Escape Rooms are one of the most exciting and immersive puzzle games ever conceptualized, pitting participants in challenges that tickle their minds, reflexes, and intuition. For Christina Eanes, these fun games can be utilized to improve your strategies and skills when it comes to the most stressful situations and competitive areas. The author of Life is an Escape Room joins Melanie Parish to share her discoveries on experimenting in escape rooms, offering helpful insights for team-building strategies and even couple empowerment. She also shares some tips on finding virtual escape rooms in this time of pandemic, her self-care routine, and her current leadership challenges.

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Christina Eanes On How Escape Rooms Can Hone Your Competitive Spirit

I would like to introduce my guest, Christina Eanes, who is a former FBI Violent Crime Analyst and Senior Manager. She’s now an author, speaker, podcast and YouTube channel host, and self-improvement guru. She specializes in super achieving and is on a mission to help others achieve more in life mainly by getting out of their own way and does this through her books, podcast series, professional development courses and keynote speeches. Her new book, Life Is an Escape Room, demonstrates how the skills you gain playing escape rooms with intention will make you more successful in all aspects of your life.

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Christina, welcome to my show. I’m excited to have you here.

Thank you. I am excited to be here too.

I would love to dive right in and ask you about what work are you doing now in your life?  

I’m excited because I have many different areas that I’m working in. I used to always have multiple jobs. What I was doing is at least two. I found a way since I’ve become an entrepreneur to put that all under one umbrella. My main business is providing professional development services to companies. We have a catalog ready to go on soft skills such as emotional intelligence, coaching, giving feedback, persuasion, accountability. We provide classes to companies, but then to also help me diversify, I love having my hands in a lot of different things. I have three sub-brands and they’re each based off of a book that I’ve written. The first one is Quit Bleeping Around and I have a podcast with that. That’s about essentially getting out of our own way to achieve more in life. The next book is The Secret to Super Productivity. I have a book, a speech and a course on that, no podcast or YouTube channel or anything like that. The one that came out in 2020 based on an addiction that I have of escape rooms is Life Is An Escape Room. That book has also a speech and a class. Who knows what’s going to come next from that? Probably also escape room related but we’ll see. I come up with something I like to get into every year or so in addition to the professional development firm.

You’re super shiny, previous FBI Analyst. I have all these images of television shows and you’re super cool. What do I have to learn from escape rooms in my life?  

The book that we wrote has 60 mini chapters on 60 different lessons. We’ve had many more, but the speech that I deliver focuses on three different things. Historically, escape rooms have been used for fun, but they’ve also been in the corporate team building realm. My husband does all the escape rooms with me. We wanted to help people realize that you as an individual, whether it’s through your company or not, can learn a lot about yourself in an escape room mainly in three areas, perception, emotional intelligence and communication. The speeches I do, I share some interesting stories like being locked in a coffin, doing a room in complete darkness, being in a room that was filling up with water.

It teaches you a lot about how you manage your emotions during stressful situations, the personality that comes out when you get in a competitive situation and how you communicate with others, but it helps you if you do them with intention. You go in and say, “This escape room, we’re going to focus on what’s important, spending time together, not necessarily getting out.” We get out at 97% of the time, but each time before we go into one of these experiences, and this is what we recommend for individuals, you set one thing that you want to work on. You make sure and set an intention, and work on that. When you get out of the room, you reflect on how you worked on that. Not only are you having fun, but you’re also improving yourself in the process.

I have the sneaky suspicion that when you say 97%, you know that that’s the right number. Is that true?  

Yes. We keep stats. We have done almost 500 rooms in 20 different countries and 22 states. I wasn’t kidding when I said we were addicts.

Escape Rooms: Escape rooms teach that one of the main things in strategizing is how to look at things differently.

I do a little relationship coaching and systems work. What do you think the dream is for you as a couple with escape rooms? What’s the best-case scenario or the high dream for the two of you together in escape rooms?  

As you were asking it, I was thinking, “This could be a form of marriage counseling.”

How come? What do you get from that?

