Practicing Mindfulness to Improve Leadership with Marc Lesser

Because I think when you start a business, you have to be the hero of your journey. And it's a beautiful thing starting something. And it's interesting that the hero's journey starts with setting out on the journey. What's your vision, you know, what is it you're trying to accomplish? I've always loved that the next part of the hero's journey is noticing your fear, not suppressing or pushing away. I think this is actually important part of starting a business.

Good day everybody. I am Jeff Dutton and we are on the Homefront. Homefront Brands simply building the world's most responsible franchise platform, encouraging entrepreneurs to take action and transform their lives, impact communities and enhance the lives of those they care most about. All the while delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners out there on the homefront where it counts. If this sounds like you, check us out@homefrontbrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness, building your dynasty on the Homefront. I will be looking for you here and today I am excited to have Mark Lesser with us on the home front. Welcome, Mark.

Thanks, Jeff. It's great to. Great to see you.

Ah, it is. This is going to be an exciting time and a time that I'm particularly interested in learning a few things that for myself. So really honored that you're on. Mark Lesser is a CEO, executive coach, speaker and Zen teacher. He founded and was CEO of three companies and has an MBA degree from New York University. Finding Clarity, How Compassionate Accountability Builds Vibrant Relationships, Thriving Workplaces and Meaningful Lives is his fifth book. His other books include Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, which I read last night, Lessons from Google and A Zen Monastery Kitchen and Less, Accomplishing More by Doing Less. Mark helped develop the world's renowned Search Inside Yourself program within Google, a mindfulness based emotional intelligence training for leaders that spread through Silicone Valley and then globally. He was the founding CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. He is CEO of ZBA Associates, an executive development and leadership consulting company that supports Genentech, Google, Beneficial State bank and other leading companies. And Mark was a resident of the San Francisco zen Center for 10 years and director of Tassahara, Is that correct? Yeah. Zen Mountain center, the first Zen monastery in the Western world. He leads an online Zen group, Mill Valley Zen International. Welcome, Mark.

Thank you, Jeff.

In reviewing your work online and your books, what's so exciting to me today is calming the swirl. And I had an incredible coach that told me that our job as leaders is is to calm the swirl around us and make sense for ourselves and all the people that are on our teams and in our orbit. And yet I've never effectively. I've never been that effective at making that happen. It's a constant pursuit, and as you say, it's practice. There is no destination. Mark, would you care to share a little bit about your background, maybe how you grew up for the audience? Please.

Yeah, I just want to just respond to that a bit. I'm reminded when you said that, Jeff, of a mentor that I had. I feel so privileged. Lucky the teachers and mentors that I've had. This particular one was someone who was trained as a Yurok Indian shaman and who I met when I was in my early 20s, when I was live. I was living at the Zen center. And one of the things that he said was, you know, being a human is easy. You just need to do three things. One, calm your mind. You have to calm the busyness in your mind. He said, that's probably the, you know, that's the starting ground, but it's only. It's only the first thing. Then you have to find what your song is, and then you have to sing it. He said, just these three things. That's all you. That's all you need to do. But, but calming, you know, calming. Calming one's mind. Being able, especially today's world, it seems like it's getting ramped up. How much is pulling, pulling at us in terms of media, social media, the news, just every. Everywhere we look. But anyhow, in response to your question, I grew up in a small town in central New Jersey. You know, I think of myself as having been pretty asleep most of my childhood. I think it was high school wrestling that got me through. Through school. I was a good student, but just nothing, nothing was really grabbing my passion other than being a. Being an athlete and wrestling. And I just loved it. I applied to Rutgers early admission, and I. I distinctly remember telling my mother that I got this acceptance. And she said, congratulations, but how are you planning to pay for it? We don't. We don't have any money. And this was a real lesson, I think, in. In resilience. I went to my high school guidance counselor and asked her for some assistance. Again, another, you know, one of those mentors. I didn't really know her, but I just walked. She pointed to some binders of scholarships. I was thumbing through these scholarships and I was really surprised to see that there was such a thing as a caddy golf caddie scholarship. And it listed one of the golf courses that I had been a Caddie at. And it listed Rutgers. I applied and I got a full caddie scholarship to Rutgers University.

Are you serious?

