Empowerment and Peace: A Conversation with Diana Cutaia

This is episode 285 of the Empowered Team podcast.

Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport, and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome. Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast. I'm so fortunate to be here today with Diana Kutaiya. And Diana has a wonderful background. She has a company called Coaching Peace, and she has this background in sports. She works with businesses. It's all about empowering people to be able to be the best that they can be and foster the environments for them to thrive and be able to do that. And that, as most of my listeners can tell, is something that I am so aligned with, so in love with. So, Diana, tell us a little bit more about, you know, you've been a coach in sport, you've been an athlete in sport, you've worked with companies, you're in business for the last 12 years. Tell our audience a little bit about how you've gotten to where you are now and doing what you're doing now with your company coaching piece.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. So, you know, I was. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life when I was 12 years old. So I got into sport, you know, pretty early, had great early experiences in sport. Loved. I was a basketball player, but I played a bunch of different sports, and I knew at 12 that I wanted to coach. That was something that I was like, I definitely want to be a coach when I grow up. I didn't even know what that looked like because in, you know, 1982, when you were a female, it wasn't like there were so many opportunities that were available for you at all. So I knew that it was.

Did you even see any female coaches? Because I think of when I was 12, and there were. I mean, one of the sports I was in, figure skating, there was a female coach, but every other sport I was in, it was always male coaches. Do you even have any female coaches at that time?

Yeah. So at 12, no. Like, none of my coaches were, you know, female. And I, by the time I got to high school, you know, I had some really great coaches. And in fact, my. My high school volleyball coach, I'm still friends with my high school softball coach, I'm still friends with my high school basketball coach. I'm really close with lives, very close to me now. So I'm 50. So it's. It's 30 years of friendship. I know 50 is. I mean, where does that happen? I still feel 25.

How did that happen? Right.

I know.

And I look around at other 50 year olds, I'm like, but you're 50. But I, I'm like, no, I feel like I'm 30. Or I feel like I. Yeah. And they're acting 50 and I'm not acting 50. I'm sorry.

No, I, Well, I will never act. That is, that is one thing I will never do, probably is act my age. But. Yeah, so I just felt like I didn't. I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't even know how to achieve that or what to do or how to get to that. And when I was 21 years old, I had another coach who was like a mentor. She was like a surrogate mother to me pass away. And she was coaching a lacrosse team. I didn't play lacrosse. I didn't know anything about lacrosse. But I was helping her as she was battling her illness during that time. So I was kind of part of the team, but not in a coaching context at all. And when she passed away, it was very early in the season and the athletic director actually asked me to take over the team. And it was kind of like the moment for me when I was like, oh, I want to do this thing. And I don't really know how to do it. And I did it so differently because I didn't know the sport, you know, so I had to rely on the team. It was like this very communal, community based idea of coaching. And I loved it. We went undefeated, we won a county championship. Like we had tremendous success and it was not a result of me at all. And I learned very early on that like a coach is a facilitator. A coach is somebody who comes in and sets a course and helps kind of create the scaffolding for us to reach success. But that if I took too much ownership, I would not empower my athletes to actually like, be their best and to, to be resilient and to overcome and to problem solve and all of that. And if I gave them too much, then they felt lost and they, they wanted direction and some support. And there was this, you know, kind of 20 year period in coaching where I just was always looking for that balance. How do I create that environment?

It's.

And I, I was just going to.

Say it's just, it's so fantastic and interesting how you're in an environment, you don't have a background in that sport. And yet, you know, I think it's, it's probably a Bit of a reach to say it wasn't the result of you, but rather you're not burdened with the biases of what the tradition of that container would typically have. You are in a place where you're just willing to support that team the best they possibly could, be the leader the best you knew how, help grow their leadership the best you knew how for them. And then the results started to come without this container of these are the things we ordinarily do. This is why we ordinarily do it. The system that may have killed the spark, if you will, for yourself or other people.

