Tag

Mindfulness Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

1073: How to Cut Clutter and Distraction from Your Life with Shira Gill

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Shira Gill shares minimalist strategies for reducing both physical and mental clutter.

You’ll Learn

  1. The hidden costs of clutter
  2. Why organizing tools won’t help you—and what will
  3. The easiest way to make your space feel less overwhelming

About Shira

Shira Gill is a world-renowned organizing expert and the bestselling author of three books: Minimalista, Organized Living, and LifeStyled. She’s a sought-after expert for media outlets and has been featured by Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, People, Forbes, goop, Architectural Digest, Oprah Daily, Vogue, and The New York Times. Her popular newsletter The Life Edit inspires readers from all 50 states and 150 countries.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

  • Strawberry.me. Claim your $50 credit and build momentum in your career with Strawberry.me/Awesome
  • Plaud.AiUse the code AWESOME for a discount on your order
  • Rula. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at Rula.com/Awesome

Shira Gill Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Shira, welcome!

Shira Gill
Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about your wisdom because, well, I think home organization is generally fun, and when I go to The Container Store, it is genuinely exciting. However, we’re talking about being awesome at your job, so I’d love it if you could make the connection for us here. In the universe of organization and minimalism, how does that have impact on our professional experiences and ability to be awesome?

Shira Gill
So, I use principles of minimalism and my expertise as a pro-organizer to help people gain clarity, clear clutter, and streamline and simplify everything. So, that’s from home and wardrobe to life and business.

And as an entrepreneur myself, I’ve run a business for 15 years. So, I have found how to leverage minimalism in organization to really dial down on what are the things that are most essential and what can I let go of. And it’s the number one tool that I use to work more efficiently and even joyfully.

Pete Mockaitis
Whew. Let’s talk about joy first. How does that increase our joy?

Shira Gill
So, I think we have so much coming at us all the time. Everyone I know is feeling that their lives are overstuffed, over-scheduled, they’re oversaturated. And it’s hard to feel joyful when you feel bombarded by clutter. And that can be digital clutter, physical clutter, mental and emotional clutter. My work helps people deal with every type of clutter. And I think when we feel like we’re drowning, we can’t be the best versions of ourselves.

And so, I think there’s this myth that, in order to feel better, look better, be better, we have to have more, we have to do more. And what I have found in my now 15 years as a professional organizer, a minimalist, as an author who writes about simplicity, is that the converse is actually true, is that the less we own, the more liberated we can feel, the more time and spaciousness we have for the things that matter most, for the things we care about deeply.

And so, most of my work, really, is about helping people cut the clutter and clear the distraction to enable them to do the things they actually care about and enjoy.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you said minimalism is the number one tool. I think of minimalism as a philosophy or perspective or value, but you’ve used the word tool, which I find intriguing. Can you expand on that?

Shira Gill
Absolutely, yeah. So, for me, minimalism is, I define it as being radically intentional. So, when I say that it’s a tool, it’s like the intentionality tool, right? So, not just with the things you own, but with how you spend your time, your resources, your energy. It’s really a tool to help you clarify what’s important so you can cut the clutter and distraction that stands in the way.

So, I think about everything in my life through this lens of minimalism and intentionality, and it helps streamline and simplify decision-making. It helps me decide where to allocate my resources. It helps me decide which projects I want to dig into and which I want to say no to. So, it’s really, it is a tool that people, I think, don’t realize is at their disposal anytime they want.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, could you perhaps tell us a tale of a person who applied this tool and saw some really cool results that showed up in their professional world as well?

Shira Gill
Absolutely. Yeah. So, I had a client, Elizabeth, and she had always wanted to be an executive coach. She wanted to work out of her home. She had three young kids. And her home, in her words, looked like a preschool had exploded. And so, she didn’t have the confidence or the focus or the clarity to get cracking on this business.

And so, what we did together is we said, “What would an executive coach’s workspace look like and feel like? How would you be able to show up, that you can’t show up in the way that you want now?” And so, what we did is we took what was her kind of guest room that had turned into a dumping ground of playthings and toy mats and diapers, and we cleared it all out. We probably donated half of it.

And then we kind of reallocated and relocated things to other parts of her home, like her kids’ room and her playroom. And we set up a really streamlined simple office space for her. So, she had a desk, she had a monitor, she had a speaker and headphones, and the kind of bare bones minimum thing so that she could go on podcasts, she could have client meetings.

And what happened was, as soon as her space changed, her motivation changed and her sense of empowerment to do this job that she had always wanted to do shifted. And so, she started putting herself out there. She started going on podcasts. And it really was about affecting change from the outside in, like she felt completely paralyzed and, like, she couldn’t work. She didn’t have the confidence.

And just by carving out a slice of real estate in her home that felt clutter-free and organized and professional, she was able to leverage that to start her dream business, and she now does that full time from her home.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love so much what you said there about change from the outside in. It can happen. And we had Dr. Srini Pillay on the show talk about a term he used, psychological Halloween-ism, in which that can show up with what you wear. You put on a blazer jacket, like, “Ooh, I feel professional.” You put on your dance pants, you’re ready to go out to the club or whatever, and you’re in maybe more of a playful and adventurous kind of a mood. So, that could happen with our dress.

And you’re saying that could happen with our space. And it’s really intriguing, I’d love to dive into some of the distinctions here because if…I’m thinking about exercise equipment. Like, that’s an example of where that tends to often not work. It’s like, “Hey, I bought a treadmill, I bought a weight bench and some adjustable dumbbells, and now, because my space is all set up to exercise, I’m going to be exercising all the time.”

And yet, in practice, often these devices end up holding clothing instead of holding our bodies as we get fitter. Is there a difference or a distinction that we can dig into and unpack? Like, what makes one more effective than the other and why?

Shira Gill
Yeah, it’s super interesting because I have found that if I like my workout wear, I do want to work out more. So, I guess that’s not about buying, like investing in a new gadget or a new trend, right? Like, those efforts typically do seem to fail.

But I have found that if I, instead of wearing like the schlubby pajamas or the loungewear from college, that if I put on like a really sharp workout outfit, like I’ve got my spandex on, I’ve got my like really supportive sneakers, suddenly, I actually feel like being more active. So, that has been effective for me.

I think what is not effective that I see a lot in my work is people trying to become organized by buying organizational gear or gadgets. And you had mentioned The Container Store earlier. I think one of the biggest mistakes I actually see in my work is people saying, “I’m going to go get organized,” and they run out to The Container Store and they buy a million organizing products.

So, they buy, like, bins and baskets and hangers and drawer dividers, and they get home and they wonder why they’re not organized. And the reason is that organization is a skill which is as simple as grouping similar things together and making sure that every category has a home. And so, if we bring more things into our home, now we have more to organize.

And one of the biggest things I see, ironically, is organizing products covered in dust that never got used because they were bought kind of in a vacuum without a purpose. So, what I caution people is to always start by editing and decluttering. There’s a saying in my field, “Organized clutter is still clutter.” So, you don’t want to organize things in your workspace or in your home before you’ve really thoughtfully gone through and decluttered and edited and made careful decisions about, “What are the things I need to do my job effectively? What are the things that are just taking up space or collecting dust?”

And a really concrete example of this is, I used to have a home office, I have two, now, teenage daughters, and they rallied together and wrote me a letter saying, “We would like to each have our own rooms, and we don’t think you need an office anymore.” And so, I really thought about this.

Pete Mockaitis
My kids are young. I’m thinking, “Oh, wow, is this my future?”

Shira Gill
Oh, yeah, it is.

Pete Mockaitis

They will gang up on me and craft correspondence to get their room.

Shira Gill
That’s right. Yes, there will be convincing articles written and cases laid out. So, my kids are very convincing, and they convinced me that if they had their own spaces, they would be more independent, they could have privacy, all of these things, right? And so, what it caused me to do is to look around. I had a proper office. Like, I had a workspace with a desk and a file cabinet and office supplies.

And what I realized, when I decided to take them up on this and give them their own rooms and downsize all of my stuff, so now I work at the dining room table or, you know, a shared workspace elsewhere, is that all that I needed to be able to do my job was a laptop, a microphone, and a notebook.

And so, I ended up selling and downsizing and donating pretty much like 95% of the things that I had in my home office, and now my entire office can fit in a tote bag. And what it did is it actually, ironically, gave me this huge sense of freedom to know I can work anywhere in the world. I can pack up my laptop and I can go work out of a hotel. I can work out of a cafe.

And so, I think when we think about organizing, we think about it wrong. I didn’t need to organize more. I needed to edit and declutter and be really thoughtful about assessing, “What are my tools so that I can do my job?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s really interesting.

Shira Gill
Are you looking around your workspace?

Pete Mockaitis
I think that just the timing is hilarious because I just recently had four strong men haul a massive sound-blocking door to outfit a better recording studio space for me to move into, kind of the opposite.

Shira Gill

That’s fair. Maybe you needed that.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I guess need is so subjective, just like, “The audio quality will be superior and it has benefits,” but I think you’re highlighting, well, it also is, there are other benefits associated with moving in the exact opposite direction. And so, it’s thought-provoking.

Shira Gill
Yeah, I mean, what I find, having been in people’s homes for the past 15 years, is most of us have so many things that we don’t need or use that add zero value to our lives and our careers.

So, like, a prime example is most people that I have met with have an entire collection, like an Office Depot-size collection of things that have kind of been rendered obsolete, like highlighters and Sharpies and Post-its and staplers and binder clips, when most of us are working in this digital world.

And so, I just find it really interesting to question, like, “If I had to go do my job tomorrow, what are the things that I need in front of me to get that job done? And what are the things that, really, are just collecting dust that could better serve, I don’t know, maybe a school or a nonprofit or a theater or a community center who may use those things?” For me, I was, frankly, shocked to learn that I didn’t need 95% of the things that I owned.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, so let’s zoom way in on the stapler, because I love office supply stores, too. So, if we use a stapler three times a year, are we better off not having a stapler?

Shira Gill
Yeah, I love that question. It’s very personal for each person, right? So, for me, probably not. I live in a small house, so I should clarify. I live in a house that’s 120 years old. It’s about a thousand square feet. I share it with three other people – my husband, two teenagers, and a dog. And it has almost no storage space. It’s a very charming craftsman bungalow, but it was built in a different time, right?

So, for me, my goal is kind of, like, “How much can I get away with not owning?” I’m really on one end of the spectrum. For someone else, it may seem too inconvenient to borrow a stapler or have to figure out a stapler those three times a year. And if they have plenty of space in their workspace, that stapler is not hurting or harming anyone.

So, one of the questions I always have people ask is, like, “Would you rather have the stuff or the space?” And I think that can be really clarifying. For me, I really value space and spaciousness in my home and in my life.

And so, nine times out of 10, if I’m questioning something, I’ll decide to live without it. And if I need it, I’ll get scrappy and resourceful and borrow it from a neighbor or from my husband’s workplace, something like that. That’s worth it to me.

For someone else, they might value convenience more than they value having a little extra space. So, it is a very customizable framework.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, yes, the stuff or the space. And it’s interesting, I’d love if you could speak to our human psyches or the research on this. It’s, like, I feel better in a space that is less cluttered. And think that’s, generally, a nearly universal human sentiment.

And, personally, I feel really awesome. I think about speaking. When I am invited to a keynote speech and I am there early in the auditorium and it’s just vast emptiness, there’s like nothing but space – empty stage, empty chairs. And it’s like, “The room is all mine.”

And I don’t know if it’s just the impact of being in a non-cluttered space multiplied by 10. Or, what’s going on here? But since, Shira, you study this stuff and teach it, what is going on here?

