Bridging Science and Spirit: The Path to Transcendence with Jessica Grossmeier

Welcome to The Flourishing Edge, the podcast where we share weekly tips on making flourishing your competitive edge. I'm Ashish Kothari, your host, and each week we'll dive deep with flourishing experts, changemakers, and executives to share best practices that can help you unlock higher performance through science-based interventions. Let's step together into the edge of what's possible and live, work, and lead with more joy, health, love, and meaning. Jessica, I'm so excited to have you on the Flourishing Edge podcast. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be on this. It's an honor.

Well, look, I've been following your work for a long while, right? You've been doing work in the space of workplace well-being for over 20 years, right? Close to, I think, 25+ years. And it's been an amazing journey from wellness to workplace well-being to now, you know, you've just written a new book called Well at Work, which is about individuals and what individuals can do. You speak at lots of conferences, lots of stages. You've been a researcher. You've researched this topic extensively. From your point of view, as you look at the state of workplace well-being today, Jessica, what do you feel— what feels most broken and what gives you the most hope?

Yeah, wow. That question about what's broken really cuts to the heart of things today, doesn't it, in this moment? So let's start with some pain points. Gallup trends indicate levels of employee engagement and satisfaction continue to be at some of the lowest levels they've ever been. And this is important to business because engagement rates, as we know, and job satisfaction are linked to productivity, performance, innovation, and retention. So that's something that we know is an indicator of what's broken. We also know that US workers are reporting moderate to severe levels of burnout, depression, and anxiety at some of the highest levels, levels ever measured before. And we know there are business costs associated with that. And then loneliness levels continue to be a challenge. And this was, this was on the upward trajectory before the pandemic. The pandemic amplified, but we are still seeing high levels of loneliness, especially in the workplace today. And we know from the research that loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity, impairs other aspects of our executive function like reasoning and decision-making. And so Research has shown that loneliness impacts team performance, motivation, again, lower job satisfaction. And so these are bottom line indications that something isn't working in how we're doing at work, even though the focus right now is on performance, productivity, and efficiency.

Yeah.

So what gives me hope? Do you want me to answer that question? What gives me hope?

Yeah, tell me about what gives you hope.

This is such an important question for those of us who've been working in this field because it feels so challenging right now, right? We thought everybody was getting the memo and then they didn't. So what are we going to do? One thing that's really encouraging me and giving me hope is that we are actually talking about these issues now. Burnout, mental health, loneliness, social connection. Mindfulness, purpose, even spirituality is being talked about more now than ever before. And what's even more encouraging is that before we used to have research, and there have been decades of research showing why this stuff is important, but now there's new research that supports the solutions to address these issues. And I think for me, that's what's so incredibly exciting is we don't just wring our hands and say, this is a problem, what do we do about it? Research actually points the way forward for us. And we can follow that and, and actually tackle some of these issues in a way that we haven't been able to do in the past. So that gives me hope.

Yeah. So I think you articulated it so beautifully, right? And we've had this conversation so many times on this podcast. Our workplaces are fundamentally broken. They're not just somewhat broken. We're not talking about an incremental level of improvement, right? When you are at the stage where 20% of people are thriving at work, 22% are burnt out, more burnt out than thriving, 60% experiencing stress, people feeling lonely, 19% of frontline finding meaning at work. This is not, this is not a situation where we say, yeah, you know, somewhat improvements. Need to happen in an economy which is predominantly a service-driven economy, in a place where so much of our innovation and work is coming from our cognitive. Um, the World Economic Forum and McKinsey work, right? $12 trillion in economic output. All of this is out there, and we've been talking about this for so long, Jessica. Like, these numbers— I personally have had 300+ conversations with C-level executives in the last 3 years across small, medium, large companies. There is not one person who looks at the science, who looks at the research directly tying workplace well-being to higher productivity, shareholder returns, creativity, who doesn't say, "Yes, I see it." And I often say, I often get all head nods. And the hand doesn't move. They go back to, yeah, all of this is great, but here are the 5 initiatives I am taking all of my energy on. And they're often performance. And we don't have space for this. My people are doing so much. And so I'm curious what those conversations are feeling like. And what do you think is going to take people to go from science, right, which is so clear, to actually action? And the reason I asked this question, Jessica, is the following. The science of wellbeing is 20 years old, 20, 25 years old. Positive psychology, Marty Seligman, Center for Positive Organizations, right? Including McKinsey. We didn't focus at McKinsey at this work till 2020. Really, really studying this holistically, right? MHI was born in 2022. Right. And so it's a fairly new field from that point of view in terms of the research that's coming into it. Climate change has been around for 50 years and the data is as compelling on that and we're not making enough movement. So how do we make sure that the wellbeing movement doesn't go at the snail's pace that the climate movement is going? And I'm curious, like, what are some ideas that you might have just given you've actually walked this field for 25 years?