Yeah, I think you really hit on it. Right. There are a couple of things. Number one, I wasn't married to the status quo. I wasn't married to the way things were done or things because I didn't know how they were done. I had no, like, knowledge at all of the system at all. So everything that I was going to do was going to be different. The other thing was I had no ego because I had no experience. I wasn't coming in here with any knowledge that I had to professor know or anything like that because I had no knowledge really. So I had to come in with vulnerability. I had to come in with really like, this idea of accepting and being willing to listen to others. And there was some real, like, strength and value in that. And I don't overly romanticize it in some ways, right. Like, they probably would have thrived by having a coach who had some experience. And our success shouldn't just be the only measure. Like our wins and losses shouldn't be the only measure of whether or not we were successful.

Yeah. Yeah.

But for me, it was this moment when I, I tried, when I got into my own sport, right. Basketball. And I started coaching right away into basketball and got my first head coaching job at a, at a junior college when I was 23. And I thought, this is a sport I know a lot about. So then I, I shift and I go to this very traditional model of coaching that I've seen all these other people do. Then I'm like, it's this journey back to that first experience of like, oh. So when I ended my, you know, like, official coaching career, I was more along the lines of that early place where I was like, this is not about me. This is about me supporting them, achieving that. And it's a marathon, not a sprint. So instead of taking every victory and, and making those highs really high and every kind of setback or failure as like this, this and personalizing it in some Ways or whatever. It was this very even, like, we're going to enjoy the moments we need to enjoy, and we're going to learn from those moments, too. We're also going to enjoy the moments that are, like, at times, struggling and challenging. I think our fear of an avoidance of failure, in particular in sport, is such a detriment to us. Yeah, it really is.

So it's interesting. It's counterintuitive. It's so interesting hearing you describe that, because it seems like there's this, which happens in most businesses or sports. There's very much outcome attachment versus a process attachment. The focus on the process, the focus on the. On the connections, the focus on what needs to happen next, the focus on the immediacy of the now, the presence. And yet it's so tempting to be focused on the outcome because that's what everyone's going for, that's what everyone's trying to get. And yet it's the actual focus on the path, focus on the.

The.

The practice of it that gets to the outcome. And it's so. It's. It kind of mixes up most people's heads because it's like, oh, but we're focused on this. We have to see this, see this, see this. But in reality, it's focusing on the process that actually gets to the outcome. And it can be challenging for coaches, for systems, for leaders, for athletes, for participants, for developing leaders to be able to get into the immersion of, oh, I can be focused on the process. And that's one of the best ways to not only live my life in a fulfilled way, but also get the outcome that we're going for, right?

And also, like, you've. You've really, like, articulated it so well. It's also the idea of enjoy the process, right? Like, we. We're so super focused on the outcome that even when we get to the outcome, it's this bleeding moment. Even if it's what we want, right? We just won a championship, we have this, like, joy, and then it's the grind again to get back there, and then it's like, we're just good and there's no joy in. So if you're not actually in the process and the moment of things, then what's the point? It doesn't make any sense. And it's this always this anxiety of chasing something as opposed to this. This gentleman I was speaking with one time, he had this tattoo on the back of his leg, and all it said is, run the mile you're in. And I loved that. Like, that has been, like, something that I'm like, constantly go back to, and I'm like, yeah, run the mile you're in. Like, be in the moment. Be present in this experience. Like, we're trying to overcome. We've got a challenge. How do we figure that out? What does it look like? You know, we have always at coaching peace. Our idea is, like, we've done it one way. Can we do it another way? Can it be different? And can that difference always center the human being and our own experience? Like, how do we do that? And that's what's so super important to us.

I. I love that as a mission, just that.

That.

How can we be more centered? I'm gonna. I'm gonna use the word as well. How can we be more aligned with either what our values are, what we believe in, and aligning our lives or our actions to that? What for you made that become so important in your life? What brought that to become basically a mission and a business for you?

