Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Hitendra Wadhwa on How To Pursue Success by Letting Your True Self Shine Through in Everything You Do EP 326

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa, a professor at Columbia Business School and Founder of the Mentora Institute, joins host John R. Miles on the Passion Struck podcast to discuss the importance of inner work and personal development in achieving success. Hitendra is the author of the new book Inner Mastery, Outer Impact: How Your Five Core Energies Hold the Key to Success. Want to learn the 12 philosophies that the most successful people use to create a limitless life? Pre-order John R. Miles’s new book, Passion Struck, releasing on February 6, 2024. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/hitendra-wadhwa-pursuit-of-success/  Bridging the Gap: Balancing Inner Core and Outer Success - Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa If you're feeling overwhelmed and frustrated by your lack of progress toward your goals, despite taking all the action steps you think you should be taking, then you are not alone! Many individuals experience this pain when they realize that external efforts alone are insufficient to achieve true success. You may neglect the importance of inner work and personal development, which are crucial in unlocking your full potential and creating lasting, meaningful success. In today's episode with Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa, you will learn that focusing on your inner growth can cultivate the self-confidence and mindset necessary to overcome obstacles and achieve authentic, impactful success. Brought to you by Netsuite by Oracle: Visit netsuite.com/passionstruck to defer payments of a FULL NetSuite implementation for six whole months. Brought to you by Lifeforce: Join me and thousands of others who have transformed their lives through Lifeforce's proactive and personalized approach to healthcare. Visit MyLifeforce.com today to start your membership and receive an exclusive $200 off. Brought to you by Indeed: Claim your SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR CREDIT now at Indeed dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. Brought to you by OneSkin. Get 15% off OneSkin with our code [PassionStruck] at #oneskinpod. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/zVtSZuDCWD8  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Marshall Goldsmith on How You Create an Earned Life: https://passionstruck.com/marshall-goldsmith-create-your-earned-life/  Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the AMFM247 broadcasting network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for “AMFM247” Network  

Coming up next on Passion Struck. The thesis I want to offer is that actually the true source of both outer and inner success lie in anchoring ourselves in a core that the movie go in this very sort of adventuresome, the suit of what is at my very core, who am I truly at my very core, and pull away from our false friends, the false pulls and demands on us,

which wants to please others or indulge in myself what have you, we go to the truth source and the truth behind everything, our core. The more we start to feel increasingly true to ourselves, from within. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 326 of PassionStruck. Consistently ranked by Apple is one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts and the number one alternative health podcast. And thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly. But listen, and learn, how to live better, be better, and impact the world. Passion Struct is now on syndicated radio on the AMFM247 National Broadcast.

Catch us on your evening commute Monday and Friday from 5-6pm Eastern time. Links will be in the show notes. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, we now have episode starter packs which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we put into convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.

In case you missed it, last week I interviewed Amy Finkelstein, professor of economics at MIT, and a MacArthur fellow, we discuss her groundbreaking work on healthcare reform. I also interviewed Andre Solo, who was a co-founder of sensitive refuge, and a co-author of the new book sensitive, where he reveals the hidden power of highly sensitive people in a world that can often be overwhelming in chaotic. The interview delves into a comprehensive understanding of sensitivity and highlights the unique strengths that sensitive individuals bring to the world. I also wanted to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews.

If you love today's episode or either of those others that I mentioned, we would so appreciate you giving it a 5 star rating and review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments and questions from our listeners. In today's episode, we have a very special guest, Hattendra Wadwa, author of the groundbreaking book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact,

how your five core energies hold the key to success. I really love this interview with Hitendra, and we have so much in common on the importance of inner mastery in driving success in life. In our episode, Hitandra introduces powerful framework for achieving success, that starts from within, specifically focusing on what he calls one's inner core. Grang from his extensive research, he reveals that each individual possesses five core energies, purpose, wisdom, growth, love, and self-realization. Understanding and developing these inner energies

has a profound impact on how we define and attain external success. With his immensely popular personal leadership and success course at Columbia's Business School, Dr. Wadwa has guided countless individuals towards creating the conditions for both inner and outer success fostering a harmonious alignment between the two. He brings forth invaluable insights on authenticity, leadership, and unlocking human potential. In today's interview, you will gain

invaluable knowledge on the significance of inner work and how to incorporate it into your daily routine, exploring the power of silence and solitude and finding answers to challenging questions, cultivating an abundance of self-love and acceptance, as well as key steps to achieve enlightenment and how to apply them to leadership. Patandra is not only a professor at Columbia Business School, but also the founder of the Mentorant Institute, with his extensive coaching experience with Fortune 100 C-Suite executives, and his role in teaching and transforming the lives of thousands of individuals worldwide. His insights are both practical and transformative. Go in us on this enlightening journey as we delve into the depths of personal and leadership

success. Get ready to tap into your inner core and unlock your true potential. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me as your host and guide in your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited today to have Dr. Hattendra Wadwa on Passion Struck. Welcome, Hattendra. Thank you, John.

Great to be here with you and your listeners. Well, I have been lucky enough to travel to India many times. And I understand growing up in India, you spent a lot of your time partaking in what you call the sumptuous feast of spirit. And I wanted to ask, how did your family retreats and your father's spiritual bookshelf help you to create a routine at a young age of inner and outer routines? Wow, that's a really powerful punch which to start a conversation, John, and I'm deeply appreciative of you taking me back to that very formative period in my life. Yeah, look, part of it is that in India, the idea of enlightenment and transcendence and

the afterlife and a higher power and the embrace of truth seeking is just like it's in the ether, it's in the air, you just casually drop it in conversations and the embrace of truth seeking. It's just like it's in the ether, it's in the air. You just casually drop it in conversations and any kind of conversations in the classroom in the executive arena and the government or just in a circle of friends. And so part of the sum choose feasting of spirit in India is because you can't escape it, it's just everywhere.

