224: Shawn Johal — The Happy Leader

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out today. Hi everyone. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the show. Our show is all about how to scale and grow your business. Today we're talking about Leader Happiness, how to be happy as a leader. I love this topic. We have Sean Johal joining us. No matter what the economy is doing, what industry you're in, no matter what part of the world you're from, we want to help you scale and grow and enjoy the process. Which is why our topic today is so bitchin. Awesome. Cool. Whatever, whatever description fits your boat. You can find hundreds of episodes on this subject of scaling up and all the tools and things@scalingcoach.com subscribe to get these updates every week. You can also go to scalingcoach.com and download back episodes, look at the show notes, the tools that we reference, that kind of thing and find all that stuff. So every week we'll bring something and then increasingly we're going to go live since it's Covid time. All right, so listen in now as we talk with Sean Jahal. Sean, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me Bill. Really appreciate it.

Guys and gals. Sean, you're in Montreal?

Yeah, yeah, I'm based out of Montreal.

Based out of Montreal. And you'll hear some of Sean's background and stuff. Sean is a coach like me in the world. He's got a new book out. Sean, what's the book title?

The book is called the Happy Leader.

The Happy Leader. So I've studied a bit about happiness and the practices for happiness and all of that kind of thing. And I am just super excited about the topic and what we're going to talk about today. So as we get into it, I'd love if you could just kind of tell some of your background how you came to write this book. What made you Think you ought to actually get something out there. I know that, like maybe go back to the beginning and then kind of go through your journey because it speaks to the book, so.

Absolutely. So I'm going to start before I was born. This is going to be a long discussion. I'm just kidding. But I will mention, I will mention the reason I'm going that far back is that my name, which my Indian name is actually Sukraj, actually means the happy leader and that's where the book title came from. So I figured I'd go a little into the past there. Sook in the end means happy and king. Raj means king or leader. So that's where the name came from. Actually initially I called it the happy King and then Vern told me that was crazy and he said the name's sexist and I don't like kings, so change your name. So that's how the new name came about. But the story goes that, you know, I've been an entrepreneur for about 11 years, started my business, I've been also part of the entrepreneurs organization. And you know, as we go on this journey, and I know Bill, you're very connected in the community as well. What I came to realize, you know, one activity we do as entrepreneurs is that we get into a room and we start sharing things. And the first thing we do is we sit, we share one word, open. And I'm a positive guy. So my words are always energy motivated. But the other seven or eight or ten entrepreneurs in the room, the words I always hear are stressed out, burnt, overwhelmed, freaking out, can't keep up, no balance. And so I kept hearing these words over and over and it just led me to this quest to understand why is it that entrepreneurs along the way seem so unhappy during this crazy journey that they're living through. And that led me to start writing my first words of the book which started eight years ago, to be honest with you.

Wow. Tell us what, what was the last. Do you still have the old business or are you full time?

I'm still involved with that business. It's an LED lighting business.

LED lighting and like industrial home everything.

We do mostly residential lighting for homes, high end homes.

Uh huh. Nice. Talk about the partnership and tell us a bit about that story because I know there's some good stuff.

Totally, yeah, it's quite a story. So we had a.

Be honest, you look like whatever it was, you're on the other side of.

It, that's for sure. So we actually came out of a big family business. We had started in 2000, actually it was 1999 by the time that started. And my father in law was really, really strong financially and he was able to take a bankrupt business and take it onto the Toronto Stock Exchange, which is pretty unheard of, taking a bankrupt business and taking it public. And over seven years he raised a lot of money and he was able to bring the business to 50 million in revenue very quickly, mostly through mergers and acquisitions. I joined that business in 2004 as a national sales manager and started learning the ins and outs of a public company, which are quite the adventure. And then in 2006 things started becoming a little more challenging. And then the recession hit, as you know, in 2007, 2008, and a couple of bad moves and all of a sudden this beautiful business that the family had built came crashing down all within a year. It was a very, very sad story for the family. Very challenging time. And you know, through the ashes as a phoenix does, my brother in law and I were able to revive, you know, three of the divisions and take them and start them over again. We basically brought all the employees back that we could and started from scratch, you know, putting our homes on, you know, second liens and second mortgages and just taking a chance and going all in. The one thing we had learned at that point is that we didn't want to create a business that was, you know, high flying and super duper swinging for the fences. You know, we wanted to build a conservative business that was going to grow profitably, which I know is something that you and I tell our clients a lot. You know, how are you going to do profitable growth and not just growth for the sake of growth, which I think is really important. And so we had a lot of success in that business. And funny Enough, Bill, in 2013 we implemented scaling up in the business because we hit a wall at that point. I mean, we had no more new products being developed. I always like to tell this story where we had two employees who were both doing customer service reception at the same time. And when the phone would ring, it was right in between them and they would just stare at the phone. You know, these are customers calling us. And neither one would answer because they hated each other and they neither one wanted to be a receptionist. And that was when we really realized we might have the wrong people in the wrong seats here, that we were building this business. And so we actually hired a really cool coach, Cleo, who's still a great coach today, as you know. She's amazing. Yeah. So she coached us for Six years and you know, it's been an amazing journey. The business has grown, you know, well into the eight figures. It's doing really, really well again today. But I was feeling pretty unhappy in my last couple of years at the business. Not just with this stress that entrepreneurs live, but really based on the fact that I was struggling a little bit to have my passion and my vision come through everything I was doing. And so it's tough because you're in a family business and you want to support the family and you want to be there. My business partners, my brother in law, he's a fantastic business person, super smart. But at one point I just felt that, you know what, he has a vision and I need to support his vision and I'm not happy in all of this. And so to most people's shock, I left the main operations of the business, but now I'm coaching my own business, which is totally bizarre. But it works for us really well actually. And that's what led onto my journey to become a certified scaling up coach.

