Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 125: Lt. Col. Jannell MacAulay, Teaching 'Mental Push-ups' in US Air Force

Episode Date: March 7, 2018

Dr. Jannell MacAulay, a lieutenant colonel and flight instructor in the United States Air Force with over 3,000 flying hours as a combat veteran, sees mindfulness meditation as national security asset. A former commander of the 400-member joint 305th Operations Support Squadron, MacAulay teaches mindfulness to her fellow commanders and other Airmen in order to improve their leadership and mission-focused performance, as well as change the culture within a high-stress military organization. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, our guest this week is a true badass. You'll hear from Janelle McCally coming up, Lieutenant Colonel Janelle McCally coming up.

First though, a piece of business, and then I want to take a few calls. The business is we've got a brand new course launching on the 10% happier app, which is awesome. All of our courses are awesome, but this one's extra awesome. It's with our most popular teacher, Joseph Goldstein, who is my meditation teacher. We went up to his living room. He lives in Murrell, Central Massachusetts, on the grounds of the legendary insight meditation society. And we went into his living room with some lucky users of the app and we did a course based around these phrases, these catch phrases, these nuggets of wisdom, might call them wisdom bombs, that he's developed or appropriated over the course of

five decades of meditation practice and meditation teaching. And so we sort of drilled down on these various phrases that are incredibly useful. They can reduce stress, provide perspective. And the first part of what will be a multi-multipart course goes up on the app, is already up on the app, and it focuses on compassion and why it's good for you. Why it feels good to be nice rather than unkind. So that's the business. Let's get to the calls.

We've got this new feature on the podcast. If you haven't been listening of late, we set up a phone number where anybody can call and leave voice messages for me, and I'll answer them to the best of my ability. You, we don't play them for me in advance, so I have no idea what people are gonna say. And in a minute, I'll give you the phone number

if you wanna call, but let's take the first call. Hi, Dan. I would like to know why loving kindness, sending people good vibes is not the same as positive affirmations. I know it's come up on previous episodes how Lomingkindness isn't affecting the brain in the same way that positive affirmations do and therefore they don't have a backfire effect but I don't

I'm curious why. Thanks for the podcast. Appreciate it. That's a great question. I you know I feel a little hobbled in answering it in that I don't know what you mean by positive affirmation. So I don't know exactly what you're referencing and that may just be or almost certainly is ignorance on my part. But let me answer it to the best of my ability, which is the power of positive thinking is often invoked by people in the self-help industry. I think it is a word that I can't say, but it begins with B and ends with a T, like utter, unmitigated, irretrievable B ends with a T. The power of positive thinking is that essentially that you can affect the external world by controlling your thoughts. If you just think positively all the time uh... everything's gonna be rainbows and unicorns

that's just not true and uh... as i like to say the only people who have had all their problems uh... solved by this uh... by the books that that uh... you know propagate this myth or that people who write these books because they make a lot of money writing these books that i don't think there's any evidence suggest that just thinking positively all the time is going to change your world or the world generally. However, loving kindness meditation in which you

and and this is something we're talking about with Joseph in this recent course in which you sort of envision beings, you know, like somebody you're close to somebody you're not close to all beings in the world, like somebody you're close to, somebody you're not close to, all beings in the world, all humans and animals, and systematically kind of send them good vibes by repeating these phrases in your mind like, may you be happy, may you be healthy, et cetera, et cetera. This kind of meditation, which, believe me, I struck me as incredibly sappy and annoying uh... actually uh... there's scientific evidence that can have health benefits

it's it there's no evidence that it it changes uh... the lives of the people to me sending the good with vibes it changes your life because you are boosting the compassion mustle you are boosting your ability to get out of your own head and uh... and to care about other people and For a lot of us that's a hard thing to do and and that's why this is a useful training is over and over You are training yourself to to care and about somebody who's not you and in the end that redounds to your benefit next call

