Infusing Mindfulness: How To Forgive Your Failures And Manage Them Towards Success

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Barkel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change.

Proof wow. You are in for a treat yet again. Today on the Change Group podcast, I have Eric Holzapple, who has more than 40 years of business experience, 30 of which is in yoga and meditation, and has taught business at Colorado State University for 20 plus years. He's found ways to infuse mindfulness and meditation into a successful business career. He's also received Entrepreneur of the Year awards from Biz west magazine and Colorado State University. My talk with him today is spectacular, I have to say, because we cover some really controversial and vital topics. I think you'll enjoy it thoroughly. I think it's something that you're going to want to share with others. So buckle up, settle in, and enjoy. All right, Eric, so having just heard your own bio, that's always an interesting thing, at least for me. When I hear people tell, you know, read what, what's we've created for them to read. You know, talk about us, talk about me, all that kind of stuff always, thank God. It's, it's so. It feels a little artificial. I don't know, maybe you don't feel that way, but my question to you to start with is, what's not in that bio? What's not in a standard introduction of you that you would love for people to know about you right out of the gate?

Well, I don't know if I'd love for him to know, but what's not in the bio? I mean, what I want them to know is in the bio. What, what they may help them to know is that the bio is the highlights and it's the low lights that probably define me and then how I use mindfulness and other tools to take me from low lights to what I call a stick in the landing, more or less. Not in an egotistical sense, but in, you know, the bio is, you know, highlights and highlighting a long, prosperous career. But it was quite a journey, Adam, let me tell you, quite a journey.

You know, you're making this really easy for me because I love, I love how you took exception, I suppose, to the, to the framing of that question. So my question back to you is, why do you think we don't or why don't you include some element of the lowlights then if it's something that would serve the audience or serve others to hear about.

Well, I do. In my book, you know, it's longer, but you get, you know, a few words and who wants to listen to somebody? That's low, you know, I guess. But.

But it is.

The. The interesting part is how you turn things and how you transform, because any business person will tell you it's how you manage failure. It's not. It's not the peaks, it's how you manage failure and how you, you know, kept going and turned it and all those kind of things. I mean, failing is an art.

Well, again, I. I'm just. I'm not so much taken. Taken, you know, a. A contrary approach to what you're saying. I'm. I'm actually taking this in for myself because it's. It's a good question. To start with it. We're used to people starting with their highlight reel or starting with all accomplishments, their accolades, you know, the awards and whatever other things they think that people would want to know.

Yeah.

And all that, you know, does. Does it. Does it have to be that the bio becomes three minutes long simply because you want to describe the fact that you crashed and burned a business 10 years ago?

I don't know. It is a good question. It. And I don't know. I guess I don't really know the answer other than that's the way that bios are written, and that's the way I wrote mine, and it gets me invited on podcasts, you know, so I love it.

I think this is a call to action for you, for me, for anybody listening. Maybe we. We just.

And it's why I love a longer format like this, that we get to explore, you know, what. What things made a difference for you and what might make a difference for somebody listening, because, you know, someone that it's on the top of the mountain somewhere that's hitting on all cylinders of life, which, you know, is rare, is probably not listening to the podcast. I don't know. It's. People that are looking for a way to go to the next level mostly. Probably.

Yeah. I mean, I think we go through stretches. It maybe it's not unlike being that the way on a. On a highway we drive. We drive all the time, you know. You know, there's different speed limits in it, different sections. You go slower because you're required to go slower. And then there are other places where you're. You're encouraged to go faster and where you're supposed to go faster and all that good Stuff, So I feel like that's, that's an element of life anyway. Nobody's hitting on all cylinders at all times. I've never met anybody like that. And, and even what all cylinders means can mean different things to people because it could be that you're hitting on all cylinders financially, but your relationships or your health or something else is, is not. So I think we, I think just. This is a podcast about change. It's called Change Proof. It's based on my book, Change Proof. Leveraging the power of uncertainty to build long term resilience is ultimately our, our research in the world on this topic really brings to life the idea that we become more resilient when we're able to bounce forward, when we're able to utilize the adversity and the uncertainties in our lives to grow. Which I know is very compatible with your, your messages and your content, which.

Is why we're certainly is. We're having a conversation all about it. All about it, Adam.

So I want to take, I want you to take us to one point in time since what you said I thought made so much sense. And I resonate with it where you say, you know, success is about how you manage failure. I mean that's, that's a very. Maybe, maybe got a little bit of the wording inaccurate there, but that's what the through line was for me. What's a moment in time in your, in your life doesn't have to be recent, could be in the past, could be recent where you've had to manage failure. I'd love to start that in that pivot point, if you will.

