Why Most People Burn Out (and How to Avoid It) with Shelly Tygielski

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life, nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion and now coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, professional athletes all over the world. This show is for people who refuse to settle, people who are driven, people who want to grow, who know that there's so much more to learn and want to learn from the world's best. Each week I bring you insights from a special guest who's at the top of their game with whether they're in Formula one, whether they're a billionaire, whether they've started a company from scratch and take it to the top. I bring them to you so that you can rewire your mindset, take action and lead a life of purpose. Let's get started. Shelly Tagilski is today's special guest. Sit back and enjoy the show. Shelly, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Oh, it's a pleasure. I want the listener to really understand how your life began. And we're going to rewind back to a very early stage. Two years of age. You were kidnapped. Now, I've met thousands of people in my life, very interesting people, and this has never happened to anyone I've ever met at two years of age. So what exactly went on and how did that impact your life?

Sure. So truth be told, and I talk about this in my book.

I personally do not remember, have any recollection. This is something, but yet it impacted my life in really great ways. When I was 2, my parents moved here to the United States, to New York City. My mother reluctantly did not have the American dream at all and was reluctant to leave her homeland, but followed my father here with my two older brothers and myself. I had just turned two. My mom and dad barely spoke English and my mother, with her broken English, went to go get a government ID at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Brooklyn, New York. This is the late 70s, so imagine that there's no security cameras there's no.

You know, kind of any type of surveillance or security guards per se, all the things that we would be used to today, right. And I was a really gregarious child. I loved talking to people and making new friends. And so as my mother and I were in the waiting room waiting for her turn to take her eye exam for, for the, the before the driving test, I probably made a ton of friends and talked to any number of people, probably climbed over the chairs and who knows what. And my mother got called into her eye exam. And when at some point when she was kind of really immersed in with her broken English, trying to decipher the letters and remember what they are in a language that was foreign to her, I disappeared. And when she turned around and completed her test, I was gone. She ran out to the waiting room and you know, nobody couldn't express herself. She couldn't explain what was going on. And she immediately started to cry and wound up calling my father from one of the phones there. Again, no cell phones, payphones required, you know that you had a quarter back then if they were even around on a street corner. And the police were also called at the time to come to the, to the dmv, the Department of Motor Vehicles. And my, my mom was, you know, she was petrified. And this is all coming from her relaying this to me. Of course she was like, this is what I came to this country for, to like basically get my children kidnapped. And you know, in this moment of chaos. My father was called as well, came from, he came from, you know, from work in the middle of the day, drove over. The police had already been there, were trying to really understand what my mother was saying and trying to get a description of what I looked like in the midst of all that chaos. A woman who had been with us in the waiting room.

Ran towards my mother and grabbed my mother's hand and she was completely out of breath running from, you know, towards the DMV and towards this chaos pulled. My mother instinctively knew that she must know where I am. And my mother just ran with her and then the police officers just followed and they ran several city blocks into a housing complex that was, you know, a government funded housing complex and walked into a building and the police put that building on lockdown. And my, my mother said we, they stopped on every floor, floor after floor after floor. And there were probably like 30 stories to this building and they were getting close to the 28th floor, you know, knocking on apartment doors, having the, the management like open with, with lock and Key every single unit to ensure that, you know, I wasn't there. And. But my mother was starting to lose hope as we were getting to the top floor and, and, and on the 20th floor, when the elevator doors open, opened, I was there in the arms of this woman who. Who was essentially wearing, like, a house coat and had, you know, very curly hair. And.

And, and my mom was crying, of course, from relief, deeply crying, even more so than she was before. I apparently thought I had made a new friend and did not know that anything was wrong. And I asked my mom, why are you crying? And as I leapt into her arms. Right. And so.

It'S so interesting to me because throughout my life, the story was always told, and there's obviously so much shock value to it, but it was always, like, casually, like, brought up, you know, by my parents at, like, a dinner party or, oh, when we came to America, and Shelly was kidnapped when she was 2, you know, and immediately, instinctually, of course, instinctively.

If you're friends with my parents or you hear the story from my mom, you immediately want to know from an empathetic way, like, oh, my gosh, that must have been so hard for you. Like, tell me more about your experience. Right. I obviously could not relay my experience because I was two and I don't remember it. And I've had so much therapy, by the way, to try to, like, unlock something to see if there was something that I was missing. But I actually do not have any type of traumatic memory at all from that experience. But it was always so interesting to me that the story didn't center on this woman, the Good Samaritan, that. Who my parents, by the way, kept in touch with for several years. But, you know, as it goes, especially in the age before social media and cell phones and, you know, you're moving around, etc, you lose touch with people. So, you know, this woman, this Good Samaritan was. I was always so curious about.