Hey, Dan First off, I want to say really appreciate everything you can do me and that redounds to your benefit. Next call. Hey, Dan. First off, I want to say I really appreciate everything you can do. And since you became so public about your own struggles, this is really a question about something that's specific issue or how to be a little happier. It's more of a decent advice from someone who's gone through

something I'm going through. I'm a journalist, and I lost my job because it means I had a hard time getting my depression, I get the better of me and I've kind of fallen off the face of the earth here and I just need some advice on how when everything seems to be piling on top of you, how you fight all that and garner the strength to overcome because it seems as though you have and well that inspires me and the advice would be great. Thank you. Well thank you for being so honest and I'm terribly sorry about what's happening. It sounds like a really difficult situation. It really does. a really difficult situation. It really does. Look, I want to say before I give advice, I am not a mental health expert. I'm not a meditation teacher. I'm just a journalist

who covers the stuff and practices to the best of his limited abilities. So that caveat having been issued, if, as you say, you've got depression and anxiety, my first move, if I were in your shoes, I think would be to deal with that because I think it's gonna be hard to deal with everything else, including your career if you don't take care of that. So, look, what do we know works for depression and anxiety? Talk therapy, medication, if it's recommended to you

by your physician or your mental health care provider, exercise, having good relationships, getting enough sleep, eating well, and meditation can be very useful. And so you know that we got to see, my view is that when it comes to well-being, you've got to surround the ball. You've got to pull, I'm going to mix my metaphors here, but you've got to pull every lever that's available to you. And those are the ones that we know work from the science. So I would, if I were you, attack that with extreme prejudice. And then, once you're starting to feel like you're on a little bit more stable ground,

then I think going back at your career. But the F Scott Fitzgerald was a great writer, but he was totally wrong when he said there are no second acts in American lives. And I've seen my own life and just time and again, by observing the world that we that people are given second chances and so I think everyone deserves them. Sometimes third chances fourth chances depending on the circumstances So I would say take a minute to take care of yourself and then get back in the ring But I'm sending you my best and I really appreciate the question If if any of you want to call in and leave a voicemail,

we're going to be doing this, I think, in perpetuity, as long as we keep getting the great questions. Here's the number, 646-883-836-646-883-836. The number's also in the show notes for this podcast and I've put it out and I'll continue to do so occasionally on social media. Alright, so let's get to our guest. As I mentioned, she's really impressive. Her name is Lieutenant Colonel Janelle McCauley. She's a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force. She works as the director of human performance and leadership for the 58th Special Operations Wing. She runs a pilot program to create high performing, mindful, and mission-focused

warfighters and families. That's from her official bio. I'm not gonna go too much more into her official bio, however, because she tells her story in a much more compelling way than I could ever do. So let me shut up and let Jeanelle do the talking. Here she is, Jeanelle McCauley. So how did you come to meditation? I actually came to meditation out of necessity. I had this period

in my life where, and I think many people can probably relate to this, where I felt as if I had to be perfect in everything that I did. I was a mom, I was a wife, I have two kids, and so they are five, I have a five-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter. So yes, we all have kind of multifaceted lives, and so I was the mom, I was a leader in the military, I was the chief of the formal training unit for the KC-10 tanker aircraft. So I was leading about 75 people at the time and my husband was deployed to the Middle East for a year. Both in the Air Force?

Yes, we were both in the Air Force. So it's a tough challenging life, but it's our life and we've adapted to it, our kids have adapted to it. We're all very resilient. I would like to think inflexible because of it, but it's not without its sacrifices and its challenges. Where was he deployed? He was deployed to the Middle East. Middle East. For one year, on a 365 day remote assignment. And that was really hard on us. Back in 2009, 2010. So Iraq still going at this point? Yes. So he was not, I would imagine maybe not the safest thing?

Not the safest place, but he was, you know, on the military base. Okay. So, he didn't have to go outside the biggest area. The on the wire, as they say. But he, what could I get the Air Force doesn't really do that unless you're in a plane? Exactly. And he wasn't flying planes. No, he is a maintenance officer.

Okay. So, he was commanding a unit of maintainers who were taking care of the planes and getting them ready for flight. Okay. But the place is still get shaled. Places are still dangerous and it was still a long time to be away from a family perspective. Of course. And at the same time, I had my own unit to lead. I had one child at the time, two year old, to take care of and a house and a dog and

where was it? Where was it? California, Northern California. You just threw in a dog just to like up the, I was up exactly. I was trying to emphasize. Right? Because we all have that, right? I mean, I even, I don't actually try to make my life as easy as possible.