So how did the unhappiness show up? What did you notice? Or what was the, how did it manifest itself? What, what would we see about you in that time?

So I'm, you know, I'm a very high energy person. I've been diagnosed with a insane positivity bias by a doctor. And that might sound really amazing, but it's actually not. Because what happens is when you're on either end of the spectrum, whether it's positive or negative, you have a lot of issues. So because I'm such a high positivity bias, I don't see any blind spots. So I'll just assume that everything's just incredible and amazing all the time and that there's no issues, you know, so it takes a lot to get me frazzled and into that unhappy state. But I was just starting to find that the day to day was bringing so much heaviness, you know, and I lost my sense of purpose and I lost my sense of direction. I really didn't know what I was trying to accomplish on a day to day. I could not figure it out. And it was no one's fault really. Sometimes things like this just happen organically. And for me it was really detrimental to the point where, you know, I really threw myself into the book to kind of figure out what was going on here, you know, picked up some mentors, started doing a lot of meditation, you know, to get out of this funk. Because I got to the point where I did not feel like going to work anymore. I mean, it was really at that point and people were noticing it around me.

Interesting, interesting, interesting. Well, so what did you do to get yourself out of that?

There was a lot of steps. There was a lot of steps. The first step was really taking a huge step back. And you know, this is something that I think is very important for entrepreneurs to do is to really say, okay, you know, do a bit of introspection, get a hold of your emotions and your feelings and you know, do a bit of a check in on are things going well? Are you overly stressed out? You know, are you taking that out on your family and your friends? You know, are you really sleeping properly or eating properly? If you see those signs which you start accepting as normal way of being, you got to change things up. So I did a pretty dramatic shift in my sleeping habits and my overall meditation habits. I started visualizing. So I found myself a vision coach actually, who helped me put together an amazing vision for myself of what I actually wanted to do and figure out my passion. I don't know if you've heard of the ikigai concept, this sense of reason for being, which a lot of people know about from the Japanese culture. That was another exercise that I did to really figure out, you know, is this business what I want to do for the next. I've been in this for 11 years, do I want to be full time in this business for the next 11? And you know, it really showed me that, you know, looking through my passions, I really, really cared a lot about helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses. And there was this awesome opportunity and avenue to do that while still helping this amazing business that we've built together, you know, push through. So that was part of the process, was saying kind of getting both the best of both worlds, right where I was able to go on this new path, but at the same time continue helping my brother in law and the business move forward also.

So I hear visioning and choice, like creating a vision and then choosing what parts of it. And then I hear altering your approach or path, the way you work with your partners. What else did you do in that timeframe?

Absolutely, yeah, we changed that completely. And it was really a struggle when we were both there and trying to split responsibilities. You know, we had what we call that mom and dad relationship where people would come in and where they wouldn't find one partner, they just kind of look to the other. And we'd always tell employees, oh, wait a second, if you were going to Joey first, why is it that now you're coming to me, and I'm, you know, I'm a buffer for it. We couldn't really figure out exactly what we were trying to do. So, you know, we completely flipped the structure on its head where I said, you know what? You put your vision. I'll help you hire a couple of amazing vice presidents to come in and see your vision through, and I'll provide, you know, the best coaching possible to the business. But yeah, I think it was really about, you know, the big thing, I would say Bill, is eliminating the ego. That was probably the biggest challenge in all of it because it is a bit of an ego struggle when you're talking about, you know, at the top, who gets to decide, who gets to put their vision through. And you're constantly having that battle, you know, of trying to say, okay, I want it this way, I want it that way. And what happens is, I feel you start losing a little bit of objectivity in that process where you start trying to win instead of doing the right thing for the business or the right thing for the customer. And when I started seeing that happen for, you know, in my own way of being, which has never been my case, I knew that things had to change for sure.

Yeah. So what did you do with your brother? What did you work out there?

