Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Inner Mastery, Outer Impact: The Essence of a Great Leader | Hitendra Wadhwa, PhD

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

What is the primary driver of effective and impactful leadership? Is it from science—or the soul? Is it a more practical, results-driven organizational practice? Or is it an inner, meditative sense of self?This week’s Finding Mastery guest, Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa, has spent his career exploring these questions… and his answer is, well, both.Hitendra fuses the mystical history of his Indian roots with the more results-oriented needs of Western business -- bridging the gap between spirituality and science, leadership and personal growth. It's a methodology that he teaches at Columbia Business School, the Mentora Institute (which he founded), on his podcast "Intersections" and in his book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact.He’s turned what he’s found into powerful tools that any of us can use to be effective leaders and masters of our own lives.Hitendra’s message for us is simple and clear: when you cultivate your inner self, wisdom shows up in the outer self. And that wisdom can be used to lead. Hitendra does it with an engaging sense of story, and telling examples from the lives of Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and Steve Jobs.Today, we talk about cultivating inner awareness and outer engagement, unlocking human energy to lead, checking emotion before making decisions, finding meaning in every experience, and much, much more. This entire conversation was full of insights and I think you may just leave it thinking about success, leadership, and your relationship to it in a whole new way._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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ideal human being, and certainly an ideal leader would be one where outer excellence and outer beauty is actually emanating from inner excellence and inner beauty. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. What is the primary driver of effective leadership? It's a question that so many of us wrestle with. What is the primary driver of effective leadership?

Is it science or is it more soul? Is it a more practical, results-driven organizational practice? Or is it an inner meditative sense of self? Dr. Hitindra Wadhwa has spent his career exploring these questions. With deep roots in both Indian mystic traditions and the rigorous world of MIT Sloan School of Management, he bridges the gap between spirituality and science, leadership and personal growth. As a celebrated professor at Columbia Business School and the visionary behind the Mentora Institute, Hittendra has coached executives in Fortune 100 companies and has also penned the transformative book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact. His teachings, distilled from a life's work at the intersection of success, wisdom, and

authenticity, have reached thousands, earning him accolades and a reputation as a pioneer in personal leadership. His philosophy is simple and so profound that when you cultivate your inner self, wisdom shows up in the outer self, and that wisdom can be used to lead. This entire conversation was full of insights, and I think you may just leave it thinking about success and leadership and your relationship to them in a whole new way. So with that, let's dive into this rich conversation with Dr. Hitindra Wadhwa. Hitindra, how are you? It's great to see you, Mike. Yeah, I'm good. I've been looking forward

to this for a long time. The way you show up in the world, the way that you've pulled on the threads of living the good life, the spiritual life, the ambitious life, the leadership life. The way that you have straddled what seems to be a very elusive point of view, let alone an elusive practice of being, has been materially important to me in my life. And so I've been really looking forward to this with you.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's one thing to just be like aspiring for this and thinking about it and trying to like codify it for the world. And it's another thing to be really exuding it, right, in your own energy and aura. And that's what I most remember being struck by, you know, about you, Mike. Like when we first met, you had that very precious dinner. Yeah. Which is like, I was just observing, you know, like, wow, you know, you're actually obviously be a teacher of this stuff, but you're actually

living this stuff right there in that sort of, yeah, very hyperactive environment that we were in. So anyway, so I too have been much looking forward to this. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. So maybe that's a place that we start is your new book you've just written about living and leading. And you've crosswalked those two concepts in what feels to me like a bit of an opus of a book. And so one, congratulations on being able to get your arms around those two concepts in a rich way. But I was wondering if we could start with, I can't remember if it was a text or an email you sent me about, it was a group chat, but about a recent dilemma that you had in your life. And if you could just open that up, it was a dinner based. Yeah.

Yeah. Could you open that up? And I think it would just give us a nice way to think about who you are, the struggles you have and kind of your outlook. Yeah. Well, it relates to a moment that otherwise is very special and indulgent for me, which is when I'm in London,

every now and then, I mean, look, I enjoy good company and I enjoy sort of, you know, feasting and engaging, you know, socially with others, but I also really enjoy little quiet moments of savoring and enjoying, you know, and this happened to be one of those moments. I'd had a very busy day with lots of activity and meetings and things. And so I thought of treating myself by going to one of my favorite, very simple, humble Sri Lankan restaurant called Hoppers in Malibu. And so I'm sitting there and at some point the server comes up and he says, it's time for last call. If any of you need more hoppers.

So a hopper is something which in South India and in Sri Lanka, you also, you call it an appam. And it's a very special form of warm, you know, bread, really beautiful bread, goes really well with the spices of Sri Lanka and South India. And so I was planful and I ordered another hopper before the kitchen was going to be closed. And so my hopper came, the second hopper, it's lying there on the side. But then about 15, 20 minutes into that warning moment where they told us the kitchen was closing, there was a couple sitting next to me, honestly, in discussion.

And the gentleman, he sort of calls the server and asks him says can i can i get another hopper and he says sir i'm sorry the kitchen is closed he said ah you know just one one hopper he says sir i mentioned 20 minutes ago that was the last call the kitchen is closed and he said well if you can't get me a hopper could you give me some rice you know to go over this food that i have and he said sir i'm sorry the kitchen is closed and i was overhearing the conversation and uh a you know feeling good about myself that i made sure i ordered my hopper but then also feeling like what a silly man like you know he he knew 20 minutes ago the kitchen was closing this gentleman had he could have just been

planful about it all he had to do was just look ahead a little bit and recognize that he had more food there than he had hoppers and i mean the place is called hoppers you know you'd want your hopper and so anyway a part of me was feeling like, wow, like, you know, he's suffering, but because he just didn't plan his dinner that wisely. If he was only just a little smarter, a little bit more aware, a little bit something. Yeah, exactly.

All right, cool. So that's my initial reaction, right? And then I'm happily continuing with my meal and then a part of me just starts to like be in his shoes So that's my initial reaction, right? And then I'm happily continuing with my meal. And then a part of me just starts to like be in his shoes. And a part of me starts to feel like, but look, Hitenpa, I mean, you've done silly things from time to time.

That doesn't make you holistically silly. It just means that in that moment you slipped, you know? And I was like, you know, they seem to be having a very, you know, energized, enervating discussion with each other. Who knows, you know, maybe they were just so deep in some heartfelt discussion that he just didn't pay attention to the closing of the kitchen or something so don't don't judge him for that and so so that happened so that was my first little moments of peacemaking you know within

myself within myself like exactly to your point um and then and then a part of me was just starting to feel like oh wait a second how can you be sitting here enjoying this meal with the second hopper waiting to be eaten by you meanwhile you know you know he's hurting for his hopper you know so so i feel like i should share it with him and so that little bit of inner battle is going on between a part of me that wants to really indulge a part of me that wants to also share and i, a part of me that wants to also share. And I decide to, okay, you know, to share, I'm going to offer him half my hopper, which sounds just like fair, you know,

we're offering half my hopper. So I look at him and knock on his shoulder a little bit. He looks back and I said, I said, my friend, you know, why don't you, and at that point, as I'm saying, my friend, why don't you, I just don't have the heart to say have half my hopper because I don't know, just something from, have half my hopper. Because?

I don't know. Just something from within me just pulls me towards like, hey, Tendra, just, just go for it. Just give, you know, like he's your brother,

you know? So I'm like, my friend, why don't you take this hopper? You know, and this kind of like. But you really wanted the hopper. Of course.

I mean, I mean, hey, listen, Mike, you got to join me in one of those meals there in London. And then you'll know what it means to give up that hopper. It's good stuff. Yeah. And so, hey, listen, Mike, you've got to join me in one of those meals there in London, and then you'll know what it means to give up that hopper. It's good stuff.

And so, yeah. So then I was just like, why don't you take the hopper? And at that point, see, what's happening is there's this indulgent part of you, this taste-driven part of you, this part that wants to get pampered by the food there. But then there's this other part of you. This other part of you is taking joy in somebody else's joy. And that part of you just starts to override that first part and becomes the dominant energy with which you're experiencing that moment. There's a sense of fulfillment that you're going to get just by having this person really, you know, get to fulfill a need, which, you know, you feel, you know, is very human for them.

So this wasn't about an embarrassment. Like, I don't want to be the one that's sharing just offering half yeah no this was like he's he's suffering to use your word from not having his hopper and i want to i want to give him that joy yes so it wasn't okay so that's not what i thought it was that's interesting oh yeah yeah yeah yeah okay no it wasn't me feeling like how would it look if i just offer him half it was you know in which case the other half would have been a little bit more grudging something yeah it was more like come on it and right you were offering love you know offer it with like a full heart you know and and you'll feel better and i did feel better in in offering the in the whole you know

to him just opening my heart more fully you know it's sort of like you know you're gonna help somebody who's you know a friend and they need a place to stay for the night in india where i grew up you know if you would have a friend come over and you were living in a one-bedroom apartment you give your bedroom to that person and you go and you know sleep on the couch you know and it's just like you're opening the door you know and the friend is like uh like like god visiting your home you know so there's that kind of sense that you get cultivated in you, which my mother had, you know, in me. And so I was doing what I made my mother proud, you know, in that moment.

And it made me happy, you know, to do that. And what did he say when you offered to him? He says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay. Please, please, please, you eat it, you eat it. And then I said, no, no, no, my friend, come no, it's okay, it's okay. Please, please, please, you eat it, you eat it. And then I said, no, no, no, my friend, come on, it's yours, it's yours. No worries. And he was like, no, no, no, I'm very happy. I'm just happy that you eat it.

