Reaching the Subconscious: How Behavior Actually Changes with Kristin Malek

“Kristin Malek: When we're looking at information in our brain, having negative information takes 20 pieces of positive information.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. It's not Friday. It's Wednesday. Our episodes come out on Wednesday.

Alex Cullimore: We should be recorded on a Wednesday. We release on a Wednesday. For everybody who doesn't pick it up on the first day, all of our talk of weekdays is meaningless.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Time is relative. We're still back to that.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That'll be a future episode of the entire illusion of time.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Oh, my son, my 14-year-old just started watching The Matrix from the very first one. He's like, “Oh, my God. This is insane.” I'm like, “I told you.”

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yes, it is insane. I rewatched that recently. I was like, “Oh, my God. The special effects now look almost cheesy.” At the time, that was cutting-edge.

Cristina Amigoni: But it was 25 years ago. I mean, they did a really good job for 25 years ago. Did you catch the point when they talk about how the world came to this point, and it was all because of AI? I'm like, oh.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, yeah. I did that.

Cristina Amigoni: AI just cover. Humans became energy sources and machines to cover. Just in case anybody's out there freaking out right now, yes, 25 years ago, they talked about that.

Alex Cullimore: Well, if it helps at all, Dune, which was written back in the 70s is the whole premises that there was a whole war against robots. There was the thinking machine to become banned, because it was so dangerous. Yes, there's a lot to look forward to if you look at fiction and dark current predicament with AI, which brings us to our episode.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. I had another non-episode related thing that relates to AI though. What's fascinating is that what helps not panic yet that we're going to end up in The Matrix yet, or at least maybe as for us who are not going to be alive past the next 20, 30 years or so, is the fact that my husband was trying to get ChatGPT and Claude to count, to create a chapter within a certain number of words, and it could not get the number of words correct. Neither of them. It would actually say like, “Here's a chapter that has 3,000 words.” Then he would take that and put it into a word document and it would be a thousand. Very, very different numbers. Not a close thing. I think we're good. We're not going to end up in The Matrix anytime soon.

Alex Cullimore: I mean, guess that out, we talked a lot with Kristin today about believability and change. Now we know, here's a reference point that at this point in when we recorded this at least and by the end of the summer, maybe this will be entirely different. This point, AI can't count words. Hang your hat on that one, everybody who's worried about AI.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. You can step into behave, like adopting AI. You don't have to go all the way in, because it can't count words.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: Yet.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yet. You also used to not be able to generate text and images and that was only three months ago, but here we are. We got to talk today to our guest, Kristin Malek, who does a lot of work in behavioral and event and change design. It's incredibly interesting stuff about how people actually change, how behaviors actually change the things that we need as humans to move forward and make progressive improvements in our life and what tends to get in the way. That actually led to a discussion of all of the things that we tend to do wrong in the corporate world and just in our daily lives that end up stubbing our toes when we try and make any progressive changes in life. It's a fascinating conversation and she's one of the, I think, best trained people I've ever talked to.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. She has a lot of training, in a very non-intimidating and non-arrogant way. Very approachable. You want to actually learn from her way. We highly recommend following her, seeing what she's doing, listening to the episode and all of that, because it's very fascinating. One of my best parts of it was the talk on values in corporate companies and the tendency to just wake up one morning and be like, “We are not a values-based company.” It's like me waking up one morning, it’s like, “I am now a rainbow unicorn. Can't everybody see that?”

Alex Cullimore: I can't believe everybody's still addressing me like I'm some kind of human.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: Please enjoy this episode. It's a lot of fun, with Kristin Malek.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, Cristina and I are joined by our guest, Kristin Malek. Welcome to the podcast, Kristin.

Kristin Malek: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Cristina Amigoni: Welcome to the podcast.

Alex Cullimore: It's nice to have you here. We've worked with Kristin in a couple of different capacities, but for background, for our audience, Kristin, you want to tell us a little bit about your story and what brought you here?

Kristin Malek: Yeah, absolutely. My name is Kristin Malek, and I currently do a lot of things, as Alex and Kristina know. But I run a company called The BCD Institute, which is the Behavior Change Design Institute. I also run my own event venue called The Gathering Grove based in Nebraska and the United States. Then, I also teach event and experience design at my local university. A lot of different things. Yeah, I like to keep a full schedule, I'll say.

Cristina Amigoni: And a full travel schedule.

Kristin Malek: I do. I do. I travel all over the world running events, designing events, running workshops, doing keynotes. I've run my own podcast, so this is really fun, always to be a guest on other people's podcasts. A super full schedule. Essentially, my background information at a very high level is I started in event planning and logistics, and I was an executive director of events for a large event planning company in Las Vegas. 

My minimum client was $1,000,000, or 1,500 people. I was running a lot of medical events at the time. I remember very distinctly at the end of one of the meetings, the large annual conference that happened in February, we won, actually, several awards in the event industry for this event. You know how those sneaking thoughts go? I had this sneaking thought, and I said, did this actually matter? Did this have an impact? Did these 2,000 doctors who showed up to this event, did they actually learn anything? Are they actually going to change their practice based on this meeting? That thought took a life of its own.

I decided that in that moment that I was going to only design events and experiences that changed mindset and behavior. I had to figure out how to do that. To figure out how to do that, I dove deep into neuroscience and psychology behavioral science, change management, communications, hypnosis, neurolinguistics, all of these fun fields. Spent 10 years traveling all across these industries, 30 certifications, eight industries, PhD, all of this ridiculous, overpriced formal education things and a ton of real-life lived experience to figure out how we can actually design events that change mindset and behavior. That's led into all kinds of other things that are not event related in terms of marketing and communications and public speaking and all the fun things.

Alex Cullimore: A full schedule then.

Kristin Malek: Full schedule. Full schedule.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. Yes. How do you change mindset and behavior in seven words or less?

