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Jan 13
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1023: Finding More Purpose and Flow through Breathwork with Francesca Sipma

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Francesca Sipma shares breathwork practices to help access more purpose and flow.

You’ll Learn

  1. How breathwork leads to greater clarity 
  2. The science supporting breathwork 
  3. The most important question to ask yourself 

About Francesca 

Francesca Sipma is the author of Unblock Your Purpose:  Breathwork, Intuition, and Flow State. She is the founder and CEO of Mastry, the creator of HypnoBreathwork®, and an international speaker who offers courses and training programs for C-suite executives, world-renowned producers, celebrities, artists, and athletes. She has led sessions for Deloitte, Snap, Upwork, and Athletic Brewing, and her work has been featured by Bloomberg, Forbes, NBC, and ABC. She lives in San Diego.

Resources Mentioned

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Francesca Sipma Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Francesca, welcome.

Francesca Sipma
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to chat through your book and your discoveries around Unblock Your Purpose: Breathwork, Intuition, and Flow State. Could you maybe share with us for starters your journey, the short version, with regard to how did you stumble upon this protocol? And what’s it doing for people?

Francesca Sipma
Yes. So, a little bit about my background is I actually come from advertising and marketing in Manhattan, and sort of hit a lot of my goals, and found myself at the peak of the mountaintop, so to say, and just felt quite empty and unfulfilled. And that really took me on a quest to rediscover my values and to sort of pivot my career into something that would bring me more fulfillment.

And that’s when I discovered breathwork and was completely fascinated by this practice. It took me really deep into my subconscious, and was extremely revealing of things that needed to heal in order to tap into my highest clarity and intuition. And the breathwork really helped me discover my life’s purpose, which gave me a lot of meaning and fulfillment. And now it’s my quest to share that with others.

Pete Mockaitis
How does breathing help us get to our purpose?

Francesca Sipma
So, breathwork reveals sort of your subconscious motivations and anything that’s unhealed in past relationships, and also a bit how your identity has been formed. So, in order for you to discover your purpose, which my definition of purpose is really the convergence of your skills, your experiences, obstacles you’ve overcome, and how you turned that outwards to be of service, you have to get to know yourself a bit.

You have to go through the defense mechanisms, the ego, any protective strategies that have been built. And breathwork has this really unique and profound ability to cut through the conscious mind, and it allows us to go deeper into emotions that have been repressed, and the exhale really allows us to clear out any sadness or guilt, subconscious limitations, and it just reveals more truth. It reveals our authenticity.

And when we do that consistently, the dots start to connect between the things that really light us up and how we can contribute to the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Francesca, help me out. I’ve been breathing for a long time but I don’t think breathing has ever done that for me. Am I doing it wrong? Or what’s the missing link here?

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, it’s a very specific style that we do. Breathwork has really become an umbrella term, and there’s a lot of different practices and processes, and most of it has really been for calming and for anxiety and stress relief. But the style of breathwork that we work on is called HypnoBreathwork. And so, the breath is really more of an experiential therapy. It’s very intense to inhale one exhale for about 20 minutes, and that really starts to disrupt your conscious mind and those habitual thought loops.

And then we bring in hypnotic suggestions, which are vocal cues that allow you to really focus and concentrate your brain on very specific prompts, and that might reveal what you wanted to be when you were younger, or how your skills can connect into something that you’re passionate about. And then we have visioning, which we really bring at the end of a session so that people can mentally rehearse their goals.

They can see the highest version of themselves. They can get clear action steps on what they want to create in the future. And it’s a hyper-efficient and effective 22-minute process, and each session sort of has a theme or a topic of things that we move and get clarity on. And when you do that daily, you can make a lot of progress in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s really intriguing. Well, so we’ve had Marc Shoen on the show, who is a clinical psychologist who does hypnosis, and that was cool. And then we had Dr. Sam Rader share about some of the, I don’t know if I want to say metaphysical, but she’s in the wellness space, talking about some of this stuff. And so, for those who are skeptical, reluctant, think that sounds a little, I don’t know, out there woo-woo, whatever term du jour, could you share any evidence, or science, or goodness that says, “No, for real, this really does stuff”?

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, I totally get that perspective. I was extremely skeptical as well when I went to Bali and discovered breathwork. I was pretty self-righteous, to be honest. I had been in therapy and read a lot of self-help books, and thought it was going to be some form of meditation or yoga. But through my experience, I found it was much more deeper than that, and it was very cathartic, and it was very healing.

And then I went to study it around the world. I went to India, I went to Peru, I went to Thailand, I went to every workshop and training, and read every breath book that I could find, and I came to understand that what’s happening in our bodies, physiologically, is we are changing the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

And when you do that, your blood becomes more alkaline, and you start to shut down the prefrontal cortex. And that’s the default mode network, that’s the overanalytical mind, that’s doing things from past experience, that’s expectations of how things have been done before, and you start to activate and you start to stimulate different regions and areas of your brain. And it’s a bit like microdosing.

When you start to activate old memories and information and knowledge and infinite intelligence, all of a sudden, you get this expansive worldview. You get more perspective. So, I actually use breathwork for peak performance. I use it to get into flow state for my business to be sharper, clearer, more articulate, problem-solving, decision-making.

And what I find is it allows me to be more creative because it’s connecting more dots. Because everything that you’ve ever studied, or been inspired by, or read, or listened to, it all lives in your subconscious mind, which is the record holder of your experiences and your emotions. And when you can breathe past that default mode network, and you can start to stimulate these different regions, all of a sudden, those different elements will connect in you in creative ways.

So, it’s like, “Oh, that one episode that I listened to on Pete’s podcast, if I did that for this passion project, and I monetize like this, and this is my acquisition strategy, and I sent this email out, and I was inspired by that social media billboard, and maybe those are the colors,” all of a sudden, you get hyper-creative, and it’s a very efficient and very effective process.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Francesca, that sounds awesome. I enjoy when my brain just makes all the connections from a lot of things. It’s a great feeling, like, “Aha,” when insights and things are unlocked, and when goodness flows.

Francesca Sipma
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And the research on hypnosis says kind of that same thing with regards to hypnosis is just kind of a state of mind in which we are more accepting or open to receiving suggestion. And so, sometimes that’s used in kooky stage hypnosis context, but it can actually be super useful in terms of practical life context for any number of things.

I think I found it best when it’s like there’s a thing that I know to be true, and yet it doesn’t feel true in terms of, like, my insides, how I’m operating, how I’m emotionally reacting naturally to things. And hypnosis can be handy for that with regard to, say, handling criticisms, like, “Oh, I know that someone is not the judge, jury, executioner, end all, be all with regard to their opinion of me or my performance on a thing.”

And yet, sometimes, it feels though like they are, like that is true, but, no, it’s not true. And then hypnosis seems to have a cool way of letting those suggestions really go deeper and hit home. And it sounds like what you’re saying is, with a particular breathing approach stacked on top of that, it’s like we’re getting even more deeper penetration.

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, you’re really hitting the nail on the head. I love hypnotherapy and all of the sessions that I had sort of gone through in my exploration, but what I found was, for a lot of the sessions, it would take 60 minutes to two and a half hours, and I just didn’t think that bringing that back to the States into modern audience, and especially with my New York friends and people in finance, that they would spend that much time on their personal development.

So, I started to experiment with an EEG headband and test my brainwaves. And theta brainwaves are where you want to get to an order for the suggestions to really stick, in order for you to access those deeper states where you’re less defensive, and you are more open to that suggestion.

And with the conscious connected breathing, when you do the two inhales and one exhale, what I found consistently was I could get into theta state within four minutes versus when I would do it in meditation, which it would be about 15 minutes and I was still oscillating between alpha and beta brainwaves, which means you can negate the suggestion.

Which means, if I say, “Get to the root of procrastination. And what would it look like to finish that task? And what would that confidence feel like in your body?” you’re much more likely to be able to go and see that version of yourself, see yourself on stage, feel the emotion like you already have it, and it can actually stick versus feeling like you’re fighting against the current.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you’re using the EEG headband and you’re saying the theta waves roughly corresponds in the app to the calm portion of that. And you’re saying that by doing this breathwork, you’re able to land to that calm zone way faster than just meditating.

Francesca Sipma
Yes, exactly. Precisely.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s cool. And I saw a fun dorky blogpost about meditation tournament, and, the irony of it all, they called it March Mindfulness, and they talked about how it can be very easy to game those if you’re doing the calibration with your eyes open. So, tell us a little bit about that nuance. Is this all eyes closed? I even see in your videos people have eye masks on. Is that right?

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, we like to place a really comfortable eye mask on, make sure that you are laying down, make sure that you’re very comfortable and cozy. A lot of people like to have a blanket with them during a breathwork session, or a box of tissues because it can be a very intense journey. But breathwork is very different than meditation. I want to be really clear in that distinction.

In meditation, you are taking more of a passive state. You’re maybe observing your thoughts, you’re maybe trying to focus on a mantra, you’re may be focusing on your breath and allowing things to pass or de-trigger yourself, where breathwork is extremely active. It is very intense. You will feel physical vibrations sort of moving through your body, especially for your first three sessions.

You might feel like your hands are clamping up. You’ll feel tingling around your face. You might feel emotions and energy moving through your chest or your stomach, and that’s really stress and emotion that’s been buried and have been stagnant that wants to remove and that wants to release. And the way that we position the HypnoBreathwork sessions, it’s really for you to become more self-aware and maybe observe those psychological patterns and expand your mind into a new way.

So, it’s very active, it’s very intense, it’s very physical. And I think that’s why people are so intrigued by the practice, and they can maybe stick with it longer than meditation. I get the same feedback all the time, “It’s so hard for me to meditate. I can’t calm down my mind. I’m constantly running my to-do list,” and people will give up on the meditation.

But with the breath, because it’s so physical, because at least you can tell that something is happening in your body, and at the end of it, you’ll at least, at the very, very minimum, feel so much lighter and so much clearer. It’s a better habit, I think, for people to start on their personal development journey because they’ll stick with it long enough to start to experience some results.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s paint a real clear picture here then. This sounds swell. So, we’re lying down, we’re comfy, we got a blanket or something, we got eye mask, so we got sort of nice visual stimuli all kind of blocked away, and then we’re doing this breathing, two inhale, one exhale. Could you give us a demo on that?

Francesca Sipma
Yes. So, it’s an inhale into your belly, inhale into your chest, and exhale. And your inhales are done through your nose, and your exhales through your mouth. So, it’s looks like inhale belly, inhale heart, exhale, inhale belly, inhale chest, exhale. And another key differentiator in the style of breathwork we teach is music is a really big part of it.

So, we might play more Shamanic beats if we’re doing a healing session from your past. We might play Adele or Celine Dion if we’re going through relationships and healing heartbreak. We might play more of like a Rufus Du Sol and ethereal, cinematic Braveheart Soundtrack type of tunes if we’re getting into your most powerful state or seeing your 2025 roadmap for your business. So, the music and the topics really shape the vocal cues and the journey. It’s very specific and it’s very customized.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, with that two inhales, one to the belly/diaphragm, one to the chest/heart, and then the exhale, is there a pace we’re aiming for?

Francesca Sipma
It’s a good question. I think that I try to let people go at a pace that they’re really comfortable with to start because I’d rather they stay for the whole journey and experience the benefits than push them too hard on the first one. I definitely work with a lot of athletes and peak performers who are pumping their breath extremely fast, and they’re feeling sort of an out-of-body experience really early on because they’re breathing in such an accelerated fashion.

But honestly, you can take it fairly slow, a place that feels good and feels comfortable, and you’ll still be able to access those deeper brainwaves states for the emotional breakthroughs and insights. So, this pacing is nice, with a medium pace, inhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, inhale, exhale. That’s sort of an ideal middle.

Pete Mockaitis
And as you’re doing it, I imagine there’s probably some group effects in terms of the rhythmic groove, and you talk about these beats. Well, now you reminded me, a buddy of mine mentioned he did, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing these words right, holotropic breathwork and SOM. Is that the same thing as this or is that different than this?

Francesca Sipma
That’s sort of the OG, like that’s the grandfather of breathwork, so definitely huge respect to Leonard Orr and to Stan Grof, sort of the grandfathers of that practice. Stan Grof was a clinical psychologist who studied LSD in the ‘60s and then created holotropic breathwork as a psycho-spiritual way for people to do deep trauma healing and see childhood memories, and become higher versions of themselves, and really access those altered states of consciousness.

So, that’s the first breathwork that I ever experienced, and I did seven sessions in Bali at a private breathwork retreat, which is why I became so in love with the practice. But what we’ve done now is we’ve really modernized it. Holotropic breathwork can also last 60 to 90 music. Typically, the music doesn’t have any lyrics in it, and there’s also no vocal guidance or cues, and there’s sort of a signature effect of drawing a mandala after your experience to really help you integrate and sort of hold onto the internal events that had just taken place.

Pete Mockaitis
What is a mandala?

Francesca Sipma
It’s basically a visual representation. You use different either crayons or markers and a white sheet of paper to just create a visual to sort of cement or integrate the practice for you. When I had my first experience with that, I was writing words and trying to understand the different colors and the different memories that I had seen, and the teacher was like, “No, just draw, like, a visual representation of it.” And I was like, “I’m not an artist. I don’t know what that means. And I’m trying to understand my physical limit, my psychological limitations.”

And so, that’s when I really noticed that I had this ability and this desire to really connect the dots between an experience and truly changing your life, and that’s when hypnosis became also foundational in the practice, as well as visioning, or visualization.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it sounds like this is powerful for you and for many of the folks you’re working with. Do we have any juicy published science on this goodness?

Francesca Sipma
Well, Stanford Research just came out with a study recently through, I believe, at the beginning of 2024 with Andrew Huberman that said that breathwork is now scientifically proven to improve mood and sleep and reduce stress, and it’s more effective than meditation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this was the paper with his physiological size relative to the other breathing practices or the mindfulness.

Francesca Sipma
And meditation, it was a comparison to meditation. The New York Times recently covered that a lot of clinicians and psychologists are bringing breathwork into their practices so that it’s not just intellectually and mentally processing, but people are also having a somatic release. And it’s still relatively new, it’s still relatively fresh, so I think we’re going to see more and more articles and sort of that research come out, very similar to what we’re seeing with, like, MDMA and ketamine.

So, stay tuned to this space because I think people are going to see that it’s a very profound and transformative practice. And what I like about it versus plant medicine is that it’s just your natural breath, and it’s so accessible.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And so, if we’re comparing it to plant medicine, I mean, that sounds pretty potent. Is this safe? Like, say, if someone hears this podcast, and says, “That sounds awesome. I’m going to get my blanket, I’m going to get my eyeshade, and I’m going to get my breath on and my music on, and some suggestions on for 22 minutes. Away I go,” are we cool? Are we safe? Any things to watch out for?

Francesca Sipma
Are we safe? So, I believe that breath is your lifeforce and it has medicinal properties, and we’re just now really tapping into how profound that can truly be for your healing. I think when you ask the question, “Are you safe?” for a lot of people, they don’t want to open Pandora’s box, they don’t want to go into some maybe memories or life events that have been painful for them. But I find it to be more unsafe to hold onto that emotion and allow it to shape the decisions that you make in your career, in your relationships, and in your health.

So, for me, while it may be intense, and while it may feel heavy at times, the breath is a natural mechanism for you to explore some of those emotions to heal and release them simultaneously in real time, and to gain that clarity and to gain that more peaceful state.

Now, we’ve developed Mastry, which is a platform that has these 80 different HypnoBreathwork sessions so that anybody can get whatever they need at any given time. And our intention is for you to breathe in this cadence for 20 minutes every single morning, and take your action step as that higher version of yourself.

Now, those sessions are more mild. So, the sessions on the app, because they’re audio-guided sessions and you’re doing them from the luxury of your own home, they are more about getting clarity, making a decision, hearing your intuition, feeling that self-love. When you’re doing the deeper more intense sessions that are maybe about processing grief or healing your inner child, those are sessions that I recommend that you do with a facilitator, and you have somebody there to hold that space for you, and to create that emotionally supportive environment if you’re dealing with heavier emotions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, it might be handy to have some support in play as a little bit of a safety backstop. But, generally speaking, are you free of fatalities and lawsuits?

Francesca Sipma
I have never had a fatality and I’ve never had a lawsuit to address.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Great. So, you got an app, Mastry. How do we get it?

Francesca Sipma
So, it’s M-A-S-T-R-Y. It’s available on the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. And as soon as you log onto the app, it gives you a demo of the breath technique, and then it allows you to choose from, again, 80 different sessions based on whatever you need on topics of health, love, peak performance, corporate.

