October 28, 2025 • 28 mins
A single moment on a New York train set Mitch on a path from early Apple II hacks to a lifelong mission: teach people how to think in ways that unlock action. ShiftED sit down with Mitch Weisburgh, creator of Mind Shifting with Mitch, to explore how small, repeatable techniques can move us from the brain’s fast, fearful survival mode into a calmer, creative sage mode—where choices widen, mistakes become feedback, and collaboration actually works.
Mitch breaks down the core mechanics of mindset in plain language. Survival mode is quick and binary; it protects but narrows. Sage mode is curious and flexible; it opens paths you can’t see when you’re tense. The bridge is deceptively simple: a phrase like “perhaps I can” that nudges your mind to search for possibilities—ask for help, change the first step, practice differently. We talk through classroom-ready tools like box breathing and co-regulation, real stories from teachers and families, and a powerful case where pausing to calm the body changed the course of a tough, emotional day.
We also go deep on scale and systems. Mitch shares how his courses are built for practice, reflection, and peer learning, why books and study guides help teams embed the habits, and how AI mentors can guide people through the techniques anytime. The goal is bold: reach five million people with resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration skills, not to erase conflict but to use it well. Complex issues demand better conversations, and better conversations start with a steadier mind. If you’re an educator, leader, or parent looking for tools that work under pressure, this one’s for you.
Subscribe for more mindset, learning, and leadership conversations, and share this episode with someone who needs a simple way to move from stuck to steady. Leave a review to tell us where you’ll try “perhaps I can” next.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Colley (00:11):
All right, everyone.
Welcome back, everyone, toanother Shift Ed podcast.
Um I have a great guest today.
We're really gonna jump intomindset.
Um I have Mitch uh Weisbergwho's coming in from around New
York area, I believe.
Hey Mitch.
Yep, yeah, just uh WestchesterCounty, just north of New York.
(00:34):
Amazing.
And Mitch has a great websitecalled Mind Shifting with Mitch.
Um I'll put that in the notesof the show, but um he has tons
of great resources on there anda couple of amazing books, which
we'll we'll get to.
But Mitch, before we start intowhat's happening nowadays,
let's go back in time a littlebit or a little time machine.
(00:57):
And I'm always curious to askguests what some of those
foundational moments were inyour career that kind of led you
to where you are now.
Mitch Weisburgh (01:08):
Yeah, so I I've had I guess quite a few
different careers.
Um I uh started off uh in 1975um at a time sharing company.
So time sharing in the sensethat they had mainframe
computers and small companieswould send their work in.
(01:30):
Um and this was kind of apioneering company uh at the
time because they used phonelines for the people to phone
the data in.
Whereas in at that time, peoplewere uh were sending you know
80 character punch cards uh backand forth.
Okay.
Um so I you know I I I did anumber of things for those
(01:52):
companies.
I was a I was computer support.
Um I then uh graduated todesigning systems and then went
to sales, and then um and thenwhile I was working, I went to
business school.
Uh I went to Columbia BusinessSchool.
And there was like, you know,something this company that I'm
at now, it's it's not reallygoing anywhere.
(02:12):
Um, or there's no place,there's no real future, future
for me.
At the same time that workingfull-time and going to business
school was a lot of work becausewe worked, you know, you know,
we we had about 20 hours a weekworth of homework.
So in 1981, I bought an AppleII Plus computer.
(02:34):
Okay.
64k, you know, like uh someserious power we're talking
about.
Like, like, you know, now whatwe we have gigahertz processors.
This is like kilohertzprocessors, you know.
Um but included with the withthe Apple II, after you
assembled it and everything, youyou had the very first
(02:56):
spreadsheet that exists.
Uh you know, VisiCalc, um,which had 64 columns, you know,
um uh uh 256 rows, you know.
Um, but I found that usingVisiCalc to do my finance
homework and using WordStar towrite my reports, I was doing my
(03:17):
work in maybe 20-25% of thetime of everybody else.
Not at 20% savings, like onequarter of the time.
And I'm sitting on a traingoing into New York with my dad,
and I'm telling him that.
And this guy jumps up from hisseat and he says, you know, I
just bought an Apple II.
It comes with five differentboxes and six different
instruction manuals.
(03:37):
All I want to do is cash flow.
Could you show me how to dothat?
And then from that, which I didfree, and then I trained his
friends free, and then um itjust thought of me like, well,
you know, something maybe peoplewill pay for this.
So I started charging peoplefor it, and I started a business
and learned a lot aboutinstructional design in addition
to what I already knew aboutsystems.
(03:58):
And for 20 years, I ran acompany that taught business
people how to use computers.
But I could see in like in theyear 2000 that the future was
changing.
You know, the the newgenerations were coming up, they
they knew how to use computers,and Windows meant that software
really didn't change.
If you knew Excel in 1999 andyou stepped onto a computer
(04:21):
today, whether you used Excel oryou used Google Sheets, it's
basically the same thing.
Chris Colley (04:25):
Right, so you know functionalities and everything.
Mitch Weisburg (04:29):
Functionalities, the interface.
You didn't have this need forcontent retraining that you used
to have in the old world.
So I was looking around fordifferent things to do, and I um
I settled on education becausethey felt, you know, something
with all this technology,there's so much opportunity to
change the way we educate kids.
(04:50):
And this was in in the US, wehad this the no child left
behind, um, which we used tocall nickelby, right?
Um, you know, so there's thisemphasis on education, and I
felt, you know, like you know,maybe I can make a difference
and help publishers understandhow to take their book products
(05:12):
and remassage them so that theycould fit into an online or uh
classroom, a computerizedclassroom, uh, both from the
standpoint of how the teacherswould use it and the kids would
use it and how to sell it.
And so that that's the businessI did for about 15 years.
And then, you know, like 15years later, I'm sitting around
(05:32):
and saying, you know, technologyis now in the schools to a
large extent.
