Resilience Unravelled with Todd Malloy: Bridging Engineering and Therapy for Intentional Living

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:33] Hello and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and welcome to my guest who's standing resplendent in front of me, Todd Malloy. So Todd, good afternoon to you. How are you? Todd Malloy Great Russell, how are you? Thank you for having me. Pleasure. And I'm guessing it's not the afternoon where you are because I'm just judging by the accent that you're somewhere else in the world. Where are you? Todd Malloy Yes, I am in the United States in North Carolina. So here it's about 11 o'clock just after 11 o'clock in the morning.

[00:01:03] Fantastic. Oh, North Carolina is a lovely part of the world. Todd, thank you very much for joining us. Looking forward to our conversation, which I'm sure will be very wide ranging, but maybe just start to tell us a little bit about you as an individual, your background. Give us a pen portrait.

[00:01:15] Todd Malloy I consider myself an eclectic person. I'm someone that kind of started off in a marginalized environment, government cheese on welfare, first person in my family to graduate from high school, but then also taught in the postdoctoral program of University of Michigan Ann Arbor, which is considered to be pretty special. I've been in rooms with Steve Forbes. I've challenged myself in life not to settle.

[00:01:43] Todd Malloy I had a mother. I had a mother when I was a kid that did the best she could to raise us. And she took us on a trip one day to Coney Island in New York City. And she shared with us the reason she took us there is that we would understand that there was more to life than the six blocks we live in. And that was the key for me to challenge myself to push through adversities, get an engineering degree. Actually, I didn't want, but ended up being an engineer for almost 30 years.

[00:02:12] Todd Malloy But again, but it facilitated me in turn exploring, learning how to build, how to fight adversity, try to accomplish the goals that I've always wanted to do in spite of what was going on around me.

[00:02:24] Todd Malloy It taught me that the only one that really limits me is me. And so I've just taken that mindset, it's led me through life, through being a mechanical engineer for some major corporations doing design work, designing cell phones, composite boom trucks, hydroelectric technology, compliance work for technical environments, QS 9000 type stuff.

[00:03:17] Todd Malloy Todd Malloy I educate myself and really find out who I am and who I really wanted to be in life. And what I really wanted to be was a therapist. Todd Malloy Right.

[00:03:29] Todd Malloy And here it is. And I wanted to be a therapist. And I didn't see a bridge between being a program manager, mechanical engineer, doing new product introduction to creating a bridge where I'd be a therapist. However, that's what I always wanted to be since I was a kid. However, life's journeys kind of distract you. And when you're told that the kid, Todd Malloy You can't be who you want to be, you become who people tell you to be. Todd Malloy Yeah.

[00:03:55] Todd Malloy So I did that for as long as I could. But then I challenged myself to give myself permission to be who I really wanted to be. And that's a therapist to where I could ultimately work with people, blend my corporate experience, my technical experience, but also work with the psychological underpinning that a lot of people struggle with, even being in corporate America.

[00:04:16] Todd Malloy But remember, business is strictly business. It's not personal. However, even though we talk about emotional intelligence in business, we really don't foster and cultivate those things. So in the midst of that environment, there could be a lot of challenge. And having the tenure that I've had in corporate America, recognizing the underpinning of psychological impact on how people show up and how they perform and how they can perform even better, want to truly understand how to coach them up.

[00:04:44] Todd Malloy I pursued that as my career as a therapist. But then as I've matured as a therapist over 14, 15 years, I began to work with clients that were in C-suite organizations, different things that were coming for relational family stuff.

[00:04:59] Todd Malloy I pursued that as a therapist. But then it began to transition into where I worked with their whole life in that because I had done the corporate America, I've owned P&Ls, I've had international work, I've owned P&Ls up to half a million dollars and having 125 people around the world interacting with. Todd Malloy I was able to facilitate merging the two worlds and just being of value to them.

[00:05:28] Todd Malloy I was able to do that because in corporate America, politics is a big thing and being vulnerable and transparent. But in my office is a safe place. Todd Malloy I was able to do that when you have those people that can bounce things off from a business perspective, have someone to have a frame of reference, and then have them find a healthier solution. Todd Malloy I was able to do that because a lot of them don't always want to do it inside the office because they have competitors in their office. Todd Malloy Right. However, coming here, so it kind of gives my eclectic life in the way it's organically been put together.

