#87: The Human Potential Movement with Stewart Emery

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 everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I am sitting here in my office today. It's a Monday morning, and of course everybody will be consuming this at a different time of the day and different days of the week, and who knows, for years on end, which is Exciting to think about that, especially given the fact that I've got a great guest this morning. And I want to get right to that. But before I do, I want to take a moment as well to be in gratitude. It's no guarantee. There was no guarantee yesterday or last year at any point that I would get to be sitting here, that any of us would be here at this moment. So this is one special moment in time when we all get to connect. We can't even see each other for the most part, just myself and My dear guest, we see each other, we can hear each other, but the rest of us, we are connected somehow. I don't know how that works. I don't need to figure that out, but it just feels good nonetheless that we get to share a moment of being alive together. And since that wasn't guaranteed for any of us, it's a blessing and something that we can appreciate. It's just something to appreciate. So with this breath, I, I'm in gratitude for all of you. I'm in gratitude for my own heartbeat and my life and all the other wonderful things that are happening simultaneously at this moment. And grateful for the friend that I get to spend some time with. And you guys get to experience this gentleman. I think you're going to find this conversation exceedingly interesting, thought-provoking. It might even be agitating. I don't know. I'm looking forward to it myself. This gentleman has such a wealth of experience in so many areas. In many ways, I don't like using too many stereotypes, I guess, when I'm introducing people that have done amazing things in their lives. So to call him a thought leader or somebody that's a catalyst in that genre is accurate, and yet he's a very humble person. He's done a lot. He's worked in many areas of commercial space businesses and part of marketing teams and initiatives to drive some of the biggest marketing campaigns That have ever been. And he is somebody that has been involved in the human potential movement for many, many, many years before it was a thing, I suppose, and before it certainly had the likes of Tony Robbins or other really large names associated with it. And I'm very intrigued by this man. I told him years ago, I think at this point, because we get to be part of a biannual meeting, and I told him, some years ago that I really wanted to get to know him better. And so having him on the podcast this morning is a blessing. It's a way for me to get to know him better. And it's a way for all of you to get to meet him for the— maybe not for the first time because he is quite well known. I'll just say a little bit about him. I'm going to dive right in. An internationally acclaimed educator, author, world-class speaker, and in-demand expert on the psychology of greatness, Stuart Emery has devoted his life to the study of human potential. and has been named one of the 10 most influential people in the human potential movement. He'd been awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters degree by John F. Kennedy University as an acknowledgment of his many contributions. He's also the author and co-author of many, many books. We'll talk about some of those today, but before we go any further, I just want to say welcome to the podcast today, Stuart. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you, Adam. It's certainly— when you talk about that, it goes back a long way, so I'm thinking, I'm getting up there in age, right? I'm almost 78. So I've been around, you know, I was at ground zero, as they say, before the human potential movement was a thing.

What did they call it back then? It's just a question I have. Did they give it a name?

Well, it was— well, it got a name probably about the time I got here from Australia. I landed in San Francisco in 1971 and turned left at Lombard Street and went over the Golden Gate Bridge. But stopped at Haight-Ashbury before I did that, inhaled, and I knew I wasn't in Sydney anymore. It was just— it was a different scene.

Did you run into Billy Garcia then?

No, but I ran into some very interesting people over the time, but it was crazy. And so it was very exciting. I'd watched Australia get in the grips of the militant elements of the British Labour movement. It had gone very left. And the marginal tax rate was 90%.

'90.

'90.

Wow.

And I got here and looked around, and, uh, originally I was coming for a couple of weeks. I'm still here, basically. But I ran into a fellow called Werner Erhard, and the rest, they say, is history. This thing was started, became called EST, and then became the Landmark Forum.

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And so, uh, they were exciting times. They were. I think Estes was phenomenal in its day. At the very least, it was extraordinary theater. At the very best, people's lives went through what you call a pivot point as a result of their involvement in the S-Trade. I really do like that phrase, by the way, pivot point. For me, arriving in America was the aftermath of a pivot point I went through in my life before I got here. I can tell a story quickly.

What did that look like? I thought when you started to speak that you were from Kentucky, so I'm glad you cleared it up and that you're from Sydney originally.

Yes, yeah, I do. So, but I can relate to Kentucky, seriously, because—

Is that another story?

Well, kind of, sort of. I mean, I grew up in Australia, but my early years were set in the Blue Mountains, and I grew up alone. We were very poor, and I won a scholarship to a school for privileged children, so I didn't actually fit in very well. My father died as a result of his involvement in the war. Although why he went off to the war at 50, I have no idea. I wasn't born yet. But he felt he had to do something, and he was a cartographer, very famous in Australia. But that turned out not to end well for him. And so I went off to university. I studied philosophy, psychology, economics, ran with 2 other guys the university newspaper. One of them was a fellow called Robert Hughes, who became very famous. He's passed now. Another was a radical called Richard Neville, but I'm not actually a radical activist at all. Although I guess at university we all are, many of us are. I decided somewhere along the way I couldn't see myself as an economics professor, and I was into photography because my father had been an artist, essentially. And so I took up photography through a series of serendipitous events, ended up shooting for Vogue, becoming famous, went to advertising photography, did became one of Australia's top food photographers. And I had always thought the secret to life was consuming the right stuff. I mean, hell, I was an ad man, right? So I was the guy telling you that unless you used the right toothpaste, you wouldn't get kissed, let alone anything else you were hoping for later that night, right? And if your deodorant failed, your life did, right? That was the deal. And because you have to—

God forbid you should walk around with Ring around the collar. I mean—

Right, I know. But wait, there's more.

There's more.

Think how crazy this is. To have integrity as an ad man, I have to believe this stuff, right?

Yeah.

I really had to believe that Be a Man was about riding a horse, smoking Marlboro, getting laid at the same time. I mean, this is like a ridiculous metaphor, politically incorrect. But hey, I'm Australian, so political correctness isn't a concept.

You get a mulligan for that.

I get a mulligan for that. But so I remember waking up one day. And I'm driving a Porsche Audi show car, which is a platform for the Wankel rotary engine. It's bright orange. I've got a bright orange racing suit to go with it. Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. I am the man, right, in my field. I'm famous, right? And I'm sitting there one day at a stoplight, which is taking a while to change. And I'm thinking, my life's actually not any better. experientially. In other words, all of the things that I thought were going to be better, like this little kid that was bullied at boarding school, this little kid that felt alone, this little kid that felt like he just simply didn't fit in, that I'd been dropped at the wrong planet. What am I doing here? Why me? You know? And so none of that had changed. I just did it in more style, but something had changed. There's an old saying that when all of the perceived causes of your unhappiness have been removed, and yet your unhappiness continues. This is a crisis. A lot of people—

Or a moment of awakening, huh?

