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

What if instead of getting knocked down, you could turn that uncertainty to your advantage? To learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way. Through insightful discussions with business leaders and social innovators, resilience expert Adam Markel explores breakthrough strategies to fully embrace an uncertain world and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm your host, Adam Markel, 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 But in my own personal experience and, 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 from 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 when you 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. 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 gonna 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. Yeah. Not because he or I 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— I don't use that term all that frequently— he is a gentleman. 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. Uh, I'd love to know if there's something that's not part of that bio. I, I know you're a very accomplished public speaker. You've been introduced many, many, many times. You probably heard that bio so many times. You know, wow. What's something that's not written in 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 3 children. We've got 3 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'm— it's a, it's a pleasure and an honor to be able to share that.

Wow. So you have had a, a resilient run with your wife, and I assume with your health as well, because you, you look great. And wife Randi and I will celebrate, I think, our It'll be our 32nd wedding anniversary this summer and have 4 healthy kids. And relationships are not easy. I didn't know that we would start here, but I'm really happy that we can start with these breadcrumbs. Relationships are really challenging. I mean—

Well, of course. And there's another component to that with all that has happened in the pandemic. You know, I heard people say, married you for better or for worse, but not for lunch every day. You know, I was really happy when you were leaving, I don't need the office. And my wife and I feel very differently about that. We're— I have an office 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. A friend of mine wrote a song. He says, it ain't been all roses. You know, we—

Ain't

that true? Yeah, think that love chose us, but it ain't been all roses. So, With all the changes that happen in life, I discovered that at our 30th wedding anniversary, we had actually lived 8 marriages. We had to redefine our marriage 8 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. And joy that I had in writing my doctoral dissertation when I turned 50 years old, my scholarship brought me to leadership and change. And so my focus on transformational change and also how we lead our own lives and lead our organizations became the center point of my work. concept of transformation, you know, to, 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, you know. So the— 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. We look around and say that we can't keep doing what we've been doing. It's not gonna work. But how do we go forward? We don't know where to go.

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

So do we go back? No, you can't. Well, but how do we go forward? Well, we don't know. And that disorienting dilemma, Adam, is the starting point of transformation. And in 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.

We'll get back to this episode right after this important

message. Hey, everybody. It's Adam. And I hope you've been enjoying this episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. Pivoting is an art form. There's an art and a science to it. I've been studying it for many, many years. I've been a serial pivoter, but wrote that book, Pivot, and Have taught and shared the strategies all over the globe. And now we've got a digital version of it, a very compact format to be able to share the most important things, the structure of the pivot and how it is that you can get into momentum and create success in any pivot, whether that's a business pivot, a career pivot, or something else that might involve your relationships or even your health. Go to pivotincubator.com, pivotincubator.com to find out And that word implies for me, when people use that term transformational, and obviously you're using it in a particular context, we're a part of an organization called the Transformational Leadership Council in Corporate circles, which is— I spend 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. I try to use it sparingly, but when I do use it, just as you did, I want to define it in terms that make it accessible. 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, 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. It's like, you know, I can't stand looking at you today, but tomorrow I want to be madly in love like we just 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 2 steps forward kind of thing. But it's these small changes that when you mush them together, so to speak, The whole time things have changed and you go, holy smokes.

Yeah. The scholarship in transformation is quite interesting. And if you look at 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 gentleness, and you look over the wall and there's pestilence and disease and horror out there.

Yeah. 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 3 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 this socialized mind to what's called the self-authoring mind. And a lot of times 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. And 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. Right. So we become self-transforming. And in the studies that have been done in organizations, 2% of leaders are operating at that level of the self-transforming mind. So most of us are still valuing expertise and 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. You know, like you're saying, huh, I don't think so. So it's— there is—

This is biblical, right, Paul? Because even, you know, and I don't typically, uh, sort of go back 3,000 years to look for an example of this, but this is 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. 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. What you were saying also reminded me of Wayne Dyer. You think about some of— and this is a beautiful, beautiful language. Again, whether this is 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 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 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, so to speak. Exactly. Okay.

I was changed by that. That moment in my life transformed me. I wanted to know, what does that really mean?

Right.

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. I thought, wow, people are going to go through this experience, they're going to say, oh, it was when that happened that that transformed. 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. And so the transformation doesn't occur. And so 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. Yeah. 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 the 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 and 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 Emmet, Yeah. 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 at that— 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 I love that.

