Mindfulness Archives - Page 4 of 10 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Jud, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Judson Brewer
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom. One of my favorite pieces I read in your bio is that you’re a thought leader in the science of self-mastery, and I love self-mastery. So, could you kick us off in maybe sharing a surprising or counterintuitive insight when it comes to human beings and achieving self-mastery?

Judson Brewer
Well, just one of the many is that it’s actually less work than we tend to think it is. And, in fact, the more we push often, the more the world pushes back. So, this idea of what we resist, persists. And that also applies to trying to master ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. Thank you. Much to chew on already. Well, specifically, I want to zoom into mastering ourselves in the realm of anxiety. Ooh, there’s a lot of that going around these days. I guess it’s been on the upward trajectory for years, and then worldwide pandemic and lockdowns certainly kicks it up a notch. So, maybe to get on the same page, do you have a working definition of anxiety that we can kind of tether us and anchor us in this discussion?

Judson Brewer
Yeah, I think I have a very simple one. It’s kind of fear of the future basically or relating to worry. And there’s an official definition but I’m terrible at remembering things. But, basically, it’s like worrying about something with an uncertain outcome or something in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then it sounds like we all do some of that and, to some extent, maybe we need to do some of that, and feel free to correct me if I’m off base here. So, I think most of us would like to have less anxiety. But can you maybe share an inspirational story or case study or something? Like, what’s really possible and realistic in terms of the human condition and our relationship to anxiety? And what would be…what’s optimal really look like? And can we get there?

Judson Brewer
I think we can, and my lab has been studying this for a long time, and we actually have some data to back that up. I’ll give you an example from a patient that I’ve been seeing in my clinic. He was referred to me for anxiety and, in fact, when he walked in the door, I didn’t even need to have him utter a word. He looked pretty anxious.

And when I took his history, he reported that he had actually stopped driving on the highway because he had gotten so freaked out just with having thoughts of getting in a car accident when he was on the highway. So, basically, he had full-blown panic disorder, and it went something like this. He would be on the highway, and he would have this thought that would come into his mind that would say, “Oh, you’re in a speeding bullet,” is the way that he put it. And that thought would lead him to get freaked out and anxious, and then his behavior was that he’d basically stopped driving on the highway, and barely even drove on residential streets.

And the result of that was that he would avoid those situations that led to these anxiety-provoking or these panic-provoking moments. Now, not only did he have panic disorder, but he also had what’s described as generalized anxiety disorder where he was basically anxious all the time. It didn’t have to be just when he was on the highway. So, it’s both panic and generalized anxiety disorder.

So, the idea is, and we can walk through how this works, but just to give you this nugget of this case study, we started having him map out how his mind had learned to become anxious. And over time, he got much better. And I can give you a little bit of a cliffhanger there so we’ll talk about how he did as we walk through this.

But one way to think about this, and how I worked with this patient, was to really understand how our minds work. If we don’t know how our minds work, how can we possibly work with them? And, in fact, we have these very basic learning mechanisms, these survival mechanisms. For example, fear is a really helpful mechanism for our survival. If you step out into the street, and you almost get hit by a car, step back onto the sidewalk, you learn, “Oh, look both ways before crossing the street.” So, that’s really helpful.

And there are actually only three elements that are needed to learn something like this. It’s called reward-based learning. You need a trigger, a behavior, and a result. So, the example with this patient, the trigger was he’d have these thoughts, the behavior was that he would avoid driving on the highway, and the result was that he avoided those panic attacks and those panicky feelings. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And so, in so doing, you kind of learn, “Okay, that’s the way to go is don’t get on the highway.”

Judson Brewer
Exactly. Exactly. The problem is driving tends to be helpful, especially for folks that don’t have good public transportation systems and whatnot, and these things, these learned anxiety behaviors and worry and things like that, can pigeonhole us into not even leaving our house and being very limited in many ways, let alone feeling anxious throughout the day, which isn’t very good.

So, the way to parse this, and the way that I worked with this patient was to help him see the difference between fear-based learning, like this negative reinforcement, which is reward-based learning, is the difference between that and how that can lead to anxiety. And the difference is that fear is a helpful survival mechanism but it can lead to anxiety when we have the absence of information.

So, think of our old brain, the survival brain, as helping us remember stuff, right? It helps us remember where our food is. It helps us remember where danger is so we can avoid it. Now, on top of this old brain, we’ve layered on this new part of the brain literally the neocortex. And the neocortex helps us think and plan for the future but it needs information in order to do that. It takes past instances and scenarios, it takes current information, and it kind of extrapolates into the future.

But if we don’t have that information, it just starts spinning out in these worry thoughts, like, “Oh, this could happen. Oh, no. Or this could happen, this could happen, this could happen,” because that uncertainty, there are a bunch of different scenarios that pop out. And what that leads to is anxiety. So, fear plus uncertainty equals anxiety. Fear by itself isn’t a problem. Uncertainty by itself isn’t a problem. But when you mix those two together, you get anxiety soup.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so now we zoom into the pandemic right here and now. I’m curious, are we doing some fear-based learning on some particular things? You’re also an expert on habits. Are there maybe some bad habits that we might be fear-based learning and reinforcing right now? What are they?

Judson Brewer
Yes. So, we’re certainly seeing this most prominently, I would say, and I pay attention to addictions and things like that because I’m an addiction psychiatrist. Drinking, for example, in society has gone up a lot. People are stress-eating more, they’re anxiety-eating more. Social media use, especially, people getting glued to their newsfeeds has gone up.

And so, here, with all this uncertainty, there’s more anxiety, and with that anxiety as a trigger, people are going to these things like drinking alcohol to make them feel better, or going to their newsfeeds to try to get information because information itself is kind of food for our brain. It helps us plan for the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, well, yeah, I could see that could be problematic in terms of if you’re eating more than you need to, then you’ll have the risk of becoming more overweight or obese. If you’re drinking more, there are natural consequences. And then the newsfeed, in terms of like addiction to distraction. Yeah, bad news. So, what should we do?

Judson Brewer
Well, the newsfeed, in particular, is kind of like a casino. So, if you think of reward-based learning, and the most potent form of reward-based learning is called intermittent reinforcement. So, think of a casino, and the casinos have dialed in those formula for their slot machines so that the slot machines only pay out at a certain schedule. And that schedule, you don’t know when it’s going to happen, otherwise we’d all win and the casinos wouldn’t make money.