Anyhow, I did, I did go to Rutgers. And because I had that scholarship, it made it even harder for my parents when I took a one year leave of absence from Rutgers and went out to the west coast on a kind of a spiritual journey. I walked into the San Francisco Zen center one day and immediately knew that this was going to be my home for a while. And I did end up staying and living there for, for 10 years. I still have the letter that I wrote to my parents explaining why this was the education that I needed now that, you know, being a parent now, I, man, this must have been a hard, hard letter for them to, to read. But it, it did certainly change the course of my life. That 10 year, that 10 year period. You and I were just chatting a little bit about the ic. Meditation is, you know, kind of like an extension of my high school wrestling. It was, you know, learning, it was be being an athlete about being in the body and stilling, you know, learning to still the mind and the body as a path to self discovery. But there was also a surprising thing about my time at that 10 years was how important work was and the integration of meditation practice with study, you know, study in this realm of a non. We could talk more about a non dual approach to life. And then finding myself working in a kitchen that was especially in the summertime, a lot like any commercial kitchen where we were producing gourmet vegetarian meals for 70 or 80 people every day, plus the student population there. And yeah, I found myself being assistant to the head cook. And then I got asked to be the head cook and then I got asked to be the director. It was not, it was very different, I think, than my own way that I saw myself. And it definitely stretched me and opened me and I was surprised how much I was learning from and enjoyed leadership. And again, this realm of leadership within the context of Zen practice and you know, people ask me well, what is Zen anyhow? And I'm like, you know, it's just a buzzword for being fully human. It's the practice of being fully human. It's a, you know, it's an old, old tradition, a beautif, beautiful, rich 1500 year tradition. But really it doesn't care so much about Zen or beliefs as much as it's bit of a practice and a process for, for self discovery and for being fully human. I, I ended up going, deciding that I wanted to explore this realm of Practice and leadership. And I ended up going to business school. Right out of, right out of my 10 years, I went right into fin. I went back and had to finish my undergraduate degree.

Okay.

Not only did I go to business school, of course I went to business school on Wall Street, New York University Graduate School of Business, which was literally on, on Wall street at, at the time. Right out of business school, I got a job working for a, a distributor of recycled paper, which led me to start my first company, which was a. A small publishing company called Brushdance, which I ended up running and growing for 15 years. Lots, lots to say about that time. And shortly after leaving that company, I got a call from a Google engineer asking, hey, do you want to come help develop a mindfulness, emotional intelligence and leadership program at Google? That also changed my life in that I discovered how much I loved teaching. I was again, really was not how I saw myself, you know, this sleepy, asleep mostly growing up in New Jersey and there I was teaching meditation, mindfulness, emotional intelligence to room fulls of Google engineers. And I felt like I was honing. It became a craft for me. The craft of teaching as well as doing, coaching, doing one on the one on one work was also something that I liked. And I really loved that combination of working deeply with individuals but also being up and creating safe, vibrant spaces. Yeah, you know, so that's kind of brief, kind of my work trajectory. I met my wife while I lived at the Zen center and I have two grown kids. And despite my youthfulness, I also have a couple of young grandkids. It's hard, it's hard to, hard to believe that, but it seems to be, that all seems to be true.

Mark, when you left Rutgers, what were you searching for? You went all the way across the country. You know, I know your father was a military, he was a veteran. You've already shared that. You know, it's a shock to people. I, you know, there's two different philosophies on whether you share your financials with your kids. Some people say you don't share any of it and other people say, well, they need to know, so you might as well talk with them about it. But obviously it was a shock to you that they weren't paying for college. So you had to, you had to figure it out. What was, what were you searching for? Were you running to something or were you running from something?

No, I think I was on fire. When I got to Rutgers as a freshman, my world opened up in many, many ways. Combination of the people that were around me from all over the country and all over the world. The people widened my world. And I share this, I think in the, in the preface of the book that I had a professor who introduced me to psychedelics. That was, that was one. A note that also opened. Opened my world. I developed a love for reading and learning, which I don't feel like I'd really had in high school. And in particular reading about humanistic psychology and existentialism, literature and, and then discovering Zen. There's something about discovering the writing of Alan Watts and, and, and Zen practice and, and a friend of mine actually is a friend of my friend of my older brother's, handed me a brochure about a place in San Francisco that you could go and study Eastern and Western psychology and mysticism and med. And as, as soon as I saw that brochure, I was like, I'm there, I'm going there. Yeah. And I announced I was going to take a one year, you know, by, by saying I. I had a program. I was going to. It was going to be a one year leave of absence. And I did, I did go to that program. And it was there that on. On a bookshelf was a book called the Tassahara Bread Book. Happens to be the most. I think it's the best selling bread book ever, ever written. There's a book that came out of this. You know, Tassajara is part of the San Francisco Zen Center. The book was, you know, had a spirituality, a sense of humor and practicality about how to bake bread. And, and again, it was like, man, I. I need to find out more about this place.

