Change, Resiliency And The Power Of The Human Heart With Dr Paul Scheele

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Barkel and his inspiring guest explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change. Proof. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I am just feeling very grounded and wonderfully blessed today. To be here in this moment, to be breathing, to be alive, to have people in my life that I feel really have my best interests at heart. I know we're constantly in our business looking at how we give to others, and I think that's a wonderful thing. I don't know that there's anything more wonderful than that, but I'll also call it out that in my own personal experience and what I've seen with other people too, it's really important we learn how to receive. And I'm working on my receiving muscle. I'm constantly trying to find ways to be more open to receiving, and not just constantly in that giving mode, but also being able to serve for more of a full cup because I'm allowing others and other things to fill me up. So you may feel that same way yourself, that perhaps you've been a little more tipped on the scale of giving and maybe that leaves you depleted at times. We're going to talk about depletion a little bit today and how it's actually quite counterintuitive. We think about the wonderful work we want to do in the world, the people we want to serve, the success and financial success that we want to create for ourselves, and the conflict, the difficulty there is in maintaining and creating and maintaining a business and our business pursuits. When we're exhausted, there's a cost of exhaustion. We're going to talk about that today with a wonderful friend, somebody. I love it when I'm on a podcast. I love it when I meet new people, but I also really love it when I get to just revisit with old friends. Not because he or I are or we are old, but we know each other a couple of years. I'm going to read a bit of his bio and then invite him in. And you guys will just so enjoy this gentleman. He is, as I don't use that term all that frequently, he is a gentleman. And I don't meet or haven't met that many people. I would say that that's really the essence of them, but this gentleman fits that bill. Dr. Paul Shealy is the co founder of Learning Strategies. He combines expertise in neurosciences, business, psychology and learning to guide people to achieve extraordinary results in relationships, work, money and health. Paul is an expert on learning how to tap the other 90% of the brain and believes that everyone has an inner genius just waiting to be awakened. He is the author of many books and personal learning courses and his passion is reclaiming the genius capacity within humanity. Absolutely love that. So great to have you with us, Dr. Shealy. I'm going to call you Paul since we know each other. So great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Thanks, Adam. What a treat to be with you as well and to speak with your beautiful audience. Thanks very much for the invitation.

Yeah, way cool. I'd love to know if there's something that's not part of that bio. I know you're a very accomplished public speaker. You've been introduced many, many, many, many times. You probably heard that bio so many times you go, you know, wow, what's something that's not written in that, that introduction that you would love for people to know about you at the outset?

Well, as a practitioner and scholar in the field of human development for 45 years, I have to say that when I met the woman who was going to be my wife, I realized if we were going to have a successful relationship, it was going to be a personal development experience. And so we're celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary this year. We raised three children. We've got three grandkids that are with us. And it's just such a wonderful thing to realize that through all the ups and downs, the vicissitudes of life, we've been able to find a way forward together. And that's a beautiful thing. And I. It is a pleasure and an honor to be able to share that.

Wow. You have had a resilient run with your wife and I assume with your health as well, because you look great. And my wife, Randy and I will celebrate, I think it will be our 32nd wedding anniversary this summer and have four healthy kids. Relationships are not easy. I didn't know that we would start here, but I am really happy that we can start with these breadcrumbs. Relationships are really challenging.

Well, of course. And there's another component to that. With all that has happened in the pandemic, I heard people say, married you for better or for worse, but not for lunch every day. I was really happy when you're leaving, going to the office. And my wife and I feel very differently about That I have an office and the downstairs of our home and an office about 12 miles away as well. And it's always a delight to be a part of this home setting and be able to do my work internationally from here. And a friend of mine wrote a song. He says, it ain't been all roses. You know, we ain't that. Yeah, thank God that love chose us, but it ain't been all roses. So, you know, with all the changes that happen in life, I discovered that at our 30th wedding anniversary, we had actually lived eight marriages. We had to redefine our marriage eight different times. And I think key to the work that you do around pivoting as well as resilience, is this idea that you can't just keep doing the same old, same old and keep experiencing the same results because the world changes around you. So we have to be able to have situational leadership. The joy that I had in writing my doctoral dissertation when I turned 50 years old, my scholarship brought me to leadership and change. My focus on transformational change and also how we lead our own lives and lead our organizations became the center point of my work. That concept of transformation, to really transform a relationship, to transform, isn't just change. A lot of times the word transformation is used as if it's change, but really cool change. No, transformation is a meltdown. You don't get to go back after a transformation. This idea that if we're going to transform and do so successfully, which is what the human family is going through a major transformation, realize that we can't continue with the unsustainable practices of the past. We have to find a way forward in the moment where a disorienting dilemma has slapped us good. It really has stopped us in our tracks. And we look around and say that we can't keep doing what we've been doing. It's not going to work. But how do we go forward? We don't know where to go. So do we go back? No, you can't. But how do we go forward? We don't know. And that disorienting dilemma, Adam, is the starting point of transformation. And in the things that you said at the beginning, I think that was the word you may have been searching for. That moment where the world is disorienting to you, the stability is gone. Where do we turn right now? That's the good news. That's the good news, because right there is the place where we habitually give away our power rather than reclaim the moment as a transformational opportunity.

