#129: Cultivating Resilience Amid Change with Martin Rutte

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, And master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I am smiling from ear to ear. I know not everybody's watching this on YouTube, but you got to get on YouTube just to see my Kool-Aid smile because I'm so flippin' happy for a variety of reasons and in no particular order right now, although I'm going to save my most important reason for last. So right now I'm smiling because it's Friday. Now you guys are watching this, listening to this, it could be Tuesday, it could be Saturday, it could be Thursday, any day of the week. But for me, it's Friday. It's always going to be Friday, right? What's that old thing with Jimmy Buffett? It's 5 o'clock somewhere. It's 5 o'clock. It doesn't feel like I need a drink or I want it to be the end of the day. I'm just thrilled it's Friday. Part of that is from my childhood where my dad who was a civil servant and worked for the City of New York, was a parks director, was a recreation director, and a preschool teacher, taught 4-year-olds, and at a time when men certainly were not tapped to do that kind of work. So it was a very interesting thing that he was able to do that work and loved it for years. I think 20 years as a preschool teacher. And my mom worked as well, and they took Fridays off. And growing up, it was an interesting thing because my Friends, their parents worked. Everybody worked on a Friday. We went to school on Friday. But my parents, Friday, even though they didn't earn hardly any money and we grew up in a little tiny little apartment in Queens, New York, Friday was a day that they would do things they wanted to do. That could mean going to the chiropractor, go to the health food store. There was such a thing as a health food store back then. Now it's in every supermarket. There's health food items. But they would go to the gym and they just do what they wanted to do. And that was their day. And it was their freedom. Their freedom day. And to this day, my brother and I both have made Fridays very much the same thing for us, whether it was when I was a lawyer and I would work till about noon and then go play golf in the afternoon. Whatever it took, I just made some part of Friday a special day. And so now, whether I'm thinking about it or it's unconscious, Friday just has a special feel to it. So it's Friday, I feel wonderful, and now the most important reason is that I get to spend this part of a Friday with somebody I absolutely freaking adore. The guy you guys are going to get to meet in just a moment because I'm going to read a bit of his bio and then get well past the bio. But I just absolutely love this man. Love him inside out. Just, he's the only— other than my own father, I can't believe I'm going to say this, other than my own father and my brother because we grew up in a house with kissing, we kiss. Weird to see men kiss, although in Europe it's totally acceptable. But in the United States, it's, you know, it's got this weird feeling or whatever. Other than my brother and my father, this man I kiss on the lips. I kiss him every time I see him because we got some simpatico thing. Maybe it's something from a past life or whatever, but I just— he's a good, good man with a good, good heart, and I respect him more than I can say and enjoy my time when I get to see him and spend time together. So His name is Martin Root. I'm going to read a little bit about him and then we're going to dig into it. But I am so grateful and feel this depth of gratitude in this moment for today, for this moment, for this breath, and for the opportunity to spend some time in conversation with a dear friend that is also something that will help other— or at least if it doesn't help other people, help you guys. Hopefully it'll be entertaining for you at a minimum. But selfishly, this is just time I'm going to enjoy. Martin Root is an international speaker and management consultant. As president of Livelihood, a management consulting firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he explores the deeper meaning of work and its contribution to society. The company's areas of service include strategic vision, corporate spirit, performance management, and creative leadership. Martin has worked with such organizations as the World Bank, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Southern California Edison, Geez, I can't believe you work for a utility company, buddy. I got to talk to you about that. Virgin Records, Esso Petroleum, and London Life Insurance, helping them expand their outlook and position themselves for the future. He was the first Canadian— we're not going to hold that against him, that he's a Canadian, by the way— he's the first Canadian to address the Corporate Leadership and Ethics Forum at Harvard Business School, returning for 4 consecutive years as keynote speaker. Martners is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work. With over a million copies sold. His newest book, Project Heaven on Earth: The 3 Simple Questions That Will Help You Change the World Easily. Easily. He helps people discover what heaven on earth is for them and what simple, easy, concrete action they can take in the next 24 hours to begin making that real. He has presented workshops and given talks on heaven on earth in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Sweden, and Costa Rica, who we've just beautiful country we've just gotten back from. And you can find more about him at projectheavenonearth.com. We'll talk more about that in just a moment. But first, Martin, so happy, so jazzed, man, to have you on the show. Welcome.

Thank you. A kiss on the lips

for Martin. Tell everybody a lot in that bio and that introduction that I just read and all that. What's not written in the introduction that you would love for people to know about you? Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany

Oh, what a great question. A great marriage of 46 years. I'm speaking to you now from our summer cottage in Prince Edward Island, Canada. I do printmaking. I love doing printmaking. It's a hobby.

By the way, you should never tell people that because the paparazzi— now the paparazzi are flying out there. You know, they're gonna hunt you down.

It's near British Columbia. No, it's not.

It's on the other side of Canada.

That's right. I do printmaking. I love good food. I love opera. Yeah, big opera fan, both my wife and I. She was an opera singer at one time.

Wow.