[00:05:58] It's allowed me to work with the whole person, which is ultimately what I wanted to do. That's why I also, I'm the quintessential nerd. I have a mechanical engineering degree. I'm also a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, certified sexuality educator. I've been to seminary and served as a pastor for seven years. So collectively, that's allowed me to deal with the whole person as opposed to pieces and parts. Okay, it could be quite a lot to go out there. So let's break some of those things down.

[00:06:28] With the rise in mental health challenges and the huge rise in counseling and therapy. Definitely. There's a lot of people who think now that therapy is part of the problem and not part of the solution. How do you think about that? I disagree completely. It's a part of the solution. No, what it is that as a society and even as a world, we're used to suffering in silence. And everybody, take the stiffer up a little. Come on, pull yourself up by the bootstrap. However, but we're dealing with a lot of turmoil. And you ever notice it?

[00:06:56] I remember Will Smith who slapped Chris Rock on the national TV show. When I saw that, you have to think about it, even though it was a joke about his wife. However, Will Smith comes from a family of abuse and he felt powerless. And that powerlessness he felt in that moment triggered him to when he was a kid. And therefore, he reacted because it's called neural hijacking. It happens to us all the time.

[00:07:23] Even we respond to feelings and emotions more than words and environments. So if I feel today the way I felt yesterday, those moments blended. I respond today as well. I'm in backing by youth or whatever the case may be. In that particular case, that trigger of him feeling powerless caused him to act out of terror. So what I share with people is that we all shouldn't have a financial manager for our lives. We have a health doctor for our care. We have a maintenance man to take care of.

[00:07:51] We have a handyman for our house. But if we don't, we should have a mental health provider on our success plan as well. Because no matter all the other things we care about, our physical fitness and all these things, if our mind isn't right, that can distort how we see life as a whole. Yeah. So it would behoove us to really understand and work with the mental health, really understand what we begin and end and how our inner workings are,

[00:08:18] such that we have a better ability to control our own emotions and be more effective in an outward society. It's interesting you say that because I'm a Brit. And my perception of Americans, possibly based on culture and such, is that few of you have an unshared thought. So actually, there's a lot of sharing. There's a lot of sharing feelings and emotions. There's a lot of social media, people all talking, being thorough and such. But it's interesting that you're in North Carolina.

[00:08:46] And I wonder if different parts of America, because it's not one country, as it's many countries melded together. I wonder if that approach to sharing is different in different cultures or different parts of the U.S. Oh, yeah. Most definitely. Me living in the South, we're said to be a little more friendly. Right. So we say good morning. When I used to live in Georgia, you could drive. This one person could drive by my house 50 times and still wave 50 times. You just kind of wave. And you do those things.

[00:09:15] However, as you go up north to the northeast, people tend to be a little cold or harder. So it depends. Certain places in the Midwest, like Ohio and so forth, you have more humanistic type people as opposed to somewhere like a Detroit or somewhere else. So it varies from city to city, culture to culture. Right. However, but for the most part, think about it this way. If we don't express ourselves, we become constipated. We can turn ourselves into bombs.

[00:09:46] If I am not expressing the hurt and disappointment that others have impacted upon me, I hold it in and punish myself. That's actually because sadness and depression is really internalized anger. I'm upset or disappointed at someone else here, but I don't feel comfortable enough to communicate it and prevent it where it's necessary. So I'll hold it in and punish myself. But that's interesting, isn't it? Because as you're talking, the thought's forming in my mind.

[00:10:15] So it's obviously an expensive business getting therapy. So it seems to be the preserve of the rich or the more affluent. You often find that people who are working two or three jobs, they can't afford therapy. They just get on with it. But arguably, they're actually more resilient, aren't they, than the people who are constantly sharing their thoughts, putting all their thoughts... Well, are they more resistant or are they short in their lifespan? Okay. So they might be more resilient in the moment and they may present more stable.

[00:10:42] But emotional distress creates a physical disease. So that unforgiveness is tied to cancer. Science has really identified emotional... Heartache. I had an aunt who diagnosed her dying of heartache. At 42 years old, she had a broken heart. She dated the same man since she was nine years old. And in turn, she had some hurts and disappointments as a result of the relationship, the longevity of the relationship.

[00:11:10] And she just had heart to stop. And it's like dying of a broken heart. Emotions have a direct link to our physical well-being. Now, you as an engineer, obviously learned to think very differently, learned to think in a particular way. Very evidence-based, very factual. So I'm interested that you're saying those things. What's the actual evidence for that? Because people would die for all sorts of reasons, not just a broken heart. That's true, isn't it?