My brother in law. It was, you know, it was. It was a long process, but we just worked out the details on figuring out, okay, how can we go about this process, how can we make it so that it's fair for both of us, but we can continue pushing forward the vision kind of. Cause we've really built this wonderful business. And so it was a lot of compromise and a lot of discussing back and forth, but ultimately it came down to a situation that worked for both of us where I would step out of the operations, be involved mostly with talent development. So really I coach the business and I help with talent and development and leadership, but he really oversees everything that's relating to the vision and the operations at this point.

And what was the meditation? Did you both do meditation? Did the rest of the team or is that just you? What was that?

How did that.

Is that related to the visualization or. Because it is, right? A little meditation and then visualization going with that, Right?

Absolutely. So I believe in doing both. You know, I think meditation and visualization are actually complementary, although they're not the same thing. And you? You know, I like to do more meditation in the morning and do more visualization at night. So I like to split the two up. I've Helped a lot of my clients implement visualization techniques and specifically meditation techniques and meditation rooms in their offices. I truly think, Bill, that meditation is probably the least utilized superpower free superpower that entrepreneurs have. I mean, the effects that I see when we implement this in businesses is unbelievable. Just the clarity of vision, the fact of being able to reduce stress. Take a step back when there's arguments, not, you know, force upon your opinion. All of these are results of people doing, you know, anywhere as little as five minutes of meditation per day.

So the kinds of meditation. When I was a kid, I was given a mantra and taught a TM approach at a very young age. And then later, I learned just like a breathing focus and a mindfulness practice to calm and settle. And then. And then guided, like a body scan followed by some kind of guided visualization as another kind of meditation. Do you do all of these? A mix of them. What's your thought on.

Absolutely. So many different types that you can do. Obviously, there's probably, you know, 100 or 200 types that you can do. There's so many types. The number one thing that I teach people and that I do for myself, there's a huge myth out there. Clearing the mind does not exist. And I would really love for the audience to understand that you will never clear your mind. You'll only clear your mind if you go live in a mountain for maybe 30 years, and at the end of those 30 years, you might have a chance to clear your mind.

Besides that, I think I'd be up in there going, that's really cold up here right now. I'm kind of hungry. Do I need to pee? Maybe I should go pee right now.

Exactly. Those are the thoughts that come to us every day. And so, you know, there's been different. People have talked about this, like Dan Harris or Sue Schwartz from Unplugged Meditation, where you want to look at it as a mental bicep curl. So the way, you know, Suz explains it is that, say, for example, you're in your meditation, and within literally three or four seconds, you start thinking about, you know, that meal that you want or that person you have to call back. So now you picture that thought that's kind of going away, and then all you do is you bring back your mind to the breathing. And as you see, I'm doing this motion for a reason, which is a bicep curl. So it's a mental bicep curl where you're. That's actually what meditation is. It's the fact of being distracted. And then coming back to the breath, for example. So, you know, it's important for people to understand that because every time I talk to people and they told me they failed at meditation, and I say to them, you cannot actually fail. You understand that? There's no failure in meditation. There's actually no failing. It's just maybe not going as well as you hope. But I like to teach people about, you know, the breathing technique. That's a big one. Another one that I do, which you might have heard of, which is really nuts, is the Wim Hof breathing technique, if you've ever heard of this. Yeah. So that's, you know, Wim Hof is.

A. I haven't studied the Wim Hof directly. I've seen and read descriptions of it. I've seen video of it. It looks to me very much like Kundalini type techniques, right?

Yes, absolutely. It's exactly like that, where you're really breathing in and breathing out quickly in a motion where you're like. And you're doing 30 of them, and then you're holding your breath at the end. And within a couple of days, you could be holding your breath for three or four or five minutes. You know, I've already got myself up to four minutes by just doing that technique. And the thing is that that's one of the best techniques, not only for your immune system, but specifically for clearing, you know, clearing that mind a little more. Because when you're doing that technique, honestly, all you can think about is breathing or not breathing because it's just so intense. And then he combines that with cold shower technique and cold therapy technique. So that's, you know, not for the faint of heart. You got to be ready to do it, you know, take a cold shower on a winter's day or you go into a cold lake. You know, I'm talking cold cold, not summer cold. We're talking winter, winter lakes that people are going into with his technique. So.

Well, I've done a bit of swimming in the San Francisco Bay here. By a bit, I mean a lot. And I. And especially if you go in the winter, it's pretty cold. It's not as cold as really, like a frozen place, but it's pretty cold. And then also the Monterey Bay is also very, very cold water. And. And at first, I think when I think about, like, the overwhelming thing, it's almost painful as the cold hits your skin and moves across the body. And then it really, like, it arrests the breathing and you tense up and do all that thing getting to A place where you can sort of break through that, accept the cold center. The body does kind of learn it. I know, like if I've been in a while and then I go back, the body takes a minute to remember. Yeah, it's okay. Let all the extremities kind of go numb. You can still use the muscle, pull the heat to the core. But I think there's something definitely that happens. And then at some point there's a kind of a shift, like if I've gotten acclimatized and then I start to swim, then maybe like 30 minutes into the swim, very much like a run, I start to get kind of a groove. And then my mind will wander and my feelings will wander. And whether I'm running or doing a long swim like that, the emotions can overcome. And I can find moving through crying and laughter like really quickly and being in kind of a state.

