From Scarcity to Sustainable Abundance: Jennifer on Healing, Systems Thinking, and the Seven Laws of Enough

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, change makers 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. Jen, it is so amazing to have you with us on the Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you, my friend, for making the time and being with us.

Thank you so much for having me. I am honored to be a member of the Happiness Squad. May it be so.

So, you know, as we were just chatting before, you know, Jen, I think the core place from where you do the work, the core underlying principle, right, on which all of your work is foundationally based, we're so of like mind right around kind of what is the root behind this poly crisis in the world that we are experiencing. And I really want to start from that, right, start with a little bit around, you know, your journey, your origin story that has shaped all of this magical world. You know, you're a teacher of teachers that you are bringing into this world.

Thank you. Okay. The origin story, I never know, I never am quite sure how, how deep into the origins to go with people, but I feel a kindred spirit here. So please, really, Ashish, my origin story has a lot to do with trauma and my own history of childhood trauma. And at the age of 22, really finding myself on my knees and not really understanding what was arising, what I was remembering, what was happening, but knowing that I was in trouble. And I was very, very, very blessed very early on. And I met somebody who also had a similar trauma history. And she said, I want you to go to a body worker. And I said, what's a body worker? Exactly. And she said, just go to this woman and you'll find out kind of thing. And I. So I went to this woman and it was a little too much for me right at that juncture. I have to say, she kind of blew, she blew a few circuits that first session, but I really saw a path start to emerge in a way and that, that I was going to go on a journey to piece myself back together, to remember and return and come home. And that really began, that became the foundation of everything else, simultaneous with a fairly zealous interest in systems and social change and an understanding of humans as creatures of context, that we were not just, I'm not just me and you're not just you. We. We are of something. We are of a landscape. We are of a consciousness. We are of a religion. We are of a socioeconomic model. We are of narratives. Layers and layers and layers and layers of narratives that have literally shaped the sinews of our bodies and our consciousness and our mind. And my real interest in systems and how they function and the impact they were having on individuals, along with my own journey, became the foundation of everything, you know, that I engage with, basically.

Yeah. You know, it's. When you tune in. Right. I think very few people, Jen, actually think beyond. You say, who are you? And there's a name. And you ask them, well, who are you? In addition to the name? Well, I work in this place, or I live here, or I was born here, or I am a man, or I am a woman. Right. Or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Even though it's in almost every ancient lineage to kind of go deep and ask, well, but who are you? Yeah, who are. Who were you? Did you exist before the name was given? And. And if you. This is your body. That can't be you. That's your car. That's not you. So who are you? I think sit. And tuning into that question as part of my meditations, you know, reading some of the work really, really has been so transformative, and yet that source of inquiry is so missing. We just don't have the space for people to really tune in to recognizing that this embodied experience that we think is real is actually just our own kind of accumulation of ideologies and egoic structures.

Yeah, we really. We live in a society built on a lot of inversions, and we could have a whole conversation about that. But one of them is this. This one that you're pointing to, which is, we think I, the I, especially in the West. I mean, we have to. We have to contextualize it in the West. In the north and in the West, I am everything.

Yes.

And where I came from, all the things you're saying, where I came from and what I do, like, those are important things about me, but me is the center of it.

Yeah.

And actually, if we begin to really understand systems and how they shape our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our beliefs, we will see that the thing we identify as me is actually really, really small. And all the layers of shaping are much larger. And then if you really go through the wormhole of the me, there's nothing there anyway. Right. You really go through that wormhole. I'm actually not what I think I am. To start with, which is to your question, what is this really? If it's 99.9999% empty space and there's no fixed knowable self that's actually in there, what am I? Am I?

Yeah.

And all the things we identify as me are. They're not inaccurate on one from one view. They're not like, I'm not here. I am here on the relative plane, but I'm also not here in the way I think I'm here.

Yeah. And one of the ways, and this is why I love and I want to get into this together with you.

Right.

Which is. And one of the manifestations of not knowing our true selves and kind of seeing the world from all of the programming. Right. These colored lenses is. You know, there's so many today who are operating from a place of fear and scarcity, a sense of lack. Right. Separation and operating knowing unknowingly from that space are not only operating at their fullest potential, but most importantly, not operating in ways that can allow others to flourish. You know, you've looked deeply into this topic and I'm curious about your research, what you find and also how that led to the seven laws that you have that are at the foundation of the work around abundance that you try, that you do in the world.

Yeah. Well, I'll give you a little bit of that origin story and some context. So it was 20 years ago now. It was about 20 years ago and I was invited to join a group of people, you could call it like a mastermind group. I mean, they didn't call themselves that, but it was a group of people who had been introduced to a body of work developed by somebody named Lynn Twist. Lynn Twist is by all, by a lot of accounts, one of the most prolific fundraisers alive today. She's raised millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. First for the Hunger Project and now she co runs an organization called the Pachamama Alliance.

Yeah.

And she wrote a book called the Soul of Money and distinguished what she called were the three toxic myths of scarcity, of a system based on scarcity, lack, separation and our economic model. And I'm not an economist by any stretch of the imagination, but our economical model is based on scarcity and debt. A commodity that is abundant. I mean, at the most basic level, a commodity that is abundant is not worth much. And a commodity that is scarce drives up its quote value.

Yep.