Yeah, but I interrupted you.

Please, just—

No, 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 a necessary revolution, as Peter Senge put it.

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

Yeah. Arnold Patton. 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 called Abundance for Life. He wrote a book called You Could Have It All.

Oh,

yes. 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 Emmet 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, that was eluding me. So Paul, thank you so much for, for making that clear, that pressure is the signal, is, 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 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 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, you know, sort of tear somebody's head off. I was a litigation attorney, so frankly, I was paid well, Mm-hmm. To put my anger to work. I mean, that 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 and reading some things— and my first book was, was The Road Less Traveled by Scott, Dr. Scott Peck. And that book is, 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 transformational moment, you know, this— wow, 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. That was the process. That's what this book Pivot is about. It's just about how it is that you do back and fill with deliberation, some hopefully level of consciousness. But that's the process for all of us. Isn't that what the pandemic has stirred up at such a deep level, do you think, Paul, that people have been now forced to confront themselves and confront their— The pressure?

Well, one of the things that I often said at the beginning of the pandemic is, you know, that 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, 8 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.

Yeah.

He says this isn't the big one. So, you know, not to be the bearer of bad news, but they've— No, no, no. Been calling him Dr. Doom for years.

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

Yeah. 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 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, I called my brother who lived in Oregon. I said, can you find me an original of this article? Because I, I quote it 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, uh, you know, the microfilm back then. It just— it 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. Wow. 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 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 hit the record button, and it reminds that reminds me of Victor Frankl, man's search for meaning and therapy, right? Was built upon that, right?

Yes, he Dr. Siebert said that was the best link that he could find, and he actually knew Victor Frankl. And he also knew Hans Selye, who was the man who did the work on. 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. 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 our 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 recover. That's what weightlifting is about. That's what Running is about. We're straining the body's systems and recovering so that it actually becomes stronger to deal with strains like this and then some.

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 are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. We'll get back to this episode in just a moment. I've got something really important I think you're gonna love. Ready to love your life in 2021? Head over to ilovemylifechallenge.com and order your copy of my new workbook today. In it, you'll find a guide to make changes for the better and push beyond the day-to-day struggles. In addition to stories, this workbook includes simple, repeatable, 10-second action steps that readers can use personally and professionally to center themselves in the face of change. You can order now on Amazon or your favorite retailer or by going to ilovemylifechallenge.com, where you'll get exclusive bonuses, including an invitation to join us to the Start 2021 Right I Love My Life launch event. So, head over to ilovemylifechallenge.com to get your workbook and some very special bonus gifts. Let's set ourselves up for an amazing year together. 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 of that, Paul, that you, for example, you know, somebody running an Olympic race or I was a swimmer, you have an Olympic meet that's happening and you're gonna 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 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 as a— and then now, you know, as an example of it— in our own personal lives, we're constantly straining and overstraining. If you ran your car On empty. And I sometimes will tell this cute little story. I think it's a good 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. It's like running on E was actually 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. We run ourselves on empty a lot. 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. Yeah. And grinding it out, working, getting the 9-hour work, 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 keep cutting our budgets and demanding more with less.

Fewer people, More and more with less. Yeah,

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

Meet 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 and front, you know, 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. That's great

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 to, as I said earlier, just have Have healthy kids. I mean, they're they're all doing great things and independent thinking and all that. But you know, as a parent, their health is the most important thing. You know, 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? You know, meaning that you know, 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, are really issues or questions of, 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, they're like the greatest. They're— they are, are looking at their, at their parents as the model of what— not just what to do, but whether or not there's congruence between the words and the actions. Yes. And same thing in leadership. If you, if, you know, if you are leading a team and, and you're saying, well, we've got to be resilient because I, you know, that's the word du jour, that's the word on everybody's lips today, as you and I said 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 not in shape yourself. You're eating the wrong things. You're overweight to a point where it could impact your health, etc. You are not giving other people permission to do even what you say they ought to do because you're not living it yourself. Mm-hmm. And

I know that's

tough to hear

for Well, I think you've hit it. In the human development model that I created, there is a triangle that has to do with 3 types of congruences, 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. And then there is a congruence between who you are personally and who you are socially. And we think about leaders who are authentic,

right?