So, they dial it in so that you don’t know when you’re going to win but you win basically randomly. Well, the same is true when people go on the news right now. They check their newsfeed, nothing new, nothing new, nothing new. And then, suddenly, bam, big news article hits. Dopamine spurts in their brain, and they say, “Oh, wow, I should check the news more often.” So, the news right now is just like a slot machine. I just want to highlight that.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny. I’ve been thinking more and more that I should check the news less often because I guess I’m…call it self-awareness or a good week vacation in the nature, but it’s like it so rarely pays off. I guess what I’m looking for is I’d like some hope, “Hey, we got a treatment. We got a vaccine.” I’d like something rich and interesting to tickle my brain, like, “Hmm, I’ve never thought about that situation or that reality for people. And how about that, I’m quite intrigued and fascinated to dig in and learn more.” And I’m satisfied in the sense that I’ve had a pleasant learning. I very rarely get any of that. When I go to the news it’s sort of like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, COVID is still happening, and, yeah, politics are still happening. Okay, I guess I’m all caught up now.”

Judson Brewer
Yes. Well, you’re actually hinting at what we can do about this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, do tell.

Judson Brewer
Yeah, I think of this as a three-step process. The first is understanding how our minds work, right? As I mentioned earlier, if we don’t know how our minds work, we can’t possibly work with them. So, just like my patient, well, I’ll give you an example. So, the patient that I described earlier, the instruction I sent to him home with was to simply map out habit loops around anxiety. Just start there. What are the triggers? What are the behaviors? And what are the results? And once he could start to map these out, then he could start to work with them.

So, for example, he came back, I think it was two weeks later, and he actually looked much happier than when he first came to see me, and he couldn’t wait to tell me something when he sat down in the chair. And I said, “What’s going on?” And he said, “Oh, I lost 14 pounds.” So, this guy was very, very overweight. And I looked at him kind of puzzled because I was thinking we’re going to talk about anxiety, and he said, “Well, I mapped out these habit loops and I realized anxiety was triggering me to eat, to stress-eat, and that was actually not making me feel any better so I stopped doing it.”

And granted, losing 14 pounds in two weeks is pretty fast, but let’s just say, he had a long way to go, he had a lot of weight to lose. And so, in that case, when he just stopped overeating, he was naturally shedding weight because he was not taking in as many calories as he was burning. Long story short, with his weight, so he was overweight, he was hypertensive because of his obesity, and he also had a fatty liver, and he also had sleep apnea. Within six months, he had lost 100 pounds, and all of those had results. He had normal blood pressure, his liver was back to normal, he didn’t have obstructive sleep apnea anymore.

So, that was the first step, was helping him see what he was doing, what these habits loops were around anxiety. So, that’s first step, map out these habit loops, what’s the trigger was, what’s the behavior was, what’s the results. The second step is to see very, very clearly how rewarding or unrewarding this behavior is. There’s a lot of science, this goes back to the ‘70s, there are these two researchers called Rescorla and Wagner who had this reward value curve where basically what they determined was based on previous rewards, how rewarding a behavior was in the past, you’re more likely to repeat it in the future. If it’s rewarding, you’re going to do it again.

The problem is that we tend to lay down behaviors as habits and we don’t pay attention to the reward value. For example, I work with a lot of people who want to quit smoking. And on average, they start smoking at the age of 13. And, actually, I had a patient who had come to me after 40 years of smoking, so he’d reinforced that habit loop about 300,000 times, and it was just habit for him. So, I told him to start paying attention as he was smoking, to really just notice what it’s like to smoke. And he realizes, smoking actually doesn’t taste very good.

And so, here, it helped him see what the current reward value was for this behavior, not when he was 13 when he was smoking to be cool or rebel or whatever, but right now. And so, that reward value naturally drops. And we’ve actually done studies both with overeating and with smoking, and it takes us few as 10 to 15 times of people actually paying attention when they do these behaviors for that reward value to drop.

Now, that opens the door for what I call the BBO, the bigger, better offer. Our brains are going to look, and say, “Okay, smoking isn’t that great. Overeating isn’t that great. Give me something better.” So, what we have people do is just notice what it’s like to just eat a normal amount of food, or eat healthy food instead of junk food, or not smoke a cigarette, for example. And within these 10 to 15 times, they actually flipped their behavior from overeating to stopping overeating, basically eating a normal amount of food or not eating the junk food because it actually feels better.

And we can even teach them simple things like getting curious about what those sensations in their body feel like that urge them to eat. And that curiosity itself is a more rewarding “behavior,” it’s an internal behavior, than getting caught up in a craving or getting caught up in worry.

I remember working with a patient, we have this app-based mindfulness training for anxiety, actually we did a couple studies where we got close to 60% reduction in these generalized anxiety disorder scales. She talked about when she started to get anxious, just getting curious about that anxiety itself, and that it flipped into, “Oh, curiosity feels better than feeling anxious.” And then it became habitual for her that whenever she notices anxiety starting to come up that she would get curious about it instead, and then the anxiety would go away.

So, that’s really the step two and three once we’ve mapped out these habit loops. Step two is really noticing how unrewarding the old behavior is, which then opens up that gap to find that bigger, better offer. And a bigger, better offer can be awareness itself, curiosity, “Oh, what it’s like when I have an urge to eat? Can I get curious about that? Oh, that curiosity itself feels pretty good.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love it if we could maybe apply that to some bad habits perhaps that professionals have, maybe they’ve picked it up in the midst of the pandemic, or maybe it’s always been there. So, it sounds like I was starting to do some of that with regard to my news habit, like, “Hmm, it seems like the current reward that it’s offering isn’t that great.”

Judson Brewer
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess we’d do the same if you’re checking emails compulsively like 30 times a day, or if you’re in the social media newsfeed. So, can you sort of walk through that process in those contexts? So, you get curious, you sort of notice what it’s doing for you and what it’s not doing for you. And then how might that play out?

Judson Brewer
Yeah. So, how about this? I’ve been seeing a lot of people comment on how they are really struggling with procrastination right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Judson Brewer
So, I’m guessing this can apply to a lot of folks at their jobs, a lot of professionals. So, whether it’s stress or anxiety as that trigger, or even just seeing or thinking about a project that they need to complete, or even looking at their inbox where they see a bunch of emails from their boss that they haven’t responded to yet, right? So, there’s the trigger. It doesn’t feel good so the behavior is to procrastinate. Maybe they go on social media, maybe they do something else, maybe they go for a snack as a way to avoid that unpleasant feeling of actually doing the work. And then the result is they get a brief relief because they’re not thinking about what they should be doing. So, there’s a habit loop around procrastination.

What we can do is help people map out that habit loop and just kind of articulate what’s happening, see what they actually get from it, “So, how does it feel to procrastinate?” Well, in the moment, it might feel a little bit better but, ultimately, they’re further behind on the project. They might feel guilty for going and eating food when they weren’t hungry, or checking out their social media feed, or looking at cute pictures of puppies on Instagram, or whatever it is. And then they realize, “Oh, this isn’t actually that great.”