It's still being resisted in inmany cases, but it's but it's
there.
And you know, kids aren't anywell any better prepared in
2017, 2018 for being adults thanthey were in 2000.
So what's what can I do?
And then at that time, I alsogot uh an email from a
(05:57):
university asking if I wouldteach their show their
undergraduates educationtechnology.
And I'm thinking, you know,education technology has not
changed.
You know, I mean they'vechanged education, but they
haven't really affected kids.
Right.
So I don't really want to showthem education technology, but
you know what kids need?
Kids need to understand howsuccessful people think.
(06:21):
How a successful person looksat a problem and instead of like
judging it or whatever, comesup with a potential solution,
starts implementing thesolution, enrolling others in
their vision.
And even when things don't workout, they take that as
information and they pivot orwhatever, but they eventually
become, you know, theyeventually win out.
(06:41):
So it's like, let me let me seeif if they'd be interested in
me teaching the kids that.
And then all of a sudden youhave to figure out like, how am
(07:12):
I gonna do this?
Yeah, I I you know, I had doneinstructional design, I had done
systems work and all this kindof stuff.
I've been an entrepreneur, butI'd never taught a two-day
workshop for kids on how tothink.
And so I had five months to doit.
So I I read um I read books ina lot of different topics that
(07:33):
deal with decision making ordeal with success.
So, you know, psychology, um,you know, uh military strategy,
sales, uh, instruction, uh,cognitive science, neuroscience,
economics, you know, so allthese different areas, and
everybody seemed to have like apiece of what it took to be
(07:55):
successful, but I felt, youknow, I could pull things from
all these different areas andmake it in one uniform treatise,
and really uh decided thatthere were going to be three
different tracks to this two-dayuh two-day workshop that I was
gonna teach.
One was going to be how do youharness your brain so that you
(08:20):
could be resourceful even whenyou felt like you were blocked?
Second, um, how how should youlook at situations so that
you're not dispirited whenthings don't work out and you're
taking the feedback that comesin as uh motivational in order
(08:41):
to continue to improve.
And third, how do you work withother people who very often are
resisting change or trying tocompete with you or disagree
with you, or maybe you don'tlike them, but somehow or other
you've got to work in thisenvironment where you're working
with other people anyhow.
So one was again the the brain,the situation, and working with
(09:04):
people, put put it together,teach the class, and at the end
of the two days, the kids stoodup and cheered.
And it was like, okay, so thisis something, you know, two
thousand eighteen, this issomething that when people uh
when people learn these skills,they immediately see, oh my
(09:24):
gosh, this is gonna reallyimprove my life.
Chris Colley (09:27):
Right.
Mitch Weisburgh (09:27):
And so I transitioned from education
technology to really justfocusing on this.
And my goal is, you know, whatif we could get a critical mass
of people in the world?
Okay.
What if we could get people,enough people who really
understood how to beresourceful, how to be
resilient, and how to becollaborative so that we could
(09:48):
really work towards the problemsthat we're trying to solve?
That could be the force thatallows everybody to live you
know more productive and happierlives.
Like we, you know, you couldbe, you know, you could be down
on yourself and another personwho knew all these techniques,
you could take a look at you,say, Oh, I see that you're in
survival mode right now.
Why don't you take a second andtry one of these things to get
(10:11):
back into resourceful mode?
And so we can support eachother.
So that's that's my mission.
And arbitrarily I've saidcritical mass of people, I don't
know, eight billion people onthe planet.
Let's say we reached fivemillion people somehow or other,
and five million people knewthis.
That's to me seems like a goodnumber to be a critical mass,
but you know, it's an arbitrarynumber, but that's totally
(10:32):
that's what I'm going for.
Chris Colley (10:34):
You know, and I I I love what you're saying, which
is super um it's making mereflect a lot on on mindset.
And I know that that's kind ofthe crux of you know, enough of
this showing people how to dostuff on Excel sheets and you
know, like that stuff's there,but it's how you're approaching
(10:54):
it from your you know, yourthought process and and how you
process all this stuff.
Could you kind of define whatmindset is for the listeners?
Like, what does that mean?
A mindset, and I know that inyour book you look at the
survival mind versus the sagemind or mindset.
Like what is mindset?
Mitch Weisburgh (11:17):
So everything starts with the way your brain
makes sense of things, andthat's really that's that's your
mindset.
And as as you brought out, umyou know, our brains uh develop
two different ways of assessingsituations.
One is is for survival, okay?
(11:37):
And that part of the brainoperates really quickly, takes
very little information, comeswith what with comes up with
something that we have to do inorder to survive, and it's very
binary.
So something is either going tokill us or it's going to help
us.
And if it makes us, it's eitherbad or it's good.
There's no nuance there.
It's bad or it's good, you doit or you don't do it.
(12:00):
You're right, they're wrong.
Every you know, it's it's it'sjust a binary choice.
And once that part of the brainlocks into something, that's
what we do, unless we also havethe presence to think, oh my
gosh, I'm using that part of thebrain right now.
This is not a survivalsituation.
(12:20):
I could relax a little bit andI could be more creative.
So when we come up with amindset that says, I know I
can't do this, that doesn't meanthat we can't do it.
Well, it does to a certainextent, but it it it because we
if whatever whether we think wecan do something or whether we
(12:40):
think we can't do something,that's gonna be our truth.
Uh, but it doesn't mean thatthat if we looked at it, we we
couldn't do it.
It just means that we've comeup with this story in our mind,
our our survival parts of thebrain have decided, you know, it
would be wrong for you to dothis because you might be
risking yourself, you mightfail, you might feel ill at
(13:02):
ease.
So I'm gonna come up with astory that you can't do it, and
then we justify that story, wecan't do this.
You can't argue with that partof the brain, okay, but you can
kind of go in through the backdoor and open it up.
