Cultivating Mindful Leadership To Build A Successful Team With Dawa Tarchin Phillips

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

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to be here today, to be receiving the breaths that I've been receiving all day. Since I got up this morning, my breathing has been very, very full, deep and full. Had a wonderful breakfast meeting with a new friend, somebody that was introduced to me by our oldest daughter, Chelsea, and her fiance. It's great to say that her fiance Matthew, and they really think the world of this guy, Brandon Hawk, who I had a great morning meeting with. And yeah, I just, it was one of those really synergistic meetings. So much of what we were saying and thinking about in our conversations the first time we met, first conversation was really just felt great. And so I moved from having started my day that way, breathing deeply into that beautiful space, really loving space, to now being sitting here in my office, drenched in sunlight and breathing fresh air, knowing that what is ahead over the next 45 minutes is conversation with another individual who I know quite a bit better and somebody that I absolutely adore. I love this gentleman. He's a amazing person, gentle leader. And I don't mean gentle in the sense of soft or weak. I mean, I want to make that clear. I think gentle is, especially among men, is a real trait and a quality and a characteristic that A, you don't see very often and B, it's incredibly powerful because it exudes to me when I encounter a gentleman. And I aspire to be, and I hope to be, as gentle a person, as kind a person as I can be. And that's a work of my own, by the way. It's something I am working on actively. When I encounter somebody like that, I feel their trust in themselves. I feel their love for themselves. I feel leadership at a level that is different. It doesn't have to be. I don't feel overpowered by it. I don't feel manipulated by it. I feel it's just really authentic and something I respect and aspire to. So this gentleman that I'm about to introduce you to for us, he is Dawa and I will give you his full name in his bio in just a moment. This gentleman is the embodiment of just what I, I'm talking about and somebody that I truly love and respect and feel blessed to call him friend. Blessed to have him on the show today. So we're starting with blessings. We're starting with gratitude, as we always do. Dawa Tarchin Phillips is the founder and CEO of Empowerment holdings, the co founder of the Mindful Leadership Online Training Conference, the world's largest online training conference for mindful leaders. Love that. He is a mindfulness and meditation expert, author, entrepreneur, spiritual teacher, researcher and educator. He is the acting president of the International Mindfulness Teachers association, the world's first global professional organization for mindfulness teaching of professionals and the founder of the Mindful Leadership Tribe, an online community of mindful leaders. Dawa completed two three year meditation retreats and teaches mindfulness and meditation, awakened business and mindful leadership the world. He is a member of the prestigious Transformational Leadership Council and the association of Transformational Leaders and a leading voice in the global mindfulness movement. And it is indeed a movement. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Men's Fitness, Forbes and Fast Company. He lives with his amazing family, his beautiful wife in Santa Barbara, California. Welcome to the show. Odawa.

So good to have you Adam. Good to be here.

Rich. Rich buddy.

Spend some time together.

Yeah, I loved reading that bio and all the things that you are known for in the world and you've done so much in the world so it's beautiful to catalog it that way. My question, first question for you is what's not in that bio that you would love for people to know about you? Dawa, in this moment?

That's interesting. Well, a bio usually is kind of like a highlight reel, right? It's different things that you've con I have contributed and that I guess make people get a greater sense of my credentials and why I might be someone that they want to work with. But I think what's not in my bio are the beautiful friendships I formed over my life. I think what's not in my bio is some of the insights that I've gained from my own personal practice. I'm someone that considers life a practice, that considers leadership a practice and that certainly considers love a practice. So I think there's, you know, bio talks a lot about the big accomplishments and the states that one has obtained or one can identify with the accomplishments. But it doesn't talk so much about the day to day, the millions or tens of thousands of little steps and little decisions that someone has to do on a daily basis in order to feel that they are in a position of contributing at the level that they would like to in the world.

Yeah, that's a really beautiful place to begin. The fact that our lives and the things that we end up doing and quote, unquote accomplishing are really the result of all these decisions that were made before that, all these micro movements, if you will. And I love the what I felt when I was listening to you describe how this thousands of those micro movements, those micro thoughts, those decisions in a day, even that leads that just the series of decisions, the dominoes, if you will, that are tipping over into each other in the course of a single day is pretty profound. Do you track your how well? So this I think, would be related to this concept of mindfulness, which I'd love you to define in some way, give us some working, running definition for mindfulness. And my question is, do you track your decisions? Is mindfulness a way of being conscious of every decision that you make consciously and unconsciously during the course of a day? Is that even possible?

