that I have, I'm working with key decision makers. Let's dwell on that one, just for a moment. And your experience, in what ways does stress build in senior leaders, and when it builds, what effect does it have not only on the leaders but their organization and beyond.

Billy Mullins 15:47

Well, I mean, it is really what I'm extremely passionate about trying to help fix, because just imagine, you know, any senior leader, they, they, they get up in the morning. The first thing they probably do is look at the news, which would you say is positive or negative? Most often, almost always negative. Yeah, all right. So they fill their minds with negative information, and then they, they, even if they are proactive, they've got a plan for the day. They walk in the door. Well, what they don't understand is they've now programmed their reticular activation system to look what's for what's wrong instead of what's right. So now they walk in the office and they start seeing what is wrong, because that's what they programmed their mind to do and see. So I just want to say, whatever you look for, you will find, and so that just starts their day off, and it goes from bad to worse, because problem after problem compounds, they feel unfulfilled, they never get what they really intended to get done, done that day, and the cycle builds. They get up the next morning, they look at the news, they fill their head with negative information, and it keeps going. That cycle is what we really want to break.

Mike O'Neill 17:14

Well, I think to some extent, maybe I misunderstood what you just said, but what you just described sounds a lot like step five, and that is that

Billy Mullins 17:22

reactive behavior. Well, again, it goes so fast, their brain got overloaded with information to begin with. And then, like, they get to the office, and they had a meeting, and five people come to the door to talk to them, or, you know, again, the information continues to bombard them. It isn't all internet information, it's people, it's, you know, it's, it's if they're managing five other, you know, direct supports, then all of them are trying to get them as soon as they walk in the door, and then the phone rings, and then an email comes in, and you know, they're just bombarded,

Mike O'Neill 18:00

which then just expedites the cycle. You've just walked us through these five steps, I know at a relatively high level, but what particularly drew me to have you on the podcast is that you've built some tools, very practical tools to address that. The two that I would like to bring up would be the reset button and salt seeds. Walk us through each of those, starting with the reset button, please. Well,

Billy Mullins 18:30

the reason I've got a little reset button that don't forget at the end to help me tell you, and we'll send one of these to any of your listeners that would like to actually have a tactile, tangible tool, but the let me just tell you a quick story about the reset button. I went through a really dark time in my life in 2010 lost a 29 year marriage from my standpoint overnight in the same week I was told that 60% of my business was with one client and it was going away and I had a really dark time and what was fascinating to me, I'm sitting midnight, you know, wallowing in my tears and fears, and I just happened to see a larger version of this that I had gotten from a trade show sitting on my desk, and I just reached over and hit it, and of course it didn't do anything, it wouldn't connect to anything, so I hit it again, I hit it again, and, and through hitting that several times, I finally realized I really need to be pushing the reset button that was in my brain and not the one that was on the desk, and through that awareness I truly did hit my own brain reset and. And you know, from my perspective, the Lord really blessed after that time, and, and my business grew exponentially, exponentially, and, and, but it started with this reset, and so I realized how tactile that was for me, and so I've gone and found these things, because it can be a way, a tool, a little gimmick that can stop your this five step sequence in its track. Does that make sense?

Mike O'Neill 20:31

It makes perfect sense. And I love the practicality of that. You've taken another step further, and that is, you've introduced salt seeds. What are those?

Billy Mullins 20:41

Okay, so, so I need to even share the acronym that SALT stands for, the S in SALT stands for stop, the A for analyze, the L for label, and the T for transform, and so this is almost a stop button or a reset button, and it should help our, you know, you stop, analyze, label, and transform, and that engages your reticular activation system to reprogram and do what you want it to do, instead of run on autopilot. The second tool that I built is a salt seed, and it is, in essence, a little positive programming step that you can take every morning. It gets emailed to you. It's intended to be one of the first things you look at in the morning, so you can say you want it at four in the morning, or 10 in the morning, or whatever, but it's, it's built to help you remember to program your brain on the positive aspect, your reticular activation system to look for the positive things instead of negative.

Mike O'Neill 21:56

Well, let me offer for our viewers and our listeners just an example. My salt seed arrived at 6am this morning. Let me read today's. It's short results are the report. Character is what you do with the report. Be honest, then better salt your thoughts. Never give up, never give, give in, and go make it happen. That's in my inbox, not as an email, but as a text every morning at six 6am And, as I understand, this is something you're making available to anybody who expresses interest, no charge to have that gotcha, so we didn't talk a little bit about you build a business, a successful business, a successful business that after that very, very dark time literally exploded. Yes, and you subsequently sold that business, and by all accounts that was what people aspire to do, build a business, sell it, and then what's next. What we're talking about for Billy Mullins is largely what's next. Am I saying that correctly? You are, you are. So, if you would share a little bit about what is it that you are, pardon expression you're building in this next season.

Billy Mullins 23:25

Well, I was blessed with the exit of my company to be able to play golf for about four years, and then I realized that I wasn't through, and as I prayed and looked and saw a continued aspect of my previous business. I owned a Vicos Corporation, and I built - I'm the guy that wrote the assessments that an applicant would take to determine where the company could determine if they were the right fit for for the company or not, and and the whole decision process, the whole essence of of my previous company was to help hiring managers and leaders in the organization to realize that they needed to be selective in their choices and not hire the first heartbeat that comes across the table, if you want to have people that fit the organization, and so I just went up a level and said, with with this new effort and passion, the cause of the whole problem is is a thinking problem, and you can't behave your way out of a thinking problem. You have to change your thinking. Does that make sense?

