Discover the Power to Shift with Sarah "The Pivoter" Kalmeta: Ep 55

This weeks episode with Sarah Kalmeta explores how the ability to pivot can be your superpower to reframe, revitalize and improve your career and life. 
Prepare for some sass, a lot of puns and reflection as she challenges the status quo of very serious topics that affect your life, your leadership and the way you do business.

Sarah is a spark for change and breath of fresh air.
We discuss with Sarah how to take your most challenging situations and use them to fuel new perspectives, fresh approaches and unique solutions.

Website: https://sarahkalmeta.com/

@NolimitsLeadership
@sarahthepivoter


Sarah Kalmeta, also known as “Sarah the Pivoter”, is an internationally acclaimed speaker redefining change and our relationship to it. She’s loved for her bold, authentic style and known for her way to light up a room. Sarah’s no stranger to life in the fast lane & intense environments having lived abroad in Hong Kong for over a decade and been a competitive athlete most of her life. She’s worked with Fortune 500 companies around the world and helps individuals and organisations enhance their performance and navigate transitions effectively, emphasising resilience and strategic planning.

As a sought-after speaker and writer, Sarah’s insights focus on leadership, personal development and redefining change. Sarah's holistic approach to coaching underscores the importance of mental, emotional and physical well-being in achieving success. She is known for her advocacy for mental health, resilience and well-being, particularly within high-stress industries like aviation and aerospace. Passionate about STE(A)M, Sarah is committed to excellence and creativity while also helping others discover and achieve their potential. A believer in community, Sarah is currently cultivating a new project in Austin to create a space for people of all backgrounds, passions and skillsets to come together.

Links:

Sarah’s Portfolio: https://link.tr/sarahkalmeta 

Sarah’s Podcast, The Lounge: https://www.youtube.com/@sarahthepivoter/streams 

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;26;07
Unknown
Welcome to the No Limits Leadership podcast. We discuss ancient wisdom, real world experiences, and the latest concepts on mastering leadership of self and others. If you're committed to maximizing your life and your impact on the world, your home. Hi, I'm Sean Patton, host of the Leadership After Hours podcast. And hi, I'm Sarah Kalmeta. Also known as Sarah the Pivot and host of the Lounge.

00;00;26;10 - 00;00;47;26
Unknown
We are so excited. Today we are doing a special podcast extravaganza. We're going to be, talking to each other and doing a dual episode between the two podcasts. It's going to be awesome. Super stoked for this. Yeah, we have this great idea to learn more about the host of the podcast, and we were inspired by a classmate of ours at Heroic Public Speaking, which is where Sean and I met.

00;00;47;26 - 00;01;09;08
Unknown
And Sean Payton is a former Special Forces veteran. He's now a keynote speaker and a leadership coach, and we've been diving in to so many cool topics. So we thought we wanted to bring this to you and invite you into our inner worlds a little bit more. Absolutely. And Sarah, you are many things, but especially an internationally acclaimed speaker and podcast host.

00;01;09;08 - 00;01;24;25
Unknown
So I'm excited for this today, and I can't wait for this deeper conversation that I feel like we've been on, like the edge of, like we been on the edge of these deep conversations and different times we've interacted, and now we've got some dedicated time, to really to really go into it. So I'm super stoked for this.

00;01;24;28 - 00;01;45;11
Unknown
Me too. Me too. It's been really cool as well on the prep phase for this, because we've been sending each other our bios and looking at photographs of each other, and you had sent me two different photos, one from your special Forces time and one a more recent photo, and it's the same person. But there's this contrast as this outward expression is very different.

00;01;45;14 - 00;02;03;22
Unknown
And for those of you who have only met me in the last few years, you know me as Sarah with the short hair, and, you know, wearing vans on stage and, you know, just 6 or 7 years ago, I was a typical corporate like, corporate dress, high heels, like curled hair down to, you know, here or something.

00;02;03;24 - 00;02;25;15
Unknown
And it's just amazing to, to see and look back and see that different perspective and, you know, appreciate the journey that we've been on to get here to who we are today. No, absolutely. You know, and on that, I think we are both people who are looking like intentionally to evolve, right. Intentionally trying to improve, try and get better.

00;02;25;18 - 00;02;51;12
Unknown
And I'm not sure if that's universal. I think people are always trying to divest, but there's, there's a certain mentality to an important value is innovate, innovating myself and becoming this better person. So what was that? You know, you said was just six, seven years ago, you were all corporate out. So like, where did that transition, what happened or what was that transition for you to kind of be in the new brand, the new you, the new vision?

00;02;51;18 - 00;03;20;19
Unknown
How did that come about? So the pivot really came about when I hit all the targets that I had been working towards and looked around and realized that I didn't want any of them, and none of them made me happy. I was burnt out, I was tired, and I felt like I didn't even know myself. And yet from the outside looking in, I had this like perfect life.

00;03;20;19 - 00;03;47;29
Unknown
You know, the the travel lifestyle, the salary, the title, this big, beautiful destination wedding. You know, the awesome flat with an awesome view. And it just was super hollow. I felt like I had been working so hard for these things that I guess I had adopted as my own, but probably societally and culturally had been told that this is what you aim for.

00;03;48;01 - 00;04;09;05
Unknown
And in that realization of, well, now, what do you mean I have to keep doing this? Or like, I don't even feel good with these things that was really The Unwinding, if you will. Or I heard a really great phrase from a friend of mine who's recently retired after he sold his company. He's like, I'm now in my retirement instead of retirement.

00;04;09;12 - 00;04;32;11
Unknown
And I was like, yes, I've been in their retirement for the last, you know, better part of six years. And, it's it's really been a process and many pivots in between. What about yourself? How did you what was that? What was that pivot point for you to, I guess, wake up and recognize that you wanted to do things a bit differently.

00;04;32;13 - 00;04;48;02
Unknown
You know, for me, it was interesting. I, I had a couple transformation when I first went in the military. I went to the military academy at West Point in New York and the whole plan was to, I was going to be an Intel intelligence officer. And after 18 months, I was going to put my packing and go to law school, and I was gonna be a Jaguar.

00;04;48;02 - 00;05;14;20
Unknown
Like, that was what I was going to do and then get into politics afterward. and then after a few years of, you know, actual like, military training, I didn't come from like a military background or family or anything, and, you know, got out in the woods and started doing, I guess, quote unquote, Army stuff. Right? I, I was like, actually, this is pretty awesome because I think the through line for me, despite any kind of pivot ever since I was a kid, is leadership.

00;05;14;20 - 00;05;43;28
Unknown
Like, in a strange way. I mean, yeah, even like in little league sports, right? Like I was I was like the catcher, the goalie, the person who was like kind of managing the the team. And then I got in the leadership roles as an Eagle Scout, like, I did all this stuff. and, and what I saw when I started doing these, you know, this again, Army drills and tactics and stuff in the woods, I was like, this is like the purest form of leadership that I had encountered because it was literally right, like, hold, go left, you go right.

00;05;43;29 - 00;06;07;15
Unknown
Oh, what's the new play? I was like, in the moment. I was like, oh my gosh, this is like the purest form of leadership. So I really got obsessed and decided to go into infantry. And then I did the infantry stuff, and then I could have gotten out after five years. and I had I spent 14 months in southwest Baghdad, with a rifle and sniper platoon, and I, I really just sat with my intuition a bit, and I was like, okay, what do I want to do?

00;06;07;15 - 00;06;28;00
Unknown
And I just had this, like, I want to I have more to give and also like, more to learn. Yeah. And so that's what I'm with the Special Forces assessment selection. Couple years of training. Got my Green Beret took command and I and it was exactly what I wanted. Slash expected in terms of continuing to be pushed to develop at a very quick rate.

00;06;28;23 - 00;06;44;27
Unknown
you know, I showed up to take over my first, Special Forces team, like the Green Berets, and I showed up 20 years old, and I was, you know, I came there to take over like, I was the captain. I was the commander, but I was the youngest guy on the team. And and, you know, the week.

00;06;44;29 - 00;07;17;10
Unknown
One week after that, I was climbing a four inch wide caving ladder from an assault boat up to a ship underway in the ocean, off the coast of San Diego, doing cross training with Seal Team five and Special Boat Team 12. And then six weeks after that, we got called back for the secretary defense, and I was on the Afghan-pakistan border like it was just it was just go to very fast and just like and it was the push and and then the I also I think I got there's a little bit of that service aspect and I will say that after my time in special forces, in my time in Afghanistan was a

00;07;17;10 - 00;07;33;15
Unknown
pretty violent deployment. I was like, okay, I think I've like, I think I've done my part. I said, it's like, I just like, sort of like peace with like, okay, I think I've done this. And I kind of looked at, well, if I do ten more years because I was in for ten, and after I do ten more years, I could retire.

00;07;33;17 - 00;07;52;25
Unknown
Right. And as I looked forward one, the jobs were almost all like I was going to come off the line. I'd spent all my time on the front line with infantry, you know, with operators, and it was like going to be an office time. I was like, that didn't sound great. And and I also saw it that I wasn't going to probably be developed the same way.

00;07;52;28 - 00;08;07;02
Unknown
And I was a little and I had all these things I wanted to try and do, like I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I wanted to I want to see what this whole freedom thing was all about that I've been hearing about. You know, I went to the Army's three weeks out of high school. It's like I'd never I never had, you know, never had that freedom to be like, what do I want to do with my life?

00;08;07;09 - 00;08;32;13
Unknown
So I kind of wanted to do that. And I realized at the rate that I was going, I was worried if I did ten more years, I was going to be burnt, like you were totally, completely burnt out by the pace. So, yeah. So, so I kind of feel like I've done enough. And I had this, I felt this urge of the next chapter more to I wanted to kind of delve into the unknown after spending 14 years, you know, inside of sort of this military bubble.

00;08;32;16 - 00;08;55;15
Unknown
Yeah, if you will. Yeah, absolutely. Because no matter what you're in, whether it's a military or an industry, you are really in a bubble, especially in the early part of your career. Right? Because you're saying, yes, to everything because you want to learn. And then you start to get on this track and the, the grooves, you a little bit deeper and you're less inclined or likely to just make like, oh, I'm going to go this way now.

00;08;55;15 - 00;09;01;11
Unknown
Right. and, and we have to.

00;09;01;14 - 00;09;22;05
Unknown
Have that pattern interrupt in order for us to realize that there are many different tracks and we don't need to stay on that one. But again, it's usually that's some cost fallacy of like, oh, I've spent this much time here, I spent this much money in this specific type of training or, you know, degrees and etc. and so do I really want to change.

00;09;22;08 - 00;09;45;26
Unknown
And, you know, that is a question that is not up to other people. That is that is totally up to each individual. And obviously, if you have a partner or family dependents or when you're in a true partnership with somebody else, you know, you you consider how your actions will affect others and you have conversations around that. But ultimately the decision is yours.

00;09;45;26 - 00;10;15;17
Unknown
What are you willing to do to live the life that you are wanting to live, to seek to seek out new information, to new experiences is and I think a lot of people get stuck there, right, because their identity has become their job in aviation. It's it's a really big thing. A lot of people, it's not I fly airplanes, it's I am a pilot, you know, it's not I work in aviation.

00;10;15;17 - 00;10;37;01
Unknown
It's aviation is in my blood. And and that's wonderful because we need that passion in every industry. At the same time, we are multifaceted individuals. We have multiple interests and talents. And it is okay to like more than one thing. The world is very different than it used to be. And I that's another part of this evolution and change.

00;10;37;04 - 00;11;03;04
Unknown
I, I completely agree. And you know, it's interesting that the same like self-identity issue of horns of like, assign yourself your identity based on like what you do or what role you play. was something that I really had to tackle myself, as you can imagine. Like you said, I come in in military, I becomes, you know, my entire adult life since I was in high school, it's like I'm Sean, the Army guy, right?

00;11;03;04 - 00;11;22;20
Unknown
Or Shawn military. I was a Sean, the Green Beret or whatever else. And it always and and like you said it in the military or in, certain industries too. It's like if you're a pilot, let's say, like there's a certain track for that, like, you know, five year, ten years, you're like, on this thing. and I see a lot of veterans struggle with that, you know, how do I find purpose?

00;11;22;20 - 00;11;40;04
Unknown
Because I think the military in those industries give you the value and they also give you they give you purpose, they give you a mission. It gives you a team. All these things. I think as human beings, we we really need. And then when it's time to say when that's done, what's the next thing? And I struggle with that.

00;11;40;04 - 00;11;55;10
Unknown
And you know, where I really saw it was with then I saw my mom retire. And she was an educator, right? She was a school psychologist and she worked in special education. So as I was working with special needs kids and advocate for them, and she was always so then she was like, all right, well, I'm a mom and an educator.

00;11;55;10 - 00;12;07;03
Unknown
Then she's like, I saw a mom. But once your kid, you know, gets to be an adult, like that kind of moves on. But then she's like, I'm an educator and then as soon as she retired and I saw her just like she couldn't get up in the morning, she would, like, sit around all day. I'm like, mom, you got to get a schedule.

00;12;07;03 - 00;12;33;05
Unknown
You got to do this stuff. And she was really struggling. So I think it's just this universe. It is such a universal concept. And and that's why I think it's so important to, I want to remember this body and get your opinion on it, because what I started doing was come with a concept, and I worked on some clients with this as well, where I said, what I want you to do is find three words and define that, define you, that have nothing to do with a role.

00;12;33;05 - 00;12;54;18
Unknown
You play a relationship with someone, a job you have, and I put you on an island. Your kids run around like you're not mom, you're not dad, you're not CEO. You're just. They're on an island. Who are you? You know, and and that actually is I found to be pretty beneficial. But just to be able to define yourself outside of this external factor.

00;12;54;21 - 00;13;20;03
Unknown
Yeah, absolutely. can I get share my three words that just popped in my head? Please do. Yes. So the interesting thing about this is people, they also grab three words and they're like, this is me. But I feel that these words really evolve and it's based on the situation you're in, who you're with. So like what popped into my head right now for the state that I'm currently in and, you know, just a lot of different factors are curious.

00;13;20;03 - 00;13;51;16
Unknown
That's pretty steadfast. silly and kind. And I love asking people to describe themselves without describing, without giving me what they do for work, what they get paid to do and to use different language. I had a guest on my podcast, a lieutenant, retired lieutenant colonel Lisa Jaspers, who wrote a book called Delete the Adjective. And in there, it's an adjective describes you.

00;13;51;16 - 00;14;15;04
Unknown
It doesn't define you. And I thought that was so powerful because when we label ourselves, what happens? We have the quick snap judgments that we can make. I identify with this, or I don't write. There's an immediate connection based on the words we use to describe ourselves, but it also puts us in a box. And so we're putting ourselves in a box every time we describe ourselves.

00;14;15;06 - 00;14;35;27
Unknown
And that's why I like to think of this as it's dynamic. It's a living, breathing thing, just like you, just like, you know, you and I are living and breathing beings, and we are going to be in different states in different times. And so this language doesn't have to be a fixed thing. And that's a new paradigm of thought for many people.

00;14;36;04 - 00;15;00;21
Unknown
So what would your three words be? Mine are, and I think mine are pretty steady which is interesting. But is warrior leader Rebel okay, right. I'm always a rebel in there for a while. Like, yeah, the key, it's still there, but it's just not like top of mind right now. Yeah. And so I think that's interesting because they're definitely going to be these pillars of words that are always there.