And so we've manufactured scarcity, like especially when it comes to something like food and hunger. Right. We've manufactured the scarcity that makes food a commodity that only some people have access to, if they have enough money to get access to it.

Yep.

So you have a sense of fear and scarcity that comes from models of domination and spiritual separation. And then you have models and systems that have been erected as a result of that. Like our economic model, which is based on scarcity.

Yeah.

And Lynne articulated some version of all of that in her book the Soul of Money. And this group of people got really interested in like, okay, well, what's the alternative? And what she had learned from Buckminster Fuller was the alternative is something he called exquisite sufficiency. And she called sufficiency. So it is not true that either you get dinner or I get dinner.

Yeah.

What the world will come to see. And Buckminster Fuller was the inventor of the geodesic dome. And he was a futurist. And he said, at some point, I'm not quite sure when the world will come to see that there is enough for all, for all time. There's not enough for everybody to live like Jeff Bezos, but there's enough to care for all of us for all of time. There's actually is enough water, there is enough air, there is enough food. There can be, yes. If we're not living in fear, scarcity, greed, delusion, hatred. If we're not living in those mind states, in that level of consciousness, that level of mind. So she started talking about sufficiency and exquisite. This group of colleagues of mine got very interested in it, created this group and started asking the question, what if my day were created from inside? The possibility of enough, the possibility of sufficiency, and it weren't created from what's been given to us in the kind of culture that we're, you know, all marinating in. So this investigation began and it got pretty rigorous. We met every week as a collective for a decade, and you had a one on one conversation with a member of the group every single day. So you created your day by asking how much fear, scarcity and separation is in my space, is in my heart, is in my consciousness. And if I were to step outside that, if I were to ask myself to defy the gravity of the context that we're in, and to step through and into the truth of enoughness, the truth of exquisite sufficiency, a bounty that's available for all of us at all times, how would I create my day? How would I create my week? How would I create my life? How would I create my team? How would I create my organization? How would we Create culture. And that exploration led to three sufficiency summits with economists from all over the world and Lynn Twist keynoting. And then it led to the moment where Gina Laroche, who's my co founder at Seven Stones and and I were in our daily conversation. And it's a bit of a mystical story, but I basically saw this image of her dissolving her work and me dissolving my work and that we were going to be put together to have our work represent the possibility of a world that works for all beings, for all time, in which there is enough. And we've built everything we do based on that foundation and wrote the book the seven Laws of Enough as a result of it.

Such a beautiful story. And it is so true. True, right. I see it in all of my organizational work that I do and the individual work. I mean people I had I'm thinking about this conversation with the chief HR officer for one of the top Fortune 10 companies and she was close to retirement. She said, you know, all my life I felt I didn't belong in that room. I didn't feel enough. I am the chief people officer for a Fortune 10 company and I feel I'm not enough. Right. And it doesn't matter whether you are who you are in the hierarchy, it doesn't matter which sector you are, it doesn't matter in what area. But I think we see it, we feel it, and, and when we are in that place, we're not confident, we're not playing right. We, we are not enough. It just creates this distortion of energy and limits us from our possibilities. In effect, being in that place, we create conditions of not enoughness out there. Right. So we're versus tuning into abundance. Operating from that. It's a lot more spacious possibilities that become possible. So I'm curious, walk me through the seven laws, Jen. What were the seven laws of enough? Because I think this work is so needed in the world. It was needed when you created. But even today everybody feels to be further cycle of not enough scarcity.

Yeah.

What are the seven laws?

Yeah. So I want to say one thing and then I'll tell you the seven laws. So one of the things we encountered as we started talking about sufficiency is that the listening, especially in the United States, people listened to that word and they said, well, you're telling me to settle. You're telling me that you just want me to have enough and you don't want me to strive for more. And we knew that's not what we were saying. But it was very hard to pay, penetrate the dominant narrative about a more and better and continuing to strive endlessly for something.

Yep.

So we actually hired a naming company. We really went to work and asked ourselves what. What is a way of talking about the context we're inviting people into that they can potentially hear? So we coined the term sustainable abundance. And what we always say is that you can't have the sustainable without the abundance and you can't have the abundance without the sustainable. The sustainable is what we call that which is reciprocal, ethical, and just, the sustaining of life. It's reciprocal. You don't just take, you give. It's ethical, it has a center, it has a core of care. And it's just. It matters. It matters how people are treated. It matters how systems privilege some over others. It matters.

Yep.

And the abundance is the truth. It's the sort of the spiritual and literal truth, which is there is bounty available to all beings at all times. There is not a scarcity of love. There is not a scarcity of time. There are not a scarcity of resources to care for all of us, to house and feed and clothe us. There are not. And that. That bounty was not carved up when we all got here by race or gender or class or sexual orientation or anything. It was not made that the mangoes were available to some and not others, or the wood to build a house was available to some and not others. Everything was given. It was all a gift. It was all just put here, not by us. Right. So the bounty, which people are so desperate to feel and experience and know has to go with the sustainable because it's a balance between the two. This abundance turns into greed. It turns into a kind of materialistic grief grabbing of all the things. Right. And the sustainability starts to feel like sacrifice to people. People start to listen about all the things they have to give up. So we very deliberately put those two things together and then said, there are these seven. We called them laws. We were brazen enough. We called them. There are these seven laws that we started to experience as we lived inside the paradigm. Okay.

I think it's beautiful.

So now, you know, it is.

