#157: Flexibility And Resilience: Keys To Mastering The Unknown

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'm your host, Adam Markel, and I am feeling very blessed to be sitting in my seat right at this moment podcasting on this beautiful day. Obviously, lots going on in our world, lots going on as always, but as much as that has sort of become the new normal, that things are changing constantly. I don't know that any of us expected the kind of changes that we're experiencing at this moment. And that I think I'm not at great risk to say. But I feel nonetheless just fantastic, not only that I get to be here, that I am still sitting at this moment on this chair in a house standing on a hillside in Southern California, which is on top of this beautiful Mother Earth of ours, which is nothing more than a speck of dirt. Spinning in infinite space. Just a realization of perspective really for me in this moment and how seriously, of course, we always take everything that's going on in our lives and in the world. And I think that's— there's nothing wrong with that. And yet in that other perspective of things, you know, how much we obsess and how much we worry and how much we suffer in the moment with things that are going on is really a point of interest. And today I have an incredible guest on the show, somebody that will bring really wonderful new perspective to the question of suffering and whether suffering is truly optional or not. William Arntz started his professional career as a research laser physicist working on Star Wars high-energy lasers. He then moved on to software writing AutoSys, an automated job control system currently in use by Fortune 500 companies. He sold that company, retired, but then decided to make a film that many of you have heard of. He created, produced, and directed What the Bleep Do We Know?, an exploration of spirituality, quantum physics, neurology, and outrageous possibilities. The film and the companion book with editions in over 20 languages have been huge international hits. His most recent book, How to Suffer in 10 Easy Steps, Love that title. Is a very different take in the genre of self-help and one that we're going to get to discuss today. I am so happy to have you on the show, Will. It's great to have you be a guest with us today. Welcome.

Well, thank you. It's good to be here. And like you, I'm grateful I'm sitting on a chair and up here at 8,300 feet in Colorado and everything is still and quiet. You'd never know by looking out of the window that Our world is in chaos right now.

No, it's true. You really wouldn't know that. The bio that I've just read, which is only a short sort of a fraction of a lot of the things that you've done in the world, I'd love for our folks to know what's not in that bio that I just read that you would love for people to know about you as we begin.

Well, I spent about 20 years with 2 different spiritual teachers, and both of those programs were pretty intense. The first teacher, Rama Frederick Glens, he got everyone into computers.

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And so that computer program that you mentioned, that was actually given to all his students as a spiritual task. Go write some software and turn it into a product and turn it into a company and sell it. So— Are you kidding? No,

that's amazing.

Yeah, that was amazing.

That was a spiritual undertaking?

Yeah, and there was a lot of teaching behind it. It wasn't just go do it and get rich. A lot of it was in meditating. One of the things you do in meditating, you're clearing your mind. And he said, well, listen, if your mind is really clear, you'll know that because when you write code, it won't be buggy and it won't break. If your mind's cluttered, it's going to be buggy and it's going to break. So it's a great reflection of that. The other reason to do it is that, look, in the West, if you're in spiritual study— and back in the '80s and '90s, this was really true, not so much now— people really look down on you. They think you're a freak. They ask you when you're going to start drinking the Kool-Aid. I mean, yeah. I mean, it was really bad. And so he said, so you're not going to get any respect. In fact, you'll get disrespect. However, if you pull up to the meeting in a Mercedes, you got instant respect and they pay you well to do computers. So, and by the way, it's the wave of the future because he was a seer. He would see the future. So there was a lot of reasons for doing it. So that's one little fact that is not in the bio.

That's beautiful. Well, you mentioned that this was a mentor of yours. What is his name?

Frederick Lenz, L-E-N-Z, was his sort of given name, given by the parents. The name given to him by the universe was Rama.

Beautiful. Yeah, I imagine people are gonna go look him up right now and see what books and things, because that's actually— I mean, and when was this approximately? What year?

Well, I signed up in like '82, and then I was around until '95 when I sold my product and then headed out to the other worlds. So it was like 13 years then.

Yeah. And forgive me for not knowing of his work and life. Is he still walking the planet?