It's actually getting close to 30 now. With now that I'm coming out of my sabbatical. I think one of the things that— one, I agree with you absolutely. And this is one of the reasons why I decided to shift from producing ever more research that shows that Ibis is important. And I focus now on translating the research into practice because there's a lot of academic work out there that shows this is important. We know what the drivers are. But we need the playbook, right? And so that's why I'm so encouraged that there are solutions in the research that help us to show, oh, we did this intervention, we tried this in an organization. And so when we can translate the research into real-world practice and real-world examples and show that, hey, when you do this, it has the ability to transform your organization. And that's why I'm so excited about some of the research that's been coming out that shows how organizational firm performance, so financial performance of firm is tied to these soft metrics that we're talking about. It's like, no, no, no. If you actually were to invest your money in the portfolio of companies who are already doing this and using these approaches, your stock price goes up. When you hit the best employers to work for list, Your stock price goes up within 10 days. Now, it needs to be genuine. This is not easy to do. You don't want it.

You don't want to do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like everybody go fill out this survey. No, no, it has to be genuine, right? Like people on the ground have to feel the organization cares for my well-being. How do we do that? And so it does need to be genuine because employees are super smart. I don't care if they're frontline employees or if they're in the C-suite. They're super smart and they get it when you're trying to manipulate this stuff. And so it's about really thinking about, well, anything that we do as a company is in some way touched by the human. Just as we would take care of the machine, the AI engine, whatever it is, make sure we have the best code that's not buggy, we need to take care of our human beings that are actually producing this output because they're the ones that are going to drive the outcomes that we want to see, no matter what that outcome is. Is. I firmly believe that. And I think research supports it. And so it's, it's helping them to understand there are practical examples of organizations who are doing this, who are transforming how they approach work. And it's those examples and it's the conversations the C-suite has with other C-suite leaders about, oh, hey, we tried this and look, it worked. That's, I think, what's going to change things.

Yeah. So this notion of, you know, real evidence proven interventions. I think there is so much work happening at the policy level too now, right? We're starting to make the movement. I am hopeful that if with the right efforts, we are able to actually shift organizations to action. And I think one of the levers you actually touch on in your book, and I wanna go there next, Jessica. Talk to us a little bit about when you started talking about workplace wellbeing and overarching the arc under which you were placing some of this work was around spirituality. And there was a very particular definition of spirituality, which really resonated. I think we are simpatico on that, right? Spirituality, not in terms of which deity do you pray to, but around this notion of connection to something bigger, right? This notion that you're not alone, you are connected to something bigger. So I want to delve into that topic a little bit on your journey into kind of really tuning into that even definition and how are you seeing that play out in the—