I don't think it's possible to be aware of the decisions you make unconsciously, but the decisions you make consciously you can be aware of. And you can practice consciousness as something that begins to expand in your life so that the amount of things that you're conscious of begins to outweigh the things that you are not conscious of. You know, we all have a certain amount of conditioning and cultural conditioning, familial conditioning, professional conditioning, and a lot of that. If it's not conscious, it influences our decision making and it influences the direction we take in our lives, oftentimes against our better judgment or against our true joy and fulfillment, or against our higher purpose, right? And so the more that we become conscious of the conditioning, the greater choice we have in life. And mindfulness is all about choice. Cultivating mindfulness, which basically means present moment awareness and attentional focus, or the ability to direct your attention where you wish it to be and to have an ability to openly monitor your present moment experience. That brings choice, that brings the ability, what you would, what you like to call pivot, right? The ability to shift your attention from where it doesn't yield anything practical or useful, insightful, to where it can actually be of benefit, or to change the quality of your perception from one that is judgmental, critical, contracted, to one that is compassionate, kind, embracing and cultivating a sense of empathy and Connection. Right. So it's not only that we can change the direction, we can also change the timber or the texture of our attention. And all of that becomes increasingly valuable in, first of all, the choices you have at your disposal, but also in directing your life. Really, it's all about directing your life. Leadership is all about directing your life. A lot of people become leaders without knowing where they're going. And so then we end up leading people in circles. Right. We talked about that another time before. And so a lot of the leaders work initially and also throughout the years is about continuing to clarify where it is actually I'm going and where am I leading people to and why am I leading them there. Because it's one thing to talk about a promised land that then turns out to be the wasteland once everybody gets there. Right. So there is a constant work on the side of the leader to keep checking whether or not things are still on track, whether or not where I'm going and why I'm going there is actually going to pay off for people in the long run.

Yeah. That's profound. My goodness. I think that's one of the greatest responsibilities and challenges of leadership. At least it's been my experience, this idea that you are. You are leading. You are the Pied Piper, people are following you and you want that you've stepped up to that responsibility. And yet at times you question as a leader. I know I question, am I leading people into the promised land or into the wasteland, as you put it? And, you know, in our own growth, sometimes we do circle a bit. We can circle around and cover. Cover the same ground until there's a period of. During a period of incubation. We talk a lot about that in the pivot process these days, that it's an incubation of sorts. And so while you're incubating as a leader, it could be that you're like Moses in the desert and there's a period of incubation or a period harnessing of energy, a taking stock of things, a building of new consciousness, etc. But in the meantime, while you're building a new consciousness, you're living in the desert for 40 years, you know, wandering about. That just came up. I don't know from whence that awareness just showed up, but it was triggered by. But what you just said. Dawas intriguing, huh?

Yes, of course. Yeah. And I mean, that's part of the. I guess the work that we do internally. Right. That then radiates out. I think that's. Those are the Things people don't see. I'm always. I'm so appreciative, you know, when I see some of my friends and the things they've manifested in the world, which are beautiful projects or beautiful companies or books or films they've made or whatever it is that they've contributed. And I'm oftentimes just appreciative of what that means in terms of inner discipline. You know, the things that they had to practice in order to get there. Not so much just the results, but who they've become in the process. And the beautiful thing about those things is that those are the things that are always with you. Right. Even if what you contribute in the world doesn't get the recognition maybe it deserves, you still have become the person that you are as you honed your craft and as you completed certain things. I am fascinated by that process of practice. I consider myself a practitioner always first. I always take my own medicine before I offer it to anybody else. And I think that has also been very beneficial to myself over the years.

Yes. In fact, you said. I wrote it down at the beginning. Love. Love is a practice. You didn't use them in a little bit of a different context. But what I wrote down was love as a practice. That love is we practice. And would you like to say any more about that, or does that suffice?

Well, what I mean with that is that we're always up against resistances, right? We have. We experience pressure and we experience resistance. So we experience both the push from behind, we experience the carrot from the front, but we also experience resistance growing out of our comfort zone and expanding as human beings, expanding as people. And so there's choices that we have to make, whether we take the resistance and the comfort more comfort as more valuable than the expansion and the love that results as a. Or that comes as a result of that expansion. And so when. I mean, it's a practice is that we have to overcome fears, we have to overcome comfort, we have to overcome complacency, we have to overcome attachment to ourselves and to our preconceptions and our prejudices. And so that is a. That is a practice that never stops. And it requires commitment. And it requires a decision that who I will become in that process and my capacity to love and serve that I wish to develop is more important to me than the comfort or the fears or the resistances or the pressure. I'm okay with those things. I'll happily embrace those things on my journey to love. And I think it's something that's very organic. A lot of people experience that when they. They have children or when they care about a project more than about their own comfort, whether that's for the first time or whether that's something that they discover over time. But I think this ability to fall in love and then to serve that love, to nurture that love against the discomforts and the resistances that we have, think that is a practice, and it creates beautiful people. It's a practice that brings forth beautiful people, and I rejoice in those people. I can see it. I can see it when I see a mother or a father. I can see it when I see a teacher who gets up every morning and goes into a public high school where, you know, he faces the distraction or she faces the disrespect, and she does it every day because she loves to serve, she loves to teach. Right. Or I see it in many of our service sectors where people practice a form of sacrifice because they love who they serve.