[00:11:36] For example, you have John Gottman, who's a therapy guy here in the U.S. He used to be an accountant, actually. And what he used to do is when he did therapy, he actually did the research and put electrodes on people and watched their emotional well-being during conversations, things of that nature. So the research is there, but do the massive habit.

[00:12:01] So there is research that supports therapeutic, evidence-based research that is scientific-based and so forth. So this is not just pie in the sky type stuff. This is evidence-based research. CBT, solution focus, even mindfulness, things of that nature, different mediums. Because in truth, think about this. In life, who teaches us how to live? We're only taught to be students, professionals, law enforcement, military personnel.

[00:12:30] The rest of life, you have parts, I have parts. We throw it together and hope for the best. Sure. That sounds like an accident waiting to happen. What if we were beginning to, just as our professional lives, be just as intentional about handling our personal lives equally and the different layers of who I am as a person, and address those just as intentionally as I do my career, as opposed to taking a swag guess at something. Makes sense.

[00:13:00] It's, yes, interesting. I don't want to get lost in a conversation about evaluating therapies. It's just interesting. We've got an engineer sitting in front of us. It's quite interesting. It's such a different thinking style. And I'm guessing as an engineer, there must be part of you who's very solution-focused and therapists, some therapists. Oh, very much. Many therapists are not solution-focused. Do you find that you have to restrict your natural urge to solve a problem for people when you're working with them?

[00:13:26] One benefit that I had, I couldn't find a bridge between engineering and therapy. However, but as I began to walk the journey, I recognized that concept, and I made a tangible product. I was one of the designers on the i1000 phone, the first Motorola Nextel phone, walkie-talkie cell phone thing.

[00:13:48] And on that team, obviously doing the design work and all of those wonderful things, I recognized that I'm taking an idea and I'm making a tangible product. But then as I began to go into therapy, I'm taking an intangible thought, an idea or goal that someone wants. And I'm now making a tangible intangible. So actually the mindset, the analytical thought process,

[00:14:18] the behavior to divide things and understand them from a very granular perspective. And even as I talk to my clients, I use technical terms like data. What is the data telling you? Look at life as a student. And then I equate them to an electric light. When I said, because for example, we have a tendency to take in, observe the world, take in data, but then we determine what we like and what we don't like, and we choose what to accept, what to go away.

[00:14:46] But I really challenge people to say, you're more like light, where we have positive and negative currents. The light absorbs the positive and negative current, doesn't judge any of it. I need 100% of the data in order to be accurate and fulfill my purpose. So I take 100% of the data through the inner workings of the system. I kick out anything that doesn't serve my best interest. I accept the rest. Then I command it to emanate light in the direction that I want.

[00:15:14] Hamlet taught us that there is no such thing as good or bad, because good or bad are constructs of the mind. It only is what it is. So if it is what it is, let's not judge it. Let's take judgment out and just look at life as life is about experiences that create feelings and emotions. We choose to get stuck in them or learn through them to achieve a destiny, purpose, or passion. So if I look at life like a student, and I actually use my emotions as metrics,

[00:15:41] because really I really think people here in the U.S., we're really big on analytics to do, to play, how they do sports, gambling, everything. However, to me, analytics isn't a new thing. It's a computerized nervous system. Our emotions, our internalized emotions are guideposts on how to move forward through life. And when I'm fearful, hey, I'm in a new terrain, slow down, be strategic in your movement because you may step on the landmine. If I'm anxious, slow down because you trip over your own feet.

[00:16:11] However, but then when I'm angry or disappointed, I recognize that's internalized anger that's not being projected out. But once I understand them that way, and I govern myself accordingly, that smooths out my journey moving forward. So as opposed to winging life and social learning, why not let's be intentional about who we are, where we're going, and choosing the right steps to move forward to accomplish those goals. Sure. That all makes perfect sense.

[00:16:40] One of the things when I'm looking at your website, .com, quick plug of that, you have quite a lot of conversations about men and the role of men in the world today. What's your take on this subject? I think manhood, what I challenge men is where do they get their definition of manhood? And is it relevant to who they are? Because think about this. Typically, when we get a definition of manhood, it comes from before we were born. It comes from your father, your grandfather, whatever the case may be.