I try to like peel away some of those responsibilities. Well, in the military, you're also... We have to balance these two paths. Many of us are technical experts, so for me, that was as a pilot. I needed to be an expert in the field of aviation. And that's... I am a pilot. Okay. Yes. I guess you can't train Euro pilot. I am a pilot. Okay.

Yes. Yes. I guess you can't train pilots if you're not a pilot. Right. Exactly. That's a dumb question. So you spent years piloting before you started training pilots. I did.

That's so cool. I did. That's awesome. Yes. And I flew a few different aircraft. I flew Lierge. I love the idea, by the way, that you could do some badass flight missions, come back and tell your husband fix this thing.

We actually did have an interesting relationship and it would work that way, although many the times the conversation was, why did you break my plane? Because we bring it back and sometimes not the best shape. In fact, my husband and I did do a deployment together. And so I would fly into Iraq almost every. On bombing. No, I flew C-130s, so they're a combat tactical airlifters. So my job was to transport troops and supplies in and out of the combat zone. Still, that's that is a combat mission.

Yes, and this was 2005-2007. Oh, super hot, yeah. So. That's, that's so high to the insurgency hot. Yes, yeah. We were a lot of, we did a lot of the resupply and defalugia in that time frame. Okay. Yeah.

You know, as one of those experiences that I'm grateful to have had, because part of it makes me who I am today, but there were challenges and there was, there were a lot of times that it really tests your ability as a leader. And I was an aircraft commander, so I let a crew of six people on those missions. And there would be times that you're in thunderstorms and weather and engines are, you know, you're losing engines and shutting them down.

And you just go into that mode of focus and having to get the mission done. But the impact of this on your son though. Next sometime when your son is hanging up, a bunch of guys and somebody makes some stupid comment about the capacities of females, he will be like, let me tell you about my mother. That's awesome. Yeah, I think that's going to give him a unique perspective. And I hope like a diverse background for the way that he'll grow up and what he'll

see in the future. Yeah, so as I am want to do completely derailed you from a logical, chronological explanation of how you came to meditation. Let me see if I can put you back on the road. You were trying to maintain a perfect life with the dog, and I think we digressed from that. We digressed, we digressed. Yes, so I was.

I was trying to do what I thought I was supposed to do, and in the military, we have, you know, servant leadership is foundational, and it's what we're taught to do, and it's very important. It means that, you know, you serve others before you serve yourself, and that you wouldn't ask anyone that is under your command

to do something you wouldn't do yourself. And so I was really trying to embody that by being the best leader and the best pilot and the best mom, the best spouse that I could be and that time in my life. And I've kind of forgot, because true servant leadership, there's a place for self-love and self-care, right? You have to, and I use the analogy of an oxygen mask, we have to put on our own oxygen

mask for ourselves before we serve and lead others. And during that time period, I lost that. And so what I first found, before I found meditation was, you know, I reached this burnout point where I was physically emotionally exhausted. And what I did was I found yoga. And I had tried yoga about 10 years earlier in my career and I could not do it. My mind was too busy, too cluttered, and I was falling over. Yes. I didn't get it. I didn't understand this concept of slowing down. What was, would yoga at that time have been considered an okay thing to admit to your

friends and the Air Force that you do? No, it was actually... Well, secret yoga. It was. It was kind of a secretive. I'm going to go out to the yoga studio and try this. But I really only tried it a couple times before I realized, nope, not for me. Can't do this.