You're a practitioner of number of things, including love. Do you have a specific practice, a practice for love?

Yeah. Well, my. I guess one of my core practices is intention. I am one of the firm believers that intention arrives before you do that. You know, when you walk into a room to meet people, they're going to tune into your intentions in less than a second. And so really, what you can do, if you wish to do good in the world, is to take care of cultivating your intention before you open your mouth, before you spring into action, before you enter a room so that people can actually experience that you're on their side. And that is a very intuitive sense that people pick up very quickly before you even say anything. So I think that's a practice that I cultivate, and that is a question also about more profoundly, a question of who I am. Right. Because I don't get to really present myself verbally or in any other way before people just encounter my presence. Yeah. So I would say if I have a practice, it's really doing the genuine work of intentionality and making sure that my intention really is about people and about service and about caring and about being in integrity and these things.

So it may well be true that our presence precedes us.

I believe that your presence is perceived before what you say is heard or understood. Absolutely. And most cues that people take are anyway nonverbal. So your presence speaks louder than words. Right. Or as sometimes someone say, what. What you're not saying speaks so loudly I can't hear a word you're saying.

Yes, right. A beautiful Emerson quote on that.

And who you are, I guess who you are.

Who you are. Speaks so loudly I can't hear a word you're saying. So intention. What I heard you say was that intention is a part of your practice of.

Yeah, maybe the core. Core part.

Yeah.

Very mindfulness.

Right. Really cool. I mean, I know that one of the things I've had the pleasure of bringing a lot of people on stages over the years, the last sort of seven, eight years as somebody that through, through training and running a company, we had a bunch of workshops and some of them were quite large. And I used to emcee a number of those workshops and I would bring other speakers on to teach certain things. And to this day, whether I'm working in smaller workshops with people who want to be speakers, speakers or trainers. We just did one at our house where everybody, 12 people, delivered a legacy talk that we filmed and all that kind of thing. It was very high stakes talk. And with each of those individuals, just like, you know, workshops or large events I've done in the past. And it didn't matter who it was. I think Tony Robbins was the only person that I never got to do this with because the way his pre game setup is, I, I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna get him right before he came on stage. But pretty much everybody else, I would always look at them, usually hold their hands, look in their eyes and ask them this one question, which was, what is your intention? So that's so reminiscent of what you said, because your intention, it precedes you, it's a part of your presence. So if your intention is to open hearts, is to have people feel your love or feel peace from your pre. From your. Or whatever it is, it could be, you know, my intention is to, Is to, you know, activate people. I want them to be vibrating with, with, with action so that they're able to move forward, you know, break free, whatever that is. But that intention going into whatever it is, it's a conversation. It's a meeting with a partner or meeting with a stranger. It's a conversation with your children or with your spouse. It really is pretty profound practice to have that intention set ahead of the conversation and the physical meeting.

Yeah. I remember a friend of mine who's a musician and composer who scores films. I remember when he was young, he came back, he'd attended a concert by Prince and he said he was so taken aback by the fact that Prince, in a positive way, that Prince, for the hour before his concert, he had played Keith Jarrett music very loudly over the speakers. Right. And he had basically created this entire field of resonance of how people were feeling and how receptive they were, how open they were, how relaxed they were, all of that long before he ever came into the arena to perform. Right. And I see it in the way that my wife prepares for having guests over. Right. So it's not only present in public life or the way that we present. It's also present in kind of the little things. Right. The everyday things. And people feel it. You know, when people walk into a room and someone has given thought prior to their arrival, that honors them, that, you know, really took care to prepare. People feel it. They feel good. And I think that's something that all of us actually can do, even when we have a difficult conversation.

Yeah.

It's not that we always walk into a room of friends. Sometimes we walk into a room of people with whom we have controversy or conflict. But what is our intention?