And then I have them compare what that procrastination habit feels like to actually turning off their email alerts and their phone, and just taking an hour and just doing a deep dive into work. Nobody has ever said to me, “You know, it feels terrible to be focused, it feels terrible to get work done.” It actually feels very good. So, here, just being able to compare what procrastination feels like compared to being focused, helps people shift from that procrastination habit into getting work done.

Now, notice how this didn’t take any willpower. It really just takes the power of observation, awareness, “Oh, what’s this feel like compared to, you know, what is A feel like compared to B?” And if they can see the results of each of those very clearly, their brain does the work for them through this reward valuation system.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. Sounds easy. I’m guessing it’s not in practice. Quite so easy of an experience because, at least a few times, you’re still going to feel the urge whether it’s smoking, eating, email checking, even after you’ve sort of observed, and say, “Hmm, you know what, this doesn’t pay off so well. The alternative is better,” you’re still feeling the urge. What do you recommend?

Judson Brewer
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. So, this isn’t to say that this is a magic pill or a perfect fix, especially when those urges feel very uncomfortable. Our natural inclination is to do whatever we can that can make that urge go away the fastest. If it’s an urge to smoke a cigarette, we quickly go out for a smoke break. If it’s an urge to check our social media feeds, social media is set up to decrease the barriers to entry so that we will quickly hop on social media. So, that’s really important to understand is that they’ve basically greased the skids to make it very easy for us to perpetuate these old habits.

Now, so you asked, “So, what can we do?” The key is, even afterwards, after we’ve done something, we can still learn from it. I think of this as these retrospective moments where you can still learn from a behavior if the juice is still there, if you can remember what it felt like to do it. So, let’s say that, we can use procrastination, we can use eating, we can use any of these examples, after we’ve procrastinated, as long as we can link up the behavior and the result of the behavior, and we can feel into what that feels like or what it feels like to even recall what it felt like previously, we can still learn from it.

I think it’s important to highlight that reward-based learning isn’t based on the behavior itself. It’s actually based on the result of the behavior. That’s what drives future behavior. So, the trigger isn’t that important, the behavior itself isn’t as important as how rewarding the behavior is. So, if we can link up that behavior result or that cause and effect relationship, and if we can even do that retrospectively, and we can see, “Oh, when I’d procrastinated, it didn’t actually feel that good,” that can help us learn for the future so that the next time we have an urge to procrastinate, we can just start to bring to mind, “Oh, what was it like last time I did this?” It takes a moment of awareness, a moment of reflection. And the more we can do that, the more that opens that gap between habitual reaction and kind of an aware response. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And so then, I guess if we’re trying to establish good habits, it seems like much of that would apply, it’s just that the feeling is a happy positive one. Is there any different suggestion that you’d put forward when it comes to if we’re trying to build up a good habit?

Judson Brewer
The same process applies just as you surmised. One thing I would say is that it’s really important to notice all the nuanced qualities of these good habits. So, for example, I think there’s a societal habit now of divisiveness, of this tribal psychology where it’s so easy to categorize somebody, or get them to categorize themselves as an us-them thing, everything from politicizing, wearing masks, to this and that.

So, we can notice, “What is it like when I feel othered, when somebody says, ‘Oh, you’re wrong, I’m right’?” or when we’re trying to defend a position, for example, “I’m right, you’re wrong.” What does that even feel like as compared to when we’re all working together for a common cause? For example, eradicating a viral infection, just hypothetically speaking. So, here, for these good habits, I think it’s really important to pay attention to what that quality feels like, and my lab is actually studying this right now. We can look at it in simple terms, like, “Does something feel more contracted or closed down versus opened up or expanded?”

So, as a pop quiz, hotshot, let me ask you. What’s it feel like when you are afraid or when you’re anxious? Does it feel more closed down or does it feel more opened up?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s very closed down and it seems like there’s almost only one option.

Judson Brewer
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
This must be the thing that happens now.

Judson Brewer
Yeah, absolutely. And so, it knows us, it focuses us, that’s the survival thing, right? If you’re being chased, your job is to quickly run away as compared to sit back and think about, “What should I do?” So, now compare that to joy. Does joy feel closed down or does it feel opened up?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it feels opened up in the sense that, you know, if I’m really joyful, it’s like, “Oh, I might want to dance or sing or jump on trampoline or give thanks.” There’s many options that feel great.

Judson Brewer
Right. So, there, we can now look at…and my lab has actually done this. If you look at these different categories, so if you look at fear, you look at anger, people tend to categorize these as more closed feelings. If you look at joy, but also look at things like curiosity or connectedness, people report that these feel much more open than these others. Now, if you had to pick, would you rather have something that feels more closed or would you rather have something that feels more open?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, open. Sure.

Judson Brewer
Yeah. So, our brain actually has these already lined up in its natural reward hierarchy. We’d rather do things that feel more open than closed. Now the reason that I bring all this forward is that we can start paying attention to things like, “Well, what’s it like when I’m fighting with somebody on the internet or with a family member? What does that feel like compared to when I’m really listening, like deeply listening, wanting to understand their perspective?” Which ones feel closed? Which ones feels open? And which of those categories actually feels better?

If we simply pay attention to those things, we’ll naturally move toward these “good habits.” I think of connectedness, working together as a good habit. It’s probably the way that we will survive as a species as compared to divisiveness. So, if we look at those and we just pay attention to how does something feel. Does it feel closed versus open? That can actually help lead us in the direction of these good habits simply through paying attention to the results of those behaviors.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Lovely. Well, tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Judson Brewer
No, I just want to highlight I think of curiosity as a superpower. And I’ll mention this and just kind of bring the circle to a close around the patient that I mentioned at the beginning. So, I talked about how we taught him to pay attention to understand how his mind worked, to notice how unrewarding, for example, stress-eating was, and then what the results of these behaviors were versus different behaviors. He lost 100 pounds.

But, ultimately, over the course of about six months, and I kid you not. I remember walking out of…I was teaching a class at our school of public health at Brown University, which is on South Main Street, and this guy pulls up to the curve in his car and rolls down the window, it’s my patient, and I looked at him kind of confused because this is the guy that was struggling driving anywhere. And he says, “Oh, yeah, I’m an Uber driver now.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Judson Brewer
So, here’s an example when somebody really learns how their mind works, they can really learn to master it and move from overeating to losing a bunch of weight, and move from full-on panic to sort of where they can’t drive to literally becoming an Uber driver.

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

Judson Brewer
One immediately that comes to mind is Dorothy Parker, where she says, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Judson Brewer
I’ll give you one favorite study recently, where there was a group at UCLA where they were studying adolescents who were shown their own Instagram feeds since they were measuring their brain activity as they were viewing their own Instagram feeds. And the only manipulation they made in the study was how many likes each picture got, and so they can look at the difference in brain activity between a bunch of likes and a few likes.

