Fixing Workplace Culture IS KEY to Ending Survival Mode

Our whole modern culture is actually driven by stress and trauma. It's driven by a sense of scarcity, a sense of being uncomfortable in my skin, a sense of fear of others. And it brings out all of these destructive forces inside of us. And actually, now this isn't just metaphorical. We have all the science that shows this is true. Foreign.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad podcast. Today I'm joined by Joe Loizo, a Columbia trained psychiatrist and contemplative science pioneer, and Elazar Eslan, seasoned executive and transformational coach. Today's episode is a powerful reminder that leadership isn't just about performance, it's about presence. Together, they have authored a brilliant book, Boundless Leadership, which blends neuroscience, Eastern wisdom, and practical frameworks to help us lead from our full humanity. On today's episode, we talked about how today's workplaces are often wired for fear and burnout and what it takes to rewire them for flourishing. Joe and Elazar walked us through their beautiful framework that integrates the mind, heart and body, and also talks about why training all three are essential if we want to lead with clarity, compassion, and courage. If you're ready to move beyond the old playbook of command and control and step into a new way of leading, one grounded in wholeness, trust, and true connection, this episode is for you. Hi, Joe. Hi, Elizar. It's so lovely to have you with us on our Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for joining and sharing insights from your life's work and this beautiful book that you sent me, Boundless Leadership. I have to tell you, I sat and for six hours I was like reading the thing from COVID to cover. I didn't plan to do six hours that morning, but that's where I found myself because I was so taken by your book. So thank you for joining us.

Thank you for inviting us. It's a pleasure to meet you and to through Artabus. Yeah.

So a question to you. What inspired you both to collaborate and write Boundless Leadership at this moment?

Well, you know, Ashish, the book is actually based on a program called Boundless Leadership that we created. And the genesis of that program was that, you know, in my personal business career, this was in the days when everybody still wore suits to go to the office. And, you know, there was all the machinations that every corporation was having, and for me, it just didn't sit well. You know, the C word then was competition. This collaboration was a sense of softness. You know, you play hard, you work hard. The idea of balance was, you know, for sissies, just Kind of you, you work all night and on a deck and you wear it like a badge of honor the next day. So it was, was so askew. It wasn't just making a lot of sense. And yet, you know, my vacations, I started looking at meditations and doing silo retreats and stuff. And that felt really natural. You know, you could feel the connection between people, the sense of collaboration and, and how easeful it was to, to be kind. And there was nothing weak about compassion. So you know, you could see the two worlds. And yeah, the idea was for me was well, we gotta be able to bring this into the corporate world. But that was a long journey. Fortunately, I had met Joe at the same time and he was already doing that kind of work. And so when I went to Joe, it's like we got to bring this into the business world. I'll let Joe explain his, his journey into that overlap.

Thank. Thanks, Elazar. Yeah, I've always felt, I mean my, I grew up watching my father become a doctor and practice as a psychiatrist and, and felt the way this kind of mentality creeps into all of our professions and lives. You know, work, work, work and you know, forget about relationships, forget about connection. And I felt that if I was going to go into medicine, I really want to bring, be sure I brought in something that allowed me to stay human and allowed me to give others the space to, to become more human together. Right. And so I, I also ran into Buddhism. This is how what brought us together in college actually. And that was a long time ago. As you can see things, you know, really. Of course this was before the mindfulness revolution. And so with the sort of science, the dialogues with His Holiness and the research that, showing that, that meditative practices are not fluff and you're not just.

A rich, most powerful rewiring practices for our brains.

Exactly. But back we didn't know that and so I felt it. But you know, so, you know, as that began to happen, the two parts of my career and training came together. And that was around the time that Elazar and I met. I was developing a center for meditation and healing at Columbia Presbyterian. And really out of that my, and I eventually developed a nonprofit to train. What I realized is that in order for caregivers to be able to embody this diff. Whole different culture or way of being or way of living, they really needed in depth training. So I created the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science to provide that training for professionals. And of course we had a lot of Business people coming, come in coaches or. Or people in trans life transition, career transition, trying to figure themselves and their lives out. But certainly I totally got it. And I was very relieved and, and glad when Elizar, you know, introduced himself and it's. And his mission and project because I think, you know, corporations are. Are so important to our. Our lives and our society. You know, the structure, the logic of. Or leadership, as usual, let's just say, is really running our lives. And so the idea of developing a program that could really re. Educate and help business people transform to be able to live a different kind of culture. Culture, connection, compassion, collaboration, contribution. Right. All those C words. That was really inspiring. So that's the story.