Kristin Malek: Seven words or less. Reaching a subconscious mind. Reaching the subconscious mind. That is it. End of podcast right there.

Cristina Amigoni: And we're done.

Kristin Malek: We're done.

Alex Cullimore: No explanation needed, and we all know how to do that.

Kristin Malek: Exactly. Right. My terra field is in mute now.

Cristina Amigoni: Ten years of 30 certifications and travels, that's what it comes down to.

Kristin Malek: That's what it comes down to. You've got to reach that unconscious, or subconscious mind. Different fields call it different things, unconscious or subconscious. You've got to reach it. Then you've got to plant some seeds that will take root. That is the end of how you change mindset and behavior. How do you do that, though? How do you do that?

Cristina Amigoni: Mandating, forcing, commanding, threatening, none of those.

Kristin Malek: None. None of those. Actually, that creates a huge defensive barrier. We don't want to do those things. We want to really – I always say that I'm an architect of curiosity. I'm always trying to design for curiosity, because curiosity will bypass some of those critical wedges, or that barrier, that block between your conscious and unconscious mind. Then you'll really be able to play around and have some fun, obviously, with curiosity in mind.

Alex Cullimore: That is a really cool way of describing it. I'm curious how one helps implant some curiosity, because we could definitely use some of the help.

Kristin Malek: Yeah. I think when you look at the fields in general, when we're talking about whether it's an online marketing, or email campaign, or segmentation, whether we're talking about live events, or even mail campaigns, we're really focusing on this hyper-personalization right now. When we talk about sales or marketing, we're talking about changing behavior in a form of whether ethical, or unethical. Changing behavior to get people to buy your product, right? In order to do that, you have to understand how that individual person works, or makes decisions, or makes reasons. That's why we have this focus on this personalization, hyper-personalization, trying to understand who you are, your habits, your scrolling habits, your buying habits, how you tick, because that's really the key to understanding what's going to open up your mind, what's going to allow you to be curious.

Then in my field, very ethically aligning with your values, being authentic, aligning with authenticity and really figuring out where people want to go in life, what's your goal in a year or in two years or in five years, and how can we adjust that mindset or behavior to get you to those goals. Not necessarily to buy another product that you don't need, that's going to end up in the ocean, right? There are people out there that are highly trained in this that are using it for capitalism, or corporate greed, and there are people who are doing it to really help make an impact. I like to think I'm part of the latter.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I mean, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like, some of the current influence sponsors are screaming the current tools, and a lot of the marketing space are understanding people's habits, so you can plug into where they already are. It sounds like, you're asking more like, what do we do to change the habits so that we can have a different outcome, rather than just using the existing habits for our good. The algorithms that we're all used to on social media, just serving us the things that we already have clicked, rather than serving us something that's going to change how we're thinking, or what we're doing.

Kristin Malek: Oh, yeah. Well, there's some really interesting research in there across different fields. There was one research study, where someone created a brand-new social media account with no background information, fake name, fake everything. They did a series of these, so that it wasn't just one. It was a giant experimental study that had a lot of different fake accounts, different IPNs, different computers, different all the things. They clicked one video, or post, or liked something that was a little bit left, or a little bit right-leaning. A little bit liberal or a little bit conservative.

Then they tracked that over two weeks. By the end of two weeks, and then by the end of 30 days, by the end of six weeks, they were completely on the extreme edges, the fringes, where it's like, okay, if artificial intelligence, or technology, or the algorithm, if it indicates that you like something, the purpose of these platforms, especially social media is to capture your attention. They're going to keep giving you things that you have told it that you like. Even if you're a little curious, you're like, “Oh, I'm interested about that. Maybe I'll like that post, or maybe I'll comment, or maybe I'll share.” By the end of six weeks, you're in total extreme territory, because they're trying to keep you on the platform. That's really dangerous, because those platforms, or that messaging, or that algorithm, or that style can really change mindset and behavior, but not in a positive way.

Cristina Amigoni: As an architect of curiosity, how do you spur, plant curiosity, plant seeds of curiosity, but also plant it in a way that it keeps the mind open to different points of view? Not just going down this path, that then it's now blindfolded path to the extreme.

Kristin Malek: Absolutely. It's a different answer depending on the situation, right? How I write a book, or coach people to write books, or how I am a keynote speaker, or coach people and keynote speaking versus planning a live event. I am running a workshop next week, or long past by the time this airs, right? I'm running a workshop, and how I plan that versus a hundred-person, or a thousand-person event, that's all going to be a little different in terms of how you structure the flow.

I'll say, it really does come down to the flow, and then connecting with the pain points at the beginning. If you are an individual, a coach, somebody that I'm working with one on one, or one in a small group, I can look at you individually, target market, socio demographics, my knowledge of you, some history in the background, maybe some interviews depending if it's a board room, or a CEO, or what the changes that we're looking for. I can identify some of the pain points, right? You've posted something, or you've said something, you've expressed a criticism, or complaint somewhere, right? I can relate to you on that, right? I am now relatable. I've built rapport with you.

Then, I think where a lot of people go wrong, I know where a lot of people go wrong is they try to just replace negative, or one point of view with the extreme positive, or a different point of view and they skip the neutrality point. Getting to neutral is really, really important. Now, it doesn't mean you don't have to replace a mindset with another mindset, but you can't go from one extreme to another, right? If you're saying, “Oh, my gosh. I'm so fat,” you can't just start saying positive affirmations of like, “I'm the skinniest person in the world.” Your brain doesn't believe it, okay? If you're poor and collections is coming after you and you have no money, you're not even making it paycheck to paycheck. Then your positive affirmation is, “I'm a millionaire,” it will never stick. There's truth in this manifesting thing, but it has to be believable for your brain, right?

So many people are skipping that middle step. You have to get to neutrality. Instead of saying, “I'm fat, or I'm poor,” and going to the extreme, you could just say, “I'm working on my health every day.” That's believable for your brain. You have action. You're moving in the right direction, right? You get your brain to that point and then you're like, “I'm okay with how I look right now.” You get to that point and then you're like, “I'm happy with how I look right now.” It steps in a process.