What was it in her that, like, in the moment where she had a decision point to make, right. She witnessed, we later learned that she witnessed somebody that wasn't my mother because she was one of the people that I was, like, playing with in the waiting room, you know, hide and seek or what have you. And she realized that I was being carried out by somebody that wasn't my mother. And in that moment, she had a couple of choices she could have made. She could have. One, ignored the issue completely, like, it's not my business. And obviously many people in that waiting room did that. Two, she could have run to Alert my mother. And by the time she would have explained what was going on, who knows where I would have been or ended up, right? And the third choice, which was the choice she made, was to run after the people that walked out, the person that walked out with me.

And so she followed them at her own per. At her own risk of peril. Right? She had no idea what she was walking into. She had no idea if these people were armed or if they were dangerous or if there were other people waiting for that. For, you know, for. For that woman, or there was a getaway car, like, who knows? And yet she, in that moment, as a Good Samaritan, had the agency to.

You know, rise to action, and essentially, you know, who knows, maybe saved my life or. Or, you know, ensured that I would live the life that I'm living today versus potentially an alternative life that wouldn't have been, you know, as great as the one that I'm living today.

Have you met that woman since?

I haven't. And that's part of the reason why I decided to write the book, because my mother lost touch with her, and I've looked up her name, and I've. I was hoping that by writing about it that through six degrees of separation, somebody would read the story and then say, oh, my gosh, you're that person you should reach out to, you know, to. To Shelly. She's looking for you. And, you know, I imagine at this point, because my mother is, you know, close to 80, that this woman, you know, would be in. In this case, in her mid-80s at this point, or, you know, maybe even older, but, you know, that North America.

So if she's in North America, on the east coast or wherever she might be, would you like to name her?

I'm not sure because I don't have her permission to do that. So I kind of wanted to just, you know, like, let it. Let it sort of all be in divine order. Beautiful, right?

I love it.

But the seed, the impact that this woman had on my life, from a very tangible way we understand what that is, right? But the kind of intangible seed that was planted with me and that really forced me to kind of, like, look in the mirror and ask myself, when I was kind of old enough to be really introspective about it.

Would I have made the same decision in that moment, at that decision point, would I have just shown up and, you know, without even thinking about it, just followed my moral compass, right? Without hesitation, in any way, shape or form? And so that, to me, was really Inspiring. And I was determined to lean into that and try to be the good Samaritan who doesn't ask a lot of questions and doesn't try to whiteboard and strategize about, you know, what the best way to help is and hesitate. Because in that moment of hesitating, you know, the moment could be gone. And that applies to so many things in our lives, right? Not just these, like, dire moments.

Yeah, everything. Small decisions, big decisions, relationships, work, health.

Yeah, everything.

The decision to write a book and put yourself out there.

Yeah, totally, totally.

And can we just talk about the book for a minute? So sit down to rise up the title of your amazing book. I'm going to put a link in the show notes so that the listener can go and get a copy. What inspired you to write that book? What's the premise of the book?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the. The show notes.

So I had been teaching. So I was a personal meditator, right? An unlikely meditator, but also for my own edification. I meditated for several decades. And.

The origin story was that I decided to show up and just start teaching free classes on the beaches of South Florida, which is where I was living at the time.

And I was really surprised by the number of people that would show up on Sunday mornings. And I started out with, you know, 12 friends who were sort of like acquaintances or in my friends circle. And this group eventually virgins and like grew to 50, then 100, then a thousand people, and then eventually a community of 15,000 people. And all this was like accidental and inadvertent. It was just kind of again, a moment, a decision point where I was like, yeah, okay, why not like, let's do this, let's build community. And you know, and it really fulfilled a need for me too, because I was really hungering for community and connection at that particular time in my life.

May I Ask as well. Shelley, you said unlikely meditator. What made you unlikely?

I'm still an unlikely meditator, by the way.

I'm an unlikely everything in a way, but really an unlikely meditator. Because I always. I mean, I want you to think about. Not like the way that people think about mindfulness and meditation today, but like, 20 years back, right. So.

I started meditating in the late 90s in New York City, where there wasn't a yoga studio on every corner and a Lululemon store. And, you know, mind. Mindfulness wasn't even like a. A word that people knew what that meant. You know, it was just kind of like the early stages of. Or. Or at least the early, maybe later stages of research. Dr. Jon Kabat Zinn, who coined that term, was working on. But it still wasn't like, didn't catch fire. Like, nobody really understood what mindfulness meant at that time. And so I say that because as a person that grew up as an Orthodox Jew.