Well, it's beautiful. I mean, it's beautiful. It's so needed. You know, I just released TED Talk three weeks ago now four weeks ago. It'll come out in a couple of weeks. But, you know, where I was reflecting and the talk was around this fact that our workplaces, where we spend over 90,000 hours, it's a third of our lives, it's most of our waking hours during the day. Day, a work day. Right. For adults, have become these massive places of human suffering rather than on human flourishing. We are more prosperous than we've ever been, and yet we are creating more strife and suffering in the workplace. And so important because it's, you know, as you write about in your book and as I talk about it, comes from a fundamental way we all experience the world. These beliefs that we are living into that are actually causing more harm than good. And so it was wonderful. That's why I couldn't put the book down, because I was reading through all of the different practices of the mind, the heart, and the body that you've kind of put together into what you're calling boundless leadership that can allow us to activate a different way of being, a different way of being showing up and collaborating to create massive value for all.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So tell me a little bit before we go into each of these practices of the mind, heart and body that you talk about. You wrote the book around 21. You know, how long have you all been running the program?

We did our first program in 2009.

Amazing.

We've had iterations, but the core beliefs obviously have been the same. Initially it was peak performance, and now it's boundless leadership. So it took us about three or four iterations to get there, but we launched the Boundless Leadership program pre pandemic.

So 1920, so about four or five years already. Reflections on how that work. These three disciplines of mind, heart and body are even more needed today in the world where AI is posing an ever increasing threat to jobs and ways of operating. Why are these three, even so, more important now?

You want me to start with that?

Yeah, Joe. Yeah, why don't you?

I mean, I see our whole modern culture, quote, unquote, civilization, right, as a move away from centering humanity, right? Science doesn't want the subjective element. It feels it's, you know, unreliable. And increasingly, our kind of worship, if you will, or our sense of future has moved toward technology, material wealth, generating material wealth and prowess, and kind of assuming that if we had enough, enough power, enough wealth, that then we would be healthy, happy humans. And of course, what we found is, in a way, quite the opposite. We do have the wealth and we have the power, but we're even more unhappy than many traditional people in many traditional societies where, as we know, our science has taught us the core values that foster flourishing, connection, belonging, contribution, presence. And they all really require that we turn attention toward our humanity. So in my view, I think AI is the ultimate example of that. We're going to eliminate humans. We don't even need them, Right? The machine is as smart as a human. Well, of course it isn't. Right? We know that. And maybe eventually it will be. But if, if we're not, if it's not a smart human programming it, then, you know, I'm not so sure that's going to be much better. Like, we, we need to really, we. Everything that happens in our culture is done by humans ultimately. And if the caliber of our human, you know, potential and capacity isn't higher, isn't improved, isn't liberated, but it's just neglected, in fact, oppressed and eroded, right. Then, you know, what we're going to be doing may seem to work well, but it actually isn't going to work toward flourishing. To your point.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm sure you, you believe this as well. I mean, AI is an issue, but it's just another manifestation of the core problem, right? Which is if we're having change that we can't control, we usually handle that with stress. It just increases the stress that we already have and may turn our stress into overwhelm. Well, you know, we can address stress either by, you know, hiding, running away, or just doing more and more trying to get ahead of that stress. But if you look at the totality of the human and break it into simple things called there's the mind of the human, the heart of the Human, what we feel and how we experience and the body of the human, the energy that we carry in our bodies, if that's one way to break down the human and you optimize each of these disciplines, the mind and the heart and the body. Now to your point, as you mentioned earlier, is we're showing up in the world at our best. And whatever the stimuli for that stress or overwhelm might be, we're better prepared for it than ever before because our body part, if you will, what makes us whole are already at their best. So we are at our best. And you know, to your point, when that stress is really reduced and we enter into the stage of flourishing, well, it feeds our sense of wellness and our sense of being in purpose. So it just comes becomes this, you know, positive root. Yeah.