And I love comedy. I've been studying comedy lately. I've been watching a lot of the old masters and watching the structure, how it builds, and the language and the precision of the language. George Carlin, God rest his soul, he would do an HBO special every 2 years, and it took him 2 years of doing that show over and over and over and over and over until it was so finely honed, and then he would come to HBO and do the show. And it looked effortless, but what you didn't realize is the amount of work that went into that. Yeah, I think that's a good—

Yeah, George was a true professional. I mean, Man, and this is a guy— so I think the first time I heard George Carlin was maybe it was a year or so before the 7 Words You Can't Say. He had a thing, right? 7 Words You Can't Say on TV. He had an album. Right. And I remember I had the vinyl, the album of it. But this friend of mine who I knew since grade school, his brother, older brother, had 8-tracks of George Carlin. People going, what the heck is an 8-track, right? Some people are going, I don't remember what an 8-track is.

I got to tell you, my favorite joke of his was he's in a supermarket, he gets his groceries and he goes to checkout and it's all done and he pays and everything. The woman says— the cashier says to him, have a nice day. He says, I'm sorry, I've got other plans.

The hippie-dippy weatherman.

The hippie-dippy weatherman.

You're going to have widely scattered daylight followed by

Didn't he do the sports figures too? Absolutely talked about nothing.

Totally.

We got to get in there, like, you know, we— and we get the teamwork and then more effort. Yeah. So now people know who I am.

So I met Martin 5, 6 years ago or something, right? We had a DLC event and here's this guy and I'm saying, he gets up on stage and I'm wondering, like, you look like you were stammering or something, like you didn't know what you were going to do or what you were going to say. and we hadn't met yet. And then all of a sudden you open your mouth and I found myself needing like 10 minutes later to go to the bathroom because I'm sweating profusely and I need to go. I've been laughing so hard that it's caused this reaction where I literally just gotta go to the john. And I'm going, this is like, I hadn't laughed this hard since I was sitting next to my parents in the Catskill Mountains when I'm like 8 years old. And I forget the guy, I think it was Buddy Hackett was performing.

Oh, one of my heroes.

And man, if you ever talk about George Carlin, so this is a sloppier version And a more vulgar version. You can imagine, like, George was pretty vulgar, right? Or I don't even like the word vulgar. He would curse a lot. I love cursing. And so George would curse a lot. But man, Buddy Hackett was dirty.

I didn't know that. Oh, every— everything I've seen of his— I mean, I saw a show he did in Vegas, and his timing, it's just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

You remember he would do this thing with the Filipino where it was So he'd replace all the Ps with Fs and the Fs with Ps. You could do this for 10 minutes. So it wasn't a Filipino, it was a Pilofino. And everything, everything that was a P was an F and an F was a P. And, you know, none of that, just so anybody that's ever been in show business or the performing arts or as a speaker or any of these kind of things, it's so practiced.

Oh.

Everything is so much more practiced. And I think the— you tell me because you're a consummate performer— the best of all is when it's so practiced that it Looks as though you're doing it for the first time in the moment, like impromptu, right?

The 2 guys who I love, Martin Short, which is like totally he's making it up in the moment, and Robin Williams.

Robin Williams.

Totally made up in the moment. And they both were not made up in the moment. They may have made some stuff up in the moment, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, improv. And so it's interesting 'cause we'll find our way into some of the topics that our community is used to from this show, which is pivoting and the change and art and science of change, of managing and utilizing change. And one of the aspects of that that we've really honed in on in the last year has been this concept of resilience. And I definitely want to talk to you about that today, about resilience, because both from a leadership standpoint and what it means for companies to be resilient, for people to model resilience in the company so that the culture— at least this is our theory— is that today in the disruptive environment we're in, which is not going to get any less disruptive, in my humble opinion, that we've got to be more resilient and that on a cultural level, it's important that we are cultivating resilience. An aspect of that is this idea of being able to utilize and improvise because that's a form of innovation, that when we can improvise in situations that otherwise could really take us out or take us into a fear place or what have you. You yourself are an incredibly funny guy. Is it always planned? How much improvisation is it for you?

When I do the stuff at TLC on the stage, that's all practiced, and it's a lot of work for me to do that. But when I'm just fooling around with you and the people at TLC, that's just spur of the moment. And it comes as an interesting background. When I grew up, Yiddish is my, my native language, and I learned English on the streets and then from Canada. I went to Hebrew school, French in school, Latin, and so I hear sound differently, I think, than most normal people, and I could hear the discrepancy or the unresonance in sound. So that's where a lot of my comedy comes from.

Well, that's because you're deaf, right?

Exactly. Beethoven and I,

both.

Your resilience thing, I think, is very important. You know, we were in Britain recently, and Brexit You can't believe what it's doing to people. It's really—

What a shit show, huh? I mean, like, the British are supposed— I always thought the British were really smart. I went to school there for a while. I thought, geez, they have it on us. They've always had it on us. And then they're a little bit more refined, a little, you know, more clear thinking. It's like, what the F have they been thinking for the last few years? Somebody, a lot of people really asleep at the wheel in Great Britain, I'm sorry to say.

Yeah, I think so too.

It feels true.