So if you, as you know, as anexample, if you have something
that you really want to be ableto do and you know that you
(13:25):
can't do it, you could say toyourself, hmm, perhaps I can.
And just saying, perhaps I can,your brain can't help, but
start coming up with ways thatyou could possibly do it.
Now, maybe you can't do itright now.
Maybe you need to studysomething, maybe you need to get
(13:45):
some help, maybe you need toask somebody, maybe you need to
practice some more, but it'sgonna start coming up with
things that you couldconceivably do.
And that's that's mindset.
Um, you know, I I can go onbecause you know, I'm because
I'm what I'm thinking is as I'mgoing this is that it's a lot
less effective for somebody elseto tell you perhaps you can,
(14:08):
and it's absolutely ineffectivefor somebody to tell you you
can.
So if you if I say, you knowsomething, I can't save up
enough for retirement, and yousay, Mitch, that's crazy, you
can, that's just gonna cause meto argue.
I'm gonna say, no, no, no, Ijust said I can't do it.
You know, I've looked at it, Ican't do it.
What are you telling me I can'tfor?
(14:29):
If you could say to me, youknow, Mitch, I realize that uh
you're looking at this and youand you you believe that you
can't come up with a way toretire uh or to accumulate
enough money to be able toretire, right?
What if you just quietly saidto yourself, perhaps I can?
(14:49):
Why don't you think aboutretiring?
And when your brain says to youthat you can't, what if you
said perhaps I can and just dothat for a minute and then tell
me what happens?
Okay.
And so you can, you know,that's allowing somebody to
change their own mindset andopening up their brain.
Chris Colley (15:06):
I love that.
Yeah, because we often talk toteachers about the fixed mindset
and then kind of the more openmindset, you know, where fixed
is no, no, this is what I cando, and I know I can do this.
I can't do any of that otherstuff.
Whereas open is like, sure.
Mitch Weisburgh (15:22):
I mean, I'll try.
You know, I'll try.
And uh hopefully with with openmindset, when you try and it
doesn't work, you're using thatas as as feedback.
You're saying, Oh, I did this,the I expected these results, I
got slightly different resultsor or the opposite results from
(15:43):
I expected.
How can I take that to still beable to move forward?
Chris Colley (15:47):
Right, right.
And I I I think in education, Imean that's the crux a little
bit of we're hoping to instill alittle of that in the students
that sit in front of us everyday so that when they are beyond
school, that they have thosetools that they developed, or
that there are no challengesthat I can't take on.
I'll figure it out, I'll findout help, I'll persevere, etc.
(16:10):
Like all of these reallyimportant um aspects of the
human development, really.
How do you get practicing thosein a practical way?
Now, I know on your on yoursite you have some courses, and
they're called personaldevelopment courses.
Do those courses help openthose doors up a little bit that
(16:31):
to help you with resilience andpersonal developments?
Mitch Weisburgh (16:35):
No, they're the courses are actually horrible.
You know, nobody nobody likesthem.
Um people complain about themall the time, but I offer them
no, yeah.
I I I hope I I I get uh reallyinteresting feedback from the
teachers, uh the educators whowho end up taking courses
because that's that my focus inthese courses is to help
(16:57):
educators, you know, live betterlives, teach better, and teach
kids those skills.
One of the examples was in thethe the course that we just
finished, which is on theresourcefulness part of it, you
know, that a teacher was saying,and this is a kindergarten
teacher, so she's teachingfive-year-olds, and she says the
kids were coming in and theywere they were wild.
(17:17):
And I said, hmm, sounds likeyou guys are wild.
And she says, one of the kidssays, you know what?
We should all sit down and dosome box breathing now and calm
ourselves down.
Okay.
And she says, you know, she shehad introduced them to the box
breathing as part of the, youknow, after the first session of
the course, and um, you know,and and and and they got it.
(17:39):
So you can teach thesetechniques to kids.
Yeah.
Um, the techniques, the way Ilook at it is you first are
learning the techniques for yourwell, for your own life, and
second, you're learning how toco-regulate with the kids.
And so the and the kids arelearning how how to be
co-regulated quicker, and thenthey gradually also learn how to
(18:04):
take on and do these things forthemselves.
Interesting.
Chris Colley (18:07):
And and if I'm taking the the course, Mitch,
like what's the interactivity?
Like, how to what does thecourse feel like that that
you've created that kind of getsteachers thinking about
themselves a little bit more?
Mitch Weisburgh (18:19):
Uh well, there's three different courses.
Um the uh the course onresourcefulness and the course
on resilience, which is thesituations, those courses are
both six two-hour Zoom sessions.
Okay.
Now, in the Zoom session, uhsay in in the first session, uh,
we we go over some concepts,then you break into small groups
(18:43):
and you try them out in thesmall groups, then you come
back, then we talk about whathappened in the small groups,
and then at the end, you'regiven a a couple of the things
that you that we covered in inthat session, and you're
supposed to try them with otherpeople.
Now, you could try them with aclass, you could try them with
fellow teachers, you could trythem with your family, you could
(19:04):
try them with friends.
It doesn't matter who you whoyou try them with, and a
reflection that you that youtype in um on what happened,
what worked, what didn't work.
Then in the next class, one ofthe first things that we do is
that if uh a number of thosepeople share what happened, so
we get really good stories aboutwhat worked.
Like uh one of the mostpowerful stories, and this has
(19:27):
very little to do with school,but um but a teacher was saying
that uh she has a friend whichwho was in an abusive
relationship, and she was goingto uh she and another friend
were going to help this womanmove with her kids into another
place on a Saturday, and theygiven the woman a list of the
(19:51):
different things to do, and theywere gonna come on a Saturday,
pack up the cars, go, and thendeposit her in this new place.
And they get to the woman'shouse on a Saturday, and the
woman hadn't done any, not oneof the things on the list.
And so their immediate reactionis anger, right?