And then, afterwards, the very last cue of every single HypnoBreathwork session is, “What is your one next intuitive action step?” So, we really try to take people through this journey where they see their highest selves, they shift their energy, and then they execute. They take action from that place so that it actually starts to move and shift and change their life. We have a digital action tracker that you will type that in after your session, and then you get a badge once you complete it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, that’s how that works. Let’s zoom in on the flow state. So, you got a book. It sounds like one of the ways to get to flow states is, “Hey, do this stuff.” Any other pro tips on getting more flow states more often and for longer?

Francesca Sipma
So, flow state is optimal consciousness. It’s when things are effortlessly flowing, you’re intrinsically motivated, disciplined, you’d surrender, you lose sense of time. My favorite way of defining it is when productivity meets alignment. That’s truly the sweet spot. And sort of how I shared before, your subconscious is this record holder of all the podcasts you listened to, conversations with mentors, investors, your bosses, your colleagues, the books that you read, all this stuff lives in your subconscious.

And what the breath does, especially if you have a good coach and he gives you a very specific cue in flow state breathwork or HypnoBreathwork, will say, “I want you to see the project. I want you to see the pitch. I want you to see yourself on that stage. I want you to see the campaign,” and then you’ll continue to breathe, you’ll start to stimulate more ideas, more creative connections will start to get made.

And then we might say something like, “How do you want your audience to feel? What are the benefits that you want to convey? See your impact in the world. What’s your next action step towards that?” And it’s a really profound way to create, in a way, that’s original to you, that’s very authentic, that’s innovative. I really believe that this is where more invention and nuance come from, and the breath is just a brilliant way to hack that state in 20 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s talk about some of these suggestions. Can I hear some of your faves?

Francesca Sipma
Well, I customize them by industry. When I first started my coaching business, it was a really difficult transition from corporate and having that stability, and especially having that secure bi-weekly paycheck, to going off and becoming a breathwork coach. And the way I did it was I treated my bedroom like a war room, and I had physiological benefits, psychological benefits, spiritual benefits, content strategy, pillars, messaging, partnership ideas, and then I would breathe, and I would just say, “What’s the next step to scale my business?”

And, immediately, it would be like, “This topic with this contact, with this video, and then this email funnel,” and these things would connect, and I did that every single day to grow my business and to scale it, and it became quite successful in the first two years. And then I brought it to different industries. So, when I went back to advertising, I said, “I want you to see the strategy. I want you to see the campaign. What are the media channels? How do you want your audience to feel? What’s your next action step as a team? How can you collaborate?”

I would use very customized vocal cues, but if I was speaking to lawyers, “See yourself in the courtroom. What’s the energy you want to convey? What are your mannerisms? What’s the case? See the victory.” If I’m going to sports teams, it’s, “See yourself on the field.” It’s just very specific and very customized. So, I would do, like, a 5- to 10-minute debrief with you, Pete, on what it is you want to create in your business. Maybe it’s podcast growth. Maybe it’s your personal brand, I don’t know. And then I would then flip it into the vocal cues, match up the songs and take you on a journey to expand and grow.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it just sounds swell.

Francesca Sipma
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
I think everybody loves a little bespoke, custom, “just for me” kind of goodness when they’re contracting a service provider, so that sounds like a successful formula for a winning business.

Francesca Sipma
But you know what we found is that in order for me to sort of digitize this and scale the work, there are general cues that can be applicable for everyone. So, even if I say, “What’s your goal? What would it feel like to accomplish that goal? See the goal like you already have the outcome that you want. Step into that.” Now, it works for millions of people even though they’re having a different internal experience.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that. Well, Francesca, can we hear a couple of those general pieces? I know some outcomes our listeners are after often are confidence and the ability to focus. Any cues that seem to be winning on those dimensions?

Francesca Sipma
So, those are two very different sessions. For focus, I would say, “I want you to see the task at hand.” And once you’ve been breathing for about one to two songs, I would say, “What’s the priority task?” because your intuition is then going to not put the busy work in front but actually put the one that moves the needle the most, because breathwork really organizes thought streams.

So, “What’s the task at hand? What is it that you need to prioritize? What is distracting you?” and then I would have you breathe out the distractions. If you’re known to be a procrastinator, I would say, “What is at the root of the procrastination?” And there, we might be going a bit deeper because there might be a fear of success, there might be a fear of failure, there might be a fear of judgment.

I would have you wrap your breath around that, move it up to your chest, exhale, keep breathing out any discomfort, keep breathing out any resistance or tension. And then I would say, “See the task like it’s done, like it’s complete. How do you feel in your body? What would be the reaction around you? Feel that peace. Feel that freedom.” And then I would say, “What’s your next action step to completing the task?”

And it might be delegation, set the meeting, have the conversation, just check it off the list. There’s a different action step for everybody. So, that’s what I would do on focus, and we do have that on Mastry app where you can breathe for 20 minutes and you’ll get those cues in a more eloquent way with the music.

And then for confidence, confidence is an interesting one. Typically, if I’m guiding someone towards confidence, I would actually have them see the last time they felt confident so we can start to generate that emotion in their body. And then I would have them apply it to their present moment where they’re needing to feel a bit more empowered, a bit more liberated.

So, I might say, “See the word confidence. What does it bring up for you? Breathe our any insecurities. Now, visualize the last time you felt confident. And now bring that emotion to your present-day visualization, and see if they can anchor those two things.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Francesca, this is fun. As you described these states, you’re bringing me back to, wow, 2009, Walking on Hot Coals with Tony Robbins, not just me, there were thousands of people there. But he hit a nice little recipe for whipping up a state of mind-body emotion in terms of adjusting your physiology, like how you’re holding your body, your visualization, and what you were saying to yourself.

And there’s a lot of power moves, a lot of “Yes. Yes. Yes,” going on. How do you think about your approach to entering into states in comparing and contrasting with this kind of advice?

Francesca Sipma
I love Tony Robbins. I really do. He’s probably my greatest expander. I also really love Dr. Joe Dispenza, and I think that they both have incredible techniques that have changed millions of lives. For me, personally, I have to remove the subconscious block in order for me to really believe that power pose. I can’t just jump up and down to a song and feel like I’m energized and I feel clear. That doesn’t work for me. Maybe I have too much trauma. I’m not really sure.

But, like, when I’m on this entrepreneurial path, or if you’re an executive, a manager, employee, it doesn’t really matter, what your position is, but if someone is like, “Feel better. Don’t be anxious,” that doesn’t work for me, per se. I have to actually see where the root of that is coming from, “Why am I having impostor syndrome right now? Where is this self-doubt percolating from? Where is it living in my body? Does it have a color?”

And a lot of times, my conscious mind is very loud and my ego can be very loud, and I’ll think I know the answer but my subconscious is a lot deeper. It’ll take me to, like, age 7 or age 14, this event happened in high school. And I’ll need to breathe out those limitations and those sources of where the identity or the pattern formed.

So, that’s my experience and that’s my experience with a lot of my clients who have maybe been through more life events that have made them really create that self-doubt, and so that’s why we like the breath. We like going into the subconscious. We like taking it several layers deeper to really get to the root, and dissipate it from the source.

And then see the stage, see the scalability, see the exit, see your most powerful self. So, it’s just a little bit of a deeper psychological process that is more effective for me personally.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention to folks looking to be awesome at their jobs before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Francesca Sipma
I have two things. First, Pete, I want to know what your biggest 2025 goal is.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d say one would be getting one of my businesses into a good spot with regard to regular growing client acquisition. It seems like it’s sort of like, “Oh, yeah, we get some referrals and we get some people come in,” but it’s like, I really like a repeatable predictable process by which we’re able to kind of turn on the “get customers” engine, whereas it’s been a little bit, “Hey, good months and bad months,” you know.

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, consistency. Consistent growth. Is it product? Service?

Pete Mockaitis
Service.

Francesca Sipma
Okay. So, what we would do in a session like that is we would do a creative brainstorm for 10 minutes, and we would talk marketing, we would talk funnels, “Is it content? Is it a different platform? Is it TikTok? Is it LinkedIn? Is it influencers?” We would do a little brainstorm, testimonials, video ideas, “Is it a webinar?” We would basically brainstorm a couple of things together.

And then I would take you into the breath, and I would say, “See your business. Where are the gaps? Where are the opportunities?” And you’re deeper now, you’re in theta, things are percolating, you’re starting to get ideas, you’re starting to get insights. You might see a blind spot, say, and then I’d say, “What is your biggest opportunity for growth?”

A couple ideas might come up in your subconscious. Then I would say, “Now, visualize your business having consistent growth. And how does that feel in your body?” And it might feel like ease. It might feel like freedom. It might feel like abundance. It might feel like joy. And then I would say, “Now, from that vibration, from that state, what’s your next action step to grow your business?”

And then the answer might be, “Hire a team, hire a social media manager, up your digital ad spend,” here’s all of these things that will come from all the information knowledge you have on that business but it’s just taking you on a little bit of a deeper journey that is a bit similar to microdosing, I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Francesca Sipma
So, I just want to throw that out there so that you could really understand what a customized flow state might look like for you. And then the last thing I would want to say to your listeners is that intuition is a superpower in your work. I think that we lean too heavy on strategy and systems and knowledge and information, and we don’t lean enough on our own inner intelligence, in our own inner wisdom.

And when you learn to trust yourself and you learn to trust this knowledge that you uniquely hold within, then your life can start to have a more original path. It can start to have more joy. You can start to attract more synchronicities and opportunities, and it can take unpredictable turns that your logical and linear mind wouldn’t have seen. So, I would invite everyone to listen more to your intuition and to fiercely execute on it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Francesca Sipma
“Act on your intuition.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Francesca Sipma
My favorite book is Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to resonate with folks, they quote it back to you often?

Francesca Sipma
That every single person has a unique purpose in this life. And when we heal bits of the past, that will start to become clear, and your life will have more color and more joy and more peace.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Francesca Sipma
You can grab my book Unblock Your Purpose on Amazon, or find me on Instagram @francescasipma, or my website, FrancescaSipma.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Francesca Sipma
I think if you want to be awesome at your job, one article or two articles that I recently come by is this new sort of wave called “The Great Stay,” which is basically like we were in The Great Resignation, and now we’re in The Great Stay where people feel stuck at their jobs, and they feel immense burnout and resentment, and breathwork will rejuvenate this position for you. Breathwork will help you find the gratitude again. It’ll help you find your creativity again, and you might actually discover your purpose within your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Francesca, this has been fun. Thank you. I wish you all the best.

Francesca Sipma
Thanks for having me.

Mar 25
0

947: How to Listen to Your Body for Leadership Insights with Rachel Rider

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Rachel Rider shares visualization and other approaches to gain individualized insights on improving your leadership.

You’ll Learn:

  1. A powerful visualization to break out of negativity
  2. The biological hack to overcome anxiety
  3. How to decode your body’s tension signals 

About Rachel

Rachel Rider founded MettaWorks in 2015 after a distinguished career in HR, receiving executive coaching certification from Columbia University, and extensive training in meditation, Somatic Experiencing, and Polarity Therapy. Starting as HR Business Partner responsible for developing and coaching leaders and teams at Bloomberg, she went on to specialize in leadership coaching at AppNexus (since acquired by AT&T) and Digital Ocean, the third-largest hosting company in the world. She studied under renowned teacher and Zen Mountain Monastery founder John Daido Loori Roshi for 13 years before continuing under his successor, Shugen Arnold Roshi.  

Rider completed a three-year intensive certification in Somatic Experiencing in 2018, and a 2020 training in Polarity Therapy with the aim of bringing leaders tools to unlock effective, long-lasting change in concert with the body. Since 2020, she’s been working intensively with anti-racism coach Makeda Pennycooke. Rider lives in New York with her husband and two children. 

Resources Mentioned

Rachel Rider Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Rachel, welcome.

Rachel Rider

It’s so good to be here. Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m excited to be chatting. We’re talking about Who You Are Is How You Lead, and some of your insights is associated with this goodness. Can you tell us any particularly surprising, or fascinating, or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made along the way here doing your research?

Rachel Rider

When I started this work, I grew up in the corporate world of HR, and I was studying somatic experiencing, which is the regulation of your nervous system, and at that time, it felt too woo to discuss. But what I have found over time working with folks in the professional world, particularly high-powered leaders, is that there is a hunger, almost a desperation, for “How does it not just live in the cognitive but how do I work with my nervous system to be able to navigate the incredible demands of my job?”

And so, where I began timid to discuss this, it felt a little magic-y, a little woo, became actually the thing that people seek me out for, and that was a surprise. I guess I had a presumption or prejudice against the corporate world, but it turns out actually there’s a place for it there.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it’s interesting. And we’ve talked to a number of guests on the whole spectrum of woo, I would say, and what I find interesting when we talk about woo, one, I guess it’s a little bit of a vibe, maybe hard to define. But when I read your stuff, I feel much more of a biological grounding.

Rachel Rider

Yeah, I appreciate that because I would say I actually live in the realm of woo a lot. And what I think of woo is the non-concrete world, the things you can’t see but you can feel exists – feelings, energy, overwhelm, you know, that’s a feeling. And so, what I appreciate about what you’re saying is my mission is to really translate the intangible but the knowing that’s there into concrete behavior, into a clear understanding, into actually being able to shift your relationship with something as a result of your relationship with the non-concrete.

And so, I believe that also lives in the biology, the body. The body is so concrete, and yet so much of the things that get stuck, a panic attack, or anger, an immediate reaction to something that lives within the body, and so even though it’s intense It’s so clearly there. And so, my passion for this work is how to connect the two, and shift it in a way that’s really healthy and powerful in how you show up professionally.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, could you make all this concrete for us a little bit in terms of a common situation or an example of a client who had a situation, and they put some of the stuff to work and saw cool things happen?

Rachel Rider

Totally. I have a client who is very successful. She built from scratch an eight-figure business, and she came to me struggling to get out of bed in the morning. This woman runs a very successful company. And what was happening was it was so heavy for her. She would stay up late, watching Netflix, and not look at her calendar in the morning, and not wake up for these very important meetings with very powerful people.

And she came to me, and she’s like, “I don’t know what’s going on. I feel stuck and I don’t know how to get out of this. And I’m even like, ‘Should I just shut this business down?’ this successful business, because I feel like it’s killing me.” That’s also, by the way, of mine, I get a lot from the people I work with. I work with very successful people and, unfortunately, that’s a line I hear, and they mean it literally. This is not a figurative line. And it’s such a beautiful way in because it’s like, “There’s something on the line here. There’s something physical on the line here that we need to explore.”

So, the place we started was understanding what was happening in the collapse because she was literally having a physical response. She could not get out of bed in the morning. She could not bring herself to look at her calendar. And so, one thing that we did physically was work with, “How did she notice in her body this happening?” And so, we would track what happens at the end of the day for her. And it was almost like everything in her day was living in her body. There was no body boundary. She was completely absorbing everything and everyone’s needs, and had totally lost her sense of self because she was caretaking of others even within her body.

And so, one of the pieces that we played with was a lot of visualization of pulling these pieces literally, pulling these pieces out of her body, pulling the direct report and their needs out of her body. She didn’t have to put them too far because she didn’t want to forget about them or un-attend to them, but starting to create space. And once we started to create space in her body, noticing she could breathe a little better, she actually felt a little more energy. She actually started to feel the skin on her body and space inside, and then there was room to move around and show up to her life.

And so, this happened over a few sessions, but I feel like I’m giving you a sense of the overall arc of how this work goes. And I’m curious if I’m answering your question.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, no, that’s really cool. So, that notion there, “I feel like it’s killing me,” I think we can all relate to this notion of overwhelm, exhaustion, too much, just, “Baah” hard to take care of a thing, maybe it’s everything, or maybe it’s work as a whole, or maybe it’s a particular procrastinated task, like, “Ah, I just can’t bring myself to do this so I feel like it’s killing me.”

I want to hear some other articulations of this vibe. One I’m hearing a lot from Dr. Trevor Kashey and his podcast, hopefully he’ll be on the show soon, is, “I can’t stand it.” Is that sort of in that same zone? Or, what are some additional articulations of this? Or, are they very different, distinctive flavors, would you say?

Rachel Rider

I think that’s a fair aspect of it, “I can’t stand it.” I think what often I’m hearing the subtext of these clients say is, “The current state is no longer sustainable, and I have no idea how to do it otherwise.” And so, instead of knowing how to escape, they just feel like they’re going to collapse and die. And truly, like physically, like I’ve worked with folks with panic attacks, I worked with folks who, like I just said, kind of can’t get out of bed in the morning.