I. I think there's a. A couple of things that I'm gonna. I'm gonna kind of verbally process this, because it's not a question I've thought about in that way, and I kind of like it. I think part of it is a middle child. So, like, part of it is always this idea that I'm always trying to bridge the. This gap of, like, is everybody okay? Is everybody all right? How do we create an environment where everybody's okay? So there's that, right? And that's. That's somewhat of my own trauma response in the experiences that I've had in my life and all of that. I've also. I get tired with the idea that this is the way it is, and this is what we kind of have to accept, and this is the system we live in, and this is the environment we have. And I. If you want a different result, do something different. And we are so unwilling, especially in sport. And you probably see this, you know, all the time. We protect this institution of sport, you know, so much, and we are so unwilling to change it because we've romanticized what it is. It's so embedded in our identity, right? And in particular, in U.S. culture, right? Like, it's so tied to who we are. This idea of, like, the ways in which we play sport are the ways in which we engage in the world, right? It's so. It's so kind of embedded and tied into that. So for me, like, the idea when we started coaching Peace, it was simply. I watched the amount of Violence that was in the world. And I saw how desensitized we became to that violence. And that violence being direct violence, like actual war. I, I looked at it also as structural violence, right? The ways in which poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, cultural violence, like all the different ways in which we had violence. And when I started coaching peace, I thought, oh, we have that, that violence exists. And one of the ways we perpetuate that is through the way we coach sport and what sport looks like, right? And I thought, oh, if we could coach differently, then we could create environments of peace. And I thought when I began that peace was the absence of violence. Like, that was just a, like peace being the absence of violence. So if there's no violence, then there's peace. What I found was that actually it is not just the absence of violence, but it is also the President's, excuse me, presence of safety. It's the presence of unconditional love and care, it's the presence of empathy, it's the presence of vulnerability. All of those things also have to be there. And whether you're on a sport team or you're, you know, making clothes or, you know, a product, it doesn't matter when you bring a group of people together, how you manage that, how you coach that, how you mentor those folks, that all contributes to the system. Sport has just always been the thing for me that I am drawn back to. Even though we go into these other areas and we're in the corporate environments and we're in non profits and we're doing all this other work in education. Sport is the thing that I still come back to. And I say, but if we could just change here, I think we can make a big difference. We're, we're always trying to, to change that in any way that we possibly can.

I love hearing about how this has developed for you because it's, it's, it exemplifies who you are into business and into your impact on the world, which, which basically is living your purpose into the world. And most people, I'm, I'm going to suggest that most people don't, don't take or nurture that privilege. Or maybe they're even taught that they're never going to get that privilege to be able to live into their own purpose, to impact the world, whatever that looks like, whatever they choose. Instead, they may settle for whatever the example that they had, or settle for what they are supposed to do based on what they've learned along the way. But where you're pointing to, you know, you, you've got the groups of people, which could be groups in schools, it could be businesses, it could be nonprofits, whatever it is. And stemming from sport, well, sport ends up being so formative and so, so guiding for such malleable humans because they're in an environment that they're trying to, they're trying to grow in, they're trying to perform. And just the act of trying to grow means they're super vulnerable. So you're in this environment where you're trying to grow, you're vulnerable. And then what you're being told how to be or what to do in order to fulfill on that. And so you're in the pressure environment that, okay, I have to behave this way and do this thing in order to grow. So we're literally impacting young people, young humans, young lives for their entire future, not just for the duration that they're in that space, sport, but for their future of business, of family, of relationships, of whatever. We're forming them because they're adopting what is supposed to be. And, and so many people in sport are going to say to you, and, and I've said this too, you know, just how much I gained from sport, how much sport taught me, how much grit or perseverance or resilience or whatever it gave me, which is all true. However, at what cost? In certain environments and, and when you actually shake the system a little bit or examine the system a little bit and go, could this be done in a way that nurtures what humans actually need and want more so that we've got even more, you know, ability or, or stability in our humanness? Like, what, what could happen in this system in order to systematize vulnerability, to systematize empathy, to systematize support, to systematize connection, along with whatever else we're trying to teach in that group of humans.