It is. And it is the nature. Right. I mean, if you think about. I mean, I. This is one of the things that always gets me, Jen. Right. It is so rooted in, you know, we always talk about man and nature. We talk about us and the world. And, you know, if I think about reciprocal, just and ethical, there's nothing in nature that doesn't work that way. But in separating ourselves from nature as putting ourselves above nature. Somehow we feel that we don't have to follow that or we can be more that. Right. I'm also reminded of this quote, I don't remember who said it, which said, you know, the planet has enough for all our needs. It might not have enough for all our wants, but definitely has enough for our needs and not just the needs of humans needs for all beings.

All beings for all time.

Yes, right. We can flourish. And by the way, the difference between operating from a place of sustainable abundance, that mindset, that lens of sustainable abundance versus scarcity, is the difference between surviving and thriving. That mindset shift is so, so critical. That way of operating is so critical we can't flourish. We can have it all, but we will not flourish. We'll always feel less than. We'll always feel. Not enough. No matter how much money we have. No much. How much power we have, no matter how big our house is, the land is whatever, you can take your pick. How famous we are. Right. In fact, some people who have all of that are some of the most miserable. They're not flourishing. And so, yeah, let's get into these because I think these are things that everybody can learn to integrate into their lives.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, just one thing before I'll tell you the seven laws, what you said, you know, all the research that we encountered in the writing of the book, which is now a little bit old, but you maybe have more current research into happiness. All the research into happiness. Right. There is a baseline economic set of needs that need to be met.

Right, Absolutely.

And it's so much smaller than anybody probably listening to this thinks it is. Right. But once you hit that threshold, there is no correlation between your happiness and what you have. And in fact, for many, there is an inverse correlation. In fact, I was just talking to somebody the other day who was, you know, hanging out with a billionaire because everybody likes to tell everybody else when they've met a billionaire and they were saying something about it and he said, you know, it must be so amazing. And the billionaire looked at him and said, it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I'm living in a dis. Like a distortion field. That's so profound. Now I don't know whether my relationships are real. I don't know. And I'm further separated, actually. It does not bring me closer to anything, including myself. It brings me further away from the.

Absolutely.

Which is our happiness does not Live in our having our happiness lives in who we're being, in our connection to the. Everything that we are fundamentally a part of. Which would bring me to the seven laws. I swear to God, I'm finally going to tell you what they are.

Tell me.

Okay, you ready? So I want to say this. My business partner, Gina, might be mad at me for doing this, but I'm going to. There was a set of laws before we wrote the book, and then there was a set of laws that were slightly changed when we got to the editorial staff of the book. And I want to tell you both of them because I'm actually a little bit more attached to the first set than the set that got published. Okay. So law number one in the book is stories matter. And we just talked about that earlier. Right. All these layers and layers and layers of the way we narrate. You know, every culture has an origin story. The way life came to be, the way life got here from. From the origin story of creation itself to all of the layers of stories. Stories matter. Before that law was called stories matter, we said the context is decisive. That was law number one. Yeah, the context is decisive. And this is the part that people don't really, from my point of view, in systems work and teams work and organization work, people don't give enough credit to. The context is decisive. Now, we are leaders defy context. They create new contexts. So it's not a fait accompli, but it is decisive. And if you do not distinguish the context, if it remains undistinguished, you do not know what you're dealing with really. You don't understand what is actually happening inside your system. Your system's a context, your body's a context. Layers and layers of context that we're in.

Yes. Cultures are. I'm reminded of this beautiful story, right. Of these two fish.

Yes.

You know, swimming. And the older fish saying, hey, how's the water? And they say, what's water?

What's water? What water? What water? Water. What water? Exactly. I didn't know I was swimming in water. Yeah, you're swimming in a sea of scarcity, polluted, toxic water. Did you know? Maybe that's why you don't feel so great. And maybe shopping isn't going to fix it. Maybe another car isn't going to fix it.

Right. I think we're blind to it. That's the power. Right. We are blind to it. And the point which I love about that law is if we wake up and recognize that we are actually in that context, then we have choice of what to do to change it, but until we get there, we just assume a set of truths, a set of rules in a system that we say, that's how it is. No, that doesn't need to be. And that's where the journey starts. So I love. I love that first law.

We made up all these systems that we now just say, this is the way that it is. We made it up. We made up money, we made up the economic. We made all of it up. These are all. We're incredible inventors, right? But we made it up. And now we. And then we act like it's fixed and it's the way that it is. And it is, and it doesn't have to be. And at this moment in history, more than any other moment that I've been alive, we need to become aware of that and leaders need to become. Because this is a moment of incredible reinvention.

Yep. I love that. So one, stories matter. Context is decisive.

Yes. Two, I am enough. Full stop, end of sentence. I do enough. I am enough. I have enough. And what we like to say is, enough is not an amount. It's a place to come from. It's a stand. It's a place to stand. I am enough. And in the context of sustainable abundance, that isn't even something that needs to be asked, questioned or declared. How could you not be enough? If the truth is we were all brought here by the same life force, whatever you call that, whatever your spiritual tradition is or your religion is, like life, we're all part of life. Who gets to say some people are not enough? Some people are. Some people aren't dependent on whatever criteria human beings have constructed. It's just not true and it's not up for grabs. We like to say it's actually just not up for grabs. And if you step into this paradigm, the question disappears.