Okay. So journey first and then definition? Yes. Is that where we should go with this? Okay. I have been a lifelong wellness enthusiast, a wellness junkie, since my teen years when I was involved in the world of sports. So, I have been interested in the science of performance at a human sport level for quite a long time. And that's what got me into this field of well-being. And so, in my work, I thought I was walking the talk, training for half marathons, juicing, you know, doing all the things, right? And I found myself after probably about a decade in an organization. I was the vice president at that time, and I started to feel this, this burnout, loneliness, disengagement with my work. Now, we weren't talking about this back then, so I didn't know that's what I was experiencing, but I knew that something felt off. What, what used to be exciting and fun and energizing was a drag. I didn't like it. I was cranky about my work. I felt like I was overworking, which I was definitely. And at the time, I just assumed, well, there's something wrong with me. And I had achieved all my major goals and maybe I just needed a new goal, right? And so I just leaned into the work and played hard on the weekends. And that was my definition of balance, right? And so things came to a head. And I tell this story in both of my books because I think it's really important for people to understand what this looks like. I ended up collapsing as I was getting ready for a flight before work one day from a combination of dehydration and fatigue. And I ended up landing face first on the hardwood floor of my house, breaking my jaw. And I ended up in the ER instead of where I was supposed to be headed that day. And I was explaining to the doctors one after another what had happened, and I was still trying to figure it out for myself. But I realized as I told this story over and over again, is that while I thought I had been paying attention to my well-being, that one of the reasons why I was pushing myself so hard was I was trying to fill this emptiness, this inner void, this dissatisfaction. And if I didn't learn how to address that inner void and that emptiness, I wasn't going to be able to address my well-being more holistically. And so as I recovered from that jawbreak and I had to actually take some time off the road because I'd been traveling extensively. I was limited to how many hours I could be talking a day. And I got into that deep silence that comes with healing and started to really think about, well, what is it about my work that's such a drag? Because it's not the people. I love the people. It's not the mission. I'm still on board with the mission. It's not even so much the work tasks that I'm doing. And so it took me some time to really unravel what it was. And I began to realize these are spiritual questions. What is the point of all this? Why am I working so hard? Why do my relationships feel so empty and, and surface level? And what can I do about it? That is the work of spirituality. And that's the work that I started to do. I didn't quit my job. I didn't leave. I leaned into understanding this for myself and that journey. Is what led me to workplace spirituality. I have dug into the research on this, and I discovered there were thousands of articles on workplace spirituality, just that domain. So, we've known about this forever, but people in my field weren't talking about it. And so, as I started to dig into the research, I started asking around, and I'm like, well, there's this whole field of workplace spirituality. Should we be looking at this? Because we had been starting to talk about culture, and we started to talk about how the organization needed to change to support well-being at work, but we weren't talking about some of this stuff. And so people said, no, no, no, don't talk about spirituality. Nobody wants to talk about that. And so I pushed it aside, but I kept working on it on my own. And these books that I've released over the past few years have been sort of my, my journey, as well as what I've learned and how we translate that research into practice in very specific ways.

No, it is, it is, it's a, it's, it's, it's, that story is such, I hear that story all the time.

It's real common.

But, you know, panic attacks, feeling like I had a heart attack. I couldn't even lift 2 pounds. I lost my ability to like even, you know, my body just shut down. You hear it all the time and we keep pushing ourselves, telling ourselves what work we do is mattering and I'm going to go all out. Or wellness is focused on physical, eat and work out, even not sleep, right? Like let's even leave that out. But I'm going to work out, I'm eating well, and I'm taking care of myself. And we lose so many of the other dimensions that you just talk about.

Yeah.

You know, my own journey in this, Jessica, right across at this point, close to 720 different books across spirituality, psychology, and neurosciences. And I've come to this worldview that these are not disparate. In fact, if I think about the whole positive psychology movement, 25 years of research on the psychology side towards what makes people thrive, most of the practices within that originate from the realm of spirituality. These are practices that we've had in thousands of years in our traditions that now are showing that they work. And, you know, like, if you really practice, they work. And here's the incremental effect. And the neuroscientists are studying and showing they actually work because they change our neural pathways, right? So we can hold them as separate, but in reality, they're united. And nobody unites them better than Lisa Miller. To our listeners, if you haven't read her book, I would highly encourage you to get a copy of it. It's called The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality, The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life, where she talks about how those who are more spiritual, not necessarily more religious, separating spirituality from religious, actually have brains that are better, more resilient from Alzheimer's, from dementia. We can think better. We can actually respond much better, we are more emotionally resilient, et cetera, et cetera, because our brain structures are changing, right?

Absolutely. And I think it's— I'm a big fan of Dr. Miller's work, so I'm glad you mentioned it. And I do cite her work in my work quite a bit. I think the whole field of neuroscience is really starting to show us, look, this is what happens when you're feeling lonely. The executive function in your brain shuts. Down. Your ability to process is changed. When you're experiencing burnout, you begin to filter everything through a cynical lens. And so, you might hear, "Good job," and like me, think, "You don't care about me as a person." Or you don't really believe it.

Or you don't really—

Right. Or no, no, no, no, you don't care about me as a person. All you care about is what I can do for you.

Yeah.

Right? And that was the filter going through my mind. And so, we have the neuroscience now that helps us to understand through biological, physiological, psychological pathways. This is what happens in your body when you experience some of these states. And these are the things that you need to do to adjust that. And that's where the transcendence chapter really comes alive for me, because the neuroscience really grounds that whole section of the book. It's like, no, no, no, we actually know why this stuff works. And when it comes to convincing people who think this is soft and fuzzy, It's like, oh no, if I hooked up electrodes and measured what's going on in your body, I could show you how this works. Exactly. Exactly. It's so powerful.