Called business or sport or whatever, that is absolutely it. Right? That is the, that is the thing. I, we romanticize sports so much. So, like, to your point, I learned a lot in sport. I also learned a lot of not great things in sport. I learned how to ignore my body at times to try to, like, overcome things, to just persevere, to push through, to walk it off, to shake it off. Right. I learned how to kind of ignore and suppress things at times because you just have to persevere as opposed to actually feeling it, processing it, going through it, you know, like, and we don't value any of that. And then we, we wonder why we're so pent up, why we have like all of this inability at times to process our own emotions and feelings and things like that. So like, yes, I learned a lot of things around perseverance and grit and all of that in sport. And also that wasn't great all the time and didn't give me the skills that I needed to do at all. And how do I then do that differently? How do we actually allow for that in sport? How do we kind of change things about sport that create an environment where I can feel like I can be my true kind of authentic self and not that, like, you know, I miss a shot and I need to sit down and cry and like, take me out. You know, like, there are some things that we have to kind of like push through in the moment, but then not being able to like feel that emotion at times is also detrimental. Yeah.

To be able to decompress later or be able to process it.

Right. Like I, I had an athlete that when I was an athletic director that I had to medically decertify and in, in a game because. For competition for a while because he kept wanting to kind of like put, you know, it's like get a cortisone shot or do something to kind of mask the pain. And I was like, it's not, that's not worth it. Like, I can't in all good conscience allow you to continue to hurt your body in the pursuit of a game. Like, I, I can't. Right. Like we were a small school. Like it wasn't. Nobody was, was losing millions of dollars by not being able to play in that one game. You know, and there was that idea where you have to say, like, hey, this is not worth. You are worth more than this right now. And we, we have to care for athletes in that way.

Yeah. And, and the, My, my background coming from national level sport in multiple different sports. Sports, whether it was hockey or volleyball or rugby or rhythmic gymnasts. There was a lot of types of athletes that I worked with. And at the national level, it's that if you are not at said caliber, you end up being cut. So there's a lot of heartbreak, there's a lot of loss. And there's this. To your point, there's this scenario where people are treating themselves like, well, I wasn't good enough, therefore I'm not good enough. I wasn't good enough for this, therefore I'm not good.

Oh yeah.

I don't. If, if I didn't perform and the heartbreak and the lack of worth that they then experience is impactful for not only the Moment, but sometimes for their lives. And in those scenarios I can, I can say personally for myself, I worked with multiple national teams, but very much like many of the athletes I worked with, there was very much the self efficacy via achievement, the self worth via achievement. So if the outcome is reached, then I'm going to feel good about myself. If this is done, then I feel good about myself. You know, if I can do this many cleans or chin ups or whatever it is, then I'm going to feel good about that day or that training session or whatever, whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah.

And then in the long run, you know, we mentioned being 50 years old. Then in the long run when an autoimmune illness comes up and you wonder why and you start to connect the dots and trace things and then realize that, wait a second, I've had chronic pain for how long but ignored it because I trained myself to ignore. What were all the little things? Oh, it's just old injuries. Oh, it's just this, oh, wait a second. No, I limp when I stand up from sitting down for however long, you know it. But this, I am a product of that type of environment for so long or a product of the outcome of either parents or sport or environments that didn't take those things into account. Would I do it for someone else? Absolutely. But for myself hold the same worth for myself? Not necessarily, but. And this is quite literally in high performance environments, the norm, it's simply the norm to go well, perform at all costs and keep performing at all costs. And oh wait, in a business environment, we're going to pull an all nighter and we're going to pull another all nighter because that's just what has to be done.