Yeah. Wow. This. I didn't expect we'd take this path. And I want to. I want to close a loop or two and then track back to mindfulness in a moment. But I also want to follow the thread just a little further, if you're game for that. Yeah. The intention is so. Gosh. And you're reminding me of some things that I've shared in the past, and it's just such a beautiful thing to bring it in this moment that even in contract negotiations, I remember some very difficult negotiations, sort of seven figure type negotiations in our business at a certain point with different people we were thinking about working with, wanting to work with, and being at an impasse and applying this intentionality, maybe we could call it the law of intention. For the purposes of this conversation. And at the beginning of this meeting where this group of folks, business people, had flown into our. You know, flown into San Diego to meet us at our office to deal with this impasse and see whether or not we were going to come out the other side. Still wanting to be partnered, we started the meeting. I'd asked everybody, as a part of creating a context for our gathering, that we'd all set forth an intention and that I would model it and say my intention first. And my intention at the outset of this meeting was that we would be. Because I knew these folks all loved sushi. They enjoyed, you know, they enjoyed good eating and love Japanese food. I said, well, here's my intention. My intention is that when we're done, it may be quite late at night. You know, it'll be Dark, let's put it that way. But certainly before the restaurants close, we're going to be sitting in this amazing sushi restaurant that's up in Carlsbad that I love. They've got great this, they've got great that. You know, incredible belly tuna and all this. I said, we're going to be in that restaurant eating a wonderful meal celebrating the success of today's meeting and what we were able to accomplish to be in partnership for the long term. And then it went around, and there were maybe seven or eight of us at this table, and everybody was kind of energetically charged when they walked in. You know, almost like poised for battle type of thing. And as soon as we went around the table, the intentions all mirrored in some way reflected that. This positive outcome and this energy of collaboration and team and just love, I could call, you know, really felt loving in the. In the room. And yes, we had difficult moments, moments where we had to walk out of the room and, you know, sort of caucus separately and privately. And there were all these sort of moments during the day we thought thing would fall apart. But you know what? That night, Dawa, we were in that sushi restaurant celebrating the success of that day and eating ourselves into a food coma.

Yeah, very good. Like I said, it's just one of the tools at people's disposal, but one that few teachers have written about and one that few people really make conscious use of as of now. Hopefully more so in the future.

Yeah, Beautiful, beautiful choices. Choices in life. I mean, I want to tie. If we can tie mindfulness to making better choices. Sometimes I forget who introduced this concept to me. It might have been Deepak years ago that said something, and it might have been in one of his books, like the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. But the ability to make spontaneous right decisions, decisions is something that I have aspired to for quite a while. And then reading things like this, chapter 30 in a course in Miracles, which is about the new beginning and that we're making decisions all the time, consciously or unconsciously, and how it is that we. And we either make those decisions with fear or we make them with love. We make them at all times with an advisor. It takes two. So it's always us and our counselor that makes a decision before it can have any effect. So to be able to make spontaneous right decisions, to make better decisions. So that you said we have better options and choices in life, and then we can lead people from that place of trust in ourselves that we know how to make decisions on the path of life. That don't lead us in circles or keep us in the desert too long. Can you tie the mindfulness piece and how you define mindfulness to this idea of making better decisions?

