The Sage Solutions Podcast Highlights of 2025: Part 4

We explore how emotions drive action, why confident vulnerability is strength, and how to turn tiny steps into momentum. We define real boundaries, explain pragmatic optimism without toxic positivity, examine sticky cognitive biases, and show how resolve and grit shape your legacy through daily choices.

• emotions as the engine behind behavior
• confident vulnerability and open body language
• practical tools for gym insecurity and activation energy
• friction, inertia, momentum, and habit formation
• clear boundary definitions and graceful enforcement
• pragmatic optimism with contingency planning
• love, connection, and legacy built by small daily acts
• grief as validation and an invitation to live fully
• cognitive biases that stall change and how to counter them
• resolve powering discipline; grit as a trainable muscle

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The Sage Solutions Podcast and content posted by David Sage is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. No coaching client relationship is formed by listening to this podcast. No Legal, Medical or Financial advice is being given. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice, diagnosis, or treatment of a psychotherapist, physician, professional coach, Lawyer or other qualified professional. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. The opinions of guests are their own and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the podcast.

Transcript

Mission And Call To Action

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Sage Solutions podcast, where we talk about all things personal growth, personal development, and becoming your best self. My name is David Sage, and I am a self-worth and confidence coach with Sage Coaching Solutions. Rounding out our short little series of highlights, this is the fourth and final episode of our Highlights of 2025. So let's jump in. But before we get into it, our goal with this podcast is to share free, helpful tools with you and anyone you know who is looking to improve their life. So take action.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Subscribe and share this podcast with them.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Right? Our actions, our decisions, generally. I mean, you make logical decisions too, but our behavior and our actions are motivated by emotions and feelings. Everyone is like that. You are not the exception. Everyone works that way. And once we accept that, then why would having an understanding, an awareness, an intelligence, some control over your emotions be a weakness if almost everything that you do is driven by emotions and feelings, then having some awareness and intelligence and ability to regulate those things gives you much more power over your ability to actually do the things that you want to do in your life. And everyone else is the same. We all have our feelings and emotions. So sharing through being vulnerable or being open about your emotions in a socially intelligent manner is strength because it connects you to other people. It's strength because it takes courage. If you think about body language, I want you to picture someone who's feeling insecure.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

In my mind, I see someone who has their head down, they're maybe have their arms crossed in front of their body, their back is hunched over, they're looking at the ground. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

They are protecting all of their vulnerable spots with that body language. If somebody were to attack them, they are already protecting all of their vulnerable to attack regions of their body. Meaning that when you're insecure, you subconsciously want to protect yourself and hide and not be vulnerable. What does confident body language look like?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

I'm picturing somebody with their chest lifted, their shoulders down with ease, their chin and eyes lifted, kind of like strutting and very open.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

In this body language, their heart is exposed, their organs are exposed, they're not blocking themselves with their arms, their neck is exposed. They're not in a guarded position, they're actually in a very vulnerable position because they feel secure. Vulnerability in language, when done in a socially intelligent manner, is the same. Vulnerability is a powerful tool towards confidence because it requires courage. People who aren't confident and are insecure aren't going to be vulnerable because they're feeling guarded, they're feeling insecure. Being vulnerable in a socially intelligent manner actually shows confidence because it takes courage.

Overcoming Gym Insecurity

SPEAKER_02 4:40

And here is my scenario. I just recently started working out, but I feel super self-conscious at the gym. How do people push through that phase?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Just a couple quick questions about this hypothetical man in his 20s. Um, what is his relationship status?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

I'm a single man.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Okay. Has this individual had relationships in the past?

SPEAKER_02 5:10

He has, but nothing very successful. And he really wants, he's seeking a relationship.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

So there's a short-term answer and there's a long-term answer, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