And so we went back and forth a couple of times. And at that point, I realized, I think it's okay. I think he's made peace with his plate of things. And I should just go ahead and respect the fact that he's happy to allow me to kind of keep my hopper. And then? Then I hit my hopper and it's wonderful. And I also feel at peace, you know, with my conscience in that moment and what is happening. And I feel sweetly about him that he was so kind and thoughtful to just allow me back my hopper.

And then the meal ends and, you know, they've already left by then, he and his partner. And so I, you know, I was going up to pay, you know, pay my bill. And I go there and they tell me, sir, you know, that couple who was sitting besides you, you know, that gentleman, he already came up and he paid for you when he paid for their meal. It almost sounds too good to be true.

It was like this, you know you know i there was a moment earlier in the story like that you had unpacked you know with me where i felt he was the silly one you know and i was you know i was like the good one here you know i was kind of making up for his silliness and then in that moment when he told me that they already paid for you and he didn't even come up to me to tell me that he paid for me right he just quietly left yeah i realized like i was the silly one silly in so many ways silly first in judging him but then silly in feeling like oh i'm so kind and giving you know and all of that right actually he was the kind one that's right and he did it without he was the hand that left the pond without a trace without a a trace, no bump and short or anything.

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So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. And with that, let's jump right back into this conversation. So I love that story because it recognizes your internal awareness of your dialogue. I call it a standing civil war within myself. I think I borrowed it from T.S. Eliot, but I can't find the quote. That's a beautiful quote. Yeah.

At any given moment. Standing civil war. Yeah. The full quote is, at any given moment in time, I'm a standing civil war within myself. Yeah. I love it. You resonate with that as well. Well, not just resonate with it,

but there's an Indian epic called the Bhagavad Gita, which is a talk given by this prophet, Krishna to Arjuna, who is preparing himself for a major battle. That battle is called the Mahabharata or the Great War. And the common understanding of that Great War is as though it was between the good guys and the bad guys in a physical battlefield, which it very well might have been. But at the same time, there's a psychological interpretation of that,

which is more about the war within. And that's pretty much exactly what you're just saying, the war within between the angels of your nature and the other sides of you. I always thought that T.S. Eliot, and again, I can't find the quote,

so maybe somebody in our community can help us, but that he was inspired by the Gita. But there's a little bit of a jump there. Yeah. But to your point, there's the war between two brothers. They're brothers, right?

There were two sides of the family. Two sides of the family. So there were five of these brothers on one side and their cousins on the other. Yeah. And then, but if you take that as a,

not a metaphor, but if you take that as an analogy for the inner war yeah like it's it's it stands yeah so true so you bring up the gita um what are you resting your philosophy on your life philosophy i have been very drawn to mysticism um and I was very grateful to have been born in a land which has produced a number of them over the centuries and they have offered and left

a lot of signposts of wisdom through scriptural and other means which is the land of India. And at the same time, I've been equally drawn to mystics from the Kabbalah traditions of Judaism or the desert saints of Christianity or the Sufis in Islam. And so anytime I find these truth seekers who recognize that there is something much more to the magic of the world than we can see with

the naked eye, who feel that there is a divine, loving, ever-present, strong force, you know, creative force that is out there and that their ultimate um you know uh their ultimate potential lies in tuning into and ultimately dissolving in that force you know their consciousness into their force i get i get just very inspired you know by those kinds of quests and people and sometimes they show up in the guise of to your point poets you know and sometimes the guise of you know musicians and sometimes in the guise of saints and to me even sometimes in the guise of business people who are drawn to in a very egoless way you know seek to expand material and other advancements in the world with a desire to

kind of be good and do good without necessarily a lot of material attachments you know so anyway and you're all of these kinds of uh individuals quests scriptures teachings mystics um has been like for me like the greatest blessed resource you know for and then let's highlight the the four okay so you you said it eloquently but i want to make sure i i get it is that you're attracted to these types of folks who are committed to... Who are committed to deepening their attunement with the magic of the universe. The magic of the universe. Yes. Okay.

Deepening their attunement to the magic of the universe. How do you explain how the universe is here? I have to go back to the Zen story, right? About this hungry student who comes over to this hungry for knowledge comes over to the zen master and is inviting him to to share and teach him and the master at some point basically recognizes the student is more restless and impatient than he should be. And so he invites him to sit with him for a cup of tea.

And, you know, you know the story, I'm sure. And as the student is looking, the master is keeping on pouring more and more and more tea into the cup. And the cup is brim full now. And it's actually starting to spill over until the student can't contain himself. And so he says, but master, I mean, like, you know, the cup is full. You know, what are you doing? You're putting more tea into it. And the master looks at him and says, yeah, you know,

you're limited by your own capacity, you know, and how much I can give at one point in time, you know. So from that vantage point, when you ask a question with such profundity in it, right, like, you know, where is this universe from or coming from? Or, you know, what brings it here? I have to acknowledge that I don't think my cup right now is large enough to be able to fully fathom that mystery

of the origins of creation. I was wondering how you're going to square the empty your cup, you know, Cohen Cohen with that answer. And so the reason I was asking is to see if there's a a first principle, deity-based or non-deity-based. Many gods, one God. No God. You know, I was wondering how you were going to use some language. And I'm watching how you worked. And you said, wait, let me tell you a Zen comment about, you know, it being a bit too much. Yeah. Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if I were to ask the question just a little differently, which is, what have you learned as a golden thread through some of the mystics? Yes. Would that be an interesting way in? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That is, that's something which I can, you know, offer a few thoughts on. So, you know, and when I share this, it is as much through the inner kind of inklings and stirrings that i have as it is through the formalization of those in the forms of words ideas thoughts that i then have you know

been benefiting from from the mystics right and so it speaks as much to the intuitive inklings of my soul you know as it does to like just an intellectual appreciation of the words on a page, you know, from, from listening. But, but fundamentally for me, um, it's like this, uh, you know, as best I can offer, which is that behind everything, there is a single universal force, a force that is all loving, that is ever present, that is omnipotent, which is completely strong and able to do anything, and all-knowing, omniscient. And so that all-loving, omniscient, omnipresent, and all-powerful force, we have emerged from it. And just like the only thing that you can get from gold is gold, which I heard from a a spiritual teacher and i like that metaphor a lot um the only thing that you can get from divinity is divinity you know and so within each of us and

within all of matter and every atom in creation is basically the essence of it is divine you know and um and what happens is that we have over the course of lifetimes of reincarnation etc you know um you know gain the opportunity to go back to our home our origin our native source which is that divine spark and by learning to merge with it you know we return to that place from where we came why that game was conceived you know by this divine force and why was creation put forth out there etc with the big bank and what have you. That's the part which my cup is too limited right now to take in.

However, the idea that I'm on that journey and you're on the journey and we're all on that journey to ultimately discover our true self and that journey might involve multiple lifetimes of classroom experiences in the school of life is something that I intuitively feel very, yeah, just like harmonized with. And then the quest is, what is it that life is trying to

invite me in this present moment to do to open my eyes up, you know, my inner attunement up to more and more and more, yeah, just of a sense of understanding about my true nature and about my relationship with the universe. And every experience that I go through is really an invitation to get me closer to that state and to get me to practice that state moment by moment. And once I can get there and I'm fully there, then I become whole. You know, I become enlightened. I become, you know, like a Buddha, you know, or a Jesus, you know, or a Krishna.

So you're taking, that's the essence that your core philosophy that you've learned. Yes. And embodied would probably be a more fair way to say it. And then you've also got this other side of you, which is a PhD from MIT. You're a professor at Columbia. You've got an MBA from MIT as well. So there's the study of excellence across domains and the ambitious, well, even the ambitiousness of getting a degree from MIT, period. But then the study of how to help others in their ambitious efforts that are maybe, maybe not spiritually grounded.

And so this is the thing that I was wanting to talk to you about most, which is, have you heard of the concept of two selves? Yeah. Yeah. So like the code switching, like I can be one way when I'm around one group of people that know me this way. And then I code switch to be something different in another way. And there's different groups that are more challenged with code shifting and different upbringings that would support that more than others. And so it feels to me like there's a code switching that's been taking place in business for a long time is that they've got their home, spiritual life, family life. And then at work, it's the grinder, hustle, cutthroat, something.

And there's a reason why there's a big stress because that chasm is fraught with tension. So how are you thinking about modern leadership? Yeah. Like, what does that, what does that look like? Let's call it, let's be wild and say three years from now. I mean, let's be absolutely ridiculous and think three years out, you know, like what would the modern leader look like? Yeah. I mean, see, I grew up in India and I have lived most of my adult life in the United States. And I like to say sometimes that, you know, the country I grew up in, I mean, I was very blessed because there's so much inner beauty there. So much inner beauty.