I'm a runner or I'm going to play a sport, but I'm not going to sit and breathe. That was something that was very foreign to me. Growing up, I had a real important focus on hard work and kind of laboring and how the harder I would work, the more successful I could become, and that yoga stuff didn't have a place in that, right? It would just slowed me down from all the things I needed to get done. So that wasn't right, but in this moment, I knew I needed something, and so I, you know, and all things happened for a reason, right? Like a yoga class on bass became available, and I was like,

let me try this. And so, for the last part of my husband's deployment, when I was really in a rough place, it became my solitude. It became the place where I didn't have to be anything but me, because when I was outside of the yoga studio, I was mom. And I was major McCauley at the time. And I was someone's boss and someone's leader

and someone's instructor pilot. And's, you know, a daughter, you know, to my parents that there was things that I had to deal with with them. So I always had a role and when I was in the yoga studio, it was just me. And I could just have some solitude, have some quiet. And that became a gift and kind of set me on my path of healing. And right after that, I ended up going back to school for the Air Force. And so I spent two years at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama studying. And I decided to choose to study performance under stress

and to study wellness in a way that, you know, how can we put on our oxygen masks? And so I wrote my dissertation. This is where I got my start of my PhD work. And I focused on how the military can lead the nation out of the health crisis from a health and wellness perspective, right? If we developed the most effective war fighters from a health standpoint, from a performance standpoint,

could we set a model for the nation to follow? And when I was doing that research, mental exercise, mindfulness in particular, just was speaking to me. I didn't go searching for it. It was a yoga practitioner at the time, but it just rose to the top as the foundational piece for all of our wellness decisions.

And so at what point did you try it? You know, almost everything I wrote about in my dissertation, I tried. So if I was gonna write about acupuncture, I tried acupuncture. If I was writing about yoga-needra, I rest, I tried, I rest yoga-needra. And so with mindfulness, I actually started by getting to know Dr. Amishijah very well.

Previous guest on this podcast from the University of Miami neuroscientist, great human. Yes, she is amazing. She really helped me understand the science behind it, understand what her work and how important her research has been to the effort. So I kind of learned from her, and then I just jumped in. I had done Shavasana, and- Which is the corpse pose where you're lying on your back at the end of yoga, where most people actually either fall asleep or plan their shopping

after the yoga. But some people actually use it as meditation. Yes, and I always use it as meditation. Yes, and I always used it as clear my mind. What I didn't mean though. I know exactly, I didn't know what it meant. I really just was like, I'm just gonna sit in silence because I never sit in silence and just breathe.

That's healthy. I'm just gonna embrace that. But I was going back and thinking about what I would do in those moments, I was trying to clear my mind, which I know now you can't really do and is not the right way to do it, but then that's where I thought I needed to be. So it was a transition and a shift when I was learning about mindfulness because I was like, wait, I'm going to actually see my thoughts, I'm just not going to give them control over me, I'm going to just bring this awareness. So it was a completely different way of thinking about what I thought was meditation.

And so I learned that really the research and the science led me to it. And then once I started using it in my life as a tool and a resource for what I would say was a tendency to be emotionally overreactive in my life. It just started to make sense. Not uncommon, by the way. Right? A lot of people, and I think a lot of people. We'll turn on the television. Yes.

A lot of people, I think, the story resonates. And I know part of your story as well, came out of a necessity to do life better and figure out a way to accelerate your professional success without sacrificing yourself in the way. Well said. And so that's kind of where it was a necessity and research. Tell me more about what did that look like?

How were you meditating? How much, what form of meditation? And then, and then I'll remind you if you forget, really a little bit more about how it showed up in your life. So when I started, it had to be something that was a routine, something that I built into my schedule. So I would actually put it on my calendar. Gretchen Rubin, another former guest, she knows a lot,

she has written a whole book, held better than before. I love giving Gretchen a little plug about habit formation. Yes. One other thing she talks about is if you want to form a habit, put it on your calendar, if you're that type of person, and sounds like you are I am and in fact I when I first tried it I did put it on my to-do list and I am one of those people that gets very controlled by my to-do list

I have a million of them and oh you have multiple I have multiple to do this it's crazy Although I did just recently read the book getting things done if you've read that book, but there's a I did just recently read the book Getting Things Done. I don't know if you've read that book, but there's a word. I can't have this name right now, but. It'll come to you. It'll come to me. He gives you this tip about having a notebook

that you carry around with you all the time because part of the reason we can't shut our brains off is that our brains don't want to forget something, right? And we tell ourselves, don't forget this. And then your brain, as soon as it starts to forget it, it brings it back up, because it's like, she told me not to forget it. The CEO of the 10% happier company,

the company that puts out the app, the 10% happier app, RCO is a young guy in his 30s, Ben, who always cares a notebook. And he's just constantly running stuff down, and he's super systematic about it. I mean, I can't read a 10-ring, it's disgusting, but when it gets on that notebook, it gets done. Yes, it's there's something when it gets in that notebook, it gets done. Yes.