00;15;01;11 - 00;15;24;12
Unknown
But then at different times you know like curiosity that's there all the time. I've probably that word stays in my three I think, I don't think I've ever had a three less list of three without that word. but there's other words that kind of seem to, to come and go. So I view it as like this pool and there's these overarching themes at the top.

00;15;24;14 - 00;15;46;02
Unknown
And then at different times the words might swap, or maybe the nuance is so similar that it's kind of like a package. Like under that word comes all these other words, and then playing with it like that, it's almost like a root system underneath the surface. So you're, you're seeing the outward expression of my foliage and my flowers or maybe not at whatever time I'm at.

00;15;46;02 - 00;16;11;07
Unknown
Right? Like a tree or a flower. But underneath those roots are always there, and they're growing deeper and wider, which is encompassing more and more as as I grow and learn now. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I think for for mine, it's like I found those and again and they do change and ebb and flow and you know of course I think I'd add some it takes away, but it's almost like they help to not define who I am.

00;16;11;07 - 00;16;37;07
Unknown
Okay. I like how you said that, does not define who I am. It's almost like I it's how the lens that I see things through almost. and, you know, for me and warrior is, it's funny like my books kind of where it's mindset, this excuse of greatness and my plan was to push a lot of like that because I have a pretty strong opinion, which basically is just I just define warrior as someone who fights for a noble cause greater than themselves.

00;16;37;25 - 00;17;00;14
Unknown
I try to find and so I think if you, if you define something like that in, in the way I look at warrior is like there's two ways to live, then you're either you either have a passion, you have a purpose, you have something that's bigger than yourself that you're willing to, you know, put ahead of your own comfort, or you don't, which means you're making decisions based on fear, right?

00;17;00;14 - 00;17;30;08
Unknown
You're making decisions based on what's going to cause me the least discomfort in the moment. And so I almost look at us like, that's why a warrior to me is such like, a strong part of, I guess, my identity and my belief structure. Yeah. Because I think that if you don't do that, it's it's almost like as human beings, I don't believe you can necessarily have fulfillment, without I think our, our fulfillment as human beings comes from impacting other people because we're communal creatures.

00;17;30;10 - 00;17;51;22
Unknown
And so that's why, you know, you mentioned earlier how you had this career and you had checked all these boxes and it's just you got there, you're like still not fulfilled, you know, and and it's like, what what is that about? And so yeah, for me, the warrior thing is really about. Whatever you're doing, if you want to experience fulfillment, you have to be focused on making an impact for others.

00;17;51;22 - 00;18;14;17
Unknown
I believe I believe any sort of short, self-serving goal, which is fine to have, but it's going to be short lived gratification. It's not going to be like long, long lasting fulfillment. Yeah. I mean, ultimately it's do you want an easy life or do you want a hard life? So if you make an easy decision now, you're going to often have hard things to overcome later in your life or have a lot of obstacles and difficulty.

00;18;15;00 - 00;18;38;13
Unknown
whereas if you make hard decisions now, you do the hard thing. You have the tough conversation, you face your fear, then you have an easy life because you don't have to go around hiding or cleaning up a mess, you know, or at all expense with collateral damage. You reach the goal, right? I used to be like the traditional proverbial, bull in a China shop.

00;18;38;16 - 00;18;56;18
Unknown
And, you know, I'd get there and I'd get there super fast, but I just bulldoze things out of my way. And that that would have included people, you know, not not really thinking about the ripple effect impact, you know, and so, yes, you can be on this steep trajectory and, and get those awards and things for yourself.

00;18;56;18 - 00;19;20;08
Unknown
But if you don't bring other people up with you, it's very hollow. And if you don't have community and community, that's deeper than surface level. I think that's, something that why is the military so strong? There's the camaraderie, there's the brotherhood or sisterhood. There is a band of brothers, right? There's this feeling of, I know you have my back.

00;19;20;10 - 00;19;37;03
Unknown
Why is CrossFit like the Kool-Aid that everybody, you know, like, get sucked into? I mean, I got sucked into that world, too. I'm going to be honest. But it's because all of a sudden, there's a community of people who are committed to, you know, working out, moving their bodies and changing how they're going to eat, and they're living life in a different way.

00;19;37;03 - 00;20;13;19
Unknown
And so then that can become addictive, and it feels very good. But then anyone else who's not on that journey, I was obviously like, I don't want to be in your cult of working out whatever, you know? but when we really look at like beneath the surface level of whatever it is, it's always back down to community and that connection and that thread of existence that, like, binds us together and knowing that it takes a village to, you know, raise an individual to raise a child, that when we operate in these different ways, you know, we get fulfillment from other places.

00;20;13;19 - 00;20;39;18
Unknown
And one thing I've learned is that, like happiness is not the end all, be all emotion. Happiness is just an emotion. It's fleeting. We feel many other things. We feel joy. We feel proud. We feel optimistic, energized, eager, determined, accomplished. We feel loved. We feel connected. We feel, at ease. We feel mellow. And then we feel things like grief or frustration or I'm really peeved right now.

00;20;40;02 - 00;21;06;28
Unknown
you know, all of these things, they're just data points for us to understand. And but if we're trying to exclusively, like, fit in this box or this circle of happiness, we miss out on so much more of the human experience. And so really broadening that, I think, also allows people to enjoy what community brings and, you know, second tier fun like, enjoy and embrace the suck when it happens.

00;21;07;11 - 00;21;28;17
Unknown
and like know that is temporary. And that's easier said than done. Of course. I mean, I fall off into those mine spirals as well. I just actually had one throughout most of April, and that's okay. And it's important to talk about it because otherwise we have toxic positivity and everybody thinks everybody else is doing fine and is like the everything is awesome, you know?

00;21;28;18 - 00;21;54;17
Unknown
Yeah. And it's like, no, it's not. And that's okay too. Yeah, absolutely. What about in the effort of, you know, transparency. So if you know what was what was April about. Like what what were you working through if you don't want to I think thank you for asking. It was I what I believe it was is we graduated from Heroic in March.

00;21;54;20 - 00;22;19;03
Unknown
So we had had this seven month intensive journey of diving deep into our stories are narrative, our being and becoming more fully expressed in service of the audience and the message that we're spreading. You know, in our aim to change the world one speech at a time. Right? So like with anything in life, there's always the the downstream, which people don't talk about very often.

00;22;19;03 - 00;22;45;11
Unknown
It's like I got married, I got promoted, I did this and then like after the high wears off, then it's okay. Well, I worked for like eight years for my medical degree. It's it's over now. Studies over. What do I do with myself. Right. So it's that down effect or like, post-holiday blues. Most people will often feel a little bit glum after this experience of being away or having this amazing trip.

00;22;45;14 - 00;23;23;29
Unknown
So for me, it was a little bit of that. It was the the ending of this journey. And we have such a wonderful cohort. And of course, energy drops off when you're not as active. But we've managed to still keep it going, and I love seeing all the messages in our group. So it was partly that, I had a very busy Q1 on the road a lot, several different keynotes, several different Mic events, you know, went to a few different conferences, brainstorming, like the directions in which I would like to take my business while also starting to get the symptoms of burnout, but maybe not paying attention because I was like, no, no,

00;23;23;29 - 00;23;44;08
Unknown
no, let's I'm talking about slowing down, right? Like, I do the things I meditate, I work out, I, I take naps, you know, like my day to day is really great. Then all of a sudden I had nothing. After the eclipse, we finished that retreat, and then it was just four weeks of no activity, like no events, no gigs.

00;23;44;10 - 00;24;16;21
Unknown
So I'm staring down the barrel, going, whoa! Stark contrast. And then realizing that I had been diluting myself for the previous quarter of how fast I was actually moving. Now, truth be told, that is a fraction of my speed. My speed is my 70% is most people's 150%. So, you know, from the outside, it will always probably look like I'm doing more than what most people have capacity for or interest in doing, especially if they're not a speaker or don't enjoy being, you know, on the road or anything like that.

00;24;16;23 - 00;24;36;15
Unknown
So it gave me this beautiful opportunity to really just sit in the void and assess what do I want, because I had started to kind of get seduced by the ego again, you know, of, whoa, look at all these things. Look at these accolades I'm getting. Look at how people are responding. Wow. My podcast is booked out till the end of the year.

00;24;36;15 - 00;25;05;29
Unknown
Oh my gosh. You know, and kind of saying yes to things that maybe it wasn't even so lit up by. And so then they fell through and I was upset about it at the time. But looking back that read that rejection was just redirection. I though it were not meant to happen. And if I if they had happened, I would find myself in December with an ever even greater like, oh my God, okay, I thought, I thought I fixed this right and that's the wrong mentality.

00;25;05;29 - 00;25;38;13
Unknown
It's not about fixing, it's just about how do I want to live my life. So April, was this really interesting experience of navigating that post graduate blues host intensity blues, and also recognizing and having a little bit of grief, even for that version of myself that had come back through and realizing, you know, hey, these things that I was doing before were actually coping mechanisms because of X, Y, Z.

00;25;38;16 - 00;26;04;02
Unknown
And I don't need to be that way anymore. I say, what? How do I want to be? And really like sitting with that and feeling into it? Because again, we we can get attached to an identity. We can get attached to. This is my routine, I'm going to do this routine. And then when it starts to change, we're not very good at grieving that change.

00;26;04;05 - 00;26;29;23
Unknown
And it is a grief process. Even getting promoted at work and going from managing a team of five to managing an entire department of a 500, right? Anything like that. Your world changes. Your day to day changes, and there's a bit of grief that comes along with that. And it's important to acknowledge and appreciate you know, who you were, the things you did, the habits you had, the routines that served you in the other space.

00;26;29;25 - 00;26;51;12
Unknown
And now understand that there is new, fertile ground for what's coming in. But it takes effort. It takes some intention to make those shifts. We can't be the same way we were with a team of five that we are now with a team of 500, or whatever the case might be in that change. so for me, it was really just navigating that, you know, and, and some key dates had come up.

00;26;51;12 - 00;27;12;23
Unknown
You know, also in March, that was the anniversary of my stepfather's passing, he committed suicide. And, you know, we were with Kurt and just that, that kind of narrative and the intensity of that. And for the first time, I'd had this thought of, he would have been 60 this year. Wouldn't it have been nice to celebrate that together?

00;27;13;04 - 00;27;44;01
Unknown
because I had been angry for a long time. And so to have that thought come in was also new. And so navigating these new landscapes was something I was very much, doing. And it wasn't necessarily easy. And for those of you out there who were my guiding light in the storm, thank you. I had many people that were that, you know, I could see occasionally through the clouds and the thunderstorms that light and go, okay, I'm just going to navigate that way.

00;27;44;04 - 00;28;02;18
Unknown
You know, I'm not I can't pay attention. Anything else? I don't know if I know what I'm doing here, but I'm going to go that way. And that's what really got me through. No one tried to save me. No one tried to do it for me. They were just there is these these lighthouses in the storm. And then, you know, I managed to work through and feel and let myself feel for me.

00;28;02;18 - 00;28;38;01
Unknown
That's a huge win. I was very good at disassociating for a very long time. So, yeah, that was my April. Well, I was a great mouse and well, it's interesting that, you know, we almost came full circle there with coming back the importance of of your other tribe, of a community, right, of relationships. I mean, the classic, Harvard happiness study, right, that they did for 70, whatever, three years and, you know, came up with those you aren't familiar with that the number one indicator of happiness, contentment, fulfillment in life.

00;28;38;03 - 00;29;13;20
Unknown
It wasn't it wasn't how much money people had or where they lived or, you know, whether it was it was just the quality of their close relationships that was it. And so it just goes to show, how that is. So I think fundamental in our, in our DNA and why it's important to be, to acknowledge that, but then also to, you know, I think be intentional, you know, that that's something that actually has come into my life recently, too, is, making sure that I'm intentional with the tribe and the network I'm surrounding myself with.

00;29;13;27 - 00;29;31;08
Unknown
Not just like, oh, you seem cool. You seem quite a lot of really cool people there, but it's like. But who? I only have room for so many in. Like, who do I want in my tribe? It's going to make me be my best seller. Help me be my best self, you know? Right. Yeah. And it's isolation is the worst advisor, you know.

00;29;31;13 - 00;29;57;26
Unknown
And and what I have noticed is I will start to isolate myself. So I'll start turning down social things. I'll start having thoughts like, well, I don't deserve to do that because of this, you know, and I have now told people this. So when they notice that I'm not showing up in the way that I used to, or I'm not responding or things like that, they'll message me privately and they'll check it, right.

00;29;57;28 - 00;30;16;22
Unknown
And then that can help pull me back out. And May is Mental Health Awareness Month. You know, it's right now there's this amazing thunderstorm happening out right outside. And it's really cool. And I just love that deep under the sound of lightning crashing. But when it's gray for a long time, I definitely have said like I grew up in Arizona, 330 Bluebird days a year.

00;30;16;22 - 00;30;38;29
Unknown
You know, I love the sun and the blue sky. and and so, so oftentimes the people that are really struggling, they don't outwardly express that. And you don't know. And there was a very powerful video that I shared recently. It's, two men at a rugby match, you know, they're like one guy is like cheering like, hey, how are you, mate?

00;30;38;29 - 00;30;42;14
Unknown
And the other guy's just like.

00;30;42;16 - 00;31;00;29
Unknown
You know, like pretty stern throughout all the scenes. And it's going through different games. You can tell the clothes are changing and the like words are you know it's not always easy and obvious to tell the signs. And then in the end, you see the happy person is not sitting there. And the other gentleman takes his scarf off and puts it on the seat.

00;31;01;01 - 00;31;24;13
Unknown
Right. And so it's really, really important that we don't accept that face value. Again, it's all about going beneath the surface. Can you be intentional to take the time to connect with those in your inner circle, to really see through? Because ultimately we want to be we all want to be seen, right? But we pretend because we want to be accepted.

00;31;24;15 - 00;31;42;21
Unknown
And the more we can get comfortable with the discomfort of you may not accept me, because when you really see me, that's okay. Because I accept myself. And I think that's a really important thing that our community can help us with because they're just mirrors for us, right? We see our reflection back. How does this person see me?

00;31;42;24 - 00;32;06;02
Unknown
Right. And, I definitely used to be very much the people pleaser of like, I want to everybody has to like me, and I'd be so worried that way. But are you mad, though? Like, yeah, all the time. and so, when you work on yourself, like you and I started to choose, we're going to pay attention to these things.

00;32;06;02 - 00;32;26;22
Unknown
We're going to work on our stories, our internal stories. Then you are aware of where you might have potholes so you can more easily navigate around them. You can start to fill them in so that they're not so bumpy. When you go over and then eventually you look back, you're like, wow, that's not even a problem anymore. Like, we repaved that whole section.

00;32;28;24 - 00;32;47;23
Unknown
yeah. And, you know, I think on that too, you know, when you, when you aren't your, your less mentioned self-expression where like heroic I think was such a powerful speaking is such a powerful tool to really get to know yourself. but when you do put layers up, you do start being that people pleaser, right? So I found myself right.

00;32;47;23 - 00;33;02;17
Unknown
If I start being a people pleaser, people will try to like me. And that was like I struggled with younger coming from, you know, I grew up in Kansas, right? The Midwest, like, you know, you don't talk about it. You don't, you know, you don't. You don't wanna make anyone uncomfortable, you know, kind of sweep stuff under the rug, all that.