To meditate was, in a very highly stigmatized way, was a Buddhist thing to do. Right. It wasn't something that somebody like me.

Who grew up in sort of this really stringent enclosed bubble would have ever leaned into. That's first and foremost. Secondly, I'm by. By just nature, I'm a skeptic about everything. And so, you know, I say unlikely meditator because.

I always felt like, you know, I'm always willing to give something a try. But.

I honestly, when I first started meditating, felt like, you know, I'm not the type of person that meditates because of that stigma of, like, what a meditator was. So, you know, just later on in life, too, in terms of continuing to define myself as a nonliki meditator, I found that it actually.

Resonated with other people who also were like, well, I'm not really a meditator. Like, I'm not a person that, you know, is into yoga, and I'm not a per. And. And it's so interesting because when you kind of like, at the. You know, I'm just like, reflecting back to sitting on the beach teaching, and when everybody else would have their eyes closed, I would kind of look around at the swath of diversity in the crowd of people that would come to meditate, and there would be, like, somebody in, like, a, you know, motorcycle jacket or a, you know, a vest who just came in on his Harley Davidson, who had tattoos from head to toe, and a woman who's like, 80 years old and a widower and, like, you know, just.

You know, somebody who was really traditional and then somebody who voted this way and somebody who voted that way and somebody who had millions of dollars and somebody who was on welfare stamps, you know, so all of these people that. That we kind of aggregated or that congregated together on Sunday mornings, I felt like to remove the stigma. Right. First, the place, the unlikely place, a beach, which wasn't scary at all. It wasn't like going into a yoga studio or going into, like an ashram. Right. And the type of music that we played, which was very like Woodstocky 1969, like, flower child, you know, type of music. And so it was inviting in that sense. And again, not the typical kind of thing that at that time you would think you would find, but. And then there was me that was just like a regular person who actually had a job from Monday through Friday, you know, that was just there because I wanted to create this community and have connection.

And just kind of, I think, really speak authentically and vulnerably from the heart and not create something that was like this unattainable thing. And so that's why I continued to. Because I felt like people gravitated toward the fact that, hey, even I am, like, unlikely. And, you know, the. Yeah, totally.

A lot of people say I can't meditate or, no, that's not something I do. Or again, they've got a stigma around what it means. I love how you've done that. I want to go, actually go really deep for a second, get tactical, and we'll come back out again. So for the person that's listening right now that goes, yeah, maybe try it at once. Or I'm thinking of trying it. Why should they? In terms of the benefits. And then secondly, what's a good place to start? Like an actual, hey, here's how you do it.

Sure. So why should they do it? You know, I will say that it's so interesting to me to.

And I don't do this. I don't mean this in like a negative way at all, but, like, we all tend to do this because we're human, right? To compare ourselves to each other. But all. But also we. We tend to compare ourselves today, for better or for worse, right. To the version of ourselves X number of years ago. Right. So it could be something physical like, oh, I used to look like that, but now I look like this. But in terms of my brain and acumen, what I could tell you is that I am almost 50 years old and I feel like my brain power is as sharp as it was when I was, and if not sharper than when I was in graduate school.

Wow.

Right?

We all want a bit more of that. Like, I mean, that's.

Yeah. I'm. I'm currently getting my doctorate in philanthropic leadership at IU at Indiana University at the Lilly School of Philanthropy. And I have, you know, people thought I was crazy for going back to school at my age, especially having not been in school for over 20 years. And in some ways I was, like, really afraid too, because I was like, oh, my gosh, am I even going to be able to do this? But I can tell you that I have this superpower to like, be able to really, like, hone in and completely hyper focus on things. And it's incredible in an age of distraction. So the metaphor that I always like to use is like, you know, our minds are like highways, right? There's so much going on. There's like five lanes of cars and there's traffic, and there's a car accident, you know, somewhere further ahead, and there's maybe a car that's broken down on the side. And there's like all of these reasons for you not to be focusing on the actual driving that you're doing. And what meditation allows me to do right through the brain training that I've been doing my. For. For two decades now, is it's allowed me to have all of those other cars that are surrounding me become white noise. And then it's just me and the car and I'm present and I'm able to really go into these deep dives because I take the time every morning to focus and to be present and to just, you know, train my brain to allow it to wander, not judge it for wandering, and allow it to come back to center and to focus again. And the more you do that, it's like muscle memory. You're able to basically, you know, not even notice that your brain has wandered. And you brought it back because it becomes this, like, you know, unconscious muscle memory that just, like you remember how to do that.

And if we get time, even more on that. I love what you're sharing. So in the morning is your preferred time. And then I imagine eyes closed, but maybe not so through what that might look like for someone.

Sure. So one of my friends and a great meditation teacher, a guy named David.