And, as we make that choice, “Do I want the stuff or the space?” how do I properly value the benefit of space, even though it’ll vary person by person?

Shira Gill

So, what we know about clutter is that over 80% of people experience stress and anxiety directly linked to physical clutter. So, part of why this is, if we just break it down, is that if you think about being in a cluttered room, every single item in that room is something that our brain has to process.

So, even if we don’t think, “I’m thinking about all these things or these piles,” on a subconscious level, our brain is having to work overtime, processing it as information, right? So, when you walk into that empty room, there’s almost nothing for your brain to process, which means your brain actually gets a break, which feels like relief and ease. And who doesn’t want more of that?

And so, I think what I realized, as a busy working mom, is there’s always stuff coming at me. There’s a long to-do lists, there’s errands, there’s driving carpool, there’s all of the things, all of the input that’s coming at me all the time, and most of which I don’t have control over. But what I do have control over is my physical environment and how I curate it and what I put in it and what I say, “I’m not going to bring this through the front door.”

And what I’ve realized is that the less that I own, the less that I have in front of me, the more relaxed I feel, the more clarity I feel, and the more efficient I can be. And so, I think that’s the thing, is clutter has a big cost, and I’ve seen it in my work, not just this kind of emotional toll of feeling stressed out or overwhelmed, but I’ve seen a huge relationship cost to clutter.

It’s one of the hottest topics in a family of having different clutter thresholds and different ideas of what being organized looks like. It can lead to huge fights and friction between partners, spouses, kids and their parents. And so, by eliminating some of that clutter, you are eliminating this incredible toll and cost that most of us feel every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, then it sounds like, according to this, every bit helps.

Shira Gill
Every bit helps, yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of it might be hard to go from clutter to Marie Kondo-nirvana in a day or even a week or month. But every morsel will be appreciable to our brains.

Shira Gill
Absolutely. And I think I’m clearly on one far end of the spectrum. Like, my children and my husband think I’m crazy, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, they got their own room out of it. I mean, I think a lot of parents are like, “Nope, this office is what puts this roof over your head, girl. So, get some bunk beds or figure something out, you know?”

Shira Gill
That’s exactly right. Yes, they should show me a lot of gratitude for that. But I think, like, I can recognize, look, I am a minimalist in a world that values maximalism, in a world that tells you to consume more and buy more and do more. I’m going the opposite route intentionally. But what I’ve seen, working with all of these different types of individuals and families, is that I have yet to meet someone who says, “I have the perfect amount of stuff for me.”

And I think that’s the goal that we want to strive towards, is not “Having the perfect amount for me, Shira,” but having the perfect amount for you in your life circumstance, in your specific career. And so, it’s starting with these questions, like, “What’s being neglected that you care about? What is a new result that you want to create in your life or in your work or business?”

And my favorite is just asking, “What do you want more of on the day-to-day? And what do you want less of?” And I think we don’t slow down enough to really ask ourselves those questions because, frankly, we’re so busy and we’re so oversaturated.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. I love those questions. Now in your book, Lifestyled, you mentioned three tools. Could we hear about adjusting volume, creating systems, implementing habits, and maybe your top tip, your top do and don’t within each?

Shira Gill
Absolutely, yeah. So, I have these three universal organizing tools, and they came from over a decade of organizing people’s homes. And then in my second book, I actually traveled the world to interview the 25 most organized people I could find. And in interviewing the most organized people in the world, and this is like from Canada to Mexico City, to Paris, to Lisbon, to Stockholm, I found that all of these people were practicing these three universal tools.

And so, here’s what they are. So, number one is adjusting volume. I think this is the most critical tool. And the way I define it is, volume is the quantity or the capacity of something. And so, if you think about, like, a radio dial, like we get to turn it up or turn it down. In most cases, we need to turn down the volume of our lives. We have too much going on. We have too many things to deal with and to go through.

So, an example here would be looking at just like one small thing where you can adjust volume. So, maybe it’s like the subscriptions. Like, I just found out I had been paying for an app for three years that I didn’t even know what this app was. I mean, how embarrassing is that?

And, like, if you add up the amount of money that most of us are paying for, like, memberships or subscriptions or apps, that we don’t even realize we have or we’re certainly not using enough, that’s like a teeny micro example of how you can turn the volume down on something, and you can save money instantly.

I also think about volume in terms of, like, what we’re consuming from social media to the news. Like, how can you streamline your sources and be more intentional about curation? And another example with volume, I could go on and on about volume, so I’ll move on to the second. But it’s thinking about your wardrobe, right? So, there’s a statistic that most of us wear 20% of our wardrobes 80% of the time.

And if I think about it, even as a minimalist, I’m probably reaching for the same, like, five things again and again and again. So, thinking about, “How do I have less but better in my wardrobe?” We all know about, like, Obama and Steve Jobs and these powerful leaders who have, like, one uniform that they wear every day so that they can optimize having more time for other decisions.

So, it’s really just thinking about in all areas of your life, even things like friendship or relationships, how can you turn the volume down so that you’re investing in the things that matter the most that you value?

Okay, so tool two is creating systems. So, I think of a system as an organized framework. It’s like a strategy that solves a problem. So, an example would be my husband went out and he bought a camera. And this camera came with a lot of accoutrements. So, it was like all of these charging cords and batteries and the manual, and he was leaving these things all over our very small home which, of course, drove me crazy.

And what I realized is we brought this new thing into our home, but there’s no system to contain it. And so, I said to my husband, “If I got you, like, a basket or a bin, would you put all of your camera-related things into it so that it’s not all over our house?” He said, “Sure.” And that’s how simple a system can be. So, it’s looking at like, “What’s something that’s not working in my home or my workspace that feels scattered or disorganized? How can I systematize it in the most easy way imaginable?”

And then the final tool is implementing habits. And this one cannot be overlooked. I think, as an organizer, I’m mainly helping people reduce volume and then set up systems and then I leave. But then it’s up to my clients, right, to implement the routines and the practices that ensure that those systems are not rendered useless.

And what I realized in interviewing all of these organizers from all over the world is they all had the same complaint, they said, “Well, I’ll help people get rid of their clutter, and we’ll do these beautiful systems, and we’ll label them, and we’ll set everything up. And then I come back a month later and it is chaos. And, like, what’s not working?”

And so, the lightbulb that I had was you can have the most pristine, perfect system, but if you don’t follow a habit to maintain it, it’s rendered useless. And so, I write about a lot in the book, “How do we make habits easier?” because most of us know what we want to do, but there’s just so much friction in the way. So, it’s like, even for me, like I have a really hard time exercising.

So, I use that very simple hack that most people probably know about, which is the night before, I fill my water bottle, I put it by the front door with my shoes and everything I need, so I wake up and there’s a visual cue, like I’ve already taken care of business. Now I just have to go walk out the front door. So, those are the three tools in a nutshell: adjusting volume, creating systems, and implementing habits.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that seems sensible. I’m intrigued, with adjusting the volume, most of us need less. What are the indications that we need more or less?

Shira Gill
So, I think that it’s asking yourself, “Do I feel like I have too many options? Do I feel overwhelmed?” Those are very clear cues. I would say the biggest word that I hear on repeat in my work is overwhelm. Almost everybody who works with me starts off by saying, “I just feel overwhelmed.” So, typically, that’s a sign that you have more volume than you can manage.

When we need to turn up the volume, it’s things like, “I feel lonely,” or, “I feel disconnected.” Like, there have been times in my life where I feel like I have more people and things and outings than I can manage.

And there have been other times in my life where I feel lonely or cut off or like, “Gosh, I’m not seeing the people that I love regularly.” Or, maybe I’ve moved to a new city, and I haven’t yet made new friends or connections, then it’s a matter of, “I need to turn the volume up on my effort towards connecting with people, reaching out, inviting people over.”

So, I think that’s a very real thing. Or, like, in your career, do you have more than you can successfully manage? Or, are you in a dry spell, where you feel like, “God, I don’t have as many clients as I want or as many projects as I want. Maybe I need to do more networking or connect with colleagues more”? So, I think those are some easy ways.

It’s like asking yourself those questions, “Do I have more than I can manage?” or, “Am I feeling some sort of a gap in my work or my relationships or even my home?” Sometimes a home, very rarely, but can get too minimal.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to hear, when it comes to implementing the habits for non-cluttering of spaces or life, do you have a top habit or two that is truly transformational? And how do you recommend we get it started up?

Shira Gill
Yeah, so one of the biggest things that I see is paper clutter. And paper clutter is probably the most overwhelming and time-consuming thing to process because you can have like a small pile of papers, but that small pile represents maybe a hundred individual decisions to make. And so, what I find in most people’s homes and workspaces is their paper is strewn about in little micro piles everywhere, right?

So, typically, on the dining room table, on the kitchen counter, maybe in the entry, maybe on your nightstands in your bedroom. So, one of my easiest hacks that you can implement today is you can gather up all of the unprocessed paper piles that are in your environment, wherever they may be, and centralize them into one vessel. And the vessel is simply your action item basket.

So my rule is if anybody needs me to deal with any anything, look at anything, process anything, pay anything, it has to go in my action basket. So, now instead of having papers all over our home, I have one basket. I review it once a week. And so, it doesn’t feel like endless or daunting.

And, in the first place, like when you do this, it might feel like more of a mountain than a molehill. But what I can tell you, from years of feedback, is that just having all of those kind of nagging to do’s and open loops, open tabs in your brain in one place is really relieving for your brain. And then you can think of it as like, “This is one big project instead of a million overwhelming projects.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s an interesting organizational concept, in general, like the consolidation, one thing versus many things. And I’ve just been astounded, even in like a hotel. Like, I’ve got my bathroom stuff in a variety of places. There’s a little moisturizer, there’s a razor, there’s a toothbrush, there’s toothpaste. Okay, so those are kind of like all over, like, the sink area.

And then, when the housekeeper comes and does the tidying up, perhaps they place a washcloth next to the sink, and they place the items on the washcloth. And, somehow, to my eyes and brain and psyche, it’s like, “Ah, that’s much better.”

And nothing substantially has changed at all except, somehow, it seems, I am processing all of these toiletry items as one because they’ve been placed on a washcloth and it blows my mind that it’s like I’ve been tricked. It’s, like, “I fell for that. Like, this is making a huge difference to me.” What’s going on?

Shira Gill

I love it so much. Yeah, it’s the art of containment, right? So, instead of having all these random disparate things, we now have one thing, a pile of toiletries on a towel, contained and organized for your brain. So, it’s, again, like less for your brain to process.

And I think a big organizing hack that all of my colleague love, is just, like, make anything a system by batching it, containing it. Like, we love a tray, we love a basket. Like, it’s so, so simple, but even, like, thinking about for the people who make a smoothie every morning.

If you have a smoothie station that’s all corralled in a neat little pile on a tray, on your kitchen counter, suddenly, it feels organized and soothing to the brain, instead of having all of these different random things all over your kitchen.

And, I mean, I think, you’ve mentioned the hotel a couple of times, and I have to say people are always saying to me, like, “God, I just want my space to feel like how I feel at a hotel.” And I think the thing is, when we go to a hotel, there’s everything we need, but nothing more. They’ve cleared away all the excess.

And I think what people forget is that we have the ability to do that for ourselves in our own homes to clear away the excess, and to think about, you know, like my example in the home office, “What do I really need to do my job effectively? And what’s just collecting dust and creating mental clutter for me?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, now let’s hear about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Shira Gill
Joshua Becker, who is a fellow minimalist and life simplifier, says, “The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.”

Pete Mockaitis
So good, yes, Joshua was on the show.

