Donald Trump’s Mindset: Breakdown by Special Ops Mindset Coach | Elite Performance Podcast #66

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:04:07
News
Donald Trump, America's 47th president.

00:00:04:09 - 00:00:09:00
Alex De Fina
If I'd frame Donald Trump as a winner and nothing else, then everything makes sense.

00:00:09:05 - 00:00:22:14
Itamar Marani
Today, we're breaking down Donald Trump's mindset and whether you like his policies or not. We're going to just share the raw mental frameworks that actually help him win. And he's one of those guys who will jump off the cliff and build the wings as he falls down, so to speak.

00:00:22:16 - 00:00:33:14
Alex De Fina
Huge amount of professional bandwidth for entrepreneurs can be eaten up by thinking about how the decisions will be perceived. Where he just said gives no Fs and just does the thing anyway.

00:00:33:15 - 00:00:57:12
Itamar Marani
He has done things that can be considered reckless. There's no arguing that. And yet in the aggregate here we are. Today we're breaking down Donald Trump's mindset and whether you like his policies or not. We're going to just share the raw mental frameworks that actually help him win. Now, again, whether you love him, whether you hate him, whether in the right, whether on the left he's doing something right or to achieve the results that he's achieved.

00:00:57:14 - 00:01:22:07
Itamar Marani
And if you're willing to ignore these things, you're basically doing that at your own peril. There are a lot of leaders in history that you can agree with or disagree with, but we have to look at what they've done in order to succeed or otherwise. We're just missing out. So what we're going to cover today is why he has this unshakable confidence, his masterful control of his own internal narrative, not the media's narrative, but his own internal narrative and how his zero FS give given approach.

00:01:22:09 - 00:01:33:11
Itamar Marani
It's not just polarizing, but it actually does something really, really favorable for himself as far as his own ability to keep going. So with that said, I want to welcome Alex. Thank you for being on the pod.

00:01:33:13 - 00:01:36:06
Alex De Fina
Thank you. Very well. How are you?

00:01:36:07 - 00:01:40:13
Itamar Marani
Good. Good. So before we get started, any initial thoughts on this?

00:01:40:15 - 00:01:51:18
Alex De Fina
No initial thoughts other than my own yo yo perspectives on Trump over the years of witnessing him. So I'm really excited to get to the topic.

00:01:51:20 - 00:02:08:19
Itamar Marani
Cool. All right. So what we're going to talk about, there's going to be three main points. You might obviously swerve a little bit, but I'm going to explain each point. And we're also going to talk about the counterpoint of that, because the reality is he's such a polarizing figure that anything he does is going to have some kind of emotional reaction to it from a lot of people.

00:02:08:19 - 00:02:27:09
Itamar Marani
And they're going to immediately say, oh, but that's bad. So we're going to talk about how that can be bad and how it can be useful and how do you actually use that for yourself against what's effective for you. So the first obvious thing with why he has such a good mindset is just he has this unshakable confidence.

00:02:27:11 - 00:02:47:13
Itamar Marani
And I think the first thing that people immediately say, Oh, that means he's just reckless. That means he can't listen to other people's advice. That means he's not a wise person. He's just arrogant, he's cocky. Now, that can be true. That absolutely can be true. But the reality is, if you do not have unshakable confidence, you cannot succeed.

00:02:47:13 - 00:03:01:15
Itamar Marani
With so many things consistently thrown at you. You're just going to at a certain point, just like shell up and want to quit. So before we really dive into that and the initial thoughts, Alex, initial thoughts.

00:03:01:17 - 00:03:34:22
Alex De Fina
How do you pass out confidence relevant to competence? Because there's different schools of thought here. It is difficult to make a crowd just act confident. Even though you're doing. And so is that something which you feel that Trump almost world class level of confidence exceeds? The level of competence is relative to his level of competence? How do you what's your perspective on that?

00:03:35:00 - 00:03:54:10
Itamar Marani
I think he's very much showing that he's one of those guys who will kind of like jump off the cliff and build the wings as he falls down, so to speak. And again, without arguing, right or wrong, philosophic, actually, this is a results that it's produced. And this is something that I want to make this podcast about. It's not necessary, but diving in is the right thing is it's the wrong thing.

00:03:54:10 - 00:04:14:15
Itamar Marani
Philosophically, is this better for society, is better for humanity, whatever it may be. But just saying these are the results it's created. He's constantly put himself in a place where he's like, I can do this. I'll make this happen. And he figured that out some way. And I think that's where he's very unique. The the reality is, like you've said this before, when we before we got on there, but we all have biases.

00:04:14:15 - 00:04:31:23
Itamar Marani
And one of our main biases is just somehow keeping ourselves safe by giving us some justification for it. And a main reason we do a wing way in which we do that is by saying, Oh, I should figure this out first until my competence gets to this level, I shouldn't go for it. And he does something very opposite.

00:04:31:23 - 00:04:52:16
Itamar Marani
He's a key, has a such strong, innate belief in himself that he can figure it out, that regardless if he doesn't know it yet, he just says, I'm going to put myself into this situation, then I will figure it out. And we'll talk later about how exposing mistakes along the way and how he recovers from that. But just that initial thing is the differentiator for so many people.

00:04:52:18 - 00:04:57:05
Itamar Marani
The pace at which you move that, it's pretty well.

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Alex De Fina
Good.

00:04:58:14 - 00:05:20:17
Itamar Marani
Yeah. So one other big thing I wanted to say as far as his unshakable confidence and this stuff that we've talked about in the pod in the past, Trump does not use self-deprecating humor. He recognizes how important confidence is, and he never puts himself down ever like that. I tried Googling it before the podcast just to make sure.