I’ve heard of couples who go in and they cannot be in the room with each other because they both break down and whatnot, but we devised this. One of the classes that I teach is on the insights discovery personality system. It helps for us to have that basis before we’re going into the rooms. We are opposites on that personality scale. He’s detail-oriented. He has specific things that he is good at. I am big picture-oriented, creative, visioning type of personality. We had that basis going in, but we’ve used that over the years to hone how we work together as a couple. Initially before we had that system, before I started teaching it and we had gone through it with each other, we initially were like, “This person is doing this to upset me or to get in my way.”

We realized, “We are immensely compatible, and we complement each other well when it comes to situations.” We’ve trained ourselves throughout time to use each of our personalities and skillsets as a benefit. We’ll walk in and there will be a certain puzzle and I’m like, “That’s yours.” We’ll see one for me and I’m like, “I’ve got this one. This is my area of expertise.” The other one learns to step back and let them do it. We’ve learned to translate this into our personal and professional lives as well. It’s been an amazing developmental experience. It’s doing them with intention and on purpose.

It’s fun to think about the idea that I do a lot of hiring and consulting. I’m often talking about that complementary skillset. We’re looking for people who aren’t the same as the other people in the organization, but when you’re talking about it, and if you don’t understand that you’re different and you don’t understand that difference is valuable for its own sake, then it can feel like friction. That’s true in organizations as well. It’s true in marriages. It’s funny that marriages that are thriving are able to see those differences as strengths, and marriages that are not thriving see those differences as pain points.  

Friction is definitely it. That’s what escape rooms teach us. One of the main things is how to look at things differently and how to perceive things differently. You can look at something as getting in your way, or you can look at it as something that’s helping round you out to be more whole in how you see things.

I love talking to people about how they’re experimenting in their own lives. 2020 has been a year of experimenting like no other. What are you doing in your own business and work life to experiment?  

I’ve always been experimenting and testing out new waters. I’m doing a lot of volunteer work with my local chapter of the Association for Talent Development. I’m experimenting a lot through that way through working with volunteers, leading them, testing out different things for my business. Though it’s not business-related, but testing out different things to see if they work and then bringing them into my business like how I interact on social media or how I interact with others, or if people like certain ideas and then I can bring them into my business. I would think that way, other than the escape rooms. I’m constantly experimenting in that fashion. Especially now, most places being under lockdown, we’ve been able to do escape rooms virtually, which is cool. We’ve been doing escape rooms virtually in countries that we would never visit. Part of that is interacting with the game master from those countries. We’ve met some lovely people and learned about different cultures. That’s another way of experimenting. Every day and almost every moment of my life is an experiment.

I’m curious, what’s the best way to find a beginner or a good place to start with a virtual escape room?

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

I’m part of an escape room enthusiast group on Facebook. There are people who are enthusiasts that have done even 1 to 5 escape rooms on there. Not all of them have done 500. We’re the unusual part of that group, but there’s a group there. You go on Facebook and search “Escape Room Enthusiasts,” and people are sharing recommendations constantly in that group. I saw one, “We’re new to escape rooms. We love them. We’ve got children this age and this age. We live in this area. What do you recommend we do?” That could be in-person or virtual. We do find a lot of our virtual escape rooms through LiveVideoEscapeRooms.com. They have a listing and it goes over what groups they’re good for doing. They even have reviews of people who’ve gone through them before. That’s another resource.

Thank you. That’s unexpected on our call but I love the idea of trying this. As many people are finding lockdown a little boring and tedious, an escape room sounds a fun thing to do.  

They have gotten creative in how they do that. I’ve been impressed with the escape room industry. We did one in Lithuania and one in Canada, and they were both enjoyable.

What challenges are you facing as a leader now?  

Some companies are worried about what 2021 is going to look like. Maybe I’m not sending enough work to my contractors now. That would be a challenge, but I’m working on that, getting more business in through the doors. Another challenge would be, which I’ve done before but it’s been a while, leading volunteers. People who volunteered to be there, they’re not paid to be there. You have to be extra emotionally intelligent and transformational as a leader to have them motivated to help out.