Well, would it be fair for me to share a time when I was having business success and personal failure?

I mean, honestly, that'd be terrific. It could be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, think of a time, you know, and you with something comment made a minute ago made me think of it was, you know, in the early 2000s, I had three kids. I was, I, I always thought I was hitting on all cylinders. Had a dozen six I'm a real estate developer. Had a six. A dozen successful real estate developments. I was, you know, had worked through the university and was teaching real estate course university. I was coaching football and doing all those things. We, I took a trip, my family to Australia thought I was hitting on all the cylinders. And then fast forward five years and we're in the recession of 07 08. And personally, you know, my oldest son started struggling with some substance issues. My youngest son was suffering with depression. My daughter was saying, you know, Go in her room and say, I'm getting straight A's. Leave me alone. My wife and I went to marriage counseling, and on the other end, you know, I was in the recession of 08, so it was like, wow. And what I did at that time, I. I tried to change my boys, I tried to change my daughter, I tried to change my wife, and none of it worked. And what I did, out of either desperation or inspiration, was turned around and said, maybe it's time to work on you. You know, no one else is listening. So I really went to work on myself. I gave up drinking, which was overdue. My son's, you know, issues were hereditary. I had, I learned to manage them, but it was definitely an issue. And I went to work deep on my mindfulness practice. I found blind spots that I had around anger, acceptance, intimacy. I went to work on those things. And magic was. As I got better and more mindful, others started to change. My family started to change. You know, and I'll fast forward. I had my 31st wedding anniversary last month. My wife and I are getting along better than ever. She didn't follow me around, but she found her own work. My oldest boy is going to graduate with his PhD in psychology. He coaches people and he's getting his PhD in psychology and is 13 years sober. My youngest son, who was a gamer, is now a game developer. He's come through our program, you know, and brought friends. It's awesome. My daughter's a yoga therapist and doing her work, and it is just amazing. We always think the other person needs to do this or that, but we don't control anybody else other than ourselves, and sometimes that's hard. So that was a moment for me. I'll never, I'll never forget. It's a moment lasted years, but it was a moment.

Yeah. You know, when you were sharing about that, because I also came through the 20078 global financial crisis, known in this country, in the United States anyway, as the, you know, the great, the Great Recession.

Yeah.

You know, from, from the Great depression of the 30s. This was the Great Recession. And, and, and for many people, it was a depression because there was so much loss in terms of wealth, in terms of opportunity, housing, you name it. We're. We're in a very interesting time. When this podcast is, is being recorded, when you and I are having this conversation, we are, we are once again at some form of precipice. You know, I won't, I'll leave the, the political stuff to the side in the margins for the moment, but just economically, you're an entrepreneur. You've been a business owner for many years, as have I. We've been through that last one. I remember the one that, that started in 2000 when the DOT com bubble burst and, and when the NASDAQ went upside down, seriously, again in 2005, and then the real estate market bubble burst in 2008. Really? And all that. So having come through those things, having resiliently ended up on the other side of those, as I know you have as well, is there anything that, that you can tell about what's, what's coming? And I'm not asking you, of course, to be a prognosticator. Nobody, nobody can do that, not even whatever pundits there are on tv, on CNBC or wherever. So what's your, what's your sense of the, of the headwinds ahead, the recession headwinds? What's your sense of the, of, of any of what is in store for folks?

Yeah, Randy, and I'll. I just don't know that it's possible for me to answer that and set the politics totally aside. What I would like to set aside is partisanship. But I would say none of the issues today, economically or socially, as far as poverty, homelessness, climate change, bother me. What bothers me and why I'm doing what I'm doing, the work that I do, is our inability to talk and get along and find compromise. All the issues are solvable. We have totally capable of solving every single issue that's out there. The economy isn't, isn't an issue other than stagnation and stalemates and arguments and those kind of things. We can get through this easily. Look what, when it gets bad enough. Well, look what happened in 08. Compare, you know, what we learned from the Great Depression. I studied economics. It's like from 08, what a job they did, you know, from taking us to the, from the edge of collapse. And the tools that they used to bring us back economically were amazing. And so what I, what I say is in mindfulness, we have a term called the middle way. You know, that we've lost our middle. And to me, business needs to be in the middle and business has a role in saying enough. In South Africa around the time of apartheid, they were on the verge international sanctions. The business community brought to their knees and the business community said, enough. Left, right, whatever move us. And that's where I don't know how bad it has to get here. So my fear is not the economics. My fear is our, this was A great little slide on 60 minutes the other night just on the effect of the social media making the, making us the barbells. You know, we used to have a normal curve. The normal and the tails were, you know, 5% or 2 1/2% on either tail. And now we got the middle is 5% and the tails are, are big. Was just the spectrum of social media, how all the aggression and aggravating things get exaggerated and reposted thousands that the statistics were crazy. But anybody putting something out in the middle about compromise or anything, nobody even, nobody liked, nobody retweeted, nobody this, nobody that. There's just no, it's craziness. So I don't worry about the economy. We have so many tools at our disposal. I worry that we'll get in another stalemate where they just can't agree on policies. The policies don't have to be perfect. 2% less or more in tax rate, 5% more or less isn't going to sink us. Or go immigration policy. A little more, a little less isn't going to sink us. What's going to sink us is just fight infighting and not being able to get along. So what I do, what I do is to say, hey, business people, you matter, you move the world. Start being a voice not for partisanship but for moving things along. Because we have so much technology and so much ability to solve. I mean, we've been to the moon, we've done every, you know, we can do it. Those things aren't the issue. So I, sorry, I, I, I got my soapbox, but there it is.