00;33;03;05 - 00;33;20;04
Unknown
and, and that was, that was one thing I think the military was good for me was like, no, you like directness as expected. Like there's no time to beat around the bush and, like, see how you just like this is how it is. Get it out quick and let's work through it. Kind of work through that confrontation.

00;33;20;06 - 00;33;39;26
Unknown
But I think that to your point, it's like people kind of clinging to the status quo, clinging to not maybe not wanting to change, not having to grieve. the, mean when you add some change in knowing that that means some part of you or some part of your life or some person is going to be out of it to make room and and embracing that.

00;33;39;29 - 00;34;06;11
Unknown
But if you put out the you're not authentic self, right? If you're trying to please everybody, then you look around and your tribe isn't your tribe is surface level because you're interacting at that surface level. You know, you're you're attracting the wrong energy, the right people. Instead of just saying, this is who I am and I'm and you know, the people that are stick around you then are the ones you actually want around you for the long haul, right?

00;34;06;14 - 00;34;26;01
Unknown
Absolutely. And it's it's tiring to to keep up that facade all the time, you know, as you were, you were speaking. I was getting a lot of different, like, memories flashing through my head because I also grew up in the Midwest, so that was awesome, right? You know, like, where that came from? and, you know, in Asia, it was very challenging.

00;34;26;01 - 00;34;52;07
Unknown
I was based in Asia for 13 years working and managing teams across all different countries. So navigating the nuance of communication, of expectation of all of those things was more energetically taxing than I really gave it credit for. You know, when you're in the thick of something, you often you just you get through it. And there's only when we look back and we reflect that we can appreciate and understand really how much energy that took.

00;34;52;07 - 00;35;16;02
Unknown
And sometimes it takes going away from a place or a person or a relationship or, job or an industry to really gain that perspective. When I went back to Hong Kong, last November, I was able to really see just how much energy internally that took for me to always have to kind of something would be sad and be thinking, right, this is their background.

00;35;16;02 - 00;35;34;09
Unknown
What are they really trying to say? What's the real question here? What's their intent? How do I answer this, you know, and navigate which in one way it served me so well because I became very good at reading people and connecting and being curious, not making a snap judgment, decision or assumption and getting all riled up about it.

00;35;34;12 - 00;35;56;19
Unknown
So it really informed my way of being and management style. On the other hand, the limit was that it was so taxing, which I didn't recognize. and I actually had I've had many people in the last two years of being back in the US. A comment on how I seem to be aging backwards. And I was like, well, it's called less stress, more sleep, no alcohol, no sugar.

00;35;56;23 - 00;36;17;14
Unknown
Like there's a lot of different factors at play there. But a big part of that was also that energy of trying to keep up this pretense of someone that I wasn't, or trying to navigate a very complex space. And I believe we can all be better at that reflection piece. You know, in aviation we have the post pre and post flight checklists and debriefs.

00;36;17;17 - 00;36;39;08
Unknown
We have a briefing before we go up. We have a debrief after we go down. And if we can treat the flight legs of our life in a similar mindset, we will become better at catching these things. The potholes as they're occurring, before they occur. And we'll also be able to ask better questions, both for ourselves and the people around us.

00;36;39;10 - 00;36;57;22
Unknown
And yeah, so two things. I'm, I'm going to I'm making notes here. One. Yeah. You do. You live all over the world. Whereas where in Asia specifically did you I know you lived Hong Kong and some other places. Where all did you live in East Asia? So I was, based in Hong Kong for ten years, and that was home for me.

00;36;58;07 - 00;37;21;19
Unknown
I was also I spent time in Singapore and mainland China, both in Shanghai and Beijing, while I was based, in Hong Kong. In the beginning, my role was mostly Hong Kong in mainland China with an aircraft management company called Hong Kong Jet. then when I moved to, the logistics company universal, I was over 12 different countries over Asia Pacific.

00;37;21;19 - 00;37;44;11
Unknown
So I would regularly travel to places like the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, you know, just all within that region. and it really gave me a lot of different perspective in many, many ways. and really, was quite an experience what I remember and think of very fondly, and, you know, I still consider Hong Kong home.

00;37;44;13 - 00;38;03;25
Unknown
And sometimes I have a Freudian slip when I'm talking about Austin, and I actually say the word, I say Hong Kong instead. But that shows me that I have now. I now consider Austin home, too, which is a great realization. Yeah. So in in East Asia I had I never actually East Asia like the one part of the, I'm the African East Asia, like the two parts of world.

00;38;03;25 - 00;38;23;19
Unknown
I really want to go to that. I haven't had a chance to, but through the military, spent some time in the Middle East and Central Asia. and so I got a little feel for that. And as I studied more, I've gotten really into my mindfulness meditation practice. Took me to, like, full blown, just like in the Buddhism already.

00;38;23;21 - 00;38;43;23
Unknown
So I've seen a lot of East Asian religions. So my question for you is around the collectivist versus individualistic culture, right? We have like America is like the most individualistic of all individuals and cultures. Right. Hyper. Yeah. Which there's some great parts about some not. But and then on the other hand, you, you know, you see the opposite of that in a lot of East Asian countries.

00;38;43;26 - 00;39;05;20
Unknown
Yeah. What, what, what was that like. And trying to balance or what's your perspective on the dichotomy of those two sort of perspectives. So it's it's interesting from my perspective it, it is it's almost, it's a little bit of this, you know, we always want the thing we don't have or we admire the thing that's different. Right?

00;39;05;20 - 00;39;26;29
Unknown
Like when I had long, curly hair, I wanted straight hair, you know, and, you know, just like you always want the opposite. The grass always seems to be greener. So on one hand, there was this, like, admiration and awe for the for me being so comfortable to get up and talk in front of a crowd or for me to self-promote in their eyes, like what I was doing on LinkedIn.

00;39;27;13 - 00;39;49;17
Unknown
and when I first got there, I was in my early 20s, like, I was completely unaware and oblivious to a lot of this and wasn't so good at reading between the lines. So I just thought, like, yeah, we had this great interaction. Everybody's happy. We're friends. And then meanwhile behind the scenes there, like the soundtrack, like she really thinks highly of herself or like, oh, well, you know, just very different.

00;39;49;17 - 00;40;08;05
Unknown
And depending on the culture. But as we got to break down those barriers and really learn, and as I started to build my awareness, that started to shift and I was able to understand and and live in both worlds. in the beginning, I remember having lunch and someone saying, oh, did you make that? And I said, yeah, you know, I coach myself.

00;40;08;05 - 00;40;24;14
Unknown
They know I was living there on my own. And I asked her, did she cook her lunch? And she said, no, my mom made it. I was like, oh, great. Do you live near mom? She's like, no, I live with my mom. And the thought that went through my like 23 year old brain was or 25 year old I was, was like, what?

00;40;24;16 - 00;40;51;29
Unknown
Like you still live with your mom? meanwhile now I'm like, what's wrong with that? Right? Like it's there's nothing wrong with that. And and Hong Kong and a lot of these Asian countries. So you live with your parents until you get married. And then when you get married, you often buy a bigger place, and then your parents move in with you, and they help take care of your kids so that when you go to work, you know, they're with family.

00;40;51;29 - 00;41;15;13
Unknown
They're not necessarily at a school. And, you know, the thing that I've realized in my journey is that no one is self-made. We all have support along the way. We all have mentors. We all have people that support us and help us on our journeys. And it requires all of those people for like me and you to have this conversation.

00;41;15;16 - 00;41;32;23
Unknown
How many touch points of different people did we have to talk to or get supported or coached by, or learn from, or interact with, or fail with and fail through in order to have the mindset that we have now in order to have even met each other at her, at public speaking, and to be having this level of conversation.

00;41;32;23 - 00;41;54;22
Unknown
Right. And so, definitely, my management style was heavily influenced by being over there because I learned how to be more about, you know, I would then I started as I grew up through this environment, it was not just about me. It was how do I teach my team to do my job so that I can continue to grow?

00;41;54;24 - 00;42;15;26
Unknown
How do I give them the tools? I went and learn something. How do I bring it back to them so that we can be on the same page? Right. and in the biggest kind of culture shock I got when I came back to the US was, you know, in Asia, you, you take the business card with two hands and you hand the person, you make eye contact and you read the name and you look back at them and it's like a sign of respect, like I'm seeing you.

00;42;15;26 - 00;42;49;15
Unknown
Right? I'm respectful of who you are and what you do. Meanwhile, like, I come back to the U.S., I'm out by headquarters and the guy's like, yeah, so we're going to go. I'm like, not look at me. I don't want your business card. Keep that. You know, like, it was really funny to see how something I thought was a little bit tedious and unnecessary when I first got there, but I was willing to do it because I respected their culture, had now become my culture, and I found it disrespectful and amusing when I came back and didn't have that right.

00;42;49;15 - 00;43;10;02
Unknown
And so it's is again, though that's not the culture here, so I can't impose that. Right? I'm in the place where it's done differently. So how do I learn how to be there and meet people where they're at? and so I'm very much more on that collective side. And I learned through my time there how much community means.

00;43;10;04 - 00;43;28;14
Unknown
And I was very lucky to have chosen family while I was there, like people that I was able to build bonds with and, you know, the orphans, Christmas orphans, you know, whatever. And we all get together. So, yeah, it was it was a stark contrast. have you had any experiences like that? I mean, your time in the military coming out of it?

00;43;28;16 - 00;43;54;11
Unknown
I know you've been overseas also for different tours. What was your experience on that individual versus collective? you know, I think that for me, trying to balance it because when I felt that collective this was in in those other countries, you did see the bigger families together. You did see, you know, the whole villages and people playing different roles.

00;43;54;13 - 00;44;14;26
Unknown
And it wasn't. And then you I would see that and maybe not seeing too much of it, but then you would come here and a guy who just pushed the pros and cons of both. But you get here and you do see people you mentioned, you know like having multi generational homes. Yeah. And then you for sure like there's no childcare.

00;44;14;26 - 00;44;52;14
Unknown
There's no you know anxiety around that. Like people are having kids. It's just like that whole thing. And we're in this like mental health crisis because we're in this go go go have to achieve. And you know, for me, I'm a person who I do have high achievements. And I do appreciate the fact that one of the reasons we have that we may not have that collectivist thing, but the other hand, we also have a much higher quality of life than people in a in in least the countries I was in, like in, in Asia and in Afghanistan and in Iraq and in Lebanon, places like that, you would see there is there is

00;44;52;14 - 00;45;17;19
Unknown
a there is a benefit to in terms of at least, quality of life to, the, the things the, that, the freedom that can be created right through that individual sort of Protestant work ethic. you know, driving get it like there it's not like that's all bad, you know, it reminds me, like, when I go, I can't imagine if Hong Kong is like this because I go to New York.

00;45;17;19 - 00;45;31;17
Unknown
I go to New York a lot. Yeah. when I was going to school there and I sure like the energy you feel when you're in that city where you're just like, it's buzz. It's infectious. Yeah. You're like, oh, you're you're dragging the rest of us along like you are the reason that we we have what we have.

00;45;31;17 - 00;45;53;21
Unknown
You know, I bet you as Hong Kong kind of like that. Oh my gosh, Hong Kong is like New York on steroids. I'm not even joking. Like, it's it's hard to imagine, but the energy is just so intense and it's like on all the time, which again. So I always like to think of things not as good and bad, but as there's a limit and there's a serve because everything can serve you in one way and limit you in another.

00;45;53;28 - 00;46;12;29
Unknown
Right. Like, let's go back to the happiness conversation by say, do you want to be happy? What's your answer? Yes. Okay. Right. and people say like, well, yeah, I want to be happy all the time. What's wrong with that? So I say, okay. Do you like to laugh? Do you like to laugh? Shop? Yes. Okay. Would you like to laugh?

00;46;12;29 - 00;46;35;29
Unknown
24 seven? No. Right. So when you put it into that context, it's glaringly obvious, like, no, I don't want just this one. I want emotion, this one range of things. Also, you'd be like the Joker, right? Yeah. Crazy, right? You need these different experiences and we can't experience this up here without this down here. So we need the dichotomy.

00;46;35;29 - 00;47;11;05
Unknown
We need the contrast. Just like, you know, in a in a speech, in a story we need the contrast. Otherwise you don't get the message. Otherwise you don't understand what's happening and you can't appreciate. So like for us you we're talking about okay. We were almost like ego driven before and now we're more soul driven. some people can begin their lives soul driven, but do they necessarily really understand how the ego driven being, the feeling of being in that is, can they bridge the gap?

00;47;11;08 - 00;47;32;02
Unknown
Right. We need the contrast. You know, when we when we compare like, okay, this is how this brain works and this is how a neurodivergent brain on this spectrum works, you know, and then but what's what's normal, whose perspective are you looking at it from? Right. The person over here, you know, to them that's their normal and you're the weird one.

00;47;32;02 - 00;47;53;04
Unknown
Right. So everybody's reality is different. and so, you know, you want to have high drive. Awesome. You want to achieve, you want to excel, you want to perform wonderful. Not everybody wants to. And that's okay too. And I remember the first time I realized not everybody wanted to like, be a leader or managed team. I was like, what?

00;47;53;07 - 00;48;14;04
Unknown
Yeah. Hey, it does not compute. Yeah, really? Right. I was like high, but also on the same point. Now I also am enjoying learning how to sit back and be led rather than fighting and be like, oh, I got to be the one in front. And like, my idea is the best. So, it's it's fun to play with those things.

00;48;14;04 - 00;48;41;02
Unknown
Once you are aware of what your predisposition is, you're and then to play with, being the opposite. Right? Not raising your hand first, not offering to be picked on or speak up. and allowing yourself to feel what it's like to watch others or to learn from their experience. And just again, it's all about perspective. No, I think so.

00;48;41;05 - 00;49;03;15
Unknown
You know, this is along this sort of like, drive fulfillment. You know, I think the one where my sort of edges right now personally, is as I've worked on myself and gone through my own journey and like, I got into, mindfulness when I first got out, I would let's go back to when I first got of military.

00;49;03;17 - 00;49;33;20
Unknown
I started a company and I ran myself in the ground, like ran myself completely in the ground, like physical symptoms, hospital like hide like people like, what is this sickness test? It's like it's just stressing myself. I almost basically personally shot my endocrine system and hormones from, I think a combination of the. It was a few years of Afghanistan, bad relationship, divorce, transition, a military failed company like that was six years.

00;49;33;22 - 00;50;03;26
Unknown
And and in that, you know, I've always been that high drive person. And then through, especially through the military training that was like refined. You know, you mentioned earlier like you're you're, you know, you're 70% of the world's 100. It's honed to a point where, like, I had to realize like, oh, I'm dangerous to myself. It took me going through all that to be like, I need to be able to control this because, you know, in the military, the answer, when things are really hard and struggling, didn't know how to get through it.

00;50;03;27 - 00;50;25;14
Unknown
The answer is keep going, because at the end of it, like the mission is going to be over and maybe three days, but it'll be over and you'll recover. You may deploy for six, seven months, ten months a year, but you'll come back. You'll get 30 days off, you'll get some counseling, you'll get to reset. And like somebody like the hire system is like, set up to allow you to be like, hey, you're inside this space.