No, he passed away in '97. And most people don't because he didn't have a huge following. I mean, at first, for most of that time, it was just 200 students, which he would move around the country all the time. And then he got another batch of about 200 students, and that was it. So it wasn't like a big thing. He didn't do a lot of big events. And he pretty much flew under the radar.

Yeah, not a modern-day guru anyway.

No.

Yeah, but really had foresight. I mean, clearly had foresight. That's remarkable.

Yeah, I mean, back in the early '90s, he broke his students up into groups and said, I want you all writing game software. What? Games, because games are gonna be different. At that point, I was like, you're crazy. You're crazy, Rana. There's not enough— computers aren't really fast enough to do what you're saying to do. But he kept saying, no, no, no, you know, you guys got to do games. Well, of course, 15 years later, multi-billion-dollar industry. So he was quite a seer.

My goodness, like a Steve Jobs of the meditation space or something. So you sell your company and do well enough to retire at a certain point. What was it— I'm sure people, even though I know we're going to take a different trajectory with this podcast, I would be remiss for sure if I did not cover What the Bleep Do We Know? and the inspiration for that because it had such a huge impact on many, many people. It's just a wonderful thing to have created and to sit where you're sitting now and know that it had the good impact that you intended and probably quite a bit more. Let's cover that for just a moment if we can, the inspiration for it and anything else you want to just share about what that journey was like, because you certainly didn't come from that background.

Well, the background I came from was really first science, and then I did the 20-plus years of intense spiritual practice. So that's the science and spirits part, and the idea of bringing them together in some form was always kind of kicking around in my mind. So then the idea— and then of course the Tao of Physics book came out by Capra, and that was starting to unite these ideas. And then I thought, man, it would be so great to make a movie. So I had wanted, when I was younger in high school and college, what my friends and I did for fun was make movies.

Oh, I didn't know that.

So there was a time in my life.

Yeah, I really—

yeah, yeah. And but it wasn't professional, you know, it was like back in 10th grade, I'm sitting at the dining room table with a glue splicer gluing together 8mm movies that we were making. So, you know, I always wanted to do it, but when it finally came time to go to LA and really do it, if I was gonna do it, I just couldn't deal with LA and that was that. So I figured, oh, I guess I'll never make movies, but I really wanted to. Meanwhile, like I said, back in the '80s and '90s, if you were in spiritual practice, people just— they rolled their eyes. You got a lot of bad vibes, let's face it.

Right.

From that, there was no respect. And quite honestly, that pissed me off. I had a chip on my shoulder and I'm like, you know, everyone I know, or most of the people I know that are really into spiritual practice, these are not a bunch of spacey flakeballs. You know, you're reading, you're studying, you're self-examining, you're turning your world upside down to evolve. I mean, it's a serious practice and I wanted to put something out there that reflected that serious practice. And that's where I said, okay, I'm gonna make a movie. I'm gonna use the language of science because that gives it instant respectability, but it's going to be about science and spirituality. So that was another reason to make it. And the third reason was, once I started it, I just got this sense that there was millions of people around the planet waiting for it. And I usually don't get that those sort of messages. But that was one that came and just wouldn't go away, that there was millions waiting for this crazy movie. So I'm like, okay, here we go. And rest is history.

So, Will, are you a seer? I know you gave that, you described your mentor in that way. Do you figure that this movie, this project was a bit of seeing?

Well, it definitely, another thing is I had a notion that, oh my God, a door is opening. There is a moment where it's the perfect time for this Film the Land. And when you look back at it, the fact that that was just when email and internet were really becoming widespread, which is sort of how it got out there, it was a moment where it was a falling out of this bias against spirituality, and nothing had been done like it then. So I had the sense this was a time, and we had to get it out in 2004, which we did. So that's it. But I mean, there's another aspect of being a seer, and that has to do with this book that my wife Deirdre and I put together, oh, about 4 years ago, 4 or 5 years ago. It's called The

Not So Little Book of Surprises. Yeah, it's an awesome book.

Yeah, and in it we talk about— we, after we did the book, we realized, oh my, and then she had a vision, and I sort of did too. that we are entering the age of surprise. And in fact, last 2 years, we had been going around doing our little Mystic and Physicist show, telling people we're entering the age of surprises. We kept telling people that and telling people that and telling people that. And if you don't think right now we're in the age of surprises, I don't know where you've been. I mean, the surprises rolling in now, I mean, it's a tidal wave.