I'm just curious about your reflections. Right. Like I've thought about it. We actually had Rasmus Hougaard who runs Potential project on our podcast about, you know, six, seven episodes. He wrote a book called More Human and you know, they've been doing work around bringing mindfulness practices into corporate for a long while. Right. And it made me reflect. You know, there were two things in that that really made me reflect. When it comes to technology, you know, we humans have been amazing at inventing technology, but not necessarily using it to further the human race. Starting all the way from, you know, we split the atom and started the biggest cold war and have produced more nuclear weapons to destroy the earth. Hundreds if not thousands of time over rather than unbelievable source of energy. Same was the story with the social media, same's the story now with AI. And I think that's where I think there is a both an opportunity, I feel Elazar and Joe, this technology that truly can do 25, 30, 40% right of what people do, which means can free up capacity, can either help us give people back a day so we can keep doing what we are doing, but at four days. And so we actually can reduce the level of busyness and allow people to go from human doings to human beings. We can actually fire them and just hence drive more profits. Or we can say, hey, in the end we started this business to make an impact in the world. And if I can do 30% more of impact, why don't I actually drive more impact in the world? All those three are roads that we can go down. We can fire people, we can give people time back, or we can actually use people and that capacity to do even more positive impact in the world. All of those three are choices we can make. But today, majority of the companies seem to be choosing choice number one. Let me fire people because I don't need them. And I can have most programming done by people, I can have a lot of marketing done by AI, et cetera, et cetera, you know, and I think that's where I think the work that you all are doing, the work that we are doing is so powerful because with the right level of consciousness, with the right level of perspective, I feel that there is an opportunity to use AI to become more human rather than replace more humans.

Yeah, I mean, I very much agree with you, Ashish. I think the potential of sort of not feeling like we're just repositories of information and skill maybe then would free our minds, time, hands to learn how to be more, more of what we can be. I think the key thing that drives the sort of, you know, the engine of current business as usual is that the whole culture, our whole modern culture has chosen in a way in my view. Elazar mentioned stress versus flourishing. So in my view, our whole modern culture is, is actually driven by stress and trauma. It's driven by a sense of scarcity, a sense of being uncomfortable in my skin, a sense of fear of others. And it brings out all of these destructive forces inside of us. And actually now this isn't just metaphorical. We have all the science that shows this is true. And on the other hand, it's almost as if we've never seriously entertained or discovered that there's a whole other side to our potential. It may not be the default side because we, given negativity bias, we tend toward worst case and self protection. But with training and with support and encouragement, we can learn to really shift out of stress as a way of being. Right. And of course that's in a way the antithesis of, you know, the social Darwinist philosophy that's been running us. Only a few people are going to make it, only a few countries, only a few civilizations are going to make it to the top. And whatever gets us there is the good thing. And we've seen that really just keeps us all caught in this struggle to survive. Instead of asking us to switch channels and say, okay, enough, we've survived, how about thriving? And of course the challenge there is, as you know, you're suggesting, is that thriving requires training. Human beings don't just throat.

Yeah, our brains are wired for fear and safety, not for happiness and thriving. Right.

Well, it's in there as a potential, but it has to be activated, has to be chosen, actually. Has to be explicitly chosen and cultivated.

I just got to say, I think that one of the core dilemmas here is we're wired for the negative for survival, but we're built for the positive. We're built for the connection. We're built for the flourishing. That's how we're built. It's just that in our socialization, plus our. Some of the hard wiring, we're kind of following a program that is so outdated for who we are, for what we are actually built for. And I think that's both the issue and the opportunity when humans start seeing. So it's that sense of, oh, the other way is actually more me.

Right.

Even though my whole life has been about performance, I am my performance and hence the stress and the overwhelm. But once I realize I am not that and much more than that, then the excitement about flipping it is all what drives me.