I think David Cameron thought he would just have this little referendum and that would be it. It would put the issue of Brexit to sleep and it didn't. The point I wanted to make about resilience there is, as I asked people over and over, what do you think about Brexit? What about Brexit? Brexit? Brexit? Consistently, the language was, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. A week or two ago, I was reading The Guardian from London online and the amount of people going to therapy has skyrocketed. They were talking about one of the benefits of Brexit is that industry has skyrocketed. So it's tough to do that resilience in an unstable culture, whether it's in Britain now or Macron's France or the US for me now. So what causes us to have that resilience? Well, one thing for me is I've been doing this for a year. I take Sabbath off. Sometimes I go to synagogue, sometimes I don't. But generally, no computer, no phone, just stop. And it's very powerful. It's very powerful. I also go on vacation a lot. I love the resilience that comes from just being quiet, meditating. And I love the resilience that comes from— I spoke at the beginning of this interview about the printmaking. I do a form of printmaking called monotype. You only have one print. And you don't really know what's going to happen, what it will look like until it comes out of the press. That explosion in creativity in another domain, not management consulting or the regular work that I do, that's another form of resilience for me because I feel when I go into that room, Adam, that I can explode. I'm so excited about just being there. To not be overwhelmed by the current condition, for me, is what the essence of resilience is. 2 ways for me is to break, to take a day off religiously, pun intended, and engage in other forms of creativity that allow this spirit of mine, this soul of mine to just explode out. I tell my wife that when I go into the print shop, I literally feel like I'm going to explode. I'm so excited to be there.

Thank you for clearing something up too, Martin, which is that when you've talked about monotype before, I always thought it just meant you were typing the same letter over and over again, maybe a word. Like, word. Like, you know, it's like Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay. So thank you. Yeah, the resilience day. So that, you know, just got it clear in my own head. That's what my parents were doing on those Fridays. That was their resilience day. It was their day to catch their breath. And of course, they had it easier back then. Some things were difficult, more difficult before technology, before the advance of our communications technology, and some things were just so much easier. To not be reachable.

Well, to stop.

Yeah, you couldn't— you left the house back then, you remember, we all remember this, some of us remember this. You leave the house, that was it. The tether was cut, you know, the umbilical cord to the phone and that form of communication. Like, how are you going to reach somebody? There's no cell phone back then. There's no beeper. So you're out of the house, as in you're, uh, yeah, smoke signals. I don't know, like the way my mom would get to us when we're out of the house. Like growing up in New York was she'd open up the window, the apartment building, and you'd hear, hey, Adam! You know, like that's how kids got called back to the nest.

That's right, me too, same thing. No matter where you were, you heard that voice, didn't you?

Somebody's mother.

You could be in Florida.

Somebody's mother,

I

heard it. Scott Funk, I've not called this guy out by name in a long time. I had a kind of a mixed bag of a relationship with this kid when I was growing up, but I think fondly of him now, and his mom, man, When he didn't answer, he was the kid who didn't answer his mother. You know, like the rest of us, the first time you ignore her, we're playing ball. It's like, you're not coming upstairs. It's 5:30 for dinner or whatever. You know, it's like, I'm not going. But the second time, you knew if you didn't come up after the second one, it's like somebody's coming down after you. Dad's coming out. Or God forbid your mother comes down. You're really, you're really, I mean, forget it. His mother would come down and literally drag this kid off, this poor kid. Like, I feel bad now that I think of it because he was a bit of a bully, but no wonder. His mother would come down and drag him by his hair.

You should look him up on Facebook.

I know, I got to do it. Scott Funk. Holy smokes. He's going to be in this podcast. He'll be like, what the heck? I haven't spoken to this guy in 40 years. Meanwhile, all right. Resilience. So your recipe, Martin, give us the recipe for resilience for you if you can put it into a couple of steps.

Well, to stop, literally to stop, and what I call the addiction, the addiction to the phone, the computer, all that, to engage in a creative pursuit that allows your soul to come out in a way that you don't normally do through work. And I think resilience also comes to the fore stronger when you've discovered your purpose in life. Vishen Lakhani used a phrase about my work, you know, why were you born, which I really loved. So the discovery of why you're here and the doing of that gives you that energy. People say to me, are you retired? And I say, what would I do if I retired? I would just do what I'm doing now. That doesn't mean— it's because I get energy from it and good friends, good community. Those are, I'd say, the aspects of the recipe for me.

Yeah. Let's talk about your work in the world because this to me is where our lives have intersected on a purposeful, or at least something that's divinely guided. But the truth is it's guided for us.

Nice verb.

I think you feel the same way, right?

I do.

Don't have any objection to that word. So yeah, divinely guided. Ooh, that's a good one. I'm gonna take that one away.

I like that.

Yeah, so share about the work that you're doing in the world.

I'll give you the 3 major stages of my life. The other major piece that I did was about vision. I was always interested in what is your vision for the kind of life and work and world that you want? Why aren't you doing that? Because I think that's very important. What will it take for you to engage in that? I spent a lot of years leading personal development workshops, leading—

Cover those 3 again because I know there are a lot of folks who take notes on these things. If you don't mind, repeat.