So I want to go there next. You define your whole approach around well-being in both your books around purpose, connection, and transcendence.

Right.

Over the last couple of episodes, we've covered purpose and connection. So I want to come to them. After covering actually the topic of transcendence. Talk to us a little bit about transcendence as one of the levers towards workplace well-being. What do you mean by it? Yeah, let's start from that.

Yeah. So transcendence focuses on self-transcendent mental states. So the science of transcendence focuses on these self-transcendent mental states. So these are things like aww, consciousness, flow, joy. There are many more states than that. These states are measurable, and they are physiologically linked to higher levels of physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being. So, when you measure what's going on when we experience these states of aww, consciousness, flow, joy, whatever it is, we can actually track higher levels of well-being through these pathways. And for me, that was very exciting. And if now that we're exchanging book plugs, okay, I have a very, very high reading list and I love to talk books with people. The book by Dacher Keltner, Awe, super thick book, super thick book. And, it's all on the science of awe. There's a book called Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman. He traces the deep work of Maslow and his later work on peak performances. And, it talks about transcendence and the research that helps us to understand why these states are important. So this is my favorite part of the whole book, and it's the least requested topic area.

Yes.

So we haven't gotten there yet. Maybe with you and I, if we keep talking about this, we'll get people there.

Absolutely. Yeah. So this notion of what you said, transcendence, these feelings and these states, it's transcendental states of awe, joy, flow, right? These states that actually we know we are at our most creative, we are at our most productive, you know, we are emotionally at our best place. We're like, you know, we're fundamentally connected to something bigger. I'll tell you, Jessica, when I first experienced awe, The first time that just vividly stuck with me, it was my first trip to the Grand Canyon. And as I stood at the edge, the scale of it, the time, the size, the beauty, right, just immediately reminded me about how small I was in all, you know, in mass, in terms of the impact and how much I was going to leave behind that people are going to remember the time I was actually on Earth. And reminded me that I was just one part of something bigger here. Right. And that's never left me. I think that something changed in me because till that point, I can tell you, You know, the Grand Canyon was me, right? The most important, the biggest is me. And that moment that shifted.

Yeah.

So these are like really, really powerful. Oftentimes people think about transcendence, like awe and joy, not at work. Flow's talked a lot about at work, but people would not associate awe and joy, unfortunately today, with work.

Yeah.

So talk to me a little bit about how transcendence plays out at work?

Okay, well, I think it helps to, to ground this in an example. And as you said, connecting with nature is one of the most common ways people experience inner stillness and groundedness. And most anybody can find a way to access nature, even if it's looking out a window, gazing at an indoor plant, viewing photos of the cosmos. People have found that, that virtual reality, and if you concentrate your attention on what you're looking at and the beauty or the expansiveness of what it is you're looking at, you can actually experience awe. You can experience this connection to something bigger than yourself, which is really the definition of transcendence, this feeling of small and yet connected to something bigger. The key is to be fully present. And this is where all of the research on mindfulness really comes in because you can be in a conversation with somebody you really enjoy. You can be actually doing work that you enjoy. You can be in a beautiful surrounding. You know, a lot of organizations spend a lot of money making their, their physical workspaces really aesthetically pleasing, right?

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All of it is a waste if we are not present in that moment. And so when we practice the, the ways of fostering transcendence, it starts with attention and intention to what is going on right here, right now. And even if you are doing— research shows this— even if you are doing some mundane task that you hate most of the time, if we can be fully present in it and just lean into it and, you know, not be distracted, create the parameters for flow, we actually begin to feel more energy. And it's like, oh, there's this satisfaction from being immersed in what we're doing. And when we're working alongside other people that are also immersed in what they're doing, and we're all heading in the same direction, that is transcendent work. Because we feel connected to something that's fulfilling to us, we feel connected to other people who are feeling fulfillment alongside us. And we're feeling part of something bigger, the mission of the organization. And that's how all of these concepts come together. It's like, how do we, how do we create and foster that that togetherness, that unity, that present attention all focused on the same thing, even if it's for 20 minutes. And that's the thing, you can, you can experience this for a whisper of a moment. It doesn't have to be, you know, this huge experience. It can be these little moments of, of deep connection to one, to oneself, to one another, and to the bigger universe.

So I love the story of OCB Holding Company that is in your book.

Yeah.

Bring that to life a little bit for our listeners, Jessica, that they should get a copy of your book and read many of the other amazing stories in here. But talk a little bit about their approach towards integrating and building a culture of transcendence.