00:05:20:18 - 00:05:51:10
Itamar Marani
And at one press event, he apparently joked, he said, My staff was concerned that I couldn't do self-deprecating humor, and I told him not to worry. Nobody does self-deprecating humor better than I do. You can tell. It's like if if that's his self-talk every time, yeah, he's going to believe in himself. And I think there's a part in society which tells us, like, Oh, you have to be humble, you have to stay humble, because logically it kind of makes sense that if you stay humble in certain things, you won't trip yourself up, you won't make unnecessary mistakes and so on.

00:05:51:15 - 00:06:13:02
Itamar Marani
And that is absolutely true. On the flip side of that is also if you keep putting yourself down and saying like only go where you're 100% certain of global is already established, you really limit yourself. Where he has is he doesn't think about it. To go back to your question, but carpet it's confidence. He doesn't look at his current level of competence in a specific field.

00:06:13:04 - 00:06:31:07
Itamar Marani
He looks at his level of what he believes he can figure out, and he makes his decisions based on that. And that what can I figure out? Can't stick. It's boosted because he keeps boosting it for himself. It's like there is a lot of talk sometimes about, you know, these polarizing people like Kanye. Everyone says Kanye West. He definitely has some genius in him.

00:06:31:09 - 00:06:52:00
Itamar Marani
There's no doubt about that. He also has some things that are a bit different about him. And there's that famous story that he has a giant painting of himself in the entrance to his house. And when he asks, Why do you have that? He said, Because if I'm not hearing from me, how can expect other people to? I think the reality is that we fail a lot more than we succeed.

00:06:52:01 - 00:07:18:10
Itamar Marani
And even if that's equal, that we fail as much as we succeed, the failures feel much bigger than like emotional math. So unless we have some internal mechanism to offset that with our self-talk like that, it's going to be challenging thing again, regardless of his politics. You agree or not just recognizing that we all need a push and that if you can give that push to yourself for that, it's probably going to be more helpful than not.

00:07:18:12 - 00:07:31:16
Itamar Marani
And he's such an extreme case where you could say like, Oh, but at what level? Like he's the extreme level of doing that and it's to help them achieve something. It's hard to argue against.

00:07:31:18 - 00:07:59:04
Alex De Fina
I think that's why Trump is such a challenging personality to everybody, apart from Trump, to understand is that any time you come across a bombastic personality who's claiming success, let's say it's Instagram. So the point of Guru, I think a logical break is sort of separate what this person's trying to peacock or present versus what they've actually achieved.

00:07:59:06 - 00:08:23:17
Alex De Fina
But with Trump, he's actually achieved so much. I think it kind of puts us into this sort of brain spin of maybe not liking what we hear or the way we hear the way it's communicated or certain parts of the translation, and then also recognizing that this has been so successful. So I think a big part of it, as you said before, is just how we frame the personality.

00:08:23:19 - 00:08:53:12
Alex De Fina
If I frame John Donald Trump as a winner and nothing else missing, he's great husband, great father, great bunch of us, nothing else, just a great winner. Then everything makes sense. If I try to, I guess, transfer my values as a human being, then I can see some gaps. So yeah. So I guess maybe. What's your perspective on that framing of Trump?

00:08:53:14 - 00:09:20:15
Itamar Marani
I think it's very well said. They're going to cure what are we judging his mindset on? And that's why I said what makes it effective in winning not makes it like the best role model, the best, whatever. I think those are different things. Like I'm Israeli, I'm Jewish, my grandpa parents are Holocaust survivors. It would be dangerous of me to just dismiss Hitler's mindset as ineffective because he used it in an effective way to galvanize so many people.

00:09:20:15 - 00:09:42:08
Itamar Marani
And he did absolutely horrendous, evil things. Those are the values with that, if you ignore that the way he did things was effective in a certain level, what he was able to do, then somebody else is going to use those tactics again and I think this is, again, the distillation. There's a difference between are you saying this is effective in achieving a goal?

00:09:42:12 - 00:10:02:07
Itamar Marani
And it also aligns with my values, very different things. And again, that's why I said at the beginning, if you're going to ignore these things, but it's at your own peril, the reality is they're effective in the world. And if we're being realistic here, we have to to see what's actually working or what's not. And then if we really care about our values, we have to look at that even more.

00:10:02:07 - 00:10:10:11
Itamar Marani
It's okay, how can we use this and within our value system to actually make sure good things happen with us.

00:10:10:13 - 00:10:18:18
Itamar Marani
So yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that? I know that was a bit an extreme side, but no.

00:10:18:20 - 00:10:48:03
Alex De Fina
We are really interested to understanding how how you, I guess, break down what is like. How would you define his mindset? What do you think might have created that mindset over time? And then why at least 49.9% of the population have a problem or have some kind of an emotional reaction to it?

00:10:48:05 - 00:11:11:09
Itamar Marani
So again, to kind of not get segue into that, I'll answer like I'll take it in a different route to your question because again, I think that's a very, very different conversation that most people naturally want to have. And it's just kind of like, first I want to understand why I feel this way instead of just saying, you know, this is effective, so let's figure out why it's effective so I can do this for myself, for my company, whatever it may be.

00:11:11:11 - 00:11:27:02
Itamar Marani
And it's also why he got there. It's like the story. It helps people, if you can explain this, what happened to him in his childhood, in his teens, is how he brought up. These were the opportunities he had, this what life taught him and so on. It helps people say, oh, okay, now I understand, but does it actually help them implement it?

00:11:27:04 - 00:11:56:15
Itamar Marani
Which is what the actual goal is again, gives him a sense of emotional certainty that, okay, I understand the world isn't so uncertain. It's clear to me and honestly what I want to do with this podcast is less so about explaining why that is, but it's giving people the actual tools to succeed and to cut through that. And the first one is just to like recognize that you can control your level of confidence with how you decide to talk to yourself.