Shira Gill
Oh, love that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Shira Gill
Okay, so my new favorite book is called No New Things, not surprisingly. So, this is written by a colleague of mine, Ashlee Piper. She doesn’t think of herself as a minimalist, but she is a sustainability expert. And she has a 30-day “No New Things” challenge, where you just start thinking about, “What are the things that I want to bring into my life?” And she offers a bevy of tools to radically shift your relationship with consumption.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Shira Gill

Oh, mine is really simple. It’s just a five-minute tidy before bed. I think setting yourself up for success in the morning should not be underestimated. So, for me, that’s, like, the quickest tidy with my family, wiping down the surfaces, making sure the dishes are done. If I have time, even laying out my outfit for the next day. It’s kind of like a gift to my future self.

Pete Mockaitis

And is there a Shira-original sound bite that really resonates with folks?

Shira Gill
I mean, I always say “Owning less is easier than organizing more.” And I think it’s, really, it’s a simple way of saying, like, “If you have less to organize, you can spend less time organizing.” It’s just kind of simple math.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Shira Gill
So, you can check out my website, which is just my name, ShiraGill.com. I have a free newsletter called “The Life Edit” on Substack. And you can find my three books anywhere books are sold, so Minimalista, Organized Living, and my new book is called Lifestyled.

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

Shira Gill
Swap something you want to do less of with something you want to do more of. A simple example is most people tell me they want to spend less time scrolling social media and more time reading and absorbing new information that feels good. So, thinking about something you want to do less of and swapping it with something you want to do more of.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Shira, thank you.

Shira Gill
Thank you so much for having me.

1070: An ADHD Strategist’s Pro Tips for Staying Motivated and Productive When You Can’t Focus with Skye Waterson

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Skye Waterson shares ADHD-friendly approaches to productivity that any professional can apply.

You’ll Learn

  1. The quickest way to shorten your to-do list
  2. How to stop overthinking and make a decision
  3. How to make hard tasks more fun

About Skye

Skye Waterson is an ADHD strategist, coach, and founder of Unconventional Organisation, helping entrepreneurs and executives stay focused, build consistent revenue, and scale—without burnout. With 82K+ engaged professionals following her work, she shares ADHD-friendly strategies for sustainable success.

After her ADHD diagnosis during her PhD, she realized traditional productivity advicedidn’t work for her. So, she developed strategies to help entrepreneurs and executives cut through distractions and focus on what matters, build ADHD-friendly systems for consistency, scale sustainably without exhaustion, and lead with confidence and regain control over their time.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

  • Strawberry.me. Claim your $50 credit and build momentum in your career with Strawberry.me/Awesome
  • Quince. Get free shipping and 365-day returns on your order with Quince.com/Awesome
  • Plaud.AiUse the code AWESOME for a discount on your order

Skye Waterson Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Skye, welcome!

Skye Waterson
Hi, it’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to hear your wisdom. You are an ADHD strategist and coach. That sounds handy. We’ve had over a thousand episodes, but we have not taken a laser shot directly at ADHD before, though it kind of comes up tangentially fairly often. So, could you, first of all, maybe just define, what are we talking about here? What precisely is ADHD? Is it the same thing as ADD? How do I think about this?

Skye Waterson
It’s a good question and it has been changing. So, ADHD is something that, if you wanted to get diagnosed with, you would go to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of disorders. Or, more likely, you’d want a psychiatrist to do it for you. And you could be diagnosed in this version, because it has been different in the past, with ADHD, type one, type two, primarily, and type three.

So, it’s primarily inattentive, which is what we used to know of as ADD; primarily hyperactive, which is the ADHD; or combined type, which is what I have. And what we know from this is that, basically, you are somebody who hits a certain criteria, of feeling driven by a motor, struggling to sit down, getting distracted, like all these kinds of things. And it also happens persistently and pervasively, so across different categories of your life and across time as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so three flavors: inattentive, hyperactive, and combined. And can we hear a little bit of detail for, what does each mean? And how do I distinguish that from just, you know, being a human who has moods and distract-ability and all that?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Well, you know, and there’s more and more conversation about this idea of subclinical ADHD because I think it’s something that everybody does struggle with. And I will say, about 50% of my clients are undiagnosed. So, they haven’t had the official diagnosis yet. They just think that they might have ADHD.

And so, when we’re talking about this, what, really, we’re talking about is you might be somebody who goes, “Oh, yeah, I get it. On a Friday afternoon, I’m exhausted and very distractible.” But we’re saying, “But what about on a Monday morning? What about on the weekend? What about at home? What about at school? What about at work?” Like, this variety of different environments is the situation that we’re looking at.

And, “Was it happening when you were a child? Is it happening now?” You know, that’s kind of what people will be looking at. And then hyperactive is very much the classic ADHD. If you guys know a person who’s like running three different businesses, two of them on some kind of really strange thing you’ve never heard before, and like always go, go, go, that kind of ADHD.

And then ADD is more of the distractible. So, person who’s looking out the window, distracted, that kind of ADHD. That’s a very generalized version of it. There’s lots of different kinds, but that’s essentially the tropes that people think about.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, then what’s this combined business? Like, someone is go, go, go and inattentive at the same time or, like, back and forth? How does that unfold?

Skye Waterson
Pretty much, yeah. So, somebody who gets distracted and is hyperactive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now I’d also heard that hyper-focusing can be a part of ADD or ADHD as well, which was a head-scratcher for me. It’s like that kind of sounds like the opposite. What’s going on here?

Skye Waterson
So, what’s happening there is you’ve got something called time blindness. So, people with ADHD, and when I first found out I had it, this was a surprise for me, really struggled with time blindness, seeing how much time is passing. And so, if you’re bored, it feels like, you know, two minutes is like a year.

But if you get into flow, if you’re really focusing, you can actually lose track of time and you can just be fully engaged and fully focused on the task at hand. That hyper focus is specific to ADHD because it’s not that we are necessarily just distractible. It’s more like a wandering attention. So, if your attention gets fixed on something, then we can really dive into it. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not good.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess good or not good is based upon what needs doing and what you find yourself hyper-focused upon.

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Did you want to be hyper-focusing on that thing? Sometimes people are like, “I did not have any intention to hyper-focus today, and now I am knee-deep in my closet reorganizing it for the second straight hour. That was not the plan.” So that would be the case.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Okay. So, I guess the way we know if we got it or not is we chat with a psychiatrist who does the DSM. That sounds maybe expensive and intense. Is there a quicker, easier way we can get a pretty good idea, Skye?

Skye Waterson
Well, there are online versions. You can even search the DSM. I think it’s available. But there are online tests that you can take. Some of them, you know, in the NHS and places like that will do a better job of kind of approximating what you would be asked by a psychiatrist. Obviously, if you don’t go to a psychiatrist, they can’t help you rule out whether you have other conditions that might be co-occurring, which happens a lot with ADHD.

But, yeah, it does take a while. It could take a really long time if you try and go public. And if you try and go private, then it’s very expensive. So, for that reason, a lot of people decide to just live with the, you know, they go, “Okay, I’m pretty confident I have it and I need strategies for it,” and they come to me and that’s what I help with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what’s our best guess for the very rough proportion of professionals, diagnosed or not, who likely have it?

Skye Waterson
It’s about 2.5% of the population of adults. That’s usually the stats.

Pete Mockaitis
Noted. And I’m curious, in terms of, for the 97.5% of listeners who do not have it, are there any particular strategies that work awesomely for people with ADD, ADHD, as well as the rest of folk?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Well, that’s the greatest thing. I mean, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the New Zealand government on some of their organizations, and I often will teach these strategies, and people will say, “Wait, wouldn’t this be great if everybody was doing it?” And I’m like, “Yes, these are wonderful strategies for anybody who’s struggling with executive functioning or distraction,” which is all of us at some of the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Understood. And maybe, just to get the motivations fired up, can you share any transformational tales or research results on just what kind of impact can adopting some of these strategies have?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of research. One of the things that we do know about ADHD is it’s one of the most treatable conditions. So, it’s very, very treatable. Once you have strategies for it, it’s very helpful. A lot of the problems people have is just that they’ve been taught the wrong systems, and they don’t have a sense of how their brain actually works because no one’s taught them, and so they have no idea.

Pete Mockaitis

So, when you say wrong systems, can you give us some examples of common prescriptions that just aren’t cutting it?

Skye Waterson
So, I would say the biggest thing is that people will be given strategies based on this idea that we have executive functioning when we don’t. So, with ADHD, the biggest struggles we have are working memory, forgetting everything, everything that we’ve recently been told. Time blindness, so not being able to track, estimate, measure time effectively.

Dopamine, so having a struggle with not getting enough of it, not having it processed correctly. And transition time, so not being able to transition between task to task effectively, needing a bit more downtime, needing to chunk things out. Those are really, really important. If somebody says to you, for example, “You should just get started. You’ll feel better,” or, “Why don’t you give yourself a reward once you finish this? That’ll be great.”

Those are the pieces or, “Why don’t you do this just with an hour a day between your meetings?” This is terrible advice for ADHD.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I guess I’m saying get the reward was like, “Hey, I got a dopamine situation so maybe that’s not going to cut the mustard there.”

Skye Waterson
Research does not back you up on that one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, say again?

Skye Waterson

So, there’s research into this, it’s something that I’m very passionate about. It’s called the dopamine transfer deficit theory. So, it came out in 2008, one of my favorite pieces of research, because that’s who I am. And, basically, what it shows is that there seems to be a gap in the type of dopamine boost that you get when you’re ADHD at the beginning of a task.

If you’re neurotypical, you know there’s a reward at the end of the task. Your brain gives you a little thumbs up, a little “Woohoo!” at the beginning because you know that you’re going to get that reward at the end. If you’re ADHD, your brain just kind of goes, “This is lame. Why are we doing this?” And then you do it. And then at the end, you give yourself a reward and your brain goes, “Well, this is nice, but why did we have to do that horrible thing?” The connection is not there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing. And so, that has been shown. When we say neurotypical as opposed to ADD, ADHD, how, and this is based upon they have the diagnosis, or do we have any brain scans, or biomarkers, or I guess we know it because we got the symptoms and the DSM diagnosis? Are there other indicators at the biochemical or level of matter that we can point to?

Skye Waterson
You’re speaking my language. I love a neuroscience paper. So, in terms of, generally overall, you are asking me about, “Do we actually see neurobiological shifts in people who have ADHD and people who don’t?” The answer is yes. There is a lot of neuroscience research. In fact, not just neuroscience.

AI as well, they’ve been looking at AI research and finding that the way people speak with ADHD is a bit different, tend to like jump from point to point, and more likely to interrupt. And so, there is new research coming out that you could actually potentially get to a place where you can tell if someone has ADHD or not, at least at a subclinical screening level using AI.

So, there are lots of different ways, neuroscience and neurobiology are one of them, but it does take a long time because you have to sit in the chair and there’s not that many of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, then help us out, if we do have ADD or are just having a heck of a time focusing, what are your favorite strategies?

Skye Waterson
My first favorite strategy is what I call a two-minute focus formula, because there’s only two minutes. So, I want to give you guys that upfront. You guys can actually DM me at Unconventional Organisation on Instagram. If you want this, just use the word awesome, and I will give it to you because that way I’ll know it came from here.

And, basically, the first thing you need to do is you need to go ahead and you need to write down somewhere you’re going to keep it, not on a random piece of paper. We want it to be something we’ll come back to. You start by writing down everything that you are going to be doing, every single task basically that’s in your head. Don’t look at your email. Don’t look at your other tasks. Let’s just focus on what’s in your head.