And there’s something about this piece around feeling trapped, feeling trapped in your success, feeling immobilized by the powerful position that you have, and wanting, first of all, normalizing that. It is very normal to feel that way. And then the question is, “How do we help you?”

Pete Mockaitis

That is good. And I like that portion of normalizing. I was reading Buzz Aldrin’s autobiography kind of randomly, but he too had struggles with depression and such. He was on the moon. You’d think, “Here’s a high-achieving dude,” and yet things were tough in terms of he’d have speaking engagements and just didn’t go. He was like, “I just can’t bring myself to get out of bed and do the thing.” And so, I think this totally happens to high achievers, maybe often, maybe not so often, maybe intensely, maybe subtly, globally or locally, it’s there. So, Rachel, lay it on us, what do we do with this?

Rachel Rider

Yeah, I really love the summary you just gave. This happens often to high achievers. As high achievers, we are seeking something outside of ourselves, and we are beautifully rewarded. I am a high achiever. I speak from direct experience and my clients. Usually, high achievers have pushed themselves so hard to cultivate the success that they’re standing in. And, usually, that pushing and that reaching for that success lives with that outside of themselves.

And so, when they finally made it, and not they, we, when we finally made it, we look around and we’re like, “Where am I? Where do I exist? I can’t find myself in this. And why is this success not the life I want? It’s everything I want and yet it’s not working for me.” And so, there’s this theme of “Where am I in this? Who am I in this?” that gets confused because, for so long, the success has been validated of who we are.

And so, so often that’s a place that I begin with my clients, is finding the internal compass of “Who do I want to be? And it doesn’t mean that I’ve disappeared because of my success. It just means I can’t tell who I am versus the success and what’s important to me.” And as we start to identify that and listen to that voice, and the way we’re doing that is we’re pulling out those other voices, literally, physically, energetically from our body, we’re finding the places inside ourselves that feel neutral, that feel good physically. We’re working with the energy around it.

And then as we find our space inside, what’s amazing is magic happens, clarity happens. Clarity arises from within, it’s like it bubbles up, and insight happens, and spaciousness happens, and we can make decisions from a stronger, more confident space.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool. Well, so then, in practice, how does one execute that in terms of, it’s like, “Okay, I can’t stand it. I feel like it’s killing me. I’m overwhelmed by the stuff. I’m lost amid my success”? Kind of what’s step one, two, three, four, kind of working through some of that?

Rachel Rider

So, I have a client, actually, right now who’s very successful and is trying to make a decision about whether he wants to step into something that he has been successful at before, and it’s very high profile, and he would be very rewarded for, and he is deeply conflicted about this because that reward isn’t necessarily what he’s looking for right now in his life.

And this is like an urgent, pending decision that has a lot of implications either way. If he walks away from it, it’s a major missed opportunity. And if he walks away from it, he may really be able to lean into who he wants to be. But the work that we’re finding is those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. What we’ve been doing concretely is, first, starting to identify whose voices are living within him and whose are his. So, judgments around him taking this opportunity, “Oh, it’s just for the money,” “Oh, it’s just for the accolades,” “Oh, this is a ridiculous occupation.”

Pete Mockaitis

Now, I wonder what it is, Rachel, a ridiculous occupation. Plastic surgeon. I can’t help it. The brain just opened up.

Rachel Rider

No, but right. Exactly. But interesting that that’s where your mind went.

Pete Mockaitis

No offense to plastic surgeons.

Rachel Rider

But that’s what I’m saying, look at the judgments that surround certain roles. And he embodies a role, and he has a judgment of it. Wow! And so, pulling that out, we’re like, “Oh, that’s not your voice. That’s a parental voice.” It’s one of his parent’s voices, “Okay, if we were to pull that voice out and just stick it on the floor next to you, maybe let’s burn it, because it’s not yours.” Even as I say it, I can feel that space that we created for him in that session. Okay, we’re now pulling the voices out, what were you going to say?

Pete Mockaitis

So, when you say pulling it out, sticking it on the floor, burning it, are these are all kind of like visualization exercises in terms of I close my eyes and I imagine this voice is a tangible thing? As a podcaster, I see a waveform.

Rachel Rider

You said a wave?

Pete Mockaitis

A waveform. I see it like in the software, the voice.

Rachel Rider

Yes, yes, yes. So, this is the thing, I want to take away the word imagine because energy is very powerful. When our heart is beating fast because we’re anxious, that’s real. Even if the anxiety of what’s happening isn’t. And so, if I were to pull that anxiety out of my body and hold it, that energy exists. So, yes, you’re visualizing, and you’re holding that energy. 

So, I want us to really know that when we’re playing with visualization, you’re really actually working with the energy. And so, when you see that waveform, when you think of the energy, that is real because of mirror neurons in your body. What’s amazing about visualization is the power of somatic experiencing, your mirror neurons, that when your body sees something happen, your body responds even if it’s in your mind’s eye.

And so, if we go back to the client where we burned that voice, the body witnessing that burning of the voice actually experiences relief. And so, that’s why I want to do away with the idea of imagine because this is truly a deep energetic experience, a healing moment.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And just a practical note, a voice is something one hears. To burn a voice, I’m actually imagining like the decibel wave chart printed on a piece of paper. I said the word “imagine.” Apologies. I’m visualizing that and then a Zippo lighter igniting this piece of paper with the printed decibel waveform of a voice. Is that how one means by which one would “burn a voice”?

Rachel Rider

Whatever you see it as. So, yes, for you that would be true. For this client, it was actually sticky. As we were pulling the voice out of his body, it was a sticky substance. And so, these experiences can come in all forms. What matters is that you’re able to connect with the felt sense of it, the texture, the color, because mirror neurons in the body are a very powerful thing. It’s like when you’re watching a movie, and you see someone kissing another person, it’s like your heart melts a little. Or you watch violence, and that stirs something within you. There’s a reason for that. Mirror neurons are very powerful.

And so, whether you’re watching a movie on your screen or in your mind’s eye, your body’s nervous system is still stirring and responding. That’s why visualization can be so powerful for good and for bad. That’s when you’re getting stuck in a loop about something and your body’s getting worked up. You’re re-running that same conversation in your mind over and over again. Even when I say that, I can feel kind of the anxiety energy, and that’s an opportunity to work with that in your mind, “Okay where does that conversation need to go so that I can sleep right now and not be thinking about it at 2:00 a.m. in the morning?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so then, it sounds, I get you that the visualization is super powerful, and that there are very creative means by which we can represent stuff. And then by doing that visualization, we have a cool response to it. So, then I guess I’m thinking, how do I know what to go after in this visualization adventure?

Rachel Rider

So, where we begin is where a place you get stuck. We need a doorway. And so, for someone who we’re talking about, when we’re really feeling like a job is killing us, where do we feel that in our body? “Oh, my chest gets tight.” Okay. So, we start with the body. We go to the body because we want to get out of our thoughts because we can get stuck there so easily.

And then, where in the body is it? Is it, “Am I feeling like I’m going to die. My chest is getting tighter”? What color is it? What image arrives for you? Is there a texture? How much space does it take up? And once we are able to identify that, then we can decide, “What does this need right now when I have tightness in my body, and it just feels like an iron rod, I have jaw tension?”

And I’ll sit there and I’ll think, “What does this need right now?” The most gentlest thing, and I’ll imagine a flame of a candle sitting next to my really tight jaw, and just watching the molecules of that, that tight metal jaw opening up and moving a little. And that’s how we’re playing. We’re really meeting what’s happening in the body with what it needs.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, this is intriguing in terms of it’s like I was just showing my little kids a video animation of DNA transcription and translation, because that’s just mind-blowing, like, “This happens constantly in our cells all the time.” It’s just amazing when I first learned about this in AP Biology, it’s like, “That’s mind-blowing.” And so, the cells know what proteins they need, and say, “All right, we’re just going to go make those via this elaborate process.” It’s just all choreographed beautifully.

So, what’s cool about this is you’re sort of zeroing in from a bodily-felt perspective, what’s the medicine, the prescription I need, and then we’re just going to go ahead and write it up, a visual style. And so, I’m imagining, Rachel, tell me if this feels appropriate, so I’m thinking, “All right, so tax stuff coming up. I don’t want to deal with it,” and it’s like “Aargh” and I just feel “Aargh” with regard to it. And I guess the bodily sensation is I just feel kind of weighted down, like moving, just walking over to the keyboard and clicking over to the bank websites, wherever, just feels heavy and dreadful.

And I know, rationally, “Pete, it’s not a big deal. You’ve done it many, many, many times before. I can handle this. I’m totally capable of this. This can be done.” And yet, my typical response of trying to overpower the weight, in terms of, “Come on, come on, let’s do this! Let’s, like, Eye of the Tiger, like Rocky, like, da-da-da-da!” like, that kind of pump-up stuff, sometimes is adequate, like, “Okay, get over hump and do it.”

But this approach, it would seem, Rachel, that maybe the best move is to say, “Well, let’s look into that bodily sensation. Let’s look into that weight, and what is sort of a visualization prescription that can ease that.” Like what is needed, I’m thinking, is maybe I need more. What I need is some lightness and fun. This needs to be a little silly even. I want to feel like a winner instead of a loser.

Rachel Rider

When you come up with a silly visual of that, like, what is a silly visual when you think of like a winner?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now, there are so ways we could slice it, but I guess I’m thinking for silly and opposite of heavy-weighted down, I’m almost thinking of like a pogo stick. It’s like, “I’m not weighted down. I am buoyant. I am bouncing, and I’m bouncing in a fun way,” which brings back some childhood memories.

Rachel Rider

If we were to play with this, that’s really cool. I feel your energy shift. Did you just even notice your energy shift as you move the pogo stick?

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah.

Rachel Rider

So, if we’re playing with you pogo-sticking towards the computer, tell me how it feels, and when and if you notice a difference in the lightness to the heaviness as you move closer to the computer on your pogo stick.

Pete Mockaitis

I mean, I’d say maybe by the second or third bounce, and I’m also putting some sound effects in there, Rachel. We’ve got a “boing, boing,” you know, something cartoony, if you will.

Rachel Rider

Yes. So, you’re feeling really light, and then something. By the second or third, you’re feeling the heaviness. If we were to pause there, and so your nervous system knows, “Oh, I don’t have to go closer for the moment. I get to enjoy this pogo stick,” just what comes up for you as you know that you can pause?

Pete Mockaitis

It just feels really nice. I mean, it’s like I’m having a childhood memory on my childhood home driveway with my brother pogo-sticking, realizing you could take off the suction, the little rubber part on the bottom, and like dent the pavement, “We really shouldn’t do that. Let’s put it back on.”

Rachel Rider

See, that’s what we’re looking for that laugh and the twinkle in your eye. And so, I invite you, I’m curious about this, we’re going to slow it really down. So, as you get off the pogo stick, and you had that twinkle and lightness in your eye, and you’re moving very slowly towards the computer, is there any thoughts or feelings that arise?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I mean, I guess I still don’t want to do it as I get closer to the reality. It’s almost like the pogo-sticking is fading out and the doing is fading back in.

Rachel Rider

And what’s under the not wanting to do? Like, what’s the feeling as you slowly, very slowly move towards the computer?

Pete Mockaitis

That this is less fun than pogo-sticking.

Rachel Rider

Yeah. And underneath that? Like, what’s the blech, a kind of word to it, or feeling underneath it?

Pete Mockaitis

I guess I just sort of think that I should have found a better system, and team, and process outsource package to have handled this by now and years ago, and I feel a little negligent.

Rachel Rider

Okay. So, now we’re understanding the dread. So, what we did, like, look at that insight that arose, “Oh, I have a little judgment around myself about this, and it probably could be done better so I don’t have to deal with this.” How does that shift the experience of dread?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I guess my first thought is like, “All right. Well, this will be the last time I handle this. Let’s adopt and mean it well, and be ready to pass it on off.”

Rachel Rider

Yes. How incredible is that, that insight about, “That’s why I don’t like the taxes?” And all we did, we started with the body and the nervous system.

Pete Mockaitis

That is pretty cool. It is a very different pathway, both in terms of feelings and thoughts, insights that pop up than, “Come on, let’s cue the Rocky montage music, and let’s power through.”

Rachel Rider

Exactly. And that’s the premise of my work. What we, literally, witnessed, insight bubble up when the body had space to play. When the body has space to look and examine without meaning-making, that’s when insight bubbles up, that’s when action can happen. Look at the insight, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m not doing this again.” And think just how powerfully that translates to the professional world, taxes in the professional world.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, certainly, yeah, in terms of lots of stuff, lots of better ways to do stuff just kind of never gets the chance to bubble up because we kind of shove it aside or whatever.

Rachel Rider

Yeah, and there’s one thing I wanted to say, I didn’t say it while we were kind of in it, but you said something that is such a profound indicator that it’s a great time to go to the body, which is, “My mind knows this isn’t a big deal,” or, “My mind knows. Like, my mind knows something that my body doesn’t. My body’s not paying attention. We are misaligned here and the body is more in charge.” That is a great place to know, “Ooh, this is when I go to the body.” It’s like, “I know I shouldn’t be so pissed off about this small thing, and yet I am losing my mind. I can’t focus on anything else.” That’s a great time to go to the body.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. Okay. Well, thank you for going deep in there with us. So, that’s a way it gets done. Tell us, in your book, you’ve got 16 snazzy chapters, and I’m curious to hear how we incorporate this kind of bodily approach to the leadership action in terms of, you got a chapter on reading the room, and then disrupting the patterns. Can you share with us how does this all kind of come together?

Rachel Rider

And so, at the highest levels of leadership, I have found that, in the work I’ve done with the hundreds of leaders, maybe thousands I think at this point I’ve coached, is when you run companies, when you’re in the senior executive team, your relationships are your deliverables. It is not about checking the box anymore. And that also means that you need to be having successful relationships with folks, which means you have to be having a successful relationship with yourself.

And so, this book is really understanding your inner world. It’s exactly what we’ve just done here. So, there are case studies in the book about a client who has really sharp elbows. She does so because she has such a high standard, but it’s really alienating people, and it means people are working around her. And so, the work we did on, “Where is that visceral impulse coming from within her?”

In the beginning of our work together, she could not handle not saying something critical, even when she was celebrating someone, because she wanted them to do better. And so, our work was, “Okay, where is this living within you? What makes it so impossible for you to not share?” And what she really wanted was to foster connection with people and make them do better, be inspired to do better.

And so, through our work together, she was realizing, “Oh, if that’s what I want, and that’s not what I’m getting, how do I work within my body so it comes from a visceral place, the celebration, it comes from a visceral place, the feedback?” And so, there are a lot of different case studies in the book that talk about, “How do you try translate understanding your inner world to showing up differently, concretely?”

Pete Mockaitis

And so, we went through one pathway by which that can be done. Any other pro tips?

Rachel Rider

So, I’m a big fan of a holistic approach. In our work at MettaWorks, we do mind, body, and spirit work. First, your brain needs to be on board, okay? We do not want to dismiss the cognitive. Your brain needs to think something needs to change. Your brain needs to think, “This is not helpful.” Then, your body needs to be on board, “I want to do it differently.” But there’s also the spirit piece, there’s also a surrender to something bigger than you.

And I have no opinion about what that should be for you. And I do believe that we do better work when we feel connected to something bigger than us because there are some impossible situations that are only impossible if we feel alone as an individual in them. And the moment that we are able to sit back and connect spiritually, we get more clarity.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, when you say spiritually, you mean bigger purpose associated with “Why are we bothering to do the thing we’re doing?”

Rachel Rider

Yes, that’s a great way in. I would also say, “Do you connect with your ancestors? Do you feel connected to the wind outside?” Whatever feels like is bigger than this human form, whatever feels like the ethereal to you that you can connect with and feel held by, that that’s what I’m talking about. And I think that was a great example and a really good place to start of “What’s my bigger why? Why do I care? What am I doing here?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, Rachel, there’s a lot of good stuff here. Tell us, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Rachel Rider

I profoundly believe, and I have seen over and over again, that every one of my clients has it within them, and the work we do is simply decluttering in the inside so that they can listen deeply to who they are, what they need, and how they want to show up. And I think that is so vital to hold within you because it means then anything is possible for you.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now could you tell us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Rachel Rider

Einstein’s “Everything is energy.” I truly believe that. And the more that you hold that everything is energy, the more there’s no immovable force. It’s just a deeper, denser energy that you need to work with.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Rachel Rider

Oh, shoot, I forget the name of it. But when light is observed, it changes behavior.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, that’s so trippy, man.