This is a great question, and I want to answer it in I guess I want to answer it in the following way. I'd say spontaneity, and I guess spontaneity with good outcomes usually is the result of practice. There is spontaneity, obviously, that even children and teenagers have. Right. But sometimes that brings good results and sometimes it wreaks havoc because sometimes the spontaneity is just in service of a craving or I guess just the desire of the moment that leaves or that disregards the impact on others. Right. So what we're talking about really is then the spontaneity that has matured to a place where we know that we can be spontaneous because we naturally, when we act spontaneously, we can trust our intentions. And what I have found in my own life is that the more confident we are in our intention, the more spontaneous we allow ourselves to be in situations. Because we really can trust ourselves. We know that we're not someone that is going to screw others over on the spur of the moment. We're not someone that is going to suddenly fall into a fit of rage and verbally or physically assault anyone. You know, we're not someone that is going to self sabotage after years of preparation, all of the sudden. Right. And so we become more spontaneous as we learn to trust ourselves on a deeper level. Now, what does mindfulness to do with all of that? Mindfulness really is the way of familiarizing ourselves with what's happening in the process, present moment. And there are so many layers to the present moment experience. When you come into a hotel room like the one I'm currently in, then when you first, when you first are there, you don't necessarily notice very much. You know that there's certain pieces of furniture that are there because that's just what's, what's meant to be there. But you don't yet notice the art. You don't notice the lampshades, you don't notice what's on the desk, what's on the pillow, what's in the bathroom. But over time, you know, spend a few hours there, you begin to see, oh, someone gave some thought to how they chose the colors, or someone, you know, picked this piece of furniture on purpose. Or you begin to notice, maybe there's a stain here or there, maybe there's something in need of repair, right? So because you're present, you begin to develop distinctions. Your awareness is beginning to pervade the environment and begin to see more clearly what all that is there. And mindfulness is that process. So whenever you bring mindfulness to a situation, you begin to see more of what is already there. And you begin to become aware of so many nuances, so many other aspects that make up a situation. And when you have that additional information, number one, you can have a deeper sense of fulfillment because you're just so much more aware of all the beauty that's around you and of all the. The love and care that went into what it is that you're getting to experience right from the food on your table, the whatever, the way that you travel, right. The work that goes into the craftsmanship that the mechanics have to have so that the plane can leave on time. I mean, it's just everywhere. Doesn't matter where we are. The care and the love and the focus and the commitment is all around us. And so a deeper sense of mindfulness opens that up for you. You begin to see it and you begin to feel more valued and supported by everything that's around you. And a deeper sense of mindfulness also lets you see more about yourself. It lets you see where you're fooling yourself. It lets you see where you're in denial. It lets you see where you're committing self sabotage. It lets you see where you're holding yourself back due to self judgment or fear of failure. And then you can correct or you can release something and you can begin to slowly free yourself from limiting mental, emotional and physical behaviors. And that also deepens a sense of trust. When you know that what you become aware of is on the way out. You know, when you know that if you become aware of stupid habit or a limiting habit, that because you've become aware of it, you can release it. You lose your fear of learning about your own mistakes and you lose your fear of seeing your own shortcomings because you know that it is such a healthy thing to become aware of your mistakes and of your shortcomings because now you have the opportunity to outgrow them. And that as well brings spontaneity. I think part of why people lack spontaneity is because they're very afraid of the consequences or they're afraid of failure, or they're afraid of looking stupid, or they're afraid of, I don't know, being silly or how they are perceived. And all of that, I think, is because there's no clear practice or no clear process that they have access to that will let them know that whatever happens, I can bring that onto the path. You know, if I stumble, it is not going to be how to say, it's not the end of the world, it's the beginning of a new fork in my life. It's because I'm going to learn something. I will be able to pick myself back up, I'll be able to integrate my new understanding, I'll be able to go from there. So I think spontaneity is rooted in trust in one's ability to respond, trust in one's ability to learn from a situation, trust in one's ability to recover from challenges, and trust in one's ability to not cause harm. And that is really about a maturation of intention, trust and wants ability do not cause harm.

So is trust rooted in mindfulness or is mindfulness rooted in trust?

Yeah, it's interesting. When you look at the scientific research and literature, then there's a very strong correlation between mindfulness and trust. Which means, for example, when you have a school, a faculty, and you teach them mindfulness, then the trust between the faculty members goes up. But when you also, when you do trust exercises, then the mindfulness in that community goes up. Which means that they are correlated. You can influence mindfulness by how trusting people are. Because when they trusting, when they are trusting, they prefer to be present. Whereas when we don't feel safe, then we are scattered. When we don't feel safe, we don't feel we are where we need to be. We don't feel we can relax, we don't feel we can connect. Now we're looking for a way out of the situation. We're not at ease where we are. And so mindfulness literally is reduced. We become scatter, minded, scatterbrained because of our lack of safety and our lack of trust. So there's a correlation and the science shows it.

Yes, it's a reciprocal relationship. It feels like that they're sort of cross pollinating each other.

Yes.

So to become, if you said, if somebody listening to this, watching this says I really would love to trust myself more, mindfulness practice would help them to receive or as a benefit of it, outgrow, and I love the word that you used earlier, that they might outgrow some of their limiting behaviors through mindfulness practice, they would gain some greater trust in themselves. But also if they were to be in a position where they were mindful because that was a practice that they had started or that was just a part of their rituals, that as a consequence of mindfulness, they might also gain greater trust without intending it specifically. Or others might gain greater trust in them, or they might gain greater trust in others as well. A collateral benefit, if you will, of that. Did I say that?