Right.

Like, and then being insights about my business and life and feeling like incredibly abundant and grateful and effective in that time frame. Absolutely.

You know, I think that. I think that swimming does that to you. Right. I think it's. It's a very scary thing, swimming, you know, in an open water lake. I mean, I don't think there's much that's scarier than that, especially for someone who's not that good at swimming.

Visualize sharks.

Yeah, exactly. You don't want to think about those. And there are some sharks in some of these places. You might have even gone near. You know, there's some crazy fish in there. But yeah, I think, I think. You know, what I love about Wim Hof's technique and people should definitely look him up, is that, you know, what he teaches. He has real world science examples about how it works. You know, he's got the world record for sitting in an ice bath. He can sit in an ice bath for an unlimited amount of time and keep his body temperature at the same level. Which you think about it is really crazy. But then he teaches people to do the same. So it's not that he's a freak of nature. He can actually teach you within four days how to do the same. So I mean, you know, that's another unbelievable technique. And we're hearing more and more of these things. Right, Bill, about meditation, visualization, these Wim Hof techniques that are all science based. I like to bring it back to science. I don't like to make it too spiritual. And spiritual is okay, but I think for entrepreneurs and for leaders, they want to hear about their true effects. How is this Backed up by actual data. And I think that that's important. So I think that's part of the game as well.

So I spent a few days studying and learning from all kinds of science thought leaders. We have a local center here at Berkeley, the Greater Good Science center with Dacher and Emilian who run that program. And they did a multi day thing at the 1440 Multiversity on the science of happiness. And brought together, I spent several days learning about all of the different techniques for being happy and fulfilled in both the sort of ancient techniques and then how they're rooted in our biology and in brain science. It was pretty fascinating and some of it is fairly obvious, like, oh, we know kind of anecdotally some of these things work. And yet it's useful to see, in fact that there is, it's not just folklore, there's actually science where how they work and how they interact with the brain, the emotion and like that.

Yeah, you're so, it's so true what you're saying, Bill. I mean, there's so much science behind it. Let's take for example, gratitude, which is, you know, something that I like to speak a lot about. You know, it sounds so simple, be, you know, being thankful for what you have, you know, showing gratitude to other people, showing appreciation. But they've wired people right. There's all kinds of studies, you know, a lot of, a lot of the California universities, in fact, as you're right, explaining that, you know, when they put people on, you know, looking at their brain waves and seeing the effects of writing, you know, a letter of appreciation to someone and hand delivering it to them and seeing, you know, a few hours later what effect that had on their brains and their minds. You know, they see spikes in all the, you know, all the important chemicals that lead to more happiness and reduced stress. So in that case, why wouldn't you, for example, take three to five minutes every day and write down the things you're grateful for or take two or three minutes in a day and thank someone the right way for something they did for you. I mean, it's very simple tools and techniques, but not a lot of people do it. And I think that's really important. So having a gratitude journal, for example, I think is a must for every person out there, including entrepreneurs saying, okay, what happened today that I'm grateful for? You know, and I'm sure you can come up with three to five things. They don't have to be huge. It could be an amazing meal, it could be, you know, phone call with A friend could be getting a new order, you know, selling a new product or service. Could be anything but just write it down every day and you know, before you know it, your book will be completely full.

So some people are. I know I'm a very inconsistent journaler, right? There are times that I journal very intensely, especially when I'm working on a key project, thinking about something or whatever. I'll take all kinds of notes and work things out of my head and capture things and I mean, never refer to them again and like that. And then I also keep places for thoughts that come to me. Like there's a thing called Aqua notes that I love to recommend. There, here's actually one of them from my, from my shower the other day. And I'll have ideas and thoughts when I'm in the shower and I'll write them down and then I can bring. And many of them I just throw away. But sometimes like this one I brought out because it was a. Like suddenly a whole bunch of things came together from. For me and I could write it down. There was an inspiration there that came in that moment as I'm, you know, shampooing the hair, washing behind the ears and that kind of thing. The journaling, I think is really useful. I started at somebody else's prompting. I don't even remember who now to be thankful for them, for a practice of gratitude. And at first it was twice a day and all I did is I put an appointment, like a 5, 10 minute appointment on my calendar and it said something fancier at one point, but today it just says grateful. So I have. And today I only have one. So towards the end of my day I have grateful and I just have one. But I've had this like for more than five years now. When that alarm comes up, like any other appointment or call or whatever, it's like, oh, grateful. And then I stop, even now, years later, and I go, oh, yeah. And I might just acknowledge in my own head, oh, I'm grateful for this. And then other times I'm like, oh, I need to tell them I really appreciate that thing or love that or. So I may verbalize it sometimes to someone else or I may just think about. But whatever the thing is, it has an enormous effect on my moment by moment happiness.