And that's normal.
(20:12):
Like we we told her to do thesethings, it really wasn't that
hard.
And then, like, and then theythey they said, you know,
something that's that is oursurvival, that's our limbic
reactions right now.
Why don't we first calmourselves down?
And so the two of them did someyou know, meditation or
(20:33):
something to to slow down theirbreathing, to and then and then
reach in and says, Well, what isreally important to us now?
And that came from the coursealso.
And they said, you know, whatcame back is what was really
important is we have this goodfriend, and what's really
important is to help her getstarted with another life.
And and as a matter of fact,she was probably just trying to
(20:54):
survive during this week, muchless do these things.
So, big deal, we're gonna spendthis entire day working with
her, but that's gonna set her upand her kids for a good life.
And they did that, and at theend of the day, all three of
them were satisfied that the twohad who had helped just felt
that they had made a hugedifference in somebody's life.
And they said, we couldn't havedone that without understanding
(21:19):
that our initial reaction wasjust um was just our our our
survival system trying toprotect us, and we had to first
quiet it down, then figure outwhat we really wanted to do, and
then we could do it.
Right, right.
Interesting.
Chris Colley (21:37):
And you said too that you want the courses, you
want five million people tofollow them, right?
Yep, yep.
And what five million peoplefollow this course, okay?
Mitch Weisburgh (21:48):
Or the courses, books, or learn from other
people.
They don't have to learn fromme.
Yeah, okay.
Right.
Um, I'm more than happy ifsomebody you know takes the
class and they say, you know,something I would like to teach
the rest of my teachers in thisin in my school?
I'm more than happy to just letthem use anything that they
want to in order to teach theother teachers in their school.
Chris Colley (22:08):
Amazing.
And and what's that outcomethough?
Like, what do you want thosefive million teachers to be
doing?
How do you want their mindsetsto shift from the starting of to
the ending of the courses?
Like, what should happen whatdo you hope is the result of
that, you know, five millionpeople uh changing their
(22:29):
mindset?
Like what what do you envision?
Mitch Weisburgh (22:32):
Well, so so it's it's complex.
Okay, it's not just one thing.
Okay, they if you look at thereally big outcome for the
individuals, it's like, wow, youknow something?
I'm doing the things that aremost important to me, and I feel
great about it.
Okay, so that would be numberone.
Number two is and I'msupporting others living their
(22:55):
best lives too.
Okay, and then the third thingis that if we get enough of
those people, then these thesefights that we have about um
should we be conserving orshould we be pushing business?
Should we uh should we bestopping guns or should we be
finding other ways to reduceviolence?
(23:16):
Um, should we be increasingtaxes or should we be or we
should be spending more onsocial services?
Those aren't like simplequestions, and we're treating
them as if like, yes, there'sthere's one answer.
It's to be able to understandthat those are complex issues
and to be able to change withthose to to um discuss with
(23:37):
people who disagree with us inorder to come up with solutions
that are more nuanced than wecould have come up with on our
own.
And so you so you know, we allthink that conflict is bad, um,
destructive conflict is bad, butto be able to look at conflict
as a way to come up withsomething better than we could
(24:00):
have come up with on our own,right?
Well, that's that's that's agreat gift.
And so all that's what I wishedfor everybody.
I love that.
Chris Colley (24:08):
I love that.
It's I mean, and I love yourgoal.
It's not like no, no, I hopethat you know my little
community is no right a millionpeople, yes.
And Mitch, I want to help youwith that because I I mean I
really value your insights andthis work that you've done is is
a you know a lifetime of workreally that you've assembled to
(24:31):
support people just to shift inmindsets.
And I just I've always lovedthe idea that we're never in a
box.
We can always open that box upand and and look beyond it.
But sometimes we need thetools, we just not sure how to
go about doing that.
Um so I want the listeners outthere to to know that we're in
(24:53):
talks with Mitch about gettingthese courses available to our
community here in Quebec forfree.
And if you uh know that youwant to shift your mindset a
bit, well uh take note and I'llget you this information soon.
Hopefully sooner than later,Mitch, we can do this because I
want to take this course nowtoo, or courses, I should say.
Mitch Weisburgh (25:14):
Okay, well, thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, and you know, so I felt,you know, doing the courses,
I'll reach a s certain number ofpeople, and those people can
reach other people.
Writing the writing them asbooks, you know, I have this um,
you know, my bias has been thatyou can't really learn this
from a book.
(25:35):
I still have that bias that youcan't just read the book and
learn this.
I've even and I and I have hadpeople who've read the first
book and starting people who'veread the second book who have
come, you know, sorry, I readyour book three times and I'm
able to practice it.
But how many people read a bookthree times and practice it?
Okay.
But, you know, like so the thebook allows me theoretically to
(25:58):
reach more people.
We're also writing study guidesfor the book so people in a in
an organization could read thebook and they've got lesson by
lesson reflection exercises anddiscussions so that you could do
you could you can have thiscombination of social learning
and reflection along with thebook.
(26:19):
Maybe that will contribute tothe book.
And then um I'm also trying towell, I'm I'm uh you know, the
the next experiment is uh isdeveloping this as a course
where um AI mentors will mentorpeople through the technique, so
you don't necessarily need aperson.
(26:40):
Um you can I don't know, youknow, there's this whole debate
about you know generalartificial intelligence, but
this is really much moretargeted.
It's like okay, we're gonnawe're going to use the perhaps I
can technique.
And so in the perhaps I cantechnique, what's something that
you really feel that you shouldbe doing and you know that you
(27:00):
can't?
And then it just asks youquestions about that so that you
come up with it with uh so thatyou're able to then apply it to
yourself and you're able toapply it to other people.
So that's that's you knowanother thing that I'm that I'm
I'm trying.
But uh, I don't know how I'mgonna reach five million people,
but somehow or other that youknow with with my goal and with
(27:22):
other people taking this beyondwhere I can take it, right?