Yeah. It is so beautiful. Right? And you talk about all of these constructs and then shaping this. I'm thinking about Jen. We come with nothing. And we actually come so many. Right? So many come into places of love and care, right? We as humans, we have long gestation periods and nine, ten years of like, we need before we can kind of do things. Nine months, more like, of needing things, right. To be cared for. Very different than so many others. In the animal kingdom, we come with nothing and we come into love. Right. At least in that moment of birth. What happens afterwards is many people have very hard childhoods, et cetera, et cetera, but we come with nothing, and we come with Love and care, we leave with nothing. And even those, most of us, but even those who don't have family and others around them, often through acts like Mother Teresa's and others, you know, we find we leave with nothing. And we leave with love and care. Somebody said, even if it is, you know, we are in a home and there is somebody at least there caring for us, we live with that the rest of the life. So many spend feeling not enough. And I'm like, what do you mean? Even if you have $5, that's more than what you came with. If you have one friend, that's more than you had when you came with. And by the way, none of that is going with you. So we are always in the surplus. We are always in the surplus. And we are always, you know, every experience we are in the plus. And every day we are learning, we're growing. So even that enoughness is like we are continuously evolving. And so for me, you know, I find it really, really interesting when people say, I don't have enough. Like, compared to what, compared to the other or compared to what I think it is. I'm like, where do you think this ends? It ends with nothing. Right? You are in the surplus right now. You're always in the surplus.

I love that. Ashish. That's beautiful. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. And there are people. So I just want to be rigorous about this. We always say that we investigate with clients and with ourselves at three levels. The personal level, like the I am level, the interpersonal level, which is where scarcity can rear its ugly head in a big way. In relationships. If only you were more this. If only I was more that. You're not enough of that. I'm not enough of this. Relationships are fabulous fodder for the mirror of where lack of fear and scarcity live. And then at the structural level, and there really are people who do not have enough. So I want to be. I want to just say that because often we get that feedback. Well, there are people who don't have enough. That is accurate. They do not have enough food or clothing or shelter or education to thrive. To your point, and I love what you said, which is we are. And at some level, we're always in the surplus.

Yeah.

And they, they can live side by side. We can be rigorous about the structural inequities and. And then look what we would say ontologically or at the soul level or at the heart level. There is always the possibility of enough relative to all.

Yeah. And I'm living this right Now, Jen, so I do a lot of work with the U.S. olympic Committee and with a couple of the national governing bodies. Right. If you look at the Olympic movement, you are living in a world where structurally there is not enough. And oftentimes interpersonal conflicts come because somehow we forget that structure. Like we are having this conversation between athletes and national governing bodies and like kind of the center, et cetera. And I think we can talk about, you know, who wants, who needs more, who's getting more, et cetera, et cetera. When you realize where we are, 12 of us talking about how is the right equitable distribution of three glasses of water. Why aren't we questioning, why aren't we thinking about how do we make three go to six? Right. So I think it's this play of structurally not enough. But again, we're not going to solve the problem of structural not enough from feeling interpersonally and personally not enough because.

They'Re mirrors of each other. Right.

Yeah. We'll be in this never ending loop. And so I love this, you know, this notion of how can we. How can we operate from a place of I am enough. Yeah. Beautiful.

All right, you ready for number three?

Yes.

I belong. Now, we all know we live in systems that have decided that certain people belong and certain people don't belong. So we're not being naive or Pollyanna or engaged in some sort of spiritual thing about that. We live in systems that tell people they do not belong. People die over this issue of belonging. And we would say that the fundamental truth of life. Gina likes to talk often about relative truth and absolute truth. If we were going to be so bold to say an absolute truth is you belong.

Yes.

Who decides who belongs? The squirrels. The squirrels belong, but the chipmunks don't. Okay. The woodpeckers belong, but the robins don't. Like, that's absurd. That's absurd. We do it all the time as humans, and it's absurd. Everything that's here belongs here. And you know how I know it belongs here? Because it's here. That's how I know it belongs here. Because life put it here. I don't necessarily always know how it belongs, how some of my thoughts belong, or how some of my beliefs. I'm not saying I always understand or even can sense that belonging, but inside that paradigm, there is no question about belonging. We belong to everything.

Yeah. And it's this again, this notion of self sufficiency. Right. On the notion of we are right. I think it's beautiful. Right. I think one of my. I Love the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and his beautiful word we all enter are. Yeah. You know, this notion of inter being that we forget there's too much focus on self and we forget there is nothing. This conversation is brought to you by Happiness Squad, where we help leaders build new mindsets and new habits and transform their ways of working to truly flourish. If you're ready to unleash the untapped human potential in your organization and operate at your best, come Visit us@happinesssquad.com and start your journey today. Fundamentally, we inter are with everything. We belong with everything else. We are the tree, we are the grass. We are the other person. As much as we might think we are different, their actions are shaping us, our actions are shaping them. Because collectively, you know, I run this exercise sometimes, you know, in some of the client work I do, and I say, I want you to think about something that you're grateful for. You know, somebody might say, my glasses. I say, okay, what would life be if you didn't have glasses? And they're like, well, I wouldn't be able to see, I wouldn't be able to operate, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, now think about how many people, hands and minds and hearts, have touched those glasses along the way. Literally go step by step. The retailer who sold it, the doctor who prescribed it, the teacher who taught the doctor, the manufacturer who made the glasses, the glass company that created the glass, the metal company that created the metal, the miner who mined it, and all the people in supply chain along the way. There have been thousands of people, right? The banker who loaned to create the shop or any of these other stuff, and who put money into them. If you really start to unravel, you start to realize that we fundamentally inter are. We are weaved in. And yet this question bears its ugly head. This is the group you belong to, and this is you don't. We fundamentally inter are. And so I love this invitation and this law of, no, it doesn't matter what the world makes you feel. This is not about whether they feel you belong. This is about you fundamentally standing on the foundation that I belong.