I was interested in vision. What is your vision? Why aren't you doing your vision? What's the stuff in the way? And what would it take for you to engage in your vision? And the same applies to your purpose. Actually, purpose comes first. Purpose answers the question why. Vision answers the question what. So why is always the primary question and then vision. So that went on for years and years. As you said, I spoke at Harvard. I had major corporate clients in the US and Canada. Southern California Edison, Virgin Records, Sony Pictures. And then I went into a funk and I didn't know why. I'd just come back from speaking in Hong Kong on vision. And long story short, I discovered that what was missing in my life was the spiritual aspect. And I wanted to have my work be about that. But everybody said, no, no, you can't do that. You're gonna lose your credibility. People will think you're proselytizing. But none of that was true for me. I mean, I just wanted to discover how do you bring your spirit, your soul into your work. So I spent a good 20, 25 years opening that conversation. I was, as far as I know, the first person to use the phrase spirituality in the workplace. No one was using that. There was one woman who was saying spirit in the workplace. So I helped begin a Center for Spirituality in the Workplace at the Sobey Business School at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, helped catalyze conferences all over the world. So I got that conversation going along with other people as well, but speaking about my life now. And then about 20, 30 years ago, I was going to do a speech on spirituality and work. And I said, wait, if every business in the world is spiritual, is that what you want? And I said, no, if we can transform business, because business is the temporal power in the world today, if we can transform business, We can transform the world. And then, Adam, this thought popped into my mind, oh, you mean heaven on earth? And I said, holy cow, you can't say that! You can't say heaven on earth! And then I thought, well, why not? I can talk to you about the hells on earth, can't I? We began in this conversation talking about them. Why can't we talk about heaven on earth? Not in a way that I'm gonna lay it on you or proselytize it. But rather in a way that evokes it from you. And so, as you said earlier, you know, this is my newest book. Can you see that? Project Heaven on Earth: The 3 Simple Questions on Amazon. The 3 simple questions that will help you change the world easily. And how I discovered those questions is by going around to people and saying, asking, what's heaven on earth for you? What's heaven on earth for you? What's heaven on earth? Because I didn't have an answer. I really wanted to learn. And so I distilled what I'd learned down into 3 questions. And if you're willing, I think I asked you guys this, you and your wife and daughter, but it bears repeating on the podcast. Can I ask you the 3 questions?

Please.

Recall a time when you experienced heaven on earth. What was going on?

First thing that came to mind was when the kids were born. Each time that baby— the baby was born was heaven on earth for me.

Very clear. Second question. Imagine you have a magic wand, and with this magic wand you can have heaven on earth. What's heaven on earth for you?

This moment. I'm in peace in my body, my mind, my heart, my soul. I'm enjoying exactly what I'm doing. I know I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing, and I'm sharing what I'm doing with somebody right this moment. That with not just you, Martin, but the people who are presently watching this, which is in the future— this is like a Back to the Future moment.

Yeah.

Because people are watching this 50 years like that. 50 years have gone by and people are watching this right now, or it's 5 months later, but either way it's the same thing, as though it's happening in this moment. They're watching this, listening to this as though it's happening in this moment. And that means I'm in a relationship, you're in relationship with those folks, people we may never ever meet. That to me is heaven on earth, because what else are we here to do but share some piece of what it is that we've learned in our life experience That might assist other people in their life experience. Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the Resilience Assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free Resilient Leader Assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

Very clear, Adam. And then the third question, what simple, easy, concrete step will you take in the next 24 hours to have more of that?

Yeah, I come back to gratitude because the gratitude for the moment That could pretty much make a good case. You know, I was a lawyer for 18 years, so I can make a good case out of a bad case. So that's my, my dirty little secret. But the truth is, if you can make a good case for loving your life in this moment, for loving life, for being a lover of life in this moment, man, your life is gonna love you back in a big way. Make a good case for it. You can make a case for it very easily. I can make a case for it. It's Looks like it's cloudy out, foggy, blah blah blah blah blah. I could— a zillion things could come to mind if I want to make that case. That's not the case I want to make.

Clear. So let's go through the 3 questions because I want you to understand the structure and your listeners. Question 1: Recall a time— by the way, these questions are on projectheavenonearth.com. Projectheavenonearth.com. Recall a time when you experienced heaven on earth. Now I want to talk about what you did. You answered the question when your children were born. What you did not do, Adam, and what no one does, is ask, what do you mean by heaven on earth?

Hmm.

Nobody says that. Why? Because my assertion is that there's a place in you that already knows what heaven on earth is, and when the question is asked, you go there and you go, well, obviously, time I experienced heaven on earth. When each of my children were born. And people do that, they go right to it. It's astounding to me how they know. The second question, here's a magic wand, and with it you can have heaven on earth. The purpose of the magic wand is to remove the necessity of how you're going to do it. If you don't have to know how, you can go deeper into the what, which you did. This, this is heaven on earth. Other people have said, you know, no more hunger, no more war, making a relationship with my wife or husband or children that hasn't been working. I'm gonna— that's heaven on earth, having that relationship really work. My country working, living a value in the world. So I'll get that in a second in terms of how I want to tie the book back to this. And then the third question: what simple, easy, concrete steps will you take in the next 24 hours? What you said is to be grateful. And it's interesting, the answers that people come up with, they know what it will take to create heaven on earth. By you being grateful, and in your case saying that is my contribution to heaven on earth, boom! You are in. You are helping co-create heaven on earth. So those are the three questions that have been distilled out of speaking to I don't know thousands of people and asking what's heaven on earth for you, for you, for you, for you. The book Project Heaven on Earth then goes into asking the three questions and then the fourteen. gateways that I've discovered. So there are patterns of answers when you keep asking this question over and over and over again. Whether heaven on earth is within you and having more of that, out in the world ending suffering, making my country a heaven on earth nation, relationships being heaven on earth. And one of the other ones, a gateway, is this here now.