Yeah. And if you go— If you go and look at, look for OCD Holdings, they are a third or fourth generation company now. They don't have a lot of splashy marketing out there and they're very, it's very hard to find. And so I came across this story from another person who's been doing the work of workplace spirituality, Judy Neal. She's the one that shared the story of this company to me and then I tracked it down. But you're not going to see a lot of splashiness around this organization. It's a mid-sized organization. They do food manufacturing, I believe, is the sector they're in. And so they have a lot of things that you would typically look at when it comes to high performance and developing profitability in that kind of a business. So they have a whole set of principles and guidelines for how they do the work that's going to result in high-quality, efficient, revenue-generating work. But alongside that, they have a whole other set of principles around this is how we're going to do our work together in a way that also supports the human element. And so they do things like celebrate one another. They celebrate big things and small things in a lot of different ways. They honor special moments such as when somebody is leaving an organization, through retirement, or maybe there are layoffs, and sometimes those happen, they actually have a process, or they had a process if they don't, if they're not still around as an organization, they have a process where people are matched with somebody who follows up with them on a very regular cadence for 6 months after they left the organization, checking in with them, helping them to make sense of their experience with this organization. They practice what many of us are now seeing in our organizations, practice spots of silence or grounding or mindfulness at the start of their meetings. They do incorporate prayer, but they do allow people to opt out of that if they want to. And so, and they also have nature, they have some of these other ingredients that I talk about in the book around how do we actually foster this connection to ourselves, to one another, into something bigger than ourselves, like, you know, community service days, for example. So there are a lot of examples in that case study which has been written about.

So it was so powerful because these practices, many of them, right, even if you took out the company prayer or spiritual guidance, right, quote unquote, that people would say, so many of the others were really so implementable and are really about, again, Intentionally creating space for presence, appreciation, and the intention of like appreciating, celebrating the good that is around us, you know, being connected to the bigger community, taking care of each other. When I read this list, it reminded me a lot of Barry Weybiller.

Yep.

The story that Bob Chapman talks about this unbelievable company in his book, Everybody Matters, right? $3.5 billion grown through 80 acquisitions. And every one of the acquisitions actually turned around the company that was acquired without laying off the workforce, the leadership team. And it was all by actually creating a culture where so many of these elements were present, where It was really an intention to tell everybody, you matter and we're going to invest in you and we collectively are going to, through that, become great together.

Absolutely. You know, people, people think that there has to be a lot of money associated with these things. And there's a whole industry wrapped around incentives and rewards and codifying appreciation, like, which is great. I mean, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those things. And it doesn't have to be expensive for us to simply learn the skills and intentionally practice the skills because we've been told as managers, supervisors, leaders, employees that this is important. Why somebody matters to you at work, how what they did made a difference for you. It's not hard to do this, but it takes attention and it takes intention and it takes normalization of the behaviors we want to see. And I think that's, that's the thing that if I had to give people one thing, it's like, Set an intention for how you want to show up for one another at work. Talk about that, name it, and then figure out, well, what does it look like for us in everyday practice to treat one another in the ways that we want to, that align with our values and align with our ways of working that support one another? And then figure out how do we weave that into how we show up every single day and hold one another accountable when we're not showing up that way. It's like, hey, you know, this is one of the things we talked about, and when you acted in this way, it didn't demonstrate that for me. And we have to have those tough conversations. And unfortunately, that's hard work and it takes discipline and it takes role modeling and sometimes it takes policy. But that's the real work of establishing a culture of care, which is really what we're talking about here. Yeah.

So being intentional about how you want to show up. Right? Really, and hold people accountable, hold each other accountable. Nobody else needs to do it. We need to hold each other accountable to be able to practice and show up that way. Sometimes having the hard conversations. What are some other ways, Jessica, around really making sure that we are creating space for transcendence in the workplace? You know, there were many practices you shared, but I think I would love to get, you know, a little bit of a list. It'll be a recap. Like, obviously you mentioned mindful moments before, after the meeting. But what are some of the other ones that come to mind for you?