So, so now you've, you've really opened up your mind. And, and I've had those periods in my life to where I've read something or I've met somebody and I just feel like I've been missing it all along. Like this was right here in front of me and I've been so heads down in my own echo chamber and then you, you somehow pull your head up from it and you, you look over the horizon and you're like, there's a whole nother world to explore here. And, and that happened for you, and then you got into business. How did that. To me, what it sounds like is that you would go somewhere like that to be an instructor, to be a teacher, but you didn't immediately until you went to Google, you went into business. Tell us about that transition and how you made that decision.

Yeah, I think in particular my 10th year of living at the Zen center I was director of this. It was a monastery in the winter, but it turns actually into a small business in the summertime. It's a conference center, overnight guests and workshops. And it dawned on me that my identity was as this, you know, Zen student, but that I was running a business and that I was responsible for a staff. I had a budget. One of the books that came into my hands during that time was one of the best selling business books ever, a book called In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters. And when I read that book, it was like, oh, business people are asking a lot of the same questions that I am, and that there is some room for people like me and maybe even some need for what I might bring to the business world. Yeah. Looking back, you know, it's funny, you look back, it's like, man, I was either very brave or very stupid. I don't know which. You know, these decisions I was making and the things I was doing. I do feel a little bit quite lucky with how things have turned out or continue to turn out. For me that leaving and going to business school was really hard. It was. I really missed being with my friends and the community, but it was a really good learning experience, I think, you know, people ask me, what did I get from business school? It gave me the confidence. It gave me enough confidence to actually write a plan and launch a company, which, you know, which I did a few years, just a few years out of business school. I had this idea that I was going to make products out of recycled paper and just. Just started doing it.

So how did you align your Zen practice and your lifestyle with your business? And how did that impact your leadership style?

You know, it's interesting. I named my company brushdance, which was a story that this Yurok Indian shaman that I mentioned at the very beginning, he used to tell a story, which is essentially the punchline of the story, which we put on the back of every one of my products, every one of my greeting cards or calendars was that the Brush Dance is a Yurok Indian healing ritual and that the Yurok Indians only have one law, which is to be true to yourself. And I felt like that was the guiding principle of how I wanted to be a leader. How I wanted to be in business was manifest integrity in everything. I did as much as I could. And it was. It was hard. And there were many, many tests having to do with, you know, growing a business, hiring and firing, dealing with investors, products that did great where we didn't have enough inventory and products that failed. It was a Great. A great learning experience. Lots of celebrations and lots of pain of things that. Things that went well and things that did not go well in that business.

Business has always challenged me in that maintaining your integrity and creating a reputation that you would want will absolutely cost you money sometimes.

Yes.

And it's a trade off. It's. Well, you know, I might be able to get out of this contract or out of this bill, but it's not what I said and it's not what I intended. And those are hard decisions. And depending on where you sit in the organization, the answers are often different and there's competing priorities. How. How did you work with your team? Did you have Zen sessions with. Did everybody practice? What was it like to work in your organization from that perspective?

Yeah, no, I just, just. I mean, in all of the work that I've done, I've always, not ever really used the language of Zen or any kind of religious pursuit. I felt it was important to, in some sense, to be bringing my full self in, but with. Without the language of. Of any particular practice or. Or religion. So I think it was more the. The language of clarity, the language of integrity, of telling, of telling the truth. It's funny, I think then I probably didn't even use the word. There wasn't the word mindfulness then. There wasn't really compassion so much. It's interesting how only now that language is seeping into the business world. Yeah. I think it was about working with as much vulnerability and integrity as I could, as I could muster. And as. And as you were just saying it was. I launched my company as a dot com during that big 1999, 2000 dot com explosion. Our timing was perfectly terrible. Raised several million dollars, and right as we had raised that money, the dot com collapsed. I still remember that I had 24 employees at the time. The assumption was more money was coming, more growth was coming. In one day, we went from 24 employees to 12 employees. And that was. That was a really hard day. And there was a lot of crying that day. And I spent about a year, I think, of kind of reviving that company from the ashes. I discovered. I discovered we didn't have enough cash in the bank to declare bankruptcy.

How does that, how does that work?

Well, it's funny, it actually. It takes money, you know, it takes money to. I didn't. Who knew, you know, that you, you have to have enough money to hire lawyers.

Fair enough.