G.

Taught me the acronym years ago, rpm, which stands for rise, pee, meditate.

Talk about practical, right? He was like, listen, before you, like reach, reach for your phone and before you, you know, go grab a cup of Coffee. Before you do any of those things, can you just push yourself up on your bed, like back and you know, on your headboard and just kind of sit with a little bit more intention, right. Even if you're kind of like half in and half out at that point and, and like at the minimum, can you do that? Right? If, if you prefer to go sit on like a cushion or to go sit on a chair or you have a space, that's fine too. But at the very minimum, if the first thing that you could do when you wake up, you know, is to go take care of your bio business and then come back to whatever position to meditate.

It becomes a non negotiable and it becomes part of your habit. So just like you wouldn't go out into the world without brushing your teeth or putting your pants on or whatever, you know, you couldn't imagine for one second going out into the world without meditating, you know, without spending those minimally 12 minutes, you know, maximally. I would say for, for really busy people are like, I don't have the time to meditate, but at minimum 12 minutes is great for attention, focus, you know, and, and that's like scientifically proven, by the way.

Okay, amazing. And in those 12 minutes, is that guided or self guided? Is there any music or anything?

It's whatever your preference is. When I first started to meditate, I. There weren't guide, you know, there was no phone again, like so I couldn't, you know, was going to put in a cd like where am I going to get a CD of like what? You know. So I would go to meditation classes with my teacher at the time, Cher, and still to this day she's my teacher, but she's Sharon Salzberg, who's a New York Times bestselling author and has written like a dozen plus books. She's really world renowned for, you know, for, for bringing meditation and sort of modern era sort of like into the western world, if you will. And I would go once or twice a week to meditate with her in New York City at Tibet House, which was where you would find meditation at the time. Pretty likely place, right?

And you know, I just really prefer silence because I have, I personally practice something called Meta Metabna, which is loving kindness meditation.

And that type of meditation focuses on cultivation of compassion and really like focusing on your heart center and opening your heart. And it's such a beautiful practice. For me, that's been my default meditation. Right. I also practice mbsr, which is mindfulness based stress reduction and so there's, you know, body scan meditations and different types of visualizations. What I would say to people who are just getting started is that there is no right or wrong way to meditate. Everybody meditates in a different way. And if you prefer, you know, music, great. If, if music distracts you and you just want to hear a soothing voice, there's plenty of that out there too. Now if you know a certain gender or a certain accent bothers you, you know, there's, there's everything under the sun these days which is so incredible. You know, meditation has become so portable. It's become so, it's always been portable, but I mean in terms of access to like meditation apps and, and one incredible app that I would recommend to people is Insight Timer. If your listeners haven't heard of Insight Timer, it's a free meditation app. There are paid components on it as well. But it's really like the YouTube of meditation. So you, you type in what ails you. You can literally say meditation because my mother in law is visiting me and, or you know, meditation for, you know, wakefulness or to prior to bedtime or whatever's going on in your life, meditation for autoimmune disease. And it, it literally will spit out now hundreds of different uploaded meditations by both, you know, certified teachers that you've heard of, authors, people who are amateurs, quote unquote, and are uploading content. And you will find the right, you know, meditation for you. And eventually you may feel that, hey, I don't need this anymore. I could do this on my own. But what I will say is that, you know, I think even for some people, 12 minutes is like daunting. So I would say start really small, start in bite sized chunks that are doable, right? And just kind of build again that muscle memory, right? You don't start by lifting 100 pound weight. If you're at the gym for the first time. You start with a 2 pound weight and then maybe you move to a 5 pound weight and you know, and so, and you just progress as you build your, your physical muscles and so too is it so with the brain, you, you have to build that muscle. And I will also say that, you know, for people who really have trouble committing to that, especially in the morning, right, when I was, when I was, when my son was younger, you know, and even when I was a single mom, early on with him, I would have to wake, I would have to commit to waking up before, before the household woke up, right? Because there's no way that I would be able to meditate with everybody awake. It's just too distracting. It's not. It's not productive. Or if I couldn't get it in that morning because we woke up late or we're in a hurry or whatever, whatever the case was, I would commit to sitting in my car before going into work, you know, for 10, 12, 15 minutes, etc. Just to center myself. Because again, how am I showing up? How am I showing up to greet the day and the people that, you know, I work with or the people that I, you know, that I love and I'm related to or. And that's really important.