And what it does is just like engenders and perhaps people who are growing up there, some kind of deep roots in inner life, which they may or may not know Cheva and water, month upon month and year upon year, but it's something very real as a dimension to the Indian psyche. So I feel grateful and blessed that was a key part of just like growing up. But then in addition, as you were saying, there were a couple of catalyzing influences in my case. One was that, yes, my father was a very curious man, and he therefore had collected together a range of texts on the scriptures. Sometimes the scriptures themselves were often interpretations and understanding of the scriptures from different sources. And these would certainly relate to the Hindu scriptures, the religion,

faith I could grew up in. But Hinduism is a very open system kind of faith. So faith that takes a lot of curiosity and interest in a sense in every faith because what they really teach you in Hinduism is the idea that there are many paths up the mountain top of enlightenment. And while they might be one end that we're all trying to reach to, that each of us is on our own path, is on our own journey. And so, therefore, when that faith ends up in a facing with or encountering anybody from a faith that they haven't yet had any familiarity with, what engenders in them is not as much desire

to necessarily defend our faith or argue that one is better than the other or try to convert the other party, but more to be curious, to be invested, to be interested, to extract the crown jewels of that faith in terms of what are some best practices here in terms of the way you practice devotion, the way you practice spare, the principles and the basis of which you have as a community really developed your life and all of that. And sometimes who are your prophets, who are your saints, what are their stories? And wow, I'd like to embrace that in my world as well.

That was, in a sense, the Hindu attitude, like frame through which my father had fairly eclectic sort of books out there. And it really helped me just feed my own curiosity. I did dive into philosophy as well. I found it somewhat drier in nature. I found a deeper mystical kind of text to be more experiential, more immersive and something that was more fused between the individual and the universe. So that was one and the second, as you mentioned, were these retreats. And so when I was around 10 years old, my parents both got very deeply invested in starting to more formalize their own true seeking journey and they got very drawn to the teachings of yoga and under who came to the United States in 1920 at the age of 27 to be a pioneer in the growth of yoga and teachings of that tradition of yoga into the Western world. And as he came here and set up an organization, it actually made his way back to India as well. And so my parents started to dive into some of his teachings and I got very drawn to them as well. And to the ashrams, the retreats and the monastics that he had cultivated over the

years. I'm diving to them now in the 1970s of an organization that at that time was like 50 years old. But it became a very special escape for me. When it's came from the humdrum and the distractions of modernity and the outer life to a place where I could really pull back and examine for myself, what are my my deepest earnings and saying the true meaning of life is and he meant to do and be in this life. So yes, I'm super grateful for those very early wanderings both intellectually but also just physically and spiritually that my parents helped and the culture of India helped in gender. Well, I always enjoyed all my visits there and I was lucky enough to probably go to

eight or nine different parts of the country. So I got to see a lot of it and I was always struck by just how genuine and welcoming everyone always was towards me. Sure, it was different because I was an executive and most of the people I was around were my service providers, but I still cherish the times that I got to spend over there. Wow. Yeah, no, I'm grateful and thankful that you share that, John. India can be a little bit of a conundrum for many. It is highly diverse as highly old culture. And can be in some ways highly chaotic as well to the naked eye.

I like to sometimes describe my journey as I was blessed to grow up in a land in India, which is very beautiful on the inside and can be sometimes quite messy on the outside. And then I come to America the year 21 to do graduate school and beyond my professional life as well at dance and I say and then I come to this country which is so very beautiful on the outside and can be something a little bit messy on the inside. And so my goal in life has been really, how do you create a more whole humanity, a more whole civilization, a more whole world, where the inner and outer beauties are just very intricately combined and connected with each other. And one is like the source and inspiration for the other.

Well, something you and I have in common as we both spent time in management consulting companies. You were with McKenzie and I got my start with booze and co and then it ended up going to Anderson Business Consultant. How did that experience shape your understanding of leadership and success? Because for me, some of the core methodologies as well as getting to work on a plethora of different company

environments has been instrumental I think to the foundation that propelled me to have success in my own career. Thank you for bringing that up. So first of all I have to confess and this is the first time I'm making a public confession of this, booze rejected me after the first interview. I had such a intellectually stimulating first interview with booze, but I obviously wasn't yet prepared to play the consulting game. But that rejection at that time taught me a big lesson. I had doubled down on preparing myself even harder for consulting interviews. That was for a summer associate appointment. So I took me a whole year before I was fully graduating and ready to do the fuller plunge into

consulting interviews. I have this in some ways very fond relationship with Booz because I remember how much of an important lesson it taught me and how stimulated I was in those early days for my first interview, but pain that was as well and not being able to take it to the next level. So I had stopped you for making it all the way through. I agree with you. I sometimes look at my years at McKinsey as not necessarily my most enjoyable, but they were definitely among my most valuable, from the vantage point of the growth I went through. And I don't really at all blame the culture of McKinsey in any way for them not being the most enjoyable. I had a very confined and limiting set of attitudes in the early stages of my time at McKinsey in any way for them not being the most enjoyable. I had a very confined and limiting set of attitudes in the early stages of my time at McKinsey that would make me assess and judge certain experiences through a lens that was confining. I would assume that you either

were going to shine or you're going to fail. And the idea of learning your way into shining over a period of time was something that I grew into over time through the apprentice system that McKinsey had that really rigorously gave you feedback and guided you and then held your accountable and then over a period of time through iterations, you worked your way out of certain limited ways of thinking and doing and being to a more effective way of problem solving and communicating and teamsmanship, et cetera. That mindset change into much more growth mindset that I can be and develop and evolve into anything I want to be in terms of my capacity to engage with senior executives in industry on the hardest strategic problems and come not with a whole lot of background in that industry or in

that function, but learn my way into logically pulling apart issues mathematically, almost figuring out the right information to collect and argumentation to develop and insights to generate and overtime robust recommendations to build. And so the first learning was around the attitude shift. And the second learning for me was to repackage my mathematical mind. I had a passion for mathematics growing up and my bachelor's was in mathematics and then my PhD was basically quantitative business and here I'm now at McKinsey and I'm not seeing a whole lot of numbers

all the time. There's a lot of circles and boxes and arrows and qualitative and strategic arguments and organization realities and yes every now and then there are numbers as well. But I had to recognize that I may have left mathematics, but that doesn't mean mathematics had to leave me. I could apply precision of thinking and pattern recognition and logical argumentation as much to qualitative data and behavioral issues as I had in the past applied to quantitative data. And once I opened myself up to that, which was not an easy journey for me, but very learning bridge, the floodgates open, and about a year and a half into my journey there,