Yeah. So that crisis is handled by some people by committing suicide. You sometimes wonder why people with fame and fortune and notoriety in a positive way end their lives. There's been a rash of that in the recent past here. And so I got to look at that. And then I— my first wife, who passed from cancer, gave me a book by J. Krishnamurti called Think on These Things. And then serendipitously, I got an assignment to go and direct cinematography in Asia for a series of commercials. And while I was in Asia, I went into an altered state of consciousness for no reason I know of. But I was up in a very poor part of what's now called Sri Lanka shooting a commercial, went into this altered space, and I was just in a state of bliss. Wow! And here was the conundrum. Here I am in very, very challenged surroundings, in the midst of people who had almost nothing. And yet, I'm experiencing a state of bliss and happiness unlike anything I'd known surrounded by my opulence I'd acquired in Sydney, Australia. And it was like, you can't come back— well, I suppose you can, but I never got over that, because it completely— it's a pivot point. It turns your— paradigm upside down of what you think it's all about. And so I went back to Australia and I really felt like a stranger in a strange land. A few other things happened. I ended up in San Francisco, ended up in the human potential movement, trying to push into and look at that, that thing.

Yeah.

You know, that our inner experience is more unrelated to external circumstances than we like to believe.

Well, to some extent when it's external, it's just simplified for us. It's an easier, potentially easier to look at something that's outside of ourselves than something within.

Yeah, I think that it is. I mean, forces conspire to have us believe that our internal experience is some external person or thing's fault. Even if our inner experience gets to be wonderful. We still think it's somebody else's fault. You know, like, you made me love you.

Nonsense.

You didn't do that at all. It had to be you. No, it didn't. It could have been any poor dumb, you

know.

Yeah. Like, you get it.

Yeah, you complete me, right? You remember that from Jerry Maguire?

Yeah, yeah.

It's outside of ourselves. It's on someone else. It's on something else. You know, the money, the economy, the politics, the president, the whatever.

You look at the divisiveness. We're fighting over whose fault our life is. Come on! It's as if the human potential movement never happened or everybody got an F. Nobody got an A. Just saying.

Sometimes— what's that expression? Sometimes you take a step backwards to take 2 forward. I don't know, but it does seem—

I can hardly wait for the 2 forward. It's all way, dude.

Yeah. Well, one thing we know is there's no straight lines in the universe. So we're definitely in that one of those inflection points, those pivot points right now in some ways.

Feels that way to me.

I'm curious about the bliss, very much so actually, because I have something that's been percolating in my head for some years which I want to run past you. But did you ever get a beat on what that bliss was from? Because again, to be in a place where there is, like you say, so much poverty and things to look at and think, geez, nobody could ever be happy for a moment in this environment, and yet you cultivated or received bliss then.

Yeah, so happily, I couldn't come up with a reason. Now, I would like to have been, and, you know, we do tend to make up reasons till we find one we like, and then we sell ourselves that reason.

Yes.

So, it left me profoundly curious. And actually—

And to this day, Stuart, curious about the same thing?

Yes. Well, I'm a— I think my life's defined by the fact that I'm a very curious person. And one other thing, one of my core values is excellence. I mean, my favorite kinds of people are people who are— go back to a Thurman quote— ask not what the world needs, but ask what brings you fully alive and go do that. Because what the world needs are people who are fully alive. And so the people that I like to have around me are people who are fully alive, being world-class at doing something that they love to do. And I think when a person enters that space, And they're fully alive. So then their lives become a gift to the world.

Gosh, I have this in front of me. So it's interesting, the timing of things, if you believe in coincidence, which I don't. But either way, the timing of things is pretty cool. March 9th, 1997, in Parade magazine. My dad sent me this pretty quickly after he saw it, but it was a conversation about success and it's between 2 fictional characters. I just want to read this because you've In what you just said, I think it has some relationship. Success? Well, I don't know quite what you mean by success. Material success? Worldly success? Personal emotional success? The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to other people. How they approach the future. People who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it. I call people successful not because they have money or their business is doing well. But because as human beings they have a fully developed sense of being alive and engaged in a lifetime task— collaboration with other human beings, their mothers and fathers, their family, their friends, their loved ones, the friends who are dying, friends who are being born. Success, don't you know, it's all about being able to extend love to people. Really. Not in the big capital letter sense, but in the everyday, little by little, Task by task, gesture by gesture, word by word. Now, my dad, he said, at that time in my life, I was striving, building a family and buying lots of things and working typical 70, 80-hour work weeks as an attorney. And I know he sent this to me both because he found it interesting, thought I would as well, but I think he also wanted me to start to question for myself and ask some questions about what would success mean, not just then, but 20, 30, 40 years later. Because as you know, as well as any of us, that we blink our eyes and it is 20, 30, 40, 50 years later. It's remarkable.

I love that quote. I love you sent it to me. We did a book called Success Built to Last with Jerry Porras and Mark Thompson. And it's in a lot of languages now. And we actually did a global survey on what people thought success was. And the consensus was what you just read, not as eloquently expressed by us as you just shared with me. But we interviewed also some of the world's most successful people. And we don't mean just monetarily. I mean, we had the requisite billionaires. We had Michael Dell, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs. I mean, I'm trying to go down the list now, but— and then we have people like Desmond Tutu, Mandela.

Wow.

Muhammad Yunus, who got a Nobel Peace Prize for microlending. Oprah. I mean, we went down the list. So there were people who you may never have heard of and people who were very famous. But if you look deeply into it and got beyond the trappings of success, but beyond that, you looked at who did you just feel uplifted by being in the presence of?

Hmm.

When you got over being impressed, if you're inclined to be. But once you got over that, and some people don't ever, Hence, we have people following the Kardashians. Why would anybody do that? But if you get over being impressed, and you're just there with somebody's humanity, and you look at how they've lived their lives, we interviewed a couple hundred people like that, and put what we found into a book. But it's all put in that phrase, that few paragraphs you just read to us. That, to me, is what success is. And then we find our own way of getting there. But I thought we found all of these people were really good at doing something that seemed to be a gift to the world.