Yeah. I want to track back to What the Bleep for one more second, just because there's something that I think is instructional or Yeah. I think people will learn something from just the process you used to take to get the title because you said something called bad— was it bad idea day or what would you guys used to call it?

Yeah. We would have bad idea days. And the thing was, there was really 3 of us who put this together, myself, Mark Vicente, and Betsy Chasse. So we all had our fingers deep in the pie. So we would have all these meetings trying to figure out what it was and how do we do it. And we're always trying to come up with the best idea. And so some Someone floated the idea, you know, I'm so sick of trying so hard to come up with the best idea. Let's come up with the worst idea we can. And then we— so we put a cheese-o-meter up on the wall where you could say how cheesy the idea was. And the idea, you'd come up with a bad idea that would be so tacky and so cheesy that everyone would groan.

And that was a good thing.

Yeah, because it just relieves the pressure of always trying to be so smart and intuitive and everything else. See, you get to blow off steam.

Wait a second. Let that land for a second. I want people to really just I want to sit with that for a second. The pressure of having to have the answers and be so smart all the time, isn't that— I mean, it's so fucking exhausting to have to live, right? And just to just release that, and then look what ends up happening. At some point, you come up with this title.

Well, one of the things that happened is we started doing this, and we would throw these out, and every once in a while, one would come out, and we'd all start to laugh and then stop and go, Hey, actually, that's pretty good. That's actually pretty good. So we had been doing this. Meanwhile, Betsy, who had come on, had never really had any previous reading or studying and all the spiritual stuff. So Mark and I would go on and on on this metaphysical stuff, and she'd stop. She goes, hey, I don't know what you guys jawing on about, but what the fuck do I know? So she was always saying, what the fuck do I know? So after about a year of trying to figure this film out, Mark and I started saying, what the fuck do I know? And then at one point, we were once more trying to figure out how to tell a dramatic story within a documentary. And someone said, yeah, what the fuck do I know? And then someone else, we can't remember who, said, yeah, what the fuck do we know? And then someone else said, well, let's call the movie that. And we all had a big laugh. That was our bad idea for the day. Ahahaha, let's call the movie that, let's call the movie that. And it just stuck. Of course, we had to change fuck to bleep. Right. But that was how that came about because it's like— and also, it's a nice ambiguous term because On the one hand, it's like, what the fuck do we know? I mean, because we didn't want to come across as the gurus. We don't want to come across as the people, we have it all figured out and you don't. We're just presenting ideas. But the other side of that is, what the fuck do we know? It's like, but we have uncovered some stuff and we've talked to some people who really do. So yeah, what do we know? I also enjoy the ambiguity of the title.

Yeah, that's really rich. Thank you, Will, for sharing that. I'm sure it's not the 100th time that you've I've told that story over the years, but I appreciate the passion that you just gave to that one. What I'd love to do with our time today is sort of triangulate 3 things. The first being, what's on your heart? I have not asked the guest in, I don't know how many, 170 episodes yet. I've never asked that question. And I'm really curious what's on your heart at this moment. I also want to talk about resilience. And I want to talk about your new book, How to Suffer in 10 Easy Steps. And if we can figure out a way to triangulate those 3 things, that would be fun and interesting for me personally, and hopefully it will be very interesting for others who are listening. So why don't we start with what's on your heart?

Well, quite honestly, the big thing on my heart right now is something very personal. I'm up here in the mountains of Colorado. It's March 16th. Any day they may slap down a thing where people can't travel. You're probably watching this way afterwards or hearing this, and my dear wife Deirdre is at our other house in California. So what's on my heart right now is getting out of here before they shut down the airways and seeing her. So it's not a big grandiose save the world or that. It's just that, I mean, that's what's up for me right now. Just, okay, wrap it up here and get out there and get with my sweetheart.