Rachel Rider

I know. So, I have been a longtime meditator, and so I love that study because it’s literally concrete evidence that when we pay attention, when we cultivate awareness of our mind, of our body, just the awareness changes everything.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. And a favorite book?

Rachel Rider

Gosh. I will default to my favorite, which is called Far From the Tree, and I forget who it’s by. I think it’s Solomon. And it’s about this man who did, I think, 10 years of studies with these children that are not identified as mainstream children in the world and the communities that they’re a part of. And it’s just so powerful and compelling. And I do believe it’s a leadership book, even though it talks about children.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Rachel Rider

Somatic experiencing body work.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Rachel Rider

Meditating.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Rachel Rider

I would point them to three places. Our website, that’s MettaWorks.io, or Instagram, mettaworks, or LinkedIn, Rachel Rider.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Rachel Rider

Start paying attention. The moment you do, the light molecule changes.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Rachel, this is fun. I wish you many fun leadership moments.

Rachel Rider

Thank you, Pete. It was such a pleasure.

Nov 20
0

917: Training Your Mind For Better Focus, Energy, and Willpower with Oren Jay Sofer

By | Podcasts | No Comments


Oren Jay Sofer shares how to engage contemplative practices to improve your focus, energy, and quality of life.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The five-item list that will help you focus better
  2. How to be unstoppable in the face of procrastination
  3. The three-second trick for boosting energy

About Oren

Oren Jay Sofer teaches meditation and communication internationally. He holds a degree in comparative religion from Columbia University and is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner for the healing of trauma. Oren is also the author of several books, including the best-seller Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication and his latest book, Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices toMeet a World In Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. His teaching has reached people around the world through his online communication courses and guided meditations. A husband and a father, Oren lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he enjoys cooking, spending time in nature, and home woodworking projects.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Oren Jay Sofer Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Oren, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Oren Jay Sofer
Thanks, Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I believe something has changed since the last time we spoke.

Oren Jay Sofer
It certainly has.

Pete Mockaitis
And you’re a proud father now. Tell us the tale.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. Well, my wife and I are both in our 40s, and she came to me a couple of years ago, dropped the bomb, and said, “Hey, I think I want to have a kid.” And I said, “That’s different.”

Pete Mockaitis
Different?

Oren Jay Sofer
Well, different than where we were when we got together 10 years ago. Yeah, so I’m a meditator so I told her, “I love you, and that’s important to me, and this is not a small decision, so give me some time to think about this.” And we talked it over, of course, but I sat quietly with myself and I listened deeply, and I really asked myself, “Is this something that I’m willing to do?” And this image came to me, Pete, of a door opening. And I thought, “Yeah, I want to walk through that door. I want to see what this aspect of life is like. I’m here to learn. And what better learning than bringing new life into our world.”

And, of course, I had a lot of reservations and fears that I talked through close friends with who are parents, which was very, very helpful. One of my biggest fears was the state of our world and what does it mean to bring a new life in right now with so much changing so quickly and unraveling. And one of my good friends, who’s a social justice activist, an organizer, and has been for many years, who cares deeply and has thought very deeply about these issues, and as a parent, said to me, he said, “You know, Oren, I don’t think the world is going to be worse off for you having a child.”

And that really shifted something in me. It made me realize, “This could be a contribution rather than a drain on our society.” So, yeah, I’m now the proud parent of a 13-month-old baby, and we got through the first six months, which were really hard, and just delighting in him and learning so much from him every day, and really feeling like all of the meditation practice I’ve done has positioned me really well to be a dad and to meet this new being, and help him learn about our world.

Pete Mockaitis
That is beautiful. Yes, I was just about to ask about those practices being helpful as I have read a book entitled, I’ll paraphrase a smidge, How to Not Lose Your Poo-Poo with Your Kids because that’s a common situation, Oren.

Oren Jay Sofer
Indeed.

Pete Mockaitis
And have you found that your years of practice have resulted in less of a tendency to be reactive and yell or lose it or otherwise react in a way that you’d rather not?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yes and. So, absolutely, there’s no question in my mind that the many years of meditation I’ve done, and really training myself to be aware of how I’m feeling and what’s happening in the moment has allowed me to make different choices, to notice when I’m getting reactive or frustrated, and ask for help or shift gears. And being a parent has pushed my edges unlike anything else.

Alongside all of the joy, it’s been incredibly humbling to see my patience run out at 3:00 in the morning with a screaming baby who doesn’t want to change his diaper, or feeling sleep-deprived and just not having anything left. So, I feel also this immense appreciation and profound respect for my own parents and for parents everywhere. It’s just been staggering to see how much time and energy and love it takes to keep a little human being alive.

Pete Mockaitis
Amen. Well, good to know that even the most contemplative among us can have that occur.

Oren Jay Sofer
Well, I’ll add one thing that’s been really huge, Pete, which is that I don’t beat myself up for it. When I slip up, when I lose my patience, when I get frustrated, all of the years of training and practicing kindness, and being with the harsh inner voice in my head, has shifted how I relate to myself and my difficulty so that when I act in a way that’s not aligned with my values or my intentions, instead of beating myself up, there’s a sense of tenderness and acceptance for my limitations, which is such a different place from which to learn and grow.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, as opposed to the scolding, like, “Okay, that was not what I was going for. All right. Let’s see what needs to change here and try to do better.” Okay. Well, you’ve got another opus coming out here, Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. That sounds big. Tell us what’s the big idea here?

Oren Jay Sofer
It is big. The big idea is that, so in the last 10, 15 years, meditation and mindfulness have kind of taken certain sectors in the public conversation by storm, and for some people that’s great, and for other people meditation is not something that’s interesting, it doesn’t work for them, and I respect that. So, the big idea here is that meditation is just one form of what is known more broadly as contemplative practice, which is essentially anything that cultivates reflection, awareness, and connects us with our sense of purpose and meaning in life.

So, the analogy I like to use is just like, say, lifting weights or strength training is one form of exercise, meditation is one form of contemplative practice. So, if you came to me and said, “Well, I don’t like to lift weights so I’m not going to exercise.” We would say, “That’s crazy. Why don’t you take a walk? Why don’t you bike? Why don’t you swim?”

So, in the same way, there’s this whole array of ways to strengthen our inner life and build more inner resources that’s much more varied than meditation. And my book is really about, “How do we broaden our scope and use the time that we have in our families, at work, on the planet, to develop this amazing set of powerful qualities we possess?” Like, energy, concentration, joy, patience, resolve, even things like play and rest. All of these are like different notes in our repertoire, and we can learn how to play them when we have the right tools.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. More energy, more concentration, more resolve, that sounds lovely, like a limitless pill going on. So, I want to really dig into the menu of this contemplative practices, but, first, I’ve got to hit it. Oren, can you share with us the evidence, the research, the basis by which we can claim that, indeed, pursuing some of these to-be-mentioned contemplative practices will boost energy and concentration and resolve, and other positive inner resources?

Oren Jay Sofer
I’ll give you a few datapoints. So, first, the whole field of positive psychology is based upon what’s known as Hebbian neuroplasticity, which was discovered by a man named Donald Hebb in the 1970s which essentially proved that our brains are not fixed, that both the structure and the function of our neurology can shift through repeated practice.

And what’s cool about that to me as a meditator is that modern neuroscience has borne out what contemplatives and mystics have known for millennia, which is that our inner world isn’t fixed, that it’s malleable, and what we do, how we act, and think, and speak every day affects it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, neuroplasticity…?

Oren Jay Sofer
Essentially, the phrase that a lot of people have heard is neurons that fire together, wire together. The more you do something, the better you get it, and that includes being frustrated, irritable, petty, and it includes being patient, kind, and generous. So, this is the underlying kind of property or principle why all this stuff works.

Okay. Then, if we look at specific qualities, we can see both that there’s a neurological basis for them, and that we can enhance and cultivate them. So, take a quality like generosity. A lot of different opinions out there about human nature, and several studies have shown that toddlers, two years old, can and do exhibit generosity.

So, one study that kind of blew me away, toddlers who have, like, a favorite teddy bear and who are really to it, like if you take it away or if it’s missing, they’re going to be inconsolable. When they’re put in a situation, and there’s a stranger who appears to need some comfort and consolation, that toddler will offer their favorite teddy to that stranger. So, there’s generosity, there’s empathy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, as you say that, I’m just tearing up because, I guess, I got three young kids myself but that is a very beautiful point of evidence. And then I’m also thinking about Anne Frank, in spite of everything, I still believed people have a good heart, so the teddy bear sharing, when it’s near and dear to them, at such a young age, that strikes home.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. And as parents, I’m sure you’ve seen it. I was sitting on the couch the other day with my young son who just turned one, this was actually before he was one, and he was nibbling on a little piece of apple, really enjoying it. And what does he do? He takes a few nibbles and then he offers it to me and puts it in my mouth, and then he takes it back and nibbles a little more, and then he offers it to me.

So, one of the other things that we’ve seen in research on pro-social qualities, like empathy, like generosity, like compassion, like gratitude, is that while there is an innate neurological basis for these qualities, they also need to be strengthened and cultivated. So, we enter the world primed to have these incredibly powerful nourishing qualities for ourselves personally and for our society, but they need to be encouraged by the adults around us.

So, something like compassion can either grow and flourish based on the kind of mirroring and experiences we have as we grow, or can atrophy. One of the examples I like to use, just to come back to studies and research, and this is more of an analogy, is we know that the human organism is born with the capacity to learn any language on the planet. Our neurology is primed to learn any sound and grammar. We can learn any language.

And in the same way, I like to suggest that our hearts are primed to experience and know all of these beautiful capacities, like kindness, patience, courage, curiosity. And the question is, “Do we get the chance to learn them and develop them?” And at any point in life, we can tap into these and strengthen them. It’s kind of like having a high-fidelity stereo, and being able to adjust the treble and the mid and the bass so that we can really enjoy the music as fully as possible.

In the same way, do we have access to all of the potentials in our hearts? And are we able to kind of play all those notes in our lives, and experience courage, and ease, and wonder, and contentment, even forgiveness or wisdom? These are all things that we can grow and strengthen through choosing where we place our attention, which is really where the journey begins, and looking at how we use our attention, and what is competing for our attention in our world today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, these are big, beautiful, powerful ideas. And so, first, I’m going to go mercenary on you, Oren, it’s like, “Oh, that all sounds nice for mankind and the world, but how does it make me awesome at my job, Oren?”

Oren Jay Sofer
Absolutely, yeah. Well, as you point out quite appropriately, we spend an outsized amount of our time at work, and so how we work is really important. Our experience of our job, our coworkers, our self, isn’t fixed. It’s influenced not only by the external factors, many of which as we know are outside of our control. It’s influenced by what we bring to it, how we pay attention, and how we do our work every day.

So, using these skills, we can develop a different relationship with our work. We can learn to be more effective, to have more of a sustainable energy than this burst of energy and burning out, to have more focus and concentration rather than being scattered all the time. We can learn to really enjoy the aspects of our job that we like and get the most nourishment from them, which then creates a positive feedback loop where we have more energy and meaning because we’re focusing on that.

And, of course, this isn’t to kind of ignore or avoid the difficult things or the things that don’t work, but it’s to ensure that we’re not missing the good aspects of our work and our job and the people around us. And the more we’re able to develop the skills of attention, the more available we are for joy and goodness in our lives and our work, the more effective we can be because we’re not wasting precious time and energy reacting, we’re not stuck in stories from the past, we’re not pushing against things that are beyond our influence to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And, again, having that initial energy, concentration, and resolve can just be huge in terms of when, in some ways, that makes all the difference in terms of every minute or hour you’re spending on doing something, the work product will be high or low quality in large part based on how much quality energy, concentration, resolve you can give to it versus how likely you are saying, “Ah, maybe I’ll just handle some easy emails instead because I don’t have the energy, concentration, resolve to power through this tricky, ambiguous, frustrating, and high-value piece of work.”

Oren Jay Sofer
Right. And the beautiful thing about it is that when we’re able to marshal our resources in that way and really dig into a project, guess what, we get to celebrate and rest afterwards. We get to feel that sense of ease and satisfaction in knowing, “I knocked out the most important thing on my list today, and now I can breathe more easily.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Oren Jay Sofer
Brings rewards in the moment and in the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
And I suppose there’s little doubt that if you do something, you get better at that something, if it’s like playing golf, or juggling, or chess, or pumping iron, lifting weights, so we can see, or running, “Hey, I see improvements however I’m measuring that,” in terms of the chess rating, the bench press, 1 rep max, the balls not dropped, or the continuous minutes of juggling, whatever. There’s a means by which we do a thing and then we can see and measure progress.

Could you give us an example of a measure, whether it’s a measure of energy or concentration or resolve, and the protocol, or the program, the workout regiment, of contemplative practice? And what sorts of lift is seen after having engaged in that?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. So, my focus is through experience. I’m an empirical person so my work is based on my own training and the students/participants that I work with in my retreats and workshops. All this stuff is supported by the neuroscience, but just to be clear and upfront, that’s not my focus or area of expertise. So, let’s talk about concentration, and I’ll talk about it from a personal experience perspective, both in myself and in working with hundreds, if not thousands, of people practicing these skills.

So, the first thing, if we want to be able to concentrate better, the first thing to do is to understand what’s meant by concentration and how it arises. So, oftentimes, we think of concentration as a kind of force your mind to stay with something. And that can work for a little bit of time as driven by willpower but eventually we burn out because it’s not sustainable, and it’s a certain kind of brittle concentration. If something interrupts us, we lose it very quickly.

So, the kind of concentration I’m talking about, I might call stability or a collected mind. It’s really akin to what’s known in the research as a flow state. We’re present, we’re connected, we’re flexible, and we have access to all of our resources. We’re not straining, we’re not tight, we’re not burning up energy unnecessarily. We’re in a relationship with what’s happening. This runs counter to so much in our world and our society today, which is pushing us to be distracted, to multitask and fragmenting our attention.

So, what we’re doing with concentration is we’re regathering our energy, our attention, and learning to channel it in the direction of our choosing. So, how do we do that? How does this concentrated, gathered flow state arise? Well, just think about the last time you were really focused in a relaxed way, reading a book, playing a sport, working on a project. How did that come about? Well, you were probably really interested. There was a natural curiosity. You were probably somewhat relaxed, you’re able to drop into the moment, and you were clear about what you were doing and why. You have certain clarity of intent.

So, these are the factors that we want to get familiar with and learn to cultivate in our life and in our work, “Am I interested? Do I know why I’m doing this? Am I connected to that? Can I relax a little bit?” And that begins just by relaxing the body, just by attending, “Is my jaw tight? Am I clenching my fists? Can I relax my belly a little bit?” and then making a really clear and focused decision, say, “Okay, this is what I’m working on right now.”

And, of course, there’s lots of obstacles that are going to come in and try to throw us off. So, for me, concentration did not come easily. I remember, say, being in college and reading the same paragraph over and over and over again because by the time I got to the end of it, my attention would’ve wandered and I needed to start back over at the beginning. And I’ve seen through all the work that I’ve done with meditation, with mindfulness, I could put my mind to something and it’ll stay there.

So, the other skill here that’s really helpful that I want to offer to folks is being aware of the challenges or the hindrances or obstacles to concentration, and this is a really great tool to use when working on a project, to have a little checklist to run through, and just check and see, “Are any of these five things present? And if so, can I shift my focus into these qualities I’m working on, of interest, relaxation, and clarity?”

So, the first two are wanting and not wanting. So, really getting caught up in wanting to get somewhere, or craving something, or feeling irritated, aversive, not wanting to do this, wanting to get away from something, these will zap our energy and distract us. The second two are about energies. So, either feeling sleepy, lethargic, or feeling restless, anxious, too charged up, “So, I just want to check. How’s my energy? Am I sagging or am I kind of a little hyperactive?”

And then the third is doubt, and this one’s the real killer, “Am I doubting myself? Am I not sure I can do this? Am I undercutting my work here?” So, just being aware of these, just checking in and seeing, “Are any of these present?” already starts to shift the inner landscape. It’s when we’re not aware of these things that they really clobber us and drive the show. So, even if, say, we’re a little bit tired, if we’re aware of that, just that awareness starts to bring more energy.

Or, if there’s some doubt present, as soon as we see it, we’re like, “Oh, wow, look. I’m doubting myself. I’m worried I’m not going to be able to do this or it’s not going to be good.” Just that awareness is already stepping outside of the doubt a little bit. Checking on each of those can give us more access to concentration when we’re working on a project.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you say there are five things on the checklist?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yup. Wanting and not wanting, so this is about craving and pulling away from things, like, “Oh, I can’t wait to get to lunch,” or, “When am I going to get to the movie tonight and go on that thing?” It’s like, “Well, that’s tonight. Can I focus on what’s happening now?” Or, “Oh, God, I’m so nervous about having to present this. I don’t want to do that,” and so worry, we’re resisting something. It’s like, “Well, that’s not now. Let’s just focus on the project. Let’s just be here with what’s happening right in front of me.”