Yes. It seems to me that when we get to the end, whatever the end is, I don't believe in an end personally. So I do have, I guess, a faith in eternity and no way to know for sure, of course. But it just feels, it feels true to me that the soul does not expire, so to speak. And it's actually interesting because a friend and a colleague, somebody actually who's we've worked with, in fact, on his public speaking because he now has an incredible platform to speak about the nature and the origin of consciousness. He wrote a book called— just recently launched a book called An End to Upside-Down Thinking, Mark Gober. And he's an investment banker in the Bay Area, interestingly enough, and Princeton grad and all this. And sometimes make a joke when I've been introducing him that, you know, he's one of these underachievers, but clearly not. But what's really intriguing to me about this gentleman is that at 33 years old, that he started to question some things. He had every reason, as many of us do sometimes when things are going our way, to just continue to press our foot on the gas pedal because money is coming in and success as other people or even as we define it is seemingly sort of in our laps. And yet the inevitable, I think, result of not thinking and pausing to be even more aware of things is that we get to a place where we can strive for great lengths of time and find that we're not happy. That somehow or another, despite the title and the money and other things, we're not happy. He was in that situation. He started to question some things and wrote a book about the origin of consciousness. And in essence, saying that the upside-down thinking is the materialist view that our brain produces consciousness, that consciousness does not exist outside of our own physical brain. And in any event, it gave me even some— I don't want to call it evidence, but just additional fuel To support my own thought that we're eternal beings, that somehow we're not done. But wherever it is that our physical bodies end, and we know that definitely comes to all of us at a certain point, I feel like looking back on our lives, all we've got is an experience of being. What else will we have, right, Stuart? Our best relationships we can't take with us, our best toys we can't take with us, but what we'll have is how we experience being alive, as you said just a few minutes ago.

Yeah. And, you know, I used to say to people who worked out this cast iron alibi for being unhappy—

Oh, I gotta hear what that is.

Well, we're doing a workshop in New York. There's this woman here from a South American country, and she spent like a quarter of a million dollars in psychoanalysis. This is like 25 years ago.

Right. When they called it analysis, not therapy. Isn't that hysterical? Like, they don't call it analysis anymore.

That was analysis. And if you were in psychoanalysis, you went 5 days a week, right?

Yeah.

I used to say to my friend who was a psychiatrist, he's passed now, I said, so why is New York crazy in autumn, in August? He said, because all of the psychiatrists are out of town on summer vacation. That's why.

They're all in Nantucket.

They're all in Nantucket. So anyhow, so she's up there and she's got this long narrative, right? We love our narratives. And I said, well, you're pretty much screwed. But not in a way you'll enjoy it. She looks at me, what do you mean? Well, you know, you spent a quarter— well, your family spent a quarter of a million dollars getting you this perfect alibi for being unhappy. And you've got this narrative about all these terrible things that happened to you or didn't happen to you. I said, what are you going to do if you get to the end of your life and you find you made this whole thing up and you wasted your entire life being unhappy, because at this point, the sanctity of your narrative is more important to you than your unhappiness. Until you decide the possibility of being happy is more important than believing in your narrative and blaming your life on external circumstances, you're done for. But I notice people usually don't want to waste a quarter of a million dollars, so hang on to the narrative, right?

Yeah.

And so my son has an honors degree in theoretical physics and applied mathematics. He's head of engineering of a big data science company. He has extraordinary PhD astrophysicists and mathematicians working on his team. And they sat down one day— because my son is not a religious man— so they sat down one day, and because they could, they started doing the math on the probability of this all being here today, you and I talking, the probability of that happening. It's so many trillions to one that there was a moment there where they looked at each other Paused eating their sushi and drinking their green tea and said, whoops, we may be here through no fault of our own, right?

That's a great quote. Do you remember Albert Ellis? Is that a name that you're familiar with? Yes. My dad studied with him and I don't remember when it was, but it probably was in the '70s. And yeah, it was probably more in the '70s. And he had something called, I think it was rational emotive therapy. Correct.

Yeah, he was the man back in the day.

I mean, he was a pretty radical guy.

Very radical.

You know, I remember just growing up with certain sound bites that really impacted me. I mean, I, you know, that nature-nurture conversation is really telling. I think there's a lot of things, of course, that we bring from the past and maybe from our DNA and who knows what else in the past. But what you hear and the environment that you're in is so important. I love Yogananda. I think his quote was that environment is stronger than will. Environment is really powerful. And in that environment, my dad used to repeat things that Ellis would say like, you know, you're catastrophizing. You know, there's no shoulds. There's not, you know, there's only hassles and inconveniences. There's nothing that's a catastrophe. But we do, we tend to. I mean, we're in a world where we catastrophize a lot of things on a daily basis, don't we? I mean, it's good media. You were in the media business, so to speak. Right.

Yes, so we not only catastrophize it, we weaponize it.

What do you mean by that?

Well, we use what the narrative that was developed over this catastrophic event that happened, and then we use it as ammunition to condemn the other party or parties, whoever's fault it is other than their own, because it's never our own.

It's interesting, the environment that we find ourselves in right now, because there are some really important things that are happening and things that certainly deserve our attention and even deserve some response, and yet they all seem to be so drama-driven. I mean, they are as dramatic as it gets. I mean, it is literally like living in a reality TV show, right?

It is. And, you know, perhaps people don't feel alive unless they're involved in a drama. I mean, it's like that kid that joins the army and he goes into the medic and says, my fire's gone out. What do you mean your fire's gone out? They give him, you know, All these things. His fire's still gone out. Long story short, it turns out for the first time in his life, he's away from his mother's cooking and he doesn't have an ingestion. So he thinks his fire's gone out. But I watch people, they grow up, you know, families, a lot of families are broken and they grow up in the midst of drama. So I think we live in a world where aliveness is associated with drama. But that's aliveness that affects, isn't it? We used to say in EST, you either live at cause or you live at effect. You know, because your unhappiness is some external element's fault. You love the drama. You're at the effect of this, you feel alive, it's exciting. You know, inner peace is not exciting, it's just sublime.

Oh my God. I had the audacity and the stupidity, I'll say. And you know what? I want to retract that. I don't know if I really believe it was stupid. But when I— the last company that I was running, I was CEO of a very large personal development training company. I was in that seat of power, so to speak, for a couple of years and was feeling like I wasn't getting anywhere, like we weren't getting anywhere. In fact, I felt like we were sliding backwards because we were, for a variety of reasons. I was at a training, one of our retreats off in the woods of BC, British Columbia, and I had something come to me, a very emotional moment where— What was that? When I came out of the whatever it was that I was experiencing, that I realized that we had an opportunity as a company to stand for peace in the sense that to help people to create their own individual peace, for us to be in some way a catalyst for the work they could do on themselves to create and cultivate inner peace for themselves, that at a certain point, if enough people This was my theory anyway. I'll say this now. If enough people were selfishly working on their— at the cause level of their peace, that our world at some point would hit a tipping point and we would experience what world peace looked like because so many people were selfishly working on that.