Long story short, they found that when adolescents got a bunch of likes to their Instagram pictures that their reward centers in their brain lit up the nucleus accumbens, which is the same network of brain regions that gets activated with every known drug of abuse, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, tobacco, all these. So, Instagram seems to activate these reward centers and, at the same time, they were activating these self-referential networks, this default network, in particular the posterior cingulate cortex.

And so, the study was one of the first that I know of that actually linked reward and basically thinking about ourselves or something to do with ourselves. And so, I thought that was absolutely fascinating. I wrote about it in my book The Craving Mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I don’t want to say anything negative about “influencers” but sometimes I just get a little bit of that impression that you’re really into yourself, and it’s not so appealing. Now, I understand in some ways it’s a business model, and they’ve got sponsors or whatever, and it’s the game and the business they’re in. But sometimes that just seems to kind of come across, and it sounds like there may be some scientific evidence that it could be a real thing.

Judson Brewer
Yes. And I think people can get lost in it just like any addiction basically. Somebody is so lost in their own persona or whatever, especially if they’re receiving a bunch of rewards, monetary or whatever, that it’s hard to step back and get a greater perspective. I would think of YouTube really should be named MeTube because that’s what it’s all about is getting that one video to go viral.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Judson Brewer
In terms of novels, I think my favorite one is The Art of Racing in the Rain.

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

Judson Brewer
Awareness. Does that count as a tool?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Yeah. And a favorite habit?

Judson Brewer
Being curious.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, when it comes to the habit of being curious, are there particular go-to questions you ask yourself that spark that up and get it going?

Judson Brewer
There’s a particular mantra I use but don’t ask me how to spell it, which is basically “Hmm…” And I like that because it drops me into my direct experience rather than getting lost in my head.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, what’s so funny is that it’s like mantra I think is the word for it because almost just like if you sing something or you do a little dance, it’s hard to feel all that bad. Like, the action itself produces an emotional response. And I think “Hmm…” falls right in that same category, so thank you for that.

And how about is there a particular nugget you share that you’re really known for, people quote it back to you frequently?

Judson Brewer
The linking this habit loop to reward-based learning is something that people bring back to me pretty frequently. And the emphasis on curiosity as a superpower is something that I hear reverberating a lot in my teachings.

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

Judson Brewer
I have a website, DrJud.com, and also a YouTube channel, same name DrJud.

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

Judson Brewer
I would say challenge yourselves to step out of your comfort zones and really embrace uncertainty so that we can move into growth zones rather than panic zones.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jud, this has been a treat. I wish you all the best.

Judson Brewer
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Matt, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Matt Tenney
My pleasure, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into a lot of your good stuff from servant leadership and mindfulness and more. And in the subtitle of your book Serve to Be Great, you mentioned there’s some leadership lessons from a prison and a monastery. So, I love a good story. So, what are the cool stories coming from the prison and the monastery?

Matt Tenney
Well, there’s a lot.The summary here is that I’m pretty hardwired, I would say I’m 100% hardwired to be just a Type A, goal-driven, pretty selfish person, and I think we all have certain ways that we’re wired, and that’s certainly me.

But this certainly reached its peak when I was, this is 2001, that was about 18 years or so ago. When I was 24, I tried to take a shortcut to success and attempted a fraud against the government and, as a result of being both dishonest and stupid, I ended up spending five and a half years confined to prison. And, at first, of course, this was just the worst thing that had ever happened in my life and I was suicidal for a while.

Then, as everybody does, I think when you’re in a really difficult situation, whether it’s one you put yourself in like I did, or one that just kind of happens to you, you gradually adjust. And about a year into it though, I started learning about the practice of mindfulness and this actually made that experience of being confined, it transformed it into the most meaningful experience of my life.

Because I’m Type A, when I started learning about it, I went at it 100%. And within about six months of starting the practice, I was making the effort to be mindful, just about every waking moment of the day, during all of my daily activities. And it was around that time when it just hit me one day that, “Holy cow, I’m actually happier here that I’d ever been in my life.” And I don’t know anything, and I’m not achieving anything, I’m just being, and there’s no fun per se.

So, that inspired me to go as deep as I could in the practice and I ended up essentially ordaining and training as almost identically to how monks train in monasteries for the last three and a half years.

I found the monastic ideal to be extremely noble because the core of it is you’re making love the top priority. Instead of making your own selfish ambition or your own goals the top priority, you’re making, contributing to the wellbeing of others your top priority.

And that turned my time of confinement into the most meaningful experience of my life, so much so that that experience inspired me so much so that, after leaving, I went to live “real” monastery and almost ordained to become a monk the rest of my life, but then realized for me that would be like trying to take another shortcut because it was really easy for me.

I’m an introvert, I like having lots of quiet time, so I realized if I really want to be able to serve on a large scale and be most helpful to people, I need to go out in the real world and do stuff, and earn a living, and probably have a family, which I do now with two small kids, so people can relate better to what we’re talking about.

I would imagine if a monk came into the average company and said, “Here’s the way to be more at peace and more successful,” everything that person said is going to be taken with a grain of salt because you’re thinking, “Dude, all you do is sit around and meditate and do the dishes. Like, what do you have to worry about?” So, that was why I ended up not ordaining. But I’ve tried to live as close to the monastic ideal as possible for the last 17-18 years on my journey from prisoner to monk to social entrepreneur.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating and there’s so much to dig into there. All right. So, let’s talk about some of the nitty-gritties of mindfulness and practice a little bit later.

Matt Tenney
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
And, first, talk about sort of this mindset that when it comes to making love the ideal and serving others. So, you talk a lot about servant leadership. Can you share how exactly do you define that and how does that differ from the norm?

Matt Tenney
Well, the kind of the standard definition of servant leadership is if you imagine a pyramid and most organizations are structured with a C suite at the top of the pyramid and then below them are VPs, below them are directors, below them are mid-level managers, and then all of your frontline people fill out the base of the pyramid.

And the basic idea of servant leadership is that instead of viewing the hierarchy like that, where you’ve got these very senior people on the top and everyone in the organization is serving them and their agenda, it’s actually upside down. So, the senior people view their job as serving all the people that they lead.

And, counterintuitively, another way of putting this is the way that I like to put it is making love the top priority. In fact, I just did a TEDx Talk that that was the title, why the best leaders make love their top priority. And there’s an abundance of evidence demonstrating why this is so. But you can summarize it very, very simply. I mean, it’s kind of common sense.