00:11:56:17 - 00:12:25:21
Itamar Marani
It's like if you keep putting yourself down, especially the self-deprecating humor, it's like one of the rules I have with my clients. You cannot do that. It doesn't help. And here's a very clear example of someone who you get so much flak from so many different angles that if he wasn't also building that internal emotional shield for himself like that, I just can't see himself going through it.

00:12:25:23 - 00:12:27:03
Alex De Fina
Great.

00:12:27:05 - 00:12:54:12
Itamar Marani
Cool. So that's point one. Point two, and this is kind of these are all points to that confidence is that he controls his internal narrative really, really well. People have talked a lot about how he controls the media's narrative, how he calls people names, all that kind of jazz. But what is more interesting to me is how he controls his own internal narrative in order to build his confidence.

00:12:54:14 - 00:13:16:00
Itamar Marani
So even when he has challenges or failures, he's somehow able to craft that into a narrative of why he's actually a winner and his ability to persist in the face of public criticism and all that kind of jazz and be able to actually flip that in his head, it seems from the outside, almost like psychotic, detached, whatever you want to call it.

00:13:16:01 - 00:13:52:17
Itamar Marani
But from as far as that effective mindset, in order to keep going and to keep having the wind in your sail, so to speak, it's so effective. And on the last podcast, we actually had Colonel Glenn here and he talked about the hostages who survived in captivity under Hamas, and he gave the example of one of the key components to them surviving under high stress situations was being able to somehow control the narrative in a situation where they had no real control, somehow being able to control it a little bit tighter of, oh, I can count how many days because I get a piece of fruit a day and I can keep the pin of

00:13:52:17 - 00:14:08:11
Itamar Marani
the fruit and I can count. All of sudden I have a sense of control and I can change it, or I can think negatively about this captor, his captor. I can make fun of him in my head or to my friends, whatever. Maybe I can all of a sudden feel a little sense of control. And I think Trump, he does that masterfully.

00:14:08:17 - 00:14:36:19
Itamar Marani
And people will say, oh, he deflects, he doesn't pay attention. And again, that might be very, very true. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm not saying there's a very positive aspect to this because it allows him to keep up that momentum, internal momentum of feeling like I'm winning even when I'm losing. I took the right bet, I did the right thing, keep going and that him tweaking his own internal narrative, it's so powerful because he doesn't constantly feel defeated when there's so many other things going on.

00:14:36:19 - 00:14:46:21
Itamar Marani
And sometimes he messes up. And again, not saying that's the wisest thing to do wrong, but it's something effective is helping him push forward through all this, all the resistance that he gets from around the world.

00:14:46:23 - 00:15:18:20
Alex De Fina
Yeah. So underneath that context of elite level, we know I'm trying to separate what's, what's a mindset and then what are, what are the tools that he uses to either leverage that mindset or to sort of reinforce and develop further that if he hasn't himself, maybe this is more of a tool, Does it? First of all, does that make sense from your perspective of like, what's the mindset?

00:15:18:20 - 00:15:19:09
Alex De Fina
What's a tool?

00:15:19:09 - 00:15:41:17
Itamar Marani
Yeah, I think what you just said is really great. I was thinking about as you were talking about it. So yeah, I think the mindset he has is like, I'm an extreme winner and these are just tools to help reinforce that because again, he's he faces perhaps more scrutiny than any other public figure ever, basically. And yet he's able to maintain that I'm a winner mindset.

00:15:41:18 - 00:15:47:17
Itamar Marani
So what are the tools that he's using? And I think it's a great way to think about it. It's a great analogy.

00:15:47:18 - 00:16:25:03
Alex De Fina
Yeah. If I think about Trump metaphorically is like the nuclear version of the New Age spiritual guru. So if everyone knows the avatar of someone who talks a lot, says nothing, you know you are truth, you are president, you are he. And we've all had this experience of seeing that on social media of something and how the brain is thinking, okay, this person is talking to themself one way, but I kind of see what they're actually achieving, whereas rubber meets the road, whereas Trump is basically doing the same thing.

00:16:25:03 - 00:16:47:10
Alex De Fina
He's just constantly reinforcing to himself, This is the greatest, this is the best. I was the first on that. So I think a lot of that actually goes into his subconscious. And as he's being bombastic, narcissistic, etc., with his speech, he's also reinforcing to himself, I'm a winner, I'm a winner winner. So what if those two things are related that he actually does believe it to be true?

00:16:47:10 - 00:16:57:03
Alex De Fina
It is truly his is his mindset. And it's just been a long, long process of constantly reaffirming to himself that he is a winner.

00:16:57:05 - 00:17:18:06
Itamar Marani
I think also to kind of go into your point, he also has a bias for action, which is the biggest thing, because a lot of these gurus, they're like, I am so good. I don't need anything else. And that's their way of in a way justifying why they don't have to do anything. And especially the ones that you see, like I know who the kind of people you're talking about online.

00:17:18:08 - 00:17:37:23
Itamar Marani
They're saying basically how they're so great that they don't actually need to do anything to prove it. And Trump is not using that as a kind of way. His self-talk is in a way for him to justify why he doesn't have to challenge himself. He loves challenges, he loves going after big things, but it's just a way for him to help him go after big things.

00:17:38:00 - 00:18:22:14
Alex De Fina
I've also noticed Trump can talk about other people in a similar bombastic for a narcissistic way. So for all the soundbites of Trump saying I'm the best of the greatest, whatever, when he's positioning somebody, you know, this is going to be the director of ABC department, he will often speak about that person in very similar terms. Do you think that's actually how he views the world like is is that he's purely a narcissist and he's also just saying nice things about other people, like this is the greatest hamburger maker that's a best basketball player or that's just his actual mindset coming through.

00:18:22:14 - 00:18:25:15
Alex De Fina
And he to some degree, he does actually believe it.