No, Eric, I, I wasn't going to interrupt you, but not because I was being polite, just because I'm, you know, nodding and feeling, feeling into the words you're saying, leaning into them really. Look, the, you know, I think my philosophy, and this is my, my disclaimer here for people who are listening to this right now is that this is my opinion, but the only cause of everything is us. That's it. You know, the cause of whatever is, is causing discomfort in, in your life, in my life is us, meaning individually us, totally and collectively us. So as the example you gave about, about the, you know, what you were dealing with and what your kids were dealing with and how when you began to deal with your own, your own and, and work on that, some miraculous or magical thing happened with your kids. I mean, look, you and I are probably both in the same age category, which we won't say out loud or whatever, but, you know, I don't Mind saying it? I'm 57, and so I've lived long enough to be able to say I've seen a thing or two. I've seen some pretty tough times for people. I'm. I'm agnostic as to that. On some level, we're always going to have tough times. In fact, that's the rule, not the exception. It's not that these things aren't serious. It's not that these things aren't. Aren't deserving of our attention and our passion and our fervency. I don't know if that's a word. Making it up. Right.

I understood what it meant. I couldn't define it either, but it sounded good.

It's, it's that we have to. We have to be able to see the bigger picture, which is that we'll all be fine. We'll all be. We're always.

Especially in America. You got to be kidding me. Pinch me. I mean, come on, pinch me. How would I. So lucky to be born a year.

Yes. You know, you know, the, the world, the world is still spinning. The world is still in business. You know, if you believe in whatever version of the universe or of, of. Of something that, that, you know, animates the whole thing. No, it's, it's. The universe is still in business.

A lot of, A lot of stats. One of them is something, you could say it a lot of different ways, but we have somewhere around 30 times the average or median American has 30 times the, the income of the average of the rest of the planet or something that's. Something crazy like that. And if we can't be happy. Come on. Yeah, we can figure this out.

So if, if the premise is that the only cause is us, I want, I want to be able to dovetail because I, I speak organizations pretty often about resilience. I'm a resilience keynote speaker, but I also speak on mindfulness. I speak about, about the, the things that are, are we're seeing in, in this, this great resignation that's perpetual now that, that has turned into something they're calling the, you know, a period of quiet quitting or quietly quitting. What we're seeing are people that are. Are stressed out, they're burned out, they're exhausted. There's a lack of work, of what is known as work life balance. There's a lack of what I like to refer to as work life harmony, not work life balance, but really finding the boundaries, the work life boundaries that need to, need to be in place and things like that and stress and managing stress and things of that sort. So in that, in those conversations, often this idea of how we manage ourselves better comes up. If. Because again, if we're the, if we're the root cause of everything that we're experiencing. And again, that's an element of personal responsibility. When you live long enough, you live long enough, Eric. Right, to understand that it's not somebody else's fault, that it's not a blame somebody game in life. Ultimately, it's about taking personal responsibility for our experience of life. And that's when things change. When you do that again, miraculously, your company changes the people you work with or the people you lead change your family, because you're, you're the common denominator in all of those situations. So I am asking you now, the work that you do when it comes to finding that middle way, is that something that, that is difficult to do? How difficult? Is it, Is it something that people can learn? Can they learn it at any age? I mean, I, I'd love for you to leg us into a bit of the, the inner details of what that's like for you and for the people that you work with.