I love that. I've been meditating maybe seven, eight years, and I love it. And sometimes it's twice a day, but it's definitely once a day, mostly in the morning. And I combine that with some journaling before or afterwards, and not very regimented or structured. I just do what feels right. But I love it. And it's been a bit like what you described. I started slow, and I was frustrated and I felt it wasn't working, and I didn't know what it was meant to be like, but started slow, minute by minute, building it. Guided meditations. I've done yoga, nidra, lots of different things. So for the person that's going, okay, I want to be more focused. I'm distracted by my phone, which possibly they're listening to this on right now. I'm distracted by my phone, and I want to be able to focus on what matters most. My family, my health, my business project, whatever it might be.

What is the right meditation or a helpful meditation? There's probably no right one, but a helpful one because there is so much information and there's so many options for us. A really good starting point, a type of meditation just for focus specifically.

Sure. So I would say that the simplest form is really just learning to kind of center on and find your breath. It sounds so.

Basic.

Yet it's not that basic. You know, there are so many breathing exercises that are.

Able to bring you back to a state of, like, homeostasis, you know, especially when you're, like, triggered in some way or you're feeling anxiety.

You know, it helps to regulate your vagus nerve. And so I would say start with the breath because it's always with you, no matter where you are. And you can incorporate these sort of breath snacks throughout your day. Breathing snacks. Yes, of course you're always breathing, but can you intentionally breathe? Can you build in these, like, little, you know, commercial breaks, these vignettes in your day of busyness, when you're going from one thing to the other to the other to the other, mind mindlessly, right? Like from one phone call to another zoom call to, you know, a meeting, to rushing into the car and sitting in traffic to go pick up your kid from school pool, to rushing home to make dinner. You know, can you. In between every single sort of major event in your life, can you re. Can you commit to recalibrating and spend 15, 30 seconds, 60 seconds if you really want to be ambitious, right? Can you commit to a breath practice? And Maybe it's the 4, 7, 8 breath. Maybe it's box breathing. You know, there's so many different breathing techniques, and I know that some people have a hard time holding their breath and some people, you know, may.

Prefer one breathing technique to the other, but if you can just find one breathing technique. And again, there are so many to choose from. Our line, My default is 4, 7, 8. And can you.

Which is hold for 7 and then slowly release for 8, right out of.

Your mouth for 8. So the, the ratio is the most important thing, right? It's not the number, it could be 618. It's I have to breathe out for longer than I breathed in and I have to hold for even one second. So whatever that ratio, that magic ratio is for you, that isn't actually causing you agony and pain, but really actually enhancing your moment. And so I started to do this before meetings, when I was at work, when I was a corporate executive, and before replying to an email, especially one that would be frustrating, I would do it actually when. And I know this, like, it's so weird, people are going to listen to this and be like, what's with her? And like going to the bathroom, Listen, we're all human. We need bio breaks. But when I would go to the bathroom and then wash my hands, right? And this is even before pre Covid times when Everybody was like, 60 seconds, you need to wash your hands. But I would basically use that moment because I couldn't be on my phone because I'm washing my hands, right? Something you have to do. And I would use that moment to really just. You know, sometimes I would even close my eyes and just wash my hands and do my breathing technique. And I would get in like 30 seconds of breathing. And it's that. It's as simple as that because you. You take a bio break multiple times in a day. Hopefully you're drinking enough water and you're hydrating, right? And so here's an opportunity to at least five, six, seven times a day be able to incorporate these, like, mini recalibrations, these breathing snacks into your day. And you will be surprised how much of a difference that makes.

I agree. Thanks for going tactical with me there. And I guess if I pull it back up now and go broad picture. So when I look at your book and I look at your brand and the amazing community, like hundreds of thousands of people that are a part of your community, this one sentence comes to mind and I'd love you to speak to this. So self care activism. And you're a self care activist. Tell me more about that. What does that mean and how can we join?

Sure.

You know.

Self care is an act of political resistance. This is what Audre Lorde said. Self care is an act of self preservation. Right.

I really started getting into Audre Lorde's work and reading her work and really internalizing it around the time of the 2016 election, especially here in the United States.

And certainly the landscape today for us is quite difficult and challenging as well as I know it is for the rest of the world, and that we're a cause for some of the angst, much of the angst that many people are experiencing.

I wanted a way to.

Really speak to.

Individuals.

Who are.

You know, volunteers and people who show up and people who are community activists and community organizers and grassroots organizers and people who are affiliated with their church, their mosque, their synagogue, who are constantly giving to their community. I know so many people like that who are just community builders. And, you know, the. It's, it's funny because in the volunteer world, the reward for showing up and for being productive is more work because people know they can count on you. And ultimately what happens in this universe is that people burn out. It's a really real thing. And they become disenfranchised and they become disenchanted and they, you know, become cynical and we lose so many of the best workers, if you will, people who are empathetic and kind. And I would love to believe, and I do believe actually, that most people in the world are. That they are kind, they are empathetic. Right.