00:18:25:17 - 00:18:31:23
Itamar Marani
So let's take this in a different way. You how many employees do you have?

00:18:32:01 - 00:18:33:06
Alex De Fina
Nine, ten.

00:18:33:08 - 00:18:51:00
Itamar Marani
Nine, ten. Okay. So what do you think will get your company a better outcome if you introduce like one of the employees, another new employee, and you're like, he's kind of mediocre? Or if you're like, He's really great. He's the best at what he does. He's a star. Which one is actually, Forget about how the new employee's going to perceive them.

00:18:51:02 - 00:18:58:15
Itamar Marani
But as far as the actual internal drive, that old employee that you're trying to put up or down, what is going to have a better outcome?

00:18:58:17 - 00:19:00:14
Alex De Fina
Second, to the for sure.

00:19:00:20 - 00:19:25:16
Itamar Marani
So this is interesting that it's super clear, it's super comfortable for you to say, I should definitely like just pump this person up. Yeah, why not do that to yourself? What's the initial resistance to go? It's not humble, it's not okay. It will cause me to be over to overstretch myself. Like what does that internal initial resistance do?

00:19:25:18 - 00:19:54:23
Alex De Fina
I think it's within what you put with Glenn was, was discussing how we find ourselves in my victim for survival because I think how we frame ourselves and in the gravity that that framing develops over time. If you view yourself as a survivor, you're much more likely to say, Hey, I've experienced these difficult times. I withstood the storm, I'm ten foot tall and bulletproof versus somebody else.

00:19:54:23 - 00:20:22:01
Alex De Fina
Like, why did these horrible things happen to me? And so I think that where I can speak for myself with my own personal biases is there's probably been times where I've been I've had both mindsets. And I definitely realize the the constraints that the victim mindset puts upon you because you start building gravity, like I'm the kind of person that bad things happen to.

00:20:22:01 - 00:20:50:21
Alex De Fina
I'm the kind of person does. All the world doesn't get the reward. And so it gets easy to look at other people because we probably don't have the same perspective. We don't have a full, comprehensive understanding that other persons we can say at this function, this person is great, but they might actually be, you know, framing themselves in a slightly different way so that for me, listening to that podcast was a really cool tool to just hear simplified.

00:20:50:23 - 00:21:14:17
Alex De Fina
And I think it makes a lot of sense for trying to understand someone like Trump separating the mindset versus the actual communication tools that he uses. I just see as his constant, like self fulfilling confidence builder in him and anywhere and everyone around him. So maybe that's one of the magic things he does.

00:21:14:18 - 00:21:38:01
Itamar Marani
So two things about that. One, one of the magic things he does about that is that how quickly he does think someone tells him is wrong. Check a fact since it's immediately his retort and he doesn't he doesn't even give pause to thinking like, am I? Did I do bad here? He immediately snaps into that I'm a winner mentality, I'm a survivor mentality, whatever you want to call it.

00:21:38:03 - 00:22:03:05
Itamar Marani
And again, when I get that, people will say there are negative things there. And I'm not arguing that. All I'm saying is that from what we're seeing in the aggregate and overall it has served him. And I think that's the big thing that I've seen on the overall level. It has served him. That's part one and part two are natural default will be to try to stay small and try to stay safe.

00:22:03:07 - 00:22:20:06
Itamar Marani
So of course, people can say, no, no, you shouldn't do this because but it's to recognize that's your natural default skill set is astrological thing. And what we did here is we said like, well, what would you tell another employee? I go to another person? I would definitely boost them up to myself, though that doesn't feel comfortable and that's a big thing.

00:22:20:06 - 00:22:42:03
Itamar Marani
It's like if you'd obviously said like, this is how we would treat somebody else, why don't you treat yourself that way? And he does that very, very well. His own best cheerleader said this to me like somebody tries to tell him like why he should think negatively of self. He merely shucks it away, pushes it away. And he has so much of that to constantly deflect that.

00:22:42:05 - 00:22:52:19
Itamar Marani
There's again, there's something that that can be learned here. He's doing a great job at that. Not again. It's politics, whatever you want to talk about. But just add that when you look at that, it's hard to argue against it.

00:22:52:21 - 00:23:25:22
Alex De Fina
You know? Do you think that part of the challenge that we have, understanding someone like Trump is that we we transfer to our own self audit, which are across multiple criteria about your husband, your father, your entrepreneur, your what have you. And you're trying to sort of juggle all those balls in the air and you look at someone like Trump and the mind starts to break about how could someone carry that approach?

00:23:26:00 - 00:23:45:22
Alex De Fina
You know, I'd love to be a fly on the wall to a relationship counseling session between Trump and Melania. First of all, it wouldn't happen to say, like, you're confused and I could do much better than you. Look at me. I'm king of the world. So first of all, he wouldn't even engage in that. Second of all, the only answer is Melania is confused or wrong.

00:23:46:00 - 00:24:09:20
Alex De Fina
So in other aspects of Trump's life, I'm making assumptions here. I can assume I would want to be that guy as a husband, maybe as a father, as a as a friend, you know, choice, throw them under the bus. But if I can recalibrate my perspective, too, this is an extreme win. And what he's trying to win in right now is being king of the world.

00:24:09:22 - 00:24:33:16
Alex De Fina
Well, it's hard to do that. And rewrite the book. And then the world's greatest husband or father or friend or other things. So I think that's a real a real challenge is to just constantly recalibrate our perspective to a very singular thing of being incredibly successful, either in business or in politics, as opposed to transferring how we value ourselves comprehensively.

00:24:33:18 - 00:24:37:18
Alex De Fina
And then looking at him and saying, for sure, there's this got some armor.

00:24:37:19 - 00:24:47:15
Itamar Marani
I want to this interesting. And we've got to bring this to point number three and a bit of a different way. So I want to break I'm going to I'm going to repeat back to you what you said in a bit of a different way. Tell me if I'm hitting.