That's right.

That's your truth. Don't let anybody change that truth for you. And if you believe in that, then by that very nature, you will also accept that the other also belongs. And if enough of us stand on that, the system will automatically change. But we have to start by leaning into that foundation that I belong and help others lean into that. That is the only way we're going to change this world where so many don't belong. They don't feel belonging, they don't feel inclusion. And there is so much happening out there.

Yeah. And it's not even just a feeling. Right. You know, you're on a boat coming to a country because you need to flee someplace and you are not welcomed.

Yes, absolutely.

It's not a feeling. You know, you're not. You can't go into a bathroom, you can't go into like. I mean, there are a million examples. And this is the trick of paradigm shifts from my point of view, because it's like, well, there's all this evidence that I don't belong. Yes. And if you're standing in the snow globe or in the water bowl of scarcity, fear and separation, you can make a case that you do not belong. But I'm inviting you to stand in the water of what we would consider to be the truth, which is sustainable abundance.

I love that.

In that water. There's no conversation about your belonging. You belong here because you're here. You're enough. Because what is. How do you even entertain the question about who's enough and what's enough? You don't entertain that question.

I love that. I can't wait for the fourth law.

Okay, here we go. No one is exempt. Not even me.

Not even me. Same.

Not even me. Well, I tell the story in the book, but this law came to me. I was outside shoveling snow in New England. And normally in my marriage there is a slightly traditional division of labor when it comes to snow. And I am not on the snow committee, let's just put it that way, normally. But my spouse had been diagnosed with cancer and he was in bed after a treatment and feeling quite ill. And I was out there shoveling the snow, feeling very sorry for myself. Ashish. And I was, with every shovel, with every shovel, I was like, why is this happening to me? Why does my. I have been a good person. I have done all my personal work. I doing this workaround enough. Like, you know, every, every pile of snow, every shovel of snow had a pity party attached to it.

Yeah.

And then I literally heard this voice that said, why not you? Why are you exempt from the husband with cancer? Millions and millions of people all over the world have a spous with cancer. Why do you think you shouldn't be on that team or part of that group? Why? And it hit me like a ton of bricks, like there is some way that our whole culture is set up to get out of something to get exempt from something to get more and more distance from being touched by the truths of life. And Gina always likes to say, you know, we're not exempt from the 10,000 joys or the 10,000 and sorrows. None of us, no matter how much money we have, no matter how insulated we make ourselves, no matter how much protection we gather, we think we're gathering around ourselves. Life is life. And just like you said, Ashish, you come in with nothing and you go out with nothing.

Yeah.

And no one is exempt from that process and all of the processes in between.

Absolutely. Yeah. No, I love that. Right. It talks to this fundamental. Another fundamental right. Truth of life has suffering. A lot of people talk about the work I do, like, what are you going to help me be happy? Or whatever. I'm like, what is happy without sad? Tell me, what does happiness mean to you? If you never experience sadness? It's like the sixth piece of pizza, right. Way beyond it is. You're not. Right, right. The first one was great. The second, maybe by the time you're having the fifth and the sixth and like, you know, you're sick. Yeah, that's. Think about that. Right. So again, like, life has suffering. That's the part of life. Nobody is exempt. We are going to go through hardships. Things are going to happen. Instead of asking, why me? I love the question, why not me? Or more importantly, you know, what can I learn from this? Or where can I go from this? How can I make this? I had a dear friend of mine, Nick, on our podcast and, you know, classic, you know, McKinsey guy, and, you know, father was McKinsey, he wasn't McKinsey, but he did a lot of work with the firm, so he might as well have been. And he was skiing down with his seven year old son. He is an amazing skier. Yeah, amazing skier. His son was better than him. Double blacks, et cetera, et cetera. They'd done an amazing ride and they were just on their way down after the day on a catwalk, just a catwalk traversing. And the skier goes past him and he says, hey, was that your son that just went off catwalk? And he was like, what? And he turned around and he wasn't there. And they lost him that day, this freak accident where he fell into the crevice. And you talk about that tragedy, you talk about that moment. But that became a transformative moment for him and his wife because they chose to make it. So it was a choice they made in that hardship to say, how can we honor, how can we Take this that has happened to us and from that pain, rather than say, why did this happen to us? How can I use that to serve others? Because I'm not the only one that has lost a child.

Yep.

And that's what they ended up creating. You know, they created a foundation in his name, and they're just doing such beautiful work. So I love that this notion of no one is exempt. Not even me.

Not even me.

Yeah. Beautiful. So what's the fifth?

Okay, this is. This is another one that got changed. Okay. So here was the original fifth law. And I know you're going to get this, but the editors were afraid that not enough people would get it, which I think is not true. The fifth law was it's already all right.

And what did that?

Got changed to resting is required.

Really?

It really got changed to resting is required. Yeah. So here's how we made. Here's how we made the connection. Should I tell you that, or do you have another question?