And on the outside, it's a little bit of a mess. On the outside? Yeah. In India, it's a little bit of a mess at times. And I come to the United States and there's so much outer beauty here. There's so much outer beauty here. As I observed when I came. came and then on the inside it's a little bit of a mess oh that's interesting you know and so like for me an ideal anything an ideal piece of art an ideal product an ideal organizational environment an ideal family, ideal human being, and certainly an ideal leader would be one where you bring both of these parts together, you know, where outer

excellence and outer beauty is actually emanating from inner excellence and inner beauty. And I know I'm like, you know, speaking to the master here, you know, because like you're so deeply invested in that work yourself and what you're manifesting, Mike, in everything you do, right? With folks in sports and business and beyond. And so for me, the notion of an excellent leader, three years, five years from now, especially in a world that is becoming incredibly uncertain, fast changing and complex, right? five years from now, especially in a world that is becoming incredibly uncertain, fast-changing

and complex, right, is somebody who has deep commitment and awareness of their inner core, you know, their soul, their spirit within, which you only do if you strive for a certain discipline of, as you know, because you teach this stuff, right, certain discipline of emotional, you know, because you teach this stuff, right? Certain discipline of emotional mastery, of inner attunement, of calmness, of stillness, of inner connection, of purity and opening of the heart, right? And so they're cultivating these inner practices that make them always show up that way. And then when they do, they're also masterfully engaged in some of the outer craft

in the messy milieu of the world, you know, where there will be egos and there will be, you know, morale issues and there will be, you know, at times divisions and there will be unknowns and all that that you have to cope with. But they can bring that grace, you know, to that moment and then be guided with a certain level of flexibility and freedom that allows them to transcend their habits, their impulses, their personality, to show up in a way that is most valuable, you know, for that context, to be in service of some noble intention, some noble purpose for themselves and

the people around them. And when they do, and they do it consistently over time, it starts to take hold in the people around them as well. Those people, to your point about the two-person kind of piece, they start showing up differently, right? And so in the case of Mother Teresa, you know, people have reported that when they were around her, they just felt so much more compassion. In the presence of Churchill, you know, during the Second World War, you know, he was invoking something, you know, quite divine in that moment in terms of his capacity to… For war.

Yeah, for leading in a kind of hero you know yeah yeah a nation and a world through a very threatening moment you know and and so people report that like nobody left the presence of churchill without feeling a little bit braver you know in the case of gandhi people just felt more calm in front of you know steve jobs they felt more creative right so that, these are all capacities of the soul. You know, creativity, calmness, courage, compassion. And so to me, a great leader is somebody who will be tapping into these qualities of their own soul and then showing up in a way that just starts to draw

those qualities more out of people around them as well. I don't know. What do you think, Mike? Yeah. I'm just, I'm like hanging on every word and how you're choosing those words um okay so what do i think for the modern leader yeah for the modern leader and yeah yeah i think um when i think about the modern leader is that they understand the applied psychology to help people unlock all the all the ways that they get bound up. They're not

psychologists, but they understand the best principles of the beautiful science of the study of self. The science is rich and committed to understanding how to be better. Wherever you are on the spectrum, how do you get a little bit better? Now the mystics have been teaching the same thing. I'm more interested in anchoring in the tension between the mystics and the science, like what's held up for 2,600 years and what's also holding up in the laboratory. Like I'm interested in those two. And so quite simply, the modern leader is one that understands for themselves how to be unlocked so that they can be fully present and understands the best practices in psychology to help unlock others. So this is no longer like bottom line, Wall Street, hitting numbers alone, grind it out for some other secondary gain later. This is the grand experiment of life happens in the present moment.

And we spend most of our waking present moments in a working capacity, working environment. So that to me feels like where the great unlock is going to happen. So it's modern leader, let's go from CEO, senior leader, and then there's the leaders in the organization. But let's just start really big for a moment. Yeah. They are looking around a couple of corners and understanding that people are struggling and suffering more than thriving, more than flourishing.

So you can't ask people for more. That's with less. That, maybe for a little bit, we could sprint. There's always a little more we can do, but you can't, that's not around looking around three corners. That's like, I can only see on horizon one, the next six months. And I'm doubling down on intensity right now because we've got to get this thing done. But not realizing that if you don't have a team or a community or a group of people that understand how to flourish, you just burn people out. So we have a human energy crisis. One of my colleagues has shared that term with me, a human energy crisis. And the unlock, which you've written eloquently about the unlock comes from working from the inside out. Yeah. Not, it's not needing more external resources. Matter of fact, it's actually not even needing more time. Okay. There's only so much time anyways, but most people

say, Oh, if I just had a little more time, If I could just have a little more alone time, me time, where I could think and just kind of. And then researchers created that experience to give people alone quality time. And they also gave them an electrical shock. During that period of alone time, 67% of men in the study chose to shock themselves instead of just being alone. Okay, quick pause here to share some of the sponsors of this conversation. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits,

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and with that let's jump right back into our conversation how about that we'd rather shock ourselves with electrical shock where prior to the to the to the um what's it called to the experiment people got a dose of the shock and they said oh no i would never want that yeah and then given them alone time versus a shock they chose a shock yeah yeah that's insane you know it reminds me of a couple of things one is um there's a quote from victor frankel you know you of course the man such of meaning right and so he said he said we've created a world where people he says are unhappier over the weekends when they come back than they are during the week when they're working you know and he says like then the reason for that is because we have created a world where

people have the means to live, but not meaning to live for, you know, and so in those moments of, you know, forced quietude and no activity, it's kind of people are being forced to face themselves. And, you know, if you have something rich, deep, inner life that you've been working on, then I imagine you end up in one place, but otherwise you end up in another place where you're open to taking that shock, you know. Meaning, purpose, and belonging. Yeah.

Three really rich, big, powerful words. And at work, if you perform well, you can have all three. You've got meaning. Yeah. In your work, you can see it. There's purpose to the organization and you belong. What happens when you don't perform properly? That's where this thing goes sideways.

Yeah. It's a performative aspect of life. As long as I can keep it up and perform well, then I've got meaning, purpose, and belonging in my organization. Yeah. But it's an invisible handshake that if I don't perform properly over time, I'm not asked to come back. I'm on the outside looking at it. Let's explore this performance question a little bit.

So you talked about how a lot of people think that if only you had a little bit more time. So I'm very sort of drawn to the science of know, science of sort of genius, right? And what does it take for somebody to perform at a level that is vastly beyond what most of us see as, you know, the potential in us, right? To do an Einstein or, you know, Gandhi in one lifetime being able to incredibly achieve so much and what have you. And so there's a story I want to share with you. So this is John Denver, right? And, you know, my favorite song of his is Annie's song.

I don't know if you know that one. What is it? Can you sing it for me? Yeah, he's singing it. So it's like, you fill up my senses. Oh, you went for it too. Yes, I know this song. Oh, you went for it.

Do you like singing? I love that song. Do you like singing? Ah, in the bathroom. Yeah, okay. Or on the podcast. Yeah, yeah, exactly. oh you went for it do you like singing do you like singing ah in the bathroom yeah exactly so anyway so it's a beautiful song for those who are those who haven't heard it anyway so this song which is arguably like one of his you know top hits what i discovered sometime back is that he was having a really difficult time in his relationship with his wife and so he was in depths of certain amount of despair if you want to call it. And he was on a ski lift going up to the top of the

mountain to ski down. And that's when the whole song came to him. That's when the whole song came to him. Now you think about it. This is a singer, composer singer, and this is one of his magnum opuses and how much time did it take for it to come to him for him to divine this right yeah right yeah and what is this this is what the buddha talks about like enlightenment um one of the quotes is uh and if i have it wrong please i know i'll never hear the end of it but it's something along the lines of enlightenment can happen over lifetimes or in the next moment in the next moment so keep paying attention yeah the next instant right so keep working yeah exactly yeah so i don't know if i i don't have a informed thought about what happens after life after physical life i'm

not sure i can understand reincarnation and i certainly i i was brought up in the catholic faith and i'm not sure what i want to think about heaven at this point you know that concept it and reincarnation. And I certainly, I was brought up in the Catholic faith and I'm not sure what I want to think about heaven at this point, you know, that concept. It feels a little manipulative in my mind. And I don't want to think that we're just done. So I'm really confused, okay? So anyways, the Buddha, back to the Buddha.

I interjected that because I just wanted to address your position on reincarnation. Yeah, yeah. Look, I mean. It feels wonderful. Yeah. It feels like it's, to me, that and heaven feel a little bit like a story that were sold as kids. Yeah. Like, you're going to have another chance.

Maybe not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe not. Yeah. And I think that they're both beautiful. They're both beautiful. Both of those ways of seeing it are beautiful, right? And I talk about that a little bit in my book, right?

Because I say, look, imagine if somebody who doesn't believe in reincarnation meets somebody who believes in reincarnation. It appears that both of them are completely at loggerheads with each other on some issue in which both of them feel very black and white. But actually, there's so much that each can learn from the other, right? And so for me, as someone who didn't necessarily absorb it from a book as much as just has never felt that I have stopped existing and has intuitively felt that I visited, you know, this planet before, you know, it's so intuitional. The value of seeing a belief, which is that you only live once, is that it makes me take this life more seriously.

Precious. Because, you know, at one point the light bulb went off in my head because it was actually a monk that I have a lot of, you know, affection for, regard for, and who is heading a certain organization. And I was talking to him and I was saying, you know, brother so-and-so, you know, you're heading this organization. I know this organization has a dispensation, which is like, you know, brother so-and-so, you know, you're heading this organization. I know this organization has a dispensation, which is like, you know, hundreds of years in the future.

So it's so nice that you don't have to face that rush of wanting to like live by quarterly earnings and stuff that, you know, businesses do at times. And he looked at me and he smiled and he said, yes, he says, but I, in this life, in this body, I'm only here now. And I'm only here for a short period of time. So I do feel a great sense of obligation and commitment

to want to do my maximum best in this time that I have, in this role. And it kind of just woke me up to like, wow, there is actually something really powerful about Mike, kind of like a intuition that you have, which is like, this is just one life. I don't know what I want to be open to selling myself about like in the future, but like at the moment, this is just this one life

and this is the present moment and that's it. And so I personally feel very just appreciative of the need to fuse these opposites. Yeah, that's why I wanted to sit with you is because the mystics and leadership, like the science of excellence and the traditions of insight, if you will, like bridging those two together. So what do we agree or disagree on what the modern leader looks like? Do we both agree that they're working from the inside out?

