Cultivating Resilience Amid Change with Martin Rutte

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 pivotal.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot podcast. I am smiling from ear to ear. I know not everybody's watching this on YouTube, but you got to get on YouTube just to see my Kool Aid smile because I'm so flipping happy. For a variety of reasons and in no particular order right now, although I'm going to save my most important reason for last. So in order right now, I'm smiling because it's Friday now. You guys are watching this, listening to this. It could be Tuesday. It could be, it could be Saturday. It'd be Thursday. Any, any day of the week. But for me, it's Friday. It's always going to be Friday, right? What's that old thing with Jimmy Buffett? You know, it's, it's five o' clock somewhere, it's five o'. Clock. It doesn't feel like, like I need a drink or I, or I want it to be the end of the day. I'm just thrilled it's Friday. Part of that is from my childhood where my dad, who was a civil servant and worked for the city of New York, was a parks director, was a recreation director and a preschool teacher, taught 4 year olds. And at a time when men certainly were not tapped to do that kind of work. So it was a very interesting thing that he was able to do that work and loved it for years, I think 20, 20 years as a preschool teacher. And my mom worked as well, and they took Fridays off. And growing up, it was an interesting thing because my friends, their parents worked, everybody worked on a Friday. We went to school on Friday, but my parents, Friday, even though they didn't earn hardly any money, and we grew up in a little, tiny little apartment in Queens, New York. Friday was a day that they would do things they wanted to do. That could mean go to the chiropractor, go to the health food store. There was such a thing as a health food store back then. Now it's in every supermarket there's health food items. But, but they would go to the gym and they just do what they wanted to do. And that was their day. And it was their freedom. Their freedom day. And to this day, my brother and I both have made Fridays very much the same thing for us. Whether it was when I was a lawyer and I would work till about noon and then go play golf in the afternoon, you know, whatever it took. I just made some part of Friday a special day. And so now, whether I'm thinking about it or it's unconscious, Friday just has a special feel to it. So it's Friday. I feel wonderful. And now the most important reason is that I get to spend this part of a Friday with somebody I absolutely freaking adore. The guy you guys are gonna get to meet in just a moment because I'm gonna read a bit of his bio and then get well past the bio. But I just absolutely love this man. Love him inside out. Just. He's the only. Other than my own father. I can't believe this. Other than my own father and my brother, because we grew up in a house with kissing. We kiss and it's weird. See, men kiss. Although in Europe, it's totally acceptable for the United States. It's, you know, it's got the weird feeling or whatever. I. The other than my brother, my father, this man I kiss on the lips. I kiss him every time I see him because he, I. We got some simpatico thing. Maybe it's. Maybe it's something, you know, from a past life or whatever, but I just. He's a good, good man with a good, good heart. And I respect him more than I can say and enjoy my time when I get to see him and spend time together. So his name is Martin Root. I'm going to read a little bit about him and then we're going to dig into it. But I am so grateful and feel this depth of gratitude in this moment. For today, for this moment, for this breath, and for the opportunity to spend some time in conversation with a dear friend. That is also something that will help other, or at least if it doesn't help other people, help you guys. Hopefully it'll be entertaining for you at a minimum. But selfishly, this is just time I'm going to enjoy. Martin Root is an international speaker and management consultant. As president of Livelihood, a management consulting firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he explores the deeper meaning of work and its contribution to society. The company's areas of service include strategic vision, corporate spirit, performance management, and creative leadership. Martin has worked with such organizations as the World Bank, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Southern California, Edison. Geez, I can't believe you work for a utility company. Buddy, I got to talk to you about that. Virgin Records, Esso Petroleum and London Life Insurance, helping them expand their outlook and position themselves for the future. He was the first Canadian. We're not going to hold that against him that he's a Canadian. By the way, he's the first Canadian to address the Corporate Leadership and Ethics Forum at Harvard Business School, returning for four consecutive years as keynote speaker. Martinez is the co author of the New York Times bestseller Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work with over a million copies sold. His newest book, Project Heaven on the Three simple questions that will help you change the world you easily, easily. He helps people discover what heaven on earth is for them and what simple, easy, concrete action they can take in the next 24 hours to begin making that real. He has presented workshops and given talks on Heaven on Earth in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Sweden. Sweden and Costa Rica. Beautiful country we've just gotten back from. And you can find more about him@project heavenonearth.com. we'll talk more about that in just a moment. But first, Martin. So happy, so jazzed, man, to have you on the show.

Welcome, Adam. Thank you. A kiss on the lips for.

Martin. Tell everybody. You know that a lot in that bio, in that introduction that I just read and all that. What's not written in the introduction that you would love for people to know about you?

Oh, what a great question. A great marriage of 46 years. I'm speaking to you now from our summer cottage in Prince Edward Island, Canada. I do printmaking. I love doing printmaking.

It's, by the way, you should never tell people that because the paparazzi now, the paparazzi are flying out there, you know, they're gonna hunt you. They're gonna hunt you down.

It's near British Columbia. No, it's not.

It's on the other side of Canada.