Well, I think, and this gets into the social connection piece of it as well, how can we help foster, whether it's virtually and in digital spaces or in-person spaces, How do we foster deeper levels of connection with one another and help people? And that's really where mattering comes from, because in order for people to feel like they matter, it doesn't happen when you get a $25 gift card or an e-discount or something. It happens when somebody else expresses to another person, this is what you did, and this is what I appreciate about you as a person. This is what this showed me about your character and who you are. And it just takes noticing that in a certain way. And it's a skill that we can all And so encouraging people to be together in ways that aren't focused 100% on the task at hand. So my favorite way to do this when I talk about social connection, because I do social connection workshops with companies, some, how do you start your, your virtual meetings? You know what I see a lot of times, and it's sometimes actually when I'm coming on online for these workshops, okay, everybody get settled. We'll start in a minute. We're waiting for everybody to gather. And so people are like working on something, they're looking down, they got up and they get a cup of coffee, right? And it takes a whole 5 minutes and then they call the meeting to order. What a waste of time. We could during that time instead be like, hey, Ashish, so nice to hear you, to see you in person. How was your vacation? Or we could say, oh, Mike, I see that you're having a blizzard on your side of the country. I mean, are you doing okay? How are things going over there? Or your favorite sports team? And this is the small talk stuff, but it helps people to know, hey, I see you. I recognize that you're here. And we now have a moment to share in some connection that has nothing to do with the work we're about to do, but it helps warm us up to the job. And this is what touches not just our heads but our hearts. When we operate from a place of openness and connectedness, that's when creativity, problem solving, helping behaviors, resourcefulness, that's, that's where that's generated from. And so it's things like creating those ways of working. So let's start our calls by engaging each other right away. For some, it might be, let's just ground in a moment of silence, like I said. And so that's a whole set of practices. It can be creating the ability for people, the permission for people to monotask. And that's where flow comes from. Which is a self-transcendent mental state. You know, when people are being disrupted, I think the current research is 42 times or something an hour, you can't really get into being fully present with that conversation you're having, you're having, or with the task at hand. And when we are able to monotask, we know that that's what actually helps us to perform better, more error-free, and it's what actually helps us to feel more satisfied with what we're doing. And so giving people permission to block 20 minutes of time where they're gonna do some focused work and say, you know what, I've turned off my, you can tell I've turned off my notifications for this time. I'm doing focused work. Give people permission to do that. Role model it. Create technology that allows you to do that.

This is one of those, this is such a powerful lever, Jessica, and So we've built an assessment that actually looks at what is flourishing costing an organization across many of these levers. Do people find meaning at work? Do they find work energizing? Are they excited to show up? Can they operate in a place of complexity, right? Do they feel like they belong, they matter? And the fifth, do they actually have time to work in neuro-friendly ways? And one of the domains in that we ask people is, I have time to do unitasking versus I'm stuck in back-to-back meetings and I'm multitasking. And when we map that in terms of losses, you know, what I find is most organizations are operating where 70 to 80% of people will say they don't have time to actually focus, and it's costing them 10 to 20% in productive human capital loss. It's accumulating stress, of course, right? Because every time you kind of multitask, it's taking more of your brain cycles away from what you're doing. The quality of thinking is not there, right? So I mean, it's such a massive lever. And to your point, in ways in which we are working, we are actually reducing our ability to be in flow, which is such a critical state to be able to do our most creative, innovative, and frankly, our most productive work. And yet we don't protect that. We don't protect that. Most organizations don't protect. And I wonder, you know, I often ask clients, like, think about what would become possible if you basically mandated that we want to spend at least 8 out of our 40 hours. We want to invite people to at least spend 8 hours of time doing deep work. You decide how you want to do it. But we will leave you uninterrupted to actually do real work rather than feel that you need to fit it into your meetings or at the end of the day after your workday is done.

Yeah, you know, I, I know organizations that have done this. They have created policies around the no meeting Mondays or whatever it might be, or it might be Fridays. It's still up to the individual to understand how to create their own container. And so we also have to teach the individuals how to do this. But I think in addition to that, there's also helping people to figure out how do we weave flow states into the everyday, whatever we're doing. And it can be in a meeting. How are you running your meetings? Are you allowing people to be distracted? So, you know, if you're doing a virtual meeting, videos on for certain parts of the meeting, we can't have videos on all day long. We'll have video meeting fatigue. That's a real thing. But when it matters, when it's critical, when we're trying to solve a problem together, when we're trying to connect with one another in a meaningful way, video's on for this portion of the meeting, right? Remove distractions, close the door, get in a quiet space for this specific purpose, and we're all going to be engaged together. You can do this in person too by saying, we have a note-taker, everybody, devices away.

Devices off.