No, no, no. Go for it. Tell me.

So for us, it's already all right. Was like. Was more of a spiritual truth. Like, it is actually already all right. Even when it's not all right. It's not all right that rape happens. It's not all right that hunger happens. It's not all right. I'm not saying it's all right. Right. That those things are happening and it's already all right. Like, if you go deep in.

Mm.

And the gateway to going deep in is to start to rest, to rest in the body, to rest in each other. So in the chapter on rest, we have these five layers of resting, or. I don't know if it's five, Whatever. However many layers we have. But resting in ourselves, resting in each other, resting in what we call at the end, the grand design. And when we rest in the grand design and start to live life on life's terms, not on our terms, but on life's terms, life has terms including that we're going to die, including that stuff's going to happen to us, including that we're going to be confronted with who we are. Like, life has terms, and it's the terms of initiation. Multiple initiations over a lifetime. But if we can start to rest and live on life's terms, it is actually already all right. So that's how we built that bridge between what we wanted and what they wanted. And I think we did okay. I think that's what we were getting at. But it is actually, in the deepest sense, it's okay right now, not tomorrow. Not next week. Not because somebody told me it was okay. Not because I have enough. It's just this moment is actually okay already.

This resonates so much. And I can see the connection, because I think partly, you know, to make somebody stop and rest. It's very hard to make somebody stop and rest if they feel there is something still to be done. Right. It's almost like a precondition. Like, if you want to rest, like you say, okay, everything is done. Now I'm going to rest. But I think what it also reminds me of is, Jen, I always. I've been playing a lot with polarities of late. And this notion that the world has polarities because we make it so and it doesn't need to be. Right. My favorite one for me is I got it in one of the retreats I did is this notion of stillness in motion. And the image that came to me was that of a large eagle flying without the flap of a wing, traversing miles just naturally on wind currents. Stillness in motion. It's waves in an ocean. The ocean is so still. And yet it is in motion. Right? It is both. Yeah. But in context of this, the one that comes to me is actively surrendering. Right. This notion of active surrender, to surrender, we have to believe what is happening is what is happening is the reality. It doesn't matter what you want, what has happened in the past, what you want, what is is. So accept that. But if you accept that and you allow yourself to rest, you allow yourself to surrender to it, that gives you the wisdom, the learning to actively shape it towards something else. But it has to start from accepting rather than fighting what you think it is. And I think it's a very subtle. But it's a very powerful move because we can either be grinding our way through life.

Yes, yes.

Or we can glide our way through life. And it actually requires us to fundamentally stand on the ground of it's already all right.

It's already all right. And I can either. To your point about resistance, like, I can either go with life as life was designed, or I can decide I've got to fight with life. And then to your earlier point about survival and creation, you can't. You know, this is the plane of polarities. Like you said, this is the plane of polarities. And we learn through the polarities. As long as we can stay fluid with them. We stop learning when the polarities get fixed. That's what's called polarization. Sound familiar? Right? But thesis, antithesis, synthesis, that's how we learn. We go from one side to the other side. And you? I. In a past life, Ashish, I was actually a marriage and family therapist. And one of the things in couples work that you say is you do a lot of trading roles, Right. When you're working with a couple to start to ease up the fixation around the polarities. Right. And as soon as the system starts to move. I used to be the angry one, now you're the angry one.

Right.

It's like, oh, that's good. There's movement. Now we're starting to move.

Right.

If the system can evolve, you can actually get from duality, which is 3D reality, to non duality. You can shift. Dimensions shift. Right. So that's the game down here.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. I had this beautiful, almost mystical experience. My wife and I were just walking down this beautiful trail we have near Boulder, and I recorded a short video because I saw as we walked down this beautiful play of creation and death, these trees that had fallen down and new plants emerging from that organic tissue. Right. Like literally acting as food for the next generation of trees. It was just magical. It was beautiful. Right. And I could see. And it was. It was just in this moment. Right. I could actually see so vividly and feel the teachings of, again, Thich Nhat Hanh. I could see the trees, right. And. And the perspiration from the trees going up. And I could see the clouds raining and pro. Feeding the rivers that are feeding the trees in this continuous cycle of life and death and separation and unity. Right. Which we've been talking all the way through. Yeah. And it's all around us if we choose to. Or we can choose to. Kind of stuck in. In. In these fixed ways of being. Right?

Yeah.

Rather than this constant change, which is the reality of life. Yes. I love it. So it's already all right. And it is going to change, right? So it is going to change. The next moment will be different. But right now, this is already all right.

Yeah. And then this moment is this moment all right. Yeah. This moment's all right. Is this moment all right? Each moment.

Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful.

So the sixth law, joy is available. And it's not to be confused with excitement or titillation.

Yep.

And it's not external, it's internal.

Yeah.

So we have those. It's another great inversion. Right. We have those totally confused.

Absolutely.

My joy is given by the next concert I go to by others, you know, by the cool, sexy person who's coming toward me by the concert I just went to by the clothes I'm wearing, by the job I might get, by the title. I have. All of that is excitement and titillation in my book when I'm talking about, you know, not the literal book. I mean, just like when I'm talking about it, right?

Yeah.

Joy. And I'm sure you know this. The Book of Joy with Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, right? Such a beautiful articulation of the truth of joy. It's something that comes up from the inside. And this is one of the things that Gina and I just started to discover in the investigation is we were happier. We were happier. We felt a joy that had nothing to do with what was happening in the external environment. And we were like, what's that? Where's that coming from?