I think that's what pretty much everybody is on some level thinking about, the safety of people they care about and wanting to be with those people as well, not be separated. I know there's people who have kids that were studying abroad in various places around the world, and some of those kids are still over there and some are not gonna make it back and some have already come back. And, you know, just so many things that what you just said, I just feel many of us can relate to. I know we're hunkering down in our own self-quarantine. In a beautiful place, but nonetheless, we're also concerned about what other people are concerned about. And there's a run on the toilet paper. There's no toilet paper to be seen or had. We went out early today to get eggs. I mean, there's, you know, things that we just would never have been thinking, as you said at the beginning, at the outset. It's like we wouldn't have been thinking about any of these things being an issue a month ago and how quickly things can change in a global environment. And ultimately, how we get through these things— well, you're a little, little more my senior, a little older than I am. You've seen a little bit more than I've seen, but I can track back in my own mind to things not long ago, like the Great Recession started in 2008, which many of us saw signs of that happening earlier than that. Obviously 9/11 and the banking crisis of the early '90s, the dot-com Boom and bust of 2000, the Y2K scare, a lot of things when AIDS was first— when information about that was first being made public and a lot of the paranoia and misinformation around AIDS at the time. Just so many things in our lives and this is another one of those things. So maybe we'll— what's your take on the big picture, if there is one, if there's something that That just over time that you've learned about events like this. And maybe you could even share some looking at it through the lens of resilience, if that's possible. But I want to just turn that over to you and look for your elder wisdom on some of what we're seeing and what's happening.

Well, I do have white hair. So I guess, you know, I'm qualified to speak. The big thing, and I've just been meditating on this, is you said this is another one of those things. And on the one hand, that's true, but there's something about this. What we're experiencing now has never ever happened in the history of humanity. Never. Now, yeah, there have been catastrophes. Maybe the flood, you know, that happened 12,000 years ago apparently affected the whole planet. So that would be the other time. But since then, just think about this. You know, there's been all those other crises you said, like even 9/11. Now, everyone on the planet was kind of aware of it, but really it was the people in America that were affected. This is something where everyone on the planet is being potentially affected by this, number one. Number two, because of the growth of internet and communications, everyone's aware of it at the same time. Now, there was other things in the past, like when they did the moon launch, where people— you see old pictures of people lining up outside of TV stores where there was a TV watching it. There was a lot of worldwide awareness about a single event. But never has there been worldwide awareness around a single event that is affecting everyone at the same time. And when you think about the immensity of that, and we are all connected, there's a collective unconsciousness. It's the collective unconsciousness right now is going haywire. And yesterday I was walking through the house and I suddenly got overtaken by this sense of dread. And I was like, Whoa! And I was— there was no— it wasn't like I was thinking about anything. I was just going through to make a cup of tea and suddenly I get hit by dread and I stopped for about 3 or 4 minutes. I'm like, wow, is this— what is with this? And then I realized, oh my God, I just picked up from the collective unconsciousness what this is because as soon as I named it, the dread went away, which tells me I'm just picking up. It's nothing personal. It's something that's in the environment. It's something in the astral sphere or wherever you want to peg it, in the collective unconscious. So there's something about There's something about this event that we're all going through that's really, really unique. And because of that, we really don't know what's gonna shake out of it. And I think that sense of unknowingness about it, of course, fuels the dread and fuels everything. So—

Yeah, it's interesting because you said we're connected and we're connected in so many ways today. And that's one other way to see this as well, or not another way, just a Another part of the depth at which we can look at this, which is that we are so connected. This is maybe the first time— I mean, smallpox and other plagues or other pandemics have been a part of the global experience before. This is not the first time for that, but the fact that we're all aware of it at the same exact moment and we're feeling it because we're given access to so much information about what's happening elsewhere in the world so that we're We're able to do what is most human, which is to empathize, to have empathy and have compassion for others. That's never been the case before when we were all going through something. And so this is a really interesting point of connection. And I don't know what ultimately that looks like and what it leads to. Perhaps it leads, and it would be my prayer, my hope, that it would lead to more empathy and more— understanding and more peace on our planet because we are having such a shared experience that is difficult. Will, what's your— been your method, let's say, of dealing with unexpected challenge in your life? Because I think that's a part of what you brought up, which is that this is something we didn't see coming and, and it has taken us by storm literally and has changed people's lives already and will forever. A long time to come, it seems. You've had events in your life, I'm sure, that caught you off guard and you had to do something with them. And ultimately, you're here. You're obviously here and doing well and still creating things to make a difference in the world. So you've been resilient. I look at you and I go, there's another model of resilience. I see them everywhere and you're one of them. What's that been like for you? Is there some keys that you would, you know, could kind of cull out of that experience to share with us?