Right? Right. Why I'm curious in that, where's the entry point for that deconditioning? Where have you found? Is the entry point where we can actually get people to shift? Is it a moment when they themselves have that realization or is there like a way that we get folks to actually be like, oh, wait a second, I, now I understand what you're saying.

I think there's two things. Personally, I think that number one, for a lot of people it's a low point, you know, it's a point of, of such a low point that is a rift in their own identity that says, oh my gosh, I, I, I, how can I be at this? This isn't who I am. How could this have happened to me? How could I have gotten this sick? How could I have gotten this detached from my family? How Could I have. There's some sort of low point. There's. That. The, the other part, though, I think is, is group influence. Because if there's a strong culture, and I, I believe this in, in working with companies or working with teams or working with entities. So the, the groups that you're describing is that the. Because we're social creatures, if the culture that we're in is one that's a higher level than we are currently operating at, then we rise to that level. And if the culture that we're in is lower than something that we currently operate at it, and we're. And this is an influential group to us for whatever we want, then we lower ourselves to that level. So unless we're in a group that actually supports our own growth or our own nourishment or fulfillment, then we're going to be influenced by that group. And I mean, you know, the, the studies show that. But, but when it comes to our influence of five people, for instance, but it's also so prevalent in cultures, just cultures in general. So if a company or a team is creating a culture that is. Let's put it this way, most often the company or the team has not created a culture. And so what develops is an intentional culture.

Right, Right.

And so, so it can be literally a collaboration of the dysfunction of a bunch of individual humans that can become the culture, or it could become something that is magical. And you've suddenly got this team chemistry, this group chemistry that's so intangible. It's like, how did that happen? But at the same time, it is a culture. And then wherever anybody is, whether their mood is low, whether they are not capable of a certain thing, they will rise to whatever that culture is or drop to whatever that culture is, because it will influence them.

And that, yeah, that's. That makes so much sense in the, you know, we, we talk about cultures all the time, and that if we're not intentional about them, it's not like they don't exist. They will always. There will always be a culture that will emerge within an organization. When you have a group of people together, whether or not you want to be intentional about what that is or not is up to you. And what's so interesting is that you kind of reminded me about is the idea that so many times we get coaches in particular, but even managers and managers will call us up and say, you know, my team, you know, there's. There's a lot of dysfunction on our team. We've got a couple of people that we really need to like weed out. And this is what I think. I don't think they're working hard enough around this or I don't think they're doing this. And coaches will do the same things, right? Like I'm sure you've seen it even on a national level, I hope less than on the other, on a amateur level, but where they'll walk into a locker room and say like, you're not trying hard enough, you're not pushing yourself hard enough, you're not doing this. The, the lack of responsibility and self reflection that people who have kind of like responsibility over groups has is mindboggling to me, right? So when I go into an organization and somebody, a manager or supervisor says this is what's going on with my team, they're, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. And I'll be like, how are you contributing to this? Well, I'm trying to do my best. I'm doing whatever I can, you know, in this. And they're not doing that. They're not doing this, this externalization and the same thing. Like have we ever had a coach that's walked into a, you know, locker room at halftime and said, okay, I didn't call a timeout at the right time on that. And I know I kind of messed up the flow there, you know, the scouting report, I wasn't on, on that scouting report. So I'm noticing now that we need to make some tweaks and changes, right? I'm going to take some responsibility. What did you all notice out there? What are some of the things that you all noticed that might, we might need to change, but instead we take on this like I'm in charge, I am flawless in every way and I'm going to tell you all the ways in which and I'm going to motivate you in a way by telling you all the things that you should be doing and that you're failing at in this. And folks don't want to be led like that, but it also disempowers them to even begin to think about taking responsibility. And if we don't take responsibility for the things that we're doing, we really won't change. We're not going to like move in a good direction in that way because we're always going to avoid being responsible for something because that it's protective for us.