Yeah.

And it is available.

It is available and it is here. You know, I always, people ask me, how are you? And I always say, I'm awesome. And they're like, you always say you're awesome. How can you always be awesome? I said, you know, this is the side effect of the job I do, of the work I do. I make my own weather, right? I bring the sunshine. And by the way, that has nothing to do with where I'm actually sitting. And it's really cloudy and it's going to rain. That's okay, right? I think because what you're talking about is the difference between joyfulness and joy, right? We can be joyful in suffering. Joyful is an inner state of being. It's a way we choose to experience again if we actively accept it's already all right. No one is exempt. We truly accept reality as the way we are. The state is joy, joyfulness within. Nothing to do with what we get out there, right? It's in many ways returning back to a state of being that we already knew and we have forgotten, right? I mean, most children, when we are young, I reflect on this so much, Jen, right? When we are young and we see a child like a 2 year old or a 1 year old, we don't need to teach children to be present. We don't need children, we don't need to teach children to be joyful. Something needs to happen for them to cry. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I wet myself, I've fallen down and I've hurt. But the base state of a baby, of a child is joyfulness. They laugh, they will be immersed in what they're doing. This make believe world, we hold everybody in wonder, right? This magical way of our brain. But as we get older, we forget we need something to your. We chase joy. We pursue happiness through external things. Our base state. When I. When you ask me most people at, you know, at the firm, when I asked them, how are you? The answer was busy or stressed or okay or not too bad, really. Versus joy. Joyful. It is available. It's not contingent on something external. I love that. I love that.

Right, Number seven. You ready? Love is the answer. And Gina, I need to bring her to life because we developed all this work together. So she always says, you know, if you forced me to say there was only one law, I'd say that this was the one law. Love is the answer. No matter what the question is. Love is the answer to the question. And not love, like a feeling. Again, our culture's version of love is like whatever Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, you know, whatever. Some kind. Like, that's not love. I mean, it's not not love. But that's not the kind of love we're talking about.

That's not the love you're talking about that.

We're talking about the love that permeates the universe. The love that is a kind of enduring presence. The love that is a commitment to being here no matter what. A love that is abiding and full and also not based on the conditions externally. And it's a choice. And you choose love. That's why love is the answer. What's the question? Should I kill him or forgive him? Forgive him. Should I? You know, like, in your own time, in your own way. But love is the. Love gives you the answer to the question.

Yeah, you know, I was at a conscious capitalism dinner. We started a conscious capitalism chapter in Colorado. And, you know, we were. There were about 12 to 15 CEOs and senior leaders in the room. And we were just going around and we were with Timothy, and he was talking around, right? The resurgence, I mean, conscious capital has been trying to grow in the last 17 years. And, you know, next version of the strategy. It's beautiful work. And One of the CEOs said, Talk. You know, Timothy talked about a lot of different elements that are at the core of the. Of the movement. He said, why don't you screen. He actually asked a question. I then asked the question back to Tim. I said. He said, you didn't mention love. And, you know, I think there were several people. You'd be surprised, right? Many of the men in the room versus the women. For women, that was a very natural. Like, of course. And for men were like, oh, I don't know about Love and like how is this going to sit in the corporate world? And what are people going to think? And you know, will they accept. The person who asked this question actually was a man. Right. So he was. It wasn't a woman. It was, it was, you know, that's the whole other story. We can go into masculine, feminine energy rather than men and women. But anyway, I asked Timothy, I said, listen, if you're looking for people who truly believe in this, that business is a force for good, there is a question, one question that Bain came up with that says is the customer experience superior or not? And is the net promoter score on a 1 to 10. Where are you in terms of recommending the business? Right. I wonder if the question to choose the leaders who are willing to embrace conscious capitalism. I said, what if you just asked, do you believe in love? And anybody who says no, don't even bother trying to sell them conscious capitalism. You can't do anything around something that again is not based on a broken economic system. If you don't believe in love or if you think love is, you know, love is not a universal, universal trust and those who say yes, yeah, then you can take them through a system and an approach that allows them to take that and actually use that to manifest and create something magical out there.

Yeah, I love that.

Right. Just screen based on that if you are. Rather than convince all the people who will not change their view, just ask for one question to a leader. Do you believe in love? Bob Chapman says, you know, in his book Everybody Matters. We don't build products, we build people. We invest in people because that's the right thing to do, not because they're investing in people, drives profits. So that's become a little bit of our mantra right now. Informing the work we are doing now, Jen, is I want to work with people. I want to work with companies who really say people matter because it's the right thing to do. I want to help them win because I know if they do the work, they will win and if we can help them just win. I want them to shape the humanity and the future, not others who operate from scarcity and not love. I won't say hate, but not love.

Yeah. You know, it might be the only shot we've got left. You know, I mean, I know this is trite to bring into the space, but that Einstein quote which is no problem is solved at the same level of consciousness that created it. So if we're not going to elevate from fear, scarcity and separation to, to love Then we're actually not going to solve the problems that we're facing. You know, it goes back to the very beginning of our conversation, right? Which is. And the conversation we had before we got on the podcast about are we actually solving for the right thing? Are we managing symptoms, or are we going to the root of the problem? And if we're going to stay inside the context or the level of consciousness that created the manifestations we have now, we will just simply create more of the same. We will rinse and repeat. We will not heal and transcend.