I started to really engage, really enjoy, and continue to learn so much until I finally chose to leave, because there were other things my heart was being drawn to. But I think, as you rightly said, I feel deeply grateful. And in some ways, it's been like a really indispensable foundation on which to build the rest of my career. Well, you ended up spending some time and startups. You've now been teaching at Columbia Business School for around 20 years, but during your time teaching there, you came to an interesting discovery

that what you and your peers were teaching at the Columbia Business School was how to lead everyone else, but you weren't teaching the students how to lead yourself. Can you discuss that journey and how you discovered it? It's a traditional, if you want to call it a Western model of leadership, right? It's very much about, I have to assert power, I have to exude confidence and I have to do my duty. And my duty is to inspire the steam and turn it around in a moment of adversity and influence the key stakeholders and have our charging, difficult conversations and drive things forward. That's like the doing kind of heroes model of leadership.

And so that's the way leadership has been approached and taught in business schools, just as anywhere else, as I'm sure you also have seen in your own career. And so what I was sensing is that for me, there was a deeply transformative journey that I had been on in my inner life, right from those early ages in my life that you had wanted on in my inner life, right from those early ages in my life that you had

wanted to early enough conversation. And they had a huge imprint on my approach to situations, to people, to life's quests and all of that. And I somehow intuitively felt that that was going to be important for anybody who was going to be preparing for a role of serious responsibility in society and in business and organizations. And yet that connected issue wasn't there. The business logic wasn't there. The academic sort of like literature on it wasn't there. So about 18 years ago, I started to move my energy

from just the teaching I was doing around strategy and marketing and traditional kind of business topics like that to a study of human nature. I looked at some of the timeless truths from the the scriptures and the ages, which I had long been drawn to. But then I also sought to filter and repackage them through a scientific lens. And what was really nice is that over the last two decades in this century, we have had an explosion of understanding image on what it takes for human beings to flourish and what it takes for humans to be inspired from psychology and psychotherapy and behavioral economics and medicine.

What have you? So I started to develop some meaningful relationships with some of the preeminent exponents in these disciplines like Dr David Burns from Stanford University who's a cognitive behavior therapy guru Dr. Dan Sieger from UCLA who's a pioneer in integrating Buddhism mindfulness and neuroscience into psychotherapy, cattle to act from Stanford who's the name around the growth mindset. So I started to build these partnerships with them, gain some mentorship from them and started to integrate some of that latest science into the curriculum. I also thought it was very valuable to study like real lived stories and journeys in the history

of humanity, people who've done extraordinary things. Like Agandhi and Abraham Lincoln and in our Roosevelt and Mother Teresa, Mandela and Steve Jobs and the Warren Buffett and others. And sure enough, when I started to look at these individuals, I found that oh wow, they were in many ways validating what the scriptures have said or what it takes to live a good life and or what the latest science was showing. Scriptures, science and stories, those were my three foundation blogs. And when I put

this class together, I thought that it's going to be of interest to some small sliver of our MBA population, or Columbia. Most of them will be just more interested in just going out and doing stuff. But I was pleasantly surprised to see what just tapping into some latent hunger that I noticed that this class did for our students of Columbia. There was just such a quick engagement and interest in this discipline. The class called over-subscribe fairly early. It has continue to be over the years. And since then, in the last about 15 years, there has been more and more of this that has started to emerge, the importance of the inner life of an organization of every individual, the pursuit of happiness and meaning and purpose in addition to purely profits and performance on the outside, that CEOs and great cultures nurture if they really want to create sustainable, meaningful enterprises.

And so in some ways, it's not as like a mind-blowing idea today, but I'm grateful that I've had the last 15 years to prepare myself for this moment because it's taken me that much time. I put something out there initially, but I evolved it, and I learned so much from my audiences, the MBA students and executives and doctors and others that I've had the privilege of teaching over the years, this material,

and some of them will come back with their stories or push back at something and offer another idea or a thought. And so over the years, I've definitely come to a more and more matureing, complete, nuanced perspective on how it's not just about leading others, it's not just about leading yourself. It's ultimately a fusion of the two.

It's a fusion of the two, and that fusion needs to be very organic. It's not simply, okay, I'm gonna take classes around how to influence others and have different conversation, and then take classes in how to find my person, manage my emotions, and no, there's got to be one single integrative like energy that you activate from within and that you project on the outside and that then gets activated and the people around you.

And that's what creates an organic, authentic, sustained, great team, a great culture, and perhaps even over time, a great nation. So it's been a very growth rich journey for me. It's very evolutionary. I do feel at peace with the point I reached when I wrote this book in a mastery-outher impact and finally had the final draft done and put in the hands of the publisher.