Yeah. Here's a thing that can really help people. I wrote about this before and I speak about this quite often, and that is that usually we practice trust as a reaction. You know, if we meet people and we judge them as trustworthy, then we react with trust. If we come into a situation, the situation is predictable and we feel like we can judge the direction of the outcome, then we feel we can react with trust, which means the trust levels that we have remain low because we have a reactionary practice of trust. And we are waiting for people and situations to prove to us that they warrant our trust. And we wait for the world to prove to us that it warrants our trust. And because people are fallible and because situations are uncertain and because the world is changing, our trust levels remain low. And so what we teach leaders is that they have to take domain over their trust. They need to release other people from the responsibility for their trust, and they need to release situations and they need to release the world from the responsibility for their trust. And they need to take ownership again of their trust and decide that I am going to invest the trust that I want to bring to a situation. I'm going to invest the trust that I need in my life in order to feel good, in order to be connected, in order to be open, in order to be at ease, in order to have access to my resources. Because if we're not in a state of trust, we're contracted. And when we contract, we lose access to vital physical, mental, emotional and spiritual resources. So by investing trust, regardless of how much we can predict what's happening, because we really don't, you know, we don't know what will happen. But if we choose to be in a state of trust in face of that uncertainty, we have full access to our resources, we can make better decision, we see more clearly, we feel better, we're more connected versus we choose to be in a state of mistrust in response to that uncertainty. And now not only don't we know what's going to happen, we have no access to our resources and our immune system is compromised. Our intelligence is compromised, our emotional well being is compromised, our ability to connect is compromised. So it really doesn't make any sense from all aspects considered to practice trust in a reactionary way. But that is an act of courage. It's an act of courage to say, I am going to release others from the responsibility for my trust, and I'm going to practice investing trust in people and in situation because it's good for me and it's good for those situations.

Yes. I wrote down leaders go first.

Yes.

And this is. This is. This is, as you say, it's a courageous moment to go first, particularly with trust.

It's a courageous moment to trust first. Absolutely.

Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. It also. You had started to talk earlier about pivot and the idea that this is a pivot. It's quantitative as well as qualitative. This pivot that comes from mindfulness and being able to access more. More perception, greater. A greater palette, if you will, color palette that gives you new options and there. And new choices. The options. Choices. Right. Can you share a little bit about your. Either some area of your life previously where that pivot showed up, where it was sort of a moment of pivot, or in the alternative, in this moment, where we're at now, where you are now, where. What's the next pivot look like to you? Either of those two?

I would say that, you know, there are two big pivots I've made in my life. In my very early 20s, I pivoted, and I decided to put my spiritual life first. I had five questions when I was a child that were really important to me and that nobody knew answers to. And a lot of children have those, and a lot of adults don't have any answers. And that was, who am I? Where am I from? Why am I here? Where am I going? And why is that even important? And so, like most of us, you know, I grew up around adults that said, you know, don't ask these questions. Just get with the program. And I decided in my early 20s that these questions were more important to me than getting with the program. And so I put spirituality for about a good 15 years. I put actually a little longer, 17 years. I put those questions in the center of my life. And I said, I really wish to find answers to these questions before I'm old and decrepit, and then say, well, now that my life is at the end, let me try to address the most important questions. Right? And that's because that's what happens for a lot of people. They get so busy and swept up in things that the core questions that drive them, they somehow just never get to spend any time with those questions. So I was fortunate enough to make a pivot at that time, And I spent 12 years as a Buddhist monk, seven of those years in meditation retreat. And it was some of the best learning and growing that I've ever done. And I really found the answers to the questions I had. And it put me on a very different track in life. Once I came out of that experience, I was asked to now be a global teacher, to travel, to speak, to run a center, to guide others. And in that process of dedicating myself to that work, I realized more and more than in order to do that really well, I need to walk in people's shoes. I need to be in the trenches. I need to be relatable. Right? And so that led to a decision to leave the monastic life, start a company, get married, you know, and live a family life. And to really live these principles in everyday life in a modern society, and explore and model and discuss and share with others of what it can actually look like to live an awakened life in a modern world, in a modern.

Time, under game conditions.

Under game conditions where the stakes are high. And like Joel says, the moment is brief.

Right.

Game time. And so that was another big pivot. And at the same time, it has only deepened my practice. I have to say that it has allowed me to really test, put the principles to the test. And there's one thing for something to make sense on the meditation cushion, and there's a whole nother thing for something to make sense when you're speaking with hundreds of people in a fast paced modern enterprise, or when you are, you know, sitting in a high stakes conversation with the people you love the most and the emotions run high and there's a lot of vulnerability and sensibilities at stake. Right, so that's a beautiful thing. If it's something authentic, it can take the heat.

Yes, exactly. Well, I would love to know. And I'm sure the folks listening right now are chomping at the bit to understand what's a ritual or practice that you have. This is the Conscious Pivot podcast. Not habit, but the practices that you've cultivated that we'd call, maybe even call rituals. I'm not attached to that word either. But is there something that you do daily that keeps you, keeps you on the path in a way that you feel is where you're making progress each day.

I speak out loud what I want to create and what I want to see in the world. I don't just think about it. I speak it out loud. And I can tell how comfortable I am with an idea or a project or a change in my life by the resistance I have to speaking it out Loud. And so that is a ritual that I have that helps me both know whether I have any incongruencies with something that I say I wish to do or wish to create. And also it helps me open up and really connect to the resources that I need in order to bring forth an idea or an intention in a tangible way.