Yeah, so I couldn't agree more.

It was really—

that's the deal.

Well, not as a mantra for a company, apparently.

No, well, I understand that. But on an individual level, it's think globally, act locally. And the ultimate process of acting locally is to develop a set of practices to live in one's own inner peace. I mean, I used to marvel during the anti-war period, '70s, and people would want Warren and I to get involved in the movement. We had our own movement we were building. So I used to say to them, I said, well, you come to me and you want me to speak at these anti-war rallies, but you're also angry. How are you going to bring peace to the world if you're consumed by your anger?

Hmm.

Go and learn to meditate. Go and learn to do something really well that brings you fully alive. And when you've found the blessing of that equanimity and inner peace, When you've grown comfortable in your own skin, then we're going to have this conversation, but not right now. You know, I can't help you right now, other than say, find a practice. Meditate. Get good at something that you love to do.

I think that's— what's a good sign, I believe, is that mindfulness and meditation, and I think a corporate term these days is mindfulness, but It's become something that is not— in the business context, is acceptable. It's not just acceptable, it's something people are speaking about with an understanding that it's not just a soft skill. I hate that. I hate when you think about how personal development or personal growth work is sometimes viewed in the corporate sector as soft, as soft skills or emotional.

Given how hard it is to get there.

Given how hard it is to get there. It's the hardest. It's not easy. No, how could it be? You have to face yourself with some honesty and truth and maybe integrity in a moment, moment to moment. I mean, that can be torturous. And at least from my personal experience of it, it can be, as usual.

Well, my wife comes from a family on her mother's side who were in the hospitality business. Back in the day, they had arguably the most famous restaurant on earth in New York called the 21 Club. Oh. And one of their values was they're very, very kind to service people. And, you know, I've watched my wife turn around the experience for an airplane full of disgruntled passengers simply by being kind to the service staff on the airplane. You know, and then we used to teach courses in customer service. And it used to be, if you want to have great customer service, you'll learn how to be a great customer. And how you have a role in serving the people who are trying to serve you. I mean, if we wanted a very simple, well, what do we do with the mess that we're in, this divisiveness and this conflict and this anger? Yeah. Well, there's a really simple answer. We're simply kind to each other. If we just practice being kind to each other and kind to ourselves, of course, the world would change. Yeah. If we welcomed people with respect and warmth— I was going to say respect and love, but the L word is scary for people. So if we welcomed each other with respect and warmth— I'm into coffee these days. I was at a function the other night, somebody's birthday party. There's 100 people there from the LGBT community. So Joanie and I are one of— we're definitely a minority. And yet we had the time of our life in the best way. It was experientially delicious. Nobody was talking politics. What bound us together was good food and good coffee. You know, I have kids who are— I mean, kids, anybody under 30 is a kid, but these are kids like teenagers.

Yeah.

Covered in tattoos and piercing and multicolored hair. And We have a common bond because I can walk up to an espresso machine and pull a shot with the best of them. So once you've established that—

Yeah.

And you're kind to each other, then age disappears, gender preference disappears, relationship preference disappears. We're simply present with each other. And present with each other requires we start in kindness. We interviewed John McCain before he announced for the presidency. presidency that Obama won originally. And he talked about how sad it had become for him that people on either side of the aisle could no longer disagree and then be friends afterwards.

Hmm.

That we'd started down this path of vilifying the other side. And if it didn't change, our representative republic would cease to exist. And McCain's passed now. He wrote the foreword for our book, Success Built to Last. And I hear that interview in the Senate building that we did and filmed. And he must have died with a broken heart.

I think it broke a lot of people's hearts for him to exit at a point when there is so much incivility. I mean, I don't normally watch a lot of the the coverage of things at the White House, or I don't watch a lot of politics in general, but I couldn't stop watching the eulogies that were given for McCain, from the former presidents to his daughter. I mean, it was heartbreaking. This was a genuinely decent man. He was. You can argue against his politics, that's fine, but this was a gentleman. And that's a word that can't be used too lightly today.

Well, we went there to interview him, and his friend who kept him alive in the Hanoi Hilton had just passed. And he couldn't go to the memorial service, so he's going to film a eulogy. And the Senate cinematography team was missing in action. So we were there with a camera crew, and we said, Senator, it would be our honor. So we made this. And then McCain said he threw all of his handlers out of the room.

Yeah.

So it was Mark, myself, and the senator. And we just talked, and we agreed that on the record, off the record, we'd honor that. A couple of times I said, Senator, you ought to put that off the record. He said, yeah, probably. And we've never betrayed that on the record, off the record thing. You can't do what we do and interview remarkable people if you don't honor that. And you don't see that there's never any leaks. So, but it's not, it's not that hard to be kind to people, actually. You simply got to notice that they're there and notice that they're human.

Hmm.

You know, we think that there's transformation in information. There's no transformation in the information. There's only transformation in how we are present within ourselves and present with another person. Be just there without the monkey mind running amok. Can you just be there in the stillness? Can you just be there in the kindness? I think the word love gets overused, you know? It's become jargon. What does that actually mean? And so I'd argue it was a state of consciousness. There may be verbs associated with, but when we say, well, I love my car, God, I love my coffee, oh, I love this latest book I'm reading, oh, I love you too, sweetheart. Really? I think the word's getting overused at this point, right? And I say that because when it gets overused, then that distracts from what it is.

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

And to your point, I just think it is a state of consciousness when the monkey mind isn't creating conflict and doubt and all those other things. And people want a mantra, they want a meditation. Make somebody's day. Be kind to them.

Do you know any of the work of A Course in Miracles? Has that ever been something you've looked at?

I know it very well, actually. I asked Bill Tetford, who was one of the people involved in that. I said, did Helen really channel that? He said, Stuart, we're down at what used to be Tiburon, the Swedish Bakery in downtown Tiburon. It's now a restaurant. But he said, Stuart, Did you ever meet Helen? I said, no, but you and I have been friends for a while, and we love A Course in Miracles. We teach from it. He said, well, Helen was a dark, angry Jewish atheist. If you ever met her, you would know she couldn't possibly have written A Course in Miracles. So the only alternative, she channeled it. And they would sit there at Columbia, right?

Yeah.

And Bill could type as fast as Helen could talk. So she'd channel this and he'd type away, and they were mimeographing it. Remember the old mimeographs? It was like this purple Yeah, and you'd

get

it all over your

hands.