I always try to break things down into three, or five steps, depending on how much the change is. Same with money, right? You can't go from, “I'm not making it paycheck to paycheck to I'm a millionaire.” You have to get to, “I can make it paycheck to paycheck, and then I can save, or I will be saving, or I am saving. I love saving.” Then you continue with the steps. People skip the steps. They're always trying to go to extremes.

Now, to answer your question in a broader context. If I'm doing things for a large group, for a book, or a keynote, or a larger conference, then you have to make sure you hit more pain points at the beginning, so that way, everyone can feel connected to the story, which gets them a little curious of like, “Hey, they seem to understand me. I wonder if I should listen, right?” Or, “Wow, they really pegged me. I should keep an open mind as I'm listening, or maybe they have an answer to a problem that I'm looking for.” You're trying to just peek that curiosity spike there.

In the field of experience design, we talk about designing for emotions. That's a very popular concept. If you look up experience design, emotional design is very big. I always design for curiosity. There's a big controversial discussion right now if curiosity is an emotion or not. That's a real thing. I'm of the mindset that curiosity is a state of being, which bundles a lot of different emotions. Some people will say, curiosity is an emotion itself. Anyways, that's probably beyond the scope of what you care about on this podcast.

Cristina Amigoni: That could be a whole podcast in itself.

Alex Cullimore: No, I like that a lot.

Kristin Malek: I know.

Cristina Amigoni: Now I'm actually thinking about that.

Kristin Malek: We could talk for hours. I'm such a geek about all of this stuff. I love it from all the different perspectives. Every field, which is often siloed, neuroscience and psychology and behavioral science, but they all overlap. I'm a true polymath. I love finding the overlaps and then combining them in ways that make a real impact.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I feel I'm going to go ahead and quickly, personally recover from the calling out of like, oh, I've definitely jumped the gun on the spectrum of going from like, oh, way too negative to trying to jump to the opposite, whether for myself, or to in suggestions to other people, or hopes for other people. It makes sense that there would be this like, go back to the beginning. Take some steps. Take some steps throughout. I like that idea of just poking, or peeking the curiosity through that immediate relatability first, so people can believe like, okay, you do understand where I'm at. You understand what I'm doing. That makes a lot of sense just from a relatability standpoint of, okay, you've been here. I might be able to trust what you have to say, because you do seem to understand what I feel internally I have experienced. That makes sense to go start there, and that's something that I think it's sometimes hard to have the patience for when you feel like where you want to go. It does make sense that maybe you can't just make the leap from negative a million to a positive a million.

Kristin Malek: As you can imagine, so many groups, so many associations, so many online community groups. I love the manifesting ones when people are on there and they're trying to manifest, and they're like, “This isn't working.” Everyone's just like, “Be stronger. Repeat it, visualize, put everything up on a poster, cut out everything.” There’s serious truth to that, and there's real brain science that supports manifesting. But they're skipping the part where it has to be believable. You have to truly believe it to have that energy to attract it. Everyone's skipping that step. They don't want to talk about it. That's the important step right there. It has to be believable.

Alex Cullimore: I like that a lot. The curiosity then allows you that space between what is next believable, even if it doesn't currently feel true and allows you to take that small step, rather than the curiosity that will be defeated in trying to leap the Grand Canyon on the one bound.

Kristin Malek: Exactly. Having some, I would say, movement words, especially if you're doing anything in writing, or speaking, or even for yourself for the future, it's hard to sit there when you're barely making your bills, right? Or, you hate working out, or running, or eating healthy, it's hard to use the I am language. That's what we always like to say. That's what we like to write. That's what we like to put in our emails and on our vision boards. You're like, “I am healthy. I am a person who loves working out.” It's just not true. Your brain doesn't see it as true. Having that movement language can really help you get there of like, “I am working. I am increasing. I am being a better person every day.” Having some of those, that movement language can really help. That also really helps in communication at any kind of marketing in books and in all of the things. Having movement language can really help move people along.

Cristina Amigoni: I had all sorts of thoughts. They're all gone.

Kristin Malek: I’ve changed your mind.

Cristina Amigoni: I know. Oh, yes. Now I got one back. Okay. The interesting part is that it sounds like, and I've experienced it myself, like for ourselves, we tend to go to the extreme, or we think that going to the extreme is what's going to work. Both ways, from positive to absolutely negative and from negative to absolutely positive, without taking the steps. Yet, I find that it's easy to recognize when somebody else is doing it and you're like, “But that's not going to work.” Why did you just go to the extreme? It doesn't make any sense.

Kristin Malek: Yes. It's definitely easier to tell in other people than ourselves. I think therapy has really figured this out. In so many ways, a lot of the training modalities, I'm trained as superficial, introductory level across three different therapy modes. One of the questions that all three of them tend to ask is, if your friend was in this situation, how would you advise them? Because it's always easier to see it objectively when it's somebody else and to give maybe a less emotional response. Because in our brains, we always like to make up stories, right? We like to fill in blanks. We like to find reasoning for the things that aren't reasonable. We like to find conclusion in whatever way that looks.

Our brains also feel negative a lot more. One piece of negative information actually takes 20 pieces of positive information to overact. When we're in an environment, I mean, at least in the United States, I can't speak globally, where a lot of our news is maybe fear-based or negative, it makes total sense to me why we're having mental health crises in so much of our country. Even in London. In London, there's, there's a minister of loneliness now. That's a real government position, because loneliness is so real.