Yes. Wow. I think that is an incredibly tangible piece of advice. I know you aren't couching it as advice because it's what you do yourself, but I will turn that around and reflect that back to everyone who's watching and listening to this podcast right now. That. That is an incredible practice. I feel this idea that as a litmus test to speak something out loud that you wish to see happen. So your intentions aren't just in the mind. And it's, I think, what a beautiful interplay of the heart and the head and inner and outer. Because you're a mindfulness expert and facilitator. And yet what you just expressed was not a meditation practice or a mindfulness practice. This was a speaking into existence that which you wish to manifest practice.

Yes. And going on the record. Right. There was a difference between John F. Kennedy thinking about putting a man on the moon and publicly announcing that he was going to put a man on the moon. And whether or not you are the first person that hears you say it out loud or you say it out loud when others are present. Saying something out loud is a different level of reality than just thinking about.

Yes. And it's even a distinction between. And it's a fine distinction, not trying to put form before substance, but I think it's essential, the difference between affirmations and declarations. And what you're talking about is a declaring. When John F. Kennedy declared out loud to the onlooking world that we would put a man on the moon, that was declaration. That wasn't affirming something that he believed or that was something he wanted to believe. This was a declarative statement of fact ahead of time.

Well, so I'm a student of history, but I'm also passionate about the United States. Not that it doesn't have its flaws, but it also has some really marvelous attempts to create governance that serves people. And one of the things that I admire about the Declaration of Independence is that it is a declaration of a reality that before had not existed. And in declaring that people put their lives risk. And, you know, the day after it was signed, the individuals who signed it were declared traitors and sentenced to death. Right. And so there is something symbolic about us moving into a new reality, committing ourselves to that reality, and knowing that the old me is going to have to let go. Yeah. And that is the power of a declaration. When I sign my name to a new world, I know that in that moment I released that old world. I no longer belong to that old world. And the old world might resist, resent, revolt against this act of declaration. But if it is for greater freedom and if it is for greater truth, then in the end, that old world will have to come around and accept that this is a new world. And I am committed and I have committed. And whether you like it or not, I am not going back into slavery and into servitude.

Yes.

Yeah. And so in, in that way, every declaration is a small declaration to greater independence if practiced on this path, that we are on the path of transformation and of some form of awakening. Really.

Yes. It's. That declarative statement is putting the old world on notice. This is what I'm hearing and I love this. It's. We are. We're putting the old world on notice. Things are about to change.

Things have changed.

Yes.

We're putting the old world on notice that things have changed and there's no turning back.

Yes. And don't be surprised, as you say, if the old world order doesn't reject revolt, resent that change, because, I mean, this is the essence of pivot. That change is not always met with open arms. And what do we do with it when we do receive that? We feel that resistance or that revolt inside of ourselves or from others around us. That's an essential moment of truth for us, isn't it?

Yeah. And we see that in our society at the moment a lot. Right. There are different, many different groups of people that are making their own declarations. And they were saying, we are not going to go back to old models, old systems, old way of thinking, old way of organizing. Right. And so I think we're living through a phase where there is a lot of change, a lot of transformation. And it's, you know, it's not that they haven't been there before, but the resolve, the resolve is growing. And there are many, there have always been many, but there are many, many voices of people that have yet to see their full place at the table, whether that is women getting equal pay or minorities being involved in self governance. Right. There's many ways in which our society is growing toward a. I want to say, even though the conflicts are more evident than ever, we're on our way to actually a deeper understanding of one another and a deeper respect for one another. And maybe that will be the result of a lot of these efforts that are being made. But it's encouraging because people finally have the courage to speak out and to declare things. They have the public square. Right. Because of technology, because of the Internet, because of access to media and so on. Individuals have a voice to change the course of things in a way that they've never had that before. And so it's an interesting time to be alive and to actually observe how these principles are being activated. And I don't want to get into a conversation on politics or religion, but I do think that these are interesting things that we're all living through at the moment together.

Absolutely. I think we're all, every one of us, regardless of whatever the political leanings that we have or any of the other issues that we may feel differently about, as many people do, we're all leaning or craving more freedom, more independence. It's the Declaration of Independence. It's a declaration of freedom.