Well, it's incredibly simple and, but not easy because you're bucking culture. You know, you're bucking, you're bucking whatever. You know, you're, you're 57, I'm 64, heading, you know, heading to, you know, apply for Medicare. You're bucking years of everything from your parents to the coaches to the schools, to the churches to the colleges to the government telling us, you know, this is production. And consumption is the be all to all things. And I love producing and consuming, and I love traveling and I love doing all those things. But until you get that, you have something else that's more important than that in your life. If we're hanging all of our happiness on how much we produce and how much we consume, there is no such thing as enough. There never be enough. Those things are all great. And I, I'm, I'm, I got them all. You know, I've been very successful and very lucky, but I had them all and was miserable. So look for a different way to be happy. And I, I found it. Now, I, I lead a lot of people through it, and some people are in for a penny and some people are in for a pound. The intention is number one. You know, everybody doesn't have to meditate, but they have to have an intention and do something. It is a practice. You know, you have to have Some sort of practice. And we, we're just so divorced from nature, you know, particularly in, in business, you know, some people out more and they're on, you know, have some acreage or get out on hikes and you know, you know, walk as I just did one at lunch. You know, just a walk without you with the phone behind. You know, when it feels like you left your lung behind, but you leave your phone behind and just take a walk and you look up and you know, people say mindfulness is woo woo. Mindfulness is focus. The rest of this crap is woo woo. Having everything go through, you know, every text I gotta be on, I gotta respond in 30 seconds, every email, you know, the media I got to be up on, I got to be tweeting, I got to be, you know, that's the woo woo. Mindfulness is getting out of the woo and focusing on what I choose to focus on. I choose to focus on the people I love first, you know, making sure I have a mindset that is positive and I can spin whatever comes and that I focus on those I love first and you know, get that taken care of and focus on my business and focus on that and get that taken care of. And if I get those things taken care of, then, you know, I got a few minutes to try to save the world. But I gotta be able to. I can't be just dragged into every thought stream that's out there because man, business is really good at getting our attention, you know, from everything. And I say the cultural revolution of mindfulness has got to come through business. If business could start setting a culture where it was important to focus, then that goes home. And those people, when it goes home, it goes to the church, it goes to the school, it goes to the Cub Scouts, it goes to the football team, it goes everywhere. And business is the great melting pot. Every gender, every race, every color. We are the business of America's. The melting business is the melting pot. We have everything. And if we want to, we, if we want to have successful businesses, we're crazy to rule anybody out. I want the biggest market and I want the biggest employment pool that I can possibly get so that I can deliver a product and make a profit. You know, so I, I just think businesses got, just got such a role in taking us through this. You know, I do it just how bad does it have to get?

I really agree with that. And it's funny, it's self serving for sure when I say this because I'm routinely speaking to leaders of organizations about why bringing Us in to have assess where their folks are from a resilience standpoint, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually even is so important because ultimately there, there is, so there is an exhaustion that is the result of what you're describing. It's the result of being pulled in, down so many rabbit holes in so many directions, or to use your exact language, to be dragged into every throat, every thought stream. Just crazy. Yeah, it is, it's crazy on some level. And yet we, it, it's probably the definition of crazy in that we, we keep doing it and doing it and doing it, but somehow we, we also realize we want to stop doing it, but the way to stop doing it isn't by continuing to do it. I, I just got back from Hawaii and, and I made this decision when I went. There were some things I needed to check on while we were away that I would just use my laptop to log in and, you know, check my email once or twice. Right. But what I decided was that from the moment I got on the, off the plane in Kauai, my cell phone was going to be turned off and not get turned on until I landed back in, in San Diego. And so eight, eight days later, that cell phone was, it was off and then it was on. Eric. And I got to tell you, it was just what you described for a little while, maybe the first two days or so, it was like, you know, am I missing something? Like what am I, like what am I missing? I'm walking around, you know, my wallet, you know, what am I missing? An appendage. My, to my body.

Exactly.

Which was this cell phone. Yeah.

Crazy.

But by the third day or thereabouts, I, I was just like, you know, I'm not missing this thing. I'm not fidgeting. I'm not using it as a fidget tool because my, my programming, my programmed mind is to keep, to be constantly aroused. So instead of while I'm standing there waiting for my, know, my family to come out of the juice shop or wherever I might have been standing for five minutes, I was looking out on, you know, obviously Kawaii is gorgeous. Yeah. And being just with my own thoughts, wherever that might have been. Whereas previously. Oh wait, they went inside to shop. I don't want to go inside the shop. I'll sit outside in the sun and I'll check my email. I'll sit outside and check LinkedIn. I'll sit outside and answer a text message, you know, like it's a business.