That's right. I do printmaking. What else? I love good food. I love opera. Yeah. Big opera fan, both my wife and I. She was an opera singer one time. What else? And I love comedy. I love. I've been studying comedy lately. Been watching a lot of the old masters and watching the structure, how it builds and the language and the precision of the language. George Carlin, God rest his soul, you know, he would do an HBO special every two years. And it took him two years of doing that show over and over and over and over and over until it was so finally honed. And then he would come to HBO and do the show, and it looked Effortless. But what you didn't realize is the amount of work that went into that. Yeah, I think that's a good.

Yeah, George. George was a true professional. I mean, man. And this is a guy. So I think the first time I heard George Carlin was maybe it was a year or so before the seven words you can't say he had a thing, right? Seven words you can't say on tv. He had an album, and I remember I had the vinyl at the album of it. But this. This friend of mine who I knew since grade school, his brother, older brother, had eight tracks of George Carlin. People going, what the heck is an eight track? Right? Some people going, I never. I remember what an eight track is.

I gotta tell you, my favorite joke of his was he's in a supermarket, he gets his groceries and he goes to check out and it's all done, and he pays and everything. And the woman says that. The cashier says to him, have a nice day. And he says, I'm sorry, I've got other plans.

The hippie dippy weatherman.

The hippie dippy weatherman.

You're gonna have widely scattered daylight followed by night.

Didn't he do the sports figures, too? Absolutely. Talked about nothing.

Totally.

We got to get in there, like, you know, we get the teamwork and then more effort. Yeah, right. All right. So now people know who I am.

Well, you. So one of the things. I met Martin maybe five, six years ago or something, right? We had DLC event. And. And here's this guy, and I'm saying, he gets up on stage and I'm wondering, like, you look like you were stammering or something. Like you didn't know what you were going to do or what you were going to say. And we hadn't met yet, and then all of a sudden you open your mouth. And I found myself needing like 10 minutes later to go to the bathroom because I'm sweating profusely and I need to go. I literally. I've been laughing so hard that it's caused this reaction where I literally just got to go to John, and I'm going, this is like. I hadn't laughed this hard since I was sitting next to my parents in the Catskill Mountains when I'm like 8 years old and I forget the guy. I think it was Buddy Hacket was performing My Heroes. And, man, if you ever talk about George Carlin. So this is a sloppier version and a more vulgar version you can imagine. Like, George was pretty vulgar, right? Or I don't even like the word vulgar. He would curse a lot. I love cursing. And so George would curse a lot. But, man, Buddy Hackett was dirty.

I didn't know that. Oh, everything I've seen of his, I mean, I saw a show he did in Vegas, and his timing, it's just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

You remember he would do this thing with the Filipino where it was. So he'd replace all the P's with F's and the F with P's that you could do this for 10 minutes. So it wasn't a Filipino. It was a Pilafino. And everything. Everything was a P was an F and an F was a P. It's like the timing. Yeah. And, you know, none of that. Just so anybody that's ever been in, you know, show business or the performing arts or as a speaker, any of these kind of things, it's so practiced. Everything is so much more practiced. And. And I think the. You tell me because you're. You're a consummate performer. The best of all is when it's so practiced that it looks as though you're doing it for the first time in the moment, like, impromptu. Right.

The two guys who I love, Martin Short, which is like, totally. He's making up in the moment, and Robin Williams. Robin Williams totally made up in the moment. And they both were not made up in the moment, and they may have made some stuff of the moment, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Improv. And so it's interesting because we'll find our way into some of the topics that our community is used to from this show, which is pivoting and the change and art and science of change, of managing and utilizing change. And one of the aspects of that that we've honed in on in the last year has been this concept of resilience. And I definitely want to talk to you about that today about resilience, because both from a leadership standpoint and what it means for companies to be resilient, for people to model resilience in the company so that the culture, at least this is our theory, is that today, in the disruptive environment we're in, which is not going to get any less disruptive, in my humble opinion, that we've got to be more resilient, and that that on a cultural level, it's important that we are cultivating resilience, that an aspect of that is this idea of being able to utilize and improvise, because that's a form of innovation, that when we can improvise in situations that are Otherwise, you know, could. Could really take us out or take us into a fear place or what have you. So you yourself are incredibly funny guy. Is it always planned? Is it always. Do you. How much improvisation is it for you?

When I do the stuff at TLC on the stage, that's all, you know, practiced. And I. It's a lot of work for me to do that. But when I'm doing, when I'm just fooling around with you and the people at tlc, that's just spur of the moment. And it comes as an interesting background. When I grew up, Yiddish is my. My native language and I learned English on the streets and from Canada, you know, I went to Hebrew school, French in school, Latin. And so I hear, I hear sound differently, I think, than most normal people. And I can hear the discrepancy or the unresonance in sound. So that's where a lot of my comedy comes from.

Well, that's because you're deaf.

Beethoven and I both.

What? Yeah. Huh.

Your resilience thing, I think, is very important. You know, we were in Britain recently and Brexit, you can't believe what it's doing to people. It's really.

What a shit show, huh? I mean, like the British. I always thought the British were really smart. I went to school there for a while. I thought, geez, they have it on us. They've always had it on us. And then it just did a little bit more refined, a little, you know, more clear, clear thinking. It's like, what the f. Have they been thinking for the last few years? Somebody, a lot of people really asleep at the wheel in Great Britain, I'm sorry to say.