00:24:47:15 - 00:24:48:21
Alex De Fina
Correctly.

00:24:48:23 - 00:25:04:04
Itamar Marani
That saying how can you have the energy to deal with all of this if you can't? So therefore, that means that he's choosing to point its energy in one direction, which is different than what I would do. And that's why he's able to do that. Is that correct?

00:25:04:06 - 00:25:05:09
Alex De Fina
Correct.

00:25:05:11 - 00:25:25:14
Itamar Marani
Yeah. So here's another thing that that is true. Probably. Probably what's also true and this is something that I observe very clearly in him, is that he saves so much more energy than most of you. And here's what I mean by that. Everyone thinks he's going all across everywhere. He's so busy. He's doing so many things, talking, tweeting, whatever it may be.

00:25:25:16 - 00:25:51:15
Itamar Marani
I think the amount of energy that people like, the biggest amount of energy that people waste is about thinking, how will people think about this? Is that initial survival instinct of will the tribe accept? And he wastes so he he saves so much energy by not caring. And people always talk about him being polarizing and how it's such a good political tool because he's always alienating some.

00:25:51:15 - 00:26:20:18
Itamar Marani
He's really lacking in others. But the reality is his polarization seems to be coming from a place where he's like, I know what I think and I do not care what anybody else thinks. Like, if you align with it, great. If not, you're a loser again, I'm saying that's right or wrong, but that's kind of his vibe and him not needing to constantly think about how would I say this in a way that person X or Y won't get offended or this will be okay.

00:26:20:20 - 00:26:43:12
Itamar Marani
That amount of mental bandwidth and just it's draining to think that way. And I think it's another tool of his. Like you said, he gives so little FS about what he doesn't care about, that he doesn't waste energy than most people do. Like we're just operating from an assumption of this is how much energy we have without taking into account how much energy we waste and those kind of things.

00:26:43:14 - 00:27:09:05
Itamar Marani
And it was interesting also that Musk is now one of his closest people, and I hope this is the actual context of it. But I remember seeing a little clip from a Trump interview with the reporter named Don Lemon, a guy from CNN, and he was asking him, do you not care about how people of different ethnicities or colors feel or like should be tolerated more or something along those lines?

00:27:09:05 - 00:27:25:02
Itamar Marani
He was trying to kind of put them like in a DIY Trump And Trump was just like and Musk was like, No, I don't care about that. I care about bringing the highest quality people into the company. They're the smartest and going to work the hardest. And you could see the guy was just a kid. That's that's not you can't answer me like that.

00:27:25:04 - 00:27:27:11
Itamar Marani
That's not allowed. You know, you have to care.

00:27:27:12 - 00:27:27:19
Alex De Fina
Yeah.

00:27:27:20 - 00:27:45:19
Itamar Marani
And Musk's like, I just don't care. No, no, I just don't care. And he was with humor about it. It wasn't even like, a big like, Listen, it's okay. I understand. We think this way about. I don't care. No, I don't care. And it's a superpower. Like once you can get really and again, values, effectiveness, different thing here.

00:27:45:21 - 00:28:05:14
Itamar Marani
But once you can get aligned with what is really important to you and how you think about certain things in the world, and to accept that you're not trying to be polarizing for the sake of polarizing, but just like you do not care about these other things and you just make peace with it, it frees up a ton of bandwidth like I've experienced with myself or like in the smallest example of how.

00:28:05:14 - 00:28:25:19
Itamar Marani
But we only run cohorts of the program. For Matt, it was a variety technical reasons or ideal avatar, etc., etc., etc.. But just like I don't need to explain that to anybody, this is what we do. And people complain and people say this. People talk negatively about this and I'm like, okay, whatever. And I don't try to justify it is what it is.

00:28:25:19 - 00:28:41:22
Itamar Marani
We move forward and I think Trump is a master at that. He just says what he wants and he doesn't have to worry about how people think about this. He doesn't take them and he doesn't waste that bandwidth. His decision is so much easier.

00:28:42:00 - 00:29:17:14
Alex De Fina
That's a great takeaway. So the two takeaways from 4.3 for me personally were, number one, his priorities were bandwidth or just the fact that he doesn't have a bandwidth bleed of thinking through how the people perceive perceive him. So if you're a CEO right now and you need to make a headcount cut, how much of your mental bandwidth is eaten up by the try to think through the downstream consequences of this change in how people are going to be perceived, what people are going to be saying?

00:29:17:16 - 00:29:42:06
Alex De Fina
So Trump just doesn't even entertain that at all. He's just focused on on taking action. So that's that's that's huge. I think I definitely agree with that. There's a huge amount of of professional bandwidth forks. Canoeists can be eaten up by thinking about how the decisions will be perceived and trying to optimize the chances of perceived positively and mitigate the chances perceived negatively.

00:29:42:08 - 00:29:56:08
Alex De Fina
Where he just said gives no FS and just does the thing anyway, That's that's a big takeaway, something that I hadn't observed or hadn't really considered from that perspective previously.

00:29:56:10 - 00:30:14:14
Itamar Marani
Yeah, I think it just it's such a big thing that people underestimate this. Imagine let's that an extreme scenario being worried about everything all the time. How much energy would that leave you to actually focus on the important things and to just move forward very little and you keep subtracting that down to caring more about what people think?

00:30:14:14 - 00:30:32:19
Itamar Marani
How will this be perceived, how will this look, etc., etc., etc.. Like the less you can need that, the less you have to spend energy on that by just saying, You know what, I've clarified my thinking this is what I believe in, and I accept that some people are going to be upset by it. Some people are going to say negative things.