Yeah, that's amazing. I'm really impressed that you do that. And I shouldn't be surprised because, you know, you are someone I know well, who, who goes out there and goes above and beyond. So that's amazing that you do that. So that is an amazing trick for the audience to try. Definitely. Another thing that they can do very simply is put alarms on their iPhone for maybe two or three times per day. You could have gratitude and you could also do body check ins, right? So when that alarm goes off, you say, okay, step back, let me check in on my body. Am I stressed out right now? My shoulders crazy tense? Am I freaking out? And just stop everything you're doing for even for one minute and take a moment to reflect. And then obviously, you know, tying that into gratitude is amazing. And again, it just puts things into perspective. You know, it could be as simple as enjoying the view that you have outside of your office, whatever it is, but it really takes time to. It gives us the opportunity to reduce stress and to really realize that there's more to life than just, you know, constantly trying to beat the man. Right. So.

So I love the grateful practice, especially at the end of the day, right. Because now like thinking about it and I can. And then it creates a nice transition. Especially towards the end of my workday as I go into dinner. If I express some gratitude before I have a glass of wine with my dinner or start to cook dinner or, or move into family time or conversation with my wife or something like that, it's a completely different way to sort of wrap up the day. Appreciating even if I had some shit happen in the day.

Right. Difficulties.

It's really, really useful. And I find even when the day really sucked, there are things to be grateful for. Right. I'm still breathing. The case may be. But you know the interesting thing to segue back to your partner a little bit. Brother, was it brother?

Brother in law? Yeah, it's my, my wife's brother.

Family related business plus partnering business, aligning visions and roles and things like that. I noticed that like, so I have a brother who's extraordinarily positive. In fact, it's really hard for him to be negative now. You could even consider it a flaw because things will be really bad and he'll stay like super like, well that's going to be fine and you know, that kind of thing. And then my dad was a diagnosed bipolar and he would go to the extreme, so he could be super positive, but then he could go really, really dark. And I find I'm mostly above average positive. But I have moments where I can get pretty dark too. Not to the level like the bipolar degree that my dad was, but it's on a, like a spectrum of something. So not stuck in one or the other, but I do Think it's kind of healthy because I'll get to a place where I'm tense or I'm really upset or despairing over something, and I'll go, oh, how do I feel right now? And I'm like, wow, I can feel that in my belly. Or I can feel that up here. Like, oh, I can in my neck. And I'll think about where and how I feel it in the body and what thoughts I have about it. And. And that awareness starts to give some power and separation from it. So, like, at first, I am the feeling. I am the emotion and the thoughts associated with it. And then when I notice it, I bring that awareness to it. Then I start to separate from it. It's here and I'm here and. And it's. It's a thought or a feeling that I have, and it's not me. Right. Have it and it's still there, but it's not this. It's different from me. I've separated the two by the awareness. Right?

Yeah, but that's what you're describing, Bill, is. Is the. That next level that you've already been able to achieve, which is amazing. And it's being able to separate yourself from your thoughts and your emotions and being able to view them from the outside and saying, well, that emotion does not define me. I'm realizing that it's something different than who I actually am. And the other big thing is to accept it, because that's one thing that we have a hard time is accepting. You're allowed to be angry, you're allowed to be frustrated. You're allowed to be negative sometimes. We're all human beings, right? And if you come to learn how to accept it. Okay, I'm in a bad mood right now. It's part of the game. Fine. Let me get over it. I think that could really help reduce things. I like to teach a lot of people. Yeah, go ahead.

No, no, finish. Finish the thought.