And, usually, this is the longest part because it takes people a while. They don’t realize how much stuff is in their head. And then from there, we want to look at everything that’s there, and we want to go ahead and we want to identify “What has to be done tomorrow or there will be a significant negative external consequence?” Significant. It can’t be nothing. It has to be, “There will be a bill that hasn’t been paid,” “You will not be prepared for an event that is happening.”

The kind of stuff that, heaven forbid, if you ended up in a waiting room that day, you still would have to figure out how to do it on your phone, or you’d have to tell somebody that it wasn’t going to happen. That’s urgent. Everything else is not urgent. And the reason I say this is because, often with ADHD, we can really struggle with clarity of thought. And so, this is a very, very clear clarifying indicator. So, that’s step one.

Pete Mockaitis
And you say this only takes two minutes?

Skye Waterson
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Wouldn’t the listing of all the things take a long time?

Skye Waterson
That is true. It depends on how many tasks you have. It might take five. It usually doesn’t take longer than that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Skye Waterson
But once you’ve done that, basically at this point, what you want to do is you want to go ahead, and this is really, you know, I’ve done this hundreds of times with lots of different professionals, and I’ve never had anybody have more than five tasks that are truly urgent for tomorrow. And this is across work, home, everything.

So, if we’re thinking about this, we’re going, “Okay, I now know what is truly urgent,” let’s look at the rest of the tasks and think about, “Okay, what are the tasks that are on this list that are going to help move me forward? What are the 80-20 tasks, those things that are going to help me with something?” So, that’s the stuff that you really want to highlight.

I usually recommend people highlight it in green, stick it in their calendar, give themselves a dopamine boost to get started. We can talk about that in a second. But these are things you really want to focus on and promote, because a lot of time we actually spend our time doing things that are neither urgent nor important. They’re just easy to take off, and that’s a big problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we have a very clear picture for urgency, which is really nice in terms of getting that level of clarity from, “Well, yeah, there’s a lot of things which would be nice to kind of have done soon-ish,” as opposed to, “If these are not done today, suffering will ensue.” It’s like, “Okay. All right. Bright red line there,” and only five-ish things maybe rise above it.

Skye Waterson
Sometimes none. People are always surprised.

Pete Mockaitis
Hey, good news. So that’s a crystal clarity on the urgency. And, likewise, can we get that with importance? There’s 80-20.

Skye Waterson
One hundred percent.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you tell us how it is done?

Skye Waterson
Yeah, so that’s actually something that, when I work with people, I figure out first. And what we want to understand is we want to understand “What is your 80-20? So, first of all, what is your goal?” And this is where we have a whole conversation about setting goals and how we feel about setting goals, because I’ve never met someone with ADHD who doesn’t have a strong feeling about goals, positive or negative.

But we need to know the direction that you’re going in, in order to understand “What is the 20% thing that you could do that’s going to give you an 80% return to get there?” Because a lot of times, that’s actually something you’re already doing, and you just need to double down on, expand on. It’s not the new shiny thing that could totally work, but has not been tested even once. So, this is kind of what we want to focus on.

And so, usually, when we’re looking at that, what is truly important, it’s what is going to help you reach your goal, what’s the 20% that will give you 80% return on reaching your goal?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I love the 80-20 Rule, and that’s super. I guess, sometimes, it feels a little unclear, like, “Well, I don’t know, it might be any number of these things.” Do you have any follow-ups, or next-level questions, or prompts, or approaches to zero in on that?

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Usually, if you’re struggling with this because you don’t really know what your goal is. So, that’s what to focus on. So, the first thing I’ll do is I’ll ask people to identify, and this isn’t just me. This is some awesome, you know, I’ve had amazing mentors in my own life. Ask for a 25-year goal. So, we say, “Okay, 25 years from now, what are the five things that you want to have achieved?” And you’re going to be like, “Man, that was great. Like, I am nailing it”?

Because when we take it to 25 years, we’re usually at a position at that point where we are not in fear or we’re like, “Oh, I’ll probably figure it all out about that. What’s the point?” So, we sort of go, “Well, I want to be this.” Most people want, “I want to spend time with my family. I want to travel. I want to be healthy. I want to have money,” or whatever it is they want to do.

And then, at that point, we go in, and we say, “Okay, what is the one thing you could do this year that would make it easier for you to reach your 25-year goal?” That’s really what we’re talking about here. And it could be a financial decision, it could be an organizational decision, maybe it’s a health decision. And then at that point, we’re going, “Okay, now let’s come back into what we have to do, what we have on our task list right now. What is the thing that is helping you get there?” That often is where we get the best clarity.

And then if you’re really struggling, I actually do have an entire decision-making ADHD framework because it’s not uncommon to struggle with decision-making, and we go through some of the research behind the significance of tasks, and we talk about the margin of error and that kind of thing to help you figure out, “What is important to really spend time on when it comes to making a decision?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this framework is intriguing. Is this discussable in five to 10 minutes?

Skye Waterson
Yes. All of my stuff is very simple because, what I want is to practice. I want it to get, you know, people often say to me, like, “You’re in my head. I can’t get it out now in a good way because it’s, like, helping me understand things.” So, yeah, so basically, at a very, very basic level, and I’m going to mess up some statistics here so I apologize. Apologies for those of you who know what I’m talking about.

We want to talk about this idea of significance. So, even if we’re talking life-saving medication, “Should it be used? Should it be not used?” that kind of thing, there’s a 1% margin of error. So, there’s never something that is truly free from having a chance that it is incorrect.

So, if you think of yourself as all the decisions you make being on a continuum from 1% margin of error, very, very important decision, but still could be wrong to a 50-50 margin of error. You know, it really doesn’t matter. Flip coin, you know, red shirt, green shirt, whatever. It’s fine. Then we need to understand, “What is the margin of error that you are happy to have with the decision that you’re making? What is the amount that you’re happy to have in error?”

So, if somebody’s like, “I don’t know which of these things to focus on this week,” then I ask people, “Okay, well, what is the margin of error on this?” And, usually, people will probably say it’s about 30% because they’re like, “Well, it’s not that important. I don’t want to waste my week, but if I did the wrong thing, it’s not going to be the end of the world.”

And at this point, I will help you assign time to a margin of error. So, if it’s a 50-50 task, it really doesn’t matter what decision you make, then we will go ahead and say, “Okay, you’re just going to take a few minutes to make that decision.” If it’s the 1% margin of error, you could take a year to make that decision. But the most important thing is that you go ahead and you schedule that time to make that decision.

So, if it’s a 30%, 40% decision, which one is more important? I’d say, “Okay, let’s go ahead and we’ll schedule some time later today. Maybe we’ll schedule 20 minutes or 15 minutes. You’re going to sit down, look at all the options, weigh them up, maybe talk to somebody, ‘What do you think I should do?’ And then at the end of that 15 minutes, whatever decision you made at that point is the decision that you’re going to stick with.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say margin of error in percentage terms, I’m thinking, I’ve always got two different concepts in my head at the same time here. So, one is margin of error, if I’m making an estimate of how much something is going to cost, “Oh, I was off by 5%,” versus a margin of error in terms of thinking about, like, the consequences of error. So, just to make sure I’m conceptually getting this, what does the percent represent in our margin of error here?

Skye Waterson
The percentage that you’re willing to be wrong. So, in a 50% scenario, you’re saying, “I’m happy with a 50% margin of error because the decision I had to make was what are we going to eat tonight. Worst-case scenario, we pick something that I don’t really enjoy, and it’s a new experience for me. It’s totally fine.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I see. It’s like, “How certain must I be to be okay with this decision, such that if I got it, if there was a 50% chance of me getting it wrong, that means it doesn’t matter all that much if I get it wrong,” versus, “There must be 99% certainty of this because, if I mess up, you know, my whole family is dead.”

Skye Waterson
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“Thusly, I’m going to proportionately spend more resources on the actual decision-making research stuff of nailing that decision right.”

Skye Waterson
Exactly, because most of the time, with ADHD as well, we’ll have this thing. And if you have ADHD and you’re listening, you’ll probably be like, “Oh, yeah, I do this all the time,” where you won’t really decide to make the decision, you won’t lock it in as, “I’m going to make a decision.” It’ll just kind of go around in your head. You’ll think about it and you’ll ruminate on it.

But because we have working memory struggles, we’ll lose the thread of the decision we made. We might even talk to somebody and come back and go, “That’s it. That’s what I’m going to do. Oh, I’m glad I figured it out.” Never write it down. Forget that we made that thing and then go and do it again. And so, we can end up in this rumination cycle that is very, takes a lot of mental energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I dig it. And so then, it seems like a lot of the value here is just getting clear that “What the task is, is making the decision. That is the project that we are embarked upon.”

Skye Waterson
You might even write that down and put it on your filter. That’s a hack for you right there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay. That is the mission. That is the project, is the making of the decision, as opposed to, you jumping the gun and figuring out all the things, “If I do it and if I don’t do it.” It’s like, “Oh, well, we’re not even there yet.”

Skye Waterson
And then you’re like, “Oh, but what if…?” Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Cool. That’s handy. What else we got?

Skye Waterson
Well, I think the third piece that is often what I get from people is, “Okay, cool. I have made a decision. I now know what I need to do but I don’t want to do it. It’s too boring. It’s too confusing. The last time I did this, somebody yelled at me and I didn’t like it and I don’t want to do it again.” This is something that we don’t talk about enough with ADHD, or even without ADHD.

We often have these experiences, and so you’re going to guess it. I’ve used the research to come up with a strategy to help you do it in about 15 to 20 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, let’s hear it.

Skye Waterson
Okay. So, I want to ask you, “What is a task that you don’t want to do right now?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, let’s just say some tax stuff, yeah.

Skye Waterson
That’s a really good example. That’s a really good example. So, if you’re ADHD, the first thing that we want to do is we want to, and we talked about this before, we want to give you a reward for starting the task. We know the reward at the end is not really going to be attached to the task. It’s not going to be motivating enough to get you to do it. So, we want to give you a reward for starting the task.

And if you’re in a position where it’s tax stuff, we want to give you a really nice reward. So, at this point, people usually say, “Okay, well, Skye, I don’t want to eat piles of chocolate forever.” “That’s okay. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to sensory stack.”

So, if you think about your five senses – touch, taste, smell, sight, sound – what are the different sensory items that we could add to you sitting down at your desk, or sitting down at a coffee shop, or wherever you want to do the taxes? So where are you planning on doing this task?

Pete Mockaitis

In my office here at the computer.

Skye Waterson
Perfect. Okay. So, the reward has to be in your office at your desk. This is very important because of transition times. A lot of people will be on the couch, in front of the TV, being like, “I’m just trying to get the motivation to go do this,” and they’re like, “Why doesn’t this work?” It’s because you’re not doing it in the space.

So, if we think about the different senses, so food, drink, listening to something, watching something, what’s something fun you could do at the beginning of this task? So, it’s not part of the task. It’s just something you’re going to do for 10, 15 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what’s funny, because, like, my first thought is, “Ooh, a fun thing I could do in my office at my computer is, like, play a game,” but that’s dangerous because you might get carried away, and do that for hours. Like, “Oh, this is so much. I don’t want to stop.”

Skye Waterson
It does have to be something you will stop. Yeah. It does have to be something you will stop. And so, I will say, over time, people can do things more, like playing a game. Your brain starts to trust you, that you’re going to do this, and it’s not going to be as terrible as it sounds.