Get it all over your hands. And they would never tell anybody where this came from, right? Because they thought they'd get their ticket canceled at Columbia if the word got out they were channeling this mystical religious text. And the Whitmores, who turned in A Course in Miracles, were neighbors of ours on Belvedere Avenue. So I was in the middle of all of that, and I loved it. I mean, I have 2 sets of A Course in Miracles on our shelves. And one of my favorite things is, things have no meaning but the meaning you give them. Now, that's really scary if you confront that, right?

Yeah.

I mean, to be responsible. I mean, think about this. The ultimate responsibility is being responsible for investing meaning in something. See, meaning is an internal construction, part of an internal narrative, and you invest it in external events. They don't in and of themselves have meaning, but we feel better if things have meaning. But we have to remember that we said, this has meaning to me. We invest meaning in this. This is going to matter to us. They're personal choices.

We're meaning-making machines.

We're meaning-making machines. We are. But we shouldn't forget that we did

that. I was reaching because it sits on my desk. And I've got 2 of these too. It's so funny you just said that. I don't know how I picked up 2, but at a certain point we were doing an event some years ago and I had heard that Marianne Williamson was running for office and it was kind of late in the game and she was looking for some extra support. And unfortunately she lost that bid. I think it was for Congress, but we invited her to come to our event and we'd make a spot for some point during the day where she could speak to our group. We had 400 people there. And she was behind stage. I was on stage and I was going to come back and speak to her briefly and then bring her up. And I had A Course in Miracles sitting on my stage table behind, you know, and I walked back there and she teaches quite a bit and A Return to Love: Reflections on A Course in Miracles is one of her books which is magnificent, I think. It's an absolutely breathtaking book. And she was holding it up, my book, and looking through something. I always wanted to get back with her and ask her, was she looking for things, passages or things that I was maybe dog-eared or whatever, or was she looking for something for herself? But there's one particular part of that text that I just come back to again and again. And I may never know any more than this one thing, but this was a blessing to find chapter 30, which is called A New Beginning. And it's in essence the rules for how you create the day. You want, which is lovely, you know, that you could learn how to create the day and it starts by asking or having an awareness that you make no decisions by yourself and we're either making them with fear or with love in essence and that kind of thing. But there's one other really amazing thing at the end of that section where it talks about that we create the day we want so that we can offer it, that it becomes an offering, it becomes a gift to the world, that the peace that we would give ourselves is the peace we get to offer the world. It's such an interesting twist on the giving and receiving thing, which is, you know, as my dad would always say, there's a front and back of everything. So it's just two sides of the same coin, and yet we're always giving, giving, giving, or thinking that that's the thing we're supposed to do, including giving love. So to give love, to put our stamp of love on things— I love my coffee, I love my car, I love my wife, you know, all those things— and yet the receiving piece of it is What seems to be lacking in so many. Because how can you give something? The quality of what you give is rooted in the quality of where it came from. I mean, talk about cause and effect. So how can you give something that you don't possess? And even if you do possess it, the quality of what you can give is based on the quality of what you possess. So this idea of loving yourself is at the root of what— the love we give others is the love we give ourselves. The judgment that we heap on ourselves is the judgment that we also heap on the world. It's such an interesting thing.

Yeah.

What you brought up earlier.

I find it's hard, you tell somebody to love themselves. It's like, sometimes they just want to hit you over the head after you tell them that with whatever is available. So I don't find that telling, saying, well, you've got to love yourself. You know, I remember driving along Tiburon Boulevard one day, this was 30 years ago, behind a Volkswagen, you know those old Volkswagen campers?

Yeah.

Covered in peace stickers and all these other things.

Yeah.

On the back of the bumper it says, honk if you love Jesus. What the hell? Honk, honk. And I drive past the woman, she leans out the thing and gives me the finger, right?

She gave you the finger.

I guess, I guess the message of universal love failed her this morning, right? That's a great story. Right? And I'm thinking, so this is why operationally we've come to be kind.

You're married to one of the kind— I wanted to say this earlier, but I'm gonna say it or I'm gonna forget. I won't forget it. I want to make sure I say it while we're recording, and that is that your lovely wife Joan is a walking example of what kindness looks like. Now, I'm not— obviously don't know her the way you do and don't live with her, and we all have our shit for sure, but I'm sure she's not clear of that. But she is just a genuinely kind human being. You married a very kind person, sir.

I married up. That's a good thing to do.

Well, it is a good thing to do.

But she's all— her soul value is to welcome others with respect. And she uses the word love, but she publicly wouldn't say that always. She'd say, welcome people with respect and warmth and be kind to them.

It's doable.

It is doable. I mean, I noticed what happens— Joanie and I do have as a core value being kind to service people. You know, the people who pack the groceries in the bag.

Yes.

The people who service behind the fish counter. And so we try always to And it doesn't seem like an effort of trying to be present and leave them smiling as we go. And that's not too hard to close that gap.

Yeah, between— yes.

And that's actionable. You can actually do that. If I say love yourself, you can't do that. If I say be kind to the person packing your groceries in the bag, you can actually do that. If you're kind to enough people, you will notice one day you love yourself. How simple is that?

Yes, it's so interesting. We were in Sydney and Melbourne a couple of years back. Been there fortunately a number of times to do some trainings and things. But we were there and heard or read that the suicide rate— well, it wasn't so much about the suicide rate but the demographic of people who were taking their lives in Australia. And you had brought up the word suicide earlier, so I just want to— it wasn't an open loop but definitely something I wanted to come back to. And because this has been on our mind lately as well. And that demographic in Australia were young people in their 20s and early 30s. And then a few years later, we were launching our book Pivot and having a celebration party in the city, Manhattan. And so funny, when you're from New York, I think everybody from New York, wherever you've lived after that, you think of the city as there's only like one city in the world. So you say the city, everybody's supposed to know it's New York.

Well, John lived in New York for a while, so I get it.

Yeah, but in any event, so we were there and it was front page of either the Times or the Wall Street Journal that they had published a 15-year study of suicide rates in the US, and the demographic was completely different here. And the highest increase of suicides was among women 50+ years old, which was really shocking to me. Like, we were shocked in Australia. What was it in Australia? What's that?

What was it in Australia? What was the demographic?

Oh, sorry. It was young people in their 20s. Right.

Here it's 50 women.

Yeah, 50+ women. And of course, men, you know, are on that, and the military unfortunately is on that too. And there was But this was in terms of the rise, dramatic rise in the rate among women 50+ years old, as well as young girls, teenage young girls. And the number of young girls that had taken their lives was very small, but the percentage increase was what was noticeable. And among women 50+ years old. I think that right now suicide is something, a much bigger issue. You brought it up with respect to celebrities and all that. This is something that's not well understood. And I think there's still a great deal of attention that needs to be placed in that area. What are your thoughts on that, Stuart?