When we're looking at information in our brain, having negative information takes 20 pieces of positive information. We do like to go to the extremes. I have a daughter, she's almost 10, she likes to do the what if. “Well, mom. What if this insert catastrophic situation happens?” We actually made a rule in our house, where we were like, every time you say a what if that's negative, you have to say a five what ifs that's positive. No, obviously, it's not 20, but it definitely makes her sit there and pause before she says this what if statement, right? She's like, “What if all my friends decide at school tomorrow that they're not going to play with me on the playground?” I'm like, what if tomorrow you're the most popular girl on the playground, right? Or, what if, all these positive things, and it drives you crazy. Now, there's almost no what if negative statements in my house. It helps. We're just retraining our brains, if that makes sense.

Cristina Amigoni: That helps a lot. Yeah. I'm glad that she's not around me with that what if, because I would have been like, “Well, that happened to me in third grade and in fifth grade, and then in freshman year in high school and freshman year in college. Then when I was 49-years-old, so brace yourself.”

Kristin Malek: Exactly. Well, you're also training, when you're making neurological pathways or connections between different points in your brain, if you're focused on negative things, you will accidentally call more negative things into your life, because that's the things you're focused on, right? You could have all these amazing things happening, or opportunities for amazing things happening. But if you're like, “Oh, I can't bid for that proposal. I'll never get it.” Or, “Oh, I should never apply for that job, because I'm not 100% qualified.” Or, “I should not go for that client.” You're just shoulding yourself to death. S-H-O-U-L-D. Shoulding.

Cristina Amigoni: We use that a lot on the podcast.

Kristin Malek: Putting yourself about it, right? Exactly. You want to focus on the positive in a believable, authentic way.

Cristina Amigoni: We've actually banned the word should and just from our company lingo.

Kristin Malek: Good. Absolutely. Everyone who's listening should also should, right?

Cristina Amigoni: Should just not use. Shouldn’t just.

Kristin Malek: Right. They should have also adopt those policies, right? You need to adopt those. If you say need, though, you're putting up barriers and blocks. Nobody likes to be told what they need to do, right? Language becomes really important.

Cristina Amigoni: You get to not use these words.

Kristin Malek: You have the wonderful opportunity to choose to elect this type of positive language in your company culture.

Alex Cullimore: I'm still hung up on the one to 20 ratio. I've heard one to 10 sometimes and that already felt insurmountable. Now it's doubled.

Kristin Malek: Well, sure there is, you know, if you're getting all nerdy and statistical, I'm sure there's some range depending on how negative the original mode is. If it's this level of negative, it only takes 10. If it's real fear-based, it takes 20, right? I'm sure there's a scale in there somewhere.

Cristina Amigoni: There's probably the level of positive that then comes into. If you're all the way to the negative, extreme negative and all the positives sounds like, “Well, it's not that bad.” Then you may need a hundred of those.

Kristin Malek: You two are so wonderful in what you do in working with teams and team culture. You already know some of the amazing research that's out there, that sits there and says, “Okay, if you're in a in-person environment, we've all heard the expression, I think at this point, you are the culmination of the six or seven people you hang around the most, whether you believe that or not.” The six people you hang around the most, you will pick up habits, behaviors, energies from them.

There's some really fascinating research that came out during the pandemic. Even being in an office environment with people that you're not actively interacting with, if you're around highly motivated people who are doing their work, that energy fills the air and then you are more productive and highly motivated. If you're surrounded by people who are – I still use the Facebook Farmville. That definitely dates me way back in the day. If you are sitting around people who are not motivated, they don't like their job, they're not happy, they don't want to be there, even if you are a highly motivated and productive person, your productivity actually drops. That's actual science research that's been done on that.

It's just really important to think about when you're talking about negative and positive, or energy, or environments, or climate, or culture, marketing, messaging. But it has to be believable. That's so important, right? I can think of all the companies I work with, and you have the president or the CEO and they send out their email, and they're like, “Everything is great.” You're like, “You don't understand my life. It's not true.” It has to be believable.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I think we've all received a few of those emails where like, “Everything's great.” Then just look around at the dumpster fires that are surrounding you and you're like, “Is it, though?” That’s true.

Cristina Amigoni: That's about seven days before a thousand people get laid off. I'm like, “I thought everything was great. What happened?”

Kristin Malek: For the toxic positivity, right? Toxic positivity on the whole other end with the spectrum of like, you just want to ignore everything. I mean, I am a positive person. I am a very forward-thinking visionary, generally happy person. Sometimes you have to acknowledge. You have to acknowledge it at the beginning, because you have to make that relatable. Like, “Hey, this climate sucks, but we are actively moving towards something better. We need your help to make all of this this better, because we're all part of it.” I love how we're going all over these topics.

Alex Cullimore: One thing I'm curious about is how this feels internally for you. What's your internal monologue like when you catch yourself in maybe a the time where you're like, “Yeah, I would like to change my own behavior on something, or here's something I'm realizing that I'm falling down a slope of something.” What does that sound like internally? Do you find these things useful? Do you catch yourself in them? Do you fall for the traps that we all end up falling for?

Kristin Malek: Yeah. It's a great question. I'm going to answer that in two parts. Because one, again, relatable. I think it will be super relatable to everybody in the situation they're in. Then, I'll give them now that I'm highly trained in these things, how I still go into it. When I was in my first neuroscience training, it was a very specific training. I spent $30,000 for a week. Insane how much some of this information is being kept. I was sitting there in this training. It was live, in-person. There was 20 people in the room. I’m learning about how our brain processes information, right? The conscious, unconscious mind. We're talking about filters. So, how our brain creates filters and what they mean.

The in-depth discussion is way beyond the script of this podcast, but essentially, your brain has no filters between zero and seven. Your brain takes everything is truth. At the time I took this training, my daughter was little. She’s three or four. I'm in this training. My first thought, I could so distinctly remember it. I put my head in my hands. I was like, “Oh, shit. How have I screwed up my child already?” I’m like, I was so like, “What ads has she seen? What arguments has she overheard? What’s on the billboards and the sign? What messages are in the cartoons? What are all these things?” Because the brain has no filter between zero and seven.