I'm in it too. I mean, I have to do Those things, silent retreat or whatever. I've got to do those things or just consciously leave it behind on a walk or something because it is. We're habitual creatures. And what I have found is that we, we're just doing the next thing. Some 95% of the time, we just do the next thing. And if we don't interrupt that pattern, we can train ourselves that that next thing is productive and positive and towards our vision and towards our goals. But if we don't, we're just gone to wherever the marketers want us to go.

Yeah.

Where the government wants us to go and the marketers want us to go and everything else. We're just like on a chain.

So we have to inter mode, right?

Yeah. So what we do is we train ourselves to, you know, recognize that, clear out, set a new vision, and then you can reset your habits that are towards, you know, more mindfulness and towards goals and things that you really want, towards your family that are, that are wholesome and good, and then those are the next thing. That happens when you're not consciously picking the next thing. But it takes, you know, it takes some time. I, and I think this, I was just talking to someone this morning or yesterday about hat. Oh, it was this morning about habits. You know, I think they say habits in 30 days or 60 days or 21 days. I think I can get a bad habit in that much time, you know, But a good habit, like a steady mindfulness habit. I mean, our program's nine months and I find it's a start, you know, to get one that because you, you get, you put yourself back in it. You're in an environment that is not that and you're bucking it all the time. So that's the other thing as we try to do is tip companies to be mindful where there's more than one, because one person comes through their program and goes back into a company that's not mindful, in a few months time they're on an island, you know. And the way habits work is, you know, first I don't do it for a day. Then it's too, oh, just think about lifting weights or running, you know, I don't do it for a day or two, then it's a week, then it's a month. Then I, I don't run anymore, you know, now it is easier to start up again if I never ran, but it's just gone. So habits have to be, I say commitments and habits have to go hand in hand. I have to have the commitments and the habits support my commitments, and my commitments support my habits. But if I have commitments and my habits are contrary, I don't stand a chance. You know, I got to have the two. Because, like, you're like, it's vacations or holidays, you know, something's going to happen that I fall off for a little bit and my commitment gets me back on the horse.

Yeah. In this, it was like the pattern interrupt was the breaking up, the. The habit that. That I want to break up now. Now it remains to be seen whether or not I. I apply. What I learned during those eight days of not having to have the phone with.

Yeah, I'm a victim too. I mean, not a victim, but I'm guilty as well. You know, it's. And we love to be distracted because when we're distracted, we're not present. It's so interesting. Yeah.

And why is that? Why do you think? I mean, this is philosophical potentially too, Eric, but why. Why do you feel like we're not so comfortable in the present?

Because we haven't experienced it? We. We don't experience it, or when we do, we don't. It takes a bit. We're not comfortable with things that aren't usual, aren't typical for us. So after a bit, I mean, being present for the first time is uncomfortable. Some. A lot of people that I work with and come through, they're shocked by it. You know, it's just not an experience at first. They don't trust it. But most people, if they think about it, they have some activity in which they're present. It's. For me, it's snow skiing. For my wife, it's painting. For some people, it's taking a walk in nature. I. I have a cousin that's a national speaker, and I was talking to him the other day and he said, you know, he's in his 70s and he doesn't want to stop. And I said, it's because you're present when you're in front of people. Yeah, you're totally there. I love that leading. Because I have to be, you know, I have to be awake and alert or like snow skin, man. It's just like going down through the trees. It's like, I can't be anywhere else. I have to be present. Or I like going fast because I have to be present. Yeah, but once you. Once you get it and you own it, you want more, you know, and that's what you got to get. But you got to get to the point, I think, to make it. To make a Difference is when you know when you're present and you know when you're not. Now, our family, my wife knows when I'm not. My kids know when I'm not. My workmates know when I'm not, you know, But I don't always, because I'm in a thought stream, you know, and it just carries me away and then I got to come back again. But once you feel that bit of being present, it's like a drug. It's the best drug there is out there.

And I don't know if this has been your experience. For me, in working in the mindfulness space as well, I find for myself, I need reminding all the time. It's constant vigilance. I think some people, they get frustrated with the fact that it might be that they can. They can just be with their thoughts or be with their thought streams and be observant of those things and be still, maybe even. Which is a lovely thing when you're just. Just still. Right? You can't stop your thoughts. So people are frustrated if they can't stop their thoughts. There's no stopping your thoughts. It's not meant to that way. And they're frustrated when. When they. They find that they've fallen into a thought stream. They've, you know, taken the bait and now they're on the hook because they're thinking about something in the past or some anger they have about somebody or something in the present. You go, oh, well, I just screwed it all up. And, you know, like. But you didn't screw it up. It's that we don't understand what success looks like in that space. So I. I know you've written a book probably. I know it's a current book, so I'd love to have you share a little bit about how you address these. These topics in that book. I know that's a very broad question, but. But I do want to.