I remember walking up and telling my wife, I think I can die in peace. And a reason why is because it was like a 15-year journey and I do feel now that while there is going to be so much more to do in the years ahead, that I was achieved at least like one very concrete first step in my understanding of leadership from the inside out. I'm glad you brought the book up. Intermastriata impact because I wanted to ask what inspired you to write it now. inspired you to write it now. It's very much that story I was sharing, the year upon year of evolution, that's happened in this model. I had a few publishers reach out to me early on when they heard about

and learned about the success of my class and what have you in this novel new way of looking at leadership from a much deeper inside out, almost like spiritual lens, but I wasn't really ready. There were things in it intuitively I felt was still incomplete and all of that. I felt myself get increasingly ready about three years ago. But when I started to put pen on paper, I started to further shift into looking at the reader as my audience, rather than the student in a classroom or the executive in a workshop. And I realized, look, this reader's not

going to have a chance to ask clarifying questions or to push back at something because they've had a very different life experience from something I'm claiming. And so I'm going to make sure that I write the book in a way that anticipates all of the confusion or hunger for more clarity on this or that may come up from the reader. And so I've sought to write it still in a conversational way as though the reader and I are having a conversation.

But along the way, it took me that good part of two plus years to get to really feel like I've achieved the deal in terms of offering something up where hopefully the reader will feel as though he or she and I are just sitting in the warm presence of each other rather than they're just reading something hard-wired and written in a book. Well, I love that. And I was hoping so we could introduce the listeners to this concept. Can you explain what the intercore is? The intercore, yeah. So I'll explain it, but, John, with your story experience, both in the military and then in business and and and now in this field of like personal transformation, I love your thoughts on it. Well, let me begin by describing it for a

listener, as you've said. So what happened is over the years as I was teaching this class, more and more students would come up to me and said, Professor, I'm really grateful because you're putting me in touch with my core. I feel like you're really helping me get to my core beliefs. I really feel that I'm more illuminated now about my core purpose and all of that. So I kept seeing this word core recur in their language. And I realized that this inner life that I'm talking about, about character, about your intentions, your values,

your emotions, your thoughts, that is a nice and unifying construct through which to view it. You're in a core. And then a few other light bulbs went off in my head, which I'm going to come back to you in a moment. But first, let me then define how I have sought to define the inner core now. And so the inner core is this space within you, within me, within each of us, from where our best self arises. When we're at that core, then we have beyond ego, we have beyond attachments, we

have beyond insecurities. We can even transcend our own habits and impulses to be deeply committed to some kind of noble cause, calm and receptive to truth in whichever form it comes. Curious and open to growth, not seeing ourselves as rigid and fixed permanently forever, very connected with the people around us and those we serve, and very centered in a joyful spirit within us so that when we show up in the world, we really there to serve, to do our lives best work, not to feed some unhealthy, unfed hunger, so that we still have from within because our spirit is already being very nurtured because we're in touch with the poor. And we drift towards the poor and we drift out of it from

time to time and each of us can make up our own conclusion as to when it is in your career in your life. You have felt closest to your core and perhaps when you're taking that walk in the park or having a conversation with somebody really sees you for the purity of your heart or something and then we drift away. And so the whole quest in some ways for the pursuit of success in life is to deepen our relationship with the core and seek and strive as much as possible to be activating it and expressing it and everything we do.

And then it doesn't matter what vocation we pursue whether it's in a creative arts or in politics or in business or I would have you as long as being in touch with the core and it's the source through which we are being guided and energized, then most likely good things will happen. So yeah, what are your thoughts, John, on that idea? I'll start out by talking about Cretchen Rubin. I had Cretchen on the podcast twice now, but last year when I had her on the first time, we were talking about human nature. And I asked her, what was the most important thing that she has discovered in all her years of studying human nature and happiness? And she said, knowing yourself is the key to unlocking the most bountiful, intentional life that you can possibly have. And I remember

her telling me that and really deep diving for a few weeks on that whole concept because I think for me that whole idea of learning about yourself and its importance really started when I was at the naval academy and it started because I became aware of those leaders who were inspiring me and I found that I was unconsciously starting to walk in their shoes and I found that the leaders that inspired me the most, people like Admiral Stockdale, Astro and Outwendy Lawrence, who was a professor of mine, were deeply rooted in a core belief in themselves and in their core values that they never strayed from. It was their power source.

So really understanding that, I learned that if you want to become the best leader that you possibly could be, you had to learn how to first lead yourself before anyone was going to follow you. And so it's something that I've been practicing with now for 30 years of my life. Sometimes as you said, I have done it better than others. And I think it's a continual journey because we evolve. And as you and I talked about before you came on the show, I have had to reinvent myself so many times during my career. I think that those younger generations who are listening to us today are going to have to do it even more than I probably did because I think this digital future we're walking into is going to force us to evolve in ways that we can't even comprehend right now.

It's already happening around us. What I learned was that we as humans are the ultimate learning device, but it all starts with having confidence in yourself that you can take those steps to go where you want in life. So, that's how I would answer your question, but I think this inner core is extremely important and I wanted to just read something if I could from your book. And you write, it may seem that inner and outer success are doomed to be in conflict that we must choose between them.

The more we focus on getting other people's approval and pursuing success based on their rules, the less we feel true to ourselves. The more we pursue our own agenda and freely express ourselves, the less open feel true to ourselves, the more we pursue our own agenda and freely express ourselves, the less open we are to striking compromises to gain other people's support, and the less quarterly success we enjoy. And you brought up one of the people that you mentioned earlier, which is Warren Buffett, who put it this way, the big question about how people behave is whether they've got

an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard. I believe the two can work hand in hand with each other. I think you do as well. What is the key to getting those to function in an intertwined way? Yeah, yeah. And Warren Bukh is a great example of that, right? Warren Bukh is a great example of that. And here is a person who has resolved that conflict

between the inner and the outer. He's been deeply authentic in his choices. For example, up graduating from Columbia Business School, he wanted to work in finance. He did not choose to stay in the capital of finance, New York City, but instead goes over to Omaha, Nebraska, just because that's where he had lived and he wished to operate out of there.