So, just being aware. It’s like when you walk outside of your house, or apartment, and you want to dress appropriately, you want to know what the weather is like. Same way, you sit down to do a project, you want to be prepared to work with the internal weather. Like, what are the conditions that are going to try to throw you off? So, if it’s going to be really cold, you want to bring a parka. If it’s going to be really wet, you want to bring a raincoat.

In the same way, if you’re working with sleepiness and you’re feeling really lethargic and doubtful, it’s like, “Okay, how can I psych myself up? How can I access a little bit more energy? Sit up straight. Take a deep breath. Turn up the lights. I’m feeling doubt. Reflect on the things that I know I’m good at, all the times in the past that I’ve really come through.” One, we need to know what might interfere, and then, two, we need to meet it, we need to work with it head on and address it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And so, when we have not wanting, what do you do with that? So, the awareness itself is helpful.

Oren Jay Sofer
Right, the awareness itself is helpful. Not wanting is usually about avoiding discomfort. So, it’s just based on biologically and the pleasure/pain principles. So, you want to look for, “Where is the unpleasant thing that I’m avoiding?” We’re often not aware of the unpleasant feeling that we’re trying to get away from. So, look for that unpleasant feeling, and then feel it.

Instead of trying to get away from it, which wastes a ton of energy and distracts us, take a deep breath, and go, “How bad is this right here and now? It’s a little unpleasant. Okay. So, how does it feel? Is my throat a little bit tight? I feel a little bit shaky, a little queasy in my stomach, a little pressure in my chest? What is it? What is it that I’m so afraid of?”

“Not in my mind, that’s the picture, that’s the thoughts, that’s the story. What is it I’m reacting to in my body? And if I can just feel that a little bit, it starts to settle because now I’m not running away from the demon in my mind. I’m actually meeting what’s real and true in the moment.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s go more into not wanting. And maybe we can even go live, a demo. Let’s say there is a task I don’t want to do. Well, let’s pick a specific one. Let’s say, “Get some transactions categorized and organized into spreadsheet and sent off to the accountant.” You go, “Ugh, I don’t want to do that. And, often, I end up doing it very close to the deadline because I don’t want to do it. And, apparently, the Post Office is very full in April 15th so I’m not alone.” So, help me out there. So, here I am, I’m thinking, “Ugh, I don’t want to do that.”

Oren Jay Sofer
So, with anything we’re avoiding, there’s two essential kinds of strategies we can use to shift that. Let’s start with one we’re already talking about, which is turning towards the avoidance directly and engaging with it. So, the first step is what you already, which is to recognize the avoidance. A lot of the times, when we’re avoiding something, we haven’t even done that.

We’re not fully conscious that we’re avoiding it. We’re just kind of pushing it away, which means our attention is split, there are some underlying anxieties, so we need to develop enough self-awareness to recognize, “Wait a minute. Something is bugging me.” And then to really be honest with ourselves and acknowledge, “I don’t want to do this.” Okay, that’s the first step.

Then turn towards it inside. Take a deep breath and feel, “Okay, what does it feel like to not want to do this?” It feels, I don’t know, frazzled, you tell me. When you don’t want to do your taxes, when you don’t want to do that. If you stop and you take a deep breath, what’s the actual experience in your body, the sensations?

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s a cool distinction right there. So, we’re focused on bodily sensations as opposed to emotions, like, angry, sad?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, that’s it. It’s going to the root level. So, the first level is going to be the thoughts, it’s, “I don’t have the time,” “I hate doing it,” “It’s too much to do.” Okay, then the next level is the emotions, which is, “I feel overwhelmed,” “I feel annoyed,” “I feel frustrated,” “I feel anxious.” We’re still, to some degree, on the conceptual level. In order for the patterning in our nervous system to start to shift and to have a little bit more flow and wiggle room, we need to engage on the level of sensation which is what’s actually driving us.

So, to feel in your body, “Okay, yeah, how does this actually feel?” And one question, so not everyone has quick easy access to their sensations, one great question to ask yourself is just, “Where in my body do I feel this? Like, is it in my throat? Is it in my chest? Is it in my belly? Or is it somewhere else?”

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s funny, I’m having a hard time with this. I think it’s like, “Ugh!”

Oren Jay Sofer
So, it’s kind of all over.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I guess if it’s not in my toes, it’s not in my calves, but it’s like, I don’t know, my neck and upper torso, it’s like instead of being filled with a zippy, “Hey, let’s dance a jig and sing a song in joy,” it’s like the opposite of that.

Oren Jay Sofer
It’s like a wet noodle.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s like flopping, “Ugh!”

Oren Jay Sofer
So, this is great. This is great. So, we experience our bodies and our emotions and sensations in different ways, and sometimes an image is how it occurs to us. So, it’s kind of that deep sigh and that gesture you made with your shoulders and your torso in this kind of flapping wet noodle. So, what happens when you just take a moment, don’t have to be with it forever. This is the fear, it’s like, “If I feel this, I’m going to get stuck here.” To just take one moment to feel that on its own terms, the wet noodle, the kind of flappy and just, “How bad is it?”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s kind of like being bored.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, it’s just what it is.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not horrible, it’s just not fun, it’s like, “Okay, it’s just a flavor of boredom.”

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah. So, you look the demon in the face, it’s like, “Oh, this is what this is.” That takes some of the wind out of its sails. It undercuts the source of resistance that’s driving it. Now, the other key strategy here, the other side that we need to work with, is the motivator. So, why is this important to you? What is this going to give you if you do it?

Pete Mockaitis
Gives you relief and keeps me out of jail.

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, gives you relief, gives you more time and energy to focus on other things that are important to you, and there’s a sense of a weight lifted, I’m imagining, when it’s done. So, now take a moment to just focus on the experience of relief and that weight lifted, and how good that feels. That can be what you want to navigate towards, like, “This is why I’m doing this.” So, you work from both angles, you kind of unplug the part that’s blocking you.

By feeling it and looking it in the face, “Okay, how bad is this? How uncomfortable is this, this thing that I’m avoiding?” And avoiding it actually gives it energy. To resist something, you’ve got to grab it first, you’ve got to pick it up. And when you pick it up, you actually give it energy. So, when you turn towards it, you’re just like, “All right, let’s just feel this. Let’s just see what this is.” Now, you’re not feeding it anymore, and it can start to peter out.

And then on the other side, “Why do this? What’s this going to give me? What’s important about this to me?” This is one of the things I talk about in the chapter on energy. One of the most sustainable sources of energy is willingness, knowing why we’re doing something. There’s tons of things in life we don’t like to do but if we can connect with the fact that we’re choosing to do it in some way, even if it’s, “You know, I don’t want to have the IRS come and take my house away,” or, “I don’t want to go to jail,” or, “I don’t want to get a speeding ticket so I’m going to drive the speed limit.” It’s like when we’re aware of why we’re doing it, we can tap into a different source of energy.

I think it’s really important, Pete, to get familiar with how it feels when we’re not avoiding something and we’re in alignment to really notice not just your thoughts and your emotions but, again, how it feels in your body, to feel connected and clear about what you’re doing and why. The more familiar you get with that experience, the more awake and aware you are, when you feel connected and aligned, the more quickly you will notice when you’re not.

It’s like developing a little bit of a baseline or a reference for, “Oh, yeah, this is what it feels like when I know what I’m doing and why, and I’m connected to my purpose, to my resources.” Then when you’re suddenly avoiding something, when you’re procrastinating, when there’s some resistance inside, we get really good at just kind of pushing through or pushing that away because it’s uncomfortable.

You’ll start to notice it more and be able to make different choices, and recognize, “You know, I’m doing the dishes right now. It doesn’t help me to not want to do it while I’m doing it. Like, I might as well just take a deep breath and relax, feel my feet on the ground, enjoy the warm soapy water, and clean the dishes.”

Or, “I’m taking my kid to music lessons right now. I’m not at home working on that project, even though I want to be. Like, let’s just relax and enjoy the time in the car.” We get the signal of the resistance when we notice more what it’s like when it’s not there, and then we can use whatever tools or resources we have, as we talked about through that resistance, to put it down.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Oren, this is huge and beautiful. Okay. So, we talked about some of these approaches to deal with we don’t feel like doing stuff and boosting resolve. I was going to go to energy next, so you gave us a tip right there. We tapped into the willingness and the underlying why. Any other perspectives on bringing about a greater energy?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, absolutely. So, energy is huge. We have limited energy in our lives. And I think that the dominant culture in the modern world is this kind of all or nothing approach to energy. It’s this kind of extractive, get as much as possible, as fast as possible. We use caffeine. We tend to push past our limits and burn out. So, how do we develop more sustainable energy?

So, willingness, knowing why we’re doing something is one resource. Another really important resource for developing more sustainable energy is starting to tune into the cycles of activity and rest. So, everything in life moves through these cycles: the seasons, the night and the day, even our breath. All of the time, there are these cycles of doing and then being, doing and then being, but the pace of our lives and the level of stimulation we’re exposed to on a daily basis tends to mask that, and we get disconnected from it.

So, just starting to pay attention to when we’re busy, and then noticing, like, when you complete something, celebrate it, take a pause for a moment, breathe out. After you send an email, instead of rushing onto the next thing, “Great.” It doesn’t have to be long. I’m talking about, like, three seconds. That’s going to boost your energy because, instead of just pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, we get the cycle. We do something and then we breathe out, and then we do something, and then we breathe out. We’re starting to feel this rhythm and it happens on a moment-to-moment level, it happens through the course of the day. That’s going to help us develop more energy.

One more tip I want to give on energy, and this one’s the real tricky one because it’s counterintuitive. If you want to use energy more effectively, initially, and this is just initially, slow down a little and try to feel more how you are working. Okay, I’ll tell you a short story. When I was in my 20s and just starting to learn to meditate, one of the meditation teachers I was training with pointed out, “Pay attention to how you brush your teeth, and just notice how you’re holding the toothbrush.”

And I noticed I had this kind of death grip on the toothbrush. I was squeezing it so hard when I brush my teeth, I was, “Why am I so tense brushing my teeth? I can actually relax. I can just hold the toothbrush with just the right amount of force, and then brush my teeth that way.” So, if you want to move an object, if you position your feet slightly apart, one in front of the other, and you bend your knees, you’ve got a lot of power.

So, balance and alignment conserve energy and create leverage. So, we can translate this into our work. How are we actually doing our work, both in our body and in our mind? Are we gripping that toothbrush really hard? Like, are we sitting at the keyboard with our shoulders hunched up and our jaw tight? Or, are we able to kind of relax, settle back, feel a sense of balance inside, an alignment, a clarity of purpose, and do things one at a time?

So, we take this kind of physical analogy and translate it into our work, into the relational space, instead of raising your voice and shouting and making a big scene, we can be more powerful if we speak at an even volume and a steady pace, and say what we need to say. So, there’s a sense of the more we become aware of how we’re using energy, we can start to channel it in more effective ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Oren, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to share before we hear a couple of your favorite things?

Oren Jay Sofer
I think one of the principles, Pete, that runs throughout the book that I want to make sure we cover here because it shows up really in any area that we’re trying to learn or grow is this principle we find in a lot of different fields, from performance to trauma healing, which is called strategic discomfort.

So, it’s knowing how much challenge is the right amount. And I’m sure you’ve covered this with other guests in other ways, right? It’s like if we don’t challenge ourselves at all, we just stay comfortable and we don’t learn and grow. But if we take on too much, we end up feeling overwhelmed and either collapsing or burning out.

So, whatever the skill is, whatever the resource or capacity is we’re trying to develop, whether it’s resolve, patience, energy, or this kind of foundational skill of choosing where we place our attention, we need to use some wisdom and ask ourselves, “What’s needed here? What’s the right amount of friction and tension and challenge for me to grow beyond my edge?” And that’s a skill, that’s a tool that we can use in all different areas of our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how do I assess that and get the right answer?

Oren Jay Sofer
Ask yourself this question, “What’s needed right now?” Not too much, not too little. We need to listen. We need to actually take a step back and check. And if we do that and we listen, and we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll know. So, whether it’s wanting to exercise more so that we have more energy in our lives, circling back to energy.

Of course, we didn’t talk about the fundamentals, like eating healthy, getting enough exercise, drinking enough water, trying to have healthy sleep, hygiene. Like, these are the foundations of energy. So, there’s an assumption that we’re attending to those things. But, say, you’re wanting to exercise more, it’s like, “What’s a reasonable goal?” and setting your aim on that, not overshooting because then we end up not doing it and giving up, and not undershooting because then we’re not actually challenging ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, Oren, could you share with us a favorite book, something you find inspiring?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, I thought about this. There are so many great books out there but one that came to mind that I read a few years ago that I think really puts us in touch with the preciousness of our time here is the book When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. He was a doctor who wrote about the end of his life as he died from cancer. A really beautiful short moving book.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite quote?

Oren Jay Sofer
This is from James R. Doty, a book called Into the Magic Shop, “It can hurt to go through your life with your heart open but not as much as it does to go through your life with your heart closed.”

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share in your courses, your books, your body of work that people really love, resonate with, and quote back to you often?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, I really think it’s the sense of we’re always practicing something. How we live every day is how we will live every day. And as you said, you’ve kind of alluded to earlier in the show is practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So, be careful and clear about what we’re practicing every day. We have this immense capacity for goodness, resilience, and empowerment in our lives if we know how to develop it every day. So, we can use our time to develop these amazing resources and be a real source of change, and goodness, and joy to the people around us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Oren Jay Sofer
Yeah, my website is probably the best place, OrenJaySofer.com. Also, active on social media @orenjaysofer.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Oren Jay Sofer
I love that question. I would say step outside of your habits and the negativity bias, and focus on the ways that you do contribute in your work and in your life. When we really notice and pay attention to the ways we contribute, we feel more energy, we experience more joy, we have more fulfillment, and it makes us more effective. It will also guide us to make better decisions about how we spend our time, what we do and don’t do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Oren, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much courage, love, and integrity.

Oren Jay Sofer
Thanks, Pete. You, too. It’s great to see you again.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Cool.

Aug 17
0

891: Finding Calm, Balance, and a Cure for Workaholism with Dr. Bryan Robinson

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Dr. Bryan Robinson shares the dangers of work addiction–and how you can recover from it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What workaholism is–and how you can tell if you have it
  2. The 10 C’s to help you find your calm
  3. How to befriend your negative emotions

About Bryan

Bryan E. Robinson is Founder and Chief Architect Officer of Comfort Zones Digital, Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a psychotherapist in private practice. He writes for Forbes.com and Thrive Global and is the author of over forty books, including three editions of Chained to the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them and #Chill: Turn Off Your Job and Turn on Your Life.

Resources Mentioned

Bryan Robinson Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Bryan, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Thank you, Pete. It’s great to be here again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat about your book, Chained to the Desk in a Hybrid World: A Guide to Work-Life Balance. But I think one thing we didn’t touch on last time you were here is your fun tagline that you heal by day and kill by night.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
That you’re a psychotherapist and a murder mystery writer. Tell us about this.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right. That’s balanced, isn’t it?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I got to wonder if I’m one of your clients, am I inspiring content to your novels?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
I would do this to my clients but just don’t cross me because people that cross me end up as one of the victims in my books, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
I’m teasing, of course. My focus really is on healing, but the murder mysteries are just fun, the play part.

Pete Mockaitis
And how many have you written?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Two so far. And, in fact, one of them, the first one is being made into a television series. I can’t talk too much about it yet because it’s still under negotiation but we’ve already done the pilot, and it’s going to be happening sometime, probably next year.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s exciting. Congratulations.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have any principles by which you write by that make for a great murder mystery?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Principles? Yeah, well, some life experiences that you take and exaggerate. Like, I was at the supermarket here about a year ago and the woman behind me didn’t put the stick between my groceries and hers, so they charged me, like, $300 or $400, and I thought, “What?” And it took us 20 or 30 minutes to undo all that mess. But what I thought, “Wow, this is a great way for two people to meet before they die.” So, I used it in a novel.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That is good. And then maybe there’d be some lingering information on the receipt.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, all right. Yeah, all kinds of things.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Can you tell us more about the book Chained to the Desk in a Hybrid World? What’s new and interesting? You’ve got a lot of experience in the universe of workaholism and exploring that. What’s new in the hybrid stuff?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, the book is really about work-life balance. That’s the subtitle, “A Guide to Work-Life Balance.” And things have been changing, as probably everybody listening knows, all over the world, in the workplace specifically. People are not working as much in the office. They’re working more either in hybrid ways or at home, which has brought up another whole problem. And that is, “Where do you set the boundaries?”