The short-term answer is in order to achieve the goal of going to the gym, take steps to reduce the friction and to make yourself not feel as insecure. If you need to wear some baggy clothes, like sweatpants and a sweatshirt, so that you don't look at yourself in the mirror and, you know, body shame yourself so that you don't do the work, then do it. If your primary goal is to get strong, it is literally building a muscle. I'm not going to go through like the sets and reps and stuff he should do, but it's the same ideology that we talk about in Life is Like a Muscle. It's going to be consistency. It's going to be showing up. Life is like a muscle, so take action and build it. Optimize for action. It's not going to be pretty immediately. There aren't switch flips that are going to immediately make you not feel insecure in the gym if you feel insecure about your body. Now, in the meantime, you can do a lot of things like give yourself some self-compassion when you have those thoughts. Become aware of your self-talk and reframe it into things like, I am getting stronger, not I am not strong. You can start changing self-limiting beliefs. You know, this is what we handle in the coaching, but it's a process. It takes time. You can't just switch all of your beliefs and your self-talk overnight. You can play music that makes you feel pumped up and more confident while you're there so that it helps distract you so that you're more in the zone at the gym. There's nothing wrong with using tips and tricks and hacks if they get you to do it, you know? Five second rule when you're thinking about not going to the gym and you're thinking, oh, I'm going to feel so small and insecure. Stop thinking about that. 5-4-3-2-1, put your shoes on, go. A lot of action is really about activation energy. What is the minimum viable action that you can get yourself to do? Emotion causes motion. Okay, so action.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

How we feel drives what we do, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

What we do also has a major effect on how we feel.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Yeah, makes sense.