The idea is if you make profit the top priority, you, as a leader, you’re either going to consciously or unconsciously neglect employees in a systematic way. And when employees are consistently neglected, they’re going to become increasingly disengaged over time and, as a result, customer service is going to decline, product quality is going to decline, and innovation is very unlikely to occur. In other words, the organization is eventually going to fail to serve the customer. In fact, they might be failing immediately.

Whereas, if you flip that, so to me a servant leader or someone who makes love the top priority, the filter that they use for every decision is, “How is this going to impact the long-term wellbeing of the people that I lead, that I take care of?” And if the answer is it’s going to have a negative impact, then it’s eliminated as an option.

And, counterintuitively, what happens when you do this is when people know that the leadership genuinely cares about them and is more concerned about their long-term wellbeing than they are on their next bonus, then what happens is people take very good care of their customers, right, through customer service, through better quality, through being more free to innovate because they’re not in a culture of fear. And, as a result, the customer is very well-served and, of course, the key to any organization, whether it’s for profit, non-profit, education, is having customers that are happy and loyal. And that’s the way that that’s achieved over the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, that filter is particularly applied from the employee perspective, like how all these affect their long-term wellbeing of those I lead. And so, those you lead, you’re thinking about employees as opposed to customers.

Matt Tenney
Exactly, yeah. If you take very good of the employees, they take good care of the customers. And that’s actually something that a lot of organizations get wrong, in my opinion, is that you hear a lot of organizations say, “We have this intense customer focus.” And so the problem with that is, it’s not that it’s wrong, and I’m sure everyone listening and knows a story that they can relate to about this, but if you have a customer that’s a real pain in your side, they’re a pain for all of the employees that serve that customer.

And if they’re demanding too much and it’s unrealistic, to continue to enable them to do that, what you’re ultimately doing is you’re degrading the wellbeing of your employees and their ability to serve not only that customer but other customers. Morale goes down, and it’s actually a net loss. Whereas, if you were to say, “Okay. Well, this customer is a real pain. We need to ask them to change their behavior or fire them,” in the short term that sounds really scary, right? You say, “Wait a second, but that’s a big source of revenue.” Well, revenue is nice but not at the expense of the morale and the wellbeing of your team members, because if that degrades, not only is that customer going to end up being failed to be served but others will be as well.

And this is actually one of the counterintuitive applications, I’m sure many of you have heard of the Pareto Principle, the 80-20 Rule, that many of the most successful entrepreneurs I’m aware of apply, is they realize that 20% of their customers are delivering 80% of their results and, usually, those 20% are really easy to work with. Many of that 80% of your customers that are only delivering 20% of the results, and oftentimes they’re the ones that complain the most, they create the most stress for employees. So, a good practice is to, as many of those as you can afford to do it, to refer them out to your competition. Let your competition serve them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. So then, I’m thinking about zooming in a little bit in terms of, okay, so we’re making love the top priority and you’re filtering out based on that guideline. What are some of the everyday practices, behaviors, activities that really make this come to life?

Matt Tenney
That’s the secret right there, Pete. So, in my experience, I wrote Serve to Be Great I think in 2012 or something so that book has been out for seven years and I’ve spoken extensively on this subject, interacted with many leaders, many employees and organizations, and, almost invariably, everyone wants to do this.

There are very few people that get up and say, “You know, my recipe for success is I’m going to go into work today and be a selfish jerk. That’s my plan.” I’ve never met anyone like that. I’m sure they’re out there but they certainly don’t come out and proclaim that to you. Everyone that I’ve met wants to do this. But I think if you were to ask most people to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being you do this consistently 100% of the time, and 1 you never do it, most people aren’t anywhere near at 10. Most people would rate themselves at a 6 or 7, maybe an 8 at best.

So, the way I like to look at it is, well, let’s think about it as, “What’s stopping us from doing it?” because we all want to, right? What are the biggest blocks to doing this? And this kind of comes back to your original question about the subtitle of the book, “Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom.” Interestingly, I think the three biggest blocks are resolved by living a little bit more like a monk.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Matt Tenney
By that, I don’t mean people need to go out and be monks. But I’ll give you the three big ideas and then you can dive in wherever you like and we can go as deep as you like.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Good.

Matt Tenney
So, here’s the summary. So, the three big blocks, in my mind, are, one, is that because of our conditioning and the way society has programmed us, we don’t focus on making love the top priority. We focus on achieving goals. And not that there’s anything wrong with achieving goals. The problem is if we focus on achieving goals at the expense of our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of those around us, that’s when that becomes problematic.

So, the first biggest block is that we just don’t focus enough on what we know in our heart of hearts is the most important thing not just in business but in life, which is to prioritize loving people over getting stuff or getting stuff done in a worldly sense. The second block is we’re busy. Have you noticed this, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Matt Tenney
People are busy. As I’m sure every listener listening to this knows that we’re all very busy. And there is science supporting, and we can talk about the study if you like. It’s actually both a hilarious and sad study at once demonstrating what, I think, we all know to be true, is that the busier you are, the less likely you are to serve the people around you, the more likely you are to be focused on your own self-interests and short-term gain.

And then the third one is we’re incredibly distracted, and not just distracted by things, but even by our own thinking, and this is where mindfulness training becomes absolutely key. So, that’s the summary, and then, yeah, wherever you’d like to dive in, I’d be happy to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I am intrigued by, I think, the study you have in mind, the one about the seminarians who read the good Samaritan story.

Matt Tenney
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s come up a couple of times, so I’ll let those who haven’t heard of it yet Google it and enjoy, but it’s a goody. It’s a goody.

Matt Tenney
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, let’s hear about we don’t focus on love, we focus on achieving goals. And you make a nice distinction between there’s being goals and there’s doing goals. And this has been kind of resonant for me lately because I’ve got a pretty crystal-clear picture on one page, like everything that I want to achieve in life, and I feel great. Like, that’s it. That’s everything, it’s on a page, we got clarity. Game on. But I don’t have as much crystal clarity on everything I want to be in life. And I’m working on that right now, I’m thinking about who I really admire, and what is it about them, but it’s a work in process for me at the moment, and so not yet at that level of clarity. So, lay it on us, how do we shift that focus?

Matt Tenney
Well, I think the first step that’s a very, very simple one, there are multiple steps of this, but the simple one that can be applied immediately and has immense benefit is to just simply shift our focus. Because if you think about what we’re focusing on, on a day-to-day basis, most of us reflect on that, there’s not a whole lot of time, especially if we’re in a really demanding work environment where we’re really focused on, “What am I doing to serve my teammates?” Or, if you’re in a leadership position, “What am I doing to serve my direct reports or my peers as leaders?” Where it’s just from one thing to the next, right? It’s like, “Well, I got this. I have got to take care of this. I have to take care…” and there’s pressure to achieve the goals, so we focus on that.