And that word implies, for me, when people use that term transformational, and obviously you're using in a particular context, we're a part of an organization called the Transformational Leadership Council in corporate circles, which is. I spent a lot of time in those circles leading workshops and working with leaders. That word has been thrown around a lot, and it's been, at least from my experience, a bit diluted. And I try to use it sparingly, but when I do use it, just as you did, I wanted to find it in terms that make it accessible. And it does. And also, not to perpetuate the misnomer, that a transformation has to be something big, because it's quite the opposite, in fact. Let's just go back to the marriage thing. I would say that our marriage, Randy and I, it's transformed itself multiple times, but it didn't do that because we just decided one day, let's create a transformation. Like, you know, I can't stand looking at you today, but tomorrow I want to be madly in love like we just met. Met. It doesn't work like that. In fact, it's a bit counterintuitive, I suppose, that it's this baby step or these tiny incremental improvements. It's really more the aggregation of many, many, many tiny adjustments. Sometimes adjustments that are very positive, and sometimes they're the proverbial take a step back to take two steps forward kind of thing. But it's these small changes that when you, you know, mush them together, so to speak, you know, things have changed. And you go, holy smokes.

Yeah. The scholarship in transformation is quite interesting. And if you look at a deeper definition, from the standpoint of cognitive psychology, a transformation is a change in meaning making. It's like peering over the wall and seeing a reality that's existed this whole time. But you're living inside of the palace wall, and your reality has been bliss and peace and gentleness. And you look over the wall and there's pestilence and disease and horror out there.

Yeah. And was it not there all along?

It was there the whole time, but now you can't unsee it. And so what happens? If you think about transformation in three stages, as we are raised by the culture that raises us, our family system, our education system, our culture, our religion, what happens is we're given wholesale a mental model. A model, a way of seeing the world. In essence, it's a lens. Now, we don't realize we're holding the lens. All we do is we look through it. But at some point, in our lives we realize that, wait a minute, there's a lot more to this world than the lens that's been handed to me. And suddenly we're looking at the lens and we're realizing we can change this lens. So we move from what's called the socialized mind to what's called the self authoring mind. And you know, a lot of times, Adam, when we look at our work, we're helping people become better at self authoring. And I kept getting attracted to a certain set of self authoring tools. So I've been in the human development business, self improvement business for 45 years. But there is a certain type of tool that I kept being attracted to. And we could call it generative as opposed to remedial. So instead of just fixing you in the process of fixing yourself, you become more capable of fixing this and other things like it for all the rest of your life. It's like the difference between learning math and learning how to learn math. If you learn how to learn it, you get to develop your math skills all the rest of your life. But if you learn math and hate it, you're stuck for the rest of your life. Do you get what I'm saying?

Yes.

So the idea is once we are self authoring, the next level up in terms of transformational moments, change in meaning making is when we become self transforming. I think this is the work that's being required of us. Back in the 70s when self development, self improvement became fashionable, all of a sudden everybody's into it. They're all doing meditation and they're all doing yoga and everybody's doing all this great stuff. And there's this next level shift which is an interdependence with others rather than a dependence on your guru, a dependence on the technique, whatever it might be. So we become self transforming. And in the studies that have been done in organizations, 2% of leaders are at operating at that level of the self transforming mind. So most of us are still valuing expertise and, you know, authority and the ability to bring about change. It's like the edict coming from on high that says, okay everybody, we're going to have a transformation this quarter. Like you're saying, I don't think so. So it's.

There is this is the biblical, right, Paul? Because even, yeah, you know, I don't typically sort of go back 3,000 years to look for an example of this. But this is, you know, if one of the central tenets of the New Testament of Jesus teaching is all about that, answers come from within don't. You don't have to look outside of yourself to find an answer that's within you. And I think what you're saying is that the self authorship, self transformation is again in leadership, looking at where am I able to find within myself a form of guidance, a form of truth? And you know, what you were saying also reminded me of Wayne Dyer. And you think about some of. And this is a beautiful, beautiful language. And again, whether this is, you know, one day Wayne was walking and this came to him, or whether it's the result, more likely, of just a lot of other things that, that we, we. That he was learning at the time. But when you look at, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, Right. Is this in essence what we're talking about?

Very definitely. So when you're looking at the world, one of the things you could do is say, oh, well, my eyes are seeing this. And in the ancient traditions, they say, consider the consciousness for whom the eyes are seeing this. And when we recognize that we are the seer, and more than that, then we have an opportunity to really take charge of how things go from that point in our lives. And the concept that you talked about is tiny little shifts aggregating into a moment of transformation. In my research, I knew that there would be the. I, I did a research methodology which studied the critical incident of transformation. And I was interested when someone says.

I was transformed, the inflection point, the pivot point, point, so to speak.

Okay, I was changed by that. That moment in my life transformed me. I wanted to know, what does that really mean? So I did a study that included the subjective report as well as objective measures. And what happened was I knew there would be a bunch of things that prepared a person for it. Then there would be this moment, and then there would be the resulting changes of the transformation that occurred. And what my research showed me is, no, that's not it. The moment isn't the thing that transforms us. Which really surprised me, you know, I thought, wow, you know, people are going to go through this experience, are going to say, oh, it was when that happened that, that transfer. No, it wasn't it.