Looks, looks bad. It looks bad if we, if we're not doing all right things right. And well, it's. I love, I love what you're pointing to. There, because we're. You're talking about. There's. There's this overconfidence bias and an overconfidence bias. It's. It's literally called the Dunning Kruger effect, and the nickname for it is being stranded on Mount Stupid. Because an overconfidence. So an overconfidence bias is exactly that. Where the person can't see so many things because they think they're so knowledgeable or they think they're so right. But the, the more important thing that you're describing is that it then disconnects it. Then by not being part of the solution or part of the problem, then they're. That leader is then disconnecting themselves from their own group, which is exactly what they don't want to do. But that's what they're unintentionally doing by trying to be really. Right. Trying to be, you know, unfallible, if you will.

Right, right, absolutely. And that when we, when we're unfallible, we never look at ourselves. So we're never really going to improve and be the best that we possibly can be because we're never going to say, oh, wow, I should change that. I should. Oh, I see what I'm doing there. Oh, I should do that differently. How might I do that? I'm going to go explore, I'm going to go learn, I'm going to go educate myself about new things. We don't. We don't ever do that. Then. We don't ever actually create that in our athletes. And then our athletes grow up into our earlier point around this idea of, like, how we perpetuate some of these things that are not valuable. Are we ever really able to work with ourselves and, and look at the good that we do and be really proud of that, and also look at the things where we need improvement and say, ooh, I could have done that better and be able to admit that and say that out loud. Right. Which is a thing I think a lot of athletes struggle with at times. Like, oh, we either beat ourselves up.

Yes. It's having the grace to be able to say those things that we messed up on without making ourselves totally wrong about doing it. So on that note, you know, if you think of leaders and you think of coaches, what would be. And. And some of the. The needs that are there. There are needs in these leadership roles, whether they're coaches or company leaders, whether it's inclusion, diversity, whether it's understanding their employees, whether it's more vulnerability or courage. What do you think that leaders or coaches should be educated or educate themselves on if there were maybe top three things or what is the need? What are you seeing as the need for these leaders and coaches? What do they need the most to be educated on or finding and learning for themselves?

I think there's a couple of things, the first of which is we've had one way, kind of one model of leadership, right? In a. Especially in the United States, like this very patriarchal view of leadership. And we've had that one model of leadership since the dawn of time. And we always kind of use that a little bit as the bellwether of, like, you know, or not, or not the bellwether, but the baseline. Right. Of what we should be. That's what good leadership is. And there are so many other ways to lead. There's so many other things that we can think about. There are so many other cultures, communities, environments where folks are leading in different ways and explore those, Explore the most marginalized, the ways of leading that we have pushed so far to the side in so many ways. Like, explore that. Think about that. I've learned so much from exploring other ways of leading and being open to that as opposed to, you know, this bias that we have that this is the way it's supposed to be, right? That. That stuck in that status quo, like, that's nice, but this, right? Like, it's the same thing when people talk about the. When we do work around equity within organizations and people say, well, you know, this is really important, but in order to sell this to the. To the higher ups, can you give me the business case for equity?

Yeah, the stats, the how it's gonna affect the bottom line, how it's going to generate.

And I'm like, no, I. Even if there was a bit. I, no, I'm not gonna do that because that denies someone's humanity. And what is, like, you're valuable because you can do this, right? So we'll let you in our company because you're valuable in our ultimate bottom line. And you're like, no, I'm not going to. I'm not going to partake in that at all. I actually want people to look at how do you lead through the lens of people? Because to your earlier point, if you focus on a process, if you focus on people, if you focus on, like, dignity, humanity, like who we are, you'll reach those outcomes that you want to reach, right? You may not reach them the way you want to reach them, but you'll get there, right? And that's okay, right? Like that more Importantly, you'll, when you do get there, you'll know you did it. Leading through the lens of people and what their experience is, you know, and how they do that. It's like when we manage through tasks as opposed to people like, hey, we have this, I need you to get this, this and this done. As opposed to saying someone, hey, this needs to get done. Can we work together to figure out how that might do that? What are the ways in which I can support you in getting this done? What do you need to get this done? Right. There's a very different way of approaching something when we approach it through the lens of a person as opposed to the lens of a, of a product or an outcome.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's deleting the, the people. I love that, you know, focusing on the process, focusing on the people, focusing on the, the dignity and the humanity in, in this era that we are on, that we are in. I would, I would say at this point called more of an AI era. How do you see this type of leadership that's more open minded or more connected? How do you see that type of leadership in an era of AI? Do you see AI influencing things in that manner? What are your thoughts?