And we didn't. I ended up finding a good attorney who said, here's what you do. You get Everyone together in the room, everyone who owes you money, your investors, your, you know, creditors, and you come up with a plan of how you're going to build this company back to where it was and even better, but that what you need is time and. And that you're going to pay everyone everything that you owe them. And we did. And it was quite a beautiful thing to re. You know, to revive. You know, my.my.com investors came back in. You know, we kind of got back into our kind of solid wholesale business that I had. That I had grown. But those were tough. Some tough conversations there, as you can imagine.

Yeah, that takes a lot of courage, Mark. We help entrepreneurs step into the swirl of business for many of them, the first time. And it's very unsettling. As you know, starting a business, there's a lot to do. There's financial pressure, there's getting your first employees. They don't always work out. What advice would you have for somebody that they could do in practice that would reset them mentally as they're going through so much during the day? How does somebody start?

I. I surprised myself a little bit. What jumped into my mind was the steps or process of the hero's journey, because I think when you start a business, you have to be the hero of your journey. And it's a beautiful thing, I think, about starting something right. And. And it's interesting that, you know, this is the. Joseph Campbell.

Yes.

The hero's journey starts with setting out on the journey, like, what's your vision? What is. What is. You know, what is it you're trying to accomplish? And I've always loved that. The next part of the hero's journey is noticing your fear, not. Not suppressing or pushing away your resistance, your fear, the things that can go wrong. I think this is actually important part of starting a business is leaning into that. But the next part of the hero's journey is finding support, is gathering the people that you need in terms of, whether it's mentors, advisors, funders, all the various elements of support. And then the whole next process is then finding your power, finding your real power, learning from the challenges and difficulties. I think that starting a business or leadership or kind of anything having to do with the work world is really a fabulous cauldron for growing yourself. And I think it's useful and important to see that you're simultaneously creating something, growing something, building something. And you're also not forgetting to point the arrow inward and see, like, what am I? What am I learning? How am I growing? How am I developing, I think that's a great dance to be able to work within our businesses and our leadership in that way.

So without the pressure and the demands, you don't have the need to find the meditative peace, without the distractions, you don't have the need to find the clarity and the focus and the calm. So these two things really work well together. One creates the need for the other.

Yeah, I think I once published as a greeting card. Right. Serenity isn't, you know, freedom from the storm, but finding freedom right within the storm. It might surprise people to hear this, but to me, meditation practice is kind of creating a storm. You sit down and you see that your mind is, your mind is a storm. It's a training in finding, finding some way of being able to be in the middle of your mind and find some sense of stillness and freedom there and then being able to take that and integrate that into one's life as a, as a leader and in all our relationships.

You wrote a blog about that said stop giving away your power. What you spoke about was power in your ability to make effective decisions and to influence for the greater good. How do people give away their power? And what do you mean by that?

Yeah, so I think a little bit of definition here that what I mean, you know, the word power often is misunderstood. I, I mean by power, the, the ability to affect or influence positive change, maybe the, the ability to muster one's sense of deep inner confidence in, in yourself. I think people give away their power by not believing in themselves, by avoiding conflict. You know, much of my latest book, Finding Clarity is really about, I think, my own journey and what I've learned and the programs that I've been developing about the importance and power of skillfully leaning in and engaging with difficulty and conflict. Key way that people give away power is saying yes when they mean no. Avoiding challenges, not being, not being willing to say yes to challenges that would be useful and healthy to, to take on. Yeah, I think we give away our power by not leaning into finding mentors, asking for help, asking for help because we need, we need all the help we can get. We do.

So when you work with leaders, where's the low hanging fruit? I think I read somewhere that you said, you know, what's the minimum you can do? And you said, one breath, one breath can make a difference. And it's just this. And I'm really interested in this concept of how do. How would I start?

Yeah, no, that was the, one of the questions I was asked. Right. Most often by Google Engineers, what's the least amount? I can meditate and have it, have it.

They don't have a lot of extra time.

No extra time. But, but I think again, the question I think also came from the scientific mind, you know. Yeah. So my response to that was start, start with something that you can do. One aware breath, one mindful breath. You know, make that a practice or, or three minutes. You know, anyone can find three minutes in the, even in a busy morning to have a little meditation practice. I've been amazed, Jeff, in the power of people practicing listening. Again, it seems like maybe obvious, but I find one of the low hanging fruits is to experiment when you're in conversation with someone to see what it's like to really listen. Let there even be a little silence. Try, tell me more, how did that change you? What do you think? And be willing to just listen and see what happens. Again, I talk about, you know, I think there is tremendous power. It's like the power of our presence, the power of our caring. Not in any fake way, but in like try on being really curious about who are these other people who you are working for or are hiring or are serving, you know, as your customers. Like be making that real connection through the power of listening. You know, can you listen and, and be open or are you listening with a kind of tightness? Can you listen with curiosity or do you find your mind is racing and you already know the answer?