00;50;25;17 - 00;50;44;25
Unknown
It's safe to go a thousand because, like, somebody sort of watching and then you get out into the, I guess, real world, right? You get a civilian world and it's like there's there's no governor on the engine. There's nobody watching how hard you're going. And so I straight broke myself. And so now I've gone through this mindfulness and meditation.

00;50;44;28 - 00;51;06;29
Unknown
And then what I found myself about a year ago was I got so into it and I was me. It's like, okay, content fulfilled, have power of now I'm present. Oh, this is great. And then I was like, I feel like I'm also losing my edge. Like I'm not I, I'm a driving. So like I want to be driven not by fear but or scarcity.

00;51;06;29 - 00;51;24;04
Unknown
But I want to be driven by joy, and I want to be driven by the things. But I'm almost it's like this scary thing of like, but do I need the fear? Do I need the scarcity to accomplish what I want to accomplish? I'm on this like edge right now. I'm trying to balance the two. I'm not sure if you relate to that, but it's like an interesting spot where I'm at right now.

00;51;24;04 - 00;51;41;01
Unknown
I don't know how you handle that. Oh yeah. Well, firstly, I want to recognize that you mentioned all those pivots you had in the six year time frame, because that's literally that's also what I had. I was like got married, got divorced. I got separated a year later, divorced the following year because it was COVID's. It took a long time, you know.

00;51;41;01 - 00;52;05;27
Unknown
So I had this like big amazing wedding and then like going through that process the next year and then, change job roles and then was made redundant and started my own business. And then, you know, couldn't leave Hong Kong for a couple of years because there's. Hi, what do you call it? quarantine for three weeks in a hotel that you'd pay for, and then coming to the U.S. for a two month trip and then getting two years later, going back to Hong Kong for the very first time, now being a living in Austin.

00;52;05;27 - 00;52;20;04
Unknown
So, like all of these unexpected pivots, you know, and also, if you would have said six years ago saying like, you're going to drop off all your hair and you're going to do you're going to live in the U.S. ocean like you are on drugs. I know what world you live in. You are like living with your head in the sand.

00;52;20;04 - 00;52;42;01
Unknown
Get out of here. So a lot of times a lot of change happens really rapidly and like a big shakeup, right? Because it's almost like the universe needs us to really feel the discomfort so that we change things. And usually once you start to change one thing, there's a ripple effect, right? And you start to realize what else doesn't fit in this new alignment.

00;52;42;01 - 00;53;06;17
Unknown
So yes, that resonates also very much resonates. I was a competitive athlete, figure skater for 11 years. My first career idea and track was go to the Olympics. Tal Lipinski when at 16, like the or just before she turned 16, she qualified like that was my whole world as a kid growing up. And then I did competitive CrossFit on a team and went to regionals, with a team.

00;53;06;17 - 00;53;29;12
Unknown
And, you know, it's it's great because that, like, that's where I learned perseverance is where I learned grit and determination and like, dedication to a goal despite it being sometimes painful and needing recovery, despite it maybe being expensive, despite it taking a lot of time and energy. But it it was like that. I love to push the the edge of boundaries.

00;53;29;12 - 00;53;46;28
Unknown
Right. And I love that feeling like I actually want to do like go into the force and do survival training. You know, my friends, I want to do Sere training. And I'm like, yeah, can we he's retired. He was gone. He's like, okay. He's like, you know, you're asking for, right? And I was like, yeah, you know, maybe don't yell in my face, but like, let's, let's go.

00;53;47;00 - 00;54;02;26
Unknown
Yeah. Let's just, let's go do the fun parts. Yeah, yeah. Let's go to the fun parts. But you know, like I want to I want to really do it. There's something very empowering about being able to know you can handle yourself in a situation that's hard and that sucks. And even if you don't know exactly what to do, you have tools.

00;54;02;26 - 00;54;18;20
Unknown
You know how to use those. You know how to look for information like those are all useful skill sets. But same thing. Like you, you can start to. Why do you not want to be happy all the time? Well, if I'm happy and content, guess what? I'm going to cling to it. I'm going to be like, this feels really good right here.

00;54;18;22 - 00;54;35;03
Unknown
And like, I don't I don't want to I don't want to be stressed. I don't want to do that over there. Like, I want to do that over there. And all of a sudden, the things that got you there, you're not doing anymore. So now, oh no business. Oh no. No, this, oh, that. Everything's changed. But I wasn't paying attention.

00;54;35;03 - 00;54;54;14
Unknown
So so busy. And my little bubble right now I need to kind of start all over. and so it is a delicate balance. It's, it's a bit of a double sided coin. Right. And riding the edge, as you described it, that's really what it is. It's like this tightrope of in. It's on when you're walking on a tightrope.

00;54;54;14 - 00;55;17;15
Unknown
Right. It's not a taut line. If it was, you just fall off. There's a little bit of slack in it. So how do we walk in this path? Like slowly, methodically, with intention? Knowing that, you know, oh, there's some there, but there's enough slack here that I can, like, get through this point. But it's going to get more taut as I get to the end.

00;55;17;15 - 00;55;40;12
Unknown
Like that is really the the dance we all have to figure out for ourselves, since kind of like an art form. And sometimes the things, in my opinion, that, got us to where we are, they're no longer the same skills or tools that will get us to the next phase. And that's again letting go of the the things that made you who you are and got you to here so that you can open up the door for new stuff.

00;55;40;12 - 00;56;04;29
Unknown
And I had a coach describe it once as I'm trying to remember the name, I can see their face. I was with Jason Drew's mindset coaching and one of the gentlemen there use this analogy and I'm forgetting his name. He has like a Scottish Irish accent. so if he's listening to this and, like, send me a message because I want to remember who you are, who is saying it's like being Tarzan or Jane in order to get to the next vine.

00;56;04;29 - 00;56;40;08
Unknown
When you're swinging through the jungle, you have to let go of the other vine and be in that forward momentum where you're like, at any moment I can grab the vine, I don't know, but if you hold on to that vine behind you, you will definitely not reach the next one right. And so it's it's that, trust in yourself, which is why I believe the, the fitness regime in the discipline with any practice that you have, meditation, yoga, walking, you know, anything you're working towards that discipline helps you believe in yourself and know, like, hey, I got this.

00;56;40;10 - 00;57;12;22
Unknown
I mean, I know what I'm doing, but I can figure it out, you know? Well, and I think that, you know, you build you do build the confidence to take those bigger leaps or to walk into the unknown from those past successes or past experiences. Right? You have to build on those things. And you know, which there's reason, you know, to your point, I think you talked to some people are so maybe struggling because they want to make a big change and in their life, and I want to completely change jobs.

00;57;12;22 - 00;57;32;10
Unknown
I want to make this big thing. It's like, okay, cool, like, but if you're really struggling, it's like, well, can you make smaller change? You know, I'm, I'm working on a program right now for self-discipline for salespeople. And it's it's really about that. Self-discipline really comes down to mindset. You know, it's really about and how do we I say self-discipline is a tool.

00;57;32;15 - 00;57;51;24
Unknown
So this one is a tool to turn an intention into a habit. Yes. And then as you develop and that tool, that tool gets stronger. You know, you can build bigger and stronger things, right? Yeah, I love that. And I forget who I don't remember if it was, Rick Hanson or Corrie Mascara. I follow these two gentlemen.

00;57;52;20 - 00;58;23;26
Unknown
and they said or maybe it was even Daily Stoic. But self-discipline is a form of self-love. because you are basically choosing and committing to this process for yourself and believing that you're worthy to to get there. And, you know, I'm a big proponent of the one degree shift, you know, 1% every day, one tiny little thing that you're going to do every single day that you can commit to because then you have the result over time.

00;58;23;26 - 00;58;45;16
Unknown
I mean, nobody walks into a gym and expects to lift a hundred kilos the first time they walk in there, right? I mean, unless they're like already super strong from whatever other sport. Right? Like Tara Lipinski did Axel, her first time on the ice because she was a rollerblade performer or roller skate. Excuse me. That's not the traditional story for most people.

00;58;45;16 - 00;59;05;03
Unknown
Stepping on ice for the first time, right? So being realistic and I think what often happens, like I was I was talking to my younger sister yesterday and she's about to prep for her interviews with, the airlines. She's already, you know, been approved. And it's just this, like next phase of the process. And she was, know, a little stressed about it.

00;59;05;05 - 00;59;22;17
Unknown
And I said, well, when you just make the task prep for my interview, that's so overwhelming because there's 100 micro tasks within that. Let's break it down. Let's get specific about when you're going to do what thing and for how long. And you don't have to do it all day, every day. It's like, do ten minutes here, do 20 minutes here.

00;59;22;19 - 00;59;40;01
Unknown
And then that becomes palatable. It's like I describe the 1% is it's like a tasty snack. It tastes good. You want more of it rather than like you bite off more than you can chew and you end up choking on it. Like, I love brownies. But if I took off this huge by and choked on it, I probably wouldn't eat brownies for a while.

00;59;40;04 - 00;59;57;20
Unknown
Yeah, or you just keep eating until you get. And you're like, now, I know I feel awful, right? Like, you know that kid in Halloween, your stomach starts to hurt. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I, I think that's yeah, it's so true. It's funny you bring that up because as I delve into as I delve into, okay, how am I going to put together this self-discipline course?

00;59;57;22 - 01;00;17;24
Unknown
You know, I have my own experience as a military officer, but it's funny because when I went through and I looked at all the different resources out there, the almost cornerstone of a lot of the thought process came from Marcus Aurelius and meditations, you know, that show, like a lot of what I put into it, is from Stoicism and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

01;00;17;24 - 01;00;40;11
Unknown
I'm a kind of a combination of the philosophy of stoicism mixed with, I'm also really big into conscious leadership. And in studying that, like so consciousness with sort of neuroscience, in my experience, I'm trying like meld that together to make this new mindset shift for for salespeople. I love that. And, you know, it's like that stuff has test stood the test of time, right?

01;00;40;11 - 01;01;08;06
Unknown
The stoicism and I love Ryan Holiday's interpretations of it and how he presents it, because he makes it very modern for a lot of people to be able to grasp, you know, if you just read like any version of translation when it was translated is the like the lens of time you're getting. So if you read a translation that was just 100 years ago, it's very different than one that was 50 years ago, compared to one that's within the last decade.

01;01;08;06 - 01;01;32;06
Unknown
Right. And so that's also very important to recognize. And again, it's all of your own. Like I talk about mindset stuff, I talk about performance and so do you. But we have vastly different experiences. And so that perspective is unique. That's why we're doing this podcast. Right. and so we can we are the flavor that works for the person that is drawn to us.

01;01;32;08 - 01;01;50;16
Unknown
And it's just like ice cream. Okay. You know, maybe chocolate's your favorite ice cream and you get that 80, 90% of the time. But one day you go in and you're like, man, this pistachio looks really good. Or that rum raisin man up. I think I'm gonna go for this or as hot as heck outside. And it's, you know, lemon sorbet all the way.

01;01;50;18 - 01;02;09;15
Unknown
By the way, I'm a poet, in case you didn't know it. Right. And I'm super punny and dorky and silly, so, but, you know, it's what's the flavor that you need? And what's the flavor that's going to taste good? You know, if you just get chocolate because you always get chocolate, but you really wanted the lemon sorbet, you're not going to enjoy it.

01;02;09;18 - 01;02;29;29
Unknown
You're not probably even going to eat the whole thing. You're going to throw it away. And guess what? That's going to be the same thing. If you start to work with a coach or buy a book or sign up for a degree because you think you want it, like really listening to your intuition, you said at the beginning of our show, and that's something that most of us have been taught not to do.

01;02;30;06 - 01;02;54;16
Unknown
Like just listen to the brain. That's the most important thing. And yeah, yeah, I you know, it's funny, I it's funny a lot of times I feel like I've had to learn that lesson. in a military sense, I, I, I had an experience where I was in Iraq with my sniper team, and we were there was, a foreign sniper, I think it was from Syria.

01;02;55;29 - 01;03;14;24
Unknown
and and he was, like, basically terrorizing this area. And what he was doing, he actually was shooting the interpreters. So they go on patrol and he would just shoot interpreters and. Right. Yeah, yeah. And it was it was like it was like they couldn't kill you couldn't communicate. It was also like a message, like you're working with the Americans and like, this is the cost of it to try to discourage others.

01;03;15;16 - 01;03;35;20
Unknown
and the unit that was there was really struggling. So we went out. We actually lived in a little outpost with, like 50 was like 20 of us and like 15 Iraqis living in this little outpost and right on the edge. We were just, like, doing patrols into it. And, you know, as young, you know, I was 24, you know, 25 and leading a student.

01;03;35;20 - 01;03;56;02
Unknown
And we were trying to be aggressive to get to make contact and figure out why this guy was. We could take action. And we were walking this road and the Iraqis told us other people's was like, hey, this road has IEDs on it. Like as roadside bombs, like it's dangerous. And it's like, all right, we'll get, the EOD team there, the explosive disposal.

01;03;56;02 - 01;04;09;27
Unknown
And they would get out and they'd have these like big rollers, and they drive ahead to like, clear the route. And then they're supposed to come. And they kept getting delayed, and they kept getting delayed. I'm like, man. And we're just anxious, like, you know what? Finally you talk to Colby. Like, we should just go, like, screw, right?

01;04;09;29 - 01;04;38;11
Unknown
It'll be all right. We'll be really careful. And we started walking down this road and walked down, even only, like, maybe half a kilometer, a kilometer and up ahead, like at the front, I just heard Boof! And this cloud go up, and I'm like, shit. like, my heart sunk and ran up. And luckily I ran up to the front and, I'll never forget, the NCO, the sergeant out front, he was he was sitting there.

01;04;38;13 - 01;04;55;27
Unknown
And somehow, by the time this thing had exploded and I hunkered down, got up and ran up there he had he already lit a cigaret, and he was walking around. He was causing the kickers like, son of a bitch like everybody else is down point security. Exactly. One of the guy who was just like, you know, he's like, like, are you all right, all right.

01;04;55;29 - 01;05;15;26
Unknown
And luckily, what had happened was the, the pressure plate that connected to make it go off went down his debt cord, and the deck cord that explodes went off. And that's what that was. But underneath that was like 12 anti-aircraft rockets. It didn't go off. Wow. So if that would have gone off like that, he would have been gone.

01;05;15;29 - 01;05;48;07
Unknown
Like gone. Even around. And the people around him. And as we were thinking like, you know, almost that ego that like, not and I kind of knew but I pushed down this intuition said it's not worth just wait. And, and I learned the hard lesson. I had a couple answers that like, kind of reinforced that. And then, you know, by the time fast forward, I'm in Afghanistan on my team, and there was multiple times where I wanted, you know, mentally, you want to push through those things and push down your feelings.

01;05;48;09 - 01;06;17;01
Unknown
And I had let's do it and I'll do it every time I listen to my intuition. Things worked out. And the couple times that I didn't, it went wrong. It was just like, almost every time it's like you, I feel like people almost throw shade at this intuition concept, like a some sort of weird. But it's I think it's really just listening to the complete, complex picture of all the senses and thoughts that are coming in and like, it's it's a complex, multi-sensory input.