And so I really started to lean into thinking about how do we empower people to really view.

Self care and the act of as cliche as it is putting the oxygen mask on yourself first.

As an act of.

Self preservation to ensure that in whatever capacity we show up for others in this world that we center showing up for ourselves first.

Because if we don't do that, we're not going to have longevity. And if we don't do that, we're not going to show up as intentionally or as powerfully or be able to, you know, to do the work for, you know, for as long as a time as it would require. And so around 2016, I realized we're in a marathon. This is not a sprint. Right. And, you know, also having grown up in Florida, you know, we experienced so many hurricanes.

Devastating hurricanes. And more recently, now I live in Asheville, North Carolina, which also experienced a devastating hurricane.

And so.

You know, all of these things, the rebuilding.

It takes the life out of you. It takes forever. You know, you can't just rebuild a community in a matter of days. And so with everything that's happening in the world, from, you know, political crises to, you know, wars and, and climate change and climate refugees and refugees of war.

It'S just, you know, we need to be able to take care of ourselves so that we can show up for others. And so I want to also make us a really important distinction because this is something that.

I think is not inferred at all because the word self implies the I, the me, the person that's like here, right? In physical sense. And.

When I talk about self care in the book, you know, in any capacity as self care activism or just self care in general.

What I really lean into is that it really is not an individualistic pursuit. It's a communal pursuit.

It's very much a communal pursuit. And it requires that we first and foremost identify what our needs are.

And that we are able to not just prioritize ourselves, but also prioritize and learn how to do a number of things. How to say no, how to, how to ask for help, which is so hard to do, how to accept help, which is even harder to do, and then how to continue to nourish and build community and build these.

These, these patterns, these.

You know, these waves of.

How we actually employ self care in our lives so that it just becomes, you know, a part of who we are.

Yeah, it needs to be. It's interesting because, I don't know, about a year and a half ago we had Mo Gaudat on the show. So he was a former CBO at Google X, arguably like the godfather of AI. And he ended up leaving Google and has very controversial opinions on AI, where it's headed, the potential dangers of that. And I can see the speed at which things are moving now. Agents are going to be deployed through agentic intelligence. So I really feel like community in person, real humans talking is going to become more important. What's your stance on the role of community and real humans connecting with real humans in this time?

I mean, there is no replacement to real humans connecting with real humans. Ultimately, you know.

Asking the question, what makes us human? And I know a lot of people are asking that question now, but, you know, in my opinion, what makes us human is our capacity to love and our capacity to feel empathy, which is a really unique.

Emotion, you know, to humans. The fact that we can feel a deep connection with people who.

We'Ve never met, who we see halfway around the world on television, who have just suffered, you know, a great tragedy. And that moves us. The fact that we can watch a film.

And it in. And. And even if it's fictional, it can invoke an emotion, right, that is so deep, that inspires us to, you know, to either go into deep thinking or to rethink something in our life or maybe to move to action to solve a problem. And so, you know, there is no replacement for that. I think that if we look at technology as a. A tool in our toolbox.

As opposed to the answer, right, it is a tool in our toolbox that can help make us certainly more efficient and more productive. And, you know, and it has really, if you look at the.

You know, since the Industrial Revolution, certainly, right. And you look at manufacturing and you look at all these other technological advances, and I think where we're kind of losing the script here is that and missing the point is that we have the ability to buy back time.

Using technology that's available to us today. And the real question is, what do you do with that time?

Right? How do you use that time to really connect with the world, connect with nature, connect with one another, connect with yourself?

Those are the priorities that we should be centering. So I'm not against in any way, shape or form the use of AI or the. Or the building of robotics or, you know, a way to make us more efficient. What saddens me is that some of this. Some of these tools are being spoken about as if they will replace, especially things like creative pursuits, the things that intrinsically are so human and require, like, human experience. You know, songwriting and, you know, composition of music and poetry and.

You know.

People writing books, entire books that have been, you know, informed or at least partially written by AI. And I'm so against that. I just. I want to read a book written by a real human who's thought about it like that means the world to me. And I like to buy a physical book and hold it and old school like that.

Yeah. But you almost wonder if, you know, not if, but like, you know, when you know. Especially as you look at younger generations who read less and less. Right. Or don't have the attention span to consume a long novel. Right.

AI is going to be doing reading for them. So that's what I'm saying. It's like replacing the things that I think really, it's what worse we should be using technology to make time for, like, wouldn't you love if, like, technology could just give you back two hours a day? It's. It's so interesting because, you know, but it's not endemic to just today. That's the funny thing is, like, people are having this conversation, but when you look at old, like, really old advertisements, I'm talking like in Time Life magazine from, like, I don't even know, early, early, you know, 20th century.