And where I think it can start most simply is just by simply changing your job description and using that as something that you review at least every day – to start, I would recommend multiple times a day – so that you start to refocus. In fact, at first, if you really feel like you’re just in a really demanding environment, you may want to read your job description once an hour, you know, take a five-minute break, go to the bathroom, come back and re-read this job description.

But what I suggest is if you simply change your primary job description and then place everything else as a secondary responsibility, because if you look at most job descriptions, they’re just terrible and they’re not inspiring. Your average leader job description is, “Oh, you’re in charge of the strategic planning and the direction of the organization and working with stakeholders, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That’s, for one, is not inspiring. Two, it doesn’t really give you an idea of what you really need to be focused on as your primary goal in making love and serving the people around you that primary goal.

So, what I suggest is you just simply reword it. I’m not saying go to HR and say, “Hey, can you rewrite my job description for me?” But this is what I’ve done with every job I had until I started working for myself, and when I worked for myself, it’s very easy because our mission is just obvious and the vision is obvious, so it’s not really written per se as a job description, but you could just change your first line of your job description as, “My job is to help the people around me to thrive.”

And if you want to be more elaborate, “To do whatever I can to do good by the people around me, to contribute to their wellbeing and their growth. And that’s my primary job. Everything else in my job description is a secondary duty.” And if you just remind yourself of that, it’s amazing what happens to brain.

This is actually one of the keys of the transformative process of the monastic training is that you recite vows every single day, reminding yourself multiple times. At first, it was probably 20 or 30 times a day reciting this vow that, essentially, my job is to help all people to be happy and to be free from suffering, which is obviously a bit grandiose but it’s inspiring. It’s like, “This is why I wake up in the morning. I work on myself to make myself better so that I can be a benefit to others and help them to be happy and to, thereby, make a better impact in the people around them.” That’s the core of monastic training.

So, to give little examples of how this works, we’ll start with maybe a case study, and you can cut me off, Pete, if this one has come up a lot as well. But, years ago, and I think this might be close to 15 years or so ago, Disney was having problems with their custodial staff. Do you remember hearing about this?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no. Keep going.

Matt Tenney
Okay. So, the problem was, as I’m sure almost everyone knows, Disney pride themselves on an amazing guest experience. That’s what they want to deliver. They want everyone who comes there to have a magical experience as a guest. And what was happening was the custodial staff was getting all of these complaints about how they were being rude and they weren’t being helpful, and it just kind of degraded from the experience at Disney which, of course, was a huge problem for them.

So, they put a lot of energy into trying to resolve this. And what it turned out, they figured out what the problem ultimately was, was the job description. The job description read, “Your job is to keep the park clean. You need to keep the bathrooms clean. You need to keep the trash looking neat. You need to keep all the walkways clean and tidy.”

So, think about this, if that’s your job description, and you see guests walking around throwing trash all over the place, you view the guests as your enemy essentially, right? “This person is making my job really hard.” And so, when someone, when a guest who just threw trash on the ground came up and ask the custodian, “Hey, where is the Dumbo ride?” the custodian would say, “I don’t know. I’m just a janitor,” and that was their response.

So, they decided, “Well, they do more than that. They’re part of our team. They’re part of delivering happiness to our guests. Why don’t we let them know that?” And they changed the job description, they said, “Your job is to create happy guests, to contribute to the happiness of our guests. How do you do that? Well, you provide them with directions when they need it, you give a kind smiling face when they ask you questions. And, as a collateral duty, you pick up the trash, and you clean the bathrooms, and blah, blah, blah, blah.”

And guess what happened? All the complaints went away, janitors were motivated and inspired to come to work because they had a noble cause for coming to work, which is to serve people and bring happiness to people, which is something we all want to do, and the guest satisfaction scores went up, and the job satisfaction for the janitors went up. Everybody wins.

So, I don’t know if there’s any neuroscientist that can explain this perfectly, but I think what’s happening is, from my limited understanding of the neuroscientist friends in my circles, is that we have a portion of the brain, and a lot of people attribute this to the particular activating system or the particular formation that its job is to filter out that which we don’t think is important.

And we’ve all had the experience of you buy a new car or you meet a new friend with a unique name and then, all of a sudden, you start seeing that car everywhere, or you hear that name everywhere.  And we know, intellectually, that car just didn’t magically multiply all over the place because we bought it, or that name just didn’t magically get slapped on everyone just because we heard it. What happened is our brain started telling us that it’s important so we start to see it everywhere this thing that we had never seen because our brain didn’t allow us to see it.

And my guess is this is what’s happening, is when you start to tell your brain, over and over and over again, “This is what’s really important to me,” you start to see opportunities to serve others and to love well. You start seeking out opportunities to improve in that area. You start to eliminate activities that degrade your ability to love well. Why? Because you’ve simply shifted your focus.

And, again, I think the easiest way to do that is to just change your job description and read it every day for a while until you really start feeling that, “Hey, I believe this. I believe that my core job description is to help the people around me to thrive.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And so, then you naturally notice those opportunities because it’s built in there. And that’s a nice tip there is that it may take a couple dozen reps and the first days to get into that groove. Excellent. Thank you. So, a lot of stuff coming together here with regard to that creates satisfaction for your own self in terms of you’re enjoying the job more as well as for the folks that you’re leading, they think, “This person is great. I enjoy working with them.” So, a lot of good stuff happening here.

So, let’s talk then about mindfulness in particular. You’ve called it the ultimate success habit. First, why is that?

Matt Tenney
Well, I use that word very intentionally and very precisely because I think we kind of live in two worlds at once, right? So, we have this conventional world where stuff like getting a paycheck and being able to pay your bills really matters. And then there’s something more ultimate, which all of us have a sense of. I don’t think any of us really know intellectually, but we have this sense that there’s something much deeper about life. In the end, what really matters is, “Were we happy?” and, “Did we love well?” That’s what really ultimately things come down to.

So, the reason I call mindfulness the ultimate success habit is because it actually has benefit in both of those realms. So, the practice can be very instrumental in improving our effectiveness in the conventional realm where we’re more effective at our job, we’re more effective as leaders, we make better decisions, so on and so forth. But it was designed not for those purposes. It was actually designed for the ultimate, which is to be happy under any circumstance, so no matter what happens to you, you’re okay and you have peace.

And because of that, you have this tremendous capacity to love well and your ability to overcome our selfish conditioning that we’re all subject to, to some degree, we can gradually overcome that conditioning. That’s actually what the practice was designed to do and that’s why I call mindfulness the ultimate success habit because it contributes to success in the conventional realm as well as what really, really matters, ultimate success.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, yeah, I’ve been playing around, reading some assorted studies on mindfulness and its benefits. I’d love it if, perhaps, you could share your favorite in terms of this result emerged from mindfulness practice, whatever sort of study is your favorite that has a big number that you find exciting.