And it seems so, no epiphany. This is sort of the anti. Epiphany.

It's part of it. The epiphany is part of it. You see, a person could have the epiphany and then regress back and say, I didn't really see that. I'm going to keep living as if I don't know that this is going on. The transformation doesn't occur. The epiphany moment or the big reveal that occurs is significant, but what it causes is a deeper inward reflection of what now, now that I know I can't unsee this and I can't go back, how am I going to address this? And so we talk about affective learning and the challenging of the mental model. All of my habits of expectation and all of my pre. All the things I presuppose to be true and all beliefs and ways in which I've been oriented, they all come under the microscope. And it's a challenging work that must occur for the transformation. Think about the caterpillar going into that cocoon in the meltdown.

Right. Exactly. Oh my. Paul, I'm reading about this just this morning. So you and I have never talked about this before, but do you have a person in your life that was either around when you were learning from that individual, or in my case, Emmet Fox died in the 50s. And he's been my. I would call my. My own personal, spiritual, metaphysical mentor since I discovered him as a footnote in a much bigger book some years ago. Is there somebody that's been like that for you? Because with Emmett, I read something of his work every day. And this morning, no coincidence at all, it was this story, this age old story of the caterpillar turning into the butterfly. But what was wonderful in that passage, which I've read that same page every day, every year on that same day, was this discontent, this divine discontent that sort of stirs up inside as he's describing this caterpillar on that same old green leaf. And then all of a sudden that same old green leaf just isn't what it was.

I love that.

Yeah, but I interrupted you. Please, just.

I think we're spot on to it. It's this idea that there's a pressure, you know, when you have to eat, there's a pressure of a hunger. When you have to go to the bathroom, there's a pressure. When we're. When a woman is ready to give birth, there's a pressure. And although we don't want to face that moment, the truth is that that pressure is the signal. And if we're feeling a lot of societal pressures, economic pressures, global malcontent, these are all signals of the environment becoming recognized as no longer sustainable. It's no longer acceptable to keep doing what we've always done and think we're going to get away with it.

Yes, exactly. It's.

It's A necessary revolution, as Peter Senge put it.

I am. I want to ask you that question. Was there somebody that. That has been that for you?

Yeah. Arnold Patton, who was an author, he was a New York lawyer who got into Universal principles. And I met him In, I think, 1980 when he came to the Twin Cities and years later had the opportunity to study with him. And he personally mentored me for a year and a half and that became the basis of my work called Abundance for Life. He wrote a book called you could have It All. Oh, and Simon and Schuster picked it up and he was on Oprah Winfrey, and he wrote several other books. Also significant, but very much a metaphysician like Emmett Fox was, and a beautiful coach to me. Very patient, because as intelligent as I was and knowledgeable as I was, it was getting in the way of the real changes that had. That I had to go through.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's been a blessing.

The word pressure was the word I was searching for at the very beginning. That was the word that was eluding me. So, Paul, thank you so much for making that clear. That pressure is the signal, is what I heard you say. And we often, I think, do live our lives ignoring many of those signals for a long time, and that's a part of my own pivot story, is just being in the law for 18 years and ignoring for many of those years the signals, the signs. And so I'll put it out there to everybody that's listening. Some of you are watching, watching as well. What are the signals for you right now? I mean, I think it's important that we have that level of self awareness because without it, of course, we're literally going blindly through our days. And in this case, I don't think ignorance is bliss. I think it's really a blind spot is what it is. And in an organization, it certainly is. Is dangerous territory to be leading any group of people, even yourself, sort of blindly. But the pressure is a signal. There were signals for me. I wasn't sleeping well. There were signals when my hair started to recede. There were signals when I was agitated in the middle of the afternoon and I needed coffee or sugar before I would sort of tear somebody's head off. I was a litigation attorney, so frankly, I was paid. I was paid well to put my anger to work. I mean, it was an ironic twist of it that I was succeeding in every way that, you know, sort of, you know, it's traditionally measured that. But I was coming home and just miserable and miserable inside and sort of making the facade was to pretend I was happy with, to just because I wanted to be, but wasn't. And there's an interesting part of that story that I don't frequently that I don't share, but you triggered it, which is that when I started to become more aware, I'm reading some things and my first book was, was the Road Less Traveled by Scott, Dr. Scott Peck. And that book, it, to use your words, it, it was a new lens for me and I was now making meaning in a different way as a result of that book. But I didn't know what to do with that. So I was back in my law practice like that caterpillar on the leaf, just not. I had this discontent, this pressure, and I didn't know what to do with it. So even as you said, it's not a moment, it wasn't a trauma, transformational moment. You know, this, this is what I'm supposed to do and I'll quit the law. And you know, so it was more of a backing and filling experience. Experience. That was the process with this book. Pivot is about, it's just about how it is that you do back and fill with, with deliberation, with some hopefully level of consciousness. But that, but that's the process for all of us. Isn't that what the pandemic has stirred up? It's such level, do you think, Paul, that people have been now forced to confront themselves and confront the pressure?