Hmm.

Which is where you went to. This here now is is heaven on earth. Our belief that it's not makes it not. So how can we create heaven on earth in this particular right moment right now? Easy, watch. Just, we're gonna just stop, we're gonna experience heaven on earth. Just like that. That's how present it is and available always.

Indeed.

Indeed. So the book is about doing that, and I want to do something with you. Tell me the name of the book.

Heaven on Earth. Project Heaven on Earth. Yeah, I can't see it all because it's too close to the screen. You got to back it up a little bit. There you go.

I don't— no, I don't want you to read the tagline, just the beginning. The beginning says Project Heaven on Earth. There's another title, Project Heaven on Earth.

Ah,

it's the noun which you said and also the verb.

Yes. Beautiful. Was that by design or did you just notice that afterward?

It was by design but not my idea, my dear friend.

Great pants. All right. Not your idea. Good.

No, no, no. A friend of mine, Richard Porter, I was going to call it the Heaven on Earth Project and he said, no, no, no. Project Heaven on Earth. I went, oh my God, Richard. Brilliant.

Yeah. And to project it. Yeah. We are these projectors. Everything we're doing is, is a projection and it's projecting into the space for other people to see. So we're constantly modeling things in the world for our kids, for our friends, colleagues, everybody, for ourselves. Yeah.

The verb project is a state of being. We're projecting heaven on earth. The noun project, Project Heaven on Earth, is about doing. So we're being and doing so that we can have more heaven on earth.

Is it a Canadian thing? I mean, would it be— would it still be project or would it be project? I know we have this whole thing with I could tell a Canadian really fast. You know, it's like they say process, I know they're American. They say process, I know they're Canadian. So I'm just curious, is it project or is it project?

You know what? I go back and forth between the 2 countries so often, I have no idea which one it is.

You're just dazed and confused, and that is not on earth for you.

For me, yes. You

live in a state of perpetual dazed and confused. Yeah.

The days of our lives, I would call it.

Oh my God. Martin, so take us back to maybe a time in your life where you experienced the challenge, the proverbial pivot as it's been, I guess, most closely associated with times disruption. With a business, in a business context, a pivot is usually a business model or thing that didn't work. And then people make a change. They quick right turn, quick left turn, whatever it is, they change something. So folks don't dig change, not our research on that, in the same way that you've done with a lot of conversations. People resist it. They defend against it. They hide from it. Change is scary. So tell us maybe about a time when either the change was the result of your own making, you designed the change because you realized some things weren't working. Or the change was sudden and came upon you. Maybe there had been signs of it and you ignored those signs or what have you, but the universe said, hey, time for a change, and now you have to deal with it all.

There are 2 major ones that come to mind when you ask the question. One was when I, early in my management consulting and speaking career, I heard about this word vision. Now, this is Canada in the early '80s. I come back from California and I spoke to some colleagues. I want to do this, some work on vision. Vision? Are you nuts? That's California talk. That, you know, you must be smoking dope to talk about vision. I mean, now you talk about vision, nothing.

And like, Martin, and you must have said to them, look, I grow dope, I don't smoke it though, right? Right. And even to this day, right, aren't you a major grower? But you just don't— but you don't partake, right? You don't inhale.

I have my standards, right? So I said, I want to do this work on vision. And all of them said, you can't do it. So I'm like, oh. And I'd also spoken at that time to the major developer in Toronto, shopping centers, condos, apartment buildings. And he also said, vision is crazy, it won't work. And in both cases, what I did was their no, you can't do it, was what I used as fuel to go forward. So the pivot point for me was, The strong negation of what I wanted to do had me go deep inside, look at it and go, no, that's not my truth. It helped me discover more of my truth. And that was a pivot point. The other pivot point was I'd come back from—

Meaning somebody telling you no. Is that what you mean? Somebody said you can't do this or wouldn't be smart, bad idea.

Exactly. And so in those points in your life, I'm speaking to the listener now, You've got to look inside and see, okay, strong no in the world or even a weak no, there's non-agreement. What's your truth? And then operate from that truth. That's the test, I think, and that's the pivot point to use your language. I mean, that's a great way to say it. The other one was when I started doing work on spirituality and work. I had this profound epiphany experience at a retreat center and I came back and I said I wanted to talk about spirituality and work and again everybody said, No, no, no, no, you can't do that. You're going to lose your reputation. People will think you're proselytizing a religious point of view, which wasn't true for me. I just wanted— I wanted to explore the notion of spirituality. And at that time, I did shut down because it was so strong externally. I went to California and I spoke with Jack Canfield and a bunch amongst some other friends down there, all of whom said, go for it. And That was a turning point as well because I realized that my issue was I was afraid of what you were going to think were I to bring up this new topic of spirituality at work. Once I saw that, it was game over. I was off.