Absolutely. So let's go into the three red pills rather than the blue pills. Borrowing from the matrix analogy of the mind. There's a mind pill, there's a heart pill, and there's a body pill. They of course, are all related, they're integrated. We all know that. But let's start with some of the practices you talk about on mind self awareness and clarity and how that those, what are some of the practices within that that can start to help us move from surviving to thriving.

Well, I think, Well, I think it's big enough. We'll both have an angle on it. The, you know, as, you know, obviously this, this core issue is self awareness. I think it's part of your descent of your model as well, because that's how we keep improving without that self awareness, you know, we're, we're as blind as, you know, we act. But one of the things that is both the opportunity, self awareness is understanding that all of us, all of us live with biases, Biases, some of that are hardwired, like, you know, the negativity bias, you know, some of them that are learned. I believe there's some gentleman who documented 186 of these biases. So if you don't have the self awareness and you're kind of bombarded by these biases in your life and you're not even aware that you have them, how are you ever going to get to clarity and see things as they are?

Right.

So self awareness is the key. That's, you know, in our approach, imbalanced leadership. Each of the disciplines has a trait that you build over time. In this case, self awareness for the mind And a competency that supports it.

Right.

And below the competency are actually qualities you develop over time through meditation and other practices which then allows one to feed the other. Right. So that's the setup and Joe's the engineer of matching these practices to the actual results that we want. So I'll let him describe some of the particular.

Yeah, Joe, talk a little bit about what are those competencies and practices? How are some ways in which you help people become more self aware?

Well, so as Elazar's suggesting, we're trying to break the big challenge of developing a whole new trade, installing it into the little bite sized pieces. How do we develop those capacities that support clarity and self awareness? And the way we've done that is to look at practices and align practices with qualities. So the practices at the level of the mind are basically the four major applications or trainings in the mindfulness tradition. Right. We have currently with the mindfulness revolution is basically limited to one and you know, that is body awareness, present moment awareness. But of course that's just the beginning. And so what we start with developing a sense of presence through practicing, paying attention to our breath and body and what they're doing. But we then want to be able to maintain equanimity or balance when things get, you know, either difficult or overstimulating. And that's where we work on what we call mindful sensitivity. Most people call it mindfulness of feeling. And you know, finally, then as others are saying, we don't even stop there. We don't just want presence and balance or equanimity. We want openness of mind. We want a freedom of mind and that we want to be able to detect and unlearn the biases that limit our capacity for clarity. And that's where we practice open awareness. And then ultimately we don't just want to be open minded and notice where we're stuck. We want to know how to unwire that and rewire ourselves. So the mindful insight is the last, you know, so the open awareness allows us to develop this unbiased awareness and the mindful insight allows us to develop discernment. Like to see things now clearly with the biases removed, with all the turbulence of I'm comfortable or uncomfortable and with all this sort of antsiness of a wild animal because my nervous system isn't settled.

Yeah, it brings me back to my vipassana training where we talked about shrimata and vipassana and one being the same. Right. That one can lead to the other.

Yes, totally.

And yet most People stop at what we started with as a base in Vipassana, practice by day three of just present moment, awareness and awareness of feelings. So you could actually get much deeper over the rest seven days with an embodied field, right?

Yeah. I mean, we often say, you know, mindfulness isn't just about being mindful. I mean, you know, it isn't. You know, we talk about the power of now, but then what about the power of them? Right? We really need to understand that we don't just want to be aware of how uncomfortable and miserable we are, how stressed out you are. We want to be able to find ways of, you know, accessing our potential to be a different human, you know, a different part of our humanity. And that requires all of these progressive trainings of attention. And that's. That's the logic.

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Well, thank you for that question. And of course, I mean, that's the key, right? How do we actually do it? And of course, the essence, you know, the problem is even compounded when you're talking about introducing mindfulness as a leadership training or as a. As a workplace training, because the mindset with which we're trying to do this is the stress mindset. If I don't do this, I'll fall behind my rivals or I don't have.

The time for it.