During that time period, your brain's taking everything is truth and it's creating all of these filters that will then dictate your entire life, unless you understand and acknowledge that they exist and actively work towards cleaning them, or removing them, or adjusting them. That was definitely my first thought is like, “Oh, no.” There was lots of expletives. I always have one on the podcast, but there was a lot in my brain, okay. I don't say expletives very often, but I was like, oh, my gosh. Then you have mom guilt, right? Parent guilt when you're like, “Oh, no. What's happened?”

Now, I'm so highly trained in all of this. I will tell you, you will always need a mirror back. You work through some of your things so unconsciously through your filters that you don't even realize that you're doing some things. That's how our body can function, because we have so many inputs way more, like 11 million inputs bits per second, that our body and our brain are trying to process. We can only actually handle 134 to 150. Then we talk about chunking, but that's beyond the scope here.

Our brains can only process this much. There's a huge difference. Our brains are creating these filters. I like to think about a coin star, or coin sorting machine where our brain has a filter, or a sorter that's like, okay, all this stuff is just getting straight deleted. It's the expression, did that go in one ear and out the other? You didn't even pay attention to it, because at some point you made a decision maybe when you were younger, maybe zero to seven, that you decided that this did not matter. Your brain is like, “I'm so overwhelmed. This doesn't matter. I'm just getting rid of it.”

Unfortunately, some of those things are actually really important. It's really helpful to have someone there to be like, “Hey, do you understand that you're doing this?” I always say self-awareness is the key to transformation. I always have a coach, or a therapist, or an accountability friend, or a community group where we can express things fully and where we're honest and direct and authentic with each other, where we're sitting there saying not out of hatred or criticism, but to be like, “Hey, I don't know if you know that you do this.” Self-awareness is the key to transformation.

I joined Toastmasters a long time ago for that. I didn't know that I had so many filler words, particularly so. I can kneel every time I say, and in this podcast, and there's a lot, okay? I'm also aware that I know that this is a problem. I just was.

Cristina Amigoni: What was AI to take them all out. Was it like, look for and and so from Kristin? Take them out.

Kristin Malek: Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: This is super [inaudible 0:33:51].

Kristin Malek: When I started Toastmasters, I didn't know I did that. It took somebody sitting there saying, “Do you know you said so 30 times in five minutes?” Me being like, “No, I didn't. I had no idea.” Sometimes you just need someone to point things out to you. That's where now I'm using that. Yes, I still have those issues. I'm much more open to surrounding myself with the right people who are going to be a good mirror back to me of things that I want to work on. That's a long answer.

Alex Cullimore: No, that's a great answer. It makes sense.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. On a total tangent, I'm a huge proponent of rather than the college fund for kids, the therapy fund for kids. It’s like, I can't go back in time, so let's start putting money into your future therapy needs, because also, especially at this point, who knows what's going to happen to college, given AI and technology changes? Let's put money into therapy fund.

Kristin Malek: Well, and I also think that could be a whole another podcast. I think so often, the end all be all therapy modality is CBT, which is very CBT therapy. It's very talk heavy. It's a talk therapy. When you actually realize that your brain is 5% conscious brain and 95% unconscious or subconscious brain, when you talk about why isn't therapy working, or I'm just doing a lot of talking and nothing's changing, CBT therapy is only targeting that 5%. It takes a long time, if ever, to actually have effective change. It depends on how much you can actually talk through your unconscious, or subconscious mind, which will change from person to person.

There's all these other therapy modalities now that most people aren't even talking about. Internal family systems is probably the one that I start recommending IFS to everybody who's wanting to start working with their unconscious, or subconscious brain. A lot of times, people like to go to EMDR and tapping and those are very valid. I find them to be more of a support for things that you're working for. There's a reason why a lot of EMDR therapists are now training in IFS, or internal family systems, because internal family systems can really help sort through what's actually happening in your unconscious brain. Then EMDR and tapping can help reinforce that.

Anyways, that's Kristin Malek's Dr. K's unofficial recommendations. You take that. If you're like, “No, I'm such a huge proponent,” awesome. I'm so glad that works for you. That's just what I found over the years with a lot of different people.

Alex Cullimore: What are your recommendations? But yeah, it’s good.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly. Well, having started my therapy journey way too late in life, about almost a year ago, at this point, definitely way too late in life. Having started with a combination of EMDR and IFS, I could definitely see how those are for me, especially more powerful and helpful than just straight talk therapy.

Kristin Malek: Well, and I think in talk therapy, it's first of all, we have a huge shortage of therapists in our world, and especially in the United States. When you're talking about talk therapy, it's so dependent on the training of the therapist. Where, are they asking the right questions? How are they connecting with you? What's the rapport they built, blah, blah, blah?

Internal family systems, it's really a facilitation of your conversation with yourself. It's a totally different mindset where they're just asking the questions of like, well, percentages, or how does that feel? Or, you have some of that woo-woo fringe stuff that's actually really important for the unconscious mind, that's in a very science-backed method. Sematic therapy is the same as well, but I recommend that maybe after IFS, or EMDR. Yeah. When I was in my end of podcast, I didn't know it would be a whole therapy thing, but this is so great. This is wonderful.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, the conversations are either providing some therapy, or talking about therapy.

Cristina Amigoni: Or recommending therapy. We're sharing our journey with therapy.

Kristin Malek: Yes. I actually use a lot of different techniques when I'm designing mindset and behavior change. Whether that's sound. I am actually a sound healer. I'm certified through sound healing. I'll use sound as a reinforcement. I'll use techniques in IFS, or breath work, or not as the main part, but as a reinforcing, or opening of mindset, or getting rid of some of the overwhelm to get people a little more grounded before we work on some. I use a lot from a lot of different fields. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: That's awesome. I'm actually going to a two and a half hour sound healing session tonight.

Kristin Malek: Yay. I'm actually sitting. You can't tell from this view, but I'm sitting in my event media right now, and we have a corporate group in here tomorrow that is going to do a sound path in the morning for their employees. That's fun.