Well, one of the things that I often said at the beginning of the pandemic is we live as one human family on one tiny spaceship Earth. And if somebody eating bad bat meat in Wuhan isn't affecting your life, you really haven't awoken to realize that everything that everyone does matters. We have 8 billion people living in our backyard, our backyard behind your house right here. Eight billion. And to act like we aren't connected somehow is a serious mistake. So that if there was a wake up call, yeah, it's that the human family has got to figure out how to live with each other. And when economies go down and the global infrastructure is taxed to the max because of a virus, which is just one of a zillion potential viruses, this is just the tsunami du jour. It's not the last thing we're going to see. There's an epidemiologist who's often quoted, Osterholm here at the University of Minnesota, who wrote the book years ago and talked about a wet market in China that was going to be the site of the beginning of the next pandemic and everything that's going on with the millions of people died from this. He says this isn't the big one. So, you know, not to be the bearer of bad news, but they.

No, no, no. But.

Been calling him Dr. Doom for years.

Tsunami du jour is a really interesting way to put it.

Yeah. So. So as soon as the tsunami du jour happened with the pandemic, then we had the murder of George Floyd, and all of a sudden, you know, Minneapolis is on fire, which is my hometown, and he was killed across the street from a home where my wife and I raised our first child.

Wow.

It was in the park where we walked him and our dog. You know, it was kitty corner on that park. So how close does it have to be before we realize we have to figure out how to work with each other? And as scary as that might be, the good news is, and this is what Emerson said, you know, from the American transcendentalist movement. He said we couldn't have a goal unless we already had within us the ability to realize it.

Yes.

So when we get this goal landed in us, on us, and we realize, you know, like you did in your work. Okay, how am I going to do this? You don't have to know how yet. You just need to know what it is. And to love your life after being so miserable and having hated it, hating your life, I mean, that's really a strong word. But the idea that you could so turn it around, to look forward to every single moment of every single day with absolute gratitude, with a heart wide open, that's a level of resilience that I think is really key. And I was informed in this whole idea of resilience by a man named Dr. Al Siebert, who wrote a book called the Survivor Personality. It first came out as an article in the Portland Oregonian magazine. And I called my brother, who lived in Oregon. I said, can you find me an original of this article? Because I quoted all the time, I'd love to have it. He called the newspaper. It was the Sunday Supplement magazine. He couldn't get an original. He tried to do, you know, the microfilm back then. It just looked horrible. And his wife said, I think I have that. And she opened up a cabinet and pulled out the Sunday Supplement magazine with the Survivor Personality in it. I mean, rocked my world, Adam. It just absolutely rocked my world. And to understand the mechanics of how not only that we survive a disruptive, disorienting, and catastrophic event in our lives, but how we come out stronger for it was the central thesis of his work, what he had done. He'd spent 35 years as a psychologist and, you know, had been helping people with mental health issues understood mental illness. But he said there was never a definition of mental wellness where we're going what is mentally well. And what he discovered is the survivor personality is the closest thing he could describe to someone who could meet adversity and come out stronger as a result of it.

Right. That ability to bounce forward, I think you and I, we were chatting about that before we, we. We hit the record button and it remind. That reminds me of Viktor Frankl, man searching therapy. Right. Was building that, right?

Yes. He, Dr. Siebert said that was the best link that he could find. And he actually knew Viktor Frankl and he also knew Hans Selye, who was the man who did the work on stress, who made the concept of stress popular. And Al Siebert said something that was quite interesting, which is quoted in the home study program we did together. He said at the end of his life, Hans Selye said, I'm sorry, I got it wrong. Stress is actually a term in physics which indicates something that's bending under pressure. And what he really meant to say is strain. That when human beings strain against something, it's actually designed to help make us stronger. And so I want to frame your concept of pressure, which we were talking about earlier and are straining against it, as being an important part of the work of our transformation, where we strain and then we recover. We strain and then we recovered.

That's.

That's what weightlifting about is about. That's what running is about. We're straining the body systems and recovering so that it actually becomes stronger. To deal with strains like this and.

Then some resilience is about how we recover, not how we endure that. There's a body of research that, that we are often talking about because you look at. Athletes are a great example that Paul, that you, you, for example, you know, somebody running an Olympic race or. I was a swimmer, you. You have an Olympic meet that's happening and you're going to swim a particular event. You wouldn't be swimming at that level or straining yourself at that level. The day before, the morning before, you would, you strain and then you recover, you rest, you. You build that recovery in. And yet when it comes to our work and so many other aspects of our lives, even though that's sort of the common sense that we get that when we look at sports and then now, you know, as an example of it in our Own personal lives. We're constantly straining and over straining. If you ran your car on empty. And I sometimes will tell this cute little story. I think it's a cute story because it's when Randy and I first met and we had this first car that it was a Honda. It could run forever on E. I didn't have any money. I was in college. You know, it's like running on E was actually, you know, it was my first experience with miracles. But at a certain point on the way to a family event, I pushed it too far, and I ended up on the side of the road having to walk a couple of miles just to pay stupid money for a container of gas. So we run ourselves on empty a lot. And we see that, in fact, in the corporate world, it's cultural, don't you think? I mean, you've done a lot of work with organizations. Have you found as well, that corporations are driving people to the point of exhaustion? There's this tremendous cost they don't acknowledge because they feel like real achievers, Successful people just always know how to grind through it, you know, and the grinding it out, working, getting the Night Owl Award, whatever it takes to get the job done is what they value versus how you build resilient individuals and then ultimately resilient organizations as a result.