That's my goal.
Amazing.
Chris Colley (27:28):
Amazing.
Well, I hope that we can helpwith that, Mitch.
Um, it's been a real pleasuretalking with you.
I hope that we can continuethis conversation and and that
we can have you come into ourcommunity and share some of your
insights.
Um I would love that.
I would love that.
Mitch Weisburgh (27:42):
Jean par Francais, but I speak English
and I speak a very tiny bit ofFrench.
Chris Colley (27:48):
Well, we we service the Anglo community, so
you're in a safe spot.
Good.
Right on.
Well, Mitch, thanks so much.
I wish you a great day, and umwe'll talk again soon.
Mitch Weisburgh (27:58):
Okay, good, Chris.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
All right, everyone.
Welcome back, everyone, toanother Shift Ed podcast.
Um I have a great guest today.
We're really gonna jump intomindset.
Um I have Mitch uh Weisbergwho's coming in from around New
York area, I believe.
Hey Mitch.
Yep, yeah, just uh WestchesterCounty, just north of New York.
(00:34):
Amazing.
And Mitch has a great websitecalled Mind Shifting with Mitch.
Um I'll put that in the notesof the show, but um he has tons
of great resources on there anda couple of amazing books, which
we'll we'll get to.
But Mitch, before we start intowhat's happening nowadays,
let's go back in time a littlebit or a little time machine.
(00:57):
And I'm always curious to askguests what some of those
foundational moments were inyour career that kind of led you
to where you are now.
Mitch Weisburgh (01:08):
Yeah, so I I've had I guess quite a few
different careers.
Um I uh started off uh in 1975um at a time sharing company.
So time sharing in the sensethat they had mainframe
computers and small companieswould send their work in.
(01:30):
Um and this was kind of apioneering company uh at the
time because they used phonelines for the people to phone
the data in.
Whereas in at that time, peoplewere uh were sending you know
80 character punch cards uh backand forth.
Okay.
Um so I you know I I I did anumber of things for those
(01:52):
companies.
I was a I was computer support.
Um I then uh graduated todesigning systems and then went
to sales, and then um and thenwhile I was working, I went to
business school.
Uh I went to Columbia BusinessSchool.
And there was like, you know,something this company that I'm
at now, it's it's not reallygoing anywhere.
(02:12):
Um, or there's no place,there's no real future, future
for me.
At the same time that workingfull-time and going to business
school was a lot of work becausewe worked, you know, you know,
we we had about 20 hours a weekworth of homework.
So in 1981, I bought an AppleII Plus computer.
(02:34):
Okay.
64k, you know, like uh someserious power we're talking
about.
Like, like, you know, now whatwe we have gigahertz processors.
This is like kilohertzprocessors, you know.
Um but included with the withthe Apple II, after you
assembled it and everything, youyou had the very first
(02:56):
spreadsheet that exists.
Uh you know, VisiCalc, um,which had 64 columns, you know,
um uh uh 256 rows, you know.
Um, but I found that usingVisiCalc to do my finance
homework and using WordStar towrite my reports, I was doing my
(03:17):
work in maybe 20-25% of thetime of everybody else.
Not at 20% savings, like onequarter of the time.
And I'm sitting on a traingoing into New York with my dad,
and I'm telling him that.
And this guy jumps up from hisseat and he says, you know, I
just bought an Apple II.
It comes with five differentboxes and six different
instruction manuals.
(03:37):
All I want to do is cash flow.
Could you show me how to dothat?
And then from that, which I didfree, and then I trained his
friends free, and then um itjust thought of me like, well,
you know, something maybe peoplewill pay for this.
So I started charging peoplefor it, and I started a business
and learned a lot aboutinstructional design in addition
to what I already knew aboutsystems.
(03:58):
And for 20 years, I ran acompany that taught business
people how to use computers.
But I could see in like in theyear 2000 that the future was
changing.
You know, the the newgenerations were coming up, they
they knew how to use computers,and Windows meant that software
really didn't change.
If you knew Excel in 1999 andyou stepped onto a computer
(04:21):
today, whether you used Excel oryou used Google Sheets, it's
basically the same thing.
Chris Colley (04:25):
Right, so you know functionalities and everything.
Mitch Weisburg (04:29):
Functionalities, the interface.
You didn't have this need forcontent retraining that you used
to have in the old world.
So I was looking around fordifferent things to do, and I um
I settled on education becausethey felt, you know, something
with all this technology,there's so much opportunity to
change the way we educate kids.
(04:50):
And this was in in the US, wehad this the no child left
behind, um, which we used tocall nickelby, right?
Um, you know, so there's thisemphasis on education, and I
felt, you know, like you know,maybe I can make a difference
and help publishers understandhow to take their book products
(05:12):
and remassage them so that theycould fit into an online or uh
classroom, a computerizedclassroom, uh, both from the
standpoint of how the teacherswould use it and the kids would
use it and how to sell it.
And so that that's the businessI did for about 15 years.
And then, you know, like 15years later, I'm sitting around
(05:32):
and saying, you know, technologyis now in the schools to a
large extent.
It's still being resisted in inmany cases, but it's but it's
there.
And you know, kids aren't anywell any better prepared in
2017, 2018 for being adults thanthey were in 2000.
So what's what can I do?
And then at that time, I alsogot uh an email from a
(05:57):
university asking if I wouldteach their show their
undergraduates educationtechnology.
And I'm thinking, you know,education technology has not
changed.
You know, I mean they'vechanged education, but they
haven't really affected kids.
Right.
So I don't really want to showthem education technology, but
you know what kids need?
Kids need to understand howsuccessful people think.
(06:21):
How a successful person looksat a problem and instead of like
judging it or whatever, comesup with a potential solution,
starts implementing thesolution, enrolling others in
their vision.