01;06;17;06 - 01;06;41;00
Unknown
Yeah, it's not sound like woowoo thing that you should have listened to. Exactly. And. Well, and guess what? We have neurons in our gut. We have neurons in our heart, and we communicate through more than just our words. Because when I had a friend who was an FBI informant at one point and he remembers and he was an older gentleman, you know, this was like five years ago.

01;06;41;00 - 01;07;07;02
Unknown
We met. We were at a conference, right, with a bunch of lawyers and financiers. And so we were having this conversation. He's like, listen, man, this stuff is real. Like nonverbal communication and all this. It is so real because I went through this experience and I had to sit there with the people who were on the listening on the other end and dissect this hourlong meeting sentence by sentence, because they thought everything was like terrible and nothing was working and it was going wrong.

01;07;07;09 - 01;07;28;26
Unknown
Whereas I walked out of that thing like, this guy is going to work with us, you know? But they didn't see the eyes, they didn't see the facial movements. They didn't have, like any of this other context. They just had words. So it was a completely different experience for them. And, you know, we have been taught to highly intellectualize everything.

01;07;28;26 - 01;07;50;04
Unknown
So again, good thing and bad thing, we are able to do so much. We innovate because of that. At the same time, we've lost touch with our bodies, our physical bodies. So we push through pain. I mean, competitive athletes, right? I pushed through signals. My body was telling me that that was probably not something I should be doing in pursuit of a goal, and then I paid for it later.

01;07;50;06 - 01;08;30;20
Unknown
Right. But then you start to get I mean, how many times have you been writing or working and you don't go to the bathroom or you don't drink water? Right. Very basic, basic things that you're ignoring the the cue and input. So.

01;08;30;23 - 01;09;01;03
Unknown
At that time, with the knife. Like they say that. And then you say something about like sensory experience and and whatever energy. And they're like, that's hogwash. It's like you, you just you just experienced it. Yeah. Neuroscience is finally catching up with what a lot of the, you know, Buddhists and other like your medic in Chinese traditional medicine and these things have been talking about so we can have some context for our logical, linear brains, but they are real and it's just learning to listen to them.

01;09;01;03 - 01;09;22;21
Unknown
Right? Also, if you have anxiety or anything like that. Again, you said multisensory. It's not that I just listen to my anxiety and that's what I take to be the truth and like follow it. It's what's this anxiety trying to tell me? Is this something I live with day to day? And maybe there's a bit of disordered feeling and so I discount it a little bit more than I would or have.

01;09;22;21 - 01;09;48;19
Unknown
I never felt anxiety ever before, but now I feel it. And I, you know, it's a signal of maybe I should do some more research, maybe I should vet this process a little bit more, or do a background check on this company or these people, or, you know what I'm about to get myself into. and so again, it's it's just it's data for you to then put through your own complex processor and figure out your answer.

01;09;48;19 - 01;10;12;19
Unknown
It's not a set formula like we have in math or calculus. Yeah. You know, on those lines a tool. It's worked. I see it's it's worked for me. It's a tool. It's a new tool. So I'm not like it's not one that I've mastered but came as I've, this, this mindfulness meditation Buddhist journey has really delved me into, into like the consciousness and conscious leadership stuff.

01;10;12;19 - 01;10;29;17
Unknown
And, I've got a consciously worship coach now, and I'm in some groups. And so, you know, I can apply that in other areas with companies and stuff. And one of things they talk about there is how feelings I really like 100% feel your feelings. And that's something, right? That's for most people. It's like whoa, whoa whoa, whoa.

01;10;29;22 - 01;10;50;10
Unknown
And yeah. And you know, I think you and I are very similar in our ability like to I know if you do like Enneagram stuff, you're probably Enneagram three, I'm guessing. Right? Like, you're like a driver, you know? No, actually, man, I just look this up for somebody. I forget what my grandmas like. I'm Enneagram three. So, like, when things like not feeling your feelings and, like, trying to, like, hide from.

01;10;50;12 - 01;11;12;18
Unknown
And you know what they talk about, like, hey, feelings. If you actually feel them, they're actually very fleeting or like like it's 90s at most if you like, really let yourself go through it and welcome it and then and then after you do that, you can almost say, okay, why did that feeling come up? And how what can I do about what you're trying to tell me?

01;11;12;20 - 01;11;30;17
Unknown
But trying to do that in that highly emotional state, as you mentioned, that neuroscience, right. We get in that fight or flight and all that we or prefrontal cortex is, is working all that, you know, sciency stuff where and and so this experience of filling feeling my feelings all the way through is been a tough one, for me.

01;11;30;17 - 01;12;06;23
Unknown
But, you know, it it is really powerful. I was I was actually practicing my speech. the other day, because I had a keynote I was going to do and practicing, and I had, my first dog job was in my speech, passed away in December. So, yeah, she just two days after her 15th birthday, Java bean and, and so, anyway, her ashes and, like, everything sitting there, so like, as I'm speaking and I was talking about this part of the speech where I talked about Java, and then I walked by her ashes like, it's a little like, you know, with her collar all to myself.

01;12;07;00 - 01;12;20;28
Unknown
And I was like, I got really sad. I was like, no, no, I I'm practicing my speech right now, you know, like, push it down, push it down, work on my speech, whatever speech. And I and I kept messing up my speech. I couldn't it was like, Yeah. And I was like, oh, damn it, I'm gonna have to just.

01;12;21;00 - 01;12;33;09
Unknown
I'm just gonna have to feel this like doing. And it when I started crying, I was like down of myself and then just, like, really hard through and then, you know, you but then you let it run its course. It was like, And I got back to, like, practicing. So it was like nothing. I said easy every time.

01;12;33;09 - 01;12;52;10
Unknown
But there was like a very real moment of like, oh, maybe there's something to this, you know, I, I definitely so when I was a kid, being a figure skater. Right. And I was very expressive, but I quickly learned that I was too much for some people. Again, Midwest like don't make other people uncomfortable or like, you know, just fit in this box because that's where I want you to be.

01;12;52;13 - 01;13;15;03
Unknown
So I learned to kind of to navigate around this and not be too much for people. And hold those things in and, you know, it it served me in a lot of ways because I was able to have more like the perseverance and grit and the talent in other ways, to competitive skating or competitive CrossFit or just, like, put my head down and work, that kind of thing.

01;13;15;11 - 01;13;37;20
Unknown
But it really limited me in my range of experience and even understanding of myself. So as I've been playing with bringing it back more, I use the emotions we all. Have you ever seen that? I don't think so. If you Google emotions, we'll anyone who's listening, you'll you'll get the image as basically as a circle where there's like the inner circle, the six core emotions, and then a second ring and a third ring.

01;13;37;22 - 01;13;55;08
Unknown
Okay. And what you start to understand is that most people's language is very limited. So when you cannot name what you're feeling, guess what? You're going to ignore it and hide from it, or you're going to run, you're going to face it and you're going to fight it, right? Because like it's fear that's coming up. I don't know what this is.

01;13;55;08 - 01;14;12;00
Unknown
So I got to run away from it or I got to like fight and get angry or you we go to our coping mechanisms. But what can often happen to is that you experience like the second or third ring emotion, but you don't really understand where it belongs. So for example, I was withdrawn and numb for a long time.

01;14;12;03 - 01;14;35;19
Unknown
Do you know where that emotion belongs? What would you say that that is under like as an umbrella? Fear. It's under anger. So I thought it was under sadness, but it actually under anger. And I didn't have an outlet for anger. It wasn't really socially acceptable for women to be angry. you know, it's more socially acceptable for men to be angry and women to be depressed.

01;14;35;19 - 01;14;57;18
Unknown
So in my mind, I thought those two things were linked to sadness and depression. They're they're actually linked to anger. And so learning that also helped broaden my experience and being able to language my experience. There is now an app that I recommend to everybody. It's called How We Feel, dawg. doctor Mark Brackett, he's got a podcast now on YouTube as well.

01;14;57;24 - 01;15;20;12
Unknown
Download this app. You can set an alarm. It'll ask you to there's there's like high energy, pleasant, low energy, pleasant, high energy, unpleasant, low energy, unpleasant. So then you select from those quadrants, then you'll get a whole range of words. And each one is a different shape and a description. So as you're learning to name your experience, you are able to like, oh, that's not quite right.

01;15;20;12 - 01;15;48;05
Unknown
Let me check out this word. Right. So you're learning as you go. Then what you get to see as well as over time where do you sit. So if I just show somebody the other day I've been doing this is some September, I only have 6% and 8% of the unpleasant emotions in my overall emotional experience. So even though I had a harder April, like I mentioned earlier, I still largely had a positive experience.

01;15;48;07 - 01;16;13;07
Unknown
And those negative emotions. Guess what? The number one is tired. Something negative. Excuse me? Unpleasant. Tired was like the number one I've selected. And, so typically these more unpleasant emotions are, at the end of my day, they're at the end of the week. Friday is the worst for them. and Sunday. So now I have an understanding of my emotional, like, journey through the week.

01;16;13;07 - 01;16;36;02
Unknown
And okay, so how do I mitigate that? That's why I do my digital detox from Friday to Saturday. Typically because it helps me reset and, you know, process and have space for all those things. And it is such a powerful tool. I've loved it so much. And then it gives you little videos to help explain to you. Or if you pick something that's a little bit more intense, how to navigate that, how to process it.

01;16;36;02 - 01;16;54;00
Unknown
And they're like, one minute 90s there. Not long. And it's kind of gamified. You can also share it with your friends. So I've got a couple friends on there now. And so when I see something come across that's like, I'm scared or I feel sad, I can go message that person, say, hey, are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?

01;16;54;02 - 01;17;19;04
Unknown
And if they don't know, they don't need to. But at least I can reach out. And I know, and that's been a really awesome tool because it's designed by psychologists, engineers and neuroscientists and they call it, you know, you're a data scientist. sorry, emotions scientist. That's what you are. You are learning about, you know, what your control level is and how do these different variables affect you.

01;17;19;04 - 01;17;38;09
Unknown
And really, I mean, our whole life is just a science experiment, figuring out what works and what doesn't work. And so that's why I love this app. because it's very powerful to, to, to learn. I'm going to show you one more, one more thing that I've done. I had a coach who invited me to just pick an emotion from the emotions.

01;17;38;09 - 01;17;58;11
Unknown
We'll set a timer on my watch for three minutes and just sit in the energy of that emotion so that I could experience in a safe setting. Right. What? That emotion is. So one day, I picked boredom. I hate being bored. Oh my God, as a kid, I just feel like I'm bored. I didn't like I had to do something.

01;17;58;11 - 01;18;19;00
Unknown
I'm, you know, my brain moves fast. I got to be entertained or learning or whatever. I didn't know how to rest. So I put boredom on for three minutes and it was like really uncomfortable fidgeting. I was there, so I just breathe through it. I started to pay attention. Where in my body am I feeling this? How? How, intense can I, like, amplify this feeling, too?

01;18;19;02 - 01;18;38;28
Unknown
And then after the three minutes, it's like, okay, it's done. Now I know what that boredom feels like. So when it started to pop up, guess what? I was able to recognize it instead of going for food, instead of going for Instagram, instead of going for whatever my advice was at the time, I could go, oh, I'm bored.

01;18;39;00 - 01;18;58;13
Unknown
What would not be boring? What could be fun for me to do that can help with this? And it would just it was fun to play with. and the other thing with that is sometimes we don't recognize because we only feel like 10% of the emotion or 20% like level 1 or 2. And so we can't name it because we don't know it at that level.

01;18;58;13 - 01;19;22;00
Unknown
We only know it at ten, or we only know it at nine. And so being able to recognize at the earlier stages of the sensations arriving in your body, what's happening is so empowering because it enables you to redirect your ship in a different direction, rather than just being swept along the riptide of, oh, we're going here now.

01;19;22;05 - 01;19;50;00
Unknown
There's no, you know, like somebody flicked a switch and that's all I can happen. I got to go to ten, you know, there's other ways to navigate that. So that was really powerful for me because I also though did not know how to process and name my emotions. I'm much, much better now. that's a that's a really cool as I'm definitely going to check that out because yeah, this sort of again in this conscious space, conscious leadership lead in yourself being intentional, being present and and feeling those emotions.

01;19;50;00 - 01;20;12;09
Unknown
And I think to me, one of the biggest things about consciousness is and is about it's about intentionality, right? It's like living with intention as opposed to, like you mentioned, being reactive. Like I feel these things. I feel it's like, where are you going? And being intentional about how you're dealing with that, being in the moment. And so I wonder, you know, you mentioned about when boredom hit and you're like, what?

01;20;12;09 - 01;20;37;17
Unknown
Wouldn't be bored? Is that the same response of like, well, what about my relationship to boredom? Yeah. Like it's, you know, is that like something you kind of explored as well? Like, yeah. What if being voids okay. Why is it bad to be bored. Yeah. Right. Because now I know how to feel it. But I also so it doesn't scare me into unconsciously choosing a coping mechanism.

01;20;37;20 - 01;20;55;27
Unknown
But now I also, you know, again, limit and serve. Boredom doesn't feel great because I'm bored and I like to do things. But how does it serve me? Well, it lets the dust settle like my nervous system can relax, right? I can all of a sudden in staring out, you know, early. We're going to go to Barton Springs.

01;20;55;27 - 01;21;17;15
Unknown
It's thunders coming outside. I love thunderstorms, but I can stare at this when I'm hearing the rain. It activates different thought patterns. Now all of a sudden, I get this opportunity to just be restful and being a different experience. And so it's, you know, I have gotten some of my greatest insights of myself or of a problem I'm facing when I'm bored.

01;21;17;18 - 01;21;42;09
Unknown
You know, I go for a walk now with or without my dog, but no headphones. I just take in the scenery. sometimes I'll take, earbud and listen to a podcast or an audiobook, but the majority of the time, especially if I'm on a run, I just what are the sensations I'm getting? Like, I'm not checked out listening to this podcast to get through my run and numb out.

01;21;42;09 - 01;21;59;20
Unknown
Disassociate. Because then guess what? I end the hour long run. I was like, oh, my ankles really, really painful now. Whereas if I don't have my headphones and it's a little niggle like, oh, maybe I need to be more intentional about my footfall, maybe my movement pattern has, you know, I was checked out so I wasn't paying attention, I wasn't running correctly.

01;21;59;23 - 01;22;22;15
Unknown
And so I'm able to catch these things. So no matter what it is that you're doing, you have more and greater awareness. But yeah, there's nothing wrong with being bored. There's also nothing wrong with being angry or anxious or any of those things, because those emotions are data. I like to say it's energy and motion. Emotion. and if you stop it, that's when you have the problem because you're like holding it in.

01;22;22;15 - 01;22;49;05
Unknown
And just like moving water or blood in the body, it has to move or else you get stagnant and things grow that you don't want to grow. And then it gets yucky and you know you have a bigger problem on your hands later down the line. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you mentioned about some of these, you know, fundamental, almost ancient in terms of our like, I guess, you know, units of time as people, that have stood the test of time, we talked about, you know, Buddhism.

01;22;49;05 - 01;23;07;20
Unknown
And it's funny how whether it's stoicism or whether it's a different falsity or neuroscience or, or consciousness, how, you know, one of those things, the sort of fundamental principle of Buddhism that keeps popping up for me is that is non-attachment. Yeah, right. And that's kind of you were talking was like not attaching myself. I'm not, I'm not I'm not angry.