00:30:32:21 - 00:30:49:05
Itamar Marani
This is going to accept and expect that all these things happen. And I'm just it is what it is. I'm not going to try to avoid them. All of a sudden, a lot of the decisions become simpler. You don't waste all that energy. And guess what? When you waste less energy, it's easier for you to control your internal narrative.

00:30:49:07 - 00:31:10:14
Itamar Marani
It's easier to do that, for example, at 8 a.m. than it is at 10 p.m. when you're tired. Same thing here. And therefore, when you can do that as well, it's easier for you to have that unshakable confidence. And it's a big thing how these things all tied together. And to go back to your analogy of the CEO or the entrepreneur or whatever it may be, it's like if you're clear on what is important and what is not, it's not about being polarizing.

00:31:10:19 - 00:31:24:21
Itamar Marani
It's just about focusing on what matters to you. And you're saying the rest doesn't matter and it's letting it brush off your shoulder after that, when you will have setbacks and you will have setbacks, the quicker you can realize, you know what, this is a setback, but I'm a winner. I'm going to keep moving this. I'm gonna keep learning from this.

00:31:24:21 - 00:31:50:06
Itamar Marani
Let's keep going instead of dwelling on it and talking about it. And it's been like, Oh, I feel bad. And immediately get a victim mindset immediately shift into that. Okay, Winners win some of those setbacks. The winners win. And I'm a winner. It's powerful. And just to give yourself that confidence, I think it's something that we talked about also, you know, ourselves personally sometimes it is more impactful for the person instead of staying humble and overthinking things.

00:31:50:06 - 00:32:12:12
Itamar Marani
And all that is to have a delusion of grandeur, to have a self-belief, that, you know what I believe in myself more than my current abilities, because what that will do is of force you to go for things that are beyond your current capabilities, and then you will actually grow like that's where you want to be. And if someone saying to themselves, I only want to do things that I know I'm capable of, they're basically in their comfort zone.

00:32:12:12 - 00:32:31:01
Itamar Marani
Maybe they're like the slight edge of their gross on. But if somebody's saying, you know what, I believe in myself enough that I can go for them, that I don't think I'm capable of doing it yet, that puts them into the edge of their growth zone where they're going to have setbacks. But if they can control that internal narrative, they can say, this is supposed to be I'm a winner, I'm doing things winners do, of course, are setbacks.

00:32:31:01 - 00:32:49:23
Itamar Marani
Let's keep going. And if you don't waste energy on things, they don't need to waste energy yourself a really great chance at winning and accomplishing big things. And that's kind of been my perspective. Just observing Trump, again, not his politics, not his policies, but just his mindset and how he moves in the world. That was very, very impressive.

00:32:50:00 - 00:32:57:05
Itamar Marani
You can't argue with the results he achieved despite not in spite in the face of all the scrutiny and all the challenges he goes through.

00:32:57:07 - 00:32:58:18
Alex De Fina
Absolutely.

00:32:58:19 - 00:33:21:08
Itamar Marani
Because and I would just add to that a little bit, all he does with his politics, it's both obviously been very effective to get him the votes, but it can also be extremely, extremely exhausting to go through that, to have that counsel thrown at you or people saying this, people saying that I feel like a lot of the world is against you.

00:33:21:10 - 00:33:48:11
Itamar Marani
So there's something he's doing to be able to keep up the wind in the sails. And I think that's the part where we have to look at and say, ha, this is powerful because we all probably face less stressful things than him a lot. And sometimes we get the wind taken out of ourselves. So if we can see what someone in that extreme is able to do that and again, ignore the politics, you know, the policies, but recognize like he's getting a lot of flak and he's able to keep pushing through it.

00:33:48:13 - 00:33:55:22
Itamar Marani
So what is that part that he's doing? Can we just take that secret sauce and put into ourselves? Can be very powerful.

00:33:56:00 - 00:34:04:01
Alex De Fina
Absolutely. I got some questions for you. What have you got next? What you want, you want to be you.

00:34:04:03 - 00:34:09:09
Itamar Marani
Know, that was the main thrust for.

00:34:09:11 - 00:34:29:15
Alex De Fina
A lot of my questions are going to come from my perspective because for people listening who's like me, who plays the devil's advocate to themselves, there's a point where you get so good at playing devil's advocate to you. So if you become more effective at convincing yourself your role, then actually just being effective at doing the right thing.

00:34:29:17 - 00:35:04:19
Alex De Fina
So it can be a double edged sword. One of the things I think Trump does terribly is communication and if we could do a find and replace for all Trump soundbites up until now, and instead of when he says me, he just said, we do think that would take some of the it would reduce some of the friction that he creates, because obviously Trump when it comes to construction politics, Trump is not pulling the concrete.

00:35:04:19 - 00:35:10:07
Alex De Fina
Trump is not drafting the documents. There's huge teams of people doing things.

00:35:10:09 - 00:35:30:13
Itamar Marani
Again, like, I'll jump in here. This is interesting because this is a completely different conversation that what we're having right now. There's still like what we talk about right now is saying, like he does all these things that could be negative, for example, like saying me or we and therefore he gets the backlash form sometimes from other people that play devil's advocate or whatever it may be.

00:35:30:15 - 00:35:55:00
Itamar Marani
Yet he doesn't let that affect him. We just want to look at this part. Why does what are the tools that he has that allow him to overcome a lot of these potential errors or potential setbacks or just negative, you know, blowback? How does he keep going despite all that? And it's interesting because all this stuff about me, we the communications, it's a very different conversation.

00:35:55:01 - 00:36:15:04
Itamar Marani
And that's the thing I want to like really focus this podcast in on, despite whatever he might be doing wrong. And I just despite it, because of the things that he is doing wrong that cause a lot of backlash, he's still able to move forward. Most people, if they got that amount of backlash to back, you know what, I already had one presidency, I'm done.