Cristina Amigoni: That's awesome. That's really cool. All right, so back to behavior change.

Kristin Malek: That's all behavior change, too. It's just different types, right?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. The other thought that I had out there that came back is, and we talked about corporate messaging a little bit. Going back to corporate messaging, one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to communication, especially in corporate is this expectation that because we only speak to the conscious mind, or at best, we speak to the conscious mind in corporate communication a lot, that there's a tendency to say like, well, here's a message with all the details that you possibly need to know, and that's it. Now, let's change behavior. Then it doesn't happen for many, many reasons. Then there's frustration that it doesn't happen. But the behavior of doing communication differently doesn't actually change.

Kristin Malek: Yeah, absolutely. When I try to tell people what I do and I'm like, “Yeah, I changed mindset and behavior,” and they're like, “Oh, you're a change manager.” I have so many feelings about it. I have training in change management. It is really enlightening to explain to people the differences between change management and changing behavior. Change management typically is focused more on the conscious mind. It's focused on processes and procedures, trying to minimize disruptions, trying to make sure that we're all on the same ship, and that ship is moving in the right direction altogether.

There's a lot of, I don't want to say micromanaging, but that's how it can feel sometimes, right? That's change management. Behavior change and mindset change is different depending on what the changes that we're desiring, right? Sometimes I say, okay, this needs to be top-down. For example, a policy of not sending emails on the weekends. That has to be top-down. That's not going to be a bottom-up. You're not going to have someone in a low level be like, “I have decided the whole company is going to do this.” There's things that have to be top down, right? That can be a real struggle.

I was working with a leader a couple of years ago, where she was all grassroots. Everything had to have support from the bottom coming up. I was like, no. Sometimes in this situation, it has to be top-down, right? Then, there are many times where it should be bottom-up. Then you have to decide, is it a department, or a subset, or a committee that's bottom-up? Or is it everybody that's bottom-up? Which becomes really interesting in large, large institutions and organizations.

My favorite thing that I'm contacted about, my absolute favorite thing, is when people come to me and they're like, “We have decided we are now a values-based organization, right?” I'm just like, the number of times –

Alex Cullimore: Yesterday we were something else.

Kristin Malek: - I confront that, right?

Cristina Amigoni: We were officially given the sash and the sword and was it all nice?

Kristin Malek: Exactly. We are a values-based organization, right? I'm like, okay, awesome. Explain to me what that means. Because having the training that I have in conscious and unconscious, so the conscious mind, that 5% is logic reasoning and creativity. That's why you also see a lot of organizations that are like, “We are going to try to cultivate curiosity,” because they know it's something they can measure and control, because it's conscious mind.

When you actually talk about, okay, goal setting happens in your conscious mind. “I am going to wake up tomorrow and I'm going to work out.” New Year's resolutions, right? All of the sales goals, they're all conscious mind, right? Then when you sit there a week later and you're like, “Oh, I haven't worked at once. Oh, I still grabbed that bag of Doritos, or whatever.” You're like, “Why didn't that work?” It's because you're unconscious mind, which is your patterns, your beliefs, your values. That's what's running the structure of the ship.

When you talk about, I'm now a values-based organization, okay, those are leaders that understand the importance of values. They understand that values are important to actually getting to the decision, but they're going about it completely wrong. They had some executive meeting on a board retreat, or they had some committee somewhere that's five people, and they're like, decide what our values are. Then they spend months tweaking the language. They put in a fancy slide deck, or a report, and then they send it out.

Cristina Amigoni: Posters.

Kristin Malek: Right? They send it out. You're laughing, because you know.

Cristina Amigoni: All right, let me see the eagle, and then there's the bear on the posters.

Kristin Malek: It's their show.

Alex Cullimore: Like all, after they come back with, “Excellent. Professionals.”

Kristin Malek: Then they're like, “These are our values. We have both these values.” Then they have a printout, they put it up in the employee worker room, and they're like, and it's in the training. You have a little business card you carry around with you, right? But it never works, it never sticks, because they've got about it completely wrong, right? There's so much other values. I'm like, okay, let's take everything you know about being a values-based organization, and let's actually look at what that means. Let's start with your employees, let's start with the people that run the ship. What are their values?

Then there's a lot of training around that, because I think I know a lot of people, a lot of people think that they just have one set of values that guide their life, and that's completely wrong. If I sat there and said, Alex, what are your values? Or Cristina, what are your values? You're going to start to name the important things on what we call the wheel of life, right? If you Google Wheel of Life, it's a very popular concept and term. It typically ranges between six and 10 things, but you have family, spirituality, personal development, career, relationships, right? You have these different wheels of life.

When I ask you what your values are, oftentimes, you give me a segment of life, right? You give me, well, family, and spirituality are really, really – that's what I value. But it's actually incorrect. That's how we really struggle with becoming a values-based organization, because we actually, in ourselves, we have a different set of values within each wheel of life, right? How I run my family, how I run my relationship, how I run my professional and personal development, and my career, they all have different sets of values.

In career, maybe I'm achievement, or money or success-oriented, which I'm not. It's actually a problem sometimes. Those would never be values that I have for my family. Then, when you look at corporations who are like, were values-based, they are like, “Yes, well, we have surveyed our employees, and they say that family is really important to them. So, we're going to become a family-based organization.” I'm like, no. That is not what you're going to become like.

Cristina Amigoni: Then force everybody to come to the office five days a week.

Kristin Malek: Exactly. Then they'll sit there and say, “Yeah. Well, our employees really care about family so all of our reward systems now we're going to be around, it’s like getting one extra day off, or having this family benefit plan within our employee resources.” That's just not true. You have to ask the right questions like, what are the values for you when it comes to your career? What's most important to you when it comes to your career? Actually, look at all of those things, and then have grassroots, or bottom-up approach of like, okay, all of the people that are part of our company, or at the top 50% of people in our company, they all have these values that are aligned. Or this department has these values, and this department has these values.