Physics Of Action: Friction To Momentum

What Boundaries Really Are

Pragmatic Optimism Explained

Legacy, Love, And Daily Choices

Grief As Love And Wake-Up Call

Optimism Without Toxic Positivity

When Pessimism Is Useful

Resolve, Discipline, And Showing Up

Cognitive Biases That Keep You Stuck

Grit Is A Trainable Muscle

Closing Highlights And Reminders

SPEAKER_00 7:54

So if you can get yourself through a burst of willpower, through feeling inspired, through the five-second rule, or any other means to start the action, the minimum viable action. Oftentimes the motivation and emotion causing the motivation will come with it. This concept of the physics of action, where we talk about inertia, momentum, friction, the ideas, I mean, I guess we can touch on those. Reduce the friction and all of the things that would prevent it. Make it as easy as possible to go to the gym, right? Second would be inertia. Inertia is the day-to-day. An object at rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Once you have started, once you've done the activation energy, the ignition of the car, you tend to stay in motion. When you're at rest and you haven't started, you're much more likely to stay at rest. If you've even started the smallest piece of what you can do, whether it's writing a book and you write one word, you're much more likely to write the rest of the sentence. Once you start, once you take that minimum viable action, you are much more likely to stay in motion because the emotion then comes. And then momentum is really like inertia over time. So in physics, momentum is the force behind a moving object. It is mass times velocity. When it comes to action, you are accumulating mass through multiple days of inertia, hence inertia over time. So if inertia is whether you're in motion or at rest during the day of or hour of or whatever in the moment, momentum is like, hey, I did the thing yesterday that makes it easier to do it today because I've started a momentum. There's some weight behind what I'm doing. And the more days in a row that you start that you keep doing it, you build momentum. And then eventually you build the habit. And once the force of habit kicks in, it becomes automatic. And while you're there, you might as well start using some of the strategies for intrinsic motivation while you're doing it. So that you start building this sense of motivation towards wanting to do it in and of itself. And while you're doing it, you're building the skills like grit and discipline and willpower. What exactly is a boundary? I think we hear the word thrown around a lot. But the definition can feel a bit fuzzy. Simply put, a boundary is the line where you end and someone else begins. It's not a wall you build to shut people out. It's not a sanction or a punishment or arbitrary rules that you set on other people. It's a gate you install and you get to decide who and what you let in. Boundaries are the guidelines and the rules you create for yourself that dictate what is reasonable, safe, and permissible for other people's behavior towards you and how you'll respond when someone crosses those lines. They can be physical, like needing personal space. They can be emotional, like not being willing to be somebody's emotional dumping ground. They can be about your time, like not taking work calls after 7 p.m. And here's the crucial part. Not having boundaries doesn't make you a nicer or better person. It makes you a more tired, more resentful, and more burned out person. You teach people how to treat you through your actions, your language, and your boundaries. But even when you do it perfectly, it's easy to feel like, okay, now what do we do? It's gonna be really awkward after this. Unless a major boundary was crossed, and it is a very big deal, which is a very different situation than what we've been talking about. Especially if you're setting it for the first time. If you're just looking to clearly set that boundary, get them to acknowledge and understand, or whatever you need to do, and then move on. It's your job then to not be awkward about it. Just move on to another topic. Talk about other things as if nothing happened. You just took a pause, you set that line, and then you kept on with your your conversation. There's no need for them to feel embarrassed or punished or awkward because that's not the point. Oftentimes people are worried that you're still feeling this residual feeling and holding it over them. So the best thing that you can do is move on and just act normal. Because it doesn't really need to be addressed unless it comes up again. And when that happens, you hold firm to that boundary. But let's take this one step further to get down to the core of it. Being realistic is good. In the next section, I'm going to explain all of the benefits of optimism. So if optimism is good and being realistic is good, how do we take it to the next level? Being practical, taking action. Pragmatism is the combination of being realistic and practical. Not just being realistic, but using that information in a usable, practical, helpful way. This is where we land on pragmatic optimism. Realistic practical optimism. To help support this, I'm gonna pull in a third book by Dr. Sue Varma called Practical Optimism. This is where the rubber meets the road. It's about embracing a mindset that expects good things to happen, but it's actively coupled with a willingness to work hard, to adapt, and to troubleshoot when things don't go according to plan. It's the entrepreneur who believes her business will succeed, while also creating the contingency plans to make sure that it does when the market downturns. It's the student who believes he'll pass the final exam and therefore creates a rigorous study schedule to make it happen. It's faith paired with action. Pragmatic optimism is a very rational approach, both based on a historical context and the fact that you are doing realistic practical things to actually make that optimistic future happen, making it much more likely. So the key takeaway here is this. The optimism pessimism spectrum deals with our expectation of outcomes and our hope. The realistic idealistic spectrum deals with our assessment of reality. Pragmatic optimism merges the best of both worlds and makes it practical. An expectation of positive outcomes tempered by the clear eyed view of what needs to be done, followed by the execution to make it happen. Because it's a heavy one. What story would your children tell their own kids about who you were? What would your colleagues say? Not in a formal eulogy, but over coffee, about the kind of person you were in your day-to-day life. This, my friends, is the topic we're diving into today. The legacy that you are leaving, and more importantly, are you living your life right now in a way that creates it? Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period. Sitting here, in the midst of this grief, I can tell you that I've never felt the truth of that statement more deeply. In the end, all you have is the love that you've given and the love that you've received. The quality of your connections is a huge part of the quality of your life. And it also happens to be the foundation of your legacy. The amount of people that visited John during his cancer journey illustrated more clearly to me than anything I've ever seen that he was a living embodiment of the legacy that you are leaving. Now his life wasn't perfect, but he spent a lot of his time investing in relationships with people. He put those relationships first. And the return on that investment will be a room full of people overflowing with love and gratitude for the man that he was. What more could any of us hope for? The hard part is living that truth when you're not in this moment of crisis and pain. How do we hold on to this clarity when the urgent notifications and demands of daily life come screaming back? Now I don't have all the answers. I'm taking this a day at a time. But I can share what this experience is teaching me. The biggest lesson is this. Don't wait. Don't wait for a tragedy to tell people how you feel about them. Don't wait until you retire to spend time on what you love doing. Don't wait for a diagnosis to start prioritizing your well-being. The legacy that you want to leave has to be built today. It might be it might be built between 8 and 9 AM when you choose to make your kid breakfast instead of checking your email. It's built on your lunch break when you call your mom or significant other just to say hi. It's built at 7 PM when you put your phone away and listen, truly listen, to how your partner's day went. So here's the challenge for you and for me. First, let's stop thinking of our legacy as some grand future project. Instead, let's start asking a simple daily question. In any given moment, with any choice, we can ask ourselves, is this action building the legacy I want to leave? Is scrolling on Instagram for twenty minutes building it? Is gossiping about a coworker building it? Is staying late to finish a task that could wait until tomorrow building it? These questions weren't meant to inspire guilt. They're meant to be a compass, a gentle nudge back towards your own North Star. And second, let's look at our calendars for the next week with these new eyes. Not with the eyes of a productivity machine, but with the eyes of a mortal human being who's going to make mistakes and has a finite amount of precious time. Where in your schedule have you made time for the people who are truly important to you? Where is the space for connection, for joy, for presence? If it's not there, the good news is that you are the one who holds the key, the pen. And you can open the door. You can write it in. Maybe it means scheduling a non-negotiable family dinner. Maybe it means blocking out one evening for yourself to read or walk or just be still. Maybe it's putting a recurring fifteen minute reminder in your calendar to call a friend. These are the small hinges that swing the big doors of a life. John's legacy wasn't built in one grand gesture. It was built over a lifetime of showing up, of telling jokes, and of just being there. Grief is a heavy, painful thing. And if you're going through it like I am, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to the episode that we did on grief, which featured my wife, Hannah, as she talked about the grief of losing her father, and how it was a heavy pain. Painful thing and that it takes time. But if we let grief have time, it can also be a gift. It's another expression of love. It can be an invitation to wake up, to live with more intention, more love, and less fear, to honor those that we've lost by living our own lives more fully. John's story has now been written, but his legacy, his kindness, his caring, his humor, his unwavering support that lives on in me and in everyone that he loved will live on. We started today with a heavy question. What will your story be? And the beautiful, empowering truth is that you are the author. Your legacy is not something that happens to you when you die. It is something that you are creating. Right now, with every choice you make, every word you speak, and every action that you take. Your story is still being written. Every single day you are the author. So I ask you, what is the story you want to tell? And I urge you to make it a story of love, of courage, of connection, and integrity. A story that outlasts you. So start writing it today. Okay, next question. I really like your concept of pragmatic optimism. It's powerful. But does embracing it mean that we have to constantly be happy or even like suppress our negative emotions? Can you explain the pragmatic or realistic way of dealing with feelings like sadness or grief without letting them erode our overall optimism? Okay, so this is another really interesting question. And it allows me an opportunity to explain a couple things about pragmatic optimism a little bit more in depth. To be clear, I am advocating for pragmatic optimism as a general default. Pessimism is not necessarily a bad thing. You can still utilize pessimism as a tool. What I'm suggesting is that we use pragmatic optimism as our default and that we will have a happier, healthier, and more successful life as a result of it. But that doesn't mean you have to be happy and optimistic all of the time. In fact, I do think that there are times that pessimism makes more sense. I think taking an optimistic point of view to somebody who is going through a very painful thing in the moment is generally a poor choice. Because it can feel like you are minimizing the pain that they feel, like you are making their feelings not valid. It it can border on toxic positivity. While I do think finding, you know, silver linings here and there can be a helpful part of it. It's very important that you are validating their emotions and their feelings because those are valid. It's not helpful to constantly be positive. Similar to pragmatic optimism, I think it is much better to have positivity be your default. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that. Just like anything else, you need to apply shades of gray. I think another area where optimism is actually not the more helpful thing is in planning. I think if you are planning for a trip or an outing, you should actually start with a pragmatic pessimism. What is everything that could go wrong? I believe there's a term for it. It's called Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong will. So operate as if Murphy's Law was true and try and mitigate anything that's realistically possible that can go wrong will actually cause much better planning. Some companies do this, it's called red teaming. So I think realistic, pragmatic pessimism can have some use in planning situations. In fact, another area where I feel optimism is not the right choice is in timing. It's in planning for something to not be late. I think this is one of optimism's weakest points, and it's something I struggle horribly with. I am not good at this. It's easy to take an optimistic outlook about getting somewhere on time. And the problem with that is then you are not planning for any of the things that could go wrong. But pragmatic optimism is going to mitigate many of the negatives that come from an idealistic optimism and give you all of the benefits of being a in-general optimist, of being the type of person that attracts other people to you, that has a positive outlook, that brightens people's day. And optimists