It's a skill. It's so hard because you listen and we all have an attention span. And then three minutes in, you've done great and now you're thinking about the next meeting or something else that's in your inbox or I got to remember to do that. Next thing you know, you've just missed something. It takes real effort and attention to stay present and engaged with people. And if I think about the best mentors that I've ever had, that was a skill that they honed.

Yeah, it's just the way things are that we, right. We listen with focus and concentration. And we also have to sometimes widen our lens. Right. We, we have to be clear and decisive, but we also need to be flexible.

You know, on the surface level, and I talk about this in training, what looks like sometimes insubordination, a lack of effort, failure to comply is often the result of a lack of clarity. And if people don't understand clearly what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it, they will hesitate, which causes missed opportunities. They will make something up that may be wrong or they'll do nothing. People that are going too fast or visionaries that occur in all three states, past, present and future, in the same conversation and confuse everybody around them, which I might have been accused of once or twice, will have a negative impact on clarity in an organization because they're just, they're not taking the time to slow down. I found in my interactions, saying nothing is the first thing that I need to do as opposed to verbalizing the four conversations that are going on in my head and just try to really be present and listen and understand. So I'm particularly interested in learning how to slow down.

Yeah. Yeah. What I'm hearing as I'm listening to what you're saying is the importance of alignment. A lot like we never, we never really know what another person's experience is. We make a lot of assumptions, often about what people are hearing and experiencing. And it takes a lot of effort and work and skill.

Right.

To be aligning again and again.

Mark, I have a question around the seven practices of a mindful leader. I have my book here and the seven practices, if you don't mind me just reading through them, please. Love the work. Do the work. Don't be an expert, which I found particularly interesting. Connect to your pain. Connect to the pain of others. Depend on others. Keep making it simpler. I'm particularly interested in what it means to don't be an expert because I found that to be your description of it. Very interesting. In as much as we're expected to be experts in everything that we do and people are judging you by that, but you have a different take on that.

You know, again, I, I think I say in there that I, I want my car mechanic and my surgeon and my.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Like, so it's not, it's not at all undervaluing mastery and expertise in craft. It is more saying that in the realm of human relationships, no one is an expert in human. In our relationships and what it's like to work together, you know, and this, these practices were. They came from the qualities that I wanted to teach to, to people who were teaching emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and, and, and leadership. I would say no one is an expert in emotional intelligence or even leadership for that matter. We might develop a certain mastery in one setting or one context, but man, you put someone in a different context and you better have an open mind. So it's really about having an open mind, being willing to learn, being willing to be flexible with whatever the circumstances are. Kind of radical vulnerability. That quality of, of not being an expert. Right.

Something that I've found helpful, I learned from an organization called ypo. We are trained never to offer advice, but only to share experiences. Because if I'm offering you advice, I'm telling you what I would do or I think you should do, and I'm now an expert in your life, whereas I might have had a similar experience. And it's more helpful for me to just share what happened to me and how I address the situation, and then you can take that.

I actually, many years ago, was got trained as a YPO facilitator.

You would be wonderful. I'm sure you were.

That statement about, you know, advice giving implies a certain expertise which can often get in the way of real learning and connection and create creativity. So it's interesting.

And then this concept of connecting to your pain and connecting to the pain of others, what does that look like in practice?

You know, I think we. There's been a lot of research and writing about the importance of empathy as a leader. You know, it turns out that feeling the feelings of others is a essential quality of a, of a leader in building connection and building, building trust and getting people to, to work passionately together. So this is, I think, just taking it a bit deeper. Right. Because in a way, the, the feelings that I think probably are most critical to be connecting with are people's loneliness, their pains, their doubts, the struggle, their struggles. So just kind of making that more, more explicit. It's a way into not avoiding conflict, because so much of avoiding conflict is often avoiding what we think is painful in ourselves. Right. It feels risky kind of practicing with learning to be able to sit right in the midst of what is uncomfortable and to be able to not suppress it or run away from it.