What I was thinking about when you were talking, we knew a woman whose father had founded Pan Am. This is, again, going back a few years, but she had started a charity and they outfitted aircraft as global traveling eye hospitals. They'd go to parts of the world and restore people's eyesight through surgeries that were simple by our standards. were not available in these developing countries. And they did long-term tracking, and they found that the suicide rate amongst people who had their eyesight restored far outstripped the normal control population. So now let's get our head around this, okay? You're blind, you have your eyesight restored, and you kill yourself.

Yes.

Well, the thing I think we talked about before we went live with this, which was when the perceived causes of your unhappiness are removed, And yet, your unhappiness continues. You can be left in such a state of despair that the only way out is to take your own life. And that was a pivot point for me, where I grew up in poverty, honestly believed that if I could consume the right stuff, I'd be happy. If I solved the problems of being poor, I would be happy. I solved those problems and joined the ranks of the conspicuously affluent. By Sydney Australian standards, which are way below American standards, or they was in those days. And here I was, I was still that same unhappy little kid, tormented at boarding school, feeling alone in the Blue Mountains, Australia, without family or friends really. It's woe is me story. But I faced it at that moment. Now for me, it was the pivot point. You talk about the people, because I read this book that my first wife gave me, who passed from cancer, by J. Krishnamurti, Think on These Things. And I just had this— I went into a state of bliss, realizing that my inner experience was not the function of external circumstances. And then, you know, later in my life in America, I got to meet some of those people and talk to them who'd survived the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. And they talked about being able to govern their internal experience in external circumstances that you and I can't imagine, probably. I mean, we can see the visuals, but we can't imagine what it would be like. I couldn't conceive of myself as a person who could manage an inner experience of equanimity in those dreadful external circumstances. But there are people like this. But I meet more and more people who have learned that their inner experience is, in fact, independent of external circumstances. But I think for a lot of people whose solution was fame and fortune, and it didn't get them there, what you gonna do?

Yeah, Robin Williams.

Robin Williams.

Being a— yes.

Anthony Bourdain. I mean, a lot of people, that famous designer. Kate Spade, was it?

Kate Spade.

Yeah. So, I mean, people who look like they totally have it made. And they always thought that having it made was the answer. To the inner demons and the relentless unhappiness.

Bruce Springsteen, I haven't read his biography, but what I heard was that he speaks about depression, his own anxiety and depression, and how he dealt with that privately. And I guess, away from the public eye, but he felt compelled to let some folks know. I think this is a much bigger issue than we even— and there's reasons. I'd actually just would love to get your opinion on it, if what I'm about to say makes any sense to you. The number of suicides, which is— as of last year, they were talking about 22 servicemen and women a day, or veterans. And the number of people that are reported to take their lives, very different number than the number of people who've attempted to take their lives or think about it and have yet or have not made an attempt. I think this is a much bigger issue in our world than we're willing to shine a light on it at this moment. And it's only— I feel like that's only increasing because the level at which we have true connections with people— That we're able to enjoy being present with other people, as you were speaking about earlier. I don't know how you can be very easily present with someone through social media. And I'm a fan of social media. I don't think— and I'm certainly not ever looking to hold back the tide of progress. I mean, it would be foolish to try, and it's not even— I don't even think it's wise to do that. But it certainly creates its own additional effects, and I think some of those effects are that people are actually more isolated than ever before.

Oh, I think that's the case. Joni was doing a course for teenage girls. It was a very difficult experience for her, but there was a moment there where she said, oh my God. They're taking a break, and she sees 2 teenage girls sitting next to each other on a park bench in the park next to the building, and they're sitting there texting each other. Not like being present with each other and connected, but texting each other. How crazy is that? And people—

Any crazier than people sitting in a restaurant that are sitting in a restaurant with a glass of wine or good food on the table on their phones? I mean, you see that every day. I mean, everywhere, right?

Everywhere. So technology has not brought us closer together.

Hasn't brought us bliss.

Hasn't brought us bliss. Well, you know, one way of looking at human history is all the things we believed in that were going to make us happy. Or I used to say, with a little more cynicism, all the things we believed in that were going to save our ass. Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus.

Oh, don't do it.

Don't do it. Then we graduated to socialism, communism, capitalism. Then we have all the isms and all the just— we tried Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Scientology. I mean, it goes on and on and on. And you say— I was talking to Norman Lear, All in the Family Norman Lear.

Yes.

And saying, you know, we talked, we did a book. And so We're talking about all of the isms and ologies we have believed in, not to mention lovers and assorted other friends that we thought were going to save our miserable butt. And none of it works.

Oh my God.

None of it! That could have you want to do yourself in right now.

I know! That's what I'm saying. Don't— oh my God. This podcast should come with a warning label.

I don't, but I've studied a lot of people who are successful in the terms you read, you know, where success is a total concept.

Yes.

They're happy people, they're loving people, and they have as much affluence as they need to be able to choose freely in the world and live a life that's a gift to the world. So I have spoken to hundreds of people like that.

Life is a gift.

And I always notice the same characteristics.

Right. I think life is the greatest game ever played. I mean, after all, who makes the rules?

Right. We do.

Yeah. We get to be the judge and the jury and the referee all the time. I mean, could you get an easier game to play on some level than that? I mean, what you said earlier about nothing has meaning except for the meaning we give it. I mean, there are just some really important basic principles that are life-changing. When you met How did you meet Werner Erhard? I mean, maybe some of the people who are consuming this might not even know of that name. And we only have just a short amount of time, but I'd love to know how that relationship started.

Well, what happened was, we had a client in Australia, the ad business, called Holiday Magic, run by a fellow called William Penn Patrick. And we had programs, they had programs to help people be more successful. like Lead the Field with Earl Nightingale and various other courses. One of them was a course called Mind Dynamics, which was how to use your mind more effectively and how to work in alpha states. I took the Mind Dynamics course. It was after I had this epiphany in Australia, and it was remarkable. They said, well, why don't you come to— we love the ads you're doing in Australia for us. Why don't you come to America, do some marketing work for us there, and if you want, take the Mind Dynamics franchise back to Australia. So that was the plan. Do all this in 2 or 3 weeks.

Right.

But what went wrong was, in the middle of the Mind Dynamics course, Werner Erhard had some of his people there because he was the star Mind Dynamics instructor.

Okay.