Yeah. And so part of how the tradition and how we learned to create the environment is to create an experience for people where they feel free and allowed an experience or quality of well being in the moment with others. So part of that has to do with the magic of community and allowing oneself to feel safer in community than one might than in most communities. Right. Part of it has to do with making sure that we're exposing and dismantling the performance mind. Right. Jon Kabat Zinn called this the judgment mind. But it isn't really just about judgment. It's a certain quality of urgency or grasping. And this is where we sort of pivot into the discipline of heart. What we need in order to really have a sustainable relationship with learning is an ability to accept where we are without the grasping energy of, I need to be better, without the aversion of, oh, I'm so bad, and without spacing out. So that is equanimity or acceptance, if you will. And so that's the magic ingredient in that sense. There are many people like my dear friend Sharon Salzberg, who says mindfulness isn't just about being mindful. There's also kindness and compassion. There has to be an agreement of kindness and compassion for oneself. And the practice has to be coming from, this is good for me and I care about myself, otherwise it's very hard to sustain.

Yeah, I want to actually go to that because for sure, right. With the mindful practices, as we rewire and redo the, you know, unwind, the conditioning, both conditioning, which is evolutionary over millions of years, but also conditioning from our childhood to kind of adulthood, life, which becomes even more pronounced, keeps us stuck. That compassion and connection and being able to do it with kindness and compassion for ourselves and for others is so important, which is where your heart practices come in. So I wanted to ask you, Elazar, let's go there next and bring to life a little bit for our listeners. What are some of those heart practices that you invite leaders to consider to make a core part of their way of operating in order to operate less from fear and scarcity and survival and more from thriving?

Yeah, great question. And a very practical one.

Right.

Theories are nice, but how does it really affect me in the office? So let me come at that with a story. You know, once I was coaching a new CEO, he was just hired and he was having a presentation with the board, or just the comp committee with the board. And I went through the presentation with him and I said, you know, you, you know, your Stuff. This is good.

I, it.

It's articulate, it flows. You make a good point, but your energy's not there. Like, I, I'm not feeling what you're saying, what's. What's really going on. And so it took us a little bit, not that long, to kind of get to. He was angry. He was angry because the person he's presenting to was the only person on the board that didn't want to hire him.

Right.

And he was presenting to her for the first time as head of the comm committee. And once we got to that, so a awareness, right? It took time to get to the awareness. Once we got to that, we were able then to put in place some of the practice. So his first reaction to that was, and I have a right to be angry, right? Because she didn't. And blah, blah, blah. And that's where he was stuck. So that was in his energy, of his presentation. So awareness, part one, to Joe's point of, you know, having presence. Oh, now I see. That doesn't mean you see and you stay, you see, so you have an option to decide what to do. Right. So where we were able to go to was compassion practice, and we were able to understand that she was just another human being, you know, connect to her humanity, not what she has done or supposedly done for him. See her in her fear mode, understand her confusion about who she is and how hard it is for her to want to have the best hire that's important to her. And whatever her views were, so kind of resetting who she really is and what she meant to him, then we actually went into a compassion, loving kindness meditation where, you know, you actually are able to open up your heart clearly to those that you love. So that's easy to do and that, you know, neutral people, that's not so hard and sometimes difficult people. So when he was able to open his heart to her as another human being, rather than walk into that meeting facing the enemy who wants him, didn't want him in. That's a completely big shift in his presentation. And when he walked out, you know, we. We connected again. So how did it go? He goes, oh, she's great. I think she might be my biggest ally in the company. That would have never happened if he walked in with the energy of anger. Never. Because if I walk in angry, what do you think the other person's going to do? They're going to defend, because why is this person angry? Well, they must be wrong, because I'm not, you know, so now we're into this subliminal tug of war. There's no way we're going to become allies. And it all happened before the meeting through simple practice and awareness and a shift of energy that change the trajectory of the meeting.

Yeah, you know, the loving kindness meditation has become a core part of my morning routine. You know, I do. I have three practices that I usually do in the morning. You know, I start with just anapana, which is just bringing awareness to the breath and to just using that as a way to still my mind, which then I shift to the isha kriya with I'm not my mind, I'm not my body as a way to kind of ground myself in something more than kind of what's present. And I always end my practice from that place of deeper connection with loving kindness. And it's just been transformative for me, you know, just being able to kind of hold the space for myself and for others and just leaves me so energized. But I can imagine how powerful it must have been for that person to shift them from an energy of anger which is one of constraining closed, you know, wanting to pound the other person down. And we all know our bodies and our energy speaks more than our words. And so, wow, I can just imagine the effect that clearly had on that relationship and on the move, you know, Ashish.