And yeah, and we're craving dignity and respect, you know, and I think that's, that's also important. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we, we all have, have a profound opportunity in this moment to not only declare our freedom but to exercise our voice, our vocal, our ability to vocalize what it is that we, that we want by declaring it, intending it and then declaring it. As you say, not just sitting in meditation or in mindfulness state, but to take that awareness and that heightened perception and understanding and vocalize it and turn it into declarative statement. That is a powerful combination and I'm so glad that that's how we tracked our conversation to the point where we're going to come to our end here. But that there's never an end, only beginning. And so this is the beginning of so much more. Even in this moment. I want to say thank you so much Dawa for all of your thoughts and how you, what you declared in this, in this, this last hour with all of us. So thank you so much.

Sure. It's my pleasure to be with you. I know you're a real change maker so it's great to, to be on you, on your show here and to, to meet more of your people, your tribe.

Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to our tribe finding out a lot more about you. So the show notes will have quite a bit of information about Dawa and his company and where it is you can find him and websites and all that kind of thing for folks who would like to learn more about Mindfulness work that you do. Also, you have a very interesting thing that's coming up. So for me, I've been reading a book called around the Year with Emmet Fox for many, many years. The book is held together by love primarily and some tape. And you are doing a different type of an around the globe experience that you are. You're just about ready to take off on in another couple of months. Would you just take a minute and share what that experience is about?

Yes. So we're doing a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a sacred journey, A journey where you are traveling with an intention to transform and reshape your life. And this particular pilgrimage is a pilgrimage around the world for 30 days. We're going to visit 17 sacred sites in five countries on four continents. And we are tracing the history of humanity as well as the individual journey of, you can say, spiritual awakening and personal transformation. The pilgrimage is called the Awakened World Global Pilgrimage. And people can learn more at the website Awakened World Pilgrimage. And it's the first time this has ever been done. There's never been a public pilgrimage around the planet that honors the really the sacredness of humanity, not just of one culture, one tradition, one geography, but of humanity and our relationship with the planet. And the intention behind it is to really begin to awaken more leaders on a global scale. Leaders who connect to a unified consciousness and who are able to begin to solve problems from that unified consciousness. Many people have heard the Einstein quotes that you can't solve the problems that you have from the same level of consciousness that created them. Right now as humanity, we're facing a myriad number of problems that were made from a competitive, separationist or separatist and discriminatory mindset. And we're struggling to solve these problems on a global scale. And so this, this journey is a journey to help people awaken to a unified global consciousness so that from there they can participate in solving some of the challenges in the world, but also experience a greater sense of personal empowerment, personal happiness, personal health, personal integration that comes from actually embodying that type of awakening in their own lives.

Beautiful, Dawah. Beautiful. So say the website one more time, if you could.

Awakened worldpilgrimage.com Beautiful.

Thank you. It has been a blessing of just a wonderful, wonderful blessing today to spend time together. I always enjoy your company. And now we got to share the warmth of our relationship with a larger community, which is what we did last maybe a week or two ago. And I was a guest on your show. So what a wonderful thing that is I think it's so important that healthy relationships are modeled, that we get to model those for as many people as we're able to. And so this has been wonderful folks. I will in a moment sign off and as I said earlier, this is just the beginning and I want to bookend this experience. Our podcast today with gratitude. Same way we began. We're going to lead off with gratitude here in this moment. I feel so grateful and lucky and privileged to be in front of this microphone to be able to share with you some of the incredible wisdom of my dear friend Dawa, as well as my opportunity to sit at the mic and say some things as well that are on my heart. I wish, hope, pray and intend that everyone tomorrow wakes up just like we got to wake up today. What a blessing it is and what a powerful intention that we will wake up tomorrow, wake up physically, of course, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually be a bit more conscious tomorrow than we are today. And if that's the case, we've had a good day. We've had a day that is changing the trajectory of not only our own personal lives, but the lives of so many other people on our planet. And certainly as you wake up tomorrow morning, taking that first deep conscious breath, be aware in that moment there, there are people who will be taking their last breath in that moment. There will also be babies born fortunately, who will be taking their first breath of life in the world. And so that moment is very holy, very sacred and deserves reverence. So in that moment that you are aware that you are breathing and awake, alive, be grateful. That's what I'm going to do. And I just highly recommending the practice that you wake up tomorrow. I hope everybody's going, yes, yes, I intend that too. I will wake up. I will be gratitude. I will be in gratitude. I will be grateful. And then if you feel it, if it's calling to you that you say these words, this, this statement is something I've been saying for many years. I've had the good fortune to share it with a lot of people around the world. This is a declaration. It's a declaration of everything that Dawah talked about. It's a declaration of independence. It's a declaration of love, not war. It's a declaration of freedom. And we get to make this declaration ourselves if we choose to. And my declaration is I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. It has been a profound pleasure to spend this time with all of you and we will come together again soon. I know CIAO for now, everybody.

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