But TikTok is never a good idea, so don’t do that one. But is there anything else? Sometimes people like to do Sudoku or a puzzle or a retro game or read a comic or an article or a YouTube video.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, what’s so fun, I’m looking right now in my office. I have this, this is so weird. I think Tim Ferriss talked about these acupressure mats, like Bed of Nails is one of the brand names. And I don’t know why it’s so fun for me to just kind of mush it against my body. Like, it’s kind of like the rush of a cold plunging a little bit, except not messy. It’s not painful, but it’s an intense sensation, which, at least for now, is still kind of novel and interesting. So, I guess we could call that a reward in a weird sense.

Skye Waterson
Yeah, 100%, so we could do that one. Now let’s stack it. So that’s good, but you’ve got to do taxes. So, we want to add something. Is there a cold beverage, a hot beverage, anything like that that you’d like to bring with you to your desk?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Well, I’m thinking about GT’s Gingerade Kombucha, or Heineken 0.0, or just straight up Diet Coke, I mean, you know.

Skye Waterson
Okay. Which is the one you want the most?

Pete Mockaitis
Probably the Kombucha right now, yeah.

Skye Waterson
Okay. Perfect. So, we’re adding the Kombucha. It’s very themed. And then let’s go ahead and add some music or something to watch while you do this.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, watching at the same time as I’m doing a thing, or as I’m doing my acupressure and my beverage?

Skye Waterson
Yeah, as you’re doing your acupressure.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, man.

Skye Waterson
Because the first thing you’re doing is just something fun. So that’s the first thing you’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis
So, watching, well, if I really go on bonkers on the visuals, I might put on the Oculus Quest 3 and look at some, like, 8K nature videos.

Skye Waterson
That’s cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s kind of fun to do in the morning on a cloudy day. It’s kind something I do sometimes.

Skye Waterson
Yeah. Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Or, I guess watching. I’m thinking about the Fireship YouTube channel. But, again, there’s danger there. YouTube fun, click, click, click, away, away you go. So, watching. What else do people love watching?

Skye Waterson
I mean, you’re right about the whole thing with views. I think some people will put like really cool digital backgrounds on their computers. Some people will just want to watch music videos. That can work, you know, things like that. Personally, I think I’ve got the weird one. I like to watch Twitch streams because I love gaming.

So, if I can’t get some gaming done, and so it gives me like a little piece of that. So, I might choose to do that while I use the mat and have the drink. But, yeah, something like that. Some people listen to music at this point. They don’t want to watch anything. So, they have a couple of pieces. I usually think three is quite nice, especially when you’re doing something that’s particularly difficult, so.

But the question I always want everyone to ask, and this is why we’re doing this live with you is, if you said to yourself, “Okay, forget the task, forget that task. All I’m saying to myself right now is, ‘Will I go and sit at my desk if it comes with a Kombucha, a Shakti Mat, and looking at something nice?’”

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Skye Waterson
Yep. Okay. Good. Perfect. Because that’s what we want to know. That’s the most important thing we want to know. So, the second thing that we do is, while we’re doing those things, while we’re giving our brain the boost, the dopamine boost, that we don’t think it’s getting because of the way our brains are currently wired, you want to go ahead and you want to turn off the distractions.

This is a good time to turn off distractions because you’re feeling good. So, who cares about them anyway? What is the stuff that you know is going to distract you when you get down to doing the taxes?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, probably, many open tabs or windows on the computer itself.

Skye Waterson
Exactly. So, we want to turn off the tabs. If you’ve got one of those situations where your brain almost goes ahead and clicks your email before you even think about it, go ahead and remove that bookmark, make it harder to find. If you need to, you can use apps like Freedom to fully remove it. You want to go ahead and remove distractions right now.

The next thing you want to do is you want to dial down the dopamine a little bit. So, maybe at this point, you just switch to music or a podcast or something in the background. Still there. We’re not going to silence just yet, but we’re dialing it down. And then at that point, what you want to do is you actually want to go ahead and write down, on a little Post-it note, a recipe of exactly what you’re going to get done.

So, “I need to open this application. I need to find this form. I need to do this.” And the reason you’re doing that is because you struggle with working memory, right? Too boring, too confusing, too, you know, “I felt bad last time I did it.” So, the too confusing piece, we want to break that right now.

We want to put it on a piece of paper, exactly what you’re going to get done during this period of time, as if you’re writing a recipe for somebody else because that person is probably you. Because if you have ADHD, you’re probably going to get distracted and forget what you were doing and have to come back to that little piece of paper. So, that’s the next piece. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yep.

Skye Waterson
Awesome. And then from there, the last piece we really get to is, “Okay, I’m here. I know what I’m doing. I’m feeling good, but I’m a little bit nervous about actually doing the task. Like, what if it goes badly?” And so, we want to give yourself the opportunity to do a few stretches. When you’re about to do exercise, or artistic endeavors will often stretch or do some practice runs. We don’t really do that with work tasks.

So, we want to just open the application that you’re going to use and tinker around in it a little bit, you know, move some stuff, add some notes, just play in it with no real pressure to get started. And, usually, what’s happened at this point is people have gone ahead and they have found themselves in position where they’re like, “Okay, well, I’ve already opened the application. I know exactly what I’m doing. And I already gave myself a dopamine boost and turned off all distractions.” Inertia starts to go the other way and you go, “Well, I might as well just do it now.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s really intriguing. So, then the reward is happening before instead of after. And I guess my concern is that I’d be enjoying myself so much, I’m like, “I just want to keep this party going. Now I really don’t want to stop all this fun for the taxes.” Is that not a problem? Or, how does that end up unfolding?

Skye Waterson
It’s a good question. So, what we talk about here is we talk about the idea of the dopamine dial. So, rather than going ahead and just going, “Well, I gave myself a reward at the beginning, and then I turn everything off and we get serious and get to work.” We talk about a dopamine dial. We dial the dopamine down.

So, we don’t just turn it off. We say, “Yeah, the party can keep going. We’re just going to write a list of tasks that need to be done right now.” But let’s just switch it away from the podcasts. What’s the next thing that might work? What about some music? Is that going to work? We still got the drinks. We still got everything there. And your brain’s kind of going like, “This is pretty cool.” Still like, “I’m not panicking yet. We’re not in a dopamine-deprived state yet.”

And then from there, you’re like, “Well, we’re just going to open the application. We’re going to tinker around in it.” What happens for most people at that point is they start to kind of get this situation, which you might’ve found in the past where you go, “This is kind of distracting me now. Like, I know what I’m doing. I know I’ve got to do it. I know it’s on. It’s something that’s on my list, and I need to get it done. And I’m right here and I’m about to do it. This music is kind of distracting me now.”

So, you’ll tend to naturally start to turn those things off, but it’s when you give yourself the pressure of, “Now I’m starting,” that we can get ourselves in that position.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very cool. All right. So, that’s really handy and thoughtful and thorough. Thank you. Any other favorite do’s and don’ts for we don’t want to do the thing, but it’s time to do the thing, how do we proceed?

Skye Waterson

Well, honestly, I think the biggest thing that I would say to everybody is you think that you know how to give yourself a reward for starting a task. You probably don’t. If you’ve sat here and gone, “Yeah, I mean I have a coffee,” this is level one of this, right?

We want to go all the way to level 10. Like, most people that I see who fail to actually get tasks done once they understand the strategy, they fail to get tasks done because of a feeling that, “I ought to be able to just do it. I should just be able to do it. I don’t understand why I can’t do it. Everyone else can do it.”

And that feeling, unfortunately, can hold you back from actually doing the task. So, usually, at this point, I ask people to get really serious about their dopamine. Make a list. Five things for each sense, for each of your different senses, like, combine them in different ways. Like, get serious about this, because this is often the thing that’s really holding you back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m thinking about dialing the dopamine up to 10, I mean, well, that invites all sorts of thoughts, like, “Oh, well, let’s crank some, let’s get some alcohol and nicotine and more involved in the party.”

Skye Waterson
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Everyone’s like, “Oh, well, this must be what you’re talking about.” And it’s like, “No, no, there’s many different ways,” you can ask ChatGPT or your favorite AI if you need help. But, like, there’s many different strategies before we get there, right? So, a lot of times people, for example, with the phone, people say, “Okay, well I have my phone. I’m addicted to my phone. What do I do?”

Like, before phones, we used to have, I don’t know if you’ve ever were in an office before phones, but, like, we had a ton of things. It was like the little thing that you like to throw a basketball into, and the Sudoku, and the weird little like water thing that you pressed and little hoops went into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Skye Waterson
You know what I mean? There’s like a whole thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Severance had that one.

Skye Waterson
Exactly. So, go in that direction and then think about, during the week when you’re at the supermarket, what is a new cold drink that you’ve never tried before? Grab that off the shelf. Leave that for when you’re going to get started off on that next task. Those are the things that you would be surprised make a huge difference.

And, you know, obviously, we can always talk about the hardcore negative sources of dopamine, but that conversation is actually why we end up in that situation where everyone’s, like, we’re either dopamine deprived. And if you’re ADHD, you’re already dopamine deprived. So, it’s not really a helpful conversation a lot of the time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, for funsies, could you give us just a quick rundown of a few of your favorite tidbits? Because, yeah, I think you’re right. Once we really let the creative juices flow, I mean, sometimes I have a feeling, it probably gets pretty, like, weird and uniquely custom for your own proclivity.

Skye Waterson
Oh, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, I actually do have, now you mentioned, a Tupperware vessel of water in the refrigerator that I will shove my face into. And so, the mammalian dive reflex is a real thing. It reduces heart rate, etc. And it just feels kind of fun. And so, I guess, if we’re pushing our own buttons, then that could take all kinds of interesting flavors. Can you share a few things with us?

Skye Waterson
Yeah, I love that because people often, you know, this level one dopamine is, like, “I’ll get coffee and then I’ll do this.” And level 10 is like, “On Wednesdays, at 7:00, if I do this in this light, this is great.” People get very specific. My favorites, I mean, I love all kinds of different carbonated drinks, is my favorite. So, I’ll go for different kinds of those ones.

I, like I said, will watch Twitch. I will also watch YouTube. I know not everyone can do that. They’ll get distracted. I am lucky enough not to do that. I have, the Spotify AI guy now has me pretty well dialed in. So, if I play the DJ, it usually knows exactly what kind of music I want to listen to because it’s got me based on time of day.

Yeah, those are kind of the biggest ones that I do. In terms of physical touch, I have a lot of fidgets. And if all else fails, I’ll usually go to a coffee shop and I’ll go there with no ability to plug my computer in, and I’ll order something really nice, and that’ll kind of get me through.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell me, any final things, tips, tricks, things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Skye Waterson
I think, usually, what I like to tell people is just your systems are probably broken, not your brain. I think it’s really important for people to understand that because so often we people will find themselves sort of slamming up against a wall again and again and again.

That’s what leads to burnout. I’ve done it many, many times before I figured out I had ADHD. And being able to work with different systems makes it a lot more fun. It’s not just better for you and what you do, but it’s also a lot more fun.

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

Skye Waterson
Yeah, my favorite quote is, “We rise by lifting others.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Skye Waterson
At the moment, I am reading most things by Naval Ravikant. So that’s kind of the area I’m in right now.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Skye Waterson
It’s split between Notion and Miro.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Skye Waterson

Dopamine. Starting with dopamine, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget or Skye-original sound bite that is quoted often?

Skye Waterson
I think a lot of people, to come back to the dopamine thing, will just be like, you know, that people tend to say like, “You have to take your dopamine seriously. You have to take having fun as seriously as working if you have ADHD.”

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

Skye Waterson
You can find me at Unconventional Organisation on Instagram. Like I said, you can just DM me there and I will give you the two-unit folks formula. And you can also find me at Unconventional Organisation on the internet. I have a podcast, The ADHD Skills Lab, where I talk about a lot more of this research. And if you want to join my program, I work with executives and entrepreneurs who have ADHD who want focused, balanced growth.