Well, let's say disruption happens. We're calling it disruption. It's a word for these days. But the truth is we're just talking about good old-fashioned change, the way seasons change, everything changes. It's the law of manifestation in the universe. We don't see new things happen unless something changes. born and they die, and that's the evolutionary process. Are you waiting for change? To me, this is a question that I ask myself and I ask business leaders all the time. Are you waiting for change or are you creating change? As in, is it waiting for disruption to occur or is it self-disruption? It sounds to me like in the situation you're describing that you were about creating a self, a disruption by design. That you were going to do something different. And then when you went to the market, so to speak, to ask their opinion, the market said, no, not a good idea. And this is where I think for a lot of people listening to this now, this is an area of growth because if you want to do something where you have an idea, you've got some— there's a brainchild that's happened and you ask some people, a lot of people will tell you and the conventional wisdom may be not to do it. It's not a good idea. It's not good timing. I'm not saying, I don't think you're saying to ignore feedback from wise people about whether it's a good idea or a bad idea, but ultimately, and this is the question I have for you, is you had to go somewhere else to be able to get a clear yes to go forward with that. I want to understand a little bit better because, yeah, you spoke to some people, they said no. Then you speak to people like Jack and others who are a little more maybe open-minded and— That kind of thing and they go, yeah, you should go for it, especially if you're getting a strong internal yes. What was it that helped you to start to speak about, let's say, spirituality in the workplace when the conventional wisdom was to say no to that?

I knew it was right for me and I knew it was right for the world, not in an impositional way, but I wanted to bring the possibility of that conversation up for people. Because I saw how shut down the spirit and the soul had become. You can't talk about those issues in the workplace. But if we go back 20, 30 years, you couldn't talk about, I'm gay, I'm Black, I'm a woman, I'm an alcoholic, I'm a drug abuser. Oh no, you can't talk about that, you can't talk about— but we found ways to talk about those issues that were beneficial to me, the individual, and to us, the enterprise. This was the same thing. You can't talk about spirituality, you can't talk— Right. But when I came in and began speaking about it in a way that was non-impositional, it was just like, I'd like to talk about this. If you don't want to, I'm fine. And people really saw that I really meant that. It was like the dam burst open. You mean we could talk about spirituality in work in a way that would be nourishing to my soul? Why can we only talk about spirituality, you know, around the dinner table or at places of worship? But not at work. Are we not spiritual beings there? We are, but in a way that would benefit us and the enterprise. That's what was new. And so once I saw that deeper truth, I was off in the sense that I listened to their counsel, as you said. I listened very deeply to their counsel. I listened to my wife's counsel. Sometimes she is very right and I'm very wrong. Okay, I give up my position. Sometimes I listen, no, that's not accurate for me, and then I go and do it. But I will listen because I don't pretend to know it all, and there are people who are wiser in many, many cases. And it was the same with Heaven on Earth. You know, you can't talk about Heaven on Earth. Why? Well, because it's religious. You're gonna impose some kind of Christian or some other kind of religious dogma. But that's coming from Heaven on Earth as proselytizing, as I have the answer to what Heaven on Earth is and you don't. No, what this work does, what this book does, is evoke what's already in you. So even if I never see you again, which obviously not, but even if I never see you again, we've evoked the Heaven on Earth that's in you so that you can begin simply, easily, and concretely within the next 24 hours, like now, not just a good idea, but now. and begin the process of moving that forward. And when I see— I should give you some examples of what I've seen in terms of what people have done, because metaphorically, Project Heaven on Earth is like a piece of software. You know, whenever you boot up a piece of software, all these new possibilities and opportunities open up that you've never realized, had never realized before. But then the program stops and it says, but I can't continue without your content. So, Project Heaven on Earth is like that. It opens up this possibility that you can actually experience and help co-create Heaven on Earth. So, what have people done? Some examples: a woman in Hawaii, Susan Alima Fryer, she grew little green micronutrient plants. I forgot what they're called. Well, what can I do? I can't do anything about Heaven on Earth. We helped her discover what Heaven on Earth was for her, is for her, and she now embeds that at the bottom of every email message that she sends out. Heaven on Earth for me is— and she answered that, and then she says, what's Heaven on Earth for you? Simple. A police officer who's written a 28-page manual, Heaven on Earth for Law Enforcement. A real estate woman in Canada who, when I talked to her about sufferings in the world, I'll tell you what the suffering is, homelessness. And she was mad. Okay, well, what can we do about that? Well, you know, it's homelessness, it's impossible. Fine, fine, fine. What's Heaven on Earth for homelessness? Oh, A home for everyone. Good. What are you going to do about it? She goes back to her agency, sits down, small agency, 10 agents, and says, we are going to create a home for everyone. How? Simply, I'm asking you that when you sell a home or a commercial office, you commit to having $100, that's all, taken off your commission, and we'll stick it into a pot. In the last 5, 6 years, they've raised something like $250,000. They have a program called A Home for Everyone in which they ask every year people in the community, individuals, associations, to submit proposals for what they would do with X amount of money, and then they fund that. It's so elegantly simple. And the one I just adore, there was a woman who we were on a— I was on a webinar about Heaven on Earth, and we're talking about the sufferings in the world. Is there a suffering that's bothering you? Yes, violence against women. I've been to the police, I've been to the government, nothing. What would you do? And I said, well, Susan, I don't know your financial position. You could donate $5,000, you could donate a penny. What difference would a penny make? One of the other women on the call said, wait a minute, what if everybody in your community donated a penny a day to help end violence against women? She went, oh my God. She and a group of women put together a program called Making Change, in which they handed out little mason jars with a picture of a woman, half her face beaten up, bruised, half her face bright alive with the light coming out. They asked people to commit to a penny a day or more for an entire year. They raised $2,500. They took that to the Government of Canada who gave them $100,000 for each of the subsequent 3 years, all based on a penny a day. Well, what difference does that make? You have no idea what difference your contribution could make. All the way up to a woman in Austria, Elisabeth. And I said, well, do you have a project? Yes. What? Austria is a Heaven on Earth nation. I went, what? Why do you say that? Well, because it's simple. And she taught me, Adam, that I don't know what simple is for you. You have to discover what simple is for you. When you discover what the simple act that you can do to contribute to Heaven on Earth is for you and begin doing that, This is the larger thing now. You're creating the new story of what it means to be a human and what it means to be humanity. You're contributing to co-creating heaven on earth. That's the game that we're up to now. What other game would there be?