He's always dressed in very humble attire and driven very humble cars and stayed in a very humble home and all of that. So all of those usual trappings that communicate to the world that look, I'm taking seriously, I'm like super financially successful, just hasn't mattered to him. And so many more ways in which he's exuded and all our tentestity and everything is done. The pursuit of inner success has been so important to him.

And yet he has done a lot of remarkable accomplishments on the outside. And so, yes, the journey that we make in the book is to actually make us aware that the only reason there is ever a disarmony, a conflict between your outer hangas and your inner hangas is if you make the wrong assumptions about what it takes to pursue the outer or to pursue the inner. If your belief is that on the outside I better tow the line, I better just be focusing on pleasing people and there are these 17 behaviors, the experts have said that I need to master and oh, they just became 21.

On old, these five just got eliminated and these four got added because now we're in a much more volatile world or et cetera. If you're gonna be just like getting yourself, hit around by the latest shifts and changes and fashions of the day, it's just gonna be really hard. If you pursue our success from a very sustainable place within and similarly on the inside, if your assumption is that I am authentic, It's just going to be really hard to pursue our success from a very sustainable place within.

And similarly on the inside, if your assumption is that I am authentic, I'm true to myself when I can just indulge in every impulse, every desire, every addiction, every emotion, every thought and belief that I have. And that's my true self in the moment. Well, then you may end up just painful so in situations where today we see much of the world struggling with the mental health and with drug addiction and what have you and clearly as the world has gotten more free in our Western society hasn't necessarily gotten to be ourselves in a core. The more we go in this very adventure, some the huge of what is at my very core, who am I truly at my very core, and pull away from our false friends, the false fools and demands on us, which wants to please others or indulge in myself, what have you, the true source and the truth behind everything, our core.

The more we start to feel increasingly true to ourselves from within. But also somehow we show up in the world with more poise, with more grace, with more what I call inner charisma. And somehow that just draws the right people into our orbit. People are inspired by us. They want to hang out more with us. They trust us more. They see a certain integrity to what we're thinking and

what we're seeing, what we're doing, and what we're feeling. And therefore, it creates the conditions where you don't have to chase out a success. It comes knocking on your own doors. Well, I love that. And you have coached dozens of Fortune 500 C-suite executives. You've taught over 10,000 students about personal leadership and you and other folks that are part of your Mentora Institute have also researched 1,000 exemplary leadership moments. For the top performers that you have seen across this field of people that I just brought up, how do they bring intention

into leadership moments? I really love that intention is so core to your own thesis and model because I've seen that to be the case that as an operational device, it can be the most transformational. So to me, what I see in these individuals is that there are situations that most of us, mere mortals, so to say, might have rejected just based on the surface of things.

Look, this is an individual that I just don't get along with. Or clearly, when I express this bad news to this person that their group is being shut down, they'll be laid off. They're going to dislike me. They're going to dislike me. They're going to be really unhappy when they walk out of this. Or, and how can I motivate my team right now? Bonus is just got slashed.

There's no financial reward. So, so clearly, people are just right now going to be very deep motivated. So, from time to time, we end up just rejecting possibilities in our situation. And in these thousand moments of exemplary leadership that my team and I have collected together and analyzed, a number of these are there in my book, they're from iconic heroes, like a Mandela, but also just like every day,

every day it figures from just around us. What we find is that they were able to achieve breakthrough outcomes, breakthrough outcomes in situations like this. Where you and I would have said, let's just know where Mandela can offer, I can enter the office of the president of South Africa who hates him because Mandela is trying to bring down his government, the apartheid government. And there's no way that he can warm him up. There's no way he can get any concessions from him, etc. Or there's no way someone like a mother

treesos and nun, hunchback, etc. can go to Harvard University and give a commencement address and have the students rising and rousing applause when she's delivering very hard messages to them about the kind of life that live versus what it is that maybe she wants to invite them to consider living. And yet they did that. They got those outcomes. To me, the critical pivotal shift that starts them on this journey to breakthrough performance. Now, there are a few other things I called them, these energies and I called them, these actions. But the critical first pivotal shift is positive intention. In other words, they look at these situations and they see positive opportunity, possibility, a way through which to perhaps open the process of discovery with this individual that they are in massive conflict with,

a way to stir and warm the hearts, a way to deliver a hard message but with a sense of deep caring for the individual and a sense of comfortable support for them, even while what they're hearing materially is not going to be a good outcome for them, etc. That notion of engaging in every interaction, in every decision, on every day of your life, starting by first checking in and asking, what are my thoughts and feelings about this? And if you don't see yourself in a place where you have positive intention about it, where you're walking in without having just summarily rejected the possibilities of transformation of growth, of understanding of victory, of some kind of kinship being developed, even with, sort of, say an enemy,

if I'm not being able to go in with a sense of possibility about that, 80% of the game is already lost. But if you can open yourself up to that intention, then from there on, yes, you have access to other kinds of tools and insights, like these five core energies that talk about my book that can help you to ultimately materialize that intention. Well, that's where I was going to take you next, because in order to achieve this attention, you say that there are these five energies that activate these luminaries and others. Can you explain what those five energies are? Yes, I'm happy to. We usually think

about assessing ourselves in terms of what we say and what we do, behaviors and our speeches and all that. The notion of energy invites us to, in fact, start from a deeper place, which is what is the energy that I'm bringing into the room? What is the energy that I'm sensing from others in this room? Not as tangible, it's not just like the words I hear, it's the tone of their voice, it's the facial expressions with which I engage with people, it's just the core beliefs and thoughts that I'm bringing into the room. And so I've sought to find a way to create structure, come from a math background and so for me, the idea of structure was very important. And so I've sought to create a little structure to this otherwise fuzzy inner life. And that structure for me has been these five energies. The first of these is purpose,