00:36:15:09 - 00:36:35:11
Itamar Marani
I'm going to show Mar-A-Lago and that's it. Yet he is somehow able to keep pushing forward. And you can talk about, you know, all these things about pull energy, push energy. This coming from a dark place, not a power, whatever it may be. Beyond that, there are certain tools here that we just uncovered that are very practical that everybody can use, that he's using to win.

00:36:35:13 - 00:36:44:06
Itamar Marani
And I think that's really what I would like beyond like the philosophic conversation of this, a good idea, a bad idea. These are frameworks people can use.

00:36:44:08 - 00:37:12:11
Alex De Fina
Yeah, maybe. I'm sorry. I think I'm with you. Or just maybe I could communicate that better. I think what I see is a communication error that if you use more collective communication rather than individualistic, you wouldn't feel the friction. I wonder if part of that is actually he's part of his self-reinforcing confidence in that when he's like, I freed the hostages is like you alone like nobody else was involved involved in this, not me.

00:37:12:13 - 00:37:39:11
Alex De Fina
So I wonder if his his whether it's intentional or just in his DNA or conditioned he will, even though he might have played 1% involvement in a thing, he will claim 100% credit a lot. We'll discuss this necessarily from through the media landscape of the populace, more so that he he gets very creative at finding ways to reinforce to himself.

00:37:39:11 - 00:37:41:04
Alex De Fina
I'm a winner.

00:37:41:06 - 00:38:00:21
Itamar Marani
Yeah, probably that's probably a mix there that he both understands logically. It's good PR to take credit for all that stuff that it puts him up there but I think it's like you said, he just he's become a master at crafting his own narrative and like, keep boosting himself up. And again, you know, I don't see a possibility of somebody.

00:38:00:23 - 00:38:21:13
Itamar Marani
It'll be very challenging for somebody to withstand all the criticism that he faces if he doesn't have some kind of internal mechanism to keep boosting himself up. And that's that's kind of what I want to share. Like just the more you can have that, there's going to be the emotional math. Even if you fail and succeed at the same rate, the failures are going to feel worse.

00:38:21:15 - 00:38:38:04
Itamar Marani
So if you don't have an internal mechanism to basically shift that the other direction, like positive self-talk, like controlling your narrative, like not wasting energy on things you don't need to be wasting energy on is going to be harder for you to succeed.

00:38:38:06 - 00:39:01:07
Alex De Fina
If if you and I just met today and I was a new client and I said my biggest challenge is self-confidence. I really want to think like a winner, act like a winner. If you said, Hey, see this orange guy over here? That's what extreme confidence looks like. And I said to you, Hey, I don't want to look or sound like that at all, but just recalibrate.

00:39:01:07 - 00:39:25:07
Alex De Fina
Like, we're going to recalibrate the goals because I think like a lot of people that will say things, you know, it's like, I want to be famous. It's like, well, being famous means you you have restricted. You've got paparazzi following use. Actually, you're living in a in a mansion in isolation. Is that what you want? And often I think what we have as aspirations versus like a comfortable balance point for each of us might be different.

00:39:25:09 - 00:39:56:00
Alex De Fina
That extreme comforts. I'm sure everybody if you said who he would like to feel more confident, like almost everybody. Yeah, but at the extreme tip of confidence, it looks and sounds a whole lot like Trump. And if that's not your cup of tea, then maybe recalibrating your goals and saying, I want to be confident enough to achieve X, Y, Z, but I'm not prepared to live life with that amount of of conflict and friction.

00:39:56:00 - 00:40:11:06
Alex De Fina
Because when you view yourself as king of the world, which is the extreme pointy end of extreme confidence, you're going to have a lot of friction with the majority of people. The majority of the time.

00:40:11:08 - 00:40:16:17
Itamar Marani
So can you rephrase the question in a bit of I guess if there's a question.

00:40:16:18 - 00:40:41:11
Alex De Fina
Yeah. If you had a new client who said, I think I need like if I could just download extreme confidence, I'm, I'm, I'm squared away. Are they ready for the friction, the downside, the cost of extreme confidence because the cost of extreme concept confidence is everything we just discussing in terms of all the resistance which is probably creating.

00:40:41:11 - 00:41:10:05
Itamar Marani
But this is the could also very much be a belief. It's like if you're going to extreme confidence and you're going have like an arena like politics, yeah, it's going to inevitably have a lot of blowback, especially the higher you go up there. There's a lot of places where you can have extreme confidence and all it will do is circulating and I think the biggest thing is just like when somebody stands out in a different way, when a client comes in and says, I want to be more confident because it's not about how do we boost your confidence, how do we make you feel?

00:41:10:06 - 00:41:26:12
Itamar Marani
Like, what are the actual beliefs or limitations you hold in your mind to why you should do this or you shouldn't do that, or why you have to always make sure that nothing offends anybody or whatever it may be. And we've got to remove those. Now where you choose to orient yourself afterwards, whether it's politics or whatever it may be, that's a different story.

00:41:26:13 - 00:41:35:14
Itamar Marani
But again, even that is probably some kind of internal by saying, like, if I become more confident, it's going to be some danger. There.

00:41:35:16 - 00:41:56:03
Alex De Fina
Right. So so your approach is rather than the client coming to you and saying, I want become more confident, your approach would be how do we make you less fearful? That's a very different perspective for most people to start off with is how to remove the shackles as opposed to at the end of a post.

00:41:56:05 - 00:42:18:11
Itamar Marani
Yeah, and again, like the all these things that we talked about, the self-deprecating humor that adds chuckles when someone tells you you're wrong and you're like, You know what? I was wrong. I should really beat myself up about it. Got a chocolate thing worrying about how everyone's going to perceive if you say this or if you say that this way or whatever, maybe it adds shackles.