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

Skye Waterson
Probably, stop trying so hard and start thinking about ways to do things differently.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Skye, thank you.

Skye Waterson

No worries. Great to be here.

1045: How to Stop Overthinking and Build Mental Resilience with Joseph Nguyen

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Joseph Nguyen discusses the hidden relationship between thinking and suffering—and offers a powerful framework for achieving peace of mind.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to spot and stop negative judgments
  2. How to PAUSE overthinking
  3. How to beat procrastination with SPA

About Joseph

Joseph Nguyen is the author of the #1 international bestselling book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, which has been translated into 40+ languages. He is a writer who helps others realize who they truly are beyond their own thinking and conditioning to live an abundant life free from psychological and emotional suffering. When he’s not busy petting his three cats that he’s allergic to, he spends the rest of his time writing, teaching, speaking, and sharing timeless wisdom to help people discover their own divinity from within and how they are the answer they’ve been looking for their entire lives.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Joseph Nguyen Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, welcome!

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your area of expertise. Your book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, has just taken off tremendously. Congratulations.

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And the title is so good. It’s so funny, Amazon auto-completes if you type, “Don’t believe everything you think.” It’s like, “Nice.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that’s a great advertisement, I guess, and a great slogan just to have all over Amazon. It’s what it should be, instead of all the stuff that we don’t need to be buying.

Pete Mockaitis
Don’t buy many other things here.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so can you take us through the journey a little bit of how you and your relationship to thought and the insights that you discovered came to be in your own personal lived existence?

Joseph Nguyen
A lot of what I’ve come to realize comes from, this is not new information. This has been here for eons, thousands of years, from everyone and so many different countries, cultures. I mean, I draw influence from Western philosophy, Eastern philosophies, Zen Buddhism, Christianity. So much cognitive behavioral therapy. Like, you name it, there’s probably some sort of influence there.

But I think the only time that I was able to actually integrate it into my life was when I sort of hit a rock-bottom moment where, after I really tried as much as I possibly could all the options that were available to me, like, I mean, there’s therapy, there’s acupuncture, acupressure, there’s going vegan. I did all these things and it didn’t really quite work until it forced me to look internally.

I was trying to do everything to change everything outside of me, so changing people’s behaviors, how they viewed me, how they judged me, wanting and trying to earn other people’s approval, love, all these sorts of things, all these attempts at finding what could only be found within. So, I think the moment where I kind of hit rock bottom, which was a point in my life where, I mean, I had a business that was growing. It was going great. I accomplished a lot of the goals that I had, but at the cost of my own mental health.

So, every single day, I was just so chronically anxious, borderline depressed. I was probably depressed. I just wouldn’t admit it to myself that that was it. And I just didn’t know when the next client was coming from. I didn’t know if we’re going to have enough money, food. My partner, now wife, she had a lot of physiological illnesses.

So, she had gastroparesis, and so she couldn’t eat, got a feeding tube, hospitalized multiple times. All of that was happening concurrently with, basically, my business falling apart. Then my business partner and I split. I went 50,000 into debt at around 21, 22 years old. And so, all of that happened within a span of about a year.

And so, that was probably the rock-bottom moment that I hit, where I thought, after accomplishing everything that I wanted, that it would give me this internal peace and joy, but it did the exact opposite. And that was because I didn’t realize where peace comes from, and it doesn’t come from manipulating the environment or other people or the world to whatever I think it needs to be. It comes from releasing that desire, that need to change everything outside of me except myself.

So, rock bottom, I think pain is a great motivator and catalyst for change. Most people, like myself, probably wouldn’t change if it wasn’t absurdly painful. So, I’m actually very grateful for those experiences, but it’s quite difficult to go through it. But that was the genesis of the turning point for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you for sharing that. That’s heavy, and it’s a lot. And I think what you’re articulating dead on, we just chatted with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who discussed the arrival fallacy, this notion, “Ah, yes, when this happens, then it’ll be smooth sailing. I’ll be happy. I’ll be free. I’ll be at peace. All my problems will be solved.”

And it just doesn’t work out that way. And sometimes we don’t believe it until, as you’ve said, we experience that pain. We have arrived and go, “Uh-oh, shoot, these feelings are still there, that lack of peace is still there.

Joseph Nguyen
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what then? What happened next?

Joseph Nguyen
So, it basically forced me to look inside, because I was trying all these modalities to help, and they did help to a certain extent, but it didn’t really change that much. And it puzzled me, because I thought to myself, “I surely can’t be the only one going through this. So that’s when I started looking for a lot of different solutions.

And then I started questioning my own experiences, and other people’s experiences too, which is I think most people, if not every single human, goes through extremely difficult and challenging events and times or even traumas.

And so, I started to ask myself and run thought experiments, where it was like, “If two people, have similar traumas, how is it possible that one person can spiral downwards and fall into a deep depression and isn’t really able to get out of it, while another person who has gone through something similar is able to make amends and make peace with the past and become okay with what happened?”

And not only that, but become empowered by what happened and go on to want to help other people not experience the same thing. How is that possible if we can’t go back and change the past? So, neither one of them went back to alter the events in any single way, which means it’s not the events that was changed, but their own thinking about what happened to them.

And so, that sparked an epiphany, which was, our emotions don’t come from external events, they come from our own thinking about the events, which is our own judgments, our own opinions, our own criticisms about the event, or even ourselves and our own thoughts about whatever happened. And so, that was what kind of made a giant light bulb moment for me, which is like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s no way to change the past, but I can always change the way that I’m viewing it. Is this helpful or hurtful? This sort of incessant nonstop negative judgment of life, of myself, of other people?”

And so, that spawned a whole slew of new questions for myself, which was like, “Why do I do that? Why do I constantly wish things were different? Why do I constantly tell myself that I’m not enough, not good enough, not smart enough, not whatever it is, and repeating these stories to myself?” And I never stopped to ask myself, “Is that actually helpful? When has overthinking helped me?”

And so, I realized then that overthinking doesn’t solve problems, it creates them and exacerbates them. And I just didn’t understand that I could just not judge, negatively judge, the things that are happening in my life or myself. That was an extremely liberating moment for me. And, I mean, most of the thoughts that we have, we have over 60,000 thoughts in a single day. How is it possible that every single one of those thoughts is true? There’s no way, right?

And if it were true that we are our thoughts, what happens to the thought that just passed our minds, that just left? We’re still here.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d disappear.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re still here, right? So, that means we are something beyond our thoughts. Same thing with emotions. If we are our emotions, if I am depressed, or if I am anxious, if I am those things, or I am happy, what happens when those things pass, anxiety or happiness? I’m still here. How is that possible?

So, we are not our thoughts and we are not our emotions then. We are something greater than that. And that is the feeling and the space that I sink back into to finally find some peace because I realize that everything in life is transient, including our thoughts. And if we are the common denominator that is still here, then those fleeting things can’t be possibly us. That was the eye-opener for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Wow, there’s so much good stuff here, and I’m just drawing all kinds of connections. I recall I was in a therapy session once, and I posed the same question, and it’s like, “So, is it true that, like Nietzsche or Kelly Clarkson says, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” Or, is it the opposite experience in which, “No, I had a bad thing happen to me and I’m somehow less strong, weaker, not as capable as a result of the experience”?

So, it’s like, “So which is it? And under what circumstances, and why, and what’s the distinction?” And he didn’t give me the easy answer, “That’s one of the greatest questions of therapy.”

Joseph Nguyen

He was amping you up, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I mean, and that is one of the assertions, I believe, of cognitive behavioral therapy or of Shakespeare. There’s nothing good or bad, but rather thinking makes it so, and our cognitive distortions or our thoughts about things and judgments shape the emotional reactions and experiences we have. And we had a Navy Seal Alden Mills sharing some similar notions, like, “Hey, is this thought helpful or hurtful? All right. Well, then let’s bring some energy to the helpful thoughts.”

And we got some real wisdom there. It’s, like, we cannot be our thoughts, we cannot be our emotions, because our thoughts and our emotions are ever shifting and changing. And that sounds wise and familiar. Is this coming from a wisdom tradition? Or is this a Joseph original?

Joseph Nguyen
Oh, no, nothing is original from me. Creativity is just a blend of a lot of different parts and combining it into something seemingly new. But it’s all from Eastern philosophy, some Western, right, some Stoicism, Zen, Buddhism, in that there’s tons of psychology in there, right? Like cognitive behavioral therapy uses so much of this in terms of questioning our own thoughts, our own emotions, trying to figure out the root cause of all this. So, all of that, I definitely stand on the shoulders of many, many giants from centuries or millennia.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you put a stake in the ground, and it seems like you’ve got some real conviction here, that it is, indeed, our thoughts and judgments and overthinking, over-thoughts, about a situation that is the source of our depression, anxiety. And I’m thinking, is it the only source, the primary source? Are we sure about this? It sounds true-ish, but what’s our best evidence for it?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, in terms of emotions, there’s no way to really prevent “negative emotions.” Those will always come and go. What I propose in the book is less about preventing them, but to reduce the time spent experiencing those emotions. Because a lot of times, we are replaying and ruminating on memories of the past, and bringing them into the present moment and reliving that experience from a certain vantage point of it, which may or may not be true, I don’t know.

But if it makes us feel a lot of anxiety or depression or resentment, is that possible for us to change? And if so, then how? And so, in the book, I started to realize, like, let’s say there’s a lot of people in veteran hospitals or recovering in Alcoholics Anonymous or tons of people who have been through so many different things. How is it possible that there’s people that have gone through something similar, but then have different results?

So, it’s like, “What are they changing? They’re not going back in the past to do that, so they’re changing something now in the present moment to alter their experience.” And so, that’s where the book is coming from, which is like, “What can we do now that things have happened, and becoming more resilient, right?”

This is building and training emotional regulation and resilience rather than a prevention of emotions in totality, because a lot of times, sometimes emotions are very helpful. They help to protect us. They help give us signs. All emotions are messengers to help us and to show us what we need to pay attention to. That’s all emotions are.

But if we believe them to be the only source of truth and an ultimate conclusion about ourselves, then that’s where we run into trouble. And, let’s say, if we’re really depressed, then we might think about ourselves, and say, “We’re not enough. We’re not lovable. We’ll never find love.” These sorts of beliefs about ourselves, which is what I call “thinking” or “negative judgments,” those things are not necessarily that helpful and they harm us more than help us.

And so, is it possible to let those things go? And if so, how? So, for me, why I use the word “thinking” in particular is because it’s the best word I could find to explain the phenomena of just ruminating negatively on something. So I make a distinction in the book, thoughts versus thinking. A thought is a neutral observation or intuitive prompting about an event that happened.

Pete Mockaitis

“I would like to eat some food.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that is a thought.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, that’s a desire.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that could be a desire.

Pete Mockaitis
A thought and a desire.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, and then thinking, on the other hand, is a negative judgment about an event or your own thoughts. So, let’s take a scenario.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m overweight. I shouldn’t eat all this food.”

Joseph Nguyen
Right. See, “should” is a great indicator that we’re thinking, right? That’s usually a preliminary word that we use before we judge ourselves. And so, an example of this is, let’s say it’s raining outside. A thought is, “It’s raining.” That’s a neutral observation. Thinking, on the other hand, would be something like, “Why is this happening? Why does this always happen to me? This rain completely ruined my day. I’m always unlucky like this.”