the idea of intentionality again, of why am I doing what I am doing? What is the noble intent, the noble cause that I'm seeking to serve through what is it that we are doing together, me individually or us collectively. And so that's the purpose energy. It fires people up, it takes someone a hero's journey, directs their attention, it allows you to adapt and evolve as conditions change because you are anchored in that purpose on the inside, an adaptive in the goals you said on the outside, based on the constraints you face and the conditions you're exposed to, the Admiral Stopdale example as a tremendous one about how he was able to be in Vietnam, prison or war camp, and still keep himself really grounded and mission-driven. Some glad you brought him up as one of your heroes. He is for me too. That's purpose. The second is wisdom. And wisdom is about recognizing that we may have good intentions on the outside, but as they say, the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. And the reason

for that is sometimes we blur the truth. We get so caught up in a certain emotion or certain blinding belief or a distorted thought that we cannot see how the other person is hinting or indicating or suggesting or hasn't spoken up or there are other facts that need to be brought to bear as well And so we go down the wrong path and do the wrong things because I motions or thoughts carried us in certain wild and crazy Directions and so the purpose energy is all about that discipline with which you stay calm stay receptive to the truth in whichever form it comes The third of these energies is growth, this notion that I'm an ever-expanding, ever-evolving self. There's no rigidity to who I am and where I've reached in life because regardless of how much success I've had, and experience I've had, and power I have,

there's always more for me to evolve, listen, learn, adapt, apologize, other things that do wrong experiment with new ways, and reinvent my own sense of identity. As I keep evolving and growing, as Manela would say, he says, I am not a saint because somebody asked him, like, how do you feel the fact that people think you're a saint? I think it was all pro-Vinprey. And he said, I'm not a saint unless you think of a saint as a sinner who never gave up. So thinking about ourselves as like those sinners who never give up and so we keep evolving towards the end of the time. The fourth of these fifth energies is love and love is the connective tissue in the universe. It's what sort of binds us together as families, as communities, as teams, as organizations, nations, as humanity. Today's generation with future generations and the

past as well. And so yeah, so love, I take it to be this energy through which you can take joy in other people's joy and find success in other people's success. And when you do that, then you just show up as a more human centered, compassionate, empathetic kind, developmently orient caring, kind of leader. So that's love. And then the last of these is self realization. And self realization is in some ways like the catalyst for a lot of my kind of spiritual investigations over the years from that early age. And the invitation in self-realization is to find a more direct pathway through which to tap into your core, to get to your core. And what can for you be the intentional,

conscious, most shortcut pathway towards your core? People are finding today in science that some of these contemplative practices from across the world, great fits, whether it's deep devotional prayer or chanting or affirmations or a mindfulness and meditation that any of all of these are ways for which people report back in very conscious like elevation of the state of engagement with the spirit and

their state of harmony with themselves from the inside. And so self-reization is any role of those practices that you carve out some time for yourself in the day so that when you activate the energy of self-reization, you just feel there's a castle around your heart and nothing that is happening in the material world outside can ever impact it because it's always pure and it's always present to you. Well, I love that and thank you for going through those five hit andrup and so many of the things that you're talking about to coincide with my own vision of what it means to have that inner self that's driving your decisions. Similar to many of the things that I wrote about in my upcoming book, which comes out

in February, and one of the things I think we both agree on is whether you use your five energies or my methodology, et cetera, the most important thing that you need to have is action. Because I believe it's simple actions that activate these energies, especially interaction that end up becoming the building blocks of all the behavioral change that we want in our lives. And I think that's something that you agree with as well. Is that the main object of your book? Are these actions? My book is to try to teach people how to create an intentional life. But I teach kind of

six mindset shifts, six behavioral shifts that the luminary similar to you that I studied go through. But I underpin the whole book in the third portion that none of it begins or ends unless you're taking continuous action. And I think that is something that I learned at an early age. People who are close to me who see me fail and see me have setbacks are like, how do you recover? How do you just keep going? And I've come to the realization that you're going to face those things. In fact, they're the most important things that happen to you. But if you sit there and dwell on them, what good is that going to be? So I choose to learn from them. And then I take actions from those learnings to propel where I want to go further in life. And to use those as I was saying, the building blocks

of things that I need to change in myself to get me to where I want to go in life. And it's interesting because in both our books, we both use Abraham Lincoln as an example. And I have always been fascinated by him because it's interesting that people don't realize that for the vast majority of his life, he self-described himself as a piece of driftwood just aimlessly going through life without intention, without finding that deep meaning. It fascinated me that when he finally found that life-passion of his, he's such a great example of then what can happen when you deploy that and you become, as I would say, a passion struck.

What fascinated you about him? And what are some key lessons that we can learn from Abraham Lincoln about his inner mastery and outer core journey? Yeah, no, thank you for sharing your books. It sounds fascinating and Gudo is putting together this structure to really help because Truth is out there. It's today instantly accessible

You got Google and now you're getting chat GPD and what have you and while there's a lot of confusing muddle stuff out there There's a lot of good stuff to but I find that one of the greatest challenges about time is just how to organize it and How to make it practical for people and so obviously that's what you're doing so, so, so well. So that's great. Yeah, you're right. You pointed to one of my deep loves, Abram Lincoln. And I'm so glad that he has the same resonance with you as well.

For me, like you said, the idea of this young boy who, when many ways had some very humbling initial experiences in life and seemed to be drifting, right? The log cabin, kind of part of the history, losing his mother really young, his father, being somebody he got estranged from very quickly, didn't really relate to him, wanted to do more studies and things, and there just wasn't much education around him,

he had just one year of education. To go from there, all the way to being a pioneering pre-maker and changemaker, but not just that, to do it from a place of deep attunement with this conscience or this inner voice. And over time, a deep sense of surrender to whatever it is that some kind of master script writer for the theater of the universe was wanting to manifest. And having the clarity of mind to know when to push forward, when to pull back, when to pivot in a new direction and when to pause. That is what inspires me most about him.