[00:17:06] However, none of those gentlemen will live in the future where you will spend most of your life. So therefore, they have a baseline. But is your definition of manhood relevant to who you are and where you are? Because if I take an old mindset and I'm trying to apply it into a new moment, it may not be relevant. So I really could be assessing myself, who I am, what I want on my term, and what the expectations are for my family.

[00:17:31] And define my manhood based on that, to have a standard that I can actually achieve as opposed to a concept that I consistently don't feel I'm fully able to achieve. I work with quite a few men that aren't very self-fulfill, aren't secure in their own well-being. They're anxious. They question their own values. They question their own masculinity. And I have wives sending their husbands to see me.

[00:17:59] However, but then when I challenge them, I challenge them and say, sir, let me answer this. Do you work? Do you provide for your family? Do you care? Do you love for your family? Do you help your kids? Do you invest? And I said, yes. That's how I know you're 100% man. You actually meet all of the expectations that you have in your life. So whatever this other mindset is that you're measuring yourself against, Warren Buffett, the football player on TV, the corporate exec.

[00:18:24] However, those are different people with different situations that you have no concept of where, what, when. Just because they look wonderful, that doesn't mean what's going on underneath is that wonderful. But really looking at life from your terms and identifying your success and your challenges based on the truth of your experience as opposed to how we've been pre-programmed by life. But isn't that just the human experience, not necessarily men? Because actually there's a sort of. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:18:52] You brought up men, but men specifically. With that, men specifically have come to me and since you brought up from that perspective. But yes, I challenge a lot. I've had clients, men and women that have been married for decades that were miserable and just left their, strategically left their family, left their husbands and really moved into a life worth celebrating and turning into multimillion dollar businesses. Because they have been suppressed and not really cultivated in who they are.

[00:19:21] I'm not saying everybody needs to leave a marriage or whatever the case may be. But if we're not being intentional in life, we're usually building a system that doesn't include us as a factor. Yes. We often, people fail to recognize that. As the rocket ship goes to the moon, it drops old mindset. It drops parts of pieces that are no longer relevant. But we have a tendency as people to drag everything with us. But what I do is challenge people to say, is that relevant and true for you? Do you really need that?

[00:19:49] We know that we don't believe in Santa Claus or the stork or the Easter bunny anymore. Why are we bringing everything else? Let's really be intentional about what's relevant and what's not in our particular lives. But that's interesting, isn't it? Because there's a big move in the States, isn't it? To regress in the role of men and have men as a sort of traditional breadwinner and women back in the kitchen. And there's a lot of social change around that. And then that is almost about reinforcing that baggage.

[00:20:16] Because actually, arguably, we're moving into a very different world. It seems odd. And maybe this is just people clinging on to the past because it gives them a degree of security. If you know here in the U.S., that's a big, we're having a big divide. So to your point, there is a mindset. But that mindset is equitably eroding. Well, as a country, I really don't believe and I would really pray we don't go back. And again, not to make this a political show, but here in the U.S., even as I'm watching, it's eroding.

[00:20:45] MAGA mindset, the current political regime is eroding terribly. And we're trusting that through our political process, through the democratic process, there's change coming. Yeah. Amen to that. I can't believe I said that out loud. So, Todd, if people want to find out more about you, where should they look? The simplest way to find me is go to toddmolloy.com. That'll give you all my social media, all of my phone numbers and so forth. Again, and where you can go and look at toddmolloy.com.

[00:21:15] Todd is what I talk about, intentional living. I really have discussion cards for everybody that, to your point, you mentioned everybody can't afford therapy. So I have tools, workbooks, cards, things of that nature to help people find their truth and be programmed some programming that they weren't even aware of they had. Fantastic. And of course, I have to say, and please don't take this the wrong way, but the idea of spending a therapy session to you, listening to your voice is quite great. I think I can look forward to that myself. I think that would be a very pleasant way to spend some time.

[00:21:46] Thank you, Todd. Thank you. Good. So toddmolloy.com is where we've been spending time today. So thank you so much for spending time with us, Todd. That's been really fascinating. And thank you for being very candid about the state of the world at the moment. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. You take it. Hi. I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining. If you want to support our work, please go to resilienceunravel.com. And you can become a member there as well.

[00:22:15] You can also send us a question there and even apply to do a podcast. You can also leave a review on Apple Podcasts or any of the other podcast hosts of your choice. As well as getting hold of some useful resources about resilience and a whole lot more. Join us next time on the next edition of Resilience Unraveled.