And he was going to become president of Mind Dynamics. But I got up and did my thing because I was leading encounter groups in Australia. And his people went back and said, there's this kid from Australia, you've got to meet him, he's really something else. He's like a terrier. He gets his teeth into someone, he just doesn't let go, right? You've got to meet him. So I meet Werner, and he says, I hear these courses you do in Australia are phenomenal. Would you do one for me and my staff? And I said, sure. So it was Werner's birthday weekend in 1971 at the Sir Francis Drake. He was set to announce as president of Mind Dynamics. We did the course. He said, you know what? I don't want to become president of Mind Dynamics. Why don't we start our own thing? Esther's born.

Wow.

And I could— we contributed the concept of aliveness because Esther's about aliveness. That was what we were offering people. But I can't say that was an original offering. Werner paid us, Joni and I, uh, Jan at that time, in advance to do the course. I thought, what am I going to do for 3 days, right? So I go to the Town Hall— I swear that you can't make this stuff up— I go to the Town Hall Metaphysical Bookstore and there's a little book Tiny little book, red cover.

Oh wait, can I guess? Can I guess? I don't know that there's any chance I'm going to guess what book you're talking about, but are you talking about The 7-Day Mental Diet?

No, no, this is called— this is called Aliveness: Health, Wealth, Happiness, and Full Self-Expression. So that became the marketing promise of EST.

Wow. Who's the author of that book? Do you remember?

No, I don't even have the book.

Wow. Oh, you got to get that book. Oh, we'll have it. We have a recording from this, obviously. What a great gift to get you. Oh my God. Wow.

And so, you know, Werner really made up his mind before we started the course, he wasn't going to take the deal at Mind Dynamics.

Yeah.

But that became the founding idea of EST. And so I didn't join immediately. We had lunch for his birthday, Greenbrae. And he said, well, we're starting EST. I said, well, I've got some other commitments. that I need to tidy up. And so on the 1st of April, 1972, Warren and I met at the Trident and Sorcellino, just across from where I live now, and we made a deal.

And the world changed.

Well, no.

My

world changed.

Your world changed, and a lot of people's worlds changed. I mean, it's a— gosh, thousands and thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of people have come through that. And then obviously, that morphed into Landmark IV, the Landmark trainings. And

I became the first CEO of EST, the first person other than Werner to do the training and train the first 10 trainers. So they were exciting, very exciting times. But, you know, timing was right for EST, and we got really remarkable people. So EST became successful because remarkable people— you get the leading edge of the bell curve.

Yes,

the people who are up to something.

And what we're talking about when it comes to timing Was that we were coming— so this is the early '70s, and this is the civil rights movement. This is the Vietnam War and all the activism against that war and the ending of the war. And it's also Nixon, and it's just shy of when we find out what's going on with him. It's a tumultuous time. So it was the perfect time for something like an S to be born.

Correct.

Yes. I'm curious to look at the times that we're living in now, because I'm just I'm sort of tracking the threads here of our conversation, and one of them is this concept of aliveness. We've covered a lot of really interesting things. I want to see if we can't connect the dots a bit too. We are living in very divisive times, very tumultuous times. In many ways, you could look at the rhetoric and compare it to the late '60s or early '70s.

You absolutely could.

So there's some similarities for sure.

I don't want to malign people, but But as we both know, a lot of big names are making a lot of money selling success, right?

Indeed. Yep. Their definition or some version of what success is.

But it's the kind of definition of success that would allow you to be one of the Crazy Rich Asians, if you've seen that movie.

Have. Yep.

Yeah. Of just conspicuous consumption in a world that can't support that anymore. So I watch a lot of—

And that's the artist's version of success, right?

Correct. Yeah, send that out to people. Your entire— everybody deserves to have that to read. It's magnificent. And so I think that those of us who are in the business of supporting people being successful, it's time for us to redefine what that means in the spirit of that piece you read.

It's—

I talked to Jack about this. He has this course, Success Principles. But the kind of success we want is this success of being able to be kind to people. Whoever is in front of you.

There's a new paradigm that will emerge and hopefully is already emerging. Any sense of what that might look like? I mean, you have already said that kindness would be an important element in the equation. Anything else? Having been on the— and the reason I'm asking is you obviously on the, you know, as the wave was cresting, you're an Australian, so you surf and you probably play rugby too, right? Yeah. So, and the rugby thing came up for me earlier just to say that What's great about rugby, our son played rugby, is that they knock each other around pretty good on the field, but more to the point, they gather afterward as fellow competitors and people that respect each other. And they have— they hoist a few, right? They sing. They arm in arm with each other celebrate one's, you know, the competition. And that's definitely not what seems to be in the air today. No.

But it's what McCain was talking about as being the case in the Senate way back in the day. We have some friends who were working to try and sort out the North Korean mess, had made some progress. Since that's not in the news cycle anymore, but we're going to start a conversation about how do you have those level conversations with members of the Senate, which puts us at greater risk than the guy in North Korea. Way back, I designed a program for Condoleezza Rice's State Department, where they brought people together from Palestine and Israel who were water engineers. I had to smuggle them out to a secure location. I actually couldn't lead the seminar. I couldn't get a security clearance. Long story. But anyhow, so— or in time, I couldn't get one. So, I mean, they came into the room not being able to look each other in the eye, and they left hugging each other. So, On that level, it works. Now, it hasn't solved the problems there, but we do know at any given moment, if a program's well-designed and well-facilitated, people can get to be present with one another, get to recognize each other's humanity, and for the length of time they're together, to be kind. Then, you know, it's difficult because Drucker said— Peter Drucker said, Culture eats strategy for breakfast, or Stuart Emery says, the environment always wins. And we talked about that. One of the difficult things about the S training or actualizations, which was the thing we did, or all the corporate work we've done, was people would have this extraordinary experience for that period of time, and then they go back to the environment they came from. What I liked about corporate work rather than public work was you could change a corporate culture. We spent years with MasterCard and made a huge contribution to their success in the marketplace and with each other, because their success in the marketplace began with their success with each other as people. So you can do something about corporate culture. So I think enough people have got to care to try and get the dialogue started in a civil way.

And so is it the same wave that's cresting again? Will the answer to this particular discord be the same or similar answer as to the one when you started Est with Werner?

We didn't invent the human potential movement, Adam. It's been around as long as humanity, hasn't it, really?

Sure.

There has always been a human—

The Bible is a human potential movement. I mean,

totally.

What else is it?

So we reinvent the narrative. In a book called Sapiens, he talks about what separated humanity, or this version of humanity, from all of the competing forms is unique to us is our ability to create narratives and have people believe them and be willing to die for them. So Christianity is a narrative. We can go through a list of isms and ologies.

Yes.