I like to teach people a lot of things about what I call the time anger gap. Right. So this is a concept that I've developed and what I've come to realize by doing all this meditation and all these different things. And I learned something interesting when I went to China. I used to go to China every single year in my old business to visit all the different things going on. All our suppliers and people over there, they cut each other off in cars. I mean, it's traumatizing. You're just driving and you see a car and you say, it's game over. We're we're dead. Like, we are dying at this moment. And the driver, the driver just slows down and lets himself get cut off and doesn't honk. And I asked one of the drivers, I said, I don't understand. Like, how are you? But for him, he says, well, this is just part of the game. Like, we just. We all cut each other off every minute. So now that's just how it goes. And what it made me realize is that, you know, in North America, we have road rage, right? Like, if someone cuts you off, it's game over, like all hell. Great sleuth. You start imagining the baseball bat, you're going to pull out and you're going to do something crazy and slash the tires of this person, you know, but we failed to realize that, you know, two minutes later, that car is gone. And, you know, we're still upset about saying we're never going to see that person or that car again. Literally. Like, very likely we'll never remember this encounter. And so, you know, this is something I've been trying to teach my clients and my kids, too. It's kind of the idea behind, okay, you're upset. Now you have a choice. You can be upset for two days, two weeks, two months, two years, or you could actually be upset for two minutes. Or, you know what? What if you were able to only be upset for two seconds? This concept really came to me when they asked the Dalai Lama, they asked him in an interview. They said, Mr. Dalai Lama, how do you never get upset? Like, it's unbelievable. You have such an amazing control in your emotions. And he laughs a lot, as you probably know. And he started laughing. He said, you think that I never get upset? As the Dalai Lama says, I see poor children around the world not being fed. I see abusive people, violence everywhere. He says, I'm upset 99% of the time, but I know how to get over it and to move on and do the right things, to put things on the right track. So I think that's an important lesson for entrepreneurs to say you're upset about something. Listen, you could be upset for two days, you could be upset for two minutes. Either way, you got to move on. So try to reduce that time anger gap.

So I love that you brought it back there, because when you were talking there, I was reminded of something that I think I remember it vaguely being a quote of the Dalai Lama, but I'm not actually sure of this, but I believe it was he who said that something to the effect that suffering is a function of resistance. And the extent that there's pain, right, there's pain that's real, but the suffering is the optional part. And the suffering is because you resist the pain. And I was reminded that as you were talking earlier and then you brought it back to him. But it occurred to me that this business of self awareness and inquiry is also a precursor to the acceptance. So it's very hard to accept something if I'm not really conscious of it. And so the first thing I do is I bring self awareness. Wow, I'm really pissed off right now. Well, I'm really triggered or I'm really upset or I'm really like, whatever. However, I mean, if I notice that I'm in an agitated or, you know, upset or activated state, I notice it, I bring awareness to it. I'm like, what's going on with me? And what is it there that's so upsetting for me? And I kind of look into it, right? I examine it and I. And only in sort of like diving into it can I then accept it and then get the separation for it. So I, and I think that's what's different is mostly we try to suppress it, numb it, like, so we bring something or we escape or we do something to get our mind off on something else. And that might be good for a minute, but if we don't do it, it's lurking there underneath, right? Our brain's super powerful and it's holding it there for us to deal with. And I think that that's. If you keep. And then you try to put on smiley face and walk around and whatever. And I'm just going to be happy now. But you're really not happy, you could say. And I was taught that that's like icing on a mud pie, right? It's crap underneath, but you've dressed it up with your smiley face and you're happy. Go lucky or you've drunk some alcohol or done whatever your vice is and then it's still there under the surface. So actually going into it lets you move through it. Because I examine it, I say, wow, look how pissed I am, look how upset I am with them. And, or this situation or whatever it is. And I feel it here and I, and I allow myself to sort of experience all aspects of it, the physical and the emotional and the whole thing and the thoughts and ideas around it. And then I. And then that is actually the beginning of the acceptance of it. I'm allowing it to be. And I'm beginning to separate myself from it. And now there's far less suffering. There's actually some choice and some opportunity. Mark Walnick chimes in that grudges are powerful in business. They provoke and motivate. And I think people have accomplished huge things. I remember my wife telling me a story about a competitor very early in launching her business who pissed her off with something and that really drove her to accomplish some great things. I've heard great stories from artists and from other people, like recording artists who said, oh, a teacher told me once I was never. And then that drove me and I, I coached a woman years ago who was an actual rocket scientist and straight up real one lovely, lovely human.

And.

And she said that one of her teachers, early in life or college professor teacher said, sort of laughed the fact that she wanted to study science and engineering and like it was inappropriate for a girl. Right. And she said it pissed her off so much and it drove her to do and to be super awesome and do the thing. So it's useful except then it can kind of create a toxic environment. So it's great to a point, but then if you don't resolve it, you get like you were where you're just miserable. Right?

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I'm sure, you know, you've probably seen and everybody's talking about the Last Dance, you know, the documentary with the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. And that was one thing that he talked about. He would invent stories that, you know, he's being, you know, disrespected and you would have all this. He'd pent up anger and he would go out and use it on the court and it would be funny. His opponents would say, I never did anything to him, you know, but he would pinpoint, you know, fake stories in the news and things like that and use them to motivate him. So I definitely think there is a place to use, you know, that anger for sure. I think that is something that you.

Can use our skillful and conscious kind of decision, right?