I, I watched a, you know, a regular TV show the other day and it was like had some AI thing at the end of it. I had like nightmares the entire night after it. So I don't know. I, I think we, we also have like a, we are ignoring a whole subset of the, the, the country that has no like or the workforce that really is not necessarily impacted by any of that. So like when we think about kind of like high level, high paying jobs, highly technical jobs, there are some real issues that we have to focus on around how we integrate AI into and create humanity. How do we do that? I am not an expert in figuring out how to do that, but I think that's a question we need to begin to recognize and understand and begin to have those conversations. For sure. I think there's a whole group of, of our workforce that are in kind of low wage, service oriented, many times positions that we're not focusing on at all that are actually really, we should really center and create some like a focus on. And part of that is, is that those folks, because sometimes AI takes those jobs away, right? In some ways. But we don't even really look at folks who are working in the service industries and low paying jobs as human beings. And when we start to like, we're focused on AI dehumanizing us we're actually already dehumanizing people.

Yeah.

So it doesn't matter what's happening over there, because here we are already dehumanizing people and going through them like they don't matter and no longer valuing folks because of the type of job they do or the amount of money we pay them in that job, not recognizing that those folks are human beings who require and deserve the same dignity, respect, and value that we give anybody else in the world. And we don't do that, so. Well, to some extent, we've already. Whatever we're worried about with AI we've already done that.

You know, I, I find it so refreshing that, that you've termed it that way because. Because of so much of the concern around AI and humans and, and dignity and things like that.

When I.

When I look at that big ball of wax, I. I think the same thing. Well, we're teaching AI. We're. We're teaching AI and what are we teaching AI? I think of. I'm a parent, and my oldest is 23. And so what I realize now, having an older child, is that there's a whole bunch of things I taught that human unintentionally.

Right.

So I taught a whole bunch of things intentionally. I parented in intentional ways. But there's whole bunch of things I taught unintentionally. And the parenting doesn't stop. I. I end up going, okay, well, these things happen. And this is what. And this is what I've learned, and this is how these things changed. And now I'm intentionally pointing that out and taking the, the blinders off so we can both learn from it. Because this person's my daughter. My oldest daughter is an adult. Four of the kids are adults now. And if you look at that in terms of AI, it's like, well, it's learning. It's learning fast. It's learning faster than we've ever known how to learn. And what is it learning? What are we teaching it? Are we teaching it how we. How we dehumanize, how we tend to separate people? How we tend to not nurture or provide safety or the support that every human being in the world needs? And we know it. We know what we need. And we're not. And we're not still providing. So what is that teaching? So it's, it's an interesting thing that, that we've got this potential to, to heal, to heal humans. And yet humans heal and learn so much slower than AI does. So is there the. Is there the potential for AI to Support. Support our healing, to support our learning. If we taught it in a way that was full of dignity, full of love, full of respect, full of all of those things. So I'm doing deep dives on this right now. So I'm so curious of. I love just how you've pointed that out of. We've already dehumanized. How is this going to be much different? Because we've been doing that. And so I. I look at it in terms of, well, what would need to happen in order for us to support more healing, to support more peace, as you say. And, And I love your spectrum. I. You didn't say spectrum, but what you said was, it's not. It's not. Peace is not the absence of violence. Peace is also the presence of other aspects that have that feeling of safety, inclusion, or. Or whatever else is there.