And that goes back to your previous question. How do you sustain the practice? Right. Well, part of it is the positive experiences. Oh, I want more of that. So in the beginning it's trust me now, believe me later.

Right.

And the science helps and this helps. But the real thing is I have the experience, you know, so that's what we really create the conditions for. And I also want to echo what you're saying about your practice. You know, sometimes I give my clients the experiment because, you know, just came upon me. You know, I had a job once where it was a 20 minute walk and it took me years. I'd walk to work thinking about my meeting, thinking about the guy in front of me, like, why is this cab driver? You know, my mind was full by the time I got to work. You know, I was already tired. Like I have all this stress. So I decided to instead of that for 20 minutes on my walk to just give compassion to everybody that I saw. This was in New York City. It was easy. You could look people in the eye, they never look you back. They're just kind of like, so you can actually connect with them as a human being. And by the time I would get to Work. My heart was so open, it'd be like, what do we. What a beautiful opportunity we have today. What are we going to do? What are we going to accomplish today? It's so exciting to see you, you know, a very different way of being. So when they have that experience themselves, because I asked them to do the same experiment, when they have that same experience, they just go deeper. They want more. So, yeah, yeah, I like it.

Right. This notion of how do you have people experience. In other words, we always use this word in our programs. How do you get people to taste the chocolate? Once you taste it, you'll want more. I can't describe it for you, but if you taste it, even if it is one bite, right? Even if it is one bite, it's not even a whole square. It's just one bite. And you experience, you want more, then I think there's a natural inclination to get there, and yet so many people don't. And I think that's where the body and embodiment comes in, right? From knowing to doing to being, where it becomes a core part. I want to go to you, Joe. You all have amazing embodiment practices as part of the body, part of the program. Talk to me a little bit about why somatics and getting in tune with our bodies and making those shifts are so foundational. Right. Just thinking about compassion and thinking about the mind is not going to solve it. We've actually got to involve the body. Talk to us a little bit around the science behind it and some practices that are foundational for you.

Thank you. Yes, absolutely. So we think we're in our heads. This is how our culture trains us. They. Our culture wants us to be in our heads because we're not supposed to feel things. That's irrational. And our bodies are just supposed to be machines that help us perform. But our bodies are living things, and they're sensitive and, by the way, social living things. So if we are not attuned to. To what our bodies are doing, they are actually powerfully influencing the state of our hearts and our minds. Right? So these things sort of stack where they. They enter. They're constantly interacting. And of course, the fact of the matter is that if we live a stressful life, we grow up in a society where we have to, you know, fight we feel or be in. And so both chemically and autonomically, that is to say, in terms of the fight, flight, fate, freeze, network, we often find we're just tied up in knots without even knowing. Right. Just again, as Elazar saying, just walking out the door and thinking about what my next, you know, to do is. And that's because a part of our culture is to help us get out of our bodies as if our bodies are something inconvenient that we can and should leave behind. Right. There's something lower. They're animal, they're primitive, they're not intelligent. But our bodies are incredibly intelligent. And the biggest difference that they feel is whether they're safely connected to another body or not. Right. So when our human nervous system feels safely connected to others, especially in groups and organizations, they are in thriving mode. They are supporting the full opening of our heart and the full activation of our minds. When they unfortunately are in survival mode, they're shut down and locked down and they're draining huge percent of our heart capacity and our mind capacity. And so not teaching us how to have a healthy dialogue with our bodies is a major downfall in terms of even just connectivity, let alone flourishing or cooperation.

I was going to say, you know, it's so crazy, it's so true. So many times people say, how, what are you feeling? And they say, nothing. And I'm like, yeah, that's a feeling of numbness. You're numb, right? You're like. But it's so true. We have forgotten and gotten so out of touch with everything below the head.