Then you're bringing it up where now everybody, similar to pain points, they see themselves in those values, right? If they don't see themselves in your values, then maybe they're not a top performer, or maybe they would be best served in another company. Maybe that's a good turnover to have. Then really focus on like, okay, what are values that we want our company that we feel as an executive team are important to us that are not currently top values within our employees? Can we express the importance, or do trainings, or workshops or talk about values, or help people understand this? And have that mindset or behavior change in that way.

It's a totally different approach than that initial email of one people. They're just like, “Tell me the process to make sure this is the value of our company.” That's not exactly how it works, right? You can print it out and put it on the employee break room wall, but that does not mean that that's going to be a value that your company is a special thing every day.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it's a great example. It is interesting to know how different it is in family life. You don't take achievement in finance into your family life. It's not your number one goal.

Kristin Malek: I mean, my daughter has to be able to eat, right? I have to pay the bill, right? But yeah, I don't want that to be a value, because that's a value of security, right? I have to pay the bills. No, provide opportunity for her to do the things that she wants to do, and that's a whole different value alignment, right?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. That's a great way to look at it.

Alex Cullimore: Now, if we can just take this and apply it to giant things, like climate change and AI, we'll be good.

Kristin Malek: There's definitely groups of people who are trying to tackle this sticky, those hard problems. It's so funny, because when you talk about climate change, like I'm part of a couple groups of helping with some messaging, right? I've been contracted through a couple groups. The real issue with climate change is that we all live on one planet and one world, right? Every country impacts that. Every country has different rules and regulations.

You could get everybody, even within the United States, for the listeners here who are global, on the east coast, in the northeast, in Boston and Cape Cod, and on the west coast, like in California and Seattle and Portland, there's no plastic bags, right? There's no plastic bags. There's no plastic straws. Everything is not even – In Cape Cod, you have to pay for paper bags. That's in the United States, right? Then I'm in Nebraska here where it's all the things, right? It's all plastic straws. It's all the plastic bags. It's all the, what do you mean recycling? That's not even part of our thing. We're not tracking any of this stuff.

I just had a family member visit from California and we went to the storage. She literally held up a plastic bag and was like, “People still use these?” It was such a – That's within one country, right? Now, you talk about globally. I call it a fun problem, because I get really energized by mindset behavior change. It's such an interesting thing to think about how best to approach it, especially in today's day and age, because the answer is you can't do it through technology, because not everyone gets the same information. Then you have to go to a mailer campaign, but then a mailer campaign is paper, which is trees, which is hurting the problem, right? It's a sticky problem, but those are the things that you'll learn about, right?

Alex Cullimore: Well, maybe we could all just become a value-based earth and then we'd be fine.

Kristin Malek: Exactly. Exactly. How do you reach everyone to align those values? Truth work.

Alex Cullimore: To have three people decide them for the globe. It'll be fine.

Kristin Malek: Exactly. It'll all be fine. Everyone in the world will listen to this podcast and then they'll have a aha moment, and then the world will be better.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Just like that.

Kristin Malek: Just like that.

Cristina Amigoni: I'm thinking Hunger Games types of in-the-sky announcements. We're going to have to be –

Kristin Malek: You know, I'm going to journal about that tonight, Cristina. That's a good idea.

Alex Cullimore: Canada blast goes off, “This value is no longer valuable.”

Cristina Amigoni: Everybody sees it. Exactly.

Kristin Malek: Yes. Yes. We're just going to create a whole force field that we can project stuff on. As long as it's the good stuff, right? Because the company that makes that is going to be a big corporation and then it's going to be like selling advertisements every 10 seconds. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Of the plastic bags that you're trying to eliminate.

Kristin Malek: Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: Is that Orion next to that Nike ad? Who's to say?

Kristin Malek: I am totally – Oh, my gosh. I'm going to have some sound clip from this on my LinkedIn. It’s so great.

Cristina Amigoni: It's Orion jumping on Nike, strapping on the Nike shoes. Check that out.

Kristin Malek: In the future, it's sad. This is the sci-fi that we write today that's going to happen in 20 years.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, it's totally going to happen. There's no way it's not.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I think we’re just writing a Black Mirror episode right now.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, we definitely have at least seven other tangents that we started and said like, this is not a scope for this episode, so we may need more than one episode.

Kristin Malek: That's okay, because the people know you and they know now me and they are going to follow all of your content and they're going to follow us both online. We're going to talk about how we can create the global screencast system. It's going to be great.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Indeed. Without the Hunger Games. Just the screencast. Yeah, for sure. Last couple of questions for you. One is, what's your definition of authenticity?

Kristin Malek: Authenticity to me is being, like knowing your values, being aligned with your values, and living your values. All of those are important. I think when people talk about authenticity, it's like, well, being yourself, right? Authenticity is being yourself. Most often, people don't actually truly know who they are, right? There's a really interesting study done through Google. I believe it was their vice president of HR, or said it was done a couple years ago. They were looking at the common threads between all their top performers, right? They looked at all their top performers and they said, what's the common thread between them?

It wasn't education. It wasn't language. It wasn't any of these things that we would naturally gravitate towards. They found that it was their level of self-awareness. Then they did a study of more of their employees, right? It was an astounding statistic. It was 90% of people, and don't quote me. Like 85% to 95%. It was up there. 85% to 95% of people thought they were self-aware, but they actually were not self-aware. If you do a 360 study, people have this filter, or this view of themselves that maybe not is how they're actually living out in their lives. 

I like to think of my daughter for this, where she's like, “I'm a good-in-kind person. I don't know why people don't want to play with me.” It's like, oh, okay, let's talk about behaviors, right? Let's talk about your tone and your language and how you're snapping and how you are like, “I only want to play the games I want to play. I'm not going to compromise. I'm not going to do all these things.” She's like, “Oh.” Sometimes things that we just think are just so innate. I think that knowing piece is really important. Truly knowing who you are, how you operate, what your values are. Then consciously and unconsciously living those values is truly what is authentic, right?