Well, there's a mindset, Adam, that we see human resources as humans are resources rather than humans have resources. And our job is to help gain access to more of the resources within each of the individuals that works with us. So we want to help open them to share the real depth of skills, brilliance, capability that are within. And if we take a holistic view of that individual's life, we know that they need rest, they need nourishment, they need to be able to recover. And if they don't, we. We keep cutting our budgets and demanding, you know, more people more and more.

With less and less.

Yeah, we're gonna have to let go of half your department, but you still have to get everything done that you.

Need all the same KPIs, but do it with half the budget.

Exactly. So. So there is a breaking point, I think, and there is a sweet spot in organizations that really get this that we need to recognize and reward, but we also need to care for. And that means that as leaders, we can't just be on the stallions in front, charging forward, and we can't just be behind people as servant leaders, guiding them along. But we need to kind of find a midway point where sometimes we're moving forward, sometimes we're stepping back in our roles in order to host a successful organization. And so the leader as host that really cares for the connections that are occurring in the complex, adaptive nature of our organizations today means that we have to be able to help people communicate and give them the resources that they need to get their jobs done.

So from languaging, yeah, leader as host is something that you think about, the best form of leadership as a parent. Not everybody's a parent. We've been blessed, as I said earlier, just have healthy kids. I mean, they're all doing great things and independent thinking and all that. But as a parent, their health is the most important thing to me. For us, I think what we've done with our kids is modeled health, some level of healthy practice, concern and awareness about our own personal health so that our kids are actually concerned about the water they drink, the food they eat. Do they believe that their own intentions can actually alter that food? Meaning do you think about your blessings or be grateful as you're chewing your food or chew your food slowly? Are you constantly slinging it back and settling for the most, you know, the fastest, most convenient thing? These are really issues or questions of modeling. When you say host, I think model. I think the way a parent models for a child. They don't listen. Our kids, I don't think they ever listened to too much of what we ever said. But what they did often, always, I think, was watch. They're like the greatest. You know, they are looking at their. At their parents as the model of what? Of what? Not just what to do, but whether or not this congruence between the words and the actions. And same thing in leadership. If you are leading a team and you're saying, well, we've got to be resilient because that's the word du jour. That's the word on everybody's lips today, is you. And I said, you know, again, before we started this episode, but you're not yourself doing things that. So you're the first in. In the morning and the last to leave. And you're, you know, not. Not in shape yourself. You're. You're eating the wrong things. You're overweight to a point where it could impact your health, et cetera. You are not giving other people permission to do even what you say they ought to do because you're not living it yourself. And I know that's tough to hear.

Well, I think you've hit it. In the human development model that I created, there is a triangle that has to do with Three types of congruence, the way in which we live congruently. So there's a congruence between our thinking and our feeling that is important, that we're aligned internally. And you could think of that as being our self concept, what's going on in our head. Then there is a congruence between who you are personally and who you are socially. We think about leaders who are authentic, or people who are able to show up authentically as they are. A disconnect there means that I can't include all of who I am. I'm ashamed of who I am. I can't reveal who I am. I've got to keep it private and secret from you, you know, and that disconnect doesn't allow the true brilliance within me to shine. So I've got to live congruently in terms of my relations. And then the third type of congruence is this one that you just mentioned, which is intention and behavior. So I can have an espoused theory, and I could have a theory in use. You know, I can espouse one thing, this is my intention, but then behave completely differently. And that behavioral incongruence is what gets modeled more often than not, certainly with our kids, because that's the first way that we learn, is by modeling. So if you take congruence at each one of these levels, the one being your head, thinking and feeling, the second being your heart, who you are personally and socially, and then the third one being your gut, your intention and behavior. And if you think about open mind, open heart, open will, these three things are what are essential. And Dr. Al Sieberg's work, who wrote Survivor Personality and the Resiliency Advantage of had a concept. He said, if you think about the brain as it has developed, the most ancient part, the reptilian part of the brain, is really that behavioral part. The midbrain is really the heart, and the neocortex is really the head, the thinking mind. And if we line those all three up, we could say self concept, self esteem, self confidence, self concept, self esteem, self confidence. And these three selves, as he liked to talk about them, have to do with our nervous system. You know, we've got our cognition, our thinking, we've got our feeling, we've got our behaving, and we do have to work with all three of those to have all three of these selves working. And what I've noticed in my research is that when there's a disconnect, it's like a brain circuit that that disconnects then it's usually a result of stress or overwhelm or fear of some kind. And then instead of being able to participate, we've got to protect. And that difference, you know, I've got to move into a protection mode. We don't even know that we're doing it. We just. I know I'm going to pass on or I'll hesitate or procrastinate or I'll self sabotage or. What if I don't acknowledge what it is that's causing that disconnect? Well, I don't want people think badly of me. That's this circuit, you know, it's this particular energy that's being incongruent in some way. And so when we can live congruently, Adam, and we have an open mind, open heart and open. Well, there's no limit to what you can do. There's no limit. Limit. You literally are unstoppable. There's no thing in the world outside of you that can harm you. And this is where resilience during a pandemic, this is where clarity and leadership and social unrest comes in. This is where great leaders and moments in history occur, is in difficult times. So to that end, I wanted to create a program with my company, learning strategies that would help people recognize that when you're able to live with an open mind, open heart, no open will, there are superpowers that are available to you. And I, you may notice because of your work, I, I, it sounds like I've excluded the spiritual. But I want you to understand that in the center of that triangle is that deeper source that is constantly radiating through you as you so that you can bring your gifts into the world. There's a reason that we're here. The evolutionary impulse that brought us here is asking us to play big. Bring your gifts. Don't look at the world and think that it's got power and you don't. It's the other way around. You're here to bring what you have as a part of the evolution that's attempting to occur. And this moment in human history, Adam, as you and I both know, is the one that we all signed on for.