Well, one of the things, but before I go into that, there's just something you said earlier that I want to just quickly—

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 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 Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

We mentioned the fact that we're all being hit by this at the same time. There's always been those science fiction things, War of the Worlds, where, you know, the only way this planet will ever come together is if we get attacked by some alien coming in. We all have to come together to fight it in order to survive. And it's interesting, although it's not a Martian coming in in a spaceship, it's a virus, but it is that. And so who knows? Who knows what is going to be the outcome of this? So anyway, that was just to close off the previous thought. As far as, you know, what do I do? I mean, really, the first thing is about resilience is you can't be a victim. You can't go into victimization. You can't go into that poor me. Oh, this, it's unfair, or the universe is unfair, or God is unfair, or whatever. Because as soon as you go into that, you disempower yourself. You're saying, well, I didn't have anything to do with this. Poor me. The world is just dumping on me. And what can you do? What can I do? I got squished. Oh my God. Oh my God. I'm roadkill. Just my luck. Oh, just my luck. Can you believe what happened to me? Let me tell you. I hope you're sitting down. It's gonna take a while. So, you know, you go into that, but the thing is, you talk about resilience, the ability to get up or the ability to turn and go a different direction or the ability to change your thinking about stuff, that takes energy, that takes power. And as soon as you've gone into victimization and, you know, told everyone your sad story, you've disempowered yourself. So you don't have the juice to get up. You don't have the juice to change— To pivot. Well, there's the word. You don't have your juice to spin on your heels and go in a different direction, to see the world differently.

Yeah. So has there been something that either you learned when you were a kid or someone who influenced you to help you to do that? Because as you said, going into victimhood, nobody— I don't think anybody ever— and I know you don't mean this, I'm just being tongue-in-cheek with it— is nobody wakes up in the morning, I don't think, puts their feet on the floor and goes, today I'm gonna be the greatest victim there ever was. In fact, whatever my past history of victim— victimness is, I'm going to take it to a new level today. Like, nobody does that. And yet by noon, you know, you ask them that one question that, you know, there's people you should never ask this question, right? And the question is, how you doing? Like, I grew up in New York, so everything was, how you doing? And nobody ever answered the question, by the way. Everybody just goes, how you doing? Right? Yeah. That's the answer to the question, is the same question. But you ask somebody, how you doing? And then they go into their, like you said, their diatribe of everything that's gone wrong. But that's a learned behavior, I believe. I think it's something we learn from the people that model it in our lives, whether it's family or whoever. But where did you learn to not do that, I guess, is what I'm asking?

Boy, that's a good question. Well, there was a certain role model that my father did. And my father was one of these guys who could build and make anything. He had a big shop at the house and he could just make anything and he seemed to be able to figure anything out. So there was never this sort of, oh, I can't do it. There was always this sense of just like, oh, okay, well, you're gonna figure it out and do it. For me, that came into play when I did my first software company. I had never done a business before and I don't really have a natural inclination towards it, but it was like, well, I was given the task, I guess I'm gonna do it. And when I did the film, again, I messed around with films, but not really, it's not like I went to film school or anything. It's just like, well, I guess we'll just figure out and do it. So that ability just to throw myself into something I don't know with the assumption that I'll figure it out was something I think I got from my dad. And luckily, it's worked out well for me.