I'm the same person with you all on this podcast as I am with you in person, as I am with my partner, as I am with my daughter, as I am with my colleagues, as I am with my employees, right? I'm the same Kristin. I have the same problems. Now, that doesn't mean that I share every wheel of life with every person, right? I don't need my daughter knowing about this, this, and this over here. And I don't need my colleague knowing about this, and this, and this with my daughter, right? I'm not lying about it, right? I'm not intentionally covering it up. It's just a section that I'm choosing not to share. I think that's a really important differentiation. When you think of, maybe you can't define what authentic means, but you can definitely think of someone at some point in your life who has been inauthentic, and you know it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. That's pretty obvious.

Kristin Malek: Oh, my gosh. I was a professor at a school that I'm not at now, a different school. There was a faculty member there and everybody loved her. Not to throw shade right now, but I'm sitting there like, “That?” I don't understand why everybody loved her, because the version of her that I was seeing was the one that was complaining about students all the time and this person's this and this person's this. She's just a very bitter, negative person. Why is every – 

I was a guest speaker for somebody, or I was attending some panel in her class. I showed up 10 minutes early, and I was just sitting in the back of the room waiting for this presentation, or whatever. I totally got it then. Because she was a totally, like it was a face, it was a mask when she was standing up there and she was like, “Oh, my God. Blah, blah, blah.” So positive, so happy, so forward-thinking, right? Totally not the same person. The minute she would leave the students, she'd be like, “Er-rr-rr.” That’s the only version I saw of her. When I sat in there, I was like, oh, I understand now. I understand why all those students are like, “Oh, my gosh. We love her. She's so great.” It was like two totally different people.

It was really eye opening for me in that moment of wow, people – sometimes we know that people act different, or we say they’re two-faced, or they’re inauthentic. But to have it there in your face was so extreme. I'm like, I’m never, ever going to be that person.

Cristina Amigoni: It's true, though. It's so obvious, especially when you know somebody and then you see them putting a mask, or an armor, or whatever it is on and you're like, “I don't know this person. If I had met this version of you, we would not be speaking.”

Kristin Malek: Exactly.

Cristina Amigoni: There would be no interaction here.

Kristin Malek: I think that self-awareness part is so important, because you change throughout life, right? I'm not the same person I was before I had a child. Then when I had my child and I was a full-time employee, versus being a business owner and then having a child and being the breadwinner and all of these things. Your values can adjust and change, just like your love languages, right, for those familiar with love languages. My love language was definitely quality time before having a child.

Then after having a child, a majority of women by research, acts of service jumped up there, right? I just want you to do something that I don't happen to call you to do, right? We acknowledge that we can change with people. We can acknowledge that our love language has changed, but values can also – you have a core set of values in all these areas, but they can adapt and flow and change in priority, and self-awareness really helps you to understand that of like, oh, okay. I didn't have money as a value. So, I wasn't making the ask for closing the deal. But I do have a value of being able to provide for my family and give my daughter opportunities, and that requires money. That money needs to move up, or it needs to get linked neurologically. I need a neural pathway that links the two of those together, so I can actually make decisions and behaviors that align with this value, which is a value that I didn't think I aligned with, right? That was such a long, wonderful –

Cristina Amigoni: It’s very fascinating.

Kristin Malek: - word to just your very simple question of define authenticity.

Cristina Amigoni: Is it simple, though?

Alex Cullimore: It's not so simple.

Kristin Malek: Yeah, right? It's not. That's why you're writing a book about it. I'm so glad.

Cristina Amigoni: Where can people find you?

Kristin Malek: That's such a great question. I feel like, I'm everywhere now. Simple answers, like you can go to bcdinstitute.com, Behavior Change Design, BCD Institute. I have really quite a large LinkedIn following. A lot of people like to follow me on LinkedIn. But I ask if you're going to look me up on LinkedIn, Kristin Malek. I'm sure it'll be in the show notes. Hit the three buttons and hit connect. Don't just follow, right? Because I love to see your content, too. People who listen to this podcast are interested in the same things that I'm interested in. I want to follow your content. If you just click follow, that just means you get my content, but I want yours as well.

Since I'm like an influencer, creator, whatever the category is, you have to do two steps to connect with me. Connect with me on LinkedIn, Kristin Malek, and then my email’s on the website, my other socials and all that stuff's on there. LinkedIn's my big one. Then the website. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Awesome. Thank you.

Kristin Malek: Yes, for sure.

Alex Cullimore: Thanks for sharing all these thoughts, Kristin. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in.

Kristin Malek: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Kristin Malek: Thanks for having me. This is so much fun. When your demand for this podcast is so high, which it will be, because we're –

Cristina Amigoni: Definitely will be.

Kristin Malek: We're manifesting that. Then, we're going to have to do a part two and we’ll dive in much deeper. Everyone's going to reach out with questions. It's going to be great.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. We do have to be like –

Alex Cullimore: We’ll have at least seven parts we could do.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. There's a whole one on curiosity. Emotion or not emotion?

Kristin Malek: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: Then, I'm sure there'll be others.

Kristin Malek: Oh, my gosh. If we did a debate on that, that would be fascinating. Because I am definitely on an island, but I'm also the one that's cross-trained in all the different fields. Whereas, some people come from a very purist perspective of like, no, experience design is emotional design. Anyways –

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe we should do a panel with Lynn and people like that.

Kristin Malek: It’s going to be fun. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks for having me. This is so wonderful.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you, Kristin.

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks for listening.

[END OF EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We are Siamo. That is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. If you would like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions, or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com, or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is @wearesiamo, S-I-A-M-O. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or, I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anyhow.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. We'd to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you, and Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you, guys, so much for listening. Tune in next time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you.

[END]