It's there's something powerful about transitioning it from your brain to know that it's in a safe place. Yeah. So then you can kind of release the thought and it'll be there when I come back. Yeah. Yeah. It's really useful. So that's been something that I, so that's how I get control of my to-do list, right,

it's with my little notebook. But I was always a to-do list person, so I I would write, practice mindfulness down in my notebook, and when I didn't do it at the end of the day, I would feel guilty. And I knew this is not the purpose of mindfulness, it's not to add guilt and stress to my life, it's to help me deal with it and manage it and perceive it in a different way. So I started putting it on my calendar. So even as a squadron commander, I led 400 people and the Air Force and my days were packed and they were busy, but I did my best

to keep that appointment with myself. So how many minutes were you doing? About 15. I mean, as a start, even as a final destination, 15 minutes a day, I believe, is a really good habit. What practice were you doing? I anchor on the breath. So the first part of my mindfulness practice

is usually just a present moment, right? I'm anchoring on the breath, feeling those sensations. And then what I like to do is I like to spend some of my mindfulness meditation in this self-reflective place. And I try to bring some gratitude in for it or into it. I might meditate and think about this loving kindness toward maybe something that I am struggling with. And most of the time, I'm going to admit one of the things I struggle with is forgiveness of

you know, my own forgiveness. And you know, it's a self-compassion. Right. Like maybe the day before I lost my temper with something or maybe I didn't do something as perfect as I wanted it to be. I did tell you I struggled with this ability to or this desire to want to be perfect. I just learned to start forgiving myself for it and understanding that actually the imperfections were growth and learning. And so I kind of have drawn that into this self-reflective piece of my practice.

So if you're doing 15 minutes, it's like 10 minutes of anchor on the breath and then when you get distracted, you start again and then bring in some gratitude and stuff in the last couple of minutes. Yes, I'd probably, exactly, probably about 10 to five. It depends, right? If I got a lot of the lot of things on my mind,

sometimes I really try to keep that present moment and maybe all along, get that and cut short, the self-reflection. I think of it and this is the way I teach it in the military. It's mental push-ups, right? It is my mental exercise. And so when I'm anchoring on the breath, I can see my push-up, right? Like I can see myself, my awareness moving to my thought, and I acknowledge it, but then I bring it right back to that anchor point and that breath, and there's my push up. And so

it's almost like the competitive side of me is like, all right, I'm going to push up some I'm going to do today. How long can I hold my attention? And so I can kind of see my progress. And again, it's a practice, right? There's no destination. So some days, I'm great at it. And in other days my mind's wandering all over the place I think those are the days where you get better at it actually. Yeah Exactly So-called bad sit is when it's like a tough workout because if you can

Pony in on the breath for just a nanosecond in the midst of a storm like that Well, that is training the mind to release the story, release the ego's story, and go back to whatever it is you're trying to focus on your breath. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. Exactly. I'm a genius. I probably stole it from somebody.

That's too sweet. Right, and I don't know if you found this because I've also found with my practice, and there are days that I don't want to pretend that I'm perfect at this, because there are days that I don't do it, right? There's days that my calendar gets overwhelmed, and I try to fit it in later and I don't. My first rule is you got to do it and make it a part of your calendar, not a to-do on the your to-do list.

But the second rule is let it go, right? When you don't do it, you have to be able to immediately just forgive yourself and say, I'll try again tomorrow. This is like when you get distracted during meditation, let it go, right? When you don't do it, you have to be able to immediately just forgive yourself and say, I'll try again tomorrow. This is like when you get distracted during meditation, let it go. For your self start again. That's let it go. It's the same attitude that you can bring to the practice and the doing of the practice, right? It's remarkably poetic in that way. It is. It's so powerful to just are psyche and are well-being and how we interact with other people. And I found, and I don't know if you found this at all, but I almost sometimes find