And even when things don't workout, they take that as
information and they pivot orwhatever, but they eventually
become, you know, theyeventually win out.
(06:41):
So it's like, let me let me seeif if they'd be interested in
me teaching the kids that.
And then all of a sudden youhave to figure out like, how am
(07:12):
I gonna do this?
Yeah, I I you know, I had doneinstructional design, I had done
systems work and all this kindof stuff.
I've been an entrepreneur, butI'd never taught a two-day
workshop for kids on how tothink.
And so I had five months to doit.
So I I read um I read books ina lot of different topics that
(07:33):
deal with decision making ordeal with success.
So, you know, psychology, um,you know, uh military strategy,
sales, uh, instruction, uh,cognitive science, neuroscience,
economics, you know, so allthese different areas, and
everybody seemed to have like apiece of what it took to be
(07:55):
successful, but I felt, youknow, I could pull things from
all these different areas andmake it in one uniform treatise,
and really uh decided thatthere were going to be three
different tracks to this two-dayuh two-day workshop that I was
gonna teach.
One was going to be how do youharness your brain so that you
(08:20):
could be resourceful even whenyou felt like you were blocked?
Second, um, how how should youlook at situations so that
you're not dispirited whenthings don't work out and you're
taking the feedback that comesin as uh motivational in order
(08:41):
to continue to improve.
And third, how do you work withother people who very often are
resisting change or trying tocompete with you or disagree
with you, or maybe you don'tlike them, but somehow or other
you've got to work in thisenvironment where you're working
with other people anyhow.
So one was again the the brain,the situation, and working with
(09:04):
people, put put it together,teach the class, and at the end
of the two days, the kids stoodup and cheered.
And it was like, okay, so thisis something, you know, two
thousand eighteen, this issomething that when people uh
when people learn these skills,they immediately see, oh my
(09:24):
gosh, this is gonna reallyimprove my life.
Chris Colley (09:27):
Right.
Mitch Weisburgh (09:27):
And so I transitioned from education
technology to really justfocusing on this.
And my goal is, you know, whatif we could get a critical mass
of people in the world?
Okay.
What if we could get people,enough people who really
understood how to beresourceful, how to be
resilient, and how to becollaborative so that we could
(09:48):
really work towards the problemsthat we're trying to solve?
That could be the force thatallows everybody to live you
know more productive and happierlives.
Like we, you know, you couldbe, you know, you could be down
on yourself and another personwho knew all these techniques,
you could take a look at you,say, Oh, I see that you're in
survival mode right now.
Why don't you take a second andtry one of these things to get
(10:11):
back into resourceful mode?
And so we can support eachother.
So that's that's my mission.
And arbitrarily I've saidcritical mass of people, I don't
know, eight billion people onthe planet.
Let's say we reached fivemillion people somehow or other,
and five million people knewthis.
That's to me seems like a goodnumber to be a critical mass,
but you know, it's an arbitrarynumber, but that's totally
(10:32):
that's what I'm going for.
Chris Colley (10:34):
You know, and I I I love what you're saying, which
is super um it's making mereflect a lot on on mindset.
And I know that that's kind ofthe crux of you know, enough of
this showing people how to dostuff on Excel sheets and you
know, like that stuff's there,but it's how you're approaching
(10:54):
it from your you know, yourthought process and and how you
process all this stuff.
Could you kind of define whatmindset is for the listeners?
Like, what does that mean?
A mindset, and I know that inyour book you look at the
survival mind versus the sagemind or mindset.
Like what is mindset?
Mitch Weisburgh (11:17):
So everything starts with the way your brain
makes sense of things, andthat's really that's that's your
mindset.
And as as you brought out, umyou know, our brains uh develop
two different ways of assessingsituations.
One is is for survival, okay?
(11:37):
And that part of the brainoperates really quickly, takes
very little information, comeswith what with comes up with
something that we have to do inorder to survive, and it's very
binary.
So something is either going tokill us or it's going to help
us.
And if it makes us, it's eitherbad or it's good.
There's no nuance there.
It's bad or it's good, you doit or you don't do it.
(12:00):
You're right, they're wrong.
Every you know, it's it's it'sjust a binary choice.
And once that part of the brainlocks into something, that's
what we do, unless we also havethe presence to think, oh my
gosh, I'm using that part of thebrain right now.
This is not a survivalsituation.
(12:20):
I could relax a little bit andI could be more creative.
So when we come up with amindset that says, I know I
can't do this, that doesn't meanthat we can't do it.
Well, it does to a certainextent, but it it it because we
if whatever whether we think wecan do something or whether we
(12:40):
think we can't do something,that's gonna be our truth.
Uh, but it doesn't mean thatthat if we looked at it, we we
couldn't do it.
It just means that we've comeup with this story in our mind,
our our survival parts of thebrain have decided, you know, it
would be wrong for you to dothis because you might be
risking yourself, you mightfail, you might feel ill at
(13:02):
ease.
So I'm gonna come up with astory that you can't do it, and
then we justify that story, wecan't do this.
You can't argue with that partof the brain, okay, but you can
kind of go in through the backdoor and open it up.
So if you, as you know, as anexample, if you have something
that you really want to be ableto do and you know that you
(13:25):
can't do it, you could say toyourself, hmm, perhaps I can.
And just saying, perhaps I can,your brain can't help, but
start coming up with ways thatyou could possibly do it.
Now, maybe you can't do itright now.
Maybe you need to studysomething, maybe you need to get
(13:45):
some help, maybe you need toask somebody, maybe you need to
practice some more, but it'sgonna start coming up with
things that you couldconceivably do.
And that's that's mindset.
Um, you know, I I can go onbecause you know, I'm because
I'm what I'm thinking is as I'mgoing this is that it's a lot
less effective for somebody elseto tell you perhaps you can,
(14:08):
and it's absolutely ineffectivefor somebody to tell you you
can.