Absolutely. And you know, so it's a whole different kind of culture. I mean, this is what modern culture has taught us, you know, Cartesian culture is this is the thinking, the intelligent part, and the rest is just a machine. And in fact, it's, it's not, it's a very much a living thing, you know, so we also broadcast constantly to each other. You know, 90% of communication is non verbal. And what we're picking up on to get those messages, tone of voice and body language. And of course body language and tone of voice are determined by how safe, comfortable, connected and happy our bodies are. Right. In fact, I love this in the Tibetan tradition, you know, in one of the, which is how I came into the practice of meditation, when you greet someone, you don't just say, hello, how are you? Right. You ask them, you know, which means, how is your body today? Is your body happy? Today? Is literally what it means today. Is your body happy? We need to move toward a culture like that, which understands and then once we recognize that we can be our trait at this level as the trait of importance, body flow. Right. Because actually we, as we all know, under certain circumstances, our bodies and our nervous systems can be very Settled and very happy to be in. Right. Very pleasant and support incredible focus and incredible enthusiasm. But that usually only happens by accident. What if we learned how to train that? So that was, that was our default state. Not only would be having this incredible capacity fully accessible, but we'd be saving all the energy that we normally waste on stress. Right. That's what we call dirty energy. So we do that in two ways. Trying to talk from our minds and our hearts kind of down to our bodies and then helping our bodies talk up to our hearts and our minds. So practices like revision it, having a positive vision give the body a message, I'm okay, I'm strong, I'm capable, I'm confident, I have ambition. Expressions with a calming, soothing tone of voice say, just like a fairy tale or a lullaby say, we're safely connected, all is good, all is well. And those calm the nervous system. Then deep breathing practices as we know, powerfully modify the autonomics. Right. So that we move from the the stress system into the relaxation and well being system. And so do the messages we give to our nervous system by gentle movement, self massage and other kinds of bottom up practices. So, you know, this isn't an act. There are actually many practices we can use to create a dialogue between our mind and body and a virtuous dialogue. One that's helping to shift our nervous system out of and our whole body experience out of survival and into thriving.

Yeah. I particularly liked Joe in your body section. You know this stance, right? The fact that we can take different stances, we can take a stance of openness, we can take a stance towards action. So as much as using visualization, tone of voice to tell the body you're okay, we can also move the body and position it in certain ways to send the message back to the brain, to activate different ways of being and different unique ways in which we can observe the world. Right. Again, something that is not accessible to so many people. Yeah.

In fact, we're almost taught the opposite. I do want to highlight what Joe was saying, the mind body dialogue. Because despite my education, despite my intelligence, for decades I knew about the monologue, how I felt affected my body. If I was anxious, I'd feel in my stomach. I did not realize it's actually a dialogue. And the body tells the mind how it's going on. So to your point about the postures, as an example, when we smile, we're telling our mind that we're happy. It's just the hormones are connected and the motions are connected. But if we put a Pencil in our mouth so that our mouth is stretched as if we're smiling. Even if we're not happy, our body will start, our mind will start getting the message, we're okay, things are okay, we're in a happy state now. And shift its chemistry. The fact that it's a two way dialogue is one of the reasons it makes it so powerful. Yeah.

And I mean, with all the research now around gut health and the fact that 70% of the serotonin is actually produced in our gut and it's not produced in our brain, and you know, what the microbiome is doing is the health is directly related to stress and anxiety and so many other things. Right. We have all the science now, you know, to back up and to recognize how critical it is and how important that dialogue and the dynamics are. Right. And if we have to flourish, if we have to thrive, we can't ignore that. It can't just be cognitive work or it can't just be emotional meditation work. We also implicitly involve the body. So I love that you integrate all of those into your programs.

Yeah. I mean, it's almost as if we need to learn all over again how to be human. Unfortunately, these sort of wellness fads often end up being one quick fix if you just do this. But they don't really address who are you? As you do that. They don't really address the whole human in this holistic, multi dimensional way. And so from that point of view, that's what we're really trying to get at, is that the whole enchilada, you know, you really can be a different, you know, version of you.