I can't think of a better game. I was listening to you and earlier you said you were listening to your wife's cancel and I thought to myself, how interesting because It sounded like cancel. I know you were saying counsel,

but it

said cancel. And I thought, that's brilliant. I was listening to my wife's cancel. Yes. And oftentimes—

Even wiser.

We will listen to other people's cancel and their counsel for sure.

So we got 2 in this, divinely guided and my wife's cancel.

And listen to their counsel and their cancel. Yeah, for sure. So the paradigm is what I'm focusing on because I think where we look at the status quo, where we look at things that are going on that we have the inclination to complain about or the places where we feel like we're powerless and that life or situations are what they are kind of thing. And I hate the expression, just personal pet peeve of mine, but I hate this expression, it is what it is. If I hear one more, and I could drop an F-bomb now and I just won't, but yes, persons say it is what it is. It drives me nuts because it is such a resignation statement. It's not it is what it is. It is what we say it is. It is what we accept it is. So to me, this self-disruption of the status quo is part of what we're talking about here.

Yeah.

Because embedded in every one of those Heaven on Earth accounts, which are so beautiful— I mean, the work you're doing and the ripple effect of it is profound— are people that are either not of their own accord not willing to accept the status quo That it's hell on earth.

Correct.

And instead create heaven on earth in a moment through a shift that you facilitate or that the book and the work facilitates. But they're also disrupting through guidance, through other people helping them to disrupt that status quo because sometimes we're just the ones in our own way. I mean, that's the truth. I mean, anybody listening to this, watching this, we're always the one in our way if that's the case. If there's anything that's not If in a moment where we don't experience or feel heaven on earth, or in the language that where we dovetail with you, where we don't love our lives in that moment, which to me, if you said to me, what is heaven on earth? Heaven on earth is I love my life no matter what in this moment. That's it. Regardless. And in a moment when I don't love my life no matter what, in a moment where I don't experience heaven on earth, Right. It's of my own making.

We could end the interview here, Adam. That's, for me, so profound. The fundamental misbelief about heaven on earth is it is not heaven on earth, it has never been heaven on earth, and it can never be. You know, we were expelled from the Garden of Eden and that's it, it's over, we can't go back in. Which, by the way, a whole section of my book about that— that's not accurate. Yes, So, I mean, would God want us to live in hells on earth? We've made this. We viewed it as hells on earth. We can shift it. You can shift it. And we can shift it. And we are shifting it.

So, Martin, what— the 3 questions again for folks that were driving or riding, walking on the treadmill or whatever they were doing and want to capture for themselves in this moment.

Doing neurosurgery.

They were doing— that's right. They had somebody's heart open on the table.

This is more important than that.

Oh, now you know what? They just finished. They sewed them up quick. They sewed them up fast. They could get those gloves off and write this down. Now give us the 3 questions for people again.

Recall a time when you experienced heaven on earth.

Yes.

What was going on? Imagine you have a magic wand and with it you can have heaven on earth. What is heaven on earth for you? And the third, what simple, easy, concrete step or steps will you take in the next 24 hours to either move that forward or make that real? By answering those 3 questions, you're in.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, It's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your resilience. Increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today.

What I would suggest is ask those around you the 3 questions as well. It's a lovely thing to do. Our friend, Ray Blanchard from TLC, asked his board those questions. He said they were just bawling their eyes out. It was so, so moving. Yeah. Don't impose your answer. So if somebody says— I remember I did a webinar workshop once and a woman stood up and said, well, heaven on earth is the end of hunger. Obviously, no hunger, heaven on earth. Next guy comes up, stands up and says, well, it's about love. You have love in the world, you have heaven on earth. And then they start getting into it. No, it's about ending hunger. No, it's about— I went, stop. We got to make her right? Empower her for the end of hunger. We gotta make him right, empower him for it's about love. So listen deeply for what their answers are and see if you can in any way support them to begin making that real in the world.