That's really— you just shared something, Will, that we've seen in our research about resilient people is that often they are improvisational. They can make do. They can, as you say, figure shit out because that's what they have to do. And there's that old cliché, of course, that necessity is the mother of invention. But there's this concept of improvisation that, that is embedded in a lot of the people that had to endure and come through and make something out of really, really harsh experiences. In fact, I think it's Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, that was It's incubated that the meaning therapy that Frankl became known for was birthed out of his experience of surviving the concentration camps in World War II. And so here's a guy that goes through one of the most horrific experiences that we can imagine. And while he's enduring it, dealing with it, his mind is less on all those things you said about, you know, woe is me. I'm probably gonna die tomorrow and everything else that must have been very prevalent, and more on what am I gonna do with this and who can I— who will I be able to share this with and how will the world be different and what will the meaning be ultimately to something that has apparently this no meaning. And he, you know, changes so many lives as a result of that. So your dad gave you quite a tool there, that is to know and to trust really that you will figure stuff out. I want to— I want to talk about the book and because it's got such a a cheeky title. I don't know, I could say a lot of things else about it, but How to Suffer in 10 Easy Steps. And so there's a little sarcasm I'm sensing there. Will, tell us about this book. Tell us about the title. What are you getting at there?

Well, it came about describing the first chapter. It came about really as a roast of self-help books. I was talking to Deirdre one evening and we just got into this idea and I'm like, yeah, all these self-help books that promise you the world and say it's going to be easy in X number of And I said, you know, the only thing easy is suffering because no one wants to do it and everyone's doing it, so it must be easy. So it sort of came about as a humorous look at that, but also in the back of my mind was like, yeah, here's the easy ways to suffer, so if you do the opposite, obviously you won't suffer. So that's really how the whole thing started, but once I got into it, I realized, oh my God, this is a really huge subject. That people tend not to talk about directly. You know, people just don't, you know, how are you doing? I'm suffering today. And when people start suffering, they usually just suffer. But, you know, what I realized is bringing awareness to it and you have a certain amount of choice. And there's other things too. I mean, the example you gave of Frankl in the book, I mean, one of the fundamental concepts is that suffering is really a key to evolving. Yeah. And there's pretty much a lesson to be learned in all of it. There's a great line from the Vedanta teachings. It's called Aklesha, and it says all suffering is a result of the misapprehension of the nature of reality. So anytime you're suffering, it's because you're not really perceiving reality as it is. If you have a fear of death and you're suffering because of that, they would say that, well, death is an illusion. It's just a passage. It's like going into another room? Do you suffer because you're gonna leave the dining room and go into the living room? No, it's the same thing. So you're not perceiving reality properly. So there's all this learning that is hooked up to it. Also, there's the idea that there's strategies you can employ once you get to a state. You say, okay, I'm really, really suffering. It's like, how are— okay, what are you gonna do about it? You're gonna do nothing? Are you going to just look at it straight on and experience it till you get bored and move on? Are you going to use some of the other techniques? Practice non-attachment. There's other things you can do, but how are you going to react to it? Are you going to react stoically? Or, you know, some people are like, gee, I'm gonna take everyone down with me. If I'm suffering, you're gonna suffer too. You know, so it's looking at the way each of us react to it and putting some awareness and consciousness on it.

Yeah,

so that's the book in 4 minutes.

So the book pokes a little fun at this idea of easy, shiny, shiny objects or shiny solutions to intractable challenges in life such as suffering and offer some genuine perspective on that. So if you were gonna say— and we've all kind of heard this through self-help teaching— that suffering is optional, do you believe that?

Well, yeah, it's a Buddhist— originally a Buddhist saying: pain is unavoidable, suffering is optional. I mean, yeah, I mean, people in the guru and the self-help world say that, but unless you're Buddha, you're just quoting something that you don't experience. I mean, you can, you can say that all you want, and then suddenly your child gets killed in a car accident.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, come on, let's get real here. And I think when you say that, there is some truth to that. You do have options there, but there are times when it is— I mean, it's just, it's so immense. It's so immense. And yeah, theoretically Buddha said, yeah, you can get, you know, completely past all your suffering. But that's a very, very, very elevated state of consciousness. And it's like, that's a one in a trillion person can pull that off. So by saying that quote, I think what you're doing is you can make people feel guilty. Oh gee, I guess if I was more enlightened, I wouldn't be suffering. But, you know, I am. So— I mean, I think that saying is good because there is some suffering that you get into really out of habit. And it's you're choosing to go into a habitual response. So choice does figure in, but, you know, I think that's one of the things about the self-help thing. People crank out these things, oh, always be positive, never look at the negative. Yeah, and then, you know, then the truck runs over you. So—

Throw it on the platitude heap. Yeah, the platitude pile.

Yeah, the platitude.

I love alliteration.