Exactly, I think that's the first thing that came to my mind. Yeah, they're working from the inside out. We both agree that it's the inner state that is really their first commitment, you know, to showing up right away. So for them to know how to be fully present in a, you said calm, curious, you had a alliteration of Cs.

Yes, yes, so I like to think of it in terms of five Cs. Oh, you do, so those were not accidental. Yeah, yeah. Where did you come up with the five Cs. Oh, you do? So those were not accidental? Yeah, yeah. Where did you come up with the five Cs? Yeah, I mean, it's basically the five energies that I talk about in a book. You know, purpose, wisdom, growth, love, and secularization. And I just ended up sort of also converting them

into a more practical sort of executive language of the five Cs, which is purpose is like committed to a noble cause. Okay. You know, always in every situation, make sure that you're going in there not with just personal hungers and needs and ego, purpose is like committed to a noble cause. You know, always in every situation, make sure that you're going in that, not with just personal hungers and needs and ego,

but commitment to a noble cause. So we're 100% alignment there. One of the first principles that I work from and I've learned from other folks is to make a fundamental commitment in your life or a set of fundamental commitments. And that's what the best athletes in the world do. Lovely. They've made a fundamental commitment in your life or a set of fundamental commitments. And that's what the best athletes in the world do. Lovely. They've made a fundamental commitment. Now it might not be the spiritual or aspirational life that any, some person wants, but, but if you look at how they've

organized their life, oh, it's a fundamental commitment. So same with Gandhi, same with mother Teresa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same with all the greats. So cool. Fundamental commitment. Okay. Keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. then the second one to me is to be calm and receptive to truth it has wisdom you know and what that means is sometimes if your emotions are out of kilter and or you have you know as you write so eloquently in your book you know these kind of confirmation biases or mind reading like distortions and all these things, these are knots in your thought fabric or blinders on your belief system that don't allow you to open yourself up to contrarian evidence and creative new possibilities and all of that.

And so you stay stuck in the wrong grooves. And so the second of these five Cs, the second energy of wisdom, is about being receptive to truth, being from a very calm place. So the way that I square calm and wisdom that you've just done is that I go, so wisdom has some characteristics. It's universally available. You know, there's a handful of characteristics for wisdom. But wisdom is built on a set of ahas.

Call that insight. Yeah. And insight rests on being so connected to the truth of something that you go, oh, wait. Oh. Okay. So if you can get down into the truth of something, you get an insight. If you can cobble together a couple of insights, you get to wisdom. Now then, how do you get to the truth of something? You got to be fully present. So a calm mind with the right intensity to be here now

over time, right? That is part of the ingredients to get to the present moment more often. And then you go, wait, this is how this flower works. This is how this relationship goes. This is how my breath works. So then you go, wait, and, and, and. So you got insights cobbled up to wisdom. So I like the calmness of there. But I would add, not that your model is wrong, but I would add that it's not just calm, mellow, relaxed. There is the required focus and intensity to stay on time with the unfolding present moment. And if we're just calm and mellow, sometimes we can slip down into the non-attentive realm,

like the theta brainwaves, as a neuroscientist would recognize. So- It's like a concentrated form of calmness. That's right. Yeah. But a busy, agitated mind has a hard time being in the present moment enough to get to the truth of something.

However, like, are you familiar with, I'd like to just harden this a little bit, precision questioning. No. Okay. Yeah. just harden this a little bit precision questioning uh no okay yeah so it's a it's a tactic that if you are going to present an idea and this is born out of an engineering model okay you're going to present an idea to five of us right and um and where we want to get to the root cause of where something breaks down so we're trying at speed to get to the error in your thinking. So this is a nice utility here. So you say the sky is blue, and I say, how do you know that?

And then I'm going to go down and try to find the error in your logic. Right? So just like, what makes you think it's blue? Because I see something else. I see a tint of gray. logic right so just like what makes you think it's blue because i see i see it you know something else i see a tint of gray and then and and then i'm just keep asking questions right in the most narrow precise way that i can define where the fault in logic is so precision quite it's a very my point is it's a very agitating irritating um overwhelming state certainly done in front of other people, that agitates an incredible amount of stress. And you can get to the truth in some respects there,

not maybe the deep wisdom truth that you and I are referring to, but you can find where something breaks. You can find where the argument or the hypothesis falls apart. So how would you square with that idea, the value of an agitated state to get to the truth of something? And I'll square it one more way with you. My wife and I. So I've got Italian-Irish roots. She's got full Latina roots. And we sometimes will argue.

I know that you might find that surprising. The romantic, passionate, you know? And so, and then when we're arguing, we're not trying to be better or beat each other, but we're just trying to get a point across. Sometimes we strike the right note and sometimes we miss it. But that agitated state to helps to illuminate oh oh that's what you're saying yeah okay got oh oh my bad i totally blew that i missed okay i get you okay so i'm just now making case for agitation over calmness yeah yeah yeah so um on the one hand there is these other energies that i have in my model right uh of which we've talked about purpose and wisdom so far to me purpose is the energy that is about activation about intention about you know a very sort of engaged part of you in the process of getting to a certain outcome and so if you apply in my lens, that energy of purpose to the quest for

problem solving, then you get the requisite amount of sort of activating energy that you need. Okay. So you're saying it's embedded in there. Yeah. To blend it with the calmness aspects of the wisdom energy. Now, I do want to say that sometimes we have certain practices that get us to a certain level of, you know, cross-fertilization of ideas and a batting ground of certain things. That may not mean that they

can't be an even better way of getting there. You know, that may be the best that has allowed us to, you know, flourish so far. But perhaps there could have been a way to get there faster or more clearly. Meaning if we're both really calm? More joyfully.

I don't know. I don't know. And I say that smiling as you were describing the dynamics because, I mean, I relate to those very much in the context of my own relationship with my wife. Is she Indian as well? Yeah, she is. She's from India. How do, it's a large country.

How many people- 1.3, it's the most populous now. Oh my God, 1.3. Oh, and that was before, you know, in the present moment. I'm sure they've added a few more. Oh my God, yeah, right. So like, it's too broad to even begin.

I know that there's a stat that horrifies me about india and about the united states which is um as many people are in the united states there are that many people without gas and water and running kind of in in india and is that do i have that that fact right i don't know the latest statistics i do know that there has been tremendous progress since India got its independence in overtime, you know, cultivating more economic development in even in the more sort of deprived rural areas. The Modi government actually has been quite remarkable. It's one of the lesser celebrated stories in the West, you know, but over the last about

10 odd years has been you know very substantial uh investment and development of like electricity and sanitation and water and even digital payments in fact india is uh vastly ahead of the united states yeah same with micro payments and stuff you know yeah you know all of that so in the infrastructure too, because we're still, the US has still got poles and wires. Yeah. And one of our partners is in Africa, and he's like, look, we just kind of leapfrogged that. It's all satellite.

The infrastructure in that way is far more advanced. Exactly. So it's happening. And at the same time, there's a different infrastructure, which I also want to sort of highlight. And this I'll do through a Steve Jobs story. So he went to India early in his life. He was a truth seeker. He wanted to figure out kind of what life was about. I think he must've been about 17 or so when he went to India. And he- It's a cool part of his story, isn't it? Yeah.

As a young kid right out of high school or in high school even, and like- Yeah. There's something else out there that I need to understand. Yeah. You know, and at some point, I don't know when it was that he said, he said, look, I, you know, I don't want to die the richest man in the cemetery. You know, that's not the purpose of life. And he said, the purpose of life is enlightenment. Enlightenment, whichever, you know, way it means to you. So what does it mean to you?

Yeah. There's a term in yoga called nirbhikalpa samadhi that's how i would define enlightenment and nirbhikalpa samadhi is where you are an infinite avenue bliss um connected with every atom in creation and beyond and you don't even have to sit in stillness to meditate to earn that capacity you're living in that you know and everything you know so i don't know how does that relate to your definition how would you define it completely tuned completely tuned you are completely tuned with what is yeah yeah yeah yeah so that's that's beautiful too that's um i think, very consistent with the view that I have of being one with everything.

Yeah, there you go. And if you can do that for like a nanosecond, that's one thing. But if you can do it for a day, that's pretty good. You can do it way more than that. So that's kind of the way I think about it. Especially under all kinds of stressors and strains on you. And so that's the nirvikalpa state. There's another version of it way I think about it. Especially under all kinds of stressors and strains on you. And so that's the Nibiru Kalpa state. There's another version of it called Serbik Kalpa.

And Serbik Kalpa, you can only do it in very sort of idealized conditions. On a pillow. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Right, on the mountaintop. Yeah, okay. So in that moment, Steve Jobs, he goes to India.

And then he comes back and he says, coming back to America was a bigger culture shock for me than going to India. He says, because in India, he says, coming back to America was a bigger culture shock for me than going to India. He says, because in India, he says, I go around some of these villages and I meet these simple folk. And what I notice is that they do not use their rational analytical mind as much as we do in the West. But they operate on the basis of their intuition more. And he says, what I've learned is that intuition is a much stronger force than the rational mind. And that has helped shape a lot of my life. And now one final word from our sponsors.

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without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. And now back to the conversation. I mean, it's so powerful and intuition is papood, certainly in the academic world. It's almost considered, I think it's like from probably Socrates or Plato, I don't know who coined it, like it's one of the lowest forms of knowledge, right? Of knowing. And so you're a proponent.