Yes. Part of me is wanting to pre frame this. I'm just going to ask it instead. So you don't wish that the pandemic didn't occur, do you, Paul?

Okay, that's a difficult question to answer.

So which is what I was going.

To say to start, let me say. But if, if, if a divorce occurs, if a catastrophic illness occurs, if the Loss of a child occurs, you know, heaven forbid that any of these tragedies should occur. What I have noticed historically, it's the same thing that Viktor Frankl and Man Search for Meaning said we wouldn't wish this on anyone. And it was the thing that brought us to the work that we're here to do.

Exactly.

A mother who lost their child to a drunk driver and started Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

You know, the suffering. The suffering is, is not something that we in invite or, or wish. You're insensitive to or somehow overlook in the process.

Tragedy. No, the tragedy, the tragic nature of it is absolutely incalculable. And if you look at any of the stories of anyone who suffered and died in the pandemic, you know what a heartbreaking experience this has been for people on the front line.

So the process of being able to see at a, at a, at a zoomed out level, let's say.

Yes.

The difference between forest and trees.

Yes.

The one being no one would wish, even to me, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. No one in the world should suffer the way people have suffered. Losing their businesses, their jobs and any number of other things. And loss of life. I have a friend who lost his father early on and couldn't even attend his father's funeral and wasn't there with his. For him, with his last breath in the hospital. And there's too many stories of that to count. There's that lens. And you started our conversation by saying that we look at things through a particular lens and when we see it through that lens, it's really difficult, especially if it's so close to you that that is the lens that you are seeing the pandemic through. It's nearly impossible with that lens alone to see anything other than this sucks. That's it. And to be in that and to grieve in that and that's its own. There's this a whole separate thing to discuss, I suppose there. But. But then when you pull back that lens and you can see more of it, all what you do see is that it's a catalyst. You said the pressure is the signal. That there is more than just a signal here. Whether it was the pandemic itself or anything that occurred during it, including the death of George Floyd and everything that. That rippled out as a result of that. These are catalysts for growth. I think that's the point that I wanted to get to is that resilience is about growth. It's not about. So our book that comes out later this year is called change proof. It's not about not making yourself resistant to change. It's that change is the nature of the universe. All growth, any improvement whatsoever of any kind is all about change. So if we're resistant to change, if we are not embracing change, even the kind of changes that cause pain, we're actually working at cross purposes to the way nature.

Yes.

Works.

Yes, very definitely. And then when we. When I refer to this idea of a tsunami coming in and hitting the human family, you know, the. When the tsunami came to Thailand, suddenly all the beaches, all the water had receded and people were out there picking up fish. All the indigenous and all of the animals and birds all went to the hills. And there's something that modern human family doesn't really get. They've lost touch with what's happening. When the tsunami begins. And there were kayakers out in the bay, and the. The director of the kayaks said, don't stop at this island. Keep going. Go out into the middle of the bay as fast as you can, as hard as you can. And the tsunami came in and they rode over the top of it and down. Had they stopped in the island, every one of them would have been killed. You know, so the. This idea that we have to get on our kayaks, we have to get on our surfboards, the tsunami is coming, we can't control the wave, but we can control the board that we're standing on. And we have to become more skilled at dynamically steering whatever craft we are in in order to make sure that we're around to deliver our gifts the following day. And this notion from Agile software development, this concept of dynamic steering, we have to adapt and we have to get feedback. And the more rapidly we can do both of those, the more effective we are at steering, regardless of what's coming in today into the global economy or into my marketplace or whatever it may be.

Indeed, as we wind down this conversation.

Which do we have?

I already know.

Too much fun.