So if you if I say, you knowsomething, I can't save up
enough for retirement, and yousay, Mitch, that's crazy, you
can, that's just gonna cause meto argue.
I'm gonna say, no, no, no, Ijust said I can't do it.
You know, I've looked at it, Ican't do it.
What are you telling me I can'tfor?
(14:29):
If you could say to me, youknow, Mitch, I realize that uh
you're looking at this and youand you you believe that you
can't come up with a way toretire uh or to accumulate
enough money to be able toretire, right?
What if you just quietly saidto yourself, perhaps I can?
(14:49):
Why don't you think aboutretiring?
And when your brain says to youthat you can't, what if you
said perhaps I can and just dothat for a minute and then tell
me what happens?
Okay.
And so you can, you know,that's allowing somebody to
change their own mindset andopening up their brain.
Chris Colley (15:06):
I love that.
Yeah, because we often talk toteachers about the fixed mindset
and then kind of the more openmindset, you know, where fixed
is no, no, this is what I cando, and I know I can do this.
I can't do any of that otherstuff.
Whereas open is like, sure.
Mitch Weisburgh (15:22):
I mean, I'll try.
You know, I'll try.
And uh hopefully with with openmindset, when you try and it
doesn't work, you're using thatas as as feedback.
You're saying, Oh, I did this,the I expected these results, I
got slightly different resultsor or the opposite results from
(15:43):
I expected.
How can I take that to still beable to move forward?
Chris Colley (15:47):
Right, right.
And I I I think in education, Imean that's the crux a little
bit of we're hoping to instill alittle of that in the students
that sit in front of us everyday so that when they are beyond
school, that they have thosetools that they developed, or
that there are no challengesthat I can't take on.
I'll figure it out, I'll findout help, I'll persevere, etc.
(16:10):
Like all of these reallyimportant um aspects of the
human development, really.
How do you get practicing thosein a practical way?
Now, I know on your on yoursite you have some courses, and
they're called personaldevelopment courses.
Do those courses help openthose doors up a little bit that
(16:31):
to help you with resilience andpersonal developments?
Mitch Weisburgh (16:35):
No, they're the courses are actually horrible.
You know, nobody nobody likesthem.
Um people complain about themall the time, but I offer them
no, yeah.
I I I hope I I I get uh reallyinteresting feedback from the
teachers, uh the educators whowho end up taking courses
because that's that my focus inthese courses is to help
(16:57):
educators, you know, live betterlives, teach better, and teach
kids those skills.
One of the examples was in thethe the course that we just
finished, which is on theresourcefulness part of it, you
know, that a teacher was saying,and this is a kindergarten
teacher, so she's teachingfive-year-olds, and she says the
kids were coming in and theywere they were wild.
(17:17):
And I said, hmm, sounds likeyou guys are wild.
And she says, one of the kidssays, you know what?
We should all sit down and dosome box breathing now and calm
ourselves down.
Okay.
And she says, you know, she shehad introduced them to the box
breathing as part of the, youknow, after the first session of
the course, and um, you know,and and and and they got it.
(17:39):
So you can teach thesetechniques to kids.
Yeah.
Um, the techniques, the way Ilook at it is you first are
learning the techniques for yourwell, for your own life, and
second, you're learning how toco-regulate with the kids.
And so the and the kids arelearning how how to be
co-regulated quicker, and thenthey gradually also learn how to
(18:04):
take on and do these things forthemselves.
Interesting.
Chris Colley (18:07):
And and if I'm taking the the course, Mitch,
like what's the interactivity?
Like, how to what does thecourse feel like that that
you've created that kind of getsteachers thinking about
themselves a little bit more?
Mitch Weisburgh (18:19):
Uh well, there's three different courses.
Um the uh the course onresourcefulness and the course
on resilience, which is thesituations, those courses are
both six two-hour Zoom sessions.
Okay.
Now, in the Zoom session, uhsay in in the first session, uh,
we we go over some concepts,then you break into small groups
(18:43):
and you try them out in thesmall groups, then you come
back, then we talk about whathappened in the small groups,
and then at the end, you'regiven a a couple of the things
that you that we covered in inthat session, and you're
supposed to try them with otherpeople.
Now, you could try them with aclass, you could try them with
fellow teachers, you could trythem with your family, you could
(19:04):
try them with friends.
It doesn't matter who you whoyou try them with, and a
reflection that you that youtype in um on what happened,
what worked, what didn't work.
Then in the next class, one ofthe first things that we do is
that if uh a number of thosepeople share what happened, so
we get really good stories aboutwhat worked.
Like uh one of the mostpowerful stories, and this has
(19:27):
very little to do with school,but um but a teacher was saying
that uh she has a friend whichwho was in an abusive
relationship, and she was goingto uh she and another friend
were going to help this womanmove with her kids into another
place on a Saturday, and theygiven the woman a list of the
(19:51):
different things to do, and theywere gonna come on a Saturday,
pack up the cars, go, and thendeposit her in this new place.
And they get to the woman'shouse on a Saturday, and the
woman hadn't done any, not oneof the things on the list.
And so their immediate reactionis anger, right?
And that's normal.
(20:12):
Like we we told her to do thesethings, it really wasn't that
hard.
And then, like, and then theythey they said, you know,
something that's that is oursurvival, that's our limbic
reactions right now.
Why don't we first calmourselves down?
And so the two of them did someyou know, meditation or
(20:33):
something to to slow down theirbreathing, to and then and then
reach in and says, Well, what isreally important to us now?
And that came from the coursealso.
And they said, you know, whatcame back is what was really
important is we have this goodfriend, and what's really
important is to help her getstarted with another life.
And and as a matter of fact,she was probably just trying to
(20:54):
survive during this week, muchless do these things.
So, big deal, we're gonna spendthis entire day working with
her, but that's gonna set her upand her kids for a good life.