You're saying intuition is an important form of knowing. So in my earlier years, I was very drawn to mathematics and intuition played a big role you know for me in helping me intuition and mathematics i mean yeah mathematicians would often talk about sort of getting these eureka moments right these sparks unexpected that come to you in the shower or wherever right and so so there's that part but since i started to meditate more regularly, you know, like 20 years ago, I have found more and more myself leaning on my intuition to give me depth, clarity, flashes of understanding, new sort of hints or glimpses, which then take more concrete form through the fact gathering and through the analysis and the logical structuring. So you don't sort of like divorce yourself from those, you know, those faculties, those more scientific, you know, bends of your mind, but you also have another resource that is more actively and intentionally nurtured. I don't know. What do you think, Mike? I mean, in your work, like has intuition been? Yeah. I was embarrassed by it for a long time.

I feel like growing up, I had to have a little bit of a spidey sense on how things worked. And it was a good survival tactic for me. And I could fit in really well socially because of that. So I'm tuning, tuning, tuning. It's what led me to write The First Rule of Mastery is that I was outsourcing my sense of if I was okay to the eyes of others. If you're not in your head, then I must be okay.

So I was really good at picking up external indicators of safety. So from that lens, I was able to tune what, if somebody were watching, I was able to tune. If somebody were watching, I was able to tune really well, but I was lost. I was outsourcing everything and not a grounding force in that tuning fork. So intuition for me for a long time was corrupted, not out of benevolence, but out of survival. And then it turned into like I was able to read really well and I got to read the environment really well. I got confused if my intuition was my savviness that I had cultivated

or if it was some deeper knowing that was emerging and I was able to listen to it. Either way, it was serving me really well, this idea of a gut response, because you took that savviness that I just was describing with paired with my attraction to consequential environments, action sports, extreme sports, as many people might know it, where if you're not tuned in those environments, some unfortunate things can take place.

So there's a forcing function out of both of those environments that forced me to work from like, how am I working in this environment? What are the conditions? How am I responding? What are the conditions? And it's this micro checking that would take place. Now I'm into my high school, college years, and I was able to sense things really well. When I was anxious and agitated, I didn't know what to do. And that created such an irritated state for me that I expressed through anger. But when I learned how to calm myself down and I had the base of those two that I just described, I could listen really well. And then I was hit over the head. So I was

feeling like there was an intuition taking place. But then I was hit over the head. So I was feeling like there was an intuition taking place. But then I was hit over the head with professors saying, you can't measure it, you can't manage it. You know, what is this hogwash? You know, like go back to the 1800s. Like, you know, we're now scientists. And so I've obviously come full circle to really value intuition. But I don't want it to stop there yeah I want to feel something yeah and if I'm drunk yeah if I'm if I'm if

I'm overwhelmed if I'm fat in you know my nutrition you know like I'm being crass here to prove a point but if I'm bloated in any way, I can't hear and I can't feel what that sensitivity is that is required to have intuition. So then I just rely on reason and I tend to default on the reason of others and crowdsource it and then find the chord that makes sense to me. That's when I'm not at my best. When I'm at my best, intuition is like a little bit of a lightning bolt. Yeah, beautiful. You know, one of the things that I really like about your approach is the grounding in science. And even now with intuition, you felt obliged in responding to my question by talking to me about,

you know, what the scientific sort of support for that is or not is. The good news is that as someone who also has a lot of interest in wanting to build this bridge between, in my case, like spirituality and science, what you're actually finding now is that in the last few years, there has been a opening up of the scientific community, of the faculty of intuition. Yeah, there's some really nice research coming out

on how intuition is a cultivatable faculty, you know, innate in each of us. And it doesn't in any way, you know, diminish the value and importance of experience, of knowledge, of, you know, effortful analysis of things. But then after gathering that experience and knowledge and effortful analysis, you step back know and when you step back then either by you know allowing yourself to sleep and then in that state between sleep and awake like first thing in the morning i don't know if you've seen some of that kind of research yeah you keep like a notepad next to you and you just ask yourself you know for that problem that you're really trying to work on what fresh new ideas are coming to you right that's the theta brainwave the hypnagogic theta brainwaves that i was talking

about earlier yeah yeah perfect yeah. Perfect, perfect. Yeah. It's an amazing little glow that can take place there. Yeah. I found that to be very valuable, like having that practice first thing in the morning to let the mind go to something even before you start moving the body around. What are some of the questions that you ask while you're still in bed? Yeah, no.

So sometimes I'm grappling with a certain aspect of leadership and a model that I'm trying to simplify. And so I'll give you an example. So some years back, we had at my institute and in my teaching at Columbia, gone down the more traditional path of developing a whole curriculum around leadership based on these traditional leadership behaviors or competencies,

like how to have a difficult conversation, how to build trust, how to influence people, how to inspire like, behaviors or competencies, like how to have a difficult conversation, how to build trust, how to influence people, how to inspire people, how to give feedback, how to coach, how to this, how to that. And there was a part of me that was just not feeling good, was just not feeling good. I was feeling it's too complex. And I knew the truth is not complex. Truth is simple. That's right. You know, And yet here I was espousing all this complexity and essentially making life quite difficult for our students and for the leaders out there. And knowing that in the moment they're going to applaud you for a job well done, a class well taught, they love the workshop, what have you. But I know that I was leaving a lot of complexity in their hands.

And fundamentally, five years later, two years later years later even two days later were they able to harness all that complexity to go into those conversations in the workplace in a dog-eat-dog world and actually manifest you know all that knowledge and wisdom no you know fundamentally I realized that this is learning doing gap and I wasn't really helping it so and then meanwhile I was having this intuitive inklings that there's got to be more pattern more structure to this than what you know meets my eye with all these different toolkits. And so those are the kinds of questions I like to grapple with, you know, first thing in the morning at that time or, you know, after my meditation or something. What is the question though?

Like what would be an example of the question? Yeah. So the question for me was like, is there a simpler and more attuned to truth way of thinking about how to show up as a leader, right? And so what that led to at some point is a conviction in me that I need to look for the common thread across all of these competencies, all these toolkits. And what I noticed in that common thread is that besides the presence of these five energies,

there were like simple actions that were getting small little actions, acts of grace, you know, if you want to call it, which were getting repeatedly used across multiple of those toolkits. Of those interventions. Yeah. And so then I went back and I said, let's study the Mandela's. Let's study the Lincoln's. Let's study the Mother Teresa's, the Gandhi's and all of that. And what do I, do I see that in them? Do I see those, the presence of those actions,

which I was seeing in these two? And sure enough, you know. Okay, so what are these moments of grace that you're talking about? So the moments of grace would be, for instance, Mandela has a conversation with a general who's threatening to mutiny and to essentially, you know,

destroy the prospects of a peaceful transition from apartheid South Africa to democracy, because he's fearing for the future of the white population. And he's just going to usurp, you know, the military power that he has to basically fight against this transition. And Mandela has a conversation with him. And over the course of the conversation, Mandela is able to convince him to basically surrender that sort of claim and that threat and to work in collaboration with them, right? Or another moment, I mean, Abraham Lincoln is talking to-

Wait, wait, I missed the insight there. Yeah, no, no, no. That sounds like a persuasive, charismatic leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the actual conversation he had, what he spoke to that general in that moment, if you take those words that he had there and you actually start to break it down

into six different actions he used. I see what you did. Right? He used six different actions. For instance, the general said that, we will defeat you because we are trained, we have the military, we have all the armaments. And Mandela didn't start by saying,

no, we will defeat you. You know, be scared of me. I'm going to be the president. Mandelaela didn't start by saying, no, we will defeat you. You know, be scared of me. I'm going to be the president. Mandela started by saying, you know, general, you are right. You're more trained than us. You have more people than us. All right.

We will not win against you. So that's what I call disarming. Disarming means you start by finding something to agree with the other person. Then Mandela says, and you will also not win. So we will not win.ela says, and you will also not win. So we will not win. He said, and you will also not win.

Because what will we do? We will retreat back into the jungles and then we'll file a guerrilla war with you. And then the whole international community will be with us, not with you. So it'll be actually a pretty miserable outcome for you too. He says, General, in this kind of war, nobody can win. And he says, now now what would you want

for your people what would you want for your people so that second action that he says when you can't win and we can't win that's fusing opposites which is like you have your truth and i have my truth and both are correct okay and then the third one he says fuse opposites and then he says um you know general what would you like for your people given that this is the miserable outcome if we go down this path, and this is the other path I'm offering, what would you want for your people? And in that, he's offering him the choice, which is, I'm not going to make the decision for you. I'm not going to impose a certain argument on you. Ultimately, I respect the fact that it is, you know, you as a leader, you have to choose. And let me just ask you, based on the conditions I've just described, what is right for you, et cetera. So there were

about, you know, two or three other such like small little acts of grace there. And what I found is that this is what Mother Teresa would use. You know, this is what Abraham Lincoln would use. This is what at times the Steve Jobs would use in their breakthrough moments, in the moments where they got unexpected outcomes in situations. So to have difficult, hard conversations, you've studied the greats and found some common themes amongst them. It could be conversations, it could be epic presentations or speeches they had to give at a time and, you know, everybody was kind of in an emotional dizzy or at times just a moment of inspiration and warmth and connection that they unexpectedly were able to build

with somebody. But there was nothing difficult about it. But the other person walked out feeling really tall, you know, from that interaction, right? And so across all of them, I found a common base of these actions, which is what I've recently published in an article in How Business View. And coming back to the intuition topic. Okay, are these six threads in the HBR article that we could link to? Yeah, yeah.