I appreciate it. It's Profit with presence, the 12 pillars of mindful Leadership. And it tackles the. The. I believe that in business there is a. Some sort of belief that's inaccurate, that mindfulness. And it's in the mindfulness community, too. I believe that mindfulness and profit are somehow at odds. I mean, the mindfulness community, I'm not speaking for everybody, but there's a portion of it that thinks money is a dirty word. And in the business community, there's a. There's. There's a belief, a hidden belief. I think that I don't have time for that once I make it, you know, I'll do that. And what I take on is, no, mindfulness is focus. And there's nothing contrary in focus, clarity, vision, intention, commitment, habits. That is contrary to business. In fact, it is business. It's serious business. So I take that on and I lay out a chart, you know, a path. It's not the path. There's a lot of paths. It's a path. You know, it's worked for me and it, and it works for many, but there's, there's a lot of ways to do it. But you got to do something. We start people with two minutes of meditation, you know, because more than that I found is counterproductive for the reasons that you pointed out. You get in there and it's a scary place and you go, I can't do this. So every time I look at that, my mind gets increased. Well, you've been like that. You just haven't noticed. Now you're noticing. And the beauty is when you become a separation, you, you mentioned, and totally correctly, you, you don't stop, you stop. Some thoughts don't stop. I mean, you may have a dramatic experience where they, you're just present and that's, that's the thoughts slow down or living in the gap is that gap when one thought stops and before the next one starts. There's, there's a, there is a. We have some 6,000 thoughts a day. So it ain't big, but it's not big. Excuse my slang, but we train just to do for two minutes. Because after a while, and I was just. A lady was sharing in our program the other night. She's been now in it for almost six months. She's now up to five, six minutes. We just, we try to get to 10 and after that if somebody wants to go to 20 grade, I've been doing it for, you know, 30 years or something in 20 minutes is, is about what I get, but. And not every day I can get that much. But once your mind starts slowing down, your brain waves stop, slow down a little bit, you feel like doing more, but if you just say, no, I'm going to do 20 minutes, you know, your mind's like that. After a bit, I find people just give up and say, I can't do it. It's just too hard. It's a process. And we took a long time not being present and it's not, I mean, as Americans, we're not very patient, you know, if it can't happen by 5 o', clock, you know, it's a long process. It's a commitment over time. So we start with two minutes and over a long period of time, try to build up. Because I find is once you, once your brain waves start to level out a little bit and things slow down a little bit, you start finding that peace that you might find in a looking at a dramatic view, looking at a beautiful painting thing. But what I, what I want to have is I want to have that peace when I'm at work. We're at work more than we're anywhere else. You know, we're work more than we're with our family. We're certainly work more than we're in nature or, you know, doing our hobbies. If we can't have peace of mind, enjoy at work. We're going to be agitated most of the time. So can I get that feeling of the zone in flow at work and notice when I'm not, and when I'm not, say, you know what, I'm going to take a little walk, I'll be back, get back in that mode. And that's when these relationships change. I mean, mindfulness is just such a gift for relationships. It's just when you, when you. And I can't say, stop the judging. I still judge. But notice when I'm judging and set it aside and look through it, you know, and say there's a real person under there. You know, they're not the label I've given them. That's when we start communicating and life starts working and when I start giving back. I mean, the, the, the science on gratitude and service and these things is just dramatic. Once I start practicing it, I look for things to be grateful for. There's an afterglow image of being grateful that stays with me after that. Man, it just, it just makes such a difference. And it's going to take a little bit. I don't think it's going to happen by next Tuesday. But I lay out a path that I hope that the business community will take on. And I just say, you know, the business community is where it's at. We, we, we come up with all wealth that goes to politics. And I don't believe in business being partisan. But I say business can say, hey, you guys don't make sense. If you don't work across the aisle and move us somewhere, we're shutting you off. Okay, let's go. So there I go again.