even just in my day, daily life, I find moments to be mindful. Right? So I may not get my 15-minute practice, but I find through the fluidity of my life and my daily activity, I find those spaces where in the past I might not have noticed the things that I'm noticing now. Yes, like we before meditation, waiting for an elevator or waiting online to check out at a supermarket is a time to be impatient and pace or check your phone, hate on somebody in your mind or hate on somebody who's literally right in front of you going slower than you think they should. But actually, once you've got a little bit of this mental push up regimen under your belt, these can be times to instead of zoning out, zone in, and just, you know, what is it

like to be alive right now on planet earth, which is a remarkable thing to do, given the momentum of mindlessness in which we live. alive right now on planet earth, which is a remarkable thing to do, given the momentum of mindlessness in which we live. And also, I notice now the pull of my technology a lot more. And like your arm as a zombie, like moving toward the phone, you don't know why. Right, it's almost like a, just a reaction, right? I'm bored, right? I'm sitting in a moment where I have nothing to do and you immediately go to your phone.

Of course, we're lonely or tired or hungry or whatever it is. You go for the dopamine hit on your phone. But what else in terms of your relationships as a mom, as a commander, as a wife, how did meditation show up for you? The first time I really knew it was working, my son was small, and he was doing what all toddlers do. And so I'm sure people in the audience can relate to this. You put your child to bed, you kiss him good night, you close the door, and then they come right back out

and they say, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, it's cold, it's hot, and those moments because time is a valuable commodity, right? And so as a working parent, you're like, you have to go to bed at this hour, because I've got these other things I have to do to prep for the next day, right? And then it's going to, and I'm a big human performance is kind of my specialty and what I studied in my PhD. So sleep is very important to me. I know how much I need, I know what I need to get. And so every time your child would just be up, and wouldn't go to bed,

and you wanna fly off the handle, cause all that stress, right? I'd start feeling about, or thinking about all the things I'm not gonna be able to get done, because now I'm dealing with this back and forth. I would wanna kind of fly off the handle in those moments, right? And I noticed this mindfulness exercise and practice of mine

was working when I could literally take a single deep breath and bring myself to the present moment and outside of my head that was judging me, that was telling me how imperfect I was being, that was telling me about all the things I had to do, and I could just be in that moment with him, I had to do and I could just be in that moment with him, get him calmly back to sleep. And most of the time, kids will feed off of us, right? So if we're getting anxious, they're going to get anxious, which is not going to solve the problem any faster. So I noticed that actually I could get him to bed much quicker. I could keep my wits and my calmness about me.

And I was like, wow, this is what mindfulness can do. And it's the same thing that I've seen in an aircraft, right? Like, I've been in situations as a flight instructor where you have a student and they're trying to learn how to land or you're in the weather and you're trying to air refuel and you're five to ten feet from another huge aircraft. So it's a very dangerous situation, and the stress can be very high, and I was able to find myself just being able to take like a single deep breath, and focusing in the moment, and focusing my awareness and attention

to get whatever job I needed to get done. That's awesome. How and when, and with how much reluctance, did you decide to introduce mindfulness into the curriculum in what I would imagine is a reasonably inhospitable environment at the Air Force? Much more of our conversation right after this quick break. Celebrity feuds are high stakes.

You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Diss and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us?

The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans formed the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other.

And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. How and when and with how much reluctance did you decide to introduce mindfulness into the curriculum in what I would imagine as a reasonably inhospitable environment at the Air Force? Yes, so I actually had just finished my PhD, so kind of had this whole evolution of finding my own practice when I took command of my squadron. Where I started was with myself. I started by trying to be what I've now coined

is like a mindful leader. I didn't know what that's what it was at the time, but I just started to exhibit, I guess use the mindfulness and the skills I was learning to be an authentic leader, to be a present leader. I know over the course of my career, I could, there are so many times that you'd walk into your boss's office.

You wanna tell them something that's personal to you, and you know that they're not listening to a word you're saying, right? Their minds are wandering, and that always bothered me. And so I knew that when it was flipped and I was in charge and I was the commander, I was gonna give them my attention.