So there are these 25 actions that I talk about across these five energies. We didn't finish the five energies yet. We got to two of them. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so good. So we'll link to the HBR article for some super applied practices. Okay, great. Do you want to go back to the five energies?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we've got um purpose wisdom wisdom which is calmness and receptivity to truth yep and the proposal i was having there is that if you think about intuition as the ultimate faculty there that's when calmness can really help because you know as you know and i know like you know intuition is not something you can tap in your most kind of, you know, restless moments. Yes. Okay, good. Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah. Okay.

Then we go to growth. The third one is growth. Growth. And growth is the idea that, you know, we have to stay ever curious. You know, you might be the world's greatest genius at this or that, but the world is ever shifting and changing around you. And it has so much nuance. And the same person is not the same person the next day, you know?

So every one of us is evolving changing shifting and so um there's on the one hand simplicity on the inside but almost like a need to fathom and navigate infinite complexity on the outside and growth is an energy that keeps you humble but also keeps you hopeful that i can i can fall i can stumble but i can always keep evolving my relationship with you. You know, my capacity to influence this team, my ability to be able to inspire this group, any or all of that are things that, and we collectively as well as a team, as an organization, as a society, as a nation, like America needs a little bit of that growth energy right now. That regardless of where we are, we can evolve and grow and become a more better version of ourselves.

So that's the growth energy. One of my most endeared applied scientist practitioner, Per Lundstrom, I hope he's listening. Per and I, our relationship, he's at USA Skiing right now. USA Skiing and Snowboarding. And he's such a great applied practitioner of science. Every conversation we have, yeah, that's a good question, Mike. Boy, I don't know the answer to that.

I'd like to talk about it with you right now though. You know, it's just like, it's super like, let's keep going on that. I'll say, hey, how do you help an athlete get on edge so that they can turn more dynamically or with more power or whatever? He goes, yeah, I've been thinking about that. This is what he does all day long. You know, I don't know.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, and it's like the more, you know, what's a Dunning, Kruger-Dunning effect? Are you familiar with that principle? Like the people that present as if they know, they actually know very little. And the ones that are really curious about like, even the most simple things are the ones that actually know a lot are the Kruger Dunning. So how have you found to help people? Because in idea, growth sounds great. Purpose sounds wonderful. Wisdom sounds awesome.

Growth sounds amazing. What gets in the way of these? Let's just start with growth. What gets in the way of people having a progressive approach to getting better or to learning or to growing? Yeah. I mean, a couple of things. One can be exactly what you just said, which is like a knower kind of mindset. Knower.

Right? Yeah. couple of things one can be exactly what you just said which is like a knower kind of mindset no you're right yeah you feel uh more confident that perhaps you should and or you feel more impatient you know about wanting to just quickly assert a conviction and move on you know rather than uh open yourself up for a deeper discovery you know and okay that tension is the tension between the mystics and the business folk, right? Is the mystics can hang there for a long time and the research scientists can actually hang there for a long time. Unless they have the demands of publication or something, right? And then the folks in the business world and athletics included, it's like we've got the divide between these two is so clear in this point. Like, hey, listen, we got a shot clock here we got to go yeah we've got to make a move yeah like okay like let's talk about it but we only got like

three minutes let's go yeah you know so how do you how do you square that tension that sometimes there is a real need yeah to measure once cut once even though we'd like to measure twice yeah i mean uh it reminds me of a story of Steve Jobs. So he's wanting to launch a retail outlet, you know, business for Apple, right? This is before Apple stores was launched. So he brings in this guy, Ron Johnson from Target, done some good work at Target, was kind of a legend in the retail world at that time. And Ron Johnson shares a story. He says like, I stepped into the car, Steve had come to pick me up and we were

just about to announce the launch of you know the retail store format and we were going to this airport hangar where the

people had laid out the store in the way that we thought it should be laid out we were going to just simulate kind of what that experience is like

for people coming to the store and he says I had this new idea that just flashed in my mind which I was convinced was the right idea. So I get in the car with Steve and I say, Steve, you know, we've been thinking about organizing

the layout of the store based on product. Actually, we should do it on the basis of the user experience. So we should have something about movie making, something about music, something about this. And he says, Steve just sort of boomed and said, Ron, this is so much at the last minute. We are going to the hangar to see the store. We've invested so much in this.

This is just pre-launched. You're not gonna bring that up now, okay? This is done, you know, at this point. And he says, the rest of the 10 minutes in the car were quiet. I didn't speak, he didn't speak. We enter the hangar. People are there.

And he says, he goes up to the podium and Steve looks at them all and he says, Ron here thinks that the way you guys and we laid this door out is completely wrong.

And he's right. And he's right. So I want you to listen to him now. And I'm just going to go back to my office. So he said, he left. He left me there with them. And he's right. And he's right. So I want you to listen to him now. And I'm just going to go back to my office. So he said he left. He left me there with them. And he said later that day, I went over to his office and talked to him. I was like, what happened?

And he says, he looked at me and said, you know, I was thinking about it after you said that. And I reacted. And I realized that actually at Pixar Animation, right, which is another company that he owned, right, I had always valued that principle that they have there that until a movie is released, if there is a better idea, we should implement it. We should implement it. And he said, that's always been something I have prided myself over,

our capacity to always keep, you know, embracing new innovation. And he said, so I changed my mind about that. And I wanted to offer that up in the context of what you just said, because, I mean, I consider the first part of like his reaction when he boomed and just shut him down to be Steve Jobs 1.0, you know?

It's like Hopper 1.0. You're right, isn't it? Right, yeah, that was like you and for the Hopper, yeah. Wow, that's cool. That's a good way of thinking about it. Yeah. Mike, and then there's Steve Jobs 2.0, right? That's right. And there are people like Ed Catmull, the CEO of Pixar Animation, who said like, look, the Steve Jobs that I knew over the course of 20 years, he was very different from the one that I first encountered.

He kept evolving and changing, and he learned his lessons from some of the things he didn't do well in Apple 1.0, right? And so if you take that idea, then there's hope for all of us. It's something I've been experimenting with and I've been, you know, finding really great outcomes with my executive MBA students at Columbia, with some of our clients at Mentora, where basically, and I think this is going to be something very resonant with you because of your work, right? And please react to this, therefore, which is that when we invite executives to take pause for 10 minutes before critical events that are coming up there's a presentation they have to

do the board they have to walk into this conversation and lay off a couple of you know 100 people or they have to do this that they have to do that when we invite these executives to basically take 10 minutes and give them a structured sort of guidance as to what to do with those 10 minutes to check their emotional state, put them into the state of calmness and receptivity and openness to the experience

they're going to have to go through, which might be otherwise uncomfortable for them and feel like, why me? Why do I have to do this? No, no, no, no.

Open yourself up to that. Take it from a space of like open possibilities as to what it might unfold. And then maybe be planful a little bit about a couple of these energies and actions. The human part of the equation as opposed to what it might unfold. And then maybe be planful a little bit about a couple of these energies and actions, the human part of the equation,

as opposed to purely the PowerPoint presentation and or the Excel spreadsheets that you needed for it. No, no, no, just the human part of the equation. It's amazing. You know, they go in there and they act much more as a 2.0 version of themselves than the 1.0 version. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore.

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of emotional mastery of how when your emotions are at a calmer place you are much more likely to be zooming out and seeing things in a bigger picture way versus zooming in and only seeing it for the things that is causing you anxiety or anger, right? And or the science of intentionality, right? If you have a situation that you're approaching from a negative mindset and you just assume that you're going to fail or that this person is going to act this way, you just limit yourself from going in there and behaving with facial expressions, tone of voice, words, et cetera, that might draw the better version of that person and all that, right?

And so intention really matters. So that's one part of the science, which is a pretty rich body of work, right? It's robust, yeah, 100%. I didn't think there was one study or a series of studies. It's a mix of things. To me, it's a mix of things all pointing to the value of starting from a place of committed, calm,

connected, curious. Here we go, yeah. We're going to get to it, yeah. Okay, and then the other thing which has been done, if you want to call it in my labs, calm, connected, curious. Here we go. We're going to get to it. Yeah. Okay. And then the other thing which has been done, if you want to call it in my labs, right, in my Columbia executive MBA students class, as well as with our executives, it's through our own pilots and work. We've been able to now quantify over about five, six, 800 of these situations, you know,

and what we find is that typically people end up excelling at those and what their own standard might be about 20% of the times. When they start applying this method, the very first time they apply it, we saw that number 20 go to about 24%, you know, which is about a 20% boost for a 4 upon 20, right? And then by doing it again and again, within about 10 of these iterations, which is the maximum that we've tracked so far, that 24% becomes 47%. Come on. 47%. So there's about basically 150% boost in performance.

And that 47% or the 20%, the anchoring question was about their experience? The anchoring question was, think about the high stakes moment, right? What was your goal for that, right? And the goal might be, I need to get buy-in from these stakeholders for this budget, or I need to get this person to accept my feedback. Oh, so it was even an external goal.