Matt Tenney
The one that I’m most excited about is not necessarily a single study in particular, but it’s actually the work of a neuroscientist who’s a professor at the University of Wisconsin, named Richie Davidson, and he’s been doing this work for a long, long time.

And, in the ultimate sense, so we’ll skip some of the conventional things, and there are many benefits in the conventional sense, especially around decision-making and emotional intelligence. Those two benefits are fairly well-established in the scientific literature. But the one I’m most excited about is there seems to be very sound and replicated evidence for the fact that we can actually change traits with mindfulness, specifically traits like kindness and compassion.

And this isn’t like a flashy number or something that sounds super sexy, but I’d like you to think about this for a second. There a lot of things you can do to change your state, right? If you’re about to go give a speech in front of a group, you can do 20 pushups and then stand up and raise your arms over your head, like Amy Cuddy teaches in her TEDx Talk, and you’re going to go out there and be way more confident than you would have had you not done that.

But there are not too many things that we know of that literally rewire your brain so that you develop a new trait that becomes your baseline way of being in the world. And there’s very compelling evidence that Richie Davidson and his team at the University of Wisconsin had been putting together. In fact, he and Daniel Goleman wrote a book on it called Altered Traits.

So, if you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend that book. They go through all of the ups and downs and the shortcomings and the pluses of the research, and then kind of really focused in on this stuff that there’s consensus in the scientific community that this is actually fact and not just theory. And that’s where they seem to come to consensus, is that with prolonged training, although you can receive some benefit immediately, if you really make the effort to focus here on this type of training, you can change your traits so that you become the person that we all aspire to be, which is somebody who’s not just effective at their job, and earns a good living, and has friends, and so on and so forth, but we become a person who exemplifies kindness and compassion in all of our interactions.

And I know everyone listening, is somewhere inside that immediately resonates with them. Why? Because this is ultimately what we’re here for. We’re all in this together and we all know that being kind and compassionate and doing what we can to be of benefit to the people around us is what really makes life rich. And I’ve never met a person who there just isn’t some glimpse of aspiration to live that way. This is something that just, it seems to me like this is just why we’re here.

So, that’s why I’m most excited about that, is the idea that this doesn’t have to just be a high-minded ideal, “Yes, I’m inspired by someone like Martin Luther King, or Herb Kelleher at Southwest, or Gandhi, or someone like that,” and think, “I could never be like that.” Actually, that’s not true. We can be like that. We can rewire our brains in ways that allow us to embody the traits of the people we most admire in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. And so, these traits are in the realm of service and generosity. But I imagine, it’s fair to say that, I guess, is it like any virtue that we can grab – courage, patience, fill in the blank – it’s within your reach via these approaches?

Matt Tenney
I think, immediately, people become skeptical, and think, “Oh, this can do everything?” Well, it’s not that it can do everything, but I think you’re right, Pete, it can help us to develop most of the qualities that we’re most interested in.

And just to give a brief explanation as to why, is that I think if we really look at what prevents us from having those qualities, it’s this tricky little thing that lives between our ears called the ego, right? It’s that little voice in our heads that’s always telling us that we’re not good enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not beautiful enough, we don’t have enough stuff, we haven’t achieved enough goals, we need to be somebody, get something, do something. It’s just never satisfied.

And what mindfulness training, at its core, is all about is learning to recognize that that voice is just simply not who we are. It’s something that we can actually listen to, with third person objectivity, just as though we’re listening to a podcast. And that’s not a theory, that’s not something you have to believe, that’s something you can realize directly just by doing the practice, because that’s what the practice is.

The practice is to learn to wake up and, instead of being in your thoughts all the time as though you are your thoughts, to just wake up and realize, “Oh, I can observe these images going through my mind as though I’m watching a television screen. I can listen to this voice in my head just as though I was listening to a podcast. And when I do that, something really special happens. There’s a little bit of space between what I feel I truly am and that voice.” And the degree there was some space there is the degree to which we’re free from that voice.

And so, now that voice can say whatever it wants and it doesn’t affect what we actually do or how we actually behave in the world. It’s just something else. It’s like if you’re watching a television program, here’s a really interesting way of looking at this. So, let’s imagine that you’re watching a movie or a television program from start to finish, and you’re about halfway in, and there’s a really emotional scene, and it draws you in, and you can feel the emotion of the actors on the stage, and you’re just in it like it’s real, right? We can all relate to this.

Now, let’s imagine that you were in the kitchen getting a slice of pizza, and you came in, you haven’t watched any of this thing, and you just look at the TV screen. It’s just some actors doing stuff, right? You might laugh at somebody who’s at a funeral thinking, “Oh, that’s really bad acting.” Whereas the person on the couch is just in tears because the star just lost their beloved one and it’s really sad.

And so, this is what tends to happen. Everyone that I’ve ever worked with that practices mindfulness consistently, it’s more and more of this drama in our heads become something that’s like, “Oh, that’s just like programming. It’s just like a TV,” and it has less and less of effect on how we actually show up. So, if the thoughts are skillful, we engage them and we follow them. If they’re not, they can be allowed to just arise and pass away as though it was a television screen across the room while we’re eating a piece of pizza.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And so then, when you are doing mindfulness or engaging in a mindfulness practice, what does that mean in terms of what’s happening? Like, I sit down, and then what?

Matt Tenney
Well, there’s a common misconception I’d like to clear up, Pete, I hope it’s okay with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Take it away.

Matt Tenney
It’s that I think that’s exactly what most people think of, is, “If I’m going to practice mindfulness, that means I need to go sit down and do nothing and engage in some type of special practice.” And there’s great benefit to sitting still and just being, and I highly recommend it. However, mindfulness can be practiced at any time in any situation. And so, how I recommend people start, especially if this is something that seems foreign or it’s just you’re thinking, “Oh, it’s one more thing I need to add to my schedule,” I recommend looking at this as like you don’t have to add anything to your schedule. What I recommend is just change the way that you do things that you’re going to do anyhow.

So, for the average person, if you were to make a list of all the things that you do in a day in relative solitude that you’re going to do anyhow, things like rolling out of bed, going to the toilet to go pee, washing your hands, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, getting dressed, commuting to work, sitting and waiting for a meeting to begin, standing in line waiting for something, if you were to add it all up, I think for the average person it’s probably right around two hours per day.

Make a list of all those things that you do every single day that you’re going to do anyhow, and for the first week just pick one of them. Let’s say it’s washing the hands, for instance, and unless you’re driving, listening to this podcast, you could actually play along with us while we do this.