So no, yeah, I mean, it's hard not to, it's hard not to end up there because a lot of all roads seem to be leading there these days. So I, I think for, for the, the person who's just saying, hey, I'd like to get started, I think it's always really great to provide a tangible single thing, a single tip, if you will. And in our language, we talk about developing resilience one ritual at a time. So as we're wrapping things up, I want to ask you this question. And by the way, for our listeners too, there'll be full show notes, as always available, and we'll have links to Eric's latest book, as well as other ways that you can reach out to Eric, you can connect with him and find out more about what he's doing in the world, the services of his company and all that kind of thing. So when it comes to a ritual for resilience, I give you two choices. Is it, is there one thing that you'd recommend that people start with or is there one thing that you do in your, in your daily routines, this one single ritual for your own resilience and whether that's the resilience of your mind, which I think is mostly what we've been talking about, your core competency being mindfulness. What's that one routine that you use that you go to each and every day, whether it's the start of the day or at some point in the day when you start to feel the thought streams coming on, or is there one other thing that you'd recommend to people for them to get started?

I do a number of things, but there's one that comes up in both categories that you put out. So I'll go there, love it. And I think it's the lowest hanging fruit is practice gratitude. Just when you get up in the morning, get a journal, think of three things that you're grateful for and why some people believe they need to be new each day. My wife and kids are on there every day and it helps me, you know, deal with them in a, in a positive way, regardless of what's going on. And we're not, you know, I can't wait to meet a dysfunctional family, but we certainly aren't excluded from that either.

A non dysfunctional family.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry. Thank you for the correction. I would say one thing is gratitude. It just changed the dopamine and the mirror neurons and with that, a little smile, just, you know, people say I smile when I'm happy. I think you're happy when you smile. You know, if you want to be happy to start smiling, you want to walk into a tough meeting, I walk in it with a little smile.

Indeed.

It's, it's amazing, brother.