It wasn't an internal. No, no. It was an external goal, right? To do with- Even more complicated. A certain outcome that they're looking for, right? And then on a one to five scale, did you completely meet that goal, which would be a five, mostly is a four and all that. And so this 20% I mentioned was a five on five. And so the

five on five rating goes from 20% to 47% of the time. That's interesting that you chose to do an outcome that is out of their control as opposed to an outcome that is 100% under their control which is like if I do so it's like a from two if I do this I'll move from an agitated state to a calm state and I know if I'm calm connected yes on your seas that I'm the I will bring my best into that environment yes then if let's say because when people are the opposite of the five Cs and they're anxious and irritated and agitated and tunnel vision and da, da, da, da, self-referencing as opposed to purpose referencing, that it would be an easy narrative to say, when you're in that state, you're most likely not going to convey people that your idea is spot on. So you went to external. I'll tell you why and how, right? Yeah. idea is spot on. So you went to external outcome. I'll tell you why and how, right? So first of all,

as you can imagine, I mean, the arena that we play in, I mean, people are ultimately also keen to get better, you know, external outcomes, right? I mean, they do want that. So that's one part. Yeah, that's interesting. But here's the other part, right? And so you have been very actively tapping certain fields of psychotherapy. You know, you mentioned that in your book. Right. You're now talking about cognitive behavior therapy, for example, as one of those. So I had the privilege of working very closely with one of the preeminent exponents of that discipline, Dr. David Burns from Stanford University, right? Feeling good in neurotherapy and beyond. So he and I partnered over time. And I said, look, David, you focus on minimizing pain and i want to take your beautiful work and i want to use it to help people maximize gain you know because because that's another you know community

of people just hungry hungry you know out there in the world and so in importing those tools over you know to that world which again is not alien to you because you you're doing it so beautifully yourself um one thing i learned from him is the power of the micro over the macro, right? So the macro would be, I want to succeed in my career. I want to be the greatest leader in the world. I really want to be able to transform this organization. The micro is, how are you showing up in your moments of truth? You know, when this person walks into your office, how are you showing up for that person?

When you actually have to do that presentation, when there's this terrible conflict going on in the world, how do you show up in that moment, right? So in these micro moments. And what I noticed in David is that what he was really emphasizing is that if people can master these micro moments, you just create the condition where the whole fabric of your leadership and your organizational journey and all that starts to become a lot more illuminated. I mean, it's worth repeating what you just said. That is worth repeating. That mastery of micro moments really rests on your ability

to be aware and present of what's happening. And that's resting, micro moments are resting on micro decisions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's small little choices that you're making. Am I open or am I agitated? Yeah. You know, like it's small little, and I asked Dr. Woody Holberg, one of, I think he's one

of the best of us. And I don't say this lightly. He's just nine or 10 out of 10 on spiritual awakeness, physical, whatever. So he just got back from the International Space Station. So he's an astronaut. And MIT trained as well. I mean, the brightest and the best of the best. And so I said, what does it mean to be your best?

He goes, huh. He goes, I don't know. It's just like throughout my day i'm making all these really small choices and the small choices i'm making you know in every little second is like i'm just trying to choose those moments to be my very best it's like it comes down to my little micro choices yeah it's so simple it's just so simple right there but you can't do it if you're not aware you can't do it if you don't have first principles yeah and you really can't do it if you're somebody that would say i had a bad day what your whole day your whole day was bad yeah do you mean you had a bad moment

you couldn't recover do you mean you had a moment that challenged you to your to your essence and you didn't know how to respond? Is that what you mean? So like, can you imagine having a bad day? Yeah, yeah. So anyways, okay, so fun, because if people, back to your original point, if people were to do something for 10 minutes prior to a perceived-

High stakes moment or emotionally charged moment or something. And in those 10 moments, you're having them downregulate and become more open to... What were you doing in those 10 minutes? Yeah, in those 10 minutes,

which actually is another thing I talk a fair amount in the HBR article for those who want to kind of get a deeper dive. But essentially, step one is set a goal for that. Not just a business goal, but like a humanistic outcome that you want.

Like, I want to build more trust with this person. I want them to be able to walk out after I've delivered the sensitive news, but in a way that makes them feel cared for and makes them feel honored, even though it was a little bit materially of a loss for them, whatever it is that I just had to kind of speak to them about them getting a lower bonus, them not getting the promotion, us not doing the deal with them, whatever it might be. Kind of what Nelson Mandela did.

Yeah, exactly. Right. In that moment. Or I want them to be inspired and motivated so that I leave, but they still go keep going on on this quest in a way that is really important, despite the challenges in the industry. So you set a goal. That's number one. And number two is that you check in on your emotional state and just make sure that you are not feeling consumed by certain constrictive, negative, victimizing type of limiting emotions, right?

Like I feel like, oh, this person never gets it. Finance will never talk to marketing. I have no power in this room. Why am I doing this anyway? I'm just going through the motions because I have to. No, no, no. You've got to put that clutter aside and you've got to be able to walk in and say, you know what? There's always possibilities in this. At the minimum, I'll have a deeper

understanding of this person. We'll be able to start taking the first few steps towards a little bit more trust. I'm hopeful that we'll get to this outcome that I want, but I know it's been a little bit tricky or difficult to get these two parties together. And at the minimum, I'll experiment with some new behaviors. And you never know. This is the way it's been repeatedly the last three times, but with this new behavior, who knows what's some new behaviors. And you never know. This is the way it's been repeatedly the last three times. But with this new behavior, who knows what's possible, right? And so this is the opportunity that life is presenting to me in this. So how can you create a positive intention for this?

And then you start to play around with some of these energies and actions to say, okay, there needs to be a little bit more human connection here. So let me use these two actions from the love energy, like, you know, know appreciate or affiliate because i think that will be really valuable to create a sense of warmth in a room where trust is a little bit broken so in this third part would you have them pull from the five energy sources and i know we've only done three wisdom purpose and growth growth yeah and the fourth and fifth one i love and civilization and so yeah so there's this you know library of these lego blocks you know these these actions. I love it. Right. So, so yeah. So you, you basically, I would, I would ask people to pick three and now we actually have

a method and a tool through which we are able to, uh, three out of the 25 actions. Oh, 25 actions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so you get, so, so as an example, you take the energy of wisdom, right. Which is about truth seeking.

One of those actions was Dizam, right? Dizam says- Oh, I see what you did. So you've got five core capability, five core, what do you call them? Energies. Energies, yep. And then from each five, you've got five actions.

Yeah, roughly speaking, five per, in one case there's six, in one case there's four. Oh, so you had to go- Yeah, yeah. It's all nice. Yeah, right. Okay. But that's the nature of the world.

Yeah, no, that's good. Yeah, yeah. And okay, so then right. Okay. But that's the nature of the world. Yeah, no, that's good. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then you have them pick three of those five. Three out of the 25 actions. Out of the 25 actions. Oh, that's really cool. And the reason for that is because, look, I mean, ideally I'd want you to have all 25 of them in your arsenal,

and you'll get there over time. And at some level, these actions are already part of who you are. But with the vantage point of trying to make you grow and up your game and strive to get a certain kind of early breakthrough, you know, the vantage point of trying to make you grow and up your game and strive to get a certain kind of early breakthrough, you know, the atomic habits

kind of idea, right? You know, which is, I mean, you were talking to me about it, you know, just, you know, earlier, right? About your moment in San, what is it, in San Diego?

Where you did that sort of early in your career with 120 athletes? Where did that go? Where was that? And getting to help them spend five minutes in a certain practice.

No, that was late night sports. That was the, it minutes in a sudden practice. No, that was Late Night Sports. It was in L.A. In L.A., okay. And it was a nonprofit that I started that brought young high school and college-age athletes together on Saturday night. And the only price to admission was you had to listen to me for four minutes you know and so so it's taking this big field of science of psychology applied sports psychology if you will and getting it down to four minutes and it's something they can practice that night so that so in some respects that's kind of like an action like a middle micro something right yeah but it's almost the same process which is

like before you go do the thing yeah do this thing yeah and do you teach them about mental imagery because it sounds like what you're doing is some some of the you know what would be a best practice in sports psychology which is imagining your future state yeah yeah yeah yeah so let me ask you this when you do that in sports psychology are you imagining are you inviting them to imagine like being you know on the pedestal receiving the gold medal and the crowd applauding? Or do you also invite them to imagine the process of getting there, like a play in the game or what somebody would do and what they would do? Because I call it visualization, but that's kind of more the state of play and the you know all of that i don't use visualization anymore because i want to invoke a word that embodies all five senses okay and imagination does more than visual yeah so i use imaginary imagery out of imagination okay and um i do an 85 15 85 percent of the time

it's seeing themselves kicking ass i see okay like being their very best yeah and slowing it down speeding it up seeing it from different directions there's five steps i walk through there's some creativity in there yeah 15 of the time um i have them seeing themselves in a very compromised situation i see and working through that slowing it down yeah seeing it from different perspectives yeah but working through if if if you and i were cage fighters yeah okay like put yourself in a end game choke choke out position right where somebody's got they have your back and they've got their arms and legs wrapped around you yeah and they're choking you out like how do do you, that's a, that's a compromise situation now. How do you navigate yourself from that point of view? And so 85, 15, 85 success, 15 compromise. And then

almost like a throwaway, if you want at the end, see yourself with your fist raised, see yourself with the belt around, but that's like a nanosecond. Yeah. Okay. Right. Okay. And then, um, and then there's always a last moment, which is see yourself walking. There's a, there's usually quiet moments, see yourself walking by yourself, um, from let's say the arena to the bus or from the arena to your car. Okay. Like that moment, how do you want to feel in that moment right so there's an interesting directionality in that but the essence of the science is um is using all five of your senses yeah to feel see hear smell yeah haste you know see how you'd like to be in the next in a in a state that you haven't or um an experience that you haven't been in yeah you know and there's a real science to that it takes time that's a skill yeah so

there's a practice there yeah um and if you're only doing the visual part you're missing the entire you're missing the bulk of your imagination and we all know the power of imagination so yes so anyways yeah no thank you i i have seen visualization as ultimately the power of imagination. So, yes. So anyways. Yeah, no, thank you. I have seen visualization as ultimately the exercise of all those five imagination, you know, senses, but I've stayed with the word and I really like your mindfulness

and saying like, you listen, but that word kind of limits people and often you have to qualify and explain to them that you don't just mean that you have to have visual images. And, you know,

some people are not good with the visual side, but they're good with the feeling of being in that, and the emotions. I think the feeling is more important as a bellwether or as a North Star than the seeing of the image. And let's be really clear. Let's put this idea to rest.