I enjoy asking my guests about imposter syndrome. I’m not asking you to share your deepest, darkest secrets with me by any means. Since you work with people, since you teach people, teach leaders, have worked in organizations, what do you know about imposter syndrome? What trips people up? How do people get out of it?

I did a video and a podcast on imposter syndrome as it relates to growth mindset. Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset is in her book Mindset. She did research and it’s been several years now. She updated the book. She noticed there’s a difference in two types of mindset and they’re on a continuum. Your growth mindset sees failure as a learning opportunity, that we are continually evolving, that we make mistakes, we go through failures so that we can be better people. On the other side of the continuum is the fixed mindset. That mindset at its purest form believes that we are born with the skillset that we have, that failure means we’ve reached the limit of our abilities, our skills. They don’t think that you can improve with more effort, more training, or personal growth, so why bother?

I have found and there’s been research out there as well backing this up, that those who fall victim to imposter syndrome tend to have more of a fixed mindset. The solution would be to develop more of a growth mindset. There’s a whole process to go through that. There are a lot of resources out there. I’ve posted a few but essentially, it’s training yourself to see failure and mistakes as more of a learning opportunity to realize that everyone makes mistakes. Babies don’t just get up and start walking. They have to crawl in order to walk. They do a whole bunch of toddling and they don’t berate themselves if they make a mistake. Getting more of that mindset, you’re less apt to feel like you have to show up in a new position or a new place and know everything. It’s like, “I’m learning. I’m new here. It’s going to take me a while to get my feet under me, help me out.” That’s one way to look at imposter syndrome and one way to help overcome it.

Thank you for that. I love that you’ve been thinking about it. I think about it. My clients think about it. It’s good to see it as a thing as opposed to a reality. I liked that idea that the bumps and bruises as you fall down is all about gaining skill.  

It’s helps you learn the skill better. We learn a lot more from our failures and our mistakes than we do from our successes.

What do you do to take care of yourself? What’s your self-care routine?  

Escape Rooms: Train yourself to see failure and mistakes as more of a learning opportunity and realize that everyone makes mistakes.

It’s me first. My kids are grown so it’s a little easier to do that nowadays. My second book is focused a lot on this, The Secret to Super Productivity, and that secret is managing your energy, not your time. I look at any self-care items as energy creators. They help us bank up that energy so that we spend it properly throughout the day. I do that in a lot of different ways. Good sleep, good nutrition, exercise, those basics, I love to get a massage and facial, spend some me time, staring out the window, reading, or watching TV. I’ve gotten into Downton Abbey. I don’t know why, it just sucks me in, but doing little things like that. It’s some me time.

Where can people find you, Christina?  

ChristinaEanes.com. I also have several other websites that fall off of that one, QuitBleepingAround.com, SecretToSuperProductivity.com, LifeIsAnEscapeRoom.com. I also have a YouTube channel, search Christina Eanes and it will pop up. Thank you.

It has been such a pleasure to have you on my show. I’m excited to get to know you more.  

Thank you.

Important Links:

• Life Is an Escape Room
• Quit Bleeping Around
• LiveVideoEscapeRooms.com
• Mindset
• ChristinaEanes.com
• QuitBleepingAround.com
• SecretToSuperProductivity.com
• LifeIsAnEscapeRoom.com
• Christina Eanes – YouTube channel

About Christina Eanes

Christina Eanes is a former FBI violent crime analyst and senior manager, now author, speaker, podcast and YouTube channel host, and self-improvement guru. Christina specializes in super achieving and is on a mission to help others achieve more in life, mainly by getting out of their own way, and currently does this through her books, podcast series, professional development courses, and keynote speeches.

Christina’s newest book, Life is an Escape Room: Applying Lessons Learned from Successful Escapeletes to Achieving More in Life, demonstrates how the skills you gain playing escape rooms with intention will make you more successful in all aspects of your life. Escape rooms are a fun way to