01;23;07;20 - 01;23;27;12
Unknown
I'm I said, I'm a being experiencing this data point that you mentioned. Like I'm getting data that this is happening. I'm getting these sensations. What do I want to do about it? Right. Like, and I have this like, I guess not too. I guess we can go deeper and say our podcast, the, to even go deeper, like, I have a it's not like I think it's right.

01;23;27;12 - 01;23;50;03
Unknown
It's just a thought, a theory. because as I sort of like, meditate on, like, enlightenment, what do they mean by that? And I almost think that, you know, the more you meditate, the more you're you have mindfulness, and the more you can create a gap between, getting getting the thought, the emotion and the stimulus, whatever that is that happens.

01;23;50;05 - 01;24;24;04
Unknown
And then you have that, even if it's half a second or second of opposite, observing that and then being able to almost start, start moving from reacting to responding, which is, I work with like leaders on too is like, are you reacting or are you responding? And even if it's a half second or a second gap, even just being aware that that there is a gap is, in my mind, potentially like what they're trying to describe when people say enlightenment, because that's like true freedom, like you're actually in your your consciousness is actually in charge now.

01;24;24;04 - 01;24;46;05
Unknown
You're not just responding to a stimulus in is is that what you're trying to get through all these efforts of, of quote unquote enlightenment? I don't know. Yeah, I thought I had yeah. No, I, I agree with that. And I think ultimately why do we why do we why do we I suppose chase enlightenment. We want to understand we are seeking understanding.

01;24;46;13 - 01;25;14;28
Unknown
for you. You're the three of the Enneagram, right? That's the achiever. So for you, it's like this thing to achieve. Whereas actually enlightenment is a way of being. It's not anything we can, like, get by doing, really, which is counterintuitive. I'm an eight, by the way. I looked up my score. Yeah. So the eight is the the challenger direct, protective, rebellious ideas that reward confident and goal oriented.

01;25;15;05 - 01;25;36;03
Unknown
But that's the same thing for me. It's like, oh, it's a goal. So if I do these things, I can get there. And a lot of my requirement for my unwinding is that, I'm learning more how to be. So be with the emotion, whatever that might be. How to be with the discomfort and not disassociate and check out like when I need to.

01;25;36;03 - 01;25;51;23
Unknown
Okay? Like if I'm being chased by a bear or I'm, you know, going to be doing this survival training or something like that, okay. Or sport, you know, great. When I need to, I'm going to do the thing, I'm going to get it done. But I'm also going to reflect on it. I'm going to understand why I did those things.

01;25;51;23 - 01;26;13;09
Unknown
Again. Consciousness. Right. And that's a beautiful thing to be studying with leadership in my opinion. Because why why do we do the things we do that's so important? You know, and so speaking of why did you start your podcast, you know, when did you start it, why did you start it? And has that changed at all, like has the kind of core focus of the podcast changed?

01;26;13;09 - 01;26;36;15
Unknown
Has the reason why you do it changed? Tell me a little bit more about that. Yeah. Interesting. So I started the podcast about a year ago. or at I think 50 episodes this week coming out. and, you know, it's interesting you bring up, I guess, the why was I wanted to I like I like talking about it.

01;26;36;15 - 01;27;06;03
Unknown
I like talking with leaders. Yeah. And and I called it Leadership After Hours because the concept was like it seemed like with business, business or Mindset podcast, it was either like super serious and like nerding out or talking or like super, either nerdy, the super nerdy, nerdy, not like the real sciency stuff, which I do love, but it's either that, like a business podcast that would be, you know, really in the weeds on like, well, what's the latest on the, you know, HR practices and compliance, but you know, whatever else, right.

01;27;06;05 - 01;27;29;04
Unknown
Or it was like comedian like fart jokes, like I feel like it's like there's just, you know, like sides. Right. And and what I was trying to do was like, what if you had a podcast that was like after hours. So almost like, think sit down, dark room. Me actually, the first few I get, I had a little studio where it was, it was a conference room that was set up, designed to look like mad men.

01;27;29;07 - 01;27;43;18
Unknown
So it had, like, the smoky chair, like the Ludwig Lounge, the other chairs. And and the idea was like, let's sit down with, like, if you're sitting down with a cocktail with a leader at the end of the day, just like, oh, all right, let's have an informal, fun conversation about like, what's really happening on the ground and what you're really seeing.

01;27;43;20 - 01;28;00;21
Unknown
And so that's the concept behind Leadership After Hours. That's why I started because I think there's it's like, let's get off of the, you know, I'm not I'm not interviewing you in the sense of like, I don't need your I don't need your pitch. I don't need your, you know, your your I don't need your company's talking points.

01;28;00;21 - 01;28;18;19
Unknown
Like what what are you really struggling with and what's really working and like let's get down to that. So that's why I started leadership off hours and what I'm trying to trying to develop as it evolves. Awesome. Yeah. What about you? What about the lounge? You've been doing that for a while. I feel like. Yeah. So the lounge actually started as the pivot cast.

01;28;18;19 - 01;28;35;02
Unknown
That was the first name. And I would do IG lives. I started in January 2021, and as you can imagine, obviously at that time in the world, there was a lot of change happening and a lot of pivots for people and a lot of people assessing what they want to do in life and who do they want to be.

01;28;35;02 - 01;28;58;11
Unknown
And, you know, maybe they're leaving industries that they were in for many, many years, particularly in aviation. Right? So it was a lot of what big pivot have you been through lately and what's your story. And and you know, how did you navigate that. How'd you get through it. and then it evolved into I actually took a pause for a while because I started to feel like, not as resonant with certain guests that were on there.

01;28;58;11 - 01;29;20;11
Unknown
Maybe I was being a little too, kind of thrown spaghetti at the wall in terms of, like, who I'm going to invite, what top secret to talk about and all that kind of stuff. And I was, at this point in my own big pivot of, do I continue to be nomadic? Do I do I pick a place in the U.S. or somewhere around the world to live, or do I go back to Hong Kong?

01;29;20;14 - 01;29;44;20
Unknown
And so I pushed pause, and decided, okay, I'm I'm going to give myself some more clarity. I'm not having fun with this anymore. I started it to have fun because I'm say, I'm really curious and I wanted to learn about people's stories, and I wanted to share those stories and help give people tools that were navigating these tough spaces, like, you know, some opportunities to have some insights from those who are also going through it.

01;29;45;06 - 01;30;12;15
Unknown
and then I once I had like, okay, I'm staying in the U.S, I'm going to look back in the business aviation world. This is how I'm going to present myself. I decided to rebrand it called calling it The Lounge. I chose to kickstart it after I saw Michelle May's car and also went to heroic and her speech changed how I felt about myself and her own space and several of the things I have the transformational experience and on stage, she said.

01;30;12;15 - 01;30;36;11
Unknown
She was a brand new speaker, so I was like, how did you do this? I need. And so we had a conversation. We hit it off. We became friends. She she was my first guest when I kickstarted it, calling it The Lounge. Perfect, right? Like retired Thunderbird pilot. And, the reason why I went with the lounge was because of this big, bigger concept of our life is a series of flight legs.

01;30;36;14 - 01;30;54;16
Unknown
No flight lasts forever. What goes up must come down. We're going to refuel. We might even change aircraft. We might go to the same place back and forth a couple times, and then we might choose a different destination. And even with that, there's inclement weather. We have alternate airports. There's diversions. Like there's so many wonderful metaphors with flight.

01;30;54;16 - 01;31;14;12
Unknown
So, you know, in the lounge, if you're a pilot, you're doing your preflight there, you're doing your post-flight there. So that's a perfect analogy for how we can assess our lives using things that we already know, and having a checklist of sorts. And and providing some structure. But also a lot of people have flown in today's world, right?

01;31;14;18 - 01;31;43;05
Unknown
At least in North America, the majority of people have been on an airplane before. If they have not, they understand they could watch a comedy skit about a safety briefing or, you know, they get it. They they know what this means. It's not such a foreign thing that is out of reach. And when you're in a lounge in a in an airport, you are there with people that are going all different destinations, and yet you're in this common place to refuel yourself to rest and recover a little bit, maybe get some work done, read a book.

01;31;43;05 - 01;31;59;25
Unknown
Right. And so I thought it was just this amazing analogy. and, you know, you feel relaxed when you're a lounge, you know? So, like you, I didn't want the standard, like, I want to talk about your business and how you did that, and you talk about that all the time. You can go listen to one of those other podcasts for that.

01;31;59;27 - 01;32;19;19
Unknown
I didn't want anything that was too ethereal. And so this allowed me to like, if I invite you into my home and we're sitting in the lounge, we're going to have a really awesome conversation, right? And barriers kind of come down. It's a little bit different. You know, one day maybe I will have a physical lounge that I can then bring podcast guests into, right.

01;32;19;19 - 01;32;41;23
Unknown
And, and do it that way. which would be amazing, you know, and then you get to play with, the sensory experiences we've been talking about. Yeah. No, you're right. There are so many great metaphors, there with aviation and life and, and and I love the way you put that all together. and then you, you know, I know we're we're pre-recording this because we're doing this.

01;32;41;29 - 01;33;01;17
Unknown
We're doing the podcast extravaganza right now. You're welcome. World. but, you usually do yours live too, right? Yeah, absolutely. And the reason for that, some of it's kind of that legacy I started doing IG lives to start with, but even once I moved to I used StreamYard. It's a great platform and, and pushes to the social channels.

01;33;01;17 - 01;33;24;24
Unknown
So it gets me the visibility but also real life cannot be edited. I cannot push, pause and go, oops. Erase that. Oops. Let's, let's let's cut out the ums. Let's cut out the swear word. No. When it happens in real life, we have to accept it, own it, pivot, do whatever we need to do. And so that's why I like to do it live.

01;33;24;24 - 01;33;50;04
Unknown
Because I feel like we're getting a more truer version. It's not polished and that's me I don't want to edit out, you know what my guests are saying? Yeah. The other the other week, my guests, laptop died in the middle of it, and she disappeared. And we had so many tech glitches like coming up to it that we were, like an hour late and starting, but we hadn't even posted about it.

01;33;50;04 - 01;34;07;20
Unknown
It was the first time. So I just was like, you know what? We're just going to fun. We're going to riff. We're going to just let's just talk. What do we want to talk about today? Right. And it was a bit of a different energy, but it gave me this great idea like, hey, what if I have the kind of preset topics on like whatever day of the week, Tuesday.

01;34;07;22 - 01;34;29;09
Unknown
But then on Friday it's just, hey, come in a lounge, let's just have a conversation. You know, maybe it's a different time length. Maybe it's, a different maybe the same. Guests can do both, but at different times, like different weeks. Right. So you get these different perspectives of them, something that's a little more of a curated experience and something that's just, hey, what's most alive for you today in this moment?

01;34;29;12 - 01;34;53;14
Unknown
What do you want to say to people? Right. So sometimes those accidents turn out to be like the coolest things you know? So I, you know, I'm playing with, a concept of doing, you know, the interview style. And then we alternate with more of a curated solo, you know, podcast episode. Yeah. I have you thought about doing that?

01;34;53;15 - 01;35;11;22
Unknown
You kind of like, get your own stuff out here. I have, I mean, you'll notice that, like, I mean, right now we're having this awesome conversation back and forth where we're both giving input, asking questions of each other. And that's kind of how my interviews tend to work anyway. I'm not just like the questions to the person, you know, it's it's more natural.

01;35;11;24 - 01;35;35;12
Unknown
And at the same time, I think it would really benefit an audience to be able to hear your view on just ten minutes of this topic go right. and I just haven't figured out exactly as I'm kind of thinking about this new format for the Friday. I'm also thinking about doing some of that, and, you know, working on sponsorship for the podcast.

01;35;35;12 - 01;35;53;03
Unknown
And so maybe that creates its own spin off, you know, maybe they sponsor the lounge, but then they have an idea for, hey, let's do this, or let's do an eight series episode on this topic. and so I'm being very open. Yes. And but yeah, what about what about you, have you thought of anything besides just for solo format?

01;35;53;03 - 01;36;21;14
Unknown
Have you had you thought about how you do your format? yes. And you know, one thing that I'm going to try to do more of is getting more of my original intent, which was I, I, you know, it's hard and takes more outreach to get like current business leaders on. And when you do, they're like super stoked because no one asked them, you know, like you us two speakers, authors, thought leaders, like we're asked to be on podcasts.

01;36;21;14 - 01;36;37;16
Unknown
We have podcasts all over the place. We just I and we it's great input. and I think one thing moving forward for the rest of the year, I want to make sure I have a good balance and really reaching out and trying to get, leaders on, you know, one of my one of the favorite podcast I did I do with my wife.

01;36;37;16 - 01;37;11;28
Unknown
She's a senior senior sales manager in tech. And again, getting so getting people that are like senior managers, VP's, not not just the CEOs or the founders or the authors, but like get some middle managers or like in the thick of it and then, you know, and it's like, okay, speak as freely as you possibly can. And what do you see and and what and now and I think that is I think that's a unique perspective that, you know, and when you especially in this top ten tip podcast, top 20, which is, which is great and there's some really good people out there, but you start seeing it, it's like it's like, oh,

01;37;11;28 - 01;37;32;05
Unknown
it's the same people, you know, in the same podcast, like, oh, Huberman is on. Oh, you know, Peter Acheson. Oh, Tim Ferriss is on. Like, this is like, this is wheel of of people going to those podcasts. which is cool. But what you're, you're not seeing is like, you know, the person who is, you know, you're hearing, like, Andrew Human, who's running a lab in a do over ten years.

01;37;32;05 - 01;37;49;03
Unknown
Like, what about like, the resident who's, like, trying to run a department inside of a hospital, you know, so that's an area that I'm going to try to shift to, I think. Yeah. You know, just to hear. Yeah, I've enjoyed a lot of the conversations that I've had with those mid-level leaders or like young professionals that are offering that new perspective.

01;37;49;04 - 01;38;18;19
Unknown
Right. because we do communicate differently through the generations, as we gain more consciousness just as a species and awareness of, you know, ourselves and the planet and how we relate to ourselves and others and, you know, all of that, obviously, like even just in the last 50 years with the internet and how things have grown and evolved since then, and how we do business and how we relate to each other and relate to other places and people and ideas, so that's awesome to get on there.

01;38;18;19 - 01;38;38;18
Unknown
Like, I had some I had this gentleman who had started a cadet program for kids, and then under like a lower socioeconomic area, you know, underprivileged. And they got scholarships to learn how to fly. And then I had two of those cadets on the podcast, and it was so much fun. I mean, they're like 17 and 18 years old graduating high school.

01;38;38;18 - 01;38;58;12
Unknown
And, you know, and their energy with each other, like the girl was more kind of like regimented and, you know, like, I'm going to the Air Force Academy and a little bit more serious. And then this kid is this other kid is like super playful and cheeky and like, teasing her. And then she's teasing him back and, you know, and then they're talking about how they support each other and what they learn from each other.

01;38;58;12 - 01;39;23;17
Unknown
And I was just like, yeah, this is so cool. And when when you go through experiences like that too, it's like, that inspires me. And that reminds me why I do this work or why I started this. And, you know, like I said to my brother the other day, he's 25 and he's pretty terrible at is phone like, I have two messages fiancé to get him to respond to a text message, which means he's off his phone a lot, and he's a film director and he's, you know, very creative.