At least I will. Maybe you're going to not allow me to do so, so, so eloquently here is that if you see it, it doesn't mean it's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Right. The, um, that mystical idea that like, if you imagine the red portion, your driveway, it's going to happen. Like, yeah, no, yeah. You got to put some work in, you know, but there's, there is nothing wrong with like spending time seeing that if you want to. Yeah. That's cool. But that's, you got to put some work in, you know, but there's, there's nothing wrong with like spending time seeing that if you want to. Yeah. That's cool. But that's, you got to do some work. Well, that's the, you know, view with which I was asking the question that I also come into this conversation with is like to my knowledge and understanding and experience,

it's much more valuable to be imagining like that state of play, flow the state you bring into it and perhaps a couple of scenarios and situations in which you want to make sure that you can visualize how well let's call it imagine that you will be um holding holding that space for grace you know from you so i really enjoyed like learning and understanding your 85 15 rule and you know just like half a percent or one percent that you focus on that. And yeah. But then also this thing about walking, um, you know, to your car, like, I love that. Like, yeah. What got you to think about that as being. Well, you know, it was my grandfather.

And by the way, the 85, 15 is not research-based. That's something I've done for years. And it feels like I'm honoring, um, the experience and not just being naive that 85, like a hundred percent of the time see success. Like it's just not how it works. Right. I want to feel myself in compromised situations and have repetitions and almost like a free pass at sorting it out rather than only being able to sort it out in the moment. So, you know, so that 85 and 15 just feels like it's honoring, you know, the complexity of experience. So the, the quiet moment, you've heard this phrase, like, when you look in the mirror, only when you shave and you look in the mirror, only you really know

who you are, Mike. This is my grandfather's wisdom. That generation, it was a War World 2 generation. And he says, so that's me honoring that and whatever the quiet moment is at the end you know yeah if you really brought yourself you know if you were looking for relief versus um the creative love affair with the unknown you know if you were just trying to get out of it or if you were so tight and tense that you couldn't access your creativity yeah required for being on time with a moment that you've never been in before so you know if you had a love affair with it or you got lucky if you were honest with your preparation or you were more interested in not looking bad than really applying your very

best. Because to apply your very best means that you're right on an edge. You don't know how it's going to go. And that's a very scary place. Most people are looking for relief from the anxiety of not knowing how something's going to go. And most people are agitated and anxious going in. And that's why relief is kind of one of the the mechanisms that people just i just want to get it done i just yeah why do i do this to myself like i just need to get it done yeah like i signed up for this thing and like what you're really looking for is relief because you don't love the not knowing how something's going to go. And I understand that because being out of control is hard. And some people have real trauma around that, like real trauma.

And so we're all just trying to figure it out. We're all just trying to do our very best here. Let me ask you this. So in that method, we have emphasized and focused on the pre like the prep part do you also bring this inner life aspect to focus in some of the after action review kind of like piece that oh yeah we call it hot wash hot wash yeah so we do a hot wash um every meeting here at finding mastery um even after you and i do this podcast we'll have our my team will have a hot wash. Yeah. This is born out of one of my Navy SEAL friends who, um, this was a best practice before you take care of, um, a shower, which is taking care of yourself. You take care of your gear, your equipment before you take care

of your gear, you take care of the team and the mission. And so the hot wash is literally your dirt, your dirty from the intensity of the environment and it's a quick rinse of what just happened it's two questions what went well what do we want to work on yeah and if you can get one applied statement out of it it's cool but it's a moment to honor the mission and the team before you take care of your equipment before you take care of yourself okay which is a nice so it's a hot watch it's a quick dirty little like what just happened and we structure it what went well what do we want to work on? And any athlete that is listening to this right now that I've spent time with, they

would say, oh, wait, we do that after every practice, Mike. That's what we do, right? Yeah. And we do that after every game. Tell them, Mike. Tell them. So after every practice, we treat practices and games as the same for the most part. And so after every practice, what went well?

What do you want to work on? After the game, what went well? What do you want to work on? So it's a hot wash either with yourself or some other folks that are on the team. Yeah, yeah. Very good. Very good. I mean, it's simple.

It's like two minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's no real pleasantries in it. Yeah. You know, you don't have to do the sandwich approach. There's something, you know, it's like, hey, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Yeah, this capacity to have us just stop being in a state of judgment about good versus bad, but instead just sit on neutral embrace of the truth, right?

In whichever way it's coming to you. Yeah, that's right even when i said earlier a bad day yeah i even bristled that i said it because like there's so much judgment in yeah bad day good day yeah but the idea that somebody is going to frame their entire day yeah as bad yeah as a double negative you know, let me bring it back to where we started from, right? The mystics in my case, right? If there is truly an all-loving force out there and that force is all-knowing

and is actually all-powerful, then how can you ever have a bad day? Because that force loves you and whatever the force is giving to you, bequeathing to you for that day has to be coming from some illuminated place. Now, you may not have the full illumination yet in the present moment to know why or what or how.

So engaging in some amount of sense-making or meaning-making all the time, I should like, what could be the message here? Or what am I meant to manifest in this moment? Or how am I meant to grow from this or whatever? That can be a conversation that you can always be having with yourself, but you never ever allow yourself to judge anything

as being bad for you in that context. And I'll give you a little story just to kind of illustrate how I, like, from time to time, been reminded of that lesson, been reminded when I fall, you know, from grace, from these standards. So I was in an airplane, actually, coincidentally, coming to LA. I was in New York. And the plane just sat in tarmac for a long time. And, you know, we're just waiting, waiting, waiting. And finally, they make the announcement.

This is late in the evening now. It's probably, I don't know, I i forget 9 p.m or something they said unfortunately we're going to have to come back to the gate because um the faa has regulations about how long a crew can work and this crew already has now exceeded if we fly to la we would be exceeding the hours that the crew is allowed to work i've been on this yeah announcement before i see i see and so like and so i was like damn it you know you did i just said something like like oh no you know or something i mean it's tinder 1.0 exactly and this lady next to me right she just looks at me with so much grace and she says

everything happens for a reason and she just like just smiles and just everything happens for a reason but i'm looking at her like oh no like come on let's share in a mutual like state of suffering yeah yeah and she's like you know everything happens for a reason okay this is the first trope that you've had the first kind of like i was going to comment on it yeah but it actually didn't come from you it came from your your yeah exactly but you haven't used one what are they called? I'm blanking on what it's called. Like, what are those called? Like everything happens for a reason. Yeah.

What are those phrases called? I don't know. Proverbs or cliches. Okay. Yeah. You haven't used one cliche yet. And I'm, I really appreciate that. Wow.

Yeah. I know I didn't necessarily observe that about my language, but yeah. So I, one thing I learned from mathematics you know my first love really is about going back to first principles you know i would never allow myself to just um replicate a certain sort of step-by-step approach to solving a certain equation or something just because that was the formula given to you in the book you know i never wanted to follow the formula i wanted to understand like what the underlying logic was and how you can go back to the axioms

and therefore do it step by step. So I don't know, maybe that's also something I'd attempt to and try to do with language rather than go for some scaffolding, try to go back like, what is, you know,

what is this? But probably everything happens for a reason is a first principle for her. Yeah. And it's a, you know, it's a, okay, so here's how powerful

it was for me in that moment. So I, you know, so we enter back into the terminal and at this point the airline is saying was for me in that moment. So I, you know, so we enter back into the terminal and at this point the airline is saying, like, we're going to give you,

you know, we're going to give you a place to stay here at the airport because, you know, New York is far away from many of you

and we're going to put you in the first flight out in the morning. It turns out it's a long line for the airport queue and I was like, yeah,

you know, I think I just, I'm better off just going back home and sleeping at least five hours and the amount of time it'll take me

to get this hotel from these folks and so I take the off just going back home and sleeping at least five hours. The amount of time it'll take me to get this hotel from these folks. And so I take the cab and go back home. And I'm entering my apartment and I'm feeling a little hungry. So at some point, I'm detecting a strange smell. And I go over to the kitchen. And as I'm wanting to just turn my gas on, I left the gas on. Come on. I left the gas on. Come on. I left the gas on.

And the smell I'm getting is of the gas. We don't really know, do we? Everything happens for a reason. Right? Like I could judge it to be a horrible day, a horrible moment. Maybe I would have come home and the gas would have not been on.

Who knows what else might have caused that thing to happen for me. But it was just like, to me, it was the universe talking to me which is just in case you thought she was just like saying a cliche it's real what a joy your depth your soul your research your clarity the wisdom the purpose that's clear the growth that you've committed to, the self-realization that you work from. I mean, thank you. Yeah. Michael, I'm only comfortable leaving this space if I get a commitment from you, which is that we're going to have another one of these conversations soon.

And those are going to be ones where I would love to draw even more out of you. I know so much of what you just said is beautiful and it's just the tip of the iceberg because there's so much I feel like my listeners also can learn from you. So I want to do a little bit more of this. Love it. Yeah, yeah.

Ditendra, thank you so much. Thank you too. Yeah, awesome. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're

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