Let's have a conversation together and be here in this conversation. It doesn't have to be you set aside this big block of time and people are like, what am I gonna do with all this time? It can be how do we design the ways of working every single day with whatever we're doing so that we're being very intentional about here's where I'm gonna allow some distraction with all the beeps and bops and boops and notifications going on. Here's where I'm going to turn those off for a moment. And otherwise what happens is It happened to me when I was suffering from burnout. Back-to-back meetings all day long as a leader. You go from one to one to one to one, and then you do your work at 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock at night. My workday started at the end of 8 hours of back-to-back meetings.

Yep. And that's the—

that's where burnout comes from.

That's the case for so many people.

Yeah, right. And so, so I had to create— and thankfully I broke my jaw and I had permission to create the boundaries of I'm only going to do 3 hours of meetings a day, and I'm going to break those meetings up, and I'll do a couple here, and I'll have breaks. I won't do them back to back. And I actually had to create that container for myself. That is still a container I try to uphold today. If, if somebody says, well, I have a meeting request and I already have 3 hours of meetings, I either say I can't do it, we have to move it to another week, or I rearrange so that I'm not doing the back to back because I know that that depletes me. And I'm not going to show up in the ways that I want to show up for the meetings that I have anyway. And so it's helped me to really understand that about myself. And that's what we need to do is figure out what are the ways of working that replenish and fill me up and allow me to do my best work. It's not going to be the same for you as it is for me. Maybe, maybe you can do more than 3 hours. For me, I can't because I'm an internal processor. I'm an introvert. So I need that focused work time to do the deep creative work that I do every day.

Yeah. So Jessica, I love that, this notion of what is your personalized, what do you need, right? There is organizational, what can you do as a leader for others, but what do you need? And that really became the focus of your second book. Your first book was a really beautiful book, Reimagining Workplace Wellbeing. Fostering a Culture of Purpose, Connection, and Transcendence. We covered transcendence on this episode. We didn't go that much into purpose and connection, but it's a beautiful book about leaders. You shifted your attention with your second book, Well at Work. I think it released this year, right?

Yeah, just a couple months ago.

Couple of months ago. And here you actually say, hey, listen, it's great for you to do these things as a leader, but let me tell you, this is a book I wrote for you as a leader for yourself.

Yes.

So share a little bit about 2 or 3 practices that you talk about in this book that as an individual, right, to the listeners, if they want to take away and go to start to do something around purpose, connection, and transcendence. And maybe a couple of practices, one from purpose and a couple from connection, which are very much individual-based. You don't need permission from your boss. You don't need permission from anybody, you have full agency and autonomy to try them. What would those be, Jessica?

Yeah. So one of the things, and it's the culminating chapter, I talk about replenishing routines. And so it's doing the work for yourself individually because even if the organization hasn't set up policies and they have all these programs, we each for ourselves have to understand what makes me tick. Because it's, it's different. The things that are important to me, my core values, um, the things that give me joy, the kinds of work that I like to do, that's different for every single one of us. And it's only by tuning in and understanding and naming those things for ourselves, that's the where this work starts. It's actually a spiritual journey to begin to examine what do I care about now, what are my values I want to do today? How do I want to show up and who do I want to show up for? Those are spiritual questions. And when we identify those things for ourselves, we can then share that with other people. You know, I had a manager who she saw that I was, I was fraying all over the place and she would ask me questions like, well, what do you want to do differently? And I was so steeped in overwhelm, I couldn't have told her. And so that was part of the journey for me is to begin to understand What is it that is, is, is leaving me feeling frayed? And I had to begin to really think about how was I working and how was that not supporting the well-being that I needed for myself. So this is inner work, and that's why I wrote that book, is because if we want to do this as leaders, we have to understand how to do it for ourselves. If we want others to support us, if I want to go to a manager or supervisor or a mentor, and get the support or a coach that I'm working with, we have to begin to articulate these things for ourselves so that we can get the support that we need. And then we can align around how we support one another.

Yeah.

And so when we identify one of the simple practices that I lead people through is identify what brings you joy and fills you up, what activates your heart. And so for some people, that might be listening to music. It might be playing with a pet. It might be being out in nature, which is a replenishing thing for a lot of people. Identify what those things are and then look at where am I able to weave those into the natural rhythm of my life in a way that brings me restoration when I need it the most. And so I have like a whole set of practices that I have incorporated into my life.

No, for sure. I think I'm looking at them now, but I would love, you know, walk our listeners through it because they're so powerful practices. And, you know, I do a lot of work with the Olympic movement, and every athlete will tell you recovery is as important, if not more important, than actually, you know, the time you spend on the mat, right? If you don't recover, you will never be able to continue improving. Your performance.