tend to be more successful, tend to have better health, and overall tend to be happier. All of those things are things we want. And as we covered, it can be learned, it can be practical, it can be realistic, and when we combine all of those things, that's how we come to pragmatic optimism as our default, as our general operating system, so that we have a happier, healthier, more successful life. So, in short, no, I don't believe that you have to be happy or positive or even optimistic all of the time. I think selective use of pragmatic pessimism can also be very useful, whether it be for time planning, whether it be for planning for a trip, or even for if you're planning for your health. But as we covered in our previous episode titled Pragmatic Optimism, it is clearly the most beneficial to be a pragmatic optimist as our default outlook. When things go wrong, pivot, adjust, adapt, be flexible, try and find other solutions, contemplate and dwell on the situation, or think about it, or let yourself have feelings about it when you need to later. I'm not trying to make a black and white statement here. I am in a situation where there is a deadline and a commitment and time pressure, which is very different than situations where those things aren't major factors. When I hit that point where I realized that life has been so busy and it was completely unfeasible for me to record on my microphone and give you the quality, the voice quality that you're used to, I had to make a decision. I could have crumpled, gotten really upset, folded, and decided I'm just gonna skip this week, put out some sort of a post. But that's not how resolve works. You see, uh I made a commitment. I made a decision, and with that decision, I made a commitment. And therefore, I have a feeling of resolve that I rely on. A resolve to do what I said I was going to do, to have integrity. Because this podcast is important to me. It's important to me that I show up when I say I'm going to show up for you. So when things don't go your way, there's three lessons I want to bring up here. First, pivot, adapt, adjust, be flexible, figure out another way. Number two, don't fold. Stick to your resolve. Do what you said you were going to do. Have integrity. Even if things aren't going to end up being perfect. And then number three, develop resilience. Resilience is what allows you to handle that change, to weather it, to be like water, to be flexible or rigid when it is required. To handle the obstacles in your way. To adapt to change. To adapt to life. I want to talk about a word that I think we misunderstand. It's a word that everyone wants to have. Or almost shades of gray. But when we think about it, we actually treat it like a chore. And that word is discipline. Now, right around this time last year, we actually did an episode on maintaining discipline during the holidays. And it was a good episode. But let's be honest, when you hear the word discipline, what do you feel? Well, for most of us, it just feels hard. Feels like restriction. It sounds like a 5 a.m. alarm. Like eating the salad when you really want the burger. Like forcing yourself to do things that you dread. When people talk about discipline, it's often brought up as this superpower of pure gritty willpower that some people are just born with. And the rest of us, well, I guess we're just not. We say, I just don't have enough discipline. Or I wish I were more disciplined. Now discipline, like any other skill or trait, is like a muscle. Some people happen to be built kind of like elite athletes, with more developed muscles or easier to develop muscles in specific areas. But in all reality, any of us can build any muscle in our body. And the same goes for any skill or any trait. Life is like a muscle. So take action and build it. But the point of today's podcast is not just to tell you go out there and build discipline. What if I told you that discipline isn't really the goal? What if I told you that focusing on being more disciplined is like trying to drive a car that has no engine? But where does discipline play into this? Well, discipline is the action. It's the car itself. It's the physical act of getting up and making the call, of doing the work. It is a state of repeated, consistent action. But resolve. Resolve is the engine. Resolve is the I will. As humans, psychologically, we are not motivated by logic. The only time that logic motivates people is when something is really smart and it gets people excited. It is the emotional response to logic that gets people to do things because of logic. As much as people may bemoan, as much as people may loathe or criticize emotion, how you feel, your feelings, your emotions are your motivations for doing what you do, which is why managing or regulating your emotions, including things like changing your emotional state or priming it in the first place, has a major effect on the actions that you take. Now, inspiration is a fleeting emotion, which is why it's not a good emotion to rely on when it comes to taking action, especially long-term action, like in the form of discipline. Now, resolve, resolve is different. What I want to get across is that resolve is an emotion. It is the feeling of being resolved. I feel resolve. When something is important to you, you get the feeling of resolve. This is why resolve is different. It's not the spark. It's the fire. It's a deep, internal, unshakable decision that you make. It's the feeling. Not a whimsical in the not a whimsical, flighty emotional feeling like motivation that comes and goes. It's the deep, settled, powerful emotional state of being. Resolve is when the internal negotiation stops. And you know what negotiation I'm talking about, right? Your alarm clock goes off. And your own personal internal debate club kicks into high gear. Ugh, it's so warm in bed. Which you follow up with, but I need to get up. And then it fires back with, you can just go to the gym tomorrow. Or you deserve a rest. You worked hard yesterday. Or oh come on, five more minutes won't hurt. That debate comes from a lack of resolve. Once you cultivate resolve, it's a whole different ballgame. When you have resolved, the alarm goes off, and when the debate is about to start, it is silenced by the feeling of resolve that says, This is important to me. I have to get up. And as a result, you just get up. The debate doesn't even happen. The decision was made. The person who decided to get up at that time was you last night. The person in the morning is just the employee executing that order. The feeling of resolve is what powers that moment where you draw a line in the sand. It's the moment you decide this is who I am now. This is what we are doing. There is no other option. The captain of this squad is the one you've likely heard of. Confirmation bias. Now, you know how this works. You have a belief. Let's say you believe that, I don't know, that waking up at 4 a.m. is the only way to be successful. Because of confirmation bias, you will subconsciously scour the internet and your daily life for any and all information that supports that belief. It also means that you're much more likely to ignore any information that goes counter to that belief. So let's say somebody then challenges you and