And one of the things that research has shown since we’ve started working more from home is we’re living and working under the same roof, and that means there are no boundaries. So, it’s caused a huge problem in overworking and burnout. For example, let’s say I have a project and I work till 5:00 or 6:00, and then I think, “Hmm, I can just keep working and burn the midnight oil and get this done.” And there’s more of that happening, and, therefore, more people are having mental health problems as a result of it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fascinating. Could you give us some statistics associated with the frequency, the prevalence of this overworking at home and the mental health challenges?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, the last statistic I saw was 40% of the people who were working remotely were saying, because they didn’t think about boundaries, and so they would just go in and out of their office, or they’d go throw on some laundry, and so it’s 40%. And that’s pretty high for an increase in burnout. So, obviously, what needs to happen is if we’re living and working in the same environment, we need to have some kind of mental understanding of where that line is.

For example, right now, I’m in my home office, and I work from here a good bit. I also have an office downtown but I imagine that my office at home, after 5:00 or 6:00, is five miles across town. I have a rule, I don’t go into that place, unless it’s an emergency, after a certain amount of time. I also have an understanding with my family, “You can’t just come barging in any time you want to.” Like, if your spouse works in a doctor’s office, you’re not going to bounding into that office with the doctors with a client, or if it’s an attorney with someone.

So, we have to also honor the boundaries of the people we live with. And what a lot of people have done is to spread out their work on the kitchen table or in front of the TV, which, really, you have other family members who want to watch TV or have dinner. It’s not respectful for them. So, it’s really raising or a heightened awareness of boundaries so that you can function in these two different worlds that have collided, have come together.

Another thing is some days, when I’m working in my office at home, I realize there’s laundry that needs doing, the dog needs to be walked, there’s chocolate cake in the fridge, but I also know, when I think that, that, yes, that’s true but I’m in my office right now, so those things are not available to me. So, that’s just like a mental way of reminding myself to stay on track.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that, that mental habit there, “Yes, but I’m in my office and so those things are not available to me.” There you have it. And then to review that statistic, you said those who are working from home have a 40% increased probability of experiencing burnout? That’s the stat?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right, yeah. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That is big.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Burnout is cumulative stress. It’s not something that just happens. There’s a difference in stress and burnout. Stress, we can recall from. Burnout is more difficult. It’s when you get to the point that you’re exhausted, you lose your sense of meaning and purpose, and you’re not as motivated as you were, you’re exhausted. And it takes a while to get over. You can’t just say, “Okay, I’ll take a week off.” It takes some good time to get through that.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, then could you perhaps share with us a cool story of someone who figured this out, they made some good adjustments to boundaries, and saw some nice results?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, I can name a lot of people that I know, that I’ve worked with. One is Arianna Huffington, who started The Huffington Post, and in the throes of trying to get that off the ground, she’s written about this in her book so I’m not sharing anything that’s personal or private. She collapsed and hit her head against the desk, her face against the desk, broke her cheekbone and woke up in a pool of blood.

Alanis Morissette, who’s a friend of mine, also suffered what she calls nervous breakdowns because of overworking. It was a real problem that she’s had over the years. Overworking, by the way, or work addiction and hard work are not the same things. We often get those confused because people will often say to me, “What’s wrong with hard work?” That’s not what we’re talking about. Work addiction is when you can’t turn it off.

And to a lot of people, they don’t get it because they think, “Who wants to work all the time?” But, believe me, many people do, and there was a time in my life when I did. It wasn’t just the work. I was running away from something within me. I didn’t realize it. When I was a professor at the university, I had a weekend ahead of me with nothing planned, and it was terrifying.

So, really, it’s about knowing what’s going to happen, and it’s about control. So, what did I do? Well, if I were an alcoholic, I would go and I would get drunk, maybe. But I was not or am not an alcoholic but, as a workaholic, or someone who’s really addicted, it became my sense of medication. And so, I found the campus newsletter and saw that there was a call for grant. And when I wrapped that computer printout under my arm, now in retrospect, it was like an alcoholic putting a bottle under his arm and feeling calm because it gave me a sense of certainty, a sense of control.

Now, where does that come from? I’ve been studying cases, and I’ve done empirical research, and I’ve worked clinically with workaholics, and every workaholic I know of has a history that relates to of living in an environment where things are out of control, often alcoholism or drug abuse or just an unstable family. And one of the things they intuitively learned to do as a child is to take control by caring for a younger sibling, for doing homework and excelling, or just doing things.

As a kid, I remember writing the church Christmas play one Christmas. Now, not only did I write it. I directed it, I acted in it, I built the sets, everybody thought I was great but I didn’t know what I was doing except, now I know that it was my way to control an unwieldy home life that was out of control, that I couldn’t control.

So, these were the kinds of things that form or the foundation for a true workaholic. People tease about it but it’s a serious addiction. And in the research that I’ve done, it accounts for 40% of divorce. If you compare a workaholic marriage to a non-workaholic marriage, there’s a 40% higher divorce rate. And we know that children who grow up in a workaholic home not only have a serious depression and anxiety issues, but they also, compared to children of alcoholics, have a harder time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s heavy stuff. Thank you for sharing. And I’m curious, when you say you are a workaholic, if you can’t turn it off, and you are uncomfortable with the idea of, “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing. Ah, work, what a release,” I’m also curious, there are times I think when I am thinking about it a lot, it’s almost like that there’s an unsolved problem or case that I’m in the middle of, and it just keeps representing itself.

And I don’t know, it’s almost like, is there a distinction here? Is that sort of the same thing or a different thing? It sort of happens intermittently when there’s, like, a puzzle that is quite not solved, and the incompleteness of it keeps grabbing my attention over and over again.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
It depends on where you’re coming from. If you’re coming from a place of having to or striving or requiring yourself to fix it, that’s one of the forms of workaholism, that if you have this compulsive need to get it finished versus being curious. Curiosity, if I’m curious about something, that’s not work addiction.

But if I have this thought in my head, “You have to do this. You’ve got to get this done,” when, in fact, there are a few things that I have ever had to do, that’s more the pressure. That triggers what we call the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight. But if curiosity is coming more from what I call is what is known as the parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest and digest response, so it’s coming from a different place inside of us.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Bryan, I’m just going to take a little curiosity break right now and ask how do you know all these famous people? What’s that? What went on there?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, they contacted me because they had read some of my work. So, Alanis Morrisette tells everybody that she worked with me. As a therapist, I don’t go out and broadcast who I work with, but she’s written about it and she talks about it, and people call me and say they want to work with me because they hear that I worked with her.

And Arianna and I worked together. I write for Thrive Global, which is her big thing now since she left Huffington Post. And I’ve written about a lot of different people. I write for Forbes, and so I’ve interviewed them, and so I’ve just heard. One of the things that I’ve learned as a therapist and having the privilege of being able to hear the internal system of people, and also interviewing people for Forbes, is we’re all struggling with something.

Everybody on this planet is struggling with something inside of us, some more serious than others. We don’t often talk about that because people are afraid that if they let other people know, they’ll be judged or they’ll be humiliated, but what’s happening more, especially well-known people, like Prince Harry or Alanis, Jewel, I’ve interviewed Jewel, talk about the hardships and how they got over them.

Then the more people realize they’re human, and what they’re going through is the human experience, and they don’t have to judge themselves because judgment throws you into a cycle of feeling worse. It’s like if you’re already suffering from something, and you judge yourself for it, that’s like fighting the fire department when your house is on fire, which adds insult to injuries.

So, one of my goals is to let people know some of my struggles, which I’m not ashamed of, but I’ve been able to get through them and land in a place that I really feel good about, which I’ll call my central command center, or the C mode. And there are 10 C words that will tell you you’re there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lay it on us.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Okay. Curiosity instead of judgment. This goes back to what I was saying. Most of us, if we fail or make a mistake, we have that little voice in our head that judges us, and that’s the worst thing that can happen. As you become more aware of that, and you go into curiosity, and say, “Why did I yell at her?” or, “Why did I throw that soup across the room at my husband?” or, “Why did I snap at my child?” then you can get to some understanding of who you are and why that happened instead of judging, so it doesn’t add insult to injury.

Calm versus anxiety. Well, we all want to be calmer, but yet we find that difficult because many of us are living such busy lives. But we know that cumulative anxiety creates health problems and early death, that’s a fact, a scientific fact. But if I can be calmer, I can be happier, I can be more productive, and I can live longer and have fewer health issues.

Clarity instead of confusion. If I have a mind that’s cluttered, it’s going to be more difficult for me to perform and to succeed. But if I have clarity and I understand what’s happening inside of me and why I do what I do, and if I have some understanding of why someone else maybe does what they do, then I can live more from a central command center, from that C mode.

Connection instead of isolation. We know that loneliness and isolation is a huge public health problem in this country. And the surgeon general, under both Obama and Biden, has pointed that out and written a book about it. So, connection is really healing for all of us. And people who are able to connect, especially in their older years, have fewer health problems, and, again, they live longer. These are all tied to longevity and happiness.

Compassion instead of cold-heartedness. Now, when I say compassion, I’m talking about caring about other people. And as I said before, all of us are struggling with something but we don’t really recognize that, we don’t see it, so we don’t know it, but it’s something we have to just…an awareness we need to carry with us so we can be kinder to people because we don’t know what they’re going through. But it’s also important that we’re kinder to ourselves.

One of the recent studies that has just come out that I find fascinating but I’m not surprised is that people who practice self-compassion have better cardiovascular systems. In other words, people who don’t practice self-compassion have higher cardiovascular risks. And they’ve actually studied the linings of the arteries to show this. This is not just somebody’s opinion. It’s a very rigid, highly scientific article. I’ve read the actual research itself. And I could talk about each one of these probably for an hour.

Then there’s, of course, confidence versus intimidation. You see so many books about confidence, but if I can really feel confident, that’s strength and that allows me to overcome just about anything. But if I’m intimidated, which is just another form of fear, or if I shrink in a situation, I’m going to be less successful and, of course, less happy.

And then there’s courage. Courage is really versus fear. Stick your neck out a little bit. If you stick your neck out, that’s how you grow, but a lot of us are afraid to stick their neck out, and it feels like we want to stay in a secure place, which is understandable. That’s the way the brain works. But if you stay in too comfortable a place, you don’t grow and you don’t succeed. And people do that and they never understand, “Why am I not happy? And why have I not been more successful?” Well, it’s because their minds have kept them stuck so they can be safe.

Then there’s creativity versus stagnation. Creativity comes from the central command center, which is the opposite of the inner critic. The critic, if anybody who’s creative knows about the inner critic, it tells you, “You can’t,” “You must,” “You should,” “You don’t know what you’re doing,” “You’re going to fail.” And so, then we recoil and we stay in our safe place. But if we stick our neck out, that’s where creativity comes from. We’ve learned we can do something different and reap the benefits.

And then there’s comedy versus drama. This whole thing of lightheartedness and laughter, we know the science. It makes us feel better and it lightens our load no matter what we’re dealing with. It makes us feel better. And then there’s celebration versus exhaustion. Celebration is when we’re grateful for what we have instead of focusing on what we don’t have.

So, celebrating our birthday, and rituals, and being with other people, that builds our life and makes us happier, and makes life worth living. So, those are the 10 Cs, if we want to live from a place of chill or a place of calm.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, those 10 Cs are associated with the chill and calm. And I do see how these things tend to hang together in terms of, “Okay, when I’m in the confident group, I’ve also more courage, I’m more brave, have more courage, and I’m more creative.”

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
“And I’m more likely to laugh at stuff,” comedy. So, they hang together.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
They do.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if we are on the opposite side of those 10 Cs, we are un-chill, we are uncalm. Because I’m wondering it sounds like maybe I have 10 gateways I might enter through to try to get over to the chill side of things. Or, what do you recommend?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
You’re absolutely right. They’re all connected, it’s like a big puzzle. Now, those C words, some people call it a higher state of mind, a higher form of living, but the ones you’re pointing out – cold heartedness, isolation, confusion – we call those parts in psychology. And they’re often protectors. They’re parts of us that take over and eclipse the C mode, and they’re trying to protect us from…they’re based on survival.

Fear, anxiety, worry, confusion, those are all actions that they want to keep us, I don’t want to say trapped, that’s not their goal. They’re survival parts that automatically come out that keep us safe. They respond to threats. So, we’re hardwired for those more negative parts. It takes a little bit of…you could call that a lower state of mind.

But it takes a little bit of awareness and understanding to live from those C words. So, it’s a higher state of living, and it takes practice and awareness. It’s not something that’s just going to happen. We have to pay attention and want to live from that place. Can I give you an example of what…?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
This is what got me out of the work addiction. This is what led me from the pit into more of an awareness. And I haven’t arrived anywhere. Believe me, I have my issues that I have to deal with like everybody else. I was a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the creative arts center invited Tibetan monks to come and perform on our campus.

So, what they do is they have these instruments and these beautiful costumes. It’s incredible entertainment. Well, we found that outside, right before the performance, there were a group of religious fundamentalists who were circling and with signs that said that Buddhists worship the devil and they’re evil and demonistic. And, of course, I was furious with these people because it was such a horrible way to welcome strangers to our campus.

But when the monks found out, they all went outside, and, at that point, the group was singing “Jesus loves me” with their hands in a circle. They joined hands and sang “Jesus loves me” with a smile on their face, a compassionate smile. And I remember thinking, “I want that. That’s what I would like to have,” because I was fuming and seeing that, and thinking, “How can they do that? I don’t get it.”

And it’s something I’ve aspired to, and I haven’t arrived anywhere but that set me out on a journey to live more from a better state of mind, and a healthier state of mind, and a longer state of mind, and it changed my life.

And I can tell you what I have discovered. I’ve kind of boiled it all down and have harnessed the three As that I practice every day.

So, if I have fear, or if I have anxiety, or if I have worry, or if there’s drama, or if I’m confused, first of all, I have to be aware because most of us don’t even realize we’re in one of those states because they’re so quick and we’re so used to swimming in the water we’re swimming in. So, awareness is the first A. And when I’m aware that I have worry, then I acknowledge it on the inside. And this is so different from what most of us do. Acknowledgement is the second A.

And the way I do that, and this is based on research, I focus on that, let’s say, the worry, and I talk to it like it’s a person, and I use third-party language. Now, this is all based on research. It used to be we’d say people who talk to themselves are crazy. Now, it’s one of the best therapeutic tools we have. And so, I’ll say, “Worry, oh, so you’re here. Okay, pull up a chair, let’s have a cup of tea or…” I prefer coffee.

Now, what I’m doing is I’m talking to it just like it’s a person who just walked in the door, “And so, tell me what’s going on.” And I’ll get a message, I’ll get an image, I’ll get words, or I may just get a sense of what that is, “Oh, I see. So, you’re worried about the MRI. Yeah, right. Well, that makes perfect sense to me.” Now, notice I’m not fighting it, I’m not debating it, I’m not steamrolling over it, I’m not ignoring it. That’s the worst thing you can do. I’m befriending it. I’m inviting it in.

As I do that, I start to feel calm. I’m curious. I’m compassionate with it. Now, that’s the own ramp. And the third A is allowing it to be there, allowing it because it’s protecting me. It’s saying, “Bryan, you need…something is going to happen, and you better get worried, you better get ready for this. This could be bad news,” so it’s not my enemy. Why would I want to fight it or ignore it? I want to appreciate it and welcome it in, and say, “Thank you for letting me know this but I got this.”

So, you feel a separation from it and you’re able to move forward with more of those C words. So, that’s the triple A that is the own ramp to some of these C words.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we’re aware, we acknowledge, and the third A is?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Allow. Allow it to be there. Don’t fight it. And there are actually two more that I don’t often tell people because it can be overwhelming. You can’t just get this overnight. You got to practice it. Like, if you go to the gym, your muscles are not going to build up unless you lift the weights. You got to do the work. If you practice this, you develop the muscle memory though.

So, the two more As is appreciation. If you practice this, after a while you’ll start to appreciate, “Wow, thank you for being there for me because I used to hate you or I used to fight you or resist you. But now I see how you’re trying to protect me, just like my ribcage protects my vital organs, and my cranium protects my brain.”