So, my friend, these laws are so beautiful. I would highly recommend everybody get a copy of the book. We'll put it in the link. The seven laws of what are some practices that, for those who are listening, who say, okay, I get it, cognitively, I heard it. I think maybe for some of them, they even resonated with the heart. So, as you and I both know, knowledge, we are drowning in knowledge, but we are parched for practice. So as just keeping an eye on time as well. What might be three, two or three practices that you would recommend? If people want to really live these laws, first they want to kind of integrate them into life. What might be the where might be a good place for people to start doing that?

Well, at the risk of making a shameless plug right now, I would say each chapter actually does have a set of practices that goes with it. So each law has a set of practices that we invite people to engage in. You know, people have a lot of stories about integrating new practices and new habits into their day and into their life. And if I had to pick two or three, like you said, I would pick the daily call with another human being to create your day. And it's funny, because Gina. And Gina had this revelation the other day. She said, you know, we're not bold enough about saying that to people. The rigor that we employed to shift paradigms to create this, to source what we source, we were not messing around. We spoke to our buddy, whoever, whatever turn it was to be. We spoke to that person every single day, seven days a week.

Same person or different people?

Well, There were like 10 of us in this mastermind group. And then you switched buddies periodically. Nobody ever wanted to give up their buddies. So sometimes buddy shifts would last six, eight, nine months. And then we'd say, we really should switch. We should have another buddy. So, you know, we. The same person, Same person call with.

The same person for a long period of time?

Well, you know, there's millions of ways to set it Up.

Yeah.

And we even have worksheets on how do you set up a, how you set up a sufficiency call and all that kind of thing. Point being a human connection to say, who am I today? Where am I coming from? How am I caused in the matter? How do I constitute myself? Like you said, you know, I get to choose. I make my own weather. We are co creators of all of this. So who am I going to be today? Where am I going to situate myself in the toxic soup of scarcity? Or am I going to situate myself over here and to own that we have some say in the matter of how all that goes. That would be practice number one. Practice number two is a really simple meditative practice. If you are not already a meditator. You asked a couple of questions like the Thich Nhat Hanh question of like what? Starting with gratitude and, and then like noticing the inter being. That would be one simple meditative practice. Another practice we've invited people into is to ask the question, what is happening right now? What's happening now? I'm looking at Ashish's face, I can hear the wind outside my window. Like what's happening right now? And then the second question is, how is that enough? How is that enough?

Wow. Yeah, Yeah, I love that. You know, we have similar practices, but I'm really enjoying this. I always talk about, we have a practice on, you know, I always invite people when they start their mornings to choose an intention for how they're going to be mindful, grateful, purposeful.

Yeah.

Yes, Right. Love. And the point being you're not going to choose what comes your way, but you can choose how you meet it. That is your choice. And I think when you, when I think about that, you know, with like what you were highlighting, we also have a practice where I say every day call somebody.

Oh my God, yes.

See, right. It's not the same. I usually what we say is like call a friend. Everybody has a birthday, anniversary, check in on somebody you haven't talked to. It doesn't matter. One call a day, five, it can be five minutes. Just call and check in with someone. But I really like this one. Right. Find a buddy. Find a buddy who can act as a mirror for you. I really love this. I think this is such a deeper, deeper connection. So I think I'm going to invite people to think about that. And then we have a practice that I always, at the end of the day I always write down what are three good things that happen today? Focusing on the good. Because of the negativity bias of the brain. And I'm like, you're making gains every day. It's again another way to kind of get people away from not enough to enough. You've gained something today. You've learned something today. Even if you failed, it's your choice to take a learning from it. You're still around. Right. That itself is enough. Right. That means you have another shot at it tomorrow. Yeah, but I really like this one too. Which is what you're asking is what is happening right now? Or they can say what has happened today.

You could do it like that.

And how is that enough?

How is that enough?

Our to do lists are never ending. But how is where we are right now enough? I think that they're so beautiful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love yours too. And we, you know, in the gratitude practices, you know, gratitude is the state of receiving. You're grateful for what's already here, for what's already available. And it puts us into sufficiency, puts us into our state of enoughness to express gratitude. And then the more we express it, the more we feel it. You know, all of this. So gratitude, practice, if, if you made me say three, I would add that as well. If you had a buddy and you asked the question, what's happening now? How is that enough? And you did gratitude practice and you did that consistently for some period of time. 30 days. You gave yourself a 30 day run. Something would be different. I guarantee you something would be different at the end.

Yeah.

Something about your experience of life would be different.

I think it's wonderful. Jen, this has been such a beautiful conversation. I mean, I am so grateful for the work you're doing and yeah, I'm just, you know, I think it's in a world today where we are more and more being hardwired for fear, I think where and more and more desperately trying to control the outside world to somehow find our footing. I think these seven laws and living into these seven laws, it's a beautiful invitation to actually turn inwards and start to master your own inner worlds. And if enough of us do that, I think we will create different realities out there. So thank you, my friend. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for all that you do. You thank and, and for really such, you know, 20 plus years of unbelievable research and practice and the humans you've touched and others you've taught to bring this into the world. I'm so grateful to you. Thank you.

Likewise. Thank you for having me very much. Beautiful conversation. And thank you for everything you do. Happiness Squad.

Thank you, my friend. Bye bye. 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.