Absolutely. I mean, at the end of day, that's— this is another one of those clichés, at the end of the day, right? At the end of the day, the bottom line, at the end of the day. Literally at the end of days for us is when we take our last breath on earth. 'Cause I don't believe in the end of anything. I think it's an eternal cycle. So for what it's worth, for me anyway, at the end of days, we won't be thinking about anything other than whether we experience heaven on earth or not. That will be the resonance of our life. It'll be a blink. We look back on it. I mean, I say that because while I've not had the quote near-death experience, I've seen how 10 years goes by in a blink. 20 years, 30 years. I mean— 54 years in a blink. So it's an instant. Time and space just collapse. So we'll get to the end of our days at some point, and we'll have that blink moment where we go, yeah, it was just that fast. And the belief I have is that we'll lie there, sit there. I'll be surfing, so on my board in a great wave. And in that moment, it'll either be that I did experience heaven on earth, that that was part of what I feel in the moment is I had more heaven on earth moments than hell on earth moments. And I think if that's our only goal, is to just create a life that has more heaven on earth moments than hell on earth moments, we've done a good job with this particular life, I think.

Amen, amen.

A

couple of years ago, I had this exercise that I did for a year every day in which I said I have to discover and experience at least a minimum Of three heaven on earth experiences every day, and it forces you to look for them. And it's an amazing exercise. So if we, as you said, we can look for the hells on earth. I had a fight with blah blah blah today. I went into the gas station and I didn't work. Blah blah blah. I can tell you the hells on earth. Okay, good. What about the heaven on earth moments? That is so special. You know, I spoke to a friend here who's a. Lutheran, I think. Yeah, Lutheran pastor, and he works with dying patients. So profound what's important for them. The things that they regret. I didn't complete with this person. I didn't complete with that person. Love. He— to be with him is such a privilege, Adam, because you hear what's important, really important to people on their deathbeds.

Hmm.

And/or those people who've had near-death experiences and come back. Dr. Eben Alexander wrote the book, you know, Proof of Heaven. He didn't believe in that, but man, he does now. The near-death experience people, they get it about heaven on earth. They deeply get it.

Indeed. Yeah. Well, winding this show down in this way is just— it just feels as perfect, if not more perfect, than any other transition for me. And speaking about transition,

thank

you. And that is to ask you a question, Martin, I ask all of our guests, which is Did you wake up today, Martin?

I did.

Yeah. And was that— it's funny because, hey, got to think about it for a second.

No, I actually had a lovely enlightenment experience this morning when I woke up. It was great.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

So you're awake?

Yes.

Good. When you went to sleep last night, was it guaranteed— a lawyer in me now— was it guaranteed that you would wake up I never

asked that question. I've never thought about it. No.

Yeah. Well, it's just, it's an observation. So was it guaranteed?

No.

No, it wasn't for me either. And I haven't met anybody yet who could prove to me that it was guaranteed they wake up in the morning. So it's a lot of things. You could make a lot of conclusions from that. The conclusion I draw is that our waking is a blessing because it wasn't a guarantee. And If you question that at all, you could think of a truth, of a reality, which is that as you were waking and taking your first waking breath this morning, there were people taking their last breath. Even in this moment, as you said, right here in this moment now, as we're breathing, taking our breath, there are people receiving their last breath in this moment. So to me, makes the moment holy. Every one of them. And tomorrow— so this is my hope, and it's my intention, and it's also a prayer— that Martin, you get to wake up again tomorrow in your family, and I get to wake up in my family, and that everybody who's watching this, listening to this, that you all get to wake up. Wake up in all the truest sense of that word— physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually— and that you wake up, and in that moment of waking, Realizing as you're taking your first conscious breath of the day that there are people who are taking their last breath, and it does make that moment a heaven on earth moment. To use this language, I think it's so appropriate that that is a heaven on earth moment from the very start. And feeling grateful for that isn't difficult. That won't be a stretch to feel grateful for experiencing heaven on earth from the moment that you Open your eyes to start the day. And then if you want to include in that ritual, that morning moment, which we'll call a waking ritual, the opportunity to say out loud these words: I love my life. I love my life. What are the words, Martin?

I love my life. I love my life.

Yes, that's a nice way to begin A heaven on earth day.

Amen.

Martin, thank you so much. So what a true honor to have you on the show. Really enjoyed our conversation.

Adam, I think we've just taken our relationship again deeper. Every time we're together, for me, my experience is we go deeper and deeper and more joy and more humor. So I kiss you on the lips again.

I accept it. All right, everybody, ciao for now. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Of course, let us know what you thought about this episode. The feedback is so important for us. And we get to learn and grow from it. You can go to adammarkel.com/podcast, leave a comment. It's a great place to share your thoughts. You go to iTunes, the reviews are helpful. We love people to find the show and learn more. You can subscribe, of course, there as well as on the website. And the Facebook group, which is the Start My Pivot community on Facebook, is growing with the help of all of you. It'll continue to grow. And I'll just say ciao. Ciao. For now, bye-bye. Thanks again, Martin.

Thank you, Adam.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at PivotFB.