01;39;23;17 - 01;39;43;10
Unknown
And that means he's not, like, sucked into Instagram or TikTok or whatever, which is great. But he's like, but yeah, I mean, I could be better, right? Because that's also a tool that could be used in a productive way. and so, you know, the fact that he can even acknowledge and have awareness that I'm like you and I did not have that level of awareness, but yeah.

01;39;43;15 - 01;40;05;21
Unknown
No. And it's crazy. These. Yeah. The younger generations, you know, because I'm, I'm just like I'm 40. How old am I now? 41. I'm 41 and, right. Yeah. Like career and I. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, sometimes I feel 25. Sometimes I feel, you know, 55. But, yeah, I'm like, in that generation, like, why whatever.

01;40;05;21 - 01;40;30;19
Unknown
Like kind of it's like I'm the I'm the OG millennial, right? Like I'm a millennial, but like, I also didn't have cell phones growing up, you know, or like the internet. We were in high school, and kind of seen both. And so, yeah, there the development and I think that's why you see, you know, the, I guess the conflict two gender, you know, with each other because we're sharing ideas at such a rapid pace and things are changing so fast.

01;40;31;06 - 01;41;02;11
Unknown
and there's some benefit to that. There's also some challenges. But, yeah, I like, you know, people, they're in their 20s now, or even teens, like, they just had the world's, you know, the world's knowledge at their fingertips for their entire life. And if they use it in a productive way, they can have. To your point, I feel like such more of a more of a worldly perspective and a grander perspective on things because they've heard they haven't just heard the people in their Midwestern towns perspectives for 20 years.

01;41;02;11 - 01;41;30;09
Unknown
You know? Yeah. No, this is, and this is why I have a problem with, like, cancel culture. I had to learn that also, like when I came back from the U.S, I was like, what is cancel culture like that didn't exist over there? you can't demonize someone for the things they did 100 years ago because they didn't have the tools we have today, like, okay, no, they should not have probably like I don't agree with slavery.

01;41;30;10 - 01;41;46;21
Unknown
No, they shouldn't have had slaves. But does that mean that we're going to like, tear it out like that's a part of history. And it's important to recognize that that happened so we can have intelligent conversations about it. Now we can't just erase it, you know what I mean? So that's that's where I'm coming at. It's not like we we don't condone the behavior.

01;41;46;21 - 01;42;09;23
Unknown
And we agree. Now culturally that this is not a good thing no matter what it is. But why are we we like let's look forward. Let's let's use that as the springboard to evolve and be better rather than like, oh, let's point fingers and demonize what happened back then like that. That to me doesn't serve the greater whole.

01;42;09;23 - 01;42;34;27
Unknown
Like it's how do we better relate to people that their generations experience this hardship or this systemic issue? How do we start to have the better conversations now? Again, that hard conversation, the conscious conversation, and now we're starting to have tools have to do that newer for you. You're 41. I'm 36. It's newer for me. He's 25. That's like his day to day world.

01;42;34;29 - 01;42;58;24
Unknown
Imagine the children being born right now, like their level of communication and understanding and even things like epigenetics and gene expression. That's not woo either. That's reality. Like, I don't understand why people can accept that this happens in like the mice studies were mice lifespan. We can see like six life spans generations in the course of, I don't know, less than a year.

01;42;58;26 - 01;43;14;21
Unknown
But yet you don't believe that is happening for us. We just have much longer lifespans, and we've only been studying it for however many years, so we don't get, you know what I mean? So I think it's, I don't even know how I get off on a tangent. Sorry. You would cancel culture on me. I'm like, all right, now, and now we're pivoting.

01;43;14;21 - 01;43;37;00
Unknown
Now we're pivoting, now we're pivoting. I just, I yeah, that somehow something like accelerated out of me. But anyways, here we are. Well you know and they know they cancel thing two is which I sort of combine with. And I think it's sort of, I, and I think we're, I think we're pivoting is the identity politics thing, which is kind of in that same realm to me, in a sense.

01;43;37;00 - 01;43;57;20
Unknown
And I think we're swinging back to normalcy, which happens. Right? Like we get this idea like, oh, it's also a pendulum. I think we're swinging back to having it be more a rational discussion. because I agree. Like at least when I was, I remember growing up in the 90s and it was it was this big push about like, hey, we're all human beings first.

01;43;57;20 - 01;44;17;24
Unknown
Yeah. Like we're all the same. And then let's celebrate differences outside of that. And I feel like there's this shift in, in some areas of society to where they're pushing it toward. You're, you're, you're identity first and a human second. Almost. Right. Like your identity or your background is more that's more defining for you than the fact that.

01;44;17;24 - 01;44;43;07
Unknown
I mean, I remember when I looked up like the genetics, you know, like where it's like 99.3% the exact same genetics of a chimpanzee. Yeah, like much less each other. Right. We're like 99.999999999. Exactly genetically the same. So like to me, I just think there's more power in, focusing on the unity and then maybe, like, we're all we're all pretty much like this.

01;44;43;07 - 01;45;07;08
Unknown
We're all human beings. But outside of that, look at all these different flavors. Right. Let's celebrate that. But it all coming back to know we're all human beings first. Like, can't we come together? I just and maybe it's my time in the military to seeing so much conflict and and and not seeing things just through probably for you to being not seeing things just through an American Americana lens of what's black, it's white.

01;45;07;08 - 01;45;30;11
Unknown
It's this is like, my God, like the, with a whole thing about like, power structures and some of that stuff that they talk about, like, you know, well, we need to the disempowered group needs it over. Now. You're almost punishing the group that made these mistakes earlier. And I'm like you, but I saw this. That's Iraq with Shia and Sunni, right?

01;45;30;11 - 01;45;48;14
Unknown
You had a minority, a minority group that ruled. And they were, you know, Saddam at least came from not that Shia, which is the minority. And, in Iraq and they rule is Iron Fist and these other two smaller ethnic groups, the, you know, the Sunnis and the Kurds were oppressed. And then guess what happens when that flipped?

01;45;48;14 - 01;46;10;07
Unknown
And we didn't have we didn't have like constructive ways for them to interact. Right? It was pile it on. And I've just seen, unfortunately, almost like the mice I've seen, if you let that run its course, where maybe in America that would take 200 years to run its course. I saw that run its course because there was no central government and it turned into death squads in months.

01;46;10;12 - 01;46;28;22
Unknown
Yeah. You know, and so it's just like this, this concept of just unity and, and seeing each other as human beings first. To me, I think culturally that's an area when you get you and I think cancel culture is a is a is part of the negative side of. Let's look at each other's similarities first. So most. Yeah.

01;46;28;22 - 01;46;53;07
Unknown
And it's like again it's just polarizing. And that's not the point of it. Right? It's how do we connect? How can we get curious? I mean, even, you know, hurt people, hurt people. And so how do we understand that this person who, you know, we're not condoning the behavior, but how do we understand, like why it's there and have more compassion?

01;46;53;11 - 01;47;23;26
Unknown
Like, if I were to with the tools I have now and the level of awareness and consciousness I have now, think about some of the actions I took 7 or 8 years ago. I could demonize that version of me. I could, like, hate her and just be so, like, horrified, like, how could you do that? You are so dumb that at that time I didn't have the tools I have now and I had to, like, figure it out.

01;47;23;26 - 01;47;39;24
Unknown
I was, you know, in the trenches with like, mud under my nails, trying to, like, climb out of a muddy well, you know, and it wasn't working. And I had to, you know, I did the best that I could with the tools that I had at the time. And what I change some of those things, I would have liked to not hurt people.

01;47;39;26 - 01;48;01;26
Unknown
I would have liked to be better in my communication, but I wouldn't be who I am now if I also hadn't gone through those things or made those decisions and learned from my epic failures. Right? Maybe I would have had to repeat the cycle a few more times if I hadn't had that experience. And so that's another thing, is, like, we then turn this onto ourselves, and that is not an empowering place to be.

01;48;01;28 - 01;48;23;17
Unknown
And that doesn't lead to growth. So, you know, it's not about demonizing and punishing. It's also not about saying that that that was okay. It's just this was the reality. How do we now get better from here? Absolutely. And, you know, I, when I nerd out and got super mad, I had a head on my whiteboard, actually, and I took my whiteboard down.

01;48;23;20 - 01;48;50;17
Unknown
But I would take principles that I thought were like, universal truth. Like, here's here's like a video. Here's some concepts for me that I think sort of universally explain the way reality is. And, one of the ones that I put up there was scale. and I think that's a very underappreciated concept. And I think a lot of times we do have, motor ideological debates or conflict.

01;48;50;19 - 01;49;14;11
Unknown
It's because you have two groups talking about two different scales. So you have one group at the individual level being talking almost like individualistic, like men. We're using full circle. you're right. Like the, the reality is that someone has come from. So where's the excuse. Right. Like your actions do dictate your future. And you are, you know, that internal locus of control you have to have.

01;49;14;11 - 01;49;46;01
Unknown
You are the, you know, the captain of your destiny like no one else is coming for you like the all that is true. And you need to have that expectation for at an individual level. But it's also, if you look at, you know, like what an easy stat would be, you know, in America that was criticized like, but if you were born, you know, a if you take the scale out from the individual to the group, then you look at something like, well, if you just happen to be born a black man versus a white man in America, you're two more than two times more likely to go to jail.

01;49;46;05 - 01;50;04;27
Unknown
Like that's objectively true, too. Yes. and you have two groups trying to make an argument, one at the individual level and one at a like a policy macro level. and, and if you don't recognize when are we talking about or are we talking about you and I right now, are we talking about how do we influence behavior at a systemic level?

01;50;05;03 - 01;50;28;02
Unknown
Because those are two different conversations. And I feel like that nuance doesn't happen enough. Yes. And I think it also becomes about like me versus you, and I want to win and I want to be right, and my viewpoint is right. And again, we are complex creatures. Like I can hold two diametrically opposed ideas and believe both are true within my own being.

01;50;28;04 - 01;50;55;00
Unknown
Right? And so not everybody can do that, though. Not everybody. Not everybody can. I mean, yes, you can. It does. It does take work. I had a neuroscience expert on my podcast one time, and she said something and I'm sorry I hit it back, but just I wanted to share this with you. Is she, we were talking about these concepts, and she said there was some famous scientists quote, basically said, hey, you haven't found truth until you've hit paradox.

01;50;55;02 - 01;51;20;29
Unknown
Yeah. And I just tell you, I love that. Like, I was like, oh, yes, that's so true. Like, if you haven't come down to like, could be either, like, you probably aren't, haven't gone deep enough. Yeah. And that's like what is all about too, because at the end of the day, like, what is reality right. If I take a Panadol for a headache, am I experiencing reality or am I still expressing reality?

01;51;21;01 - 01;51;38;05
Unknown
But it's like I've just created it myself because now it's different than what it would have been without, you know what I mean? Like, there's so many layers and I go into this. I wrote a whole paper on it. It was really fun for philosophy class. But, you know, it's it's challenging your beliefs, challenging your thoughts. Right?

01;51;38;05 - 01;52;08;23
Unknown
Again, back to where we started the beginning. If like having this thought, I am this whether that's an emotion you're saying I am or the, thing you do, who are you without that? you know, have you ever tried, And how could you experience that difference? How do you experience that paradox? And there was a at a, conference I was a keynote at in February when the last keynote, he had these coaching questions that he asks, like people and his business.

01;52;08;23 - 01;52;47;05
Unknown
And he's got a book. Right. Ryan Leak. And one of those questions is, what is other people's experience of you? how often do you contemplate that? Right. And when you really sit with it, sometimes you're like, oh, wow, I have not been considering this whatsoever, and I've just been doing the things for my experience. And to some degree, that's always going to happen because we are having this human experience with this, like self-preservation and the ego and all these complex things that we're going to be doing.

01;52;47;07 - 01;53;11;04
Unknown
Of course, everything I do will also have some self-interest and benefit for me. Right? Even being altruistic, one could argue, is selfish because it gives you a feeling that you like and that you get to portray and all of that. Right? find it. Hence, is it selfish they put on their own oxygen mask first? No, because then they can't serve the rest of the people on the airplane.

01;53;11;07 - 01;53;37;16
Unknown
Right. And so it's really sitting in that and playing with it and asking people one of the space kind homework assignments and, the space leadership program, I, I'm a group leader in and I've done it myself several times is what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Go ask other people to reflect that back to you. And it's it's a powerful exercise.

01;53;37;23 - 01;54;02;17
Unknown
Yeah. Oh wow I like that. Yeah. Really powerful. And you know, it's also powerful is to do it periodically. Not like once a year, but every couple months, every quarter, every six months to the same people and see what's changed over time. I still remember when my mom like from one class to the next. My mom shifted patients as something to improve and work on which lifelong goal here, to being a strength.

01;54;02;17 - 01;54;26;14
Unknown
And I was like, what? Really? Really? And then I even went to my partner and I and he's like, you are much more patient than you were before. And probably her experience of you is you have more patients with her. And I was like, this is a very good paramedic cancer. Do you do like to deal with you?

01;54;26;16 - 01;54;54;14
Unknown
And he's like, like I said, you you are better than you were before. And I was like, okay, well there's progress, right? He's like, yes, yeah. Yes. I was like, I am, you know, the and there's room to grow. You know, you reminded me of, another one of the powerful, questions I found going through this, like conscious leadership, growth and study that I've used a lot is could the opposite be true?

01;54;54;18 - 01;55;20;16
Unknown
Yes. And just like whenever you have that, just be like, okay, what am I what's my feeling now? Could it be the opposite? True. And they're productivity thing you're talking about is, is is what has really helped prod that in me because it's like I feel like I need do I need my if my belief is I need almost fear scarcity, you know, drive like you've got it I've got I there's these things I want to get done because they're important, because they impact people.

01;55;20;16 - 01;55;45;06
Unknown
And it is through all the things. And I need to feel that, that that sense of, of drive to accomplish those things that if not, I should feel bad about it. And it's like, or could it be true? It could obviously be true that if you didn't do that and you, you, you sat in abundance and you sat in the presence and you sat in contentment, would you get there faster?

01;55;45;10 - 01;56;20;10
Unknown
Like, is it requirement? And and that that is it is the opposite. True has been a really powerful tool. kind of along the same lines, you were just talking about that for me. That's that's worked really well. Well, this is actually also dialectical behavior therapy. So dialectical behavior therapy is often used in people who are experiencing intense emotions sometimes who might have some deeper, divergences than kind of the average healthy brain, so to speak, which is an evidence based psychotherapy methodology to change behavioral patterns.

01;56;20;10 - 01;56;47;00
Unknown
And it's often used in very extreme cases like, depression, self-harm, substance abuse, etc. but essentially it's comparable is because it's working on acceptance, changed oriented, change oriented strategies, but it's comparable to this philosophical dialectical process which you just described. Could the opposite also be true? So you're looking at the thesis and antithesis is followed by synthesis, some more than this process.

01;56;47;00 - 01;57;17;01
Unknown
You're going to understand like these two different opposing viewpoints. Somewhere in the middle you're going to find your integration for you. Right. And so it's integrating these opposites. And the other thing is like is this absolutely true when you have or you have a thought like is this the 100% truth or could it be proven otherwise? And like following where that takes you, that's also really fun and enlightening to do.