I, I so happy that you did that. And we didn't even plan this, folks, because as many, many of our listeners know, I did a TED Talk some years ago about that very topic. And it being the one sort of thing that I've, I've held on to, has been my buoy in, in many ways throughout for the last several years of my life. This concept of, of starting the day with the I love my life. This sort of mantra of I love my life no matter what. Really. So I so appreciate you sharing that as a daily ritual that people can engage with. I think it is, it literally does alter the molecular structures of our, of our brains as well as our hearts to be in gratitude especially. And this is I think the key at the beginning of the day. Not that you should not use it throughout the day. You can of course, but I just go back to what my grandmother said, you know, start the day on the right foot. It. And so often it is what we're doing is we're starting the day based on someone else's agenda for us. So when you pick up your cell phone, you look at your text messages or your emails, that's, that's coming from outside of you. And, and we know that all, every, every great teacher, every great teaching, whether in spiritual terms or, or otherwise intellectual terms, is, is an inside out. We understand that the game is an inside out game. We win the game working from the inside out. And when we, when we're allowing these other extraneous things, whether it's the media, news reports, text messages, social media, whatever it might be to be the thing that influences how we feel certainly at the start of the day, we're, we're starting, I would say on the, on the wrong foot because it's not, it's not where we're not working from the inside out that way. Eric, I've just so enjoyed our conversation. As I said that earlier, folks, we'd love for you to comment. Leave a comment@adammarkel.com forward slash podcast. If you believe there's somebody you know in your life, in your business life, your personal life that would just really love to hear this message. Hear what Eric shared with us today. And there was so much richness in what he did share, please feel free to share this episode with folks. Of course, leaving, leaving a a five star rating is always so we love always. Lovely. Wherever you are consuming this show, we love that too. And of course, if you've not yet found out how resilient you are and want to take your own assessment. It's entirely free. It takes just three minutes, believe it or not. You can go to rank my resilience.com rankmyresilience.com and find out in three minutes just how resilient you are based on where you are in this moment, even mentally, emotionally, physically, and actually spiritually too. So with that, Eric, again, thank you so much for being a guest on the Change Proof show today and for our folks. Have a blessed and a beautiful day and I do truly hope you love your life no matter what. Oh my goodness. I so enjoyed my conversation with Eric today. It covered so much ground. It really covered some things that I think are so at the forefront of much of what is animating us, animating our emotional states these days. That's got us in some ways quite agitated. We, we talk about that, we talk about that. The, the only cause of, of so much of what we're feeling really is us and, and what that means and, and most importantly, how do we, how do we address it? What do we do about it? If we are the one cause of all things, if we're the catalyst, if we're the first domino in that succession, how do we, how do we use that? How do we utilize it? What do we do with it? We talked about how success is really just about how you manage failure. Something that I know in my life I've had trouble with. I know a lot of people have trouble in letting go of failures, in forgiving failures in themselves and in others, and in generally just not re. Rehashing them or reliving them or in living in some state of regret about them. We talked about mindfulness and a very workable definition, I think maybe the most workable definition for mindfulness that, that I have yet discovered and that is mindfulness is purpose. It is, it is simply the, the, the focus that you put into your purpose. It's. It could be the purpose could be about business. The purpose could be about loving people. It could be about being grateful, could be about, about not holding judgments. It could be about anything. But to focus on that purpose for some small length of time is really the key. And as Eric said, that can be two minutes. Two minutes is an excellent mindfulness practice. When it comes to the length of time that he works with people on this, he starts in 2 minute increments and then 5 minutes and then ultimately 10 minutes is, is a very workable time frame, etc. And so often we find that people when they want to meditate or they think that they have to develop a meditation practice because everybody around them is telling them they, to do it, they. They go about it in the wrong way. They don't go about it in a way that actually sets themselves up for success either, because they define it in a way that, that's unrealistic, such as that I have to quiet my mind, that I have to remove my thinking somehow, stop my thinking, stop my thoughts, et cetera, which is just something that many of us who've been doing it for some length of time understand is virtually impossible. What we can experience, of course, are gaps, gaps that, that are really wonderful between a thought and another thought. There can be these, these lovely gap moments. And we can, we can revel in our ability occasionally to, to observe the gap. But ultimately meditation is, is, Is more effective when we define it in a way that, that allows us to be successful at it. And I think what Eric said on that topic is just worth repeating and listening to. And hopefully I didn't, I didn't get in the way of his, his process, but contributed to it and added some flavors from my own practices in that same arena. Because when it comes to resilience, when it comes to developing greater resilience for ourselves personally and professionally and, and how to apply it, even when we're, when we're wanting to lead others in that practice, whether it's to help our families, help our kids to develop their own mindfulness practices, or when we're leading teams in business, we have to keep it simple. We have to those goals realistic and attainable and things that won't frustrate people and, and then we have to also understand that when we do get frustrated that there are methods to interrupt those patterns so that we can get back to it. Because there's so much value in quieting our minds, not stopping our thoughts, but being able to observe those thoughts and even maybe, as I said, observe, observe this, this wonderful gap that can occur between our thoughts from time to time. I love the talk that we had that covered how it is that we, we are today going from sort of one state of agitation to another and, and what it is that we can do in the way of our rituals and our practices at the beginning of the day, even looking at gratitude as a fundamental precept for happiness and a, A wonderful tool that is accessible to all of us to develop ourselves in. In deeper ways, develop our resilience practices in deeper ways. Something that again, I love to talk about when I'm in front of audiences. And my resilience keynote speaking or my resilience keynote topics as often cover stress management or work life balance or, or how it is that we, that we resolve conflicts, things of that sort, they all come back to the same thing, which are simple practices to get present, simple practices to become less agitated or even on the other end of that spectrum to feel happy, feel happiness, feel peaceful. These things. Develop our strength before we actually need that strength. We develop our resilience in an optimal world and an optimal scenario before we're, we're going to be called forth to, to be resilient due to circumstances because there's so much right now in the way of circumstances that are just outside of our body of control. And for people like me who are control freaks or, or I like to think of myself almost as a recovering control freak. We're living in, in the most uncertain times that we ever have. And, and that is by anybody's definition, I think, and anybody's stretch of the imagination. So developing our resilience couldn't be any more relevant and any more imperf. Perfect timed timing wise than it is at this moment. And if you yourself don't know exactly how resilient you are, but would love to find out that information and we have a wonderful tool that is accessible to you that is for free, you don't have to do anything, I don't have to pay anything for it. We use it globally. It is IP that we developed some years ago and we've now used this particular assessment, this resilient leader assessment with more than 5, 000 leaders globally, from Fortune 50 companies to startups. And all you have to do is go to resiliencerank.com resiliencerank.com and in three minutes, and this is probably the best part because it's just 16 questions, it takes you about three minutes. You will get your score, you will know how resilient you are in four specific key areas and just as importantly, you will get some free resources for how it is that you can create some new practices to improve those scores, including the things that Eric talked about today on how it is that we develop mindfulness practice and how it is that we ourselves become more, more adept and more agile and more flexible in our, in our thinking and our mindsets so that we can in fact leverage the uncertainty, leverage the adversity, even to our ultimate benefit, to our ultimate growth. So I hope that you love this episode with Eric and that you share it with friends and that you'll of course, take a moment to leave a review even even give us that five stars if it makes sense to you, if it feels right to you. We love that. And of course we love it when you share this information with someone else. So if this episode would be valuable, please feel free to share it with a friend as well. And again, I'll just say ciao for now. Wishing you a bl blessed and beautiful day that that you are are loving your life in this moment. I know I am.

Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become Change Proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcast. For more Resilience tips and strategies, including support for building Change Proof teams, visit adammarkel. Com becomechangeproof.