And then the final A is acceptance. And acceptance is when it goes really deeper into, yes, and it can be worry, it can be fear, it can be whatever, and you’re able to go then out once you worked inside. It’s an inside job, as we say. You’re able to go forward into an uncertain situation, a scary situation, public speaking or results of an MRI, or fear of a divorce, or somebody’s going to leave you that you love. It can be a myriad of different experiences, but it’s these Cs strengthen you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. And so, when you say that’s the pathway, when you’re un-chill, work through the three or five As and return to chill.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Exactly. That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
That’s my ticket.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s your ticket. That’s the one. All right. It’s funny, I was going to say, I was thinking at first when I heard the 10 Cs, so I could do any of them, it’s like I’ll just watch something funny and then I’ll return to chill. Is that also accurate?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah. I was talking to someone today and we’re going to be doing a podcast, actually, and so she and I are going to do it together, and she said, “Oh, I got this great guy, and he wrote this great book, and, oh, it’s fabulous. You’ve got to read it and we got to have him on.” And then you could go on the dark side, but then she said, “But then I found out that he was dead.”

And we laughed but not because he was dead but just because of the absurdity of it. So, you can bring comedy to a situation, or you can go on down the dark path. We have a choice of what we want to focus on. And that’s true of any of these C words. You have a choice on, “Do you want to focus on cold heartedness or compassion?” Cold-heartedness is a protector. If I’m coldhearted, that’s a part of me, it’s not even me. It’s like my skeletal system. I have a cranium and I have a sternum. Well, cold-heartedness is protecting me from being hurt because I’ve been hurt before.

So, if you look at each one of these that’s on the opposite side, they’re all protecting us. We just don’t stop to think about it that way. But in protecting us, they keep us stuck. They trap us and we don’t realize it but we can get ourselves unstuck if we look at those Cs, and each person listening just says, “Which one of those would I like to build up?” And you can make that a goal for this coming week.

One of the things I did, only because I wanted to practice some of these, at the beginning of 2023, well, my only resolution was I’m going to do one kind deed a day, especially for somebody I don’t know, a stranger. And, boy, has that helped me. It’s helped me, first of all, become more compassionate with people I don’t know instead of making snap judgments.

And some of the things I’ve done is bought groceries for people. I do that a lot. When I can tell they don’t have much money or they forgot their credit card one day, and I said, “Forget it, I’ll pay for that.” And it makes me feel good. Or, I’ll hold a door for somebody. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It doesn’t have to be money.

But if you want to be more compassionate, think of little things you can do for somebody, or just compliment somebody. Our mind tends to go into the negative because we are born with what’s called a negativity bias for survival but we can offset that by starting to look at, “Wow, gosh, you look beautiful today.” I found myself saying things I would never have said to people 10 years ago, and it feels good to me, and it feels light, and you get smiles and people look at you, and you feel connected to the world.

So, you’re right, you do one and then you feel these other Cs coming in along with that one C that you started with. We often say curiosity is the gateway because it’s easier to get to. If I can just be curious about, let’s say somebody snaps at me. My automatic reaction is going to be to snap back or to maybe call them a name.

But if I pay attention to that space, there’s always a little space in there before I react, I might say, “Now, how do I really want to be?” And I might think, “Well, she’s having a hard day,” or, “She’s misunderstood what I meant.” So, if I can just take a second before I react to that, I feel like I’ve just hit a homerun. It’s a great feeling to be able to stay in your central command center and respond from that place instead of from that protector.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Thank you. Well, tell me, Bryan, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, I will say that, I’d said earlier, I didn’t know how to get to where the monks were, and I still am not where they are. I can’t promise that I’m always going to be in the C spot, or the C mode, I call it. And I always tell people, “If you see me pounding the steering wheel and I’m stuck in traffic, I’m human. I’m just like everybody else, but I don’t judge myself if I get angry. I don’t judge myself if I’m scared. I don’t judge myself if I feel stagnated.” I’ll allow that to be and acknowledge it, which paradoxically shifts me over into the C mode.

So, the thing to watch out for is judgement is such a quick thing that our parts do to protect us that it can be there before you realize it. So, just know that curiosity is the gateway, and practice that for a little bit, and be curious before you react, and watch what happens. It’s amazing. It will change your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, my favorite quote is by Viktor Frankl, that everything we’ve been saying relates to. Viktor Frankl wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in Dachau and Auschwitz, and his wife and he were separated. She was sent to the chamber, she was burned. He didn’t know that but with people dropping dead around him, and him starving and literally no clothes, knowing he could die any minute, he made a vow to himself, “One thing they can never take from me is my will.”

And so, the quote that I think about all the time, and that I love to share with people, because none of us are in the Holocaust, hopefully. We’re trapped in other ways inside because of the way we think or because of what’s happened to us. The quote is, “Between the stimulus and the response,” the stimulus meaning the event that happens, and how I react to it, “there’s a space.” Most of us run real shadow with that space. But if we start to be aware that there’s a space, and we take that pause, then we have a choice. We realize we have a choice.

And in that space, when I make the choice, I’m free. I can never be trapped by anybody or anything. So, the quote is, “Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. And in that space, we have a choice. And when we choose, we are free.”

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share a favorite study or bit of research?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, there are two. One is about Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan, who did the study on self-regulation that shows people who speak to themselves in the third person versus people who speak using “I” pronoun, perform better.

And it’s incredibly scientific experiment that he did showing how when I say, “Bryan,” or “You,” instead of “I,” I separate out from the me, and I have more, like, a bird’s eye view of what I’m doing. It’s almost like somebody else is talking to me. And I have less anxiety and I have more confidence. That’s one. And the other is the study I mentioned earlier about self-compassion and how that leads to better self-care and lower cardiovascular disease.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
I guess my favorite book, there’s so many, but Huckleberry Finn, I read it as a kid. I could read it tomorrow and just love it. I love Mark Twain.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, I’m going to go back to self-talk. It’s something that has really helped me separate out from those negatives that I mentioned earlier. Because when I talk to myself, it gives me an objective, I zoom out and I’m able to see the whole picture instead of just the myopic view that I had.

So, self-talk, in a way, it’s a certain way of self-talk though. It’s like I use my name, “Bryan, you know you can do this,” or, I say, “You know what, have you thought about this?” It’s almost like there’s someone else talking to me, and it widens my perspective, and it helps me see potential instead of just the problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Yeah, it’s something I borrowed from John F. Kennedy. Some people listening may not remember this, but he had a famous quote that said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” And so, I borrowed that and changed it a little bit, and it’s, “Ask not how life is treating you. Ask how are you treating life.”

And what that means is we all have curve balls coming at us. That’s what life is. It’s joyful, there are wonderful things but we’re all going to have things happen to us that we don’t want. But what do we do that? Instead of focusing on, “Ain’t it awful? And ain’t it terrible? And, oh, my God, you won’t believe what happened to me,” which is what we tend to do, and that’s okay.

But if you can add to that, or flip it, and say, “So, what am I going to do with this? How can I turn this into something that will make my life better or benefit me? And how can I live from a higher state of mind as a result of this?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And can you tell us, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, my website is BryanRobinsonBooks.com. And so, they can, from that, find out how to get in touch with me. And they can also read more about some of the work I’ve done, the articles I’ve written for Forbes, and some of the books I’ve written, and even there are some films on there, and even see the pilot, the novel that’s called Limestone Gumption is on there, so.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Well, what I’d ask everybody to do is, based on that last quote, because right now, people listening to this are struggling with certain things – fear, grief, anger – and that’s okay. That’s our humanity. But how can you flip that? For example, I can focus on my shortcomings but what are my tall comings? Pete, I don’t know if I ask you to list your tall comings, you might immediately think, “Well, I can do my shortcomings in a flash,” but you have to think a little bit about those tall comings sometimes.

Tall comings are just the opposite. It’s like what are you creative at? What are you good at? What are you talented at? What are your qualities that people are drawn to you for? That’s one. And have more green time with your screen time. So, I call it flipping, have a to-be list with your to-do list. If you’d focus on the negative and flip it, there’s always a positive side. You can’t have an up without a down. You can’t have a right without a left.

So, if we just teach ourselves to look more on the positive, and that’s not ignoring the negative, it’s adding to it. It’s seeing the whole picture. It can make a huge difference in our lives, in our health, and our longevity. We know that for a fact.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Bryan, this has been a treat. Thank you for this. I wish you much luck with all your chilling.

Dr. Bryan Robinson
Thank you. Appreciate it. It’s been great being with you, Pete.

Feb 23
0

842: How to Thrive in High-Stakes Situations with Carol Kauffman

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Carol Kauffman says: "If anybody is going to get in your way, please don’t let it be you."

Carol Kauffman reveals her secrets for finding your calm in the biggest moments.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The super question to ask yourself dozens of times a day.
  2. How to avoid being hijacked by stress.
  3. How to find the best approach in any situation.

About Carol

Carol Kauffman is known internationally as a leader in the field of coaching. Carol works extensively with global CEOs and their teams, also serving as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, visiting professor at Henley Business School (University of Reading, UK), and a senior leadership adviser at Egon Zehnder. Marshall Goldsmith named her the #1 leadership coach, and Thinkers50 ranked her among the world’s top eight coaches.

Resources Mentioned

Carol Kauffman Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Carol, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Carol Kauffman
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m super excited to talk about your latest, Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High. But, first, I need to hear about your first job with a violent horse. What is the scoop here?

Carol Kauffman
Oh, okay. That’s my very first job was a pooper scooper, yeah, because we had an illegal kennel in our home when I was growing up, so imagine having 30 dogs, and I’m not understanding why 101 dalmatians is unusual. So, yes, my job was to, one, do pooper scooper, but also was to let the dogs out in the correct order.

So, we’d have two whites, two browns, an apricot, and chocolate, and then you do it again and again and again, and everyone just thought it was the same jobs, the same dogs. So, that was the beginning of my life of crime. The violent horse thing happened by accident, where there was just this beautiful white horse of every girl’s dreams, and I walked in because I was taking horseback riding lessons, and there was a lesson going on.

And I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in there, so I just sort of walked in, and there was a window and a bucket in front of us so I had to turn my back to the horse to look outside to make sure my lesson wasn’t happening. And what I didn’t know was that according to Monty Roberts, who was the original horse whisperer, when you have a naughty horse or a violent one, you turn your back on it by 45 degrees, which is exactly what I had done.

And when I did that, the horse came over and started befriending me. And then that was the beginning of learning about, first of all, nonverbal behavior, and how to relate to animals that everyone is scared of. But if you treat them right, they befriend you rather than attack you, which is what he did to everybody else.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful to pick up from an early age. Good stuff.

Carol Kauffman
That was wonderful, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, talking about your book here, Real-Time Leadership, is there a particularly surprising or counterintuitive discovery you made along the way here that really struck you?

Carol Kauffman
Well, that’s interesting. Probably the one thing, I’m not so sure it was counterintuitive, but what’s really striking is how a split-second intervention can make a big difference. And that’s almost cliché but it’s really powerful when you see it. So, I can talk about that a little bit. Marshall Goldsmith has kind of gone crazy with one of my questions, but it is really amazing. If you stop and make a space, even very quickly, it can be really powerful what happens as a result of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I just have to know Marshall went crazy with one of your questions. What was the question? And in what way did he go crazy?

Carol Kauffman
I’m not going to tell you, sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Carol Kauffman
So, the question was, it was New Year’s one year, and you know how we all have the “What I’m going to do…” like my New Year’s resolution is always, “What am I going to do?” and this year, I’m like, “Really, I’m just going to do the same resolution, and it’s going to last six weeks and then be gone again.” So, the question came to me, instead of what I want to do, it was, “Who do I want to be right now?”

So, I’d love for you and people listening to try it and ask yourself that question 20 to 80 times, like today or tomorrow, like, the waiter is slow, and you’re really hungry. Okay, who do you want to be? Maybe someone has given you a project that they’re working on, and it’s really subpar, and you really knew they could’ve done better. Oh, at that, who do you want to be?

Or, you’re giving someone a report you’ve written, okay, who do you want to be? So, that is this very split-second kind of course-correction question. And why Marshall loved it is he felt, I’m not entirely sure why, but he felt…what he says is, “I’ve read 500 books on Buddhism and this is the best description of mindfulness I’ve ever heard.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There you go. Grab that quote.

Carol Kauffman
Yeah. So, that is really powerful. That’s probably one of the most powerful things that I think comes from the book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s good. That’s good. Well, I visited Marshall’s home, and it’s cool to see all the Buddhism stuff, so, yeah, maybe that’ll be inscribed somewhere in there over time. All right. Well, let’s hear about the book Real-Time Leadership. What’s sort of the big idea or main thesis here?

Carol Kauffman
Okay. Building off of that, the book, I love the quote by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, which is, “Between every stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom.” Okay, so that’s good, making a space. But then, like, what do you do with that space?

So, the entire book is if you can stop and create a space, instead of having your default reaction or your automatic reaction, and you make a world of choice there, what we then do for the whole book, which is, as Marshall says, “It’s dense in a good way,” we literally go through, “What are four sets of things you can do when you’ve made space that are going to help you towards optimal performance but also towards being a better human being?”

So, it’s make that space for choice, and then have an idea of, like, what to do in that space.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, could you share with us an inspiring story of someone who did just that, maybe in a particular high-stakes, high-risk situation, or habitually, and saw really cool results from that?

Carol Kauffman
Okay. I think the first example that comes to my mind, now this was someone who wanted to be a CEO but it applies in any difficult interview that you’ve had. So, he was in front doing the first two days, the first day of the interview. He was really convinced that what it was he really needed to do was wow them. So, he didn’t make a space to consider if that was true or not. So, he was giving them lots and lots and lots and lots of information, and I think we all can do that when we’re applying for a job.

And we think that they just want to know how much we know, so we spit it all out. But he saw that he was sort of losing the attention of people, and then they were getting restless. And so, he just did more of it, and, finally, it’s crashing, and he just sort of tries to maintain good posture and dignity, and walks out. And, like, what is he going to do the next day.

What did he get wrong? That’s when we talk about. We have this acronym M-O-V-E, and the M stands for being mindfully alert. And mindfully alert to, “What are the external demands you need to meet?” In this case, he wanted the job, etc. “What are the internal challenges you have so that you’re able to meet that demand? And then, how do you need to relate to people?”

What happened was he left, then he called David and me, but also the head of the non gov committee, the nominating governance committee, called and said, “We think he’s out. We had somebody else.” So, then we talked to him, and really said, “Well, what is it that you’re really trying to do?” And that’s a question we don’t ask ourselves enough, like, “What are we actually trying to do? What’s your reflex? And can you make space and think about it? Like, hold on, what do you really need to accomplish?”

And in his case, it was to be making a connection with the board so they would feel safe putting him into this position, and to also take their perspective. So, his perspective was, “Let me throw a bunch of things at you.” Their perspective is, “How many things can I absorb?” So, one of the things about it is,  “How can you know what you need to do? How can you know who you need to be?”

And in this case, he had a lot of emotion regulation and was able to change course the next day, and he was able to also transcend his ego, so he could see, “Oh, I did that, and that’s on me, not on them.” And then he could interact with them differently. So, that’s one of the kind of core concepts of the book, and of Real-Time Leadership, and it also works at home, by the way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear that story as well.

Carol Kauffman
Okay. I love this story. My son, Michael, who’s now a mechanical engineer, when he was 11, I walked into the dining room and there’s this, like, unholy mess on the dining room table. I walked in, and he says, “Okay, I’m done with my homework. Can I watch TV now?” Okay, so now remember the three dimensions of leadership: what do we need to do, who do I need to be, how do I need to relate. And we are leaders at home. We are leaders with our peers. We’re leaders in lots of ways.

So, the first question is, “What do we need to do?” And the reflex is, “Get the homework done.” So, you go over and, like, for instance, this unholy mess and there’s scribble marks everywhere. And I was working on the book, I thought, “Wait a minute. What is my actual goal here? Is my goal to just get this homework done? Or is my goal to help him learn how to be disciplined? Or is my goal to have him love learning? Or is my goal having him watch his parent be chill and talk with him under stress so that he can be more like that? Like, what is your goal?”

And we just assume it’s like, “Get the homework done,” the reflex. So, we’re saying, “Stop. Make a space.” Okay, so there’s that. Then, well, who do I want to be in that moment? It’s at the end of the day, have I done enough investing in my own emotion regulation so that I’m able to stop as opposed to, “I’m tired. I’m cranky. I don’t want this”? So, that’s my internal development.

And then, “Okay, what’s the best way to relate to Michael at this moment? Is it to get really involved and help him get the homework done? Is it to give him space? Is it to be nurturant? Or is it just pause and not do anything?” And that’s actually the second part of the model about your options. But, actually, the hardest one is to do nothing, particularly when you’re triggered and annoyed.