Yes, absolutely. And I've used it myself. You know, I'm not a crazy amazing athlete, but I've done a few half ironman in my day and, and play some competitive soccer. And, you know, I've used. I've definitely been able to use anger sometimes to fuel, you know, my, my passions. And, you know, I love Mark's comment here that we're seeing on the screen. You know, he's saying, you're going to get a lot of that in business and, you know, how are you going to use it and you shouldn't be taking it home, which I think is obviously a great point that he's making. I think like you said, you have to be able to use it the right way and motivate yourself and your team the right way. You know, one of the best things that ever happened in our business was a competitor who copied our entire product line and literally took the 200 products and put them all at $1 less than us. I mean, it was just shocking to us. But that happened just before we started scaling up was actually one of the main reasons we started scaling up. And it just transformed our business and took our business from here and leveled us up so high because we were so angry at that competitor and we did everything possible to become innovative and crazy. And I mean we were just, you know, we really did fuel anger in the right way. And it became a theme in the company where I was like, okay, let's beat out this competitor, you know, at all costs. And we ended up coming out, you know, much stronger than them at the end of the day. So it can be used the right way.

But it's helpful if there's some consciousness. And by consciousness I don't mean anything too kooky. I mean awareness, right? Self awareness. I'm conscious, I'm self aware. I'm not just acting unconsciously. I saw a BBC story I want to. It was like Oxford or some other university study of happiness. And big so is a fairly substantial feature about a significant study. And they were looking at how relatively happy people were in practices and what circumstances they were tied to and that kind of thing. And, and I forget all the details. The biggest thing that I remember is that happiness was not tied to anything that you and I might think of. So money, affluence, actual profound poverty, suffering, those kinds of things were completely independent of happiness. So you could live in a miserable shack and be hungry and be diseased in a slum in India or favela or like whatever, and you could be in fact happy, as happy as self reported and displaying the markers of a very wealthy person who might be satisfied with their business. Or you could be a fricking billionaire and be miserable. And I only think that like, you know, a great champagne, a private jet in a luxury hotel is a great place to nurse your unhappiness.

That's it. You could be really unhappy in a wonderful setting, right?

Like you, you then go deep into drugs or other kinds of things and then pretty soon like you've, you've tossed away your life and all that so you can Be unhappy, no matter the circumstances.

Absolutely. It's so true what you're saying, Bill. There's been multiple studies on this. It's a. It's a very scary thing when you think about it, because we. And this, you know, you're actually leading into the exact premise of the book. Like, the main reason I wrote the book, you know, Warren Rustand, you know, he's a wonderful business person. Yeah. And, you know, he's my mentor. And he. He had really told me, he said, you know, what is it you think you're going to achieve one day when you sell your business? Or, like, do you actually believe that's when you'll be happy? Like, you're going to sell and then the selling of the business will make you happy? And that's the type of thing that I see entrepreneurs do all the time. When X happens, then I'll be happy. When Y happens, then I'll be able to be less stressed and things like that. The reality is that this journey you're on is probably going to be long. And if you're not happy and enjoying the journey, then you're probably missing out on most of your life. Recent studies have shown that we only spend about 5% of our time in the present moment. 5% of our waking moments, most of it is spent in the past thinking about things that we should have done or looking ahead to the future. And yes, you and I, as coaches, we teach our clients to look ahead to the future and to plan their future. But at the same time, how often are we actually appreciating the present moment? And to me, that's where the real measure of happiness happens. Because if you're in your present moment and you're already thinking about something else, it means that you can't truly be happy at that point. So it's really finding a way to say, okay, in this exact moment, okay, you and I are talking on this podcast. Am I actually appreciating this present moment that I'm in right now, or am I already thinking about when we hang up and go downstairs, I'm going to have dinner, I'm going to make a phone call, I'm going to catch up on emails. You know, if you're constantly in that mode, which most of us are, which is really what I realize most of us are, that's a very dangerous place to be. And that's where this entire idea of consciousness meditation, taking a step back, putting your alarm at a certain point in the day, you can actually then give yourself tricks to just Be living the present moment, which is what is the issue. I mean, we really need to get back to the present moment. Most of us are not in it.

That's really terrific. There was a particularly apt phrase popularized by the EST movement back in the 70s, be here now. Which is like not tuning out but actually being fully present and aware, super powerful and especially relevant in that escapist time. You know, I love that you mentioned Warren. Warren Rustand and I, along with Tanya Chernova and Rich Mulholland will be leading a multi day event for. For the European region of the EO organization next May. Assuming that we find some relief from the COVID quarantines and things like that. Late May in Santorini in Greece, we'll be leaving a two and a half day about designing your life, creating a purpose and plan for your whole life. And we'll be dealing with a lot of these things. So shameless plug for that. There may still be some tickets available. I think it's largely sold out now. Again, it sold at once and they rescheduled. I think it's sold it. But go look for EO Unlimited or EO Unlimited Santorini if. If you're a member of the EO organization and looking.

I love that you're doing that, Bill. I love that you're doing that. I think that's super necessary. We don't do enough of it. I swear to you. No joke. I was, I spoke with Richard Mulholland for an hour this morning. So now that is just a pure strange one of those crazy weird coincidences that you mentioned. But Richie's got his head, you know, perfectly around all these topics and Warren obviously is the guru behind all of it and I know you're really good at it too.