So I'm curious, right? I mean, look, I love this work. You love this work. You've dedicated your lives to it, to leaders who today still, I think about only 10% of people get it. 90% of people are like, I want to drive profits, I want to drive revenue, I want to drive growth. I have an attrition problem. Maybe I'm happy to think about that. I have a absenteeism problem. You know, maybe my people are not as productive. And here you're talking about meditation, you're talking about, you know, journaling. You want people to become more self aware. You want to have them take postures like this feels like a lot of mumbo jumbo. I don't have time for this. I need to drive profits. What's the message you give to leaders to build the case for why this is needed today more than ever before and why they should actually invest in this as A priority.

Well, I mean, the promise of boundless leadership, the promise of this work is that you could have a trajectory of your future that's based on the limitations of your past, or you could have a trajectory of your future that's based on your potential. Under a world of stress, under a confused approach to who we are and what we need, you're going to stay limited in what you can deliver. So if you want the performance, if you want the results, if you want the impact, you want the people to be at their best, not living through the limitations of their past. And, you know, what kind of investment would you make if I said to you, I have this machine that could speed up your production, you know, and reduce your cost of goods? You say, okay, a million dollars, it makes sense. It pays back in five years. Great. You do that calculation. Well, we're saying the same thing. It's just not a physical machine. But it will improve the productivity, it will improve the engagement, it'll improve the innovation, it'll improve the creativity and the wellness and forget all the costs of sick people and all that. Just the positivity. What are you willing to invest? You know what? No matter how little you invest, you'll have a payback. And from that payback, invest a little bit more. So don't take it all on.

I'm going to do all of these.

I'm going to be a different person. No, let's start with where you are, because wherever you are, you could do something small. Meditation is too much. No problem. Why don't you just start with awareness of your biases? Make a list of what are the three top biases you think you have. Make a list and watch them for a week. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

I really.

Oh, wow.

That's all.

That's an investment.

It'll.

It's a hell of a beginning. It's good enough. And then you'll want more yourself because you tasted the chocolate, you're going to want more.

Yeah, I would. Also, just specifically to your point, Ashish, the science is there that we can make a case for any of the needs, a. Sorry. For any of the needs that a CEO might have. Engagement, teamwork, product. We can make a very specific case how this specific part of boundless leadership will help, and that would be a place we can start. Then the question is, you know, you tasted the chocolate, you want more. You know, and also I think the larger issue of, you know, the research on flourishing and how directly related it is to overall productivity and teamwork and everything else. I Think it's really quite. The evidence is mounting, so we try to point it out to people like, consider this as another alternative.

Yeah, no, it's true, right, that the science behind I use this. I actually opened with a board and I asked them this question, which they looked at at me as if I had like, who's this weirdo? If it hadn't been for my McKinsey background, they probably would have thrown me out of that meeting by that question first question. But luckily they didn't. I asked them, do you think Earth is round? And people first looked at each other, then looked at me, and they said, yes. Well, that's great. You know, 1% of the US still believes Earth is not round. There are flat earth conventions. 500 years ago, 50% of you would have raised your hand and said, I'm not sure Earth is round because all those people were afraid to sail off and were afraid of falling off the plate. Today, science shows us that Earth is round. The science around the connection between flourishing and productivity and shareholder returns is as clear today as the science that is clear around the Earth being round. The question is, do you want to still live under your biases and preconditions of the only way to happiness is through success? The only way to do more is to achieve more, is to do more. If you're willing to allow yourself a different pathway, recognizing that bias, to try and take a small move, to notice how stillness and space can actually create and open up something that allows you to get what you want with less effort, with more creativity, with more pathways, then that is the path to it. Right? And I loved Elazar what you said, start where you are, start with what you're doing, make it small. Try that. And from the payback, invest more into it. Look, thank you both for spending this time. Will put the book and your program in the show notes. It's really, really well done. I loved the integration of it. I loved how you tied it also around one of the things that is on top of mind for so many people, which is this whole notion of remote work, not remote work. How does all of that tie into it? Thank you both for the beautiful work you're doing in the world. We'll definitely follow up and connect on ways in which we can collaborate. But meanwhile, thank you. Be well and have an amazing weekend.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Thank you.

That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional, professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.