Yeah, I think, I think David Cameron thought he would just have this little referendum and that would be it. It would put the issue of Brexit to sleep. And it didn't. But the point I wanted to make about resilience there is, as I asked people over, what do you think about Brexit? What about Brexit? Brexit, Brexit. Consistently, the language was, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And a week or two ago I was reading the Guardian from London online and the amount of people going to therapy has skyrocketed. They were talking about one of the benefits of Brexit is that industry has skyrocketed. So it's tough to do that resilience in an instable culture, whether it's in Britain now or Macron's, France or the US for me now. So What. What causes us to have that resilience? Well, one thing for me is this is. I've been doing this for a year. I take Sabbath off, Sometimes I go to synagogue, sometimes I don't. But generally, no computer, no phone, just stop. And it's very powerful. It's very powerful. I also go on vacation a lot. I love the resilience that comes from just being quiet, meditating. And I love the resilience that comes from. I spoke at the beginning of this interview about the printmaking. I do a form of printmaking called monotype. You only have one print, and you don't really know what's going to happen, what it will look like until it comes out of the press. So that explosion in creativity in another domain, not management consulting or the regular work that I do, that's another form of resilience for me, because I feel when I go into that room, Adam, that I can explode. I'm so excited about just being there. So to not be overwhelmed by the current condition for me is what the essence of resilience is. And so two ways for me is to break, to take a day off, you know, religiously, pun intended, and to investigate other and engage in other forms of creativity that allow this spirit of mine, the soul of mine, to just, you know, explode out. I tell my wife that when I go into the print shop, I literally feel like I'm going to explode. I'm so excited to be there. So, yeah, that's resilience for me.

Thank you for clearing something up, too, Martin, which is that when you've talked about monotype before, I always thought it just meant you were typing the same letter over and over again. Maybe a word like, you know, it's like, jj, you know, so. Thank you. Yeah. The resilience. A resilience day. So that, you know, just got it clear in my own head, that's what my parents were doing on those Fridays. That was their resilience day. It was their day to catch their breath. And of course, they had it easier back then. You know, some things were difficult, more difficult before technology, before the advance of our communications technology. And some things were just so much easier to be able or to not be reachable.

Well, to stop.

Yeah. You left the house back then, you remember? We all remember this. Some of us remember this. You leave the house, that was it. The tether was cut. You know, the umbilical cord to the phone. And that form of communicate, like, how are you gonna reach somebody? There's no cell phone back then. There's no beeper. So you're out of the house. As in, you're. Yeah, smoke signals. I don't know. Like, the way my mom would get to us when we're out of the house, like. Like growing up in New York was. She'd open up the window, the apartment building, you know, like, that's how kids got called back to the nest.

That's right. Me too. Same thing. No matter where you were, you heard that voice, didn't you?

Somebody's mother.

You could be in Florida.

Mother Scott Funk. That called this guy out by name in a long time. Yeah, it kind of a mixed bag of a relationship with this kid when I was growing up. But I think fondly of him now and his mom. And when he didn't answer, he was the kid who didn't answer his mother, you know, like the rest of us. No, the first time you ignore her, we're playing. We're playing ball. It's like, you're not coming upstairs. It's 5:30 for dinner, whatever, you know? But the second time, you knew if you didn't come up after the second one, it's like, somebody's coming down after your dad's coming out, or God forbid, your mother comes down. You're really. You're really. I mean, forget it. His mother would come down and literally drag this kid off. This poor kid. Like, I feel bad now that I think of it, because he was a bit of a bully, but no wonder. His mother would come down and drag him by his hair.

You should look him up on Facebook.

I know. I got to do it. Scott Funk. Holy smokes. He's going to be in this podcast. Be like, what the heck? I haven't spoken to this guy in 40 years. Meanwhile. All right, Resilience. So your recipe, Martin, give us the recipe for resilience for you. If you can put it into a couple of steps.

Well, to stop. Literally to stop. And what I call the addiction, the addiction to the phone, the computer, all that, to engage in a creative pursuit that allows your soul to come out in a way that you don't normally do through work. And I think resilience also comes to the fore, stronger when you've discovered your purpose in life. Vishalakhani used a phrase about my work. Why were you born? Which I really loved. So the discovery of why you're here and the doing of that gives you that energy. People say to me, you know, are you retired? And I say, retired? What would I do if I retired? I would just do what I'm doing now doesn't mean it's because I get energy from it. So I. Those and, you know, good friends, good community. Those are, I'd say, the aspects of the recipe for me.

Yeah. Let's talk about your work in the world. Because this, to me is where our lives have intersected on a purposeful, or at least some. Something that's divinely guided. Godded.

I got it.

Guided. But the truth is it's guided for us. You feel the same way, right? I do have any objection to that word. So, yeah, divinely guided. Ooh, that's a good one. I'm going to take that one away.

I like that.

Yeah. So tell us, share about the work that you're doing in the world.

Well, the work. I'll give you the three major stages of my life. The first major piece that I did was about vision. I was always interested in what is your vision for the kind of life and work and world that you want. Why aren't you doing that? Because I think that's very important. And what will it take for you to engage in that? So I spent a lot of years leading personal development workshops.

Cover those three again, because I know there are a lot of folks take notes on these things. So if you don't mind, repeat.

The vision. Sorry.

The three steps you just laid out.

I forgot what I was saying. I was so far ahead of myself. Oh, you were.

Rewind the tape, Martin. Either that or we'll have the tape.