Right.

So profound. So I want to be sensitive to your time and, and pull things together. If, if you were to give your past self some advice, let's say, at a time where you think you really needed it. So maybe it was at a time when you were younger, maybe it was a time where you struggle with something, what piece of advice would you. With the now self, what would you give your. Your past self?

I'm going to say, like, two words. Two words that come to mind, I think, is pause and wait. And I think that the. The reason those two are so important is because I used to feel especially like, you know, coming up in. In the kind of athletic environment in the sport world, like, I had to be the best at it. I had to always prove myself. I had to always take the opportunity when it was there. And I felt like I was always running and I was always chasing something or feeling like I was being chased. And as I've gotten older, one of the wonderful gifts of age is to be able to take a moment to kind of just say, hold on a second. Wait this out for a minute. Like, don't respond to that email right away because somebody said something that's like, you know, whoa, wait a second. You know, I'm gonna give it. Give it a moment, pause for a second. Take a breath before you respond. Take an opportunity to, like, let me collect some more data about this. And I always feel like if I could have done that a little bit more when I was younger, then I would have taken more time to kind of learn and take a breath and not feel like I was always, you know, like just this ball of stress. Who was. I got to do the next thing, and I Got to get to the next thing and I got to succeed in the hustle and that's important. And look at me, I'm at work at 6 o' clock in the morning and I don't leave till midnight. And like, I'm amazing. And you're like, no, actually you have no balance in your life and you're going to pay for that later on. And I wish I could have seen that. And I think part of that goes back to, I wish I would have valued myself then as much as I value myself now. And I wish I would have cared for myself in the same way that I care for myself now. I mean, now I have an entire team of people that have to care for me. You know, like between my doctor and massage therapist and a train, like, you know, I, I'm lucky that I could afford many of those things, but like, I put so much effort, resources in the care of myself, you know, than I ever did before.

On that note, what is, what is one of the most important things right now that you're doing, now that you're feeling Future self is definitely thanking you for resting. Love it.

Resting. I, I, I think like, I, there are moments I travel a lot. I, I think I was on the road almost every single week for most of last year. And when I get home, I always plan the, the day after my travel, if I'm able to, where I don't work at all. And a tremendous amount of privilege in order to do that. And I know that that might not always be the case. I might not always have that ability to do that. So when I don't have meetings or I don't have something pressing, I do not work, I rest, I, you know, go take a walk or bike or just sit and play with my dog. But I take the opportunity to actually rest. And that is, I know that that is going to be an absolute like, gift as I get older. Just that like, oh, I took a breath, gave my little heart a chance to like, catch up.

Oh, I, I love that you've said that because having a background as an athlete, having a background in sports, sport, the, the one thing that I think most athletes learn when they're at a high performance level is that the travel isn't actually recovery. Even though they're not on the court or not on the field or not practicing or not training, the travel, it does not physiologically recover our bodies the way that, and I, I'm so glad that you've described that as an example of your rest because so many business People think that the travel day can be their day off of work or be there. And they don't understand that the travel itself, the sitting, the flying, the, the environments that they're in are not restful for our physiology. And so the fact that you've given yourself this incredible gift of resting after traveling or resting on, on, on that day for yourself is. It's not, it's not selfish. It's not. It is high performance. It is self love. It is the nourishment and human dignity that we all are craving. And giving it to yourself is the greatest gift. So I'm so grateful that you've said that. Example. Well, I'd love to wrap up here here. I am so grateful for your time. If people want to reach you and work with you, where's the best place for them to reach out?

Honestly, just the our website coachingpeace.com obviously connect at LinkedIn and folks are always welcome to email me@diana coachingpeace.com Excellent.

And LinkedIn. I love it. Okay. Well, we are. I'm so glad we got to have this conversation. It felt so good and likewise we will stay in touch and do all the things. There's so many, so much alignment between the two of our companies and us. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

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