Mike O'Neill 24:50

It makes sense to me. Of course, you and I have been talking at some length about what is it you're building, and I'm excited about what. What that is going to look like, I'm particularly excited about how it's going to help not just individuals, but because many of these individuals are going to be and are in senior leadership roles, and one of the reasons I enjoy working as a coach with senior leaders is the effect when they improve their effectiveness as leaders that trickle down. Absolutely, it affects the employees if the employees are positively affected, and it affects the employees' families. And so, starting kind of at the top, and so my interest in learning more about what you're building is how it would help leaders as well as individuals, and there's no age parameter here. This, I know, has applied from high school to college, and, and well beyond. Yes.

Billy Mullins 26:00

Well, I think that that we've all had bosses that you waited until they came in that day to see what kind of mood they were in, because you knew that whatever mood they were in was going to dictate how that day went, and that would be the epitome of a reactive leader, and so then the whole organization becomes reactive, but the opposite is true. If we can have a positive effect, and that leader think intentionally and engage their, their beliefs and their values in a proactive way, then that positively, that positivity then trickles all the way down to everybody, and not only to the employees, but their spouses and their families. I mean, it, it, it truly has a long-lasting and positive impact.

Mike O'Neill 26:56

Bill, you shared earlier, and I appreciate your openness that you were at a very dark period in your life, and that something had to change, and the literal reset button was symbolic of what needed to happen. You could have stayed stuck there,

Billy Mullins 27:14

absolutely.

Mike O'Neill 27:15

So that's a perfect example of how you got unstuck, but do you have maybe another example, either in your own work or someone that you've been working one on one with, where you saw that chain kind of play out, and that you realize this framework we're talking about, it's real.

Billy Mullins 27:32

Yeah, I think one of the the most absolute typical situations I was involved in a selection process for high school principal, I engaged six different stakeholder groups in this whole decision process. It was an elaborate process. It was a really important hire. We gathered tons of data, and what was fascinating, we took five candidates through this process, and the data was one of the cleanest, clearest. There was one candidate that was so far above everybody else, it should have made the decision process take five seconds. I got to the board meeting, and in this board meeting there were 20 different individuals in there and I presented the data, I expected to be out in 10 or 15 minutes, and then suddenly the former chairman of the board said, "We've decided we're going to go with the lowest ranked candidate, and and I'm going to quote exactly what she said, she said, because I have known his family for years, so what transpired, and a word that everybody that is listening here, you watch for in your meetings, the word because is a, is a critical little word in our brain. It can trigger this five step process where you start looking for information to support the because instead of being intentional. So it took me about four and a half hours to wipe out that because and get people to actually look at the data, but that, that, that is the best example I know of a real-life scenario

Mike O'Neill 29:30

where it could have gone way off track, but we had to push the reset button. All right, great story. I appreciate that. You know, we're beginning to wrap up our time together, so I want to make sure that you have an opportunity to share some additional insight for the senior leaders who are listening right now, and they might recognize themselves in this conversation. What might be one thing that they can do this week to start interrupting that change?

Billy Mullins 30:00

Well, the first step in any process is the self-awareness step, and hopefully through this podcast that they would actually become a little more self-aware and look for those trigger words like I just said, because, and, and, and most of the time they're going to catch it after it has happened, and so the key, the intervention is to have the self awareness, you may not catch it in step one, two, or three, but hopefully before step five, before the wrong decision comes out, you can press the reset button and give yourself a few seconds to say okay, if I make the knee-jerk decision, is that really who I am? Is that really the decision I want, or do I need to take just a few seconds to determine what I really believe and what really matters?

Mike O'Neill 31:00

As expected, Billy, this is clear. This is practical, and it really is genuinely useful. What is the best way for people to connect with you?

Billy Mullins 31:11

You can look at my website, www assault your thoughts.com and and you can order the book or sign up for the salt seeds, there's also, as I mentioned, I love assessments. I've written 36 different assessments to help you learn how to think congruently and consistently and intentionally. My passion is to make a difference, a positive impact in the lives of leaders around the world, so as we wrap here, if today's conversation made you see your own reactions differently, that's the chain, and now you know where it starts again. The show notes will have the links that Billy just kind of mentioned, so seek him out for all those resources

Mike O'Neill 32:00

that he's made available, and if today's conversation reminded you, perhaps, of a senior leader in your world, someone who's carrying too much and making high stakes decisions without a trusted advisor in their corner, that's exactly who I work with. I coach a few senior leaders one conversation at a time, referral only. So, if someone comes to mind, the link to reach me is in the show notes as well. So, Billy, thank you for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. It's been a pleasure. And also, want to thank our listeners for your doing the real work that leadership requires, and I hope that this has helped you get unstuck and on target. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Get Unstuck and On Target. I hope you've gained insights to help you lead with confidence and drive your organization forward. Remember, at Bench builders, we're committed to your success, your leadership excellence, and your strategic growth. If you've enjoyed our conversation today, please leave a review, rate, and subscribe to keep up with our latest episodes. This show really grows when listeners like you share it with others. Who do you know who needs to hear what we talked about today. Until next time, I encourage you to stay focused on the target and continue to break new ground on your leadership path.

AI VO 33:40

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Unknown Speaker 33:47

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