Yes.

Because you're not giving your body time to strengthen. So actually, you know, I think this will be my last question to you before we wrap up our episode. What are some of these replenishing routines? So you talked about finding something that brings you joy and what are some of these other replenishing routines for our listeners to choose from?

Okay, well, I have a whole set of morning routines that I use, and it's the things you would typically think of. I start my day with quiet time by myself in my recliner, journaling about my gratitudes for the day, right off the top of the day. What's important to me? What am I grateful for? How do I want to show up today? I also do a set of movement in the morning. I call it vitamin M, vitamin movement. I need to move. And I usually use some form of— yeah, I use some sort of mindful movement like yoga, for example. And so I have a whole set of practices, which is why I woke up today at 5 in the morning for an 8 o'clock call because I have the practices that I do that allows me to feel filled up in my best self when I start. That's not realistic for everybody, but a small practice might be a journaling practice. It might be listening to some music. It might be reconnecting with your purpose, whatever it is. Midday, or when you tend to have like, okay, here's, here's my— ah, I get a breath for a moment. What could be a practice you might do? And so for me, I like to get outside. I like to experience nature in some way. Get next to a window if I can't be outside, even if it's just for 10 minutes, and really savor the beauty of what I'm seeing out my window or in a car or out the plane window, wherever I am, really focusing on nature at some point. And I actually do awe walks during the middle of the day where I'll actually go on a walk and I'll notice what am I seeing, what am I smelling, what am I feeling? As I do this walk, right? All those things, all those things. And then, you know, we can have other practices like savoring a cup of tea at 3 o'clock every day and just taking some deep breaths, maybe looking at a picture of a loved one who brings you joy in your life. So it's finding what those things are. For some, it might be, this is my playlist when I come home from work. If you're commuting, it might be a playlist that you have. So we can begin to weave these things into our lives, just look for the pauses. When do you pick up your phone? And your phone will tell you because now you can track this. When you pick up your phone and scroll through social media, there's an opportunity to use that in maybe a different way. Unless social media is what fills you out.

Right. I love these because each one of these are actually not massive shifts. They're micro. They're really small, right?

Yeah.

To our listeners, why these resonate so much, so many of these are part of my life, is because it's a little bit like today the phones have gotten better. But when the smartphones came out, unless you kept charging it throughout the day, you were not going to have a phone that worked. Think about this as your ways to continuously charge your inner battery, recover. And what you will notice is when you end your day, you not only have less stress, that you're carrying with you, but your performance throughout the day, because of these little recoveries that you've had, micro recoveries throughout the day, you're actually able to compress your work hours. You'll be able to get more done because you're thinking more clearly. You're not in a brain fog. You know, emotion from a meeting that went bad is not going to hold you the whole day. And let sleep recover. You can actually shift that throughout the day.

Yes.

So I think they're beautiful. Highly encourage everybody to get a copy of Well at Work. We'll, of course, put it in our show notes. Jessica, thank you for joining us. Thank you for continuing to do such pioneering work. And I'm so appreciative that you shifted over the last few years from research to practice because We can keep doing more research, but frankly, I think we already know enough. If we can move more organizations and individuals from knowledge, from knowing to doing, and from doing to being, I think we have a lot higher chances of creating a more flourishing world.

Yes. And I do want to mention, for people who are looking for what are these tangible practices, I do have a free downloadable guide on my website. It's a workplace spirituality practice guide, and it lists every single practice that I found in the research at the individual, at the interpersonal, at the leadership level, at the organizational level, at the societal level across purpose, connection, and transcendence. So, I've distilled them all into one grid that you can look at and start to identify, well, what makes sense for me? What makes sense for my team? What makes sense for my organization? And you just begin to identify what those are and say, How can I do this just a little more often? And you begin to experiment with it and try some things out. So it's really quite doable if you start small, but just don't put it off. Start today.

Start today. Thank you, my friend. I will download that. We'll put that in our show notes as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us. It's such a joy to know you, to have you on our podcast, and thanks for all that you do.

Great. Thanks so much for your podcast.

Thank you for joining me on The Flourishing Edge. If today's conversation inspired you, share it with someone who's ready to flourish too. Subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected for more tools to achieve breakthrough performance through flourishing. Until next time, keep learning, practicing, and growing into your fullest potential.