You could say, yeah, it's a pile of platitudes.

That's just a pile.

I should add that in the book.

Yeah, okay. I'm thinking maybe there's a word that's missing. So this whole concept of suffering is optional, and maybe there's a word before suffering that puts that into perspective. Maybe it's unnecessary or habitual or— just let's play with this for a second, Will. If there's a word that goes before suffering is optional, what word might give that more tangible relevance? Yeah, I

was thinking suffering is at times optional, or suffering is sometimes optional.

And I was thinking maybe if we put a word in front of the word suffering. So this may be like a— what do they call that? A circular reasoning thing. When I was a lawyer, we used to have to watch out for circular reasoning, but unnecessary suffering. suffering is optional. And then it begs the question, what is unnecessary suffering?

Right.

Which is good because we just keep— I think the more we can question, the less we are held in place by habitual patterns of thinking. And I do think that's a challenge for me, for all of us, that we just habitually think in certain patterns and certain ways and make meaning of things based on habits or what's just what we're used to, what we're comfortable with, then we miss the grand opportunities. I mean, I know that in the midst of all of what's going on now in this world that is so challenging and so difficult, that there are wonderful, amazing, incredible, very credible opportunities that are present. And the ability to see those things in the midst of all the suffering and other things that are happening, that is going to be the gift for a few, maybe, and hopefully more than just a few.

Well, I'm wondering what's gonna happen because I think part of the reason that society and the world has been so screwed up the last 10 years is the pace at which everyone's going. I mean, you know, people just 7 by 24, boom, boom, boom. Check the cell phone, check this, what's news, let me check the news. You got an Instagram, how many followers? That whole jag that everyone's on and no one takes weekends off anymore. People are working all, you know.

There's no such thing as the end of a week. There is no weekend for most people. Certainly no entrepreneurs know what a weekend is. Yeah, not really.

So I'm wondering what's gonna happen now that a lot of that is out the window. And so people are gonna have to deal with not having that constant jag. I'm hoping people rediscover the fact that, you know, I really need a weekend off. I mean, it's even in the good book. On the 7th day, God chilled out.

That's a loose translation. God put his feet up and cracked open a Frosty.

Yeah, yeah. I created everything and beer's on the list. So here we go. So, you know, the fact that you humans, we need time off. I mean, that's why sleep exists. I mean, we need this time off, you know, and so this, this thing is an opportunity because our normal patterns, our habits are now all disrupted. There's a line that keeps going through my head. This was my first software company. The first guy I hired, he had been a nuclear warfare officer on a nuclear B-52. So anyway, at one point I was saying, well, David, you may go here, you may go there, we may have to send you there, but I don't know. I won't know till tomorrow. I said, I hope that's okay. And so he said, well, you know what they say in the Air Force, don't you? That's how he talked.

Hmm.

I said, what, David? He goes, they always say flexibility is the key to air supremacy.

Flexibility.

Flexibility is the key to air supremacy. And that's true of life. The flexibility is the key to your supremacy, your supremacy in your environment, being able to deal with things, being flexible. So, this is your— back to your resilience and to pivot that to flexibility. You know, you're heading east, you stop, now you're heading west. Boom! Just like that. Oh, gee, this isn't working this way. What can I do to change it? So, that flexibility, being able to move in and through the unknown, that's something that, you know, we're all experiencing and hopefully we're all going to get better at.