We'll have to rewind themselves. Just cut me out of this at the beginning. Oh, yes. So I was interested in vision. Thank you. What is your vision? Why aren't you doing your vision? What's the stuff in the way? And what would it take for you to engage in your vision? And the same applies to your purpose, actually. Purpose comes first. Purpose answers the question why? Vision answers the question what? So why is always the primary question. And then vision. So that went on for years and years, as you said. I spoke at Harvard. I had major corporate clients in the US And Canada, Southern California, Edison, Virgin Records, Sony Pictures. And then I went into a funk and I didn't know why. I just come back from speaking in Hong Kong on vision. And long story short, I discovered that what was missing in my life was the spiritual aspect. And I wanted to have my work be about that. But everybody said, no, no, you can't do that. You're going to lose your credibility. People think you're proselytizing. None of that was true for me. I mean, I just wanted to discover how do you bring your spirit, your soul, into your work? And so I spent a good 20, 25 years opening that conversation. I was, as far as I know, the first person to use the phrase spirituality in the workplace. No one was using that. There was one woman who was saying spirit in the workplace. So I helped begin a center for spirituality in the workplace at the Soviet Business School at University of St. Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, helped catalyze conferences all over the world. So I got that conversation going, along with other people as well, but speaking about my life now. And then about 20, 30 years ago, I was going to do a speech on spirituality and work, and I said, wait, if every business in the world is spiritual, is that what you want? And I said, no, if we can transform business, because business is the temporal power in the world today. If we can transform business, we can transform the world. And then, Adam, this thought popped into my mind. Oh, you mean heaven on earth. And I said, holy cow, you can't say that. You can't say heaven on earth. And then I thought, well, why not? I can talk to you about the hells on earth, can I? We began in this conversation talking about them. Why can't we talk about heaven on earth? Not in a way that I'm going to lay it on you or proselytize it, but rather in a way that evokes it from you. And so, as you said earlier, you know, this is my newest book. Can you see that? Project Heaven on Earth, the three simple questions on Amazon. The three simple questions that will help you change the world easily. And how I discovered those questions is by going around to people and saying, asking, what's heaven on earth for you? What's heaven on earth for you? What's heaven on earth? Because I didn't have an answer, I really wanted to learn. And so I distilled what I'd learned down into three questions. And if you're willing, I think I asked you guys this, you and your wife and daughter, but it bears repeating on the podcast. Can we. Can I ask you the three questions, please? Recall a time.

Process me right now.

You got it. Recall a time when you experienced heaven on earth. What was going on?

First thing that came to mind was when the kids are born. Each time. Each time that baby. The baby was born was heaven on earth for me.

Very clear. Second question. Imagine you have a magic wand, and with this magic wand, you can have heaven on earth. What's heaven on earth for you?

This moment, I'm in peace in My body, my mind, my heart, my soul. I'm enjoying exactly what I'm doing. I know I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing, and I'm sharing what I'm doing with somebody right this moment that with not just you, Martin, but the people who are presently watching this, which is in the future. This is like a back to the future moment because people are watching this. 50 years like, like that 50 years have gone by and people are watching this right now or it's five months later. But either way, it's the same thing as though it's happening in this moment. They're watching this, listening to this, as though it's happening in this moment. And that means I'm in relationship, you're in relationship with those folks, people we may never ever meet. That to me is heaven on earth. Because what else are we here to do but share some piece of what it is that we've learned in our life experience that might assist other people in their life experience?

Very clear, Adam. And then the third question. What simple, easy, concrete step will you take in the next 24 hours to have more of that?

I come back to gratitude. Because the gratitude for the moment, that could pretty much make a good case. You know, I was a lawyer for 18 years, so I can make it. I can make a good case out of a bad case. So that's my, my dirty little secret, you know. But the truth is, if you can make a good case for loving your life in this moment, for loving life, for being a lover of life in this moment, man, your life is going to love you back in a big way. Make a good case for it. You can make a shitty case for it very easily. I can make a shitty case where it looks like it's cloudy out, foggy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I could a zillion things that come to mind if I want to make that case. That's not the case I want to make.

Clear. So let's go through the three questions because I want you to understand the structure and your listeners. Question one. Recall a time. By the way, these questions are on project heavenonarth.com project heavenonearth.com recall a time when you experienced heaven on earth. Now I want to talk about what you did. You answered the question when your children were born. What you did not do, Adam, and what no one does is say, is ask, what do you mean by heaven on earth? Nobody says that. Why? Because my assertion is that there's a place in you that already knows what Heaven on earth is. And when the question is asked, you go there and you go, well, obviously time I experience heaven on earth when each of my children were born. And people do that. They go right to it. It's astounding to me how they know. The second question, here's a magic wand, and with it you can have heaven on earth. The purpose of the magic wand is remove the necessity of how you're going to do it. If you don't have to know how, you can go deeper into the what which you did. This, this is heaven on earth. Other people have said, you know, no more hunger, no more war. Making a relationship with my wife or husband or children that haven't been working, that's heaven on earth. Having that relationship really work my country working, living a value in the world. So I'll get that in a second in terms of how I want to tie the book back to this. And then the third question, what simple, easy, concrete steps will you take in the next 24 hours? What you said is to be grateful. And it's interesting, the answers that people come up with. They know what it will take to create heaven on earth by you being grateful. And in your case, saying, that is my contribution to heaven on earth. Boom, you are in. You are helping co create heaven on earth. So those are the three questions that have been distilled out of speaking to, I don't know, thousands of people and asking, what's heaven on earth for you? For you, for you, for you. The book Project Heaven on Earth then goes into asking the three questions and then the 14 gateways that I've discovered. So there are patterns of answers. When you keep asking this question over and over and over again, whether heaven on earth is within you and having more of that out in the world, ending a suffering, making my country a heaven on earth nation, relationships being heaven on earth. And one of the other ones, a gateway is this here now, which is where you went to that. This here now is heaven on earth. Our belief that it's not makes it not. So how can we create heaven on earth in this right moment, right now? Easy, watch. Just. We're gonna just stop. We're gonna experience heaven on earth just like that. That's how present it is and available always.