says, no, you don't have to get up at 4 a.m. and provides a counterexample of somebody who's very successful that doesn't. You decide to scour the internet to see what it really says. But because of the confirmation bias, as you're doing your research, you're going to subconsciously pick out and internalize every article that supports what you already believe. And at the same time, you'll mostly ignore the hundreds of articles about the importance of sleep, or examples of very effective CEOs who wake up at eight. This automatic filtering of reality, just to prove yourself right, that you're not even doing consciously. That is confirmation bias. There's also a specific flavor of this confirmation bias called the my side bias. While confirmation bias is a bit more general, the my side bias is specifically about how we evaluate arguments. There's a scientific consensus of studies that show that we evaluate information differently based on the my side bias, especially when it comes to politics. Now I'm not looking to make a political statement here, and I'm not taking either side. I'm just using politics as an example because it's highly emotionally charged and very polarizing. Based on this scientific consensus, if I put a study in front of you that supports your political belief, you will likely accept it immediately, not questioning inconsistencies or errors or something that could make it not true. We see this all the time, where smart analytical people will then complement the positive sides, highlighting or saying that this study has a solid sample size and great methodology, overlooking any flaws in the study because it confirms what they already believe. But if I put a study in front of you that contradicts your political view, you're likely to reject it outright and say, well, there must be something wrong with it. And then start hyperfixating on the issues with it and trying to find problems with the study. We then see smart analytical people do the exact opposite. And they'll start tearing it apart, saying, oh, the sample size is too small, and the researchers were biased. Even though that similar study earlier that confirmed their view may have had identical sample size and methodology. Because of confirmation bias and my side bias, we don't naturally evaluate data based on the data. We evaluate it based on whose side it helps. And in comes another cognitive bias that's basically holding hands with these other two. It's called the desirability bias. This is simply the tendency to believe something is true just because you want it to be true. Think about a relationship that is clearly failing. All the red flags are there. But you want the relationship to work. You want it so badly that your brain actually filters out the red flags. You don't even see them. You predict a positive outcome because the negative outcome is too painful to look at and you just don't want to believe it. If we think back to the last week of our lives, I'm sure we can find some places where any or all of these cognitive biases apply. Where did you accept a fact just because it felt good? That's desirability bias at work. It's comfortable. It keeps us stuck. And many times these compound because we often believe what we want to believe. And once we've identified that as a side, all three of these biases are at play at the same time, making it very hard to change a belief, or even just rethink one when new information is provided. The binary bias is actually one of my personal pet peeves. And it's because it is the polar opposite view of a major part of one of my core fundamentals. Lifelong learning in shades of grey through curiosity and critical thinking. Well the binary bias is none of that. It's quickly labeling things as good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, pretty or ugly, smart or stupid, and on and on and on. Complexity can be hard. Nuance takes calories. So we flatten the world into two choices. You're either with us or you're against us. That food is either a superfood or it's a poison. But real wisdom is usually found in shades of grey, not the binary. But unfortunately, the binary is easier and tends to feel safer. Moving on to our second last cluster of biases, these are the three that keep you stuck in a life that you don't love. The first is loss aversion. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Travarsky found that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. You will work harder to keep$100 than you will to earn$100. This bias leads us to play small. We don't apply for The new job because we're afraid of losing the security of the old one. We don't start the business because we are afraid of losing our savings. We prioritize safety over growth every single time unless we consciously fight it. The cousin of loss aversion is the status quo bias. This is the preference for things to stay exactly the same. Change requires effort. Change requires risk. So if we have a choice, we usually choose doing nothing, not changing. This is why you stay with the same insurance company, even though they keep raising your rates. This is why you stay in a relationship that has been dead for two years. Because doing something feels risky. Doing nothing feels safe. But in the long run, the status quo is often the most dangerous place to be. Rounding out this trio, we have the endowment effect, also called the clutter trap. What is it? It's the tendency to value something more highly simply because you own it. This is one of the main reasons why it's so hard to declutter your house. You think your old mug is worth$10 because it's yours, but if you saw it in a store, you might pay a dollar for it. And you know what? Heck, I'm gonna throw another one in. While this one is technically a logical fallacy, depending on who you ask, it also counts as a cognitive bias. The sunk cost fallacy. The past investment trap. The tendency to continue doing something just because you've already invested money, effort, or time into it, even if the current costs outweigh the benefits. Staying in a bad career because I spent four years in college for this, or finishing a terrible book just because you read the first fifty pages, or staying in a relationship that neither of you have been happy for years and years simply because of how long you've been in it. The sunk cost fallacy compounds on these other biases by adding the time, money, or effort investment on top. But scientifically speaking, it is a very specific variable. And if we want to get into the science, we really can't talk about it without talking about the pioneer of grit research, Dr. Angela Duckworth. If you haven't read her work, I'll give you a Cliff Notes version. Back in the mid-2000s, Duckworth went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. If you know anything about West Point, you know you've probably heard of the Beast Barracks. It's seven weeks of pure, unadulterated intensity designed to break people. These are the best of the best, oftentimes varsity athletes and valedictorians. They have the IQ, they have the physical fitness, heck, they even have the training, but every year a large chunk of them drop out before the summer is over. Duckworth wanted to know who stays? Is it the smartest ones?