With our franchisees, we have to get what we call in the pocket with them, meaning we have to be close enough they will trust us to share what the issue they are having might be. Because if we notice that, say, numbers are off for some reason, if there's low trust, they might say, well, you know, the market's changing, everybody's slow. This is, you know, some sort of surface level response. But if we're close enough and our empathy is forward and our intent is good and clear, they will ultimately get, hey, I'm going through a divorce or something, there's an illness or something's going on. They don't want to share that right off the bat. But unless we really are sharing their pain and understanding what their reality is, it's hard for us to help them accurately. And it takes time and also some people are less sympathetic than others and I think empathy is unfakable.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. You know, and there's the, the pains and challenges that as humans we bring in from other parts of our lives. But there's also the pain of not feeling like you're a successful salesperson or accountant or whatever it is. The, the gaps between where you want to be and where you actually are and, and being able to face those, those difficulties and challenges.

Mark, I can imagine that changing workplace with remote work, the continued digital impact of social media on our attention, the ability to communicate through collaboration tools which cuts down on face to face time, all of these things must have a tremendous impact on the ability to connect and the necessary human relationships in the workplace. Is this a trend that makes your work more difficult or what comments do you have on, on that?

Even before COVID when I was, I was CEO of Company, I was always experimenting with finding the right blend of people working together and flexible. To me that there's something really valuable about finding, finding that. I, I think what you're saying and what I'm noticing, I, I do work now with companies and it's become more and more common where people rarely to never actually meet. The jury's out on how that's gonna work out. My own experience is that once I meet in person, it makes virtual much easier. But I have to say I work with clients who I never meet in person and I'm surprised how well it works.

It does. We have to be open minded about it. But yeah, I mean, we are tribal. But I mean if zoom is the norm, then, you know, that's the norm. And these collaboration tools, I mean you can communicate almost over communicate. People expect the response within seconds sometime when they're in a group, which I think can be overwhelming a little bit in and of itself.

Yeah, I'm of the mindset that if you're going to work virtually, look for ways to connect as much as possible virtually, which I would say is what I would advise in person. It's all about connection. There are even some instances when I've seen even some advantages to, you know, like in fact, I was actually teaching a class that was mostly in person when Covid came and it happened to be in a classroom that was kind of long and narrow. It was kind of imperfect. I could really only see and be about the first row or two of people. And then there were, I don't know, eight or 10 other rows of people behind them. And I noticed when it went virtually Suddenly I could see everyone's face and it's like, oh, that's interesting. There's, there's a way I feel more connected here in Zoom. Now what I gave up was all of the amazing things that happened during the breaks where you get to hang out with people and you there, there are definitely trade offs, but there were some advantages. And, and, and I find now in, in the workshops that I do online. Getting people into breakouts online is quite intimate and sometimes even more intimate than in person where you might be in a room where there's a lot of distractions and people. But man, you're just, you're just there face to face with another human being on Zoom. So I like to look for how to best find the gold in this particular medium.

Mark, if somebody were looking at a life changing, career changing decision, as so many people we work with are, what are some of the questions that would be very helpful that they should ask themselves if they're maybe fearful? How do people, how can people help themselves really sort this out and come to peace with the. A new, a new reality?

Yeah. Yeah. To me the big questions in, in those times of change are what's in my heart? Like come back. Like what's, what's in my. I mean, it's like the obvious question, but you know, what's in my heart? What do I really want? What support system do I have and what support system do I do I do, Do I have the right support system? What do I need and you know, and what do I love doing? How we spend our time and where we put our attention are so irreplaceable resources and to, to value those so to be really careful about where I'm putting my time, where I'm putting my energy and my own, my own inner resources.

Awesome. So if you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would that be? Do you have a go to?

Yeah, my go to. My go to is a quote by Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer who says, be joyful. Though you've considered all the facts. So it's, don't avoid anything. Meet life people, conditions, work, meet it all head on. Find a way to be joyful and appreciative right in the midst of the craziness and beauty of this world that we live in.

I think that's very sage and perfect. Mark, how could people reach out to you or how can they enjoy and consume some of your wisdom?

Yeah, please reach out. Buy my book Finding Clarity and My website is marklesser.net M A R C L-S-S-E-R.net Lots of writing, guided meditations, and yeah, come, come play.

Fantastic. Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on with us today. Thank you so much.

Yeah, my pleasure, Jeff. Thank you.

You're very welcome. And as always, the this podcast has been brought to you by a very calm, serene Homefront Brands simply building the world's most responsible franchise platform, all the while delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners out there on the home front where it counts. So if this sounds like you, check us out today, I will be looking for you here. Thanks again, Mark. We'll talk to you soon.

Thank you.