Indeed.

Indeed. So the book is about doing that. And I want to. I want you. I want to do something with you. Tell me the name of the book.

Heaven on Earth project. Heaven on Earth. Yeah. I can't see it all because it's too close to the screen. You Got to back it up a little bit.

There you go.

I don't know.

I don't want you to read the tagline. Just the beginning.

The beginning says project Heaven on Earth.

There's another title, Project Heaven on Earth. It's the noun, which you said, and also the verb.

Yes. Beautiful. Did you. Was that by design, or did you just notice that afterward?

It was by design, but not my idea, my dear friend.

All right. Not your idea. Good.

No, no, no. A friend of mine, Richard Porter, I was going to call it the Heaven on Earth Project, and he said. No, no, no. Project Heaven on Earth. Oh, my God, Richard. Brilliant.

To project it. Yeah. We are these projectors. Everything we're doing is a projection, and it's projecting into the space for other people to see. So we're constantly modeling things in the world for our kids, for our friends, colleagues, everybody, for ourselves.

Yeah. The verb project is a state of being. We're projecting Heaven on Earth. The noun project, Project heaven, or is about doing so. We're being and doing so that we can have more heaven on Earth.

And is it a Canadian thing? I mean, would it be it. Would it still be project, or would it be project? I know we have this whole thing with. I could tell a Canadian really fast. You know, it's like they say process. I know they're American. They say process, I know they're Canadian.

So I'm just curious.

Is it project or is it project?

You know what? I go back and forth between the two countries so often, I have no idea which.

You're just dazed and confused. And that is for you. You look for me.

Yeah.

Perpetual dazed and confused.

The days of our lives that we call it. Oh, my God.

Martin. So take us back to maybe a time in your life where you experienced the challenge. The proverbial pivot, as it's been, is most closely associated with times of disruption with a business. In a business context, a pivot is usually a business model or thing that didn't work. And then people make a change. Quick right turn, quick left turn, whatever it is, they change something. So folks don't dig change in our research on that in the same way that you've done with a lot of conversations, people resist it, they defend against it, they hide from it. Change is scary. So tell us maybe about a time when either the change was the result of your own making, you designed the change because you realized some things weren't working, or the change was sudden and came upon you. Maybe there have been signs of it and you ignored those signs. Or what have you. But, but the universe said, hey, time for a change. And now you have to deal with, deal with it all.

There are two major ones that come to mind when you ask the question. One was when I, early in my management consulting and speaking career, I heard about this word vision. Now this is Canada in the early 80s, right? And I come back from California and I spoke to some colleagues. I want to do this, some work on vision. Vision? Are you nuts? That's California talk that, you know, you must be smoking dope to talk about vision. I mean, now you're talking about vision. Nothing like Martin.

And you must have said to them, look, I grow, I grow dope. I don't smoke it though.

Right, right.

And even to this day, right, Aren't you a major grower? You just don't. But you don't partake, right? You don't inhale.

I have my standards. Right now you may be like, oh, so. So I said, I want to do this work on vision. And all of them said, you can't do it. So I like, oh. And I'd also spoken at that time to one of them, not one of the major developer in Toronto, shopping centers, condos, apartment buildings. And he also said, vision is crazy, won't work. And in both cases, what I did was their, no, you can't do it was what I used as fuel to go forward. So the pivot point for me was to the strong negation of what I wanted to do, had me go deep inside, look at it, and go, no, that's not my truth. It had me discover more of my truth. And that was a pivot point. The other pivot point was I'd come.

Back from, meaning somebody telling you no. So what you mean somebody said, you can't do this or wouldn't be smart. Bad idea.

Exactly. And so in those points in your life, I'm speaking to the listener now. You got to look inside and see, okay, strong no in the world, or even a weak no. There's non agreement. What's your truth then operate from that truth. That's the test, I think. And that's the, that's the pivot point. To use your language. I mean, that's a great way to say it. The other one was when I started doing work on spirituality and work, I had this profound epiphany experience at a retreat center. And I came back and I said I wanted to talk about spirituality and work. And again, everybody said, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. You're going to Lose your reputation, people will think you're proselytizing a religious point of view, which wasn't true for me. I just wanted, I wanted to explore the notion of spirituality. And that time I did shut down because it was so strong externally. I went to California and I spoke with Jack Canfield a bunch amongst some other friends down there, all of whom said go for it. And that was a turning point as well because I realized that my issue was I was afraid of what you were going to think were I to bring up this new topic of spirituality and work. And once I saw that it was game over. I was off.