All of this thinking about the thought of it raining is not as helpful to us and is the source of all this suffering. So, let’s say we did have something planned and it rained and it ruined our day, that’s unfortunate, right? Like, we had plans, we planned for it, but is it possible to not let it ruin our entire day? Is it possible to let go of this emotional suffering within a few minutes?

And so, that’s why I say that’s the thinking part of whatever is going on. And although we can’t change the event or even our initial thought of it, we can always let go of the thinking or judgment about whatever is going on, and that’s where the power lies. For example, thoughts have no power over us unless we believe them to be true, right? So, the belief in the judgment is what causes this suffering and is the difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, now, as you use the word “thinking,” I am wondering if we could have other, do some other thinking, or judging about the rain in a positive fashion, in terms of, “At last, the crops will be nourished by this rain,” or, “You know what, let’s just frolic like a child.”

And so, in your definition, would you still call that thinking even though it has maybe a positive vibe or feeling associated with it?

Joseph Nguyen
I think there’s two different categories of what we can call positive thinking. On one hand, it could just be an intuitive prompting. An example of that would just be, “It’s raining. Let’s go outside and play in the rain.” It doesn’t necessarily have to skew towards, “This is the best thing that’s ever happened in the entire world.”

See, like where we can over-exaggerate positive thinking is equally where we can fall short of it because who’s to say it is the best thing in the entire world? Because if it’s raining here, it might flood somewhere else. So, it’s very difficult to just, ultimately and conclusively, say if this is good or bad. And so, if we are overly positive about something, then it opens us up for, “Well, what if that might not be the case?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, so it might feel good, but we’re not necessarily getting closer to truth or accurate representation of reality.

Joseph Nguyen
Correct, yeah. And we can skew both ways, and that’s when positive thinking can then open us up all sorts of cans of worms. But that’s not to say that positive thinking doesn’t work, and I don’t want to say that at all. It certainly does work, but the question is, “Is it sustainable? And is it based in reality?” So, if we observe the rain, and we’re like, “Oh, look, it’s like nourishing the crops,” like that’s a neutral and true observation, like it is feeding the plants and all that stuff, and we can feel good about that.

But what I also observed as well was, once we let go of the negative judgment about things, we are naturally at peace. We are naturally more joyful. We skew towards that way. And if you look at children that are a couple years old, they skew towards happiness. They’re smiling, they’re happy, unless they’re like hungry or like something is physiologically wrong. They’re generally just very positive, very happy, laughing all the time.

And that’s our natural state as well if we don’t negatively judge whatever situation is going on. If we let go of worrying about the future or ruminating and resenting the past, that is our default state. So, you don’t necessarily have to try to be positive. And other examples I love giving is, think about or recall a time where it’s like you were very anxious, or stressed, or overwhelmed. Like, how much thinking is going on?

Pete Mockaitis
Plenty.

Joseph Nguyen
Too much, right? But then if we flip and invert the question, recall a time when you were your happiest, in a total state of flow, and you lost track of time, how much thinking was going on then?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s, I guess per your definition of thinking, like, very little. Although, if you’re in a flow and doing a thing, you naturally have to—

Joseph Nguyen
You’re having thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, you’re having thoughts, but you’re not thinking in the Joseph-sense of the word.

Joseph Nguyen
Right, you’re not negatively judging the thoughts or experience that you’re having. You’re just in it, you’re fully immersed. That’s when you lose a sense of self, actually, and that’s when we are no longer psychologically suffering. And some people in the spiritual community will call this like the death of the ego. It’s when you just dissolve and you feel at one with everything. That’s what flow is and why a lot of times people will say like that’s this ideal state for humans to be in.

Athletes experience this very often when they’re in and playing a game during a competition. They’re not so much thinking about what’s going on. They are just intuitively responding and being there. And that’s like our ideal state that we’re in. Actually, the times that athletes think too much, they tend to miss the shots, or think too much about something and overanalyze, and that’s when they freeze and choke when they could have definitely done something different.

The same thing is true for our own lives. The more that we constantly just ruminate, judge, and criticize ourselves, other people, events, we tend to freeze, and go into fight-or-flight mode, and act as if our life really is in danger, and operate from a place of fear rather than love and expansion and joy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Joseph, we’re getting near a zone I’ve been pondering for a while, which is, you talk about when we feel a sense of peace or joy and flow, contentment. And I’ve been reflecting on the distinction between contentment and boredom. Because, in terms of an external view of the situation, they’re almost the same.

It’s like, “Nothing’s really happening right now.” And yet, when we feel bored, we’re restless, agitated, and, I guess, negatively judging, “I don’t like that nothing’s going on right now,” versus when we are content, it’s like, “Ah, nothing’s going on right now.” And that feels restful, rejuvenating, restorative, and we like and appreciate the space that we find ourselves in.

So, I guess that is perhaps one of many examples of the judgment we bring to a situation, shaping it, but I’d love your pro tip. If we find ourselves bored and would rather be content, what should we do?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, great question. So, boredom is not necessarily a bad thing. Boredom, a lot of times, is the birth of creation, new things, new hobbies, new thoughts, new ideas. If we’re not bored a lot of the time or sometimes, then we’re actually just recycling a lot of the same material from the past and constantly going and we feel like we’re in the hamster wheel. So, boredom is not necessarily bad. And when you see kids get bored, what do they do? They invent.

Pete Mockaitis
They invent some games.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly. That’s what humans do. When we’re bored, we create, and so it acts as a great motivator. But where things can go a little bit south is when we say, “Oh, instead of being content with what’s happening right now,” let’s say we’re on vacation, “I should be working. If I’m working these hours, I could make so much more money or I have all these emails I need to get to.”

You’re not able to actually enjoy yourself in the present moment, and you’re constantly thinking about the future and all these things you need to get done, that’s when the “boredom” or what we would call that in that case, that’s when it robs our peace and takes it away from us is when we think we need to be doing something else other than what we’re currently doing or experiencing.

So, in that case, what I love recommending to do is just to schedule those things and just, like, if you’re on vacation, like that’s the boundary you need to draw for yourself. But if we don’t draw boundaries, it will creep in. All of these beliefs that we have, all these negative judgments that we have about ourselves or what we should and shouldn’t be doing, they will come in unless we set that boundary for ourselves.

Like, “If I’m on vacation, my phone is off,” or, “I’m not taking emails or whatever it is.” But without those, they will creep in and they will start to fester and become uncontrollable at that point. And this is really a practice of presence more than anything else. Are we able to do and give our full attention to what is happening right now in front of us? Or, are we distracted and thinking about something else in the meantime?

Peace comes from being present. It is a natural byproduct of doing so. The more that we are able to do that, that’s the happier we will be, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m reminded of the Scientific Journal article, “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind,” which, I think it was Kahneman and company looked at just that in terms of empirically checking with people and, “Hey, what are you doing? What are you thinking about?” and seeing the results. So, that’s that there. When you say boundaries, my first thought is sort of external things, like, “I will not be picking up my smartphone,” “I will not be answering emails on vacation.” Do you have some thoughts for boundaries we have, like with ourselves and our own thoughts or experiences?

Joseph Nguyen
Those are the most important boundaries because we can change everything external but if we don’t change anything internally then we’re still going to suffer a lot emotionally. So, some of the most important internal boundaries that you so aptly alluded to are the judgments that we’re making that is really at the core of our emotional suffering, of our resentment towards others, to ourselves.

If we don’t draw that boundary, and say, like, “We will no longer judge ourselves in this light,” then we’re going to keep doing it. And we do this mostly because we’re not even aware that there’s an option out, that, “Oh, we can just not judge everything that’s going on? Like, there’s a way that, as I go about my life, I don’t have to constantly narrate and say this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this should be happening, this shouldn’t be happening?”

We just aren’t taught that. Most people just don’t know, and I wasn’t aware of that until I was basically smacked in the face with it and had to hit rock bottom to find it. But that is probably the most important boundary to set, which is, “Can we let go of the judgments that we’re having about ourselves, the world, whatever’s happening? Are we able to enjoy it as it is?”

When we go about life, most of the time we judge everything, “This person’s good,” “This person’s bad,” “This person’s evil,” “This person’s not,” “This is beautiful or ugly.” Like, there are so many things that happen. But when we walk in nature, like how many of us are saying, “This flower is ugly. This flower is like beautiful,” or, like, “This tree is crooked or what”?

Like, we just observe and enjoy nature as it is rather than constantly pick apart every single thing that we think is wrong with this tree. As soon as we do that, that’s when we suffer. So, nature is a great way to reset because of that and it brings us back to our true nature, ironically, of just being aware and giving our full attention to someone without judging them. That’s what the basis of love is, unconditional love, which is to fully accept someone as they are without wanting to change them, without wanting them just to be something different.

Full acceptance of that is where peace comes from. This not only goes for people, but for situations, anything. That is the root of unconditional love. And use that thought experiment for yourself. Like, when do you feel most loved by someone? When they’re constantly judging you, nagging you, saying you should do this, saying you should be different, you should be better, you should be doing any of these things, or when they fully accept you as you are without judging? That is the goal of everything.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. My children would say, when we do hugs and kisses in flying blanket mode.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
But it falls into a subcategory of what you’re describing. I like that notion about the narration that we’re just doing it all the time, and it might not even seem too intense, like, “I’m such a stupid idiot.” But even just like, “Oh, oh, oh, the sun is kind of in my eyes. Oh, it’s kind of hot. Like, oh, I’m getting tired.”

Like, there you are in nature, you might not be condemning the tree for being crooked, but we are narrating and judging – well, I am often – experiences they’re in, in terms of like the air temperature or the illumination that is not perfectly aligned to the preferences I have in that moment.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, and that’s where all the suffering comes from, is just what we wish would happen, what we want the world to be. But peace comes from letting go of what we wish everything would be and accept it for how it actually is. And, yes, same goes for anything in life, people, even ourselves. In AA, like one of the first steps is acceptance. The five stages of grief, acceptance is what you’re trying to go for.

And in CBT, acceptance of whatever emotions we’re feeling is also a core component of the whole process. So, at the end of it all, like all these different modalities are pointing to the same thing, which is, “Can I let go of the judgment that I’m having of whatever is happening and going on?” Once we’re able to let go of that thinking mind, the fear-based mind and the judgmental mind, then we’re able to find a little peace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you said that we have the option to stop the narration, and I am a frequent Audible listener who likes to pause my audiobooks. And I understand you’ve got a little acronym you can walk us through.

Joseph Nguyen
Yes, exactly. So, this acronym, I tried to make it as actionable as possible in terms of, I mean, what we’re doing is letting go of the judgments. That’s the whole purpose of this. And so, this makes the act of letting go a little bit more tangible. So, the first letter in the acronym is P, which is pause. So, pause and take deep breaths, and you don’t need to get fancy with it. Just take five deep breaths. There’s no specific way you need to do it.

But it’s been scientifically proven that taking deep breaths allows us to lower our heart rate, to regulate our emotions, and to come back to center. So, just do that in the beginning of anything, because it’s really hard to regulate or do anything or make decisions or come back to yourself when we’re in a fight or flight mode. Next is A, which is ask ourselves, “Is this thinking useful?” Just like the other psychologists you mentioned before, like, “Is this thinking making me feel the way that I want?” If not, the next step is U, which is understand that you have the ability to let that thinking or judgment go. We always have that power. We may not be able to control our thoughts, but we can always control our thinking about the thoughts, and therein lies our entire power to change our experience of life.

S is, say and repeat the mantra, “Thinking is the root cause of suffering.” You can use any mantra in this matter. Another one, for example, would be, “I let go and choose peace.” Any mantra rooted in truth will work, and it needs to be short and memorable. What mantras do is that it’s very difficult to think of two things simultaneously.