Judaism, Islam, they're all narratives. Republican narrative, Democrat narrative.

Yes.

They're all narratives. And we divide into tribes and fight over whose narrative is the right narrative. So, you know, some progressive intellectuals think, well, we've got to get rid of tribes. But if we look at the person as an elephant with a rider, the tribe lives inside the elephant, and that's not going to change. How do we do globalization without destroying tribalism? Because if you try to destroy somebody's tribe, it doesn't end well. So, you know, we can bring ourselves to be kind if we love animals. We can be kind to a lot of species of animals and donate to animal welfare. Well, what about this elephant? What about that animal, right? How can we be kind to the very species of elephants making up the human race? And it's not by the rider giving dogma and a personal version of the truth as the only truth. That just isn't so.

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.

Absolutely.

Don't work.

Don't work. So we love each other. Generally speaking. Correct.

I want to just the last couple of moments ask you this question. And I've— for those of you that are watching this on YouTube, and you can see what I've got on the screen, and folks that are listening, I'm just bringing up a graphic of Stuart's new book, Who's in Your Room? And speaking of narratives, Stuart, how has this book— is this book informed by some of what we've been talking about today? I imagine it is in many ways.

The book's a really simple idea. Imagine you live your entire life in one room. Travels with you, can be beautiful. But the thing about the room is that it only has one door. You can say, but Stuart, lots of rooms only have one door. What's the deal? I say, what the deal is, Adam, is that this room has a one-way door, in but not out, entry but no exit. So, whoever comes through the door to your room is with you in your room for the rest of your life. Whatever they bring with them is in your room with you for the rest of your life. Now, if you knew that, would you choose more carefully? Now, before you argue whether that could possibly be true or not, would you be willing to live going forward as if it were true? Oh, and by the way, if you talk to the world's best brain scientists, they will tell you it's absolutely true. If it comes into your mind, it never leaves. You may think people are out of your life, but they're still in your head. So the book's about how do you live with that? How do you choose carefully going forward? How do you have people that support you becoming the best version of yourself, living in kindness, and living a life that's a gift to the world? That's what the book's about.

Beautiful.

Very practical. Yes,

and you obviously co-authored with Ivan Misner and Rick Shapiro and had Ivan on just a couple of months ago on the podcast. So is it available now? Is it in stores and on Amazon?

It's up for preorder on Amazon. I don't know what date this is, but the book launches in America 2 days after the midterms.

Beautiful.

And we think it'll be a very relevant book at that moment. Who's in your room, right?

Indeed. Yeah, no kidding.

I'm just, you know, I'm Australian, so there's a part of me that's just You know, cheeky, incorrigible.

Yeah. This has been everything I would have wanted it to be, both from the first— wonderful conversation, go on forever and ever. But we get to do that privately. Everybody else, sorry.

I'm so glad that we finally got to hang.

I know.

With an audience.

Think about it.

I hope they like it.

Yeah.

Well, I'm thinking, I don't know whether anything—

I'm not attached to whether they do or they don't. So

Well, I don't know whether anything I said is actionable. I think being kind to people, that's actionable.

I think it's incredibly actionable and it's simple. And it is the kind of thing that when you walk in— I love things that are usable. And walking into the supermarket, which is something we all do, sometimes daily or weekly, certainly, to see that person on the other side of the counter and instead of fiddling with your phone or doing any other number of things, figuring out whether you spent too much money or did you get everything you're there to get, maybe just to look across and look at that person and see them, allow them to see you seeing them, ask them something, use their name. I don't think there's anything more practical as a way to model kindness than in that scenario. It's just one of many, many scenarios, but what a beautiful example you gave us.

And it can get to be a habit. You see, once it's a habit, it's called critical mass. Then you just notice that you've become kind to yourself.

Yeah.

When we recognize each other by just being present, rather than what our job is or what we're wearing, but just being present, it does all change. It just does.

Yes. As we close out this episode, first of all, thank you, Stuart, for your time today. Thanks for the words and your wisdom. It was a pleasure.

Likewise, it was great. I was going to say thank you for whoever signs in to read this. And, you know, the world needs you to have a successful life and to be a happy, kind person. That's what the world needs from you right now. And that will bring you fully alive. So you'll be honoring Thurman's quote to Martin Luther King. So go do that, please.

Yes,

we all need us to do that.

Indeed. So for our community, thank you so much, as always, for supporting what we're doing here and for the wonderful comments that leave for us. We'd love to get your feedback. So you can go to iTunes and leave a review. You can go to adamarkel.com/podcast to leave a comment. We can reply directly to you there. Of course, if you haven't yet subscribed, please feel free to. Our Facebook group is growing and they are very much like-minded, like-hearted people that are pivoting in so many ways. And the essential pivot for most of us, if not all of us, is Our day-to-day, our moment-to-moment thoughts. And so that community Facebook is the Start My Pivot community, and you can get there by going to pivotfb.com. And I will leave with a prayer. I really believe in the power, the value of prayer. And I say this in a secular way, I suppose, because I'm not assigning it to a religion, but yet I believe every moment of our lives is holy. So to that extent, this There's something— there's nothing that's really secular, but without splitting hairs, my prayer is that we all get to wake up tomorrow. Today we did. We got to wake up and be alive, as we've been talking about today, and that wasn't a guarantee. And tomorrow it'll be no different. So my hope is that we all get to do it again tomorrow. And I hope that you will in fact agree that your intention is to wake up tomorrow. Wake up. Not just physically, but consciously, that you are a little more conscious tomorrow, a little more awake and alive tomorrow than you are even today. And if that's the case, and I'm sure it will be, then we're making steady progress. And that in that moment, that waking moment when you take your first conscious breath, that you're aware that there will be people taking their last breath at that moment and babies being born, taking their first breath. And it is something to be grateful for. So waking up, part 1, acknowledging how special that is and being grateful, part 2. And lastly, if you're inclined to say these words out loud, I've had the blessing to share this with a lot of people around the world and it has made a big difference in my own life. And you get to be the judge of whether it works for you. That's the beauty of any of this. What Stuart was sharing today, you get to try these things on for size, no different than if you went into a shoe store and tried on a pair. And if they fit, great, wear them. And if they don't fit, take them off. You get to create your own narrative about it. But my narrative is that I love my life. And so tomorrow when you wake up and you feel grateful for that breath, you get to also choose if you want to declare out loud from your bed, from the moment you stand up, whenever it is, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. It's been a blessing, everybody. We'll see you very soon. Again, Stuart, thanks so much for your— Thank you. Your kindness today. Thank you.

Thank you.

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.com. PivotFB.com.