Yeah, there's this, there's an idea that, well, let's say disruption happens. Nothing stays. You can call, we're calling it disruption, it's a word for these days. But, but the truth is it's really just talking about good old fashioned change. The way seasons change, everything changes. It's the law of manifestation. In the universe. We don't see new things happen unless something changes. Things are born and they die. And that's the, that's the evolutionary process.

So.

But how is it that you are, are you waiting for change? So to me, this is a question that I ask myself and I ask business leaders all the time. Are you waiting for change or are you creating change? As in, is it waiting for disruption to occur or is it self disruption? And it sounds to me like in the, in the situation you're describing that you were about creating a self, a disruption by design, that you were going to do something different. And then when you went to the, to the, to the market, so to speak, to ask their opinion, the market said no, not a good idea. And this is where I think for a lot of people listening to this now, this is, this is an area of growth. Because if you want to do something or you have an idea, you've got some, you know, there's a brainchild, it's happened. And you ask some people, a lot of people will tell you, and the conventional wisdom may be not to do it. It's not a good idea, it's not good timing and it's not, I don't think we are, I'm not saying, I don't think you're saying to ignore feedback from wise people about whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. But ultimately, and this is the question I have for you is you had to go somewhere else to be able to get a clear yes, to go forward with that. And I want to understand a little bit better because yeah, you spoke to some people, they said no. Then you speak to people like Jack and others who, little more maybe open minded and that kind of thing. And they go, yeah, you should go for it, you know, especially if, you know, if you're getting a strong internal. Yes, but yeah. So what was it that helped you to start to speak about, let's say, spirituality in the workplace? When the conventional wisdom was to say no to that?

I knew it was right for me and I knew it was right for the world. Not in a impositional way, but I wanted to bring the possibility of that conversation up for people because I saw how shut down the spirit and the soul had become. You can't talk about those issues in the workplace. But if we go back 20, 30 years, you couldn't talk about, I'm gay, I'm black, I'm a woman, I'm an alcoholic, I'm a drug abuser, oh no, you can't talk about that. You can't talk about. But we found ways to talk about those issues that were beneficial to me, the individual, and to us, the enterprise. This was the same thing. You can't talk about spirituality, you can't talk. But when I came in and began speaking about it in a way that was non impositional, it was just like, I'd like to talk about this if you don't want to, I'm fine. And people really saw that I really meant that. It was like the dam burst open. You mean we could talk about spirituality in work in a way that would be nourishing to my soul. Why can we only talk about spirituality, you know, around the dinner table or at places of worship, but not at work? Are we not spiritual beings? There we are. But in a way that would benefit us and the enterprise, that's what was new. And so once I saw that deeper truth, I was off in the sense that I listened to their counsel, as you said, I listened very deeply to their counsel. I listened to my wife's counsel. Sometimes she is very right and I'm very wrong. And okay, I give up my position. Sometimes I listen, no, that's not accurate for me. And then I go and do it. But I will listen because I don't pretend to know at all. And there are people who are wiser in many, many cases. So. And it was the same with heaven on earth. You know, you can't talk about heaven on earth. Why? Well, because it's, it's religious, it's, it's. You're going to impose some kind of Christian or some other kind of religious dogma. But that's coming from heaven on Earth. As proselytizing as I have the answer to what heaven on Earth is. And you don't. No, what this work does, what this book does, is evoke what's already in you. So even if I never see you again, which obviously not, but even if I never see you again, we've evoked the heaven on earth that's in you so that you can begin simply, easily and concretely within the next 24 hours. Like now, not just a good idea, but now, and begin the process of moving that forward. And when I see I should give you some examples of what I've seen in terms of what people have done, because metaphorically, Project Heaven on Earth is like a piece of software. You know, whenever you boot up a piece of software, all these new possibilities and opportunities open up that you've never realized, had never realized before. But then the program stops and it says, I can't continue without your content. So Project Heaven on Earth is like that. It opens up this possibility that you can actually experience and help co create heaven on Earth. So what have people done? Some examples. A woman in Hawaii, Susan Aleema Fryer. She grew little green micronutrient plants. I forgot what they're called. Well, what can I do? I can't do anything but heaven on earth. We helped her discover what heaven on earth is for her. And she now embeds that at the bottom of every email message that she sends out. Heaven on earth for me. Isn't she answered? And then she says, what's heaven on earth for you? Simple. A police officer who's written a 28 page manual, Heaven on Earth for law enforcement. A real estate woman in Canada who, when I talk to her about sufferings in the world, I'll tell you what the suffering is. Homelessness. And she, I mean, she was mad. Okay, well, what can we do about that? Well, you know, it's homelessness. It's impossible. It's fine, fine, fine. What's heaven on earth for?

Homelessness.

Oh, a home for everyone. Good. What are you going to do about it? She goes back to her agency, sits down small agency, 10 agents, and says, we are going to create a home for everyone.

How?

Simply I'm asking you that when you sell a home or a commercial office, you commit to having $100, that's all taken off your commission and we'll stick it into a pot. In the last five, six years, they've raised something like $250,000 they have a program called A Home for Everyone, in which they ask every year people in the community, individuals, associations, to submit proposals for what they would do with X amount of money. And then they fund that. It's so elegantly simple and the one I just adore. There was a woman. I was on a webinar about heaven on Earth, and we're talking about the sufferings in the world. Is there a suffering that's bothering you? Yes. Violence against women. I've been to the police, I've been to the government.