So, what it does is it focuses your attention on this one thing, which means you can’t be thinking about the future or ruminating about the past. So, it forces focus and attention on something that is true. So, repeating that for maybe 30 seconds to a minute is really all you need, and that will slow the thinking mind. It will calm things down significantly.

That’s the basis of Transcendental Meditation as well, what a lot of the Tibetan monks use to go beyond the mind and to achieve oneness with the universe. But we take it here and you’re able to use it in real time.

Then E, the last step is to experience your emotions fully without resistance. So, we’re not trying to bypass the emotions by just not thinking about it. We’re actually removing the judgment of the emotions because what we resist persists. So, if we are resisting the anxiety, it usually gets worse, which is why a lot of times, when someone has a panic attack, they’re much more prone to more panic attacks simply because that’s how, it’s just like self-fulfilling, so to speak.

It’s like once we experience something and don’t want it to happen, we just put up a wall and just constantly resist it. But in physics, an object in motion will stay in motion, right? But also, for every force, there’s an equal and opposite force happening. So, if you have this force of an emotion and you’re resisting the emotion, that emotion is going to constantly be there and it’s going to stay stuck unless it passes through your system.

Anything that is stuck creates a significant amount of suffering. So, for a slightly more comical and light-hearted example is, like, if you eat a lot of food and it doesn’t pass through your system, what happens? Like, a week, a month passes, it’s going to be very painful and it’s going to cause all sorts of issues.

The same thing is true for our thoughts and emotions. The more that we hold on to our thoughts and don’t let them pass through, the more it’s going to cause us a lot of emotional suffering. Thoughts, emotions, all these things are transient and meant to pass through us, just like water flowing through a river.

As soon as a river is dammed up, that’s when wildlife begins to dwindle, fish begin to die, all these things start to happen. But as soon as the river is able to flow, that’s when life begins to flourish. That is the same thing for our own lives. So, letting thoughts and emotions pass through us without resistance. So, the way to do that is to create space within ourselves, to honor and hold the emotions, and to not judge them.

See them as another entity, like our inner child, or even one of our own children, and to hold them within our hearts, and to give them space to be there, without judging them, without saying, “You shouldn’t be here. Why are you here again?” That’s what we say to these emotions a lot of times, like, “Why are you still here, anger?” And we’re angry at the anger, and so it just compounds.

But as soon as we say, “Oh, you’re welcome here. You’re not an enemy. It’s okay.” As soon as you give children space, time, and attention, things begin to settle and we’re able to regulate. The same thing is true for all of our emotions and it passes so much more quickly when we’re doing this rather than kind of putting up a wall. So that’s the whole entire process.

Pause, take deep breaths. A, ask yourself, “Is this thinking helpful or useful?” U, which is understand you have the ability to let that thinking go. S, which is say and repeat the mantra. And E, which is experience your emotions fully without resistance.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. And if I may put some numbers into this, so you had a mantra, I counted, it was about seven words. Is that around the length that we’re thinking about? Like, if you push it to 20, it’s outside mantra zone?

Joseph Nguyen
Probably. It just creates so much more thinking and you’re probably going to have to try to remember, “Am I saying it right? Did I forget a word?” And you’re trying to make it as simple as possible so that you don’t have to overthink it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then with experience, I think when I’ve resisted, historically, it’s been almost out of a fear that, “If I begin to experience this sadness, this sorrow, this grieving at this deeply unfortunate thing that has occurred, then will it swallow me? Will it persist for a long time and impact the things I need to do this day, this week, this month?”

And so, I can sometimes push away. But you say with the water flowing situation, and that which we resist persists, we are better off experiencing it fully. I mean, Joseph, for those fellow aversive pushers, away-ers…

Joseph Nguyen
Master push-up-ers, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
…how long are we in for a rough emotional experience if we allow it to hang out?

Joseph Nguyen
I will say shorter than if you’re resisting it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Joseph Nguyen
So, the irony in it is that, when we’re pushing it away, we think that we’re not dealing with it but we’re still suffering. We’re constantly thinking about it, we’re wishing it were different, we’re ruminating on it constantly, but what we don’t understand is that when we just allow it to be there, that it passes so much more quickly.

I think neuroscience is saying now that it takes about 90 seconds for an emotion to be regulated in our bodies. The only reason why it’s prolonged most of the time is that we begin ruminating on the event or judging the situation that happened, and it resets that time period. So, we’ll go 90 seconds, and right before that, we think about it again, we’ll judge it again, and it keeps prolonging the cycle.

And so, it only takes a few minutes to do this and to let go, and it’s not like the entire emotion will go away, but the intensity of the emotion will be drastically reduced than what it was when we were resisting. And, over time, as you build the muscle of emotional resiliency and emotional regulation, it becomes a little bit easier to do every single time. And the threshold in which we become overwhelmed is significantly expanded, so we can take on a lot more in life.

We’re able to do a lot more. We’re able to endure a lot of these events with a lot more grace and a lot more love. But, yeah, it’s definitely scary to kind of allow these emotions to come in because we think that we might not be able to handle it. We might crumble under the emotion. But you have to ask yourself, like we were saying before, like, “Am I my thoughts? Am I this emotion?”

And think about all the difficult times and trauma that you’ve been through, and all the trauma, like, you’re still here. So, I mean, you’re greater than every single emotion that you’ve ever experienced. And the same is true now and it will ever, and it will be true forever because those things are not us.

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, beautiful stuff. Could you share any final thoughts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, I would run micro-experiments with yourself. Like, you actually don’t have to believe anything that I’m saying, ironically, like the book title. Test it out for yourself. See if it’s true, if thinking is the root cause of your emotional suffering. And the way that you can test this out is to try to suspend judgment, negative judgment about yourself, your own thoughts, your own emotions, external things, people, circumstances.

See if you can suspend judgment for about seven days. That’s it. You don’t have to do a month. You don’t have to do a year. Just see if you can let go of the judgments that your mind is creating, for seven days and see how you feel afterwards. If it significantly improves your emotional well-being, awesome! Continue doing it.

And if it doesn’t, that’s completely okay, and you can find another modality that might work for you. But at the very least, try it and see what happens. And it is only through our own lived experience that you know what truth is, rather than just taking someone’s word for it. So, that’s what I would encourage everyone to do, and just see for yourself.

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

Joseph Nguyen
One of my favorite quotes is actually in the book, which is from Jonathan Safran Foer, which is, “I think, I think, I think. I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, very good. Very good. Thank you. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Joseph Nguyen
The neuroscience study that I was alluding to before, I don’t know exactly what experiment it was.

But they were studying about how long it takes for our emotions to actually pass through our systems, and it was about 90 seconds, which was mind-boggling to me because I thought it would take, you know, like multiple minutes or at least like, I don’t know, 10 minutes, for like, if you’re angry of something, like it feels like it takes way longer than 90 seconds.

So, that was a profound shift in me to realize that, “Oh, my gosh, like it is possible to let go of a lot of these emotions quite quickly.” And it’s actually important to follow this. You don’t have to follow this process, specifically, but you can follow any process, but it’s really important to do it in real time as you’re going about your day.

So, this process is, if you’re experiencing something in traffic, or your boss says something, or your parents say something, or your friends says something that creates a negative emotional reaction within you, it’s important to use the process then rather than only use it in the morning or in the evening like meditating, right?

That way you are actually strengthening your emotional resiliency throughout the entire day. It’s a little bit easier to find peace when you’re alone in your room and it’s dark, your blindfolds are on, there’s like Zen music, right? It’s like a little bit easier to find peace there, but the true test is, “Are you able to find peace while also, like let’s say your boss is screaming at your face, or making fun of you, or your friends are doing something that you don’t really approve of, or your parents are criticizing you in front of other family members?

That’s the time that you’re truly tested for, if you’re able to find peace. And this is something that you can use during those times rather than you need to bust out like a 30-minute meditation just to find a little bit of alleviation. So, that’s one other thing I would do, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And a favorite book?

Joseph Nguyen
This one’s very interesting, maybe slightly controversial, but it currently is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill.

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

Joseph Nguyen
I like to use this particular framework on just when I’m doing work because I have issues, a lot of times. Just like procrastinating like most people or just putting off things that I know I need to be doing. And one of the most effective things that I’ve done is to follow the SPA methodology, which is just, if I’m overwhelmed by something, just take the next smallest possible action, so SPA, and doing that.

So, if it’s, “I need to write another book,” that’s a pretty big task, pretty scary, daunting, and it’s like, “Am I able to bust out a whole book in this one session?” Now, that’s typically what the mind thinks of. But if I break it down to the smallest possible action, like, “Am I able to just open the Word document? Can I just do that?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I can definitely click on Notion and open it up. I can definitely do that.” And if I still can’t do that, “Can I just sit at the computer desk?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Joseph Nguyen
So just keep breaking it down.

Pete Mockaitis
“Sit up from the couch.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard, right? Sometimes it’s really hard. And so, it’s okay if we need to break it down into those baby steps, but that works wonders for me. So, it’s like, “Can I write one sentence?” And when I write one sentence, I’m going to want to write another sentence, like I’m just going to go.

And, lo and behold, there’s like a couple dozen sentences, a couple hundred words pass, and that was way more progress than if I force myself sit down and write my book. That’s a big task. So, smallest possible action is what I like to default to when I am frozen in procrastination or analysis paralysis.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear it quoted back to you often?

Joseph Nguyen
Our emotions don’t come from external events, but from our own thinking about those events. That is something that people just didn’t really realize, and so it’s like a massive epiphany moment for them. Other ones are just like, “I didn’t realize that I could just stop judging. I had no idea I could just not listen to that incessant negative critic in the back of our minds, and that I could just be and just be present. I don’t have to be thinking about something else or doing something else. I can let go of whatever that incessant chatter is, and to finally find a little bit of peace.”

Yeah, that big epiphany was like, oh, yeah, during the times that we are happiest, like we’re not really thinking about anything else, or ruminating on anything. We’re just there, fully engrossed by the moment. And so, those are probably like some of the biggest nuggets that people have gotten.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Probably, I would say my website and newsletter, so JosephNguyen.org, J-O-S-E-P-H N-G-U-Y-E-N.org. You’ll be able to find like my newsletter there, sign up for it. I do have a YouTube channel. I don’t post that often but a lot of the content there is evergreen. All my socials are just itsjosephnguyen, I-T-S and then Joseph Nguyen. Those are probably the best places to find me, but email is where you’ll be able to be up-to-date on any new projects I’m working on.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Let go of the fear of being judged. The more that we’re afraid of being ourselves, to be awesome at our jobs, the less effective we’ll be. And sometimes being ourselves will ruffle a few feathers. People will judge us one way or the other, even if we’re playing conservatively and not really showing that much at work.

People are still judging us anyway. So, we might as well be judged and criticized for being who we truly are rather than masquerading ourselves behind something else. And the more that you’re able to be yourself, the more awesome you’re going to be at your job, the more that you’re able to lean into your own gifts, your own talents, your abilities. All of that is usually held back if we’re afraid of what other people are thinking.

So, stand up for yourself, do what you believe is best for the work that you’re doing, and definitely defend it, and to not just let it be pushed over. Because at the end of the day, if you’re coming from a place of love, generosity, true selflessness, and wanting to do the best that you possibly can, there’s no shame in that at all. So, if you’re going to be criticized, definitely be criticized for doing what you believe is right, rather than hiding behind and playing it small.

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, beautiful. Thank you.

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you so much, Pete. It’s been such a pleasure and so much fun with you. I love your energy.

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

By | Podcasts | No Comments

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

Thank You, Sponsors!

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.

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

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

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.