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No.

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Is it the ones with the highest SAT scores? No. Is it the ones who can do the most push-ups? Surprisingly, no, not really. She found that the people who made it through were the ones with the most grit. And her findings didn't end there. She found that the single biggest predictor of success in life wasn't talent. It was this thing that we call grit. The definition that's used is passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Here's the part that really fascinated me when I was reading her book, titled Grit. The study showed that grit is unrelated or even inversely related to talent. Meaning sometimes, if things come easily to you, you are actually at a disadvantage when the friction hits. Because you haven't built the muscle of grit. You never learned how to generate that second wind, how to push through, how to harness your resolve. Because I think most of us misunderstand grit. In a very similar way to how many people misunderstand courage. Many people believe that courage is being fearless. But courage is really about facing or overcoming your fears, feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Grit is not about easily taking action. People that can just naturally do things and it's not hard for them, that doesn't take grit. We think of gritty people and we think that it's all about being harder, tougher, and more calloused. But what I've found in my own personal experience, by looking through the research and in my coaching, grit is usually not a shout, it's not a scream. Most grit is a quiet thing. It's an internal struggle that we push through. Similar to courage, it's a personal battle. But I think we've done a disservice to that word. We treat grit like it's a character trait that you're born with, like blue eyes or being tall. We think you either have it or you don't. But that's bullshit. Life is like a muscle, and just about any skill or trait can be built and honed over time. I believe that human beings have the ability to get better, sharper, and more capable. I believe grit isn't a magical trait. It's a skill. More specifically, it's a muscle that we build just like any other skill. But grit is really a compound muscle. It's a whole series of skills that we build at the same time into the into this compound muscle of grit. If you want to be grittier, stop trying to get hyped up. Stop looking for motivation. Don't get me wrong, embrace it when it's there. Instead, look for that feeling, that gut feeling, the click in your stomach, the moment where you say, I am doing this even if it sucks. Well, that's all we have for our highlights of 2025. Hopefully you enjoyed some of these high points from the podcast throughout the last year, and we'll see you on the next episode. And remember, you are enough, and you deserve to fill up your inner cup with happiness, true confidence, and resilience. Thank you for listening to the Sage Solutions podcast. Your time is valuable, and I'm so glad that you choose to learn and grow here with me. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on more Sage advice. One last thing. The legal language. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. No coaching client relationship is formed. It is not intended as a substitute for the personalized advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.