Nothing.

What would you do? And I said, well, Susan, I don't know your financial position. You could donate $5,000. You can donate a penny. What difference would a penny make? One of the other women on the call said, wait a minute. What if everybody in your community donated a penny a day to help end violence against women? She went, oh, my God. She and a group of women put together a program called Making Change in which they handed out little Mason jars with a picture of a woman, half her face beaten up, bruised, half her face bright alive with the light coming out. They asked people to commit to a penny a day or more for an entire year. They raised $2,500. They took that to the government of Canada, who gave them $100,000 for each of the subsequent three years, all based on a penny a day. Well, what difference does that make? You have no idea what difference your contribution can make. All the way up to a woman in Austria, Elizabeth. And I said, well, do you have a project? Yes. What? Austria is a heaven on earth nation. I went, what? Why do you say that? Well, because it's simple. And she taught me, Adam, that I don't know what simple is for you. You have to discover what simple is for you. When you discover what the simple act that you can do to contribute to heaven on Earth is for you and begin doing that. This is the larger thing now. You're creating the new story of what it means to be a human and what it means to be humanity. You're contributing to co creating heaven on Earth. That's the game that we're up to now. What other game would there be?

I can't think of a better game. I was listening to you in it earlier. You said that you were listening to your wife's cancel. And I thought to myself, how interesting, because it sounded like cancel. I know you were saying counsel, but it said cancel. And I thought, that's brilliant. I was listening to my wife's cancel, yes. And oftentimes, even wiser, we Will listen to other people's cancel and their counsel.

For sure. So we got two in this divinely guided and my wife's cancel and listen.

To their counsel and their cancel. Yeah, for sure. So the paradigm is what I'm focusing on because I think where, where we look at the status quo, where we look at things that are going on that we have the, the inclination to complain about, or the places where we feel like we're powerless and that life or situations are what they are kind of thing. And I hate the expression, just personal pet peeve of mine. But I hate this expression. It is what it is. If I hear one more and I could drop an F bomb now and I just won't, but yes persons say it is what it is. It drives me nuts because it is such a resignation statement. It's not. It is what it is. It is what we say it is. It is what we the what we accept it is. So I'm not. To me that self disruption of the status quo is part of what we're talking about here because embedded in every one of those heaven on earth accounts which are so beautiful, I mean the work you're doing and the ripple effect of it is profound. Are people that are either not of their own accord, not willing to accept the status quo, that it's hell on earth.

Correct.

And instead create heaven on earth in a moment through a shift that you facilitate or that the book and the work facilitates, but they're, they're also, they're disrupting through, through guidance through other people, helping them to disrupt that status quo. Because sometimes we're just the ones in our own way. I mean, that's the truth. I mean anybody listening is watching this where we're always the one in our way. If that's the case, anything. It's not. If in a moment where we don't experience or feel heaven on earth or in the language that, where we dovetail with you, where we don't love our lives in that moment, which to me, if you said to me what is heaven on earth? Heaven on earth is I love my life no matter what in this moment, that's it does it regardless. And in a moment when I don't love my life no matter what, in a moment where I don't experience heaven on earth, it's of my own making.

We could end the interview here. Adam, that's for me so profound. The fundamental misbelief about heaven on earth is it is not heaven on earth. It has never been heaven on earth. And it can Never be. You know, we were expelled from the Garden of Eden and that's it. It's over. We can't go back in. Which, by the way, a whole section of my book about that. That's not accurate. Yes. So, I mean, would God want us to live in Hells on Earth? We've made this. We viewed it as Hells on Earth. We can shift it. You can shift it, and we can shift it. And we are shifting it.

So, Martin, what the three questions again, for folks that were driving or riding, walking on the treadmill or whatever they were doing and want to capture for themselves in this moment, doing neurosurgery. They were doing somebody's heart open on the table.

This is more important than that.

Now, you know what they just finished? They sewed them up quick, they sewed them up fast. They could get those gloves off and write this down. Now give us the three questions for people again.

First of all, the Questions are on projectheavenonearth.com you can sign up.

Listen, listen.

We'll do that later.

It's all in the show notes. All right. Promotional podcasts here.

Thank you. Recall a time when you experienced heaven on Earth.

Yes.

What was going on? Imagine you have a magic wand, and with it, you can have heaven on Earth. What is heaven on earth for you? And the third, what simple, easy, concrete step or steps will you take in the next 24 hours to either move that forward or make that real by answering those three questions? You're in. And what I would suggest is ask those around you the three questions as well. It's a lovely thing to do. Our friend Ray Blanchard from TLC asked his board those questions. He said they were just bawling their eyes out. It was so, so moving. Yeah. And don't impose. Just a couple of things. Don't impose your answer. So if somebody says, I remember I did a webinar workshop once, and a woman stood up and said, well, heaven on earth is the end of hunger. Obviously. No hunger. Heaven on Earth. Next guy comes up, stands up and says, what's about love? You have love in the world, you have heaven on earth. And then they start getting into it. No, it's about ending hunger. No, it's about. I went, stop. We got to make her right. Empower her for the end of hunger. We got to make him right. Empower him for it's about love. So listen deeply for what their answers are and see if you can, in any way, support them to begin making that real in the world.