Yeah, and it's not a far-flung concept from improvisation, from what you said your dad gave you, which was this I'll figure it out mentality. That's flexibility as well. This idea that, so, you know, there's concrete doesn't stop a tree from growing its roots. It just doesn't happen, right? Some knucklehead decides to build concrete, you know, a walkway right where a tree is standing, and then the roots just happen to grow right up and that tree keeps growing. So, I mean, we've all seen, you know, grass growing up between in busy places and streets and in the city, etc. So flexibility is a big deal. And what you said earlier, I think when it comes— 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 mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. When it comes to resilience, it's less about endurance. This is what our research— when we do quite a bit of keynote speaking, corporate audiences and the like, and consulting in that space as well— often when we go into an organization, we're talking about what are their resilience traits. What are the— not just the state of resilience, but the trait that's been established over time. And one of those traits of resilient organizations and resilient people Is this recognition that you do have to recharge, just like your phone. I mean, you just leave your phone unplugged for a day, and most people are compulsive, obsessive about plugging in their phone or plugging in their laptop because they know if they don't or they leave it alone and they keep using it, eventually they just get a black screen and the thing is toast. And yet, we run ourselves endlessly thinking somehow that we've got this battery supply that will never Never run out. And so yeah, it's a really interesting thing when the universe sends something or when this shows up, something like a global pandemic. What is the greater message to take away from this and to look at? And yes, people are going to become reacquainted with themselves and their families for better or for worse and are going to spend maybe more time, hopefully, in doing things that nurture, enriching To themselves as opposed to, as you said, with everything else going on, people constantly comparing and through social media and other places, just thinking that somebody else is doing it faster, somebody else is doing it better and more successfully at that. You just got to keep keeping up. I mean, when we grew up, keeping up with the Joneses really meant that somebody in your, you know, in the house next door or the apartment next door or what have you, they got a new car. They got a new car. That's what it meant to keep up with the Joneses. And today it means, man, And the list is too long of what people are trying to keep up with. And yeah, I think everybody really is exhausted. So with that, I would love to ask you just one final question, and that is, what's one thing that you do on a ritual basis to maintain, to maintain your own personal resilience? And it could be physical, it could be mental, emotional, spiritual even.

Well, every morning I have about 25, 30 minutes of stretches I do. And that's resilience in a very, very specific physical way. So that I, when I am moving around in this world, it's comfortable and fun and it feels good. And that's something I know that when I don't do it, everything starts not to work so well. And I'm just, it gets to be the point like, ugh, these physical bodies. So that's something that I just have to be, as they would say, religious about and do it every day.

Yeah, and that would play into that whole idea of flexibility is the key to supremacy because—

Yep.

Yeah, so for my wife, Randi, and I, we do yoga pretty much every day. We started doing qigong as well, and these are not lengthy practices. You know, you can have a— every one of us can have a practice that lasts 10, 15, 20 minutes that is really beneficial to your body, to the flexibility of your body, and then other practices that help create a flexible mind. I'm sure For people who are listening to this podcast right now, this hopefully is one of those practices that helps you to maintain a flexible mindset because what you hear on these shows, whether it's mine or others, will be differing views, divergent viewpoints, which only make you question whether what you believe is so. And I'm always questioning how attached am I to being right? And, and where does that all lead? So with that, I will remind myself and remind all of our listeners that tomorrow is truly a gift and a blessing that we're not guaranteed today, not promised that we're gonna all wake up tomorrow. So when, when you do wake up, when we do get to wake up again tomorrow, you can feel gratitude in that moment. A part of my waking ritual, my waking practice, is to wake up, number one. That's a good practice to have. Let's do that. And 2, to feel grateful for it and appreciative in that moment of waking. And 3rd, to actually say something out loud that I want to experience, that I want to experience myself being in a state for the day and beyond. And the words that I use to convey that message to myself and to the universe are 4 words, simple words. I love my life. Those 4 words, I love my life. Will, I'm going to ask you the question. Do you love your life?

Most of the time. I'm being honest. Most of the time.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Most of the time.

It could be a little—

Yeah. There's times when it's like, hey, this sucks. So, that's the human condition. But luckily I'm not a guru, so it's okay for me to have those moments.

I think it's a— somebody said it's a sign of genius or higher intelligence to be able to entertain conflicting thoughts, conflicting ideas at the same time. And so yes, I agree with you. I get to points in my day where I go, this sucks. And that's when my own restorative is to take 10 seconds and simply to say those words out loud again and again and again until I just feel the energy. What does it mean? What would it be like to actually love your life no matter what? What a concept. All right. Well, that's it for today and at least for this interview. Will, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Well, yeah, it's been a lot of fun. You're fun to bounce it back and forth with.

No, way cool. Everybody, please leave your comments at adamarkel.com/podcast. Let us know your thoughts, your questions. The reviews are great. And of course, as well, if you haven't subscribed to the show, please do that. Tell your friends. It's out. All right. Ciao for now, everyone.

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 life lifestyle you love, join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.