And you look at magazines that had, like, advertisings for. Especially for women, female homemakers at the time. Right. Who were still doing laundry by hand. And then like, voila, like the laundry machine, you know, this is going to save you so much time. And the TV dinners are going to save you time, and the, you know, the microwave is going to save you time. All of these inventions that supposedly were supposed to give us back more time, and yet we still have no time. It's so fascinating problem.

And this is where your meditation piece really comes into it as well. It's like, what do you really want? And do you have the ability to have a muscle to focus on that thing for long enough?

Correct. But my point is, is that also, like, we talk about AI like, it's like this new problem, but like, when you kind of go down to like, the common denominator, it's the same conversation we've been having for over 100 years, at least, if not more. Right?

100%. It really is. And I'm going to remind everyone that's listening again, the book is in the show Notes. Please go and get it. We've just been dipping our toes in here. So you want to go deep. That's where I want you to go. And look, I want to be mindful of your time, but a couple of things I need to ask you, partners in kind, please just give the listeners a little overview of what that's all about.

Sure. So, you know, it's so interesting because for a really long time, especially after I left the corporate world, I was frustrated because I felt like my, my life was like I was living and doing things in silos and I couldn't understand intrinsically what the connection between all those silos were. So, like, I was, you know, teaching meditation and mindfulness and running retreats and, you know, maybe keynote speaking at places, writing books, all in that silo, right? So, like, the mindfulness silo. And then I was leading Pandemic of Love, which is the grassroots mutual aid organization that's still in existence. And, you know, that was another silo. So I would, like, kind of consistently, like, move. You know, my day would be, like, kind of fragmented, Right. And I would be working on maybe, you know, other types of projects that, you know, felt like they were really purposeful and I was, like, leaning into, you know, my. My true purpose. Right. And so what I realized was that all of these kind of strands, and it wasn't apparent to me at the time, but now, reflectively looking back, all these silos, sorry, were actually strands. They were like strands of a braid. And it was up to me to, like, weave those things together and where they didn't make sense and they didn't intersect. It was also up to me to, like, let go of something. Even if it was financially lucrative, Right. Even if it was something that.

I felt obligated to do. Right. And so I had to start really thinking about sort of in a very corporate way, because that was my background and how I was trained. Right. What is my mission statement? And it's so interesting because I actually sat down on the recommendation of a friend to write down a mission statement. And you would think that would be so easy to do because it's one sentence, and it's so impossible, because how do you encapsulate in this moment in time, like, what your mission is? Right. Can you do it? But it's such an incredible exercise because essentially that became my luminous purpose. That became the litmus test to say, I'm going to do this. I'm not going to do this. Right. Yes or no. And it really helped to become, like, a guiding light for me in terms of centering my life around intentions, which I talk about a lot in the book, versus goals, and just trusting and having faith that as you step forward, the tile will appear. And so partners in kind actually came out of.

You know, an interesting, wonderful relationship. I met my partner, Jillian.

Doing Pandemic of Love work. She was a donor to Pandemic of Love, and we became fast friends. And I had an interesting opportunity. Somebody approached me during the days of the pandemic, when Pandemic of Love was growing and was featured on CNN Heroes. And you know, we were on the Kelly Clarkson show, and it was great, Right. And so we were getting a lot of attention and buzz, and somebody reached out to me to see if I wanted to make Pandemic of Love into a television show. And in the end, we didn't wind up doing it because it felt really exploitative and just not right in terms of who we really wanted it to serve, but the exercise of.

As somebody who didn't come from the industry of Hollywood or making films or tv, I knew that Gillian, my partner, had experience in producing films, and so I asked her to join me for these meetings, and she did. And while the television show didn't happen, ultimately, what we realized is that, one, we liked working together, and two, that there's a major gap. And I'm sure that this is not just in the United States, but all the world over. And I know that anybody that's in production or in film or television or anything will agree with me who's listening to this, that social impact and entertainment content, content that is empathetic and puts out a message of kindness and tries to make a difference, is not funded enough and it's not greenlit enough by the gatekeepers at the. The, you know, the streamers and the networks. And they will tell you that nobody wants to consume this stuff. Right. People want to continue to consume reality shows and people left on an island together and, you know, girls in bikinis on dating shows and whatnot. And the truth is, is that even when you look at social media and what's popular on YouTube and what people consume. Sure. Do they consume salacious things and things that, like, are people getting hurt and all these. Yes. But also, people love to watch when somebody does a fundraiser and helps, you know, a stranger or helps to get housing for a homeless person or helps a dog that's found on the side of the street. And, I mean, on and on and on, those types of stories go viral all the time and have millions and millions and millions of views. And so we know that it's commercially viable and that people want to consume this type of content and that there's so many stories that deserve to be told in all forms, on all platforms, in theaters and podcasts. And, you know, it's not just true crime. I need people to stop telling me that. We need another true crime show.