It's too much. I'm just going. I don't want to stop. Somebody listening has got to go. Yeah, I've still got an hour to drive. Can you guys please keep going? All right, I'll save the sort of the penultimate question for just a moment. I want to ask you about a book. This just came to me, but the Honest Truth About Dishonesty is a book I recently was introduced to through our youngest daughter who's at the University of California, San Diego. Dan Ariely, I believe, is the author. And there's an interesting aspect of this book, it's all research. He's a. I think, a Duke University professor and researcher, and he studies the fact that people are predisposed to lying. That's. That's really not something we need to talk about at the moment, but. And it's within a margin. You know, it's. We lie a little bit. We lie just as much as we. As we can and are able to without us then thinking we're liars like that. It doesn't affect our self image to fudge a little here or there. Right. But what he was studying in addition to that was the fact that there were causes for poor decision making. So we've talked a lot about both people, individuals in their personal lives as well as in organizations. So bad behavior, bad conduct, bad decision making, mistakes, outright lies or cheating and things like that is something that's impacted by what we've been speaking on. So if this book is not one that you've ever heard of, I suggest getting it because it's fascinating. And the research he was looking at suggested that when we're depleted, when we're tired, when we're hungry, when we've not taken care of ourselves, that we actually are many times more likely to lean into some of those other behaviors where we make poor decisions, where we're not working from our prefrontal lobe, but instead it's our amygdala, it's our fear mechanisms that are guiding us, all that kind of stuff that leads to just the things that in an organization, you go, why is there so much turnover here? Why is the toxicity. Why is it that people are fudging on or not giving their all, or why are they out sick or getting injured? And you go, why? And the answer, I think, is to eradicate or at least ameliorate this depletion. So I want to know from your standpoint, Paul, what do you do on a ritual basis to fill yourself up? Because where you're at having done this for three or four decades now, and you're still as. I mean, I've known you at least probably 10 years at this point. You're as energized, as enthusiastic as, you know, or, you know, just brimming with new ideas and creativity, and you go, well, are you somehow different, like biochemically than anybody else? I don't think so. But you are not depleted.

So I appreciate that. Yeah, I appreciate the concept of ritual, and I do want to emphasize the word, because ritual allows us to take a mundane experience and make it sacred.

Yes.

So A sacred act as you described as taking nourishment into the body. So what do we do? We pause. What do we do? We bless the food. We align energetically that this is here. Food is our medicine, right? So it's going to heal, it's going to strengthen, it's going to nourish. It's going to give me the power to bring my gifts into the world to make a difference that I'm here to make. It's a recognition of the sacred nature of all things. And the more that we can pause in our day. The word pause P A U S E Practice awareness until spirit emerges. Practice awareness until spirit emerges. Just pause in the day at these things that we just would mindlessly go ahead and do and say, what is the best for all concern? How can I show up and bring my all to this moment? There are two great times to do. This is before we go to sleep and is when we first wake up. And it's because the mind is more silent, the noise of the world is quieter. So the signal to noise ratio is in the favor of the signal, the information that we really need to be able to run our lives efficiently. There was Dr. Jbcroft at 3M Corporation, which is here in St. Paul, Minnesota. He used to say the 10 most important minutes of a manager's day at 3M are the 10 minutes that he or she takes to decide how the day is going to go. And that's a profound idea from an educator in a conservative company. No kidding. Stop and visualize how you want it to go. But you and I know that that's the difference that makes a difference. And you could mark on the calendar the day you don't do that, right? Because you just hit the ground running and you had to go because something else. And you're always grinding against the gear somehow. There's no flow to it.

It's like Jim Rohn setting the sail right.

It's exactly. Trim it, set it, trim it, you know, and get it just so. So the. The idea here is, yes, I have practices and I absolutely can't put those up for discussion. You know, how I awaken my yoga practice, my meditation and prayer time, all of it, the words I'm speaking here, they were given to a greater source. That my mouth be filled with the words that had to be spoken today. All of that, it's just. It is what I do and through the day. If I can do qigong, I will do qigong. I'll go for my walk, I'll do My exercise routine, whatever it might be for that day. I swim a couple of times a week, you know, swimming, I cough. I can't give up my swimming, can't give it up. And, and you know, when you think about it, even when you got to.

Make a reservation at the Y to get a lane, you got to do it. I'm going to do later today.

Yep. And, and I would even swim at the Y when we had three people in one lane and we had to do circles. Exactly. But yeah, the, so there are rituals that are very important and I would like to, to help understand that ritual really meets the reptilian complex at a very important level, which is switched off when we're in fear. That's called the escape mechanism, the freeze mechanism. And then the midbrain is the emotional brain. And that's the part of fight or flight. Right. So to be able to be physically safe, emotionally calm, then it upregulates the brain from one to the next to the next. And the next up regulation is the neocortex and that's the thinking brain, the, the rational and the creative. So those are in harmony with the breath. Right. And then what we have access to with our meditation is the prefrontal cortex, where we have mindsight, where we see the big picture, where we do have our God moments of recognition. And so my rituals through the day are designed to up regulate my brain and keep me in that highest functioning. It's as if most of us are living in 80 story high rise buildings and only living on the first 10 stories. Yes, all the wiring goes up to the top floor, but we're not getting up there, we're not metabolizing our energy up onto those higher levels. And you can do it through the rituals that you keep.

And it's interesting you brought up 3M. We use an example of 3M in our upcoming book. Because they were one of the first innovative companies to require that a certain percentage like 20% of their work and their resources went to creating new products. They were unwilling to sort of just rest on the laurels of even the successful things they had going. So they were constantly thinking about the future and the unknown.