01;57;17;04 - 01;57;35;13
Unknown
Yeah. And we are almost to two hours. This is crazy. We don't even get into it the like we like looked up all these questions like chatty simple questions to like diverge on the path of normal questions. I think we just do our ourselves on our own. Yeah, yeah. You know what it was? It was a it was a safety net.

01;57;35;14 - 01;58;00;17
Unknown
We had chapter two. We had the we send each other emails like we're so prepared and we use probably, what, 5% if that. But this is this is how it works. Like the preparation process is what allows for it to be easy is what allows for it to be fun. So that's like I prep my morning like my vitamins are laid out, my probiotic, I prep my coffeemaker, my water with my lemon and whatever.

01;58;00;23 - 01;58;15;00
Unknown
And then that way in the morning, I just get up and I do it. I don't have to spend 15 minutes, like preparing everything and getting distracted. So it's easy and I can do it. And like, we prepped for this. So it was just easy. We already knew, like what we're going to do. And the same thing with like our speeches, right?

01;58;15;03 - 01;58;35;13
Unknown
You prep all of that time figure skating or like gymnastics. How many hours go into that prep before the competition and boom, you nail it. So I think we nailed it. We nailed it. Yeah. well, this is awesome. I'm, Well, I guess get together and decide when we want to put this thing out here. Hopefully soon for everybody.

01;58;35;15 - 01;58;52;28
Unknown
And, we'll put each other's contact info into show notes so we can get Ahold of us and follow. Yeah, all my leadership after hours, folks, make sure you go check out the lounge after this and connect with Sarah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And everyone who follows me, please check out Sean's podcast, connect on socials. They'll be I'll I'll be there.

01;58;53;00 - 01;59;15;19
Unknown
I do want to do a quick fire round of the three questions I typically ask. Okay, so what's your superpower? I think mine's grit. Grit. I've I've always been stubborn and, stick to this. And if I decide to get through it, we kind of talk about it, kind of. It can take it to the extreme where it can become, it can become a weakness if I let it go too far.

01;59;15;19 - 01;59;33;07
Unknown
Yeah, but, if I decide I'm going to do something and something needs to happen, it gets done. Awesome. So let's let's just reframe it to tenacious, because I'm also very stubborn. Tenacious is a little more okay, I like that. I like I like tenacious, I like tenacious, amazing. okay, so the second question is who's on your personal board of directors?

01;59;33;07 - 02;00;05;25
Unknown
The people that you go to frequently for that perspective shift, they can be alive. They can be not alive. They can be fictional, real people in your personal network or not in your personal network, but the the lenses you frequently go to to process. Really interesting. so I would say I go to, you know, in terms of outside of my personal circle and even historical, I really like, Epictetus, the stoic philosopher is like one of my, one of my faves.

02;00;06;18 - 02;00;30;07
Unknown
I like Eckhart Tolle. Totally. the power of now. And I go through things like Buddhism. I go to things like the 15 minutes of conscious leadership. So that's kind of like that. You know, when you you had mentioned these questions I saw on your podcast, you asked, you know, I said I was thinking, another question that I asked God is like, whose opinion am I going to let matter to me is how I kind of interpreted it.

02;00;30;12 - 02;00;53;07
Unknown
And so I like, you know, like my wife, my business coach and my conscious leadership mentor. And that's like, if those three people, if they tell me something I like without putting it through a filter, right, I'm like, I this opinion matters to me. But what's your personal directors? I'm interested in that. Yeah. So I, I love having these questions thrown back at me.

02;00;53;09 - 02;01;19;13
Unknown
So I would say that I have like a wider board that then based on the situation I'm facing, I'll recruit appropriate people. so definitely, like, my partner is on there. I've actually lately started asking, what would SAS do? She's my 13 month old Doberman, like, you know, because animals are so in the now and they're not thinking of how was it going to happen five minutes from now or what happened five minutes ago?

02;01;19;13 - 02;01;42;27
Unknown
They're just like, I want to scratch right now. I need a nap right now. Like whatever it is. So sometimes that like that really brings me into the power of now, you know, in a very visceral way, in a, in a very kind of fun way. certainly my mom and, I have, several mentors through the years who have seen me from like, high school age up through now.

02;01;42;27 - 02;02;07;15
Unknown
And so they have this very long term perspective of me and seen me through my different pivots and help. Really good at asking the question that just helps nudge me back onto the path, you know, instead of they're not dragging me over, they're not forcing me. They just asked for one specifically from high school. and one very early in my career when I was living in Beijing.

02;02;07;18 - 02;02;37;09
Unknown
And, my best friend Brandon is definitely on there and now, by extension, also his wife. they they have become like their opinions matter, you know, and I like that is a great question from the wider spectrum. Definitely the Stoics. I'm big into stoicism. I love filtering things through that lens. you know, I, I think back to I think about like when things were really simple and there's no technology, in, in, in, in kind of community environment.

02;02;37;09 - 02;03;03;07
Unknown
How would this be handled or how could how have I experienced in my different experiences this being handled? So like using that lens, one of my best friends and guides from that realm, Parker share, he passed away two years ago. So I often, you know, use how he was and how he loved people where they were at and met them, where they were at, which is what allowed them to get to where he saw them instead of the traditional I see the potential new here.

02;03;03;07 - 02;03;27;22
Unknown
So I'm gonna I'm going to force you. I'm going to nag at you. I'm going to demand this of you. Now, he had this magical ability to hold you here and ask the right question, make the right comment, and make you feel special and valuable and worthy. Now, even without that other thing. And by doing so, that allowed you to get to the other thing that he could so clearly see.

02;03;27;25 - 02;03;49;23
Unknown
So that was really, really special and powerful. So he's definitely there. and there's a myriad of others, you know, it really depends on is this a business kind of thing? Is this a, personal things, romantic thing? And then I might, you know, recruit some other, some other, eyes and ears, but, yeah, you can have multiple, multiple boards for multiple efforts, you know?

02;03;49;24 - 02;04;13;26
Unknown
Okay, at the end of the day, I like that it's it's still my decision. And what's so great about it being a person I don't actually know or a fictional character is I'm putting it through a new lens and perspective, but I am actually guiding myself to that answer. Right. So it's also a very empowering thing of like, I still made this choice, just using these tools.

02;04;13;26 - 02;04;39;01
Unknown
It's just, you know, it's just a tool. So yeah. Yeah, that's that's super interesting. Yeah. The, you know, one tool I just started using my business coach Tony out was, because he mentioned ChatGPT was, I mental masterminds. And it's like, so he's like, you can literally go on there and you could say, I'm really struggling with like, how what about what I should do with my life through the lens of Marcus Aurelius?

02;04;39;01 - 02;05;01;12
Unknown
Oh, yeah. From Hairspray. Answer this question. You know, and like this thing and, like, have a conversation with different, like, historical characters and, and and I did it. And I was like, this is actually, like, pretty cool, a little creepy, but like, pretty cool to see that. But if you get some good insights, it's like, what a, you know, as far as positive negative I, I'm like, that's a cool usage that I hadn't initially thought of.

02;05;01;12 - 02;05;21;05
Unknown
I just started using. Absolutely. Actually, one of my guests recently, Mike Mongeau, he's written a book, using AI and it's a conversation with like with Sherlock Holmes. and it's is something to do with astronauts, but it's just, it's I mean, I was just like, what? What a concept. Like, it's incredible that we now have these tools.

02;05;21;05 - 02;05;42;21
Unknown
So I like yeah, I could say, hey, from the lens of Marcus Aurelius, all the translations that we have, all of these things that are out there, like, what would you do here? Yeah. Yeah, sure. What should I do for dinner now? Just kind of like, you know, you could ask him, you know, Vegas, Vegas stuff, but, you know, probably like, look at all your social media and all this stuff, like, this is what you should eat.

02;05;42;25 - 02;06;14;16
Unknown
Like that is perfect. Wait, how do you like. It's good. And is that, Marcus Aurelius is listening to me? Yeah. along with my iPhone. Yeah. You know, another cool use of AI real quick was, I had. I like an AI expert on my podcast. Like, earlier on, it's been six months ago. but he one way thing he does is he, asks his kids in the day what they want, what they the theme they want for their bedtime story to be.

02;06;14;22 - 02;06;31;19
Unknown
They'll be like, I want to do about dragons. And then what we'll do is and he'll take the lessons that they're like, working through. He saw they he wants them to work on like being a better communicator recorder. And he's like, write me a, you know, a story this long about using dragons that, like, teaches this lesson and he, like, uses a problem that is familiar.

02;06;31;19 - 02;06;56;17
Unknown
And so then he has a custom bedtime story for his kid every night. Like, how cool is that? I need to, like, ask my mentor to do that for me. Just like, hey, like, Anthony's fable, bedtime story. You know, like, because then also, you know, you receive it differently when it's in that form, right? Even sometimes with our mentors, our coaches were like, no, that's not what, that's not what it is.

02;06;56;19 - 02;07;16;04
Unknown
And then like six months later you're like, yeah, that's what it was. So always right. Or like, sorry, when I was 17, you told me all those things about whatever. And I was like, you, you don't know. And then now I'm like, yeah, I kind of didn't know. Yeah, I was, damn it, I was right again. Yeah. Every time.

02;07;16;17 - 02;07;38;05
Unknown
All right. Cool. So last question and it's designed for self-awareness and we can come back, I'm sure we're going to do another extravaganza. I feel like that's something we should do another way. Yeah. An alien life has come to Earth, and they meet you. What do they learn about humanity? Because they've met you.

02;07;38;07 - 02;08;04;27
Unknown
I think that I. I am obsessed and driven by making have people to find a. But for me how to make my life matter I think I it comes from a place of gratitude. Like I'm just, regardless of what this is, I know it's unique and I'm grateful for it. And I am, like, obsessed and driven with, like, making life matter by impacting other people.

02;08;04;27 - 02;08;27;11
Unknown
And I think that's what they would take away from me. Amazing, right. And what about you? I'm sorry, but humankind, I think they would learn. I mean, so I have this North Star theory, right? We kind of I kind of mentioned being good too, is just, where I believe every living creature, not just humans, is its most happy content fulfilled when its activities environment align with its genetic purpose.

02;08;27;13 - 02;08;45;17
Unknown
And, you know, I mean, plants, animals, you know, like, wait a minute. And then, the pandemic happened. My wife and I got obsessed with the zoo shows like zoo, San Diego Zoo, Melbourne. And, when they and I reflected back on this when I was, I was thinking through this is like they have to do enrichment activities, right?

02;08;45;17 - 02;09;00;12
Unknown
So, like, if a lion, they'll give it free health care and all the food it wants, but if it stays in a cage and it doesn't actually do lions stuff, it like mentally, physically deteriorates, right? So they have to like fake a hunt for it to go catch something and then they can feed it right. And so it's activities environment.

02;09;00;12 - 02;09;35;17
Unknown
And so I'm obsessed with that concept. And I and again as we talked about like humans are we're tribal and social creatures. And so I think they would learn that we, we are really more of a hive than we are solo creatures. And they need to, and so if you want to send humans, you have to think in terms of this communal social creatures where we developed over hundreds of thousands of years to get selfish reward through these reward chemicals, through selfless acts, by contributing to the group, we get praise.

02;09;35;17 - 02;09;59;18
Unknown
And that's how we value and create this element for ourselves. I love that that is that is that is awesome. I have just written down enrichment activities exhale, simulate, hunt before eating. So, you know, like I can't just open the fridge and like grab the thing. I'm going to just make a little process for myself. So I'm I'm getting in my kitchen, delayed the satisfaction and feel like I accomplished something.

02;09;59;23 - 02;10;28;18
Unknown
No, but it's literally written over here, live simply and according to your nature. And that is just a reminder, because when you simplify, simplify, simplify, like often the sexy answer is this complicated, convoluted thing, and we feel intelligent by it. But simplicity is usually what works. It's what sticks and is what feels good, and that it cuts away all this unnecessary crap that we don't need.

02;10;28;29 - 02;10;44;12
Unknown
and then, according to our nature. Right. Like, I am designed in a certain way. So if I try to force myself to be in a cubicle or to work in Excel or to, I don't know, whatever, the thing is that I would just, like, suck the soul right out of me. That's not what I should be doing.

02;10;45;03 - 02;11;05;05
Unknown
and for, you know, just like, the person who's meant to be in a forest school, they should not be in an office and in a suit and whatever. And there are absolutely those people who want to wear the suit and who want to do that. It's not like demonizing that existence. It's just where are you going to be most in accordance to your nature, because that's where you're going to shine.

02;11;05;05 - 02;11;28;01
Unknown
So I love that you said that because we are definitely, on the journey of getting back to that ourselves. Yeah, absolutely. Wrap this extravaganza up. I said, what I want to hear. So is that is that how to throw it back to you? How you best serve, how you represent humanity? Do you think that's that's it or would be something different for you?

02;11;28;01 - 02;12;15;26
Unknown
So I think that assuming we could communicate, we could find ways of communication, what they would learn about through the lens of Sarah, about humans is that we are extremely curious, and we might be quick to react with assumption or, be scared of something initially. But with patience and with kindness and curiosity, we can bridge the gap, that we thrive in environments where we get natural light, where we have, community, where we are eating real food.

02;12;15;28 - 02;12;57;10
Unknown
Talk to us, that we can be extremely simple and extremely complex at the same exact time, that we are emotional creatures and they may not be. So they would they would learn about emotions, that we have this yearning to explore and to discover, while at the same time also craving structure and routine. and that we can be extremely frustrating because we act like infants sometimes.

02;12;57;13 - 02;13;22;20
Unknown
So we need naps and we need snacks. That's what they would bring. Yeah. Naps and snacks, baby. Okay. At this at the Analog Space Analog Astronaut conference I was just at or as I'm seeing we did this welcome like get to know you exercise in the beginning. And literally we realized that the way to teamwork and harmony like the answer to the universe is tacos.

02;13;22;23 - 02;13;46;22
Unknown
Every single group had tacos and it was just hilarious. So if you want to take tacos away from this podcast, like that's probably the one word tacos. It's like the yeah, it's like the Hitchhiker's Guide to a Galaxy, right? The answer to the meaning life 42. Yeah, it's like it's not 42 is tacos versus 42 and tacos. We now have an updated, unabridged version.

02;13;46;22 - 02;14;04;17
Unknown
Yeah we do. Maybe it's 42 tacos. Maybe that's the number of tacos you need. 42. Did we just solve the universe? Yes. There we go. I think we just solved it. That's the answer. I guess someone was wondering. It took us a couple hours to get here. We got there. This is how we have world peace through tacos.

02;14;04;19 - 02;14;15;11
Unknown
Okay, you have your 40 Twitters. You have your mission. Should you choose to accept this, maybe odds ever be in your favor.

02;14;15;14 - 02;14;32;05
Unknown
Oh, my gosh, Sarah, this is awesome. it was fun to get to chat with you this long, uninterrupted. So, thank you for this. Thanks for doing. This is a great time. The first just again, thank you to our colleague, doctor G, who gave us this incredible idea for our podcast. And, hopefully we can see more of these collaborations.

02;14;32;05 - 02;14;54;13
Unknown
I'd love to do this again with you. And and also to, do this format with other people who have regular podcasts. This is this is a great, great, science experiment that yielded awesome results, in my opinion. Yeah. Mine too. Oh, this was awesome. Thanks so much, sir. Thank you. Do that right.