So leading the keynote and Rich is emceeing the event and Tanya and I are designing all of the exercises that'll wrap through, in and after each speaker and through the group time and, and the music. And we're going to have movement and mindfulness and a whole bunch of practices in the. In the thing and like Santorini.

So yeah, Santorini. Beautiful. That's amazing. I love that you're doing that, Bill. Awesome.

So let's talk about. You applied this with some mindfulness and meditation, that kind of thing with a client. Right? Talk. Tell that story.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I work with a lot of clients as you do. First thing I always try to check out is first of all quality of the team. So how good is the team around them? And then I quickly come to Realize, you know, what their stress levels are at. I don't know if this happens for you, but a lot of times I get hired by CEOs to come coach them one on one. And we always eventually end up getting to doing, scaling up. Because, you know, once you start figuring out what the issues really are, usually it's in the business and usually it's with the entire company. So it usually is one that leads into the other. But yeah, I was working with a really amazing CEO of a super fast growing company and I'm completely stressed out, you know, totally freaking out all the time and, you know, really didn't believe in these type of techniques. Didn't think that it was something that could, you know, help him or his business. And so, you know, we started doing it together where, you know, sessions together. We would actually try and do the meditation. And eventually, you know, he got to a point where he really, really started feeling super comfortable doing it on his own. And that was when he decided that he wanted to implement the actual meditation practice at his office. And so, you know, he did a theme around, this was a quarterly theme, as we often do in Scaling Up. I find them very powerful. I know Andy Bailey has like his book of themes, which is really amazing. I think he's got to add this one in though. I don't think he has a meditation one in there, so I'm going to mention that to him. But yeah, so it was a case where we brought it to the employees. We did a full half day session teaching them how to do the techniques. He bought yoga mats and those little meditation cushions for everybody around the company. Had all kinds of labels on the walls and all kinds of posters promoting it. And he's really said that it's been one of the most transformational things that they've done in their business to this day, is allowing people to take time at any point that they want, either go outside or to go into the special room that they've designated to do meditation. And they've integrated yoga as well. So they've done the combination of both. And he says that stress levels have gone down dramatically, that employee morale has gone up. The ENPS scores have been much, much higher since they've done that, you know, six months ago. So, you know, it's a real thing that could be done by any business. It literally doesn't cost anything. Literally, you know, there's nothing, there's no real cost associated to it. So, you know, it's something that I'm starting to encourage every single one of my clients to do. Most of them look at me like I'm crazy because I actually do meditation in our scaling up sessions. So, you know, the way I look at it, Bill, is that, let's say we're doing a super intense strategic module on core values, for example. And now I got everybody thinking about core values. They're going crazy. They come up with all these ideas. Now I send them on break and they go on the break and what do they do during the break? They start checking their emails, right? So now they're checking emails, they're making phone calls, and they're getting themselves stressed. So now they come back into the meeting, most of the time a little bit stressed, you know, unfocused. And now I'm going to ask them to come up with their big, hairy, audacious goal, like, good luck with that, right? So I always say to them, listen, we need to take a step back. We absolutely need to do either meditation or breathing exercise, a WIM HOF technique, which I'll even do with clients, and then we're gonna jump into the next strategic module. And it really has quite a profound impact for them. Honestly.

I think that's really great. Music, movement, fresh air, stretching. Not even the hard yoga. We all know people that do the hard yoga, the sweaty yoga, the, the, the hot yoga, they'll do the intense yoga. They'll do just like really, really light, just like move your body a little bit, Go take a walk in the middle of the day, get people to dance around a minute. You know, things like that can make a real difference.

Huge difference. Huge difference. We do that all the time.

Yeah, that's really great. I. So before I tell you about, about the book and where to get Shawn's information, I want to remind everyone that if the show helped you, please like it, share it, subscribe to it. You can share it as a preview party or a premiere and get it going out there and bring others to it. If you subscribe, either wherever you get your podcast or on our website@scalingcoach.com, you'll get them every week into. And you know, there's always a topic or something that we've got. I want to give special thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework, and to Lucy Summers, who produces our show. It schedules you. It gets things ready. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge at Podfly Productions. The show notes are written and compiled by Ein Codena and proofread by Tim McGowan. I want to thank everyone again for listening and tell you to keep scaling up. If you want to get more information about Sean and the book you will find that@sean shaal.com the book is the Happy Leader. Shaal.com thanks Sean for joining us today and talking all about getting happy.

Thank you Bill. Really appreciate the time. It was awesome. And thank Lucy as well. She was great.

Thanks so much. Let's let the music then play us out since we said that makes a difference in our it makes me happy anyway.

It does. I love it.

Thanks. Bye everyone.

We'll see you next week.

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