And they did that, and at theend of the day, all three of
them were satisfied that the twohad who had helped just felt
that they had made a hugedifference in somebody's life.
And they said, we couldn't havedone that without understanding
(21:19):
that our initial reaction wasjust um was just our our our
survival system trying toprotect us, and we had to first
quiet it down, then figure outwhat we really wanted to do, and
then we could do it.
Right, right.
Interesting.
Chris Colley (21:37):
And you said too that you want the courses, you
want five million people tofollow them, right?
Yep, yep.
And what five million peoplefollow this course, okay?
Mitch Weisburgh (21:48):
Or the courses, books, or learn from other
people.
They don't have to learn fromme.
Yeah, okay.
Right.
Um, I'm more than happy ifsomebody you know takes the
class and they say, you know,something I would like to teach
the rest of my teachers in thisin in my school?
I'm more than happy to just letthem use anything that they
want to in order to teach theother teachers in their school.
Chris Colley (22:08):
Amazing.
And and what's that outcomethough?
Like, what do you want thosefive million teachers to be
doing?
How do you want their mindsetsto shift from the starting of to
the ending of the courses?
Like, what should happen whatdo you hope is the result of
that, you know, five millionpeople uh changing their
(22:29):
mindset?
Like what what do you envision?
Mitch Weisburgh (22:32):
Well, so so it's it's complex.
Okay, it's not just one thing.
Okay, they if you look at thereally big outcome for the
individuals, it's like, wow, youknow something?
I'm doing the things that aremost important to me, and I feel
great about it.
Okay, so that would be numberone.
Number two is and I'msupporting others living their
(22:55):
best lives too.
Okay, and then the third thingis that if we get enough of
those people, then these thesefights that we have about um
should we be conserving orshould we be pushing business?
Should we uh should we bestopping guns or should we be
finding other ways to reduceviolence?
(23:16):
Um, should we be increasingtaxes or should we be or we
should be spending more onsocial services?
Those aren't like simplequestions, and we're treating
them as if like, yes, there'sthere's one answer.
It's to be able to understandthat those are complex issues
and to be able to change withthose to to um discuss with
(23:37):
people who disagree with us inorder to come up with solutions
that are more nuanced than wecould have come up with on our
own.
And so you so you know, we allthink that conflict is bad, um,
destructive conflict is bad, butto be able to look at conflict
as a way to come up withsomething better than we could
(24:00):
have come up with on our own,right?
Well, that's that's that's agreat gift.
And so all that's what I wishedfor everybody.
I love that.
Chris Colley (24:08):
I love that.
It's I mean, and I love yourgoal.
It's not like no, no, I hopethat you know my little
community is no right a millionpeople, yes.
And Mitch, I want to help youwith that because I I mean I
really value your insights andthis work that you've done is is
a you know a lifetime of workreally that you've assembled to
(24:31):
support people just to shift inmindsets.
And I just I've always lovedthe idea that we're never in a
box.
We can always open that box upand and and look beyond it.
But sometimes we need thetools, we just not sure how to
go about doing that.
Um so I want the listeners outthere to to know that we're in
(24:53):
talks with Mitch about gettingthese courses available to our
community here in Quebec forfree.
And if you uh know that youwant to shift your mindset a
bit, well uh take note and I'llget you this information soon.
Hopefully sooner than later,Mitch, we can do this because I
want to take this course nowtoo, or courses, I should say.
Mitch Weisburgh (25:14):
Okay, well, thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, and you know, so I felt,you know, doing the courses,
I'll reach a s certain number ofpeople, and those people can
reach other people.
Writing the writing them asbooks, you know, I have this um,
you know, my bias has been thatyou can't really learn this
from a book.
(25:35):
I still have that bias that youcan't just read the book and
learn this.
I've even and I and I have hadpeople who've read the first
book and starting people who'veread the second book who have
come, you know, sorry, I readyour book three times and I'm
able to practice it.
But how many people read a bookthree times and practice it?
Okay.
But, you know, like so the thebook allows me theoretically to
(25:58):
reach more people.
We're also writing study guidesfor the book so people in a in
an organization could read thebook and they've got lesson by
lesson reflection exercises anddiscussions so that you could do
you could you can have thiscombination of social learning
and reflection along with thebook.
(26:19):
Maybe that will contribute tothe book.
And then um I'm also trying towell, I'm I'm uh you know, the
the next experiment is uh isdeveloping this as a course
where um AI mentors will mentorpeople through the technique, so
you don't necessarily need aperson.
(26:40):
Um you can I don't know, youknow, there's this whole debate
about you know generalartificial intelligence, but
this is really much moretargeted.
It's like okay, we're gonnawe're going to use the perhaps I
can technique.
And so in the perhaps I cantechnique, what's something that
you really feel that you shouldbe doing and you know that you
(27:00):
can't?
And then it just asks youquestions about that so that you
come up with it with uh so thatyou're able to then apply it to
yourself and you're able toapply it to other people.
So that's that's you knowanother thing that I'm that I'm
I'm trying.
But uh, I don't know how I'mgonna reach five million people,
but somehow or other that youknow with with my goal and with
(27:22):
other people taking this beyondwhere I can take it, right?
That's my goal.
Amazing.
Chris Colley (27:28):
Amazing.
Well, I hope that we can helpwith that, Mitch.
Um, it's been a real pleasuretalking with you.
I hope that we can continuethis conversation and and that
we can have you come into ourcommunity and share some of your
insights.
Um I would love that.
I would love that.
Mitch Weisburgh (27:42):
Jean par Francais, but I speak English
and I speak a very tiny bit ofFrench.
Chris Colley (27:48):
Well, we we service the Anglo community, so
you're in a safe spot.
Good.
Right on.
Well, Mitch, thanks so much.
I wish you a great day, and umwe'll talk again soon.
Mitch Weisburgh (27:58):
Okay, good, Chris.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
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