00:42:18:13 - 00:42:37:01
Itamar Marani
And Trump has just done a very good job about not adding that on to like. And I think that's the main thing. It's like if you're going to all of a sudden remove these things for a life to know, you're not going to become a psychopath overnight if that's what you're afraid of, it doesn't happen. It's like it's taking you the best way I can say it.

00:42:37:01 - 00:42:56:04
Itamar Marani
Like physiotherapist When you go in for an injury and you're asking usually like, how long is it going to take to heal? One of the first questions I'll ask is how long have you had? Because if you've been walking up that bum knee for ten years, like there's so many compensations there that it's not going to go away overnight to give yourself that the illusion of grander you're not all of a sudden going to turn into a psychopath overnight.

00:42:56:06 - 00:43:04:10
Itamar Marani
It actually is entering more and more and more. It's just being comfortable taking more action because you're less afraid of the possible consequence.

00:43:04:12 - 00:43:59:15
Alex De Fina
You suppose it slows down to like a top three or four mindset hacks for entrepreneurs. Maybe I can just spitball what I've taken away from this and then you can you can correct me or challenge me with better. Listen, one would be, if not illuminating, be very self-aware of the consequences of self-deprecating humor. This does look to me number two would be that being aware of your of your bandwidth and being comfortable that being an extreme, we know having an extreme in his mindset might come at the cost of other areas of life or potential friction.

00:43:59:17 - 00:44:21:06
Itamar Marani
So I would say in a different way without the extreme in or mindset or this or that, whatever. Be like, you don't have to be an extreme winner. The reality is, if you care less about trying to please everybody, you just have more energy to someone you actually care about. I move forward. That's it. Whether you want to be an extreme winner or whether you just want to sit at peace with yourself on the beach, whatever it may be.

00:44:21:07 - 00:44:37:19
Itamar Marani
But always thinking about how will I say this in a way that doesn't offend X, Y, or Z, just waste a lot of energy right now. If you can figure out for yourself what you actually care about, and then you say it's not about me being polarizing and marketing or whatever it may be, but it isn't about me being comfortable with my truth and not caring about the rest.

00:44:37:19 - 00:44:53:13
Itamar Marani
It frees you. And that was the Musk example. He's not just saying that to be is like all I care about is that we get the best people, the most talented people. The other stuff I do not care about, and I get it. That's your narrative. The guy from CNN. It's your narrative. Cool. Good for you. I don't care about.

00:44:53:15 - 00:44:55:02
Itamar Marani
I'm not going to apologize for that.

00:44:55:04 - 00:45:20:08
Alex De Fina
Yes, that's a better way of phrasing it. So number one would be being very aware of limiting self-deprecating humor, being aware of the text that applies in our psychology. Number two would be saying what needs to be said or doing what needs to be done, despite other people's sort of feelings, their emotions are just not not giving up unnecessary bandwidth and just marching forwards, being hyper effective and efficient.

00:45:20:10 - 00:46:04:01
Alex De Fina
And then number three, as my takeaway from this would be the value of that self reinforcement, even though it comes across in a very narcissistic, bombastic way of that self reinforcement, which I view as another alternative to two mantras and positive affirmations. It's just comes across in a very clunky way the value of reinforcing to yourself your wins and creating an environment in other people that when you translate that same mindset and transplant those attributes onto people around you, you've created this sort of environment of of winners.

00:46:04:01 - 00:46:11:22
Alex De Fina
If you themselves are people who win, That to me seems like the three biggest takeaways that for me as an entrepreneur, the moment obviously something.

00:46:12:00 - 00:46:31:15
Itamar Marani
I'll say the last one in a different way and I think this will hit home for you that in the grand scheme of things in the aggregate, okay, having a delusion of grandeur serves people better than playing devil's advocate to themselves, playing devil's advocate to ourselves, why we can't do this, why we should do this. It makes us feel really smart.

00:46:31:15 - 00:46:59:18
Itamar Marani
Oh, we look at different angles or understand things were so intelligent, etc. etc., etc.. Losing a grant is a guy. He's just ridiculous. He's not an intelligent thinker. He's just a fairytale. Whatever. Maybe like a glasses tank, whatever you want to call it. The reality is that we're not wired for action. We are wired for safety. So if we try to compensate for that default wiring by having an internal delusion of grander in the aggregate, probably serve this better.

00:46:59:20 - 00:47:13:07
Itamar Marani
Again, there's things you can put in place to make sure you're not being reckless, but if you have, that is like, I'm going to purposely try to lift myself up more than I talk myself down. You're probably going to win. That's what Trump has shown.

00:47:13:09 - 00:47:14:19
Alex De Fina
Yeah, that's correct.

00:47:14:21 - 00:47:22:18
Itamar Marani
And again, he has done things that could be considered reckless. There's no arguing that. And yet in the aggregate, here we are. And that's the point I'm trying to make.

00:47:22:20 - 00:47:27:05
Alex De Fina
Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. All right.

00:47:27:07 - 00:47:48:11
Itamar Marani
Thank you guys for tuning in. On that note, also, kind of what Alex was mentioning, what we're going to be doing next week in the pod and the previous week, we had Glenn, the head hostage briefer for the IDF. He was gracious enough to share a lot of the lessons he learned from debriefing the hostages and being the first one to contact also the Mossad's chief psychologist who knows a lot about this stuff.

00:47:48:12 - 00:48:08:00
Itamar Marani
I've also chatted with him in the past couple of days since new houses have been released and he's sheriff and some of the updates and what Alex and I will be doing on the next sidecars is breaking down that podcast and making it very tangible and saying, how can we apply these lessons? What are the helpless and how you can actually apply them to your life and your business so that you can win more so from that.

00:48:08:02 - 00:48:10:14
Itamar Marani
Have a great rest of your day and we'll see you in the next I've got.