I'm with you on that.

I don't believe it. I think that people want to see. See a play about Maya Angelou's life, you know, and. And see it on Broadway and on West End and all over the world. And I think that people want to reflect on what it means to be human and you know, and so Jillian and I started Partners in Kind, which is a. With an equity fund called a Purpose in Production Fund. And we invite people from all over the world and they do to pitch content to us in, in any format and in, you know, whether it's fully developed or requires finishing funds or you know, we want to make sure that these stories get made and so we invest in them, we provide equity funding and then we're getting ready to launch a Partners in Kind foundation which essentially allows for co investment by other funders, donors, institutional funders, high net worth individuals or traditional foundations or here in the United States we have something called donor advised funds. And so there's so many ways for us to kind of link arms together. We believe.

And tell these stories because we know that storytelling is what changes culture, it's what changes behavior and it will ultimately hopefully change policy as well. And that's what we strive to do, is to inspire people's hearts and minds in a way that can help give them pause, make them feel something and then hopefully make them rise up and.

Do something that's beautiful. And I'm going to just for the listener, just say, look, there's something very exciting happening and I'm not going to tell them exactly all the details, but for them to get the details, they need to go to your social media and follow. Follow you, especially in the channel. But you're doing something very cool with Leonardo DiCaprio and it's yeah. Involved. So let's not tell them anymore. Let's get across your social media and understand what's going. Because I was looking at it this week and I was blown away. So well done on what you have done. But let's just leave them with a little bit of curiosity there.

Totally. Thank you for that. We wrap up.

I feel like there's so much more we could say, but I want to respect your time and the most important question I ask that I leave to the end, I ask the same question to every single person that joins me on the show. So for just a moment, I want you to pretend that you and I are fast forwarding into the future, many, many years. And you're highly aware that it's your last day on earth and someone very young, who you love dearly, comes into the room and says, shelley, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to me?

I would say that you should.

Center your life around an intention.

And not around goals.

Powerful. That'll be challenging for so many. Because I know a lot. A lot of people that listen. We talk about goals. We've had goal experts on the show, and it's about setting them. What you've done is actually challenged all of us to go, actually pause, hold up. Intentions versus goals. I love that.

Yeah, yeah. Because a lot of times your goals don't align with the intentions of how you want to show up in the world or who you want to be. So if your intention is, I want to be a person of service, your goals could be a myriad of things, and they could change throughout your life. Right. The way that manifests, the way that you show up. You could be a nurse, you could be a teacher, you could be a volunteer. You could. There's so many ways to do that. Right. I want to be a happy person. I want to. It's. It. It reflects back to a really simple question. I'll end with this. You know, when. When. I don't know if this happened to you when you were a kid. I imagine that it did, but I know that even when my son was younger, people would always ask him, what do you want to do when you grow up?

Yeah.

What do you want to do when you grow up? Right. Like, as if that's. That's the end goal. That's the be all end. All right? And we're entrained, as young children like to. We see the reaction when we say, I want to be an astronaut, I want to be a neurosurgeon, I want to be a lawyer, you know? But if you say, like, I want to be a philosopher or a cowboy or whatever, you know, it's a completely different reaction. And so we're entrained in that way.

And I think the real question that we need to be asking, not just children, but ourselves is who do you want to be when you grow up?

And that's the intention. Who. I want to be a happy person. I want to be a kind person. I want to be a person that's of service. I want to be a person and so on. And if you could center your life around those basic things or just pick one thing, that's your driving force.

Powerful and very liberating, too. Takes a lot of pressure off. I honestly love that. A beautiful question. Who, Rather than, what do you want to do? Who do you want to be? That's just beautiful. Shelley. I want to say a huge thanks for taking the time to share your wisdom. I want everyone to grab a copy of your book today so that they can go deep. And certainly what you shared with my last question, your book has so much more depth on that as well. You've kind of left us with a cliffhanger there, which is beautiful, but you get to go in and do that in depth with you. So huge. Thank you. And I wish you nothing but the best with your mission.

Thank you so much, James. I really appreciate you having me on and hopefully one day I'll see you in New Zealand.

100%. It'll happen. Thanks for tuning in to Lead on Purpose. If you find this episode valuable, please share it with one person that you think might benefit from it. And if you're serious about leveling up, please make sure you're subscribed to the show and continue to lead your life on purpose.