He came to the brink of obscurity on a few different occasions when he failed to make it in a political race or the other. And just a couple of years before, in fact, he was fighting for the presidential election. We had lost the senatorial race. And there he was to Stephen Douglas recounting the time when Stephen Douglas and he used to know each other, just in the youthful years in Illinois. And they were sitting the store on by a friend of theirs and you talk about local politics and things. And then he was saying, look, where Stephen Douglas is, Kriya has catapulted him. He's this very eminent nationally known senator and look where it's taken me because I'm like, there's nobody sitting here in the night. And that was about two years before circumstances and his own deep discipline

preparation for the moment. Catapulted him into the national line light and he's now fighting for the Republican primaries. He's won the Republican line light and he's now fighting for the Republican primaries, he's won the Republican primaries, he's fighting now with Stephen Douglas on the other side, Depeats him. Here he is in the White House. And now Stephen Douglas, who are the kindness of his art, actually was holding his hat, holding that when he had his inauguration or staking and speech making for the first time he entered the White House. And then actually Stephen tried to cooperate and support him in what he was trying to do to keep the country united. And after having done way good,

he actually passed away a year from then. And so think back three years ago, Stephen's like star was shining so brightly and Lincoln was just wondering what happened to his life. And yet he just kept going and growing and three years later, this is the outcome that happened. And yet that was still in the early stages of the civil war. That war was still

to be fought out on the grounds of America in painful ways, in very lost intensive ways. And Lincoln had hard calls to make about letting a third son of a wailing mother who had already lost two of his sons to conscription and the war and the Union Army to also be conscripted and also be sent to war. But he was looking out for future generations, he was looking out for you and me and for the preservation of the Union and ultimately the dissolution of this very horrible institution of slavery. So what I see in him is a tremendous humility, tremendous sense of surrender, a tremendous persistence, but also that achievement to knowing when to pause, we would push and pull. And ultimately, my most favorite story of his is how there came a day when he and his wife were a first lady, were going to go out into Washington DC for a social event. And the White House security

got at that time there, mentions the story. Later on, he said, every time they used to go, they would say, to me, good night. But at this one time, they were going out and they said, goodbye. And I was confused why the thing good, goodbye to me, he, Lincoln, why is the president saying, goodbye to me, he would say, good night often. And he said, that was a night that he came back in a bullet

written body and it passed away. So the idea that he had this intuitive inkling as well that perhaps his role in this theatre of life had now come to an end and it was time for him perhaps to move on to the afterlife remains for me a very powerful testament to the invitation in some ways between the universe and us that if we find a true purpose, if we live it from a very selfless place, from a sense of surrender, perhaps if you find a true purpose, if you live it from a very selfless place, from a sense of surrender, perhaps we can be a piece even when that moment comes, when we are being beckons to the light beyond. Well, Hattendra, I love that explanation,

and I wanted to ask you a follow-up to that. What is it that you have found gets in the way of us achieving both inner core and outer mastery, and how can we dissolve the boundaries between each? Yeah, step one, I think we have no idea how much joy and love and peace resides at the very center of our being, that what we are searching for through material gain on the outside is already who we truly are in our identity on the inside. And that this hunger for outer love and outer wealth and outer power is merely just the soul in us, searching for its own self. And so to me, the first thing that limits us is that people believe that they need to indulge in that food or in that drug or in that relationship, one that thing in order to have reassurance and peace

and love and joy in their life. And they don't realize, actually, that's already a condition of the soul. And those other things are merely things that activate activated, but they're not really it. And there are other more, a time sustainable ways through which to pursue the it on the inside. And then enjoy the pleasures that life gives us on the outside, but from a place of non attachment and lack of insecurity. And so the first thing is you've got to believe. Then the next barrier that holds us back is that for those who actually do have their belief, feel like life is still long and there is a lot

of years ahead for me to pursue these deeper kind of questions. And aging comes to us in such intangible ways, day upon day and year upon year, that we fool ourselves into assuming that we've got tons of time. Meanwhile, we just never know when we're going to die. And every passing decade, in some ways, the potential for how much we can do with this temple, which is a body, as a core asset, starts to get more and more limited in the years ahead. And truth-seeking is a lifelong quest

that any of all of us can take on. So the delusion that we have tons of time, and we can wait for this to the point when we are like 75 and 80 and now we really cannot enjoy much of the pleasures of the world. So let me turn my attention inward. That to me is a barrier and then the third barrier is just a lack of tools, a lack of certain path, a dabbling that gets us to be in that search mode, but listen to a certain TED talk or read a certain book or go on a certain retreat and just keep dabbling as opposed to really intuitively ask yourself who is a teacher a teaching a path that I feel like just deeply inspired and uplifted by and I feel like I want to hitch my card to that horse and then just committedly with repetition, with focus, start building some new habits, some new routines, some new rituals, have a certain community, have a certain language of framework, a method, and make it your own.

Make it your own for a period of time. Give it at least six months, give it a year, regularly, every day, put into practice the teachings of that path. And then if you do that, and if you don't get the results, go ahead and change and move in a new direction, but take some one thing, and first, make sure it's the right thing for you. It really resonates with you, and if it, then spend some time making it your own. So those are the three I would offer have this kind of inspired vision of who you truly are at your core. Be on fire to go in that search in the quest rather than think that you have decades ahead to do that and then find the right path. Well, Hitandra, thank you so much for sharing that. have decades ahead to do that and then find the right path.