So, if you think about what washing the hands is like most of the time, if we’re honest, we’re thinking about everything in the world other than washing the hands. Would you agree with me, Pete, that when you wash your hands?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure, yeah.

Matt Tenney
So, we’re thinking about, “Hey, the dog just crapped on the floor. I’ve got a report due for my work tomorrow.” Whatever. We’re thinking about all types of stuff. We’re not really present with washing the hands.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re going to wash your hands again after cleaning up after the dog.

Matt Tenney
Yeah, yeah, you wash your hands then you go, “Oh, man, I forgot about the crap on the floor.” You go clean that up and come back and wash again, yeah. So, this is what’s happening when we live our lives this way, is that we’re reinforcing this identification with thinking and we’re constantly distracted by our thinking, and this is taking us in the opposite direction of being free from that voice in our heads and from our thoughts.

So, the idea is to make it a practice of being free. It’s not like you have to get somewhere or achieve something. Like, just be free right now. So, when you’re going to wash your hands, just take a half a second and just remind yourself, “I’m washing the hands now.” And then that little reminder is a wakeup call to just be really curious about the experience of washing the hands. And if thoughts arise, it’s perfectly fine, they probably will. But the idea is just you’re curious about the thoughts, “Oh, there’s a thought about this or that. Okay, what else is going on? Oh, yeah, there’s this wonderful sensation.”

So, why don’t you try this for a second, those of you who are not driving? Just pretend like you just started washing your hands, you’ve got soap and water on your hands, just rub them together. And what I’d like you to do is just be intensely curious like you’ve never washed your hands before. And just notice, “What is it actually like to wash my hands? What does the skin feel like as it’s being massaged by the other hand? What do the muscles feel like that are making the arms and the hands move? Are there any thoughts happening?” If not, it doesn’t matter. Either way it’s not important. Just be curious about what is it like.

Now, every time I’ve done this exercise with any group, 100% of the time, unless people just didn’t raise their hands, people say that washing their hands like that is diametrically opposite of how they normally wash their hands. So, this is a very different experience, right? And some people even get anxious because what we’re so used to doing is washing the hands as fast as we can so we can get onto what’s important, right?

What we’re doing now is realizing that, “Well, if I want to have clean hands, I need to wash them for 30 seconds anyhow, so why not be here for that experience?” And what happens is there’s this, as silly as this might sound just with these little activities, of just being aware of the body, aware of the mind, aware of what it’s actually like to wash the hands during that experience, what’s happening is we’re creating what I think may be the most interesting paradigm shift that we can consider. Because if we think back to how we normally do it, what we’re doing is we’re rushing through it to get it over with so we can get onto what’s next, oftentimes either it’s partially or completely distracted by our thinking, so as a result three negative things are happening.

One, we’re reinforcing this bad habit of being identified with our thoughts. Two, we are creating a little bit more anxiety because we’re not there, we’re rushing through it. That’s going to make us less effective at whatever we do next. And, third, and perhaps most important, is we’re not actually living that moment of our life. We’re rushing through it to get onto whatever is next. And, sadly, there may not be a next. The person that you’re with right now, and what you’re doing right now, is the most important. And we don’t know, tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us.

And when we start making, allowing mindfulness to permeate our daily activities, those three negatives are transformed into three amazing positives. So, first, you’re training yourself to be mindfully self-aware, and self-awareness is arguably the most important professional skill that we can develop. So, you’re creating a very positive habit of being mindfully self-aware.

Two, your anxiety, you’ll find, as I’m sure you noticed when you wash your hands like that, it’s pretty relaxing. Did you notice that, Pete? Did you actually wash your hands with me?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, in my mind’s eye, yes. No faucets in the…

Matt Tenney
Okay. I’m sure you’ve got things you’re working on there with the podcast, yeah. When you actually do it, what you’ll notice is, “Oh, that’s actually relaxing to just be fully present with the sensations of washing the hands.” So, your anxiety goes down a little bit, making you more effective at whatever you’re going to do next.

And then, of course, most important, is you’re actually living that moment of your life and you’re developing this new habit of actually living the moments of your life so that when you come home from work, and you greet your child, you’re actually there for him or her. And you come home from work and greet your spouse, or your dog, or whoever, you’re actually there for them instead of reliving everything that happened at work in your head.

And, as grandiose as that might sound, it’s not going to happen overnight, but it does happen little by little if we just start integrating mindfulness into our daily life. So, coming back to the list, we start with just washing the hands for week one. Then, for week two, continue with washing the hands and add a second activity, brushing the teeth, let’s say. And you can see where this is going, right? Each week you just add another activity.

After 12 weeks, you’re going to have 12 anchors that, if nothing else, you know you’ve got 12 30-second to 60-second activities where you’re breaking the habit of constantly being identified with and distracted by thinking, and instead being free.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. And so then, in practice then, the difference is, one, you’re sort of noting what’s happening here, “I’m washing my hands now.” Two, you’re getting curious about each of these, I guess, the finer details of the experience, like, “Oh, that’s pretty warm. Oh, that’s pretty slippery. Okay, that’s pretty relaxing as they go together. I can hear the sound. I could maybe see some steam rising up a little bit. I could smell, perhaps, the soap.”

And so then, in so doing, you are there as opposed to elsewhere in terms of, “I better hurry up and reply to that email.” And so, there you have it. Okay. So, that’s really cool. All right. Well, thank you for that, Matt. Tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Matt Tenney
Nothing comes to mind immediately, Pete, other than just I have said it a couple of times, so I apologize if this is redundant, but I would just ask people to, as they’re finishing up listening to this podcast, to remember to just be kind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Matt Tenney
A favorite quote. Yes. I apologize if this might be paraphrasing, but Martin Luther King said something that actually inspired the title of Serve to Be Great, which is, “You don’t need to have a Ph.D. to serve. Anyone can serve. And because anyone can serve, anyone can be great.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Matt Tenney
I think my all-time favorite book is actually a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Peace Is Every Step.

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

Matt Tenney
Well, I think Google Calendar is pretty magical believe it or not, so, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I can buy it. And how about a favorite habit?

Matt Tenney
Mindfulness, by far, is my favorite habit.

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

Matt Tenney
What I hear probably most often is just, “Yes, I want to be a leader who serves and loves well.”

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

Matt Tenney
Well, I guess you could go to MattTenney.com and that can direct you to anything else that you might be interested in.

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

Matt Tenney
Absolutely. I would, please, encourage anyone listening who stuck with us here to the end to please go ahead and create that list of all the things that you do every day anyhow, and see if you can incorporate those activities into your day in a more mindful way, just one activity at a time. And I think that simple exercise, you’ll find has some incredible benefit in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Matt, thank you. This has been a treat. And keep up the great work.

Matt Tenney
Thank you, Pete. Thanks so much for having me.