Are people who are able to show up authentically as they are. And 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 gotta keep it private and secret from you.

Yes.

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. 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 3 things are what are essential. And Dr. Al Siebert's work, who wrote Survivor Personality and The Resiliency Advantage, 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 3 up, we could say self-concept, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-concept, self-esteem, self-confidence. And these 3 selves, as he liked to talk about them, have to do with our nervous system. 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 3 of those to have all 3 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 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.

Yes.

And that difference, 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 whatever. If I don't acknowledge what it is that's causing that disconnect, well, I don't want people to think badly of me. That's this circuit. 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 will, there's no limit to what you can do. There's no 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.

Yes.

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, and open will, there are superpowers that are available to you. And you may notice because of your work, it sounds like I've excluded the spiritual, but I want you to understand that in the center of that triangle is that Mm-hmm. 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 You 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.

And I'm asking you a question that it's— part of me is wanting to preframe 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

Let me say, but if a divorce occurs, if a catastrophic illness occurs, if the loss of a child occurs, heaven forbid that any of these tragedies should occur. What I have noticed historically, it's the same thing that Viktor Frankl in Man's 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 her child to a drunk driver and started Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The suffering is not something that we invite or wish or are insensitive to or somehow overlook in the process.

No. 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, uh, a zoomed-out level, let's say.

Yes.

The difference between forest and trees.

Yes.

The, the one being no one No one would wish even— no, no, 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.

I know.

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, you started our conversation by 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— this is a whole separate thing to discuss, I suppose, there. 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 rippled out as a result of that. These are catalysts for growth. I think that's the point. The other thing 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 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, 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, you know, there's something that modern human family doesn't really get. They've lost touch with what's happening. And so 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've been killed. This idea that we have to get on our kayaks, we have to get on our surfboards, the tsunami's 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, is 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 to? This is too much fun!

It's too much fun. 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 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 Arrelly, I believe, is the author. And there's an interesting aspect to this book where 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 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 We can and are able to without us then thinking we're liars. 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. We've talked a lot about both people, individuals in their personal lives, as well as in organizations. Yeah. 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 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. Yes. 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? 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, I don't know, 3 or 4 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 A mundane experience and make it sacred.

Yes.

So a sacred act, as you described, is taking nourishment into the body. So what do we do? We pause. And 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 concerned? How can I show up and bring my all to this moment? And there are 2 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 a Dr. Jay Becroft 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, you know, to—

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 gears somehow. There's no flow to it.

It's like Jim Rohn's Setting the Sail, right? It's literally—

Exactly. Trim it, set it, trim it, and get it just so. So the idea here is, yes, I have practices, and I absolutely can't put those up for discussion. How I awaken, my yoga practice, my meditation and prayer time, all of it. I mean, everyone— 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 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. Swimming. I can't give up my swimming.

Can't give it up.

No. And when think about it,

even when you got to make a reservation at the Y to get a lane, you got to do it. That's what I'm going to do later today.

Yep. And I would even swim at the Y when we had 3 people in 1 lane and we had to do circles. Yeah, you had to do circles.

Exactly.

But yeah, so there are rituals that are very important, and I would like 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 upregulation is the neocortex. And that's the thinking brain, 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 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

And it's interesting you brought up 3M. We use an example of 3M in the 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. Yes. 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. 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 of thinking, and they started using it to play cards and to drink coffee and chat. Nobody knew how to use it, right? 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, I suggest that we talk about a part 2 to this. We'll do that offline. So folks, you don't have to be too disappointed. Because to tap into— 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. I 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. I had 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 agnostic as to the circumstance. You can love your life in this moment even if there's challenge. And that creates resilience in and of itself. Is that correct?

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, 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, whatever you want to call them, you know, like it's an artful approach to living. What's your thoughts on that?

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 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. You know, we see it, but no one 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 2 steps forward, one step back when we learn, 2 steps 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. One, one, one, one, one, one. But there's a certain type of stitch that'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 2 things: strength and flexibility.

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.

You see, and that's what learning is. It's strength and flexibility. So it's not 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. 2 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. And then the second— Siri is talking to me on my wristwatch here. I see that. 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 2, you reclaim yourself as author or agent or the one who has the control to do something with it, the creator or 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 uplevel 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 Yeah. 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 adammarkel.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, 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-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.