So, I, like, stop and did nothing for a moment. And when you do that, it’s sort of like it mimics in the shower or when you go running, and an idea hits, but if you can just pause, see what comes to you. And what popped into my head was a question. So, I just said, “So, Michael, I want you to ask yourself a question, and then, depending on the answer, you can go watch TV. I want you to just look at this and just ask yourself, ‘Am I proud of my work?’ And if you’re proud of your work, you can go watch TV.” And I left the room.

And he maybe spent two or three extra minutes taking a look at it and decided that he was proud enough and he maybe did something, but it had an impact on him in terms of me in that role, giving him space, trusting him, and then giving him an opportunity to be self-motivated.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what happened in the end?

Carol Kauffman
Well, he stayed there about two or three minutes, and did a little bit. Then he went in to watch TV, but I have to say it did something very good for our relationship. And even today, now that he’s a grownup, he’ll often call me for coaching. And very often, he’ll ask me something, and I’ll say, “Okay, as your mother, the patent is yours, throw somebody else under the bus? As a coach, let’s think through what’s your real goal here now that you have got this patent and who you should share it with?”

So, I think that’s probably the big takeaway is it really helped our relationship, and he is a very much self-motivated learner.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s hear these four steps, the MOVE framework, M-O-V-E. Can you walk us through each of them?

Carol Kauffman
Yes, I can. Okay, so M, I’ll name them and then go through, and then you can sort of decide which one that our listeners would be most interested in. So, M is to be mindfully alert, O is to be an options generator, and there’s an article on that in Harvard Business Review this month.

Then V is to validate your vantage point. And E is you engage and effect change. So, we did a little on M already. So, M is being mindfully alert, mindful in terms of not prejudging things, alert like an athlete. Very agile, aware of what’s going on, and being able to respond. And a big part of that being the three dimensions of leadership that I talked about, “What do I need to do? Who do I need to be? How do I need to relate?”

Now, the options generator is when I work with people, and, again, this can be top of the house, this could be me, this could be you’re writing a report, you could be a novelist, you could be an engineer, anything. For any challenge, I want you to have four options available to you. And the options really stem from evolutionary theory and our four reflexes, which are fight, flight, freeze, and befriend.

And we all kind of have a natural one. Lots of us are naturally we sort of lean in and engage. Others of us kind of like look back and take the overview. Others go to nurturing, and others go to sort of reflecting. And we talk about these as the four stances. So, what is a stance you can take? And we translate that into, in a situation, “Do you lean in and really engage?”

You can engage with enthusiasm. You can engage with an edge. You can engage like a Rugby player or a ballerina. But do you lean in? Or, are you able to also make the choice to lean back, kind of look at the overview, get on the balcony, think about the data, rational-think it through, and then proceed with that?

Then the third one is leaning with, and that is sort of caring. And the idea of someone has done something to help you, you want to help them. Or, on a bigger scale, it’s your culture. But that third way is being nurturant. And the fourth way is to not lean at all. And that is when something is thrown at you, “Do you have the capacity to tolerate the silence? Do you have the capacity to not be triggered and just sort of stay in your space?” So, that’s the options generator.

The validate your vantage point, 75% of business failures are due to overconfidence, so you’re not validating your vantage point. And we have a number of ways to figure out, “Is my vantage point accurate? If I was going to see something incorrectly, what is it that I’m most likely to do? How does my personality impact what I see?” bunches of stuff, and then unconscious bias as well.

So, mindfully alert, options generator, validate your vantage point, and then how can you engage and effect change. And for engage, it’s really like, first of all, how do you just really connect to the people that you are leading? And it doesn’t mean you’re their leader, you can be their colleague but you’re trying to get something done. How do you send the right signals, hear back what people are reflecting to you, and then adjust?

And each one of those are all ways to make space. Like, you’ve got that space, what do you do with it? And you can take yourself through the M-O-V-E to get a sense of what’s the best way to proceed right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool. And I’d love it if you could share with us a few examples that illustrate that very clearly, “Oh, here we are being mindfully alert, and then generating options, and validating the vantage point, and engaging and effecting change.”

Carol Kauffman
Sure. I’m going to hop into one of my examples of the lean in and lean back. And when I came up with the idea, I was coaching this guy that I call Max. And Max, his very dear friend had become his boss, and this relationship had just gone to hell in a handbasket. She was micromanaging him. He had a whole fund that was going to be used for one thing, and she actually took it away. And it was so bad that at the end of the day, he would say, “You know, I would only make appointments for her at the end of the day, sort of immediately go home and have a martini.”

Okay, so lean in. So, he had, like, “I need to manage this,” blah, blah, blah, and I’m, like, right there with him. And he then says, “After she micromanages, and this and that, and then she starts confiding in me and telling me secrets, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, like, she’s a sociopath. Like, this is so manipulative.’”

And just as I’m about to go with that energy, I’m like, “Stop. Make a space.” So, this, really, you can use this just for yourself as a coach as well as in a leadership position. So, I stopped and thought, “Okay, let’s lean back.” So, I then said, “So, Max, let’s pause for a minute. What might be going on in the overview? Like, what’s the bigger picture here?”

And then he could see how the leadership team over her was really, really coming down on her, huge pressure, and that, in fact, she was kind of passing that along because she was under such intensity, but it helped him to kind of be able to chill a little bit. Then I thought of the next one, which was, in this case, don’t lean.

I was actually afraid to ask him this because I thought he would get mad at me, which was, I said, “So, listen, Max, you get your way in the end, and you even got all your funds back. Why is her behavior even bothering you?” And that was sort of a curve ball question for him, and a good one for us to ask when we’re activated to really go, “Wait, why is this bothering me? Does this really need to bother me? Do I need to be triggered right now?”

That takes me back to, “Who do I want to be right now? What am I really trying to accomplish?” So, all of this, you can see they’re intertwined. But then, okay, so he’s like, “Well, that’s interesting.” And, again, it helped him make a little more space. Then the last one with him was to think about leaning with. And so then, I said, “So, listen, she used to be, like, one of your good friends, and you’re describing all this pressure that she’s under. What if your goal…” okay, remember the external goal, “What if your goal in the next time you met with her was just for her to feel better at the end of the meeting?”

And that was just a real shocker for him, and he remembered, “Oh, right, we used to be friends, and she’s under so much pressure.” So, what you could see was, if we linked this together now, so those were the four stanzas, but you can see how it’s connected to “What do I need to do? Who do I need to be? And how do I need to relate?”

But also, we were also secretly doing vantage point because it’s like, “Wait a minute, you have this perspective, your point of view is that she’s doing this on purpose, and that she’s something that rhymes with witch, and that this is, again, volition on her part, and it’s about power.” And his anger and his triggering had really clouded his thinking.

And we all fill in the dots with our hopes and our fears, and he was then able to see more clearly. And then, in terms of being able to engage and effect change, in this case, it was just, “Okay, I just want to engage with her as a human being,” and it got much better for a while.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, thank you. Well, now I’d love it if you could maybe share a top do and don’t for each of the four steps in the framework? Like, “Hey, when it comes to being mindfully alert, you probably want to do this, you probably don’t want to do that.”

Carol Kauffman
Okay, so here it is. Let’s say I’m going to have a difficult conversation. What do I want to do? What do I not want to do? So, if I think about being mindfully alert, and I’m about to have a difficult conversation with someone, first question is, “What do I really want to accomplish? And then what do I not want to accomplish?”

So, in this particular situation, someone had cost me a massive amount of stress and finances, and I was aware that when I was thinking about the conversation, part of me just wanted to, pardon the expression, just wanted to put her nose in the pee-pee, I mean, “Look what you did to me.” And it’s like, “No. Like, what really needs to be done now and what really is the ultimate goal, not what is it that’s going to make me feel better in this moment?”

So, do make a space to think about what you really want to do. In that case, for a difficult conversation, go back to the homework example, so there. And then, “Who do I want to be?” Well, what you want to be able to do is remember your strengths. You don’t necessarily want to, like, dive into all the ways you’re inadequate. It’s like, “Yeah, okay, I’ve got a lot of flaws but here’s the things that I do need to do right.”

Then, in terms of, “How do I need to relate?” what you want to do is what I call the platinum rule, and you do not want to do the golden rule. So, the golden rule, it’s a fairly low bar in some ways, which is, “Okay, so, Pete, we’re in a situation, and it’s, like, I should treat you the way that I want to be treated.” But what if it what works for you is not at all what works for me?

Let’s say I’m a super extrovert and you’re an introvert, and you’re having a hard time with something. Well, as an extrovert, I might think, “Oh, Pete, you need a pep talk, and this, and that, and this, and that,” and inside you’re going, “Oh, dear Lord, just leave me alone. I need to think.” So, you don’t do the golden rule, give to others, treat others as you would want to be treated. You do the platinum rule, which is treat others as they would want to be treated. So, that, if we just go through the M, those are some do’s and some don’ts.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then with the O-V-E?

Carol Kauffman
Okay. So, with the O, what you want to do is remember you’re being mindfully alert. What you want to do is choose. So, when it comes to leaning in, even that tough conversation or you’re leading a merger and acquisition, like, “Do I lean in and get tough? Do I lean back and get the data?” So, the point is be aware of your default, that’s the do. The don’t is automatically go with your default because it’s the easiest thing to do.

So, be aware of what the four stances are, and then challenge yourself. So, you may be someone, for example, that when you do something, you like to go big, and you like to go fast, and you want to get it done. Well, like lean in, it’s like, “Well, wait a minute. What would it look like if I went slower and I was more careful?”

So, the point for me isn’t that you do the one that say, “I might think is better.” It’s that you could really visualize, “Here’s four different ways. I could go in strong, do something big. I could go in more gentle and do a series of smaller things. I could think about people first and not the outcome. And I could able to be more reflective.” So, I want someone to know what the four paths would be like and able to make space to choose.

So, the do is know the range of how you could be, and the don’t is go with your gut automatically. Although, sometimes going with your gut is the right thing to do, but it should be choice and not automatic.

Pete Mockaitis
And then when it comes to validating, are there any favorite approaches that could give you a boatload of clear validation or invalidation of your hypothesis for what’s up here?

Carol Kauffman
Yeah, so the don’t is don’t assume you’re right. Also, don’t assume you’re wrong. Don’t assume. Start out with, “This is what I think,” and then allow yourself a moment and space, and say, “Do I actually agree with myself? Am I seeing clearly? Do I have rose-colored glasses on, charcoal glasses on? Am I near sighted or far sighted?”

So, for example, near sighted, if you’re in a sort of subject-matter-expert role, you can see things up near really, really well but you may not have the hundred-mile view that a CEO does. But then, let’s say you’re CEO and you’re far sighted, but there’s stuff going on right under your face that you don’t know, you can’t see up close very well. So, it’s knowing what your strength is and how to balance it.

And then a big one for validate your vantage point is, again, know, “Do I tend to doubt myself too much? Or, do I tend to be overconfident? And then, what are my biases? And how can I begin to know what I don’t know that I don’t know?” The answer is ask people a lot and get over yourself. So, I would say that was the V. And the big thing is we do connect the dots with our hopes and fears.

So, one of the guys who helped with the book, my co-author, David Noble, was friends with him, was a retired four-star general. And I didn’t even know there weren’t a lot of four-star generals, he’s like, “Carol, there’s only been one five-star general,” which I didn’t know, like Einsenhower. There’s like two four-star generals. Really nice guy, really like small and very, very pleasant. But he’s like, he would be in charge of the Iraq theater, and he’s like, “You want to fight the war you have, not the war you want.”

And so, bringing that down to us, is we want to be reality-based with what’s really going on, not with our wishful thinking, and not hijacked by our fears. So, that’s sort of the V.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then with engaging?

Carol Kauffman
With that, what you want to be able to do is send clear signals. And a big mistake we make, personally, one of my favorite mistakes because I make a lot, is I believe I have been achingly clear in what it is I’m asking, and others aren’t. So, I think I’m being very clear on my intent, and I now know that my automatic belief when I engage is I’ve got to be very clear on communicating my intent.

So, one example that we see a lot with leaders is they tend to think people can read their minds. Like, I’m having a meeting, so you and I and a couple people were having a meeting, and we’re brainstorming. And then I’m just stunned when I find out that you went out and did all those things because, hey, we were just brainstorming, but I wasn’t clear about that signal.

I didn’t say, “Hey, we’re just brainstorming now. For Pete’s sake,” pun intended, “For Pete’s sake, don’t go out and do anything. This is a brainstorm.” And how to kind of sign-post so people aren’t running around. But it’s amazing how unclear you can be when you think you’re being clear.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s a lot of good stuff, Carol. Tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Carol Kauffman
At the end of the day, what I’m really hoping for is that this material doesn’t just help you at work but it helps you at home and it helps you step into all that you can be, that it really can help you become an extraordinary person, and for you not to put blocks in front of yourself. As I say, if anybody is going to get in your way, please don’t let it be you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Carol Kauffman
Well, of course, there’s the stimulus and response one that I really love.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Carol Kauffman
Ahh, so much. The one researcher that I love is a man named Richard Boyatzis, a neuropsychologist at Case Western Reserve. And you should get him on your show some time. What he’s done is really looked at what part of our brain is activated when we’re in an interaction. And, basically, it’s every interaction is neurological, that you’re activating the threat or the reward system of the other person.

And that’s the sympathetic is the threat, and the parasympathetic is the reward system. So, in any interaction, that’s going on. And if you want to have a positive influence on someone, you will activate the parasympathetic nervous system. So, even if they’ve messed up, you’ll say, “So, listen, we really wanted to do this, and this, and this, and we kind of missed it, but let’s figure this out together. What still went right even though…?”

So, how do you really create this very active psychologically safe and caring environment? And then when you do that, you can then challenge people with them still staying safe. So, it’s a combination of Richard Boyatzis’ and Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School. And she’s the one who’s done all the psychological safety work. And those two sets of research, I think, really guide me, they guide me a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Carol Kauffman
Favorite book, I’ve got a gazillion favorite books. For some reason, the one that I really loved recently was I read the book Circe. I can’t remember who wrote it now. It’s just a fabulous, fabulous rendering of the gods in a way that you’d never be able to think on your own. I’m also reading, of course, there’s Thinking, Fast and Slow with Danny Kahneman, and that’s one is great. And then the ones by Marty Seligman. Those are probably the ones that got me on this path to begin with. And I love historical novels. I’m reading historical novels all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Carol Kauffman
I have a bunch of mantras. This one that really helps me a lot is, “I’m not in control of my destiny but I am in control of my probabilities.” So, “What is it that I can do to increase the likelihood that I’m going to be able to achieve what I want?” Not, “Am I going to achieve what I want?” because that’s linear and true success is much more kind of uncertain and nonlinear. So, that’s something that I keep in mind a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Carol Kauffman
A favorite habit. Probably the favorite habit is what I was talking about earlier of asking myself, “Who do I want to be right now?”

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, are there any other super questions that you go to a lot?

Carol Kauffman
I’ll tell you one that I really, really like, which is this. Say you’re thinking of doing something, if you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you want to do?

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Carol Kauffman
Yup. And one of the things we ask in the book a lot is something we call the ten of ten question, which is, “If I’m going to do something, if I was a ten out of ten, what would it look like?” And then I’d ask myself, “Okay, on that scale, what am I now?” Let’s say I’m a seven, and then the important question is to ask, “What am I doing right that I’m not a six or a 6.5?” And then, “What could I do over the next eight weeks to get from a seven to a 7.5?”

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a favorite quote of yours, something you share that really resonates with folks, they quote frequently?

Carol Kauffman
Well, I like some of my own quotes. I have a bunch of things called Carolisms. So, one of them is, “If anyone is going to get in your way, please don’t let it be you.” The, “I’m not in charge of my destiny, but I am in charge of my probabilities.” And what is the other? I guess it’s just people often ask me to give talks on confidence, and I say that’s fine except I don’t believe in it.

So, the other one is “Confidence is irrelevant. What matters is your purpose and what you’re trying to do because confidence is simply a pleasant subjective emotional experience, and it is not a requirement to do anything at all.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Carol Kauffman
If you remember my name, Carol Kauffman, two Fs, one N, you can just Google me, Carol Kauffman, CarolKauffman.com. And if you’d like to buy the book, Amazon hardback, just Google “Real-Time Leadership,” and it’ll get you to Amazon.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Carol Kauffman
Make sure that whatever you’re doing, you really want to be doing it from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Carol, this has been a treat. I wish you many great winning moves.

Carol Kauffman
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, that’s the recording. Thank you.