And I had the opportunity to model their creative process for a course I wrote for Honeywell. I went and met with scientists and asked them about their creativity and problem solving processes. So yeah, I'm very familiar with that and it is exciting. Honeywell in the after World War II had time, 30 minutes set aside every morning for people to devote to higher creative thinking. And they Started using it to play cards and to drink coffee and chat. Nobody knew how to use it, so they disbanded it. So it's not just that we have time, it's that we also understand how to use that time most effectively.

Exactly. So, Paul, Will, I suggest that we talk about a part two to this. We'll do that offline. So, folks, you don't have to be too disappointed, because to tap into, to just tap more of the well, of your experience and expertise is something I know our people would crave. So we'll do that for sure.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

I do have a final question for you, and it is based on those of you that are watching on YouTube. You'll see I'm wearing a hoodie that says I love my life at a TED Talk with that same this principle of can you love your life in spite of your life not being perfect? So you talk about the way we are, meaning making machines. For me, when my life was imperfect as a lawyer, I was blaming it at that time on the work, I was blaming it on the law. I was blaming it on my clients, on the judges, on everything. What I realize now is that loving your life, no matter what, means no matter what. And I could have very easily loved my life and pivoted within that profession if I knew then what I know now. I'm thrilled that I'm where I am and what I do. But you can love your life wherever you are in this moment, no matter what. Pre pandemic people didn't love their lives. Post pandemic people don't. It's. It's agnostic as to the circumstance. You can love your life in this moment, even if. Even if there's challenge. And that creates resilience in and of itself.

Is that definitely.

So my question to you, Paul, is do you love your life? And what's that like? Because we're not saying every second of the day you're in love with what's happening. But to be loving and to. I don't want to use the word blessing in this context, but to love the picture in its entirety, even when there are things within it that you would change or that you're working on, I think is one of those little. Whatever you want to call them, it's an artful approach to living. What's your. What's your thoughts on that?

Well, several thoughts. Just to keep it as brief as possible, I would say that the effort to strive for perfection is misplaced energy. We really want Kaizen. We want to do things with Beauty and grace and truth and goodness and perfection isn't really the thing that we're going for in any given task itself. In fact, we've done quite a bit of remodeling in our home, and there are errors that occurred. And my wife and I would gleefully say, well, if anyone spots that, we'll give them a dollar, we see it. But no one ever will see that or let alone comment on it. So the idea is that when we make decisions, we make good enough decisions, an important concept in military strategy. We don't have to make the perfect decision. We need to make a good enough decision. And sometimes what's good enough at the moment turns out to be not good enough, in which case we learn. And so there is a metaphor that I've used. I had a woman in my class and I was talking about how important it is that we take two steps forward, one step back. When we learn to step forward, one step back. And she said, you know, I'm a seamstress and there is a stitch that does that. Many stitches on a seam are just one stitch after the next 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,. But there's a certain type of stitch, it's called on the bias, which is a couple stitches forward, one stitch back, couple stitches forward, one stitch back. And the quality of the effect is two things, strength and flexibility, you see, and that's what learning is, it's strength and flexibility. So it's not that it's important to keep marching forward and succeeding every single time and doing everything perfectly. It's very important, in fact, for our strength and flexibility that we encounter resistance or we encounter pushback, or we realize that we're giving away our power and it's time to reclaim it. As my teacher, Arnold Patton would say, everything you look at in your life that you don't appreciate, it's essential that you pause to appreciate it. Two things will happen. He calls it the double positive whammy. Number one, when you appreciate even the screw ups that occurred, when you bring your attention to it and appreciate it for what it can do to assist you, you first of all reclaim the power that you put into it and said, that's not me, it's got power. I screwed up. I'm now feeling awful because of that thing happening. No, claim it, embrace it, allow it to come in. So the second thing that occurs is you reclaim yourself as a creator. So, number one, you reclaim the energy in that event. And number two, you reclaim yourself as author or agent or the one who has the control to do something with it. The creator co creator of your life. And that has really stuck with me Adam, that everything that happens can serve but it requires that I turn to it and get how it is of service to up level the quality of my life.

I so love that Paul. I mean it reminds me of this part in Hamilton about the narrative, about reclaiming the narrative and how important it is that you own your own narrative. We're going to put it we're going to park our boat here for the moment. We're going to moor the boat. We'll come back for more of this. Paul folks are used to going to the Show Notes to find out more information about you, your work and the company learning strategy. So everything links and more information will be in the Show Notes folks. So go there for that. And of course if you've loved this episode as I would expect, you have. But either way we love your feedback. So regardless, questions, comments, feedback, you can go to howtomarkell.com podcast to leave those. And if you know someone that would really benefit from hearing some part or all of this conversation, please feel free to share this episode with those folks as well. And Paul, my friend, thank you so much for spending time with us today.

It was a great pleasure. Thanks so much for the invitation and I look forward to seeing you again really soon.

As will I.

Peace and blessings.

Thank you. Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change proofs. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com for more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building Change proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com BecomeChangeproof.