Absolutely. I mean, at the End of day, that's. This is another one of those cliches. At the end of the day, right? At the end of the day, the bottom line, at the end of the.

Day, even at the middle of the.

Day, literally, literally, the end of days for us is. Is when we take our last breath on Earth and on Earth. Because I don't believe in the end of anything. I think it's an eternal cycle. So for what it's worth, for me anyway, at the end of days, we. We won't be thinking about anything other than whether we experience heaven on earth or not. That will be the resonance of our life in a. It'll be a blink. They look back on it. I mean, I say that because while I've not had the, quote, near death experience, I've seen how 10 years goes by in a blank. 20 years, 30 years, I mean, 54 years in a blink. So it's an instant time and space just collapse. So we'll get to the end of our days at some point and we'll have that blink moment where we go, yeah, it was just that fast. And the belief I have is that we'll lie there, sit there, I'll be surfing so, you know, on my board in a great wave, and in that moment it'll. It'll either be that I did experience heaven on earth, that that was part of what I feel in the moment, is I had heaven on earth moments than hell on earth moments. And I think that's, if that's our only goal, is to just create a life that has more heaven on earth moments than hell on earth moments. We've done a good job with this particular life, I think.

Amen. Amen. A couple of years ago, I had this exercise I did for a year every day in which I said I have to discover and experience at least a minimum of three heaven on earth experience experiences every day. And it forces you to look for them. And it's an amazing exercise. So if we, as you said, we can look for the hells on Earth. You know, I had a fight with blah, blah, blah today. I went into the gas station today, didn't work. Blah, blah, blah. I can tell you the hells on Earth. Okay, good. What about the heaven on earth moments? That is so special. So special. You know, I spoke to a friend here who's a minister. Lutheran, I think. Yeah, Lutheran pastor. And he works with the dead and. Dead and dying. Not dead and dying, sorry. With dying patients. So profound. What's important for them? You know, the things that they Regret. I didn't complete with this person. I didn't complete with that person. Love. He. To be with him is such a privilege, Adam, because you hear what's important, really important to people on their deathbeds or, and, or those people who've had near death experiences and come back. Dr. Evan Alexander wrote the book, you know, Proof of Heaven. He didn't believe in that, but man, he does now. The near death experience, people, they get it about heaven on earth, they. They deeply get it.

Indeed. Yeah. Well, winding this show down in this way is just the features feels as perfect, if not more perfect, than any other transition for me. Speaking about transition.

Thank you.

And that is to ask you a question, Martin. I ask all of our guests, which is, did you wake up today, Martin?

I did, yeah.

And was that. It's funny because, hey, got to think about it for a second.

No, I actually had a lovely enlightenment experience this morning. When I woke up. It was great. Yeah.

So you're awake.

Yes.

Good. When you went to sleep last night, was it guaranteed, A lawyer in me now, was it guaranteed that you would wake up in the morning?

I never asked that question. I've never thought about it, no.

Yeah, it's just, it's an observation. So was it guaranteed? No, no, it wasn't for me either. And I haven't met anybody yet who could prove to me that it was guaranteed. They wake up in the morning. So it is a. It's a lot of things. You could put it into a lot of. Make a lot of conclusions from that. The conclusion I draw is that the. Our waking is a blessing because it wasn't a guarantee. And it, if you question that at all, you could think of a truth, of a reality, which is that as you were waking and taking your first waking breath this morning, there were people taking their last breath, even in this moment, as you said right here in this moment. Now, as we're breathing, taking our. Our breath, there are people receiving their last breath in this moment. So it to me makes the moment holy, every one of them. And tomorrow. So this is my hope and it's my intention. And it's also a prayer that, Martin, you get to wake up again tomorrow in your family and I get to wake up in my family and that everybody who's watching this, listening to this, that you all get to wake up, wake up in all the truest sense of that word, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and that you wake up and in that moment of waking, realizing as you're taking your first conscious breath of the day that there are people who are taking their last breath. And it does make that moment a heaven on earth moment. To use this language, I think it's so appropriate that that is a heaven on earth moment from the very start. And feeling grateful for that isn't difficult. That won't be a stretch to feel grateful for experiencing heaven on earth from the moment that you open your eyes to start the day. And then if you want to include in that ritual that. That morning moment, which we'll call a waking ritual, the opportunity to say out loud these words, I love my life. I love my life. What are the words, Martin?

I love my life. I love my life.

Yes, that's a nice way to begin a heaven on earth day.

Amen.

Martin, thank you so much. What a true honor to have you on the show. Really enjoyed our conversation, Adam.

I think we've just taken our relationship again, deeper every time we're together. For me, my experience is we go deeper and deeper and more joy and more humor. So I kiss you on the lips again.

I accept it. All right, everybody, ciao for now. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Of course. Let us know what you thought about this episode. The feedback is so important for us and we get to learn and grow from it. You can go to AdamMarkel.com podcast Leave a Comment those are a great place to share your thoughts. You go to itunes. The reviews are helpful. We love people to out find find the show and learn more. You can subscribe of course, there as well as on the website and the Facebook group, which is the start. My Pivot community on Facebook is growing with the help of all of you. It'll continue to grow. I'll just say ciao for now. Bye bye. Thanks again, Martin.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We, 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@pivotfb.com.

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