Hattandra, thank you so much for sharing that. And I wanted to just tell the audience, I really loved this book. And exactly as you pointed out earlier, I did find it to read as if you were just trying to have a conversation like we're having right now with each other. And the way it's organized is part one, he goes through something called the map. Part two, a tundra goes into the journey in each one of these five energies, such as living with purpose versus leading with purpose. And brings in the examples of some of the people we've talked about before, such as Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gandhi, et cetera, throughout them. And then part three, he goes into the destination and transcendence, which I'm a huge fan of. So I just wanted to give you an idea of how the book is organized because I really think this is one the audience would love

to pick up and I highly encourage you to do so. And Hitandra, as I was reading this, one question came up to me in the book, and I think it really is the cornerstone question from the book, and that is, who is the most important hero we should have in our life? Yeah, I share the story in my book, but one of my executive MBA students who is in his late 30s, early 40s,

doing really well in private equity, and how he shared very heartwarming and beautiful way with that class, how he would really struggle with cancer when he was growing up. And what he would from it when he was 14 went back to school, but it struck him again. He earned a half later. And this time he just felt that he was on his knees and he just was giving up and he just didn't have it in him to keep fighting the fight again.

And that one, his mother, he says came up to him and held his hand and said, my son, there's a story I've never shared with you about your father. I've told you so many stories about him. The only way you know about him is through stories because you never met him because he died before you were born. But I never shared this story with you. And there was this one day and it was my birthday and he came home very excited. He wanted to give me a very special surprise and a gift and takes me in the car at 20

miles away and it's a car dealership. And it's this car that he's going to buy for me. It's the car of my dreams and he saved so much money and you can make that happen quietly without my knowledge over the years and not this was the moment. He bought the car, but then instead of driving into separate cars, we just wanted to drive together our car, old car. And so we did the new car, bumper to bumper behind with the chain. And as we were driving, he ended up pausing and stopping the car because the chain was

getting a little loose. And as he got out, you correct the chain, bang, this truck hit the back of the new car. And he got crushed between the two cars. And he died right there on this spot. And so the mother is telling this student of mine, as he's a teenager, trying to recover from his cancer. And she's saying that in that moment, she said, I just lost all meaningful life.

I lost all motivation for life. And I was on impulse, just going to open the passenger side door and just walk into the highway myself and invite life to take me also out just as it had taken my darling husband out. And she said, but in that moment, I felt this kick in my womb. And it was you because I was expecting you at that time. And I just felt it was I was just like, you were telling me like, Hey, MMO, I mean, don't do that. We lost

something really precious, your husband and my father. And that's not going to be lost that we'll ever recover from. And yet on the other hand, we have each other and we have the rest of our life together. And we will make meaning out of it. We will find a strength and we will make this life still rewarding for us. So don't do that. Don't take our life right now by going out there. She said that day you were my hero and you turn around for me and there have been so many times over the course of these last 15 odd years that I've had you as my child that you have been my hero. You've been the source of my strength and what have you and and then he looks at all of us, a student of mine who's now like I said in his late 30s early 40s when he's sharing the story and he says, look, I want you all to know that be search for heroes on

the outside, but we should search for the hero on the inside because just like I have been for my mother, you have been a hero for so many in your life too and continue to be. And he says, I got sore, I was by that. When my mother said that I started to fight the cancer again. And sure enough, a year later, I was finally back in school again. And I never looked back since. The cancer has never come back to me. And here I am living a healthy and a lesser life. That's far and all of that.

And so this message from him, what looked for the hero within, I think, is what I took away from that story, this idea that we all search for heroes, we want heroes, we share heroes stories, we watch movies with heroes, because when we engage with those stories and those heroes, we walk in their shoes, their story becomes our story, because it's inherent in the sun. There's then each of our lives wanting to be a hero, wanting to be a hero, and we should be right police, though, because each of us has that capacity and potential

and invitation from life. And so yeah, I think that in me, the most important hero in my life as I know it must be John for you and your journey. And that for all of us should be is the hero line in waiting for them to waiting to be stirred, waiting to be taken in some kind of way by you on an invitation to go on some beautiful journey in our lives. Well, I love that story and I love that we ended on it.

Had time to have the audience would like to know more about you. Where's this the best place for them to go to do so? Yeah, thank you. Certainly, I encourage you if you can, to pick up the book if you're so drawn to it, you're so kind and sharing the outline. There is my website, hitendra.com, so that's H-I-T-E-N-D-R-A.com, which is where I have a newsletter that you can sign up for as well, and certain articles that I already have offered for you. And then if any of you are interested in leadership and advancing

that craft for yourself or others in your organization, then there is my institute called Mentora Institute. So that's me and TORA.institute. And I'm super grateful to you for all you're doing, John, wishing you well and the launch of your own book. Looking forward to more conversation. Thank you for having me and I want to wish everyone here Godspeed and a great life. Well, Hatt, I was certainly an honor to have you here and congratulations on this wonderful book. I'm so glad it's being introduced to the world. Thank you again for joining us here today. Yeah, very grateful. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Hitandra Wadwa and I wanted to thank

Hitandra for Craven and Hashat Books for giving us the honor of having him appear on the show. Links to all things Hatendra will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in the show notes,

and they're also in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. You can find this also on YouTube at John Armiles and PassionStruck Clips, our Clips channel. As I mentioned at the beginning, we are also on the AMFM247 National Broadcast to an end during your evening commute, Monday and Friday from 5 to 6 pm Eastern time. And I also wanted to tell you that I have a book coming out in February. Links will be in the show notes and you can pre-order it now. You can find me on LinkedIn where I post a weekly newsletter or you can find me at John Armiles on all the

other social channels where I provide daily doses of inspiration, meaning hope, and connection. You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStrike podcast I did with Cynthia Thurlow in her groundbreaking book, Intermittent Fasting Transformation. Cynthia unveils a game-changing approach to intermittent fasting that is specifically designed for women but can also be used by male listeners. I think a lot of the confusion surrounding intermittent fasting is really just semantics. Some people think it means starvation, others think that it represents this disorder of pattern

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