And so that's really where it started I was flipped and I was in charge and I was the commander. I was going to give them my attention. And so that's really where it started was by me being a mindful leader myself and also not being afraid to share the fact that, like I said, my background is in a whole host of human performance aspects. So whether it was nutrition, whether it was physical activity, whether it was mindfulness, I led by example. I was not afraid to say, yeah, I'm going to close my door and take some deep breaths because I need to, or I'm going

to go to a yoga class at three o'clock on a Tuesday as the boss. And, you know, I'm actually going to teach that yoga class at three o'clock. And so it was started by just this leading by example. I also thought it was really important to teach the airmen of my unit. So I did this right off the bat too, teach them about their stress response. So it was kind of like when you feel your clammy hands and your heart starts racing and the butterflies and your stomach and you feel like you want to just explode, I asked them to take a step back and go to the cloud. Is actually the kind of phrase I used. And what that meant was step back,

take a couple deep breaths, and then respond. So many people just aren't even aware of the amount of times our sympathetic nervous system, right? Starts activating. Our amygdala takes control and makes the reaction for us. Many times we'll regret it later, because it was something we didn't mean to do. So I wanted to teach them how to do that

or how to understand that mechanism of our physiology. And so that's kind of where I started. In fact, it became almost this buzzword around the squadron. You could hear Airman saying, Hey, dude, you need to go to the cloud. And it was my way to kind of introduce the power of our breath. And then from there, they actually started asking me, what do we do in the cloud, ma'am, what does this mean?

And so I took that as my opportunity to introduce the idea of mindfulness. Now, in parallel with that, I also, in the way I was exhibiting, you know, this mindful leader characteristic and style, I would do things like call parents, write personal notes. I had this policy called no email Friday. So every Friday, I would put an out of office reply and I would spend the day connecting with the air

and I led, getting to know them, building relationships. Because when you're present and you're aware, that's what you do. You aren't going so fast that you miss the people that are in your life. And I think that built trust within my unit. And so when I did introduce meditation to them and said, hey, I'd like to show you this technique of mindfulness. And we're going to start doing it at our commanders calls,

at our leadership meetings. They went on the journey with me. Because they trusted me, I think. And they said, well, let's see where she takes us. And it's gone beyond that now. Yes, so beyond that. So once over the course of the 18 months I was in command, I had many airmen earn high accolades, awards for their performance.

We had the unit itself was awarded, you know, squadron of the year for all of air mobility command. We were the airfield of the year for the entire Air Force. And it really wasn't because we focused on human performance. It was because that culture brought about an organization that was innovative and took risks and wasn't afraid to fail and had compassion. And so that's really why we earned those accolades. And then after kind of earning those accolades, it has now kind of been highlighted as to

gosh, what did this unit do to make it have such success? And so now I go around the Air Force and I kind of teach other commanders how to bring mindfulness not only into their lives to improve their own personal leadership and performance, but to change the culture of their organization. How much resistance do you encounter? I would say, you know, there's always skeptics, and anytime you are leading change, right,

people are going to be resistant to it. So there are definitely challenges associated with what I'm doing. The interesting thing is I always lead with the science and Dr. Jha has this great study that talks about how they and actually was with General Piot when they said the money. She's done a lot of, I just to say she's done a lot of work with the military looking at the impact of this practice on members of the military. Yes, and a lot of members of organizations of high stress. Yes, also firefighters,

the football team at the University of Miami and others. Yes, she's really focused on performance. Yes, exactly. Like how can you use mindfulness to achieve those, to perform in high stress and rugged environments and still achieve high levels of performance, which is exactly the military, right? That is what we do.

And in fact, according to Forbes, right, they do the highest stress occupations every year. Enlisted military member is the number one for 2017. And it's been in the top 10 for, like, at least the 10 last 10 years. So we are a high stress population. And one of her studies shows that when we leave for a deployment in the

pre-deployment interval, so the couple months leading up toward a departure when we walk out the door, the stress is so high that our cognitive resourcing is decreased, right? Our ability to pay attention is decreased. Our mind-wandering is increased, our well-being overall, right? How we feel, how we perceive the stress in our life is really high. And it's understandable, right? You're worried about your family, you're worried about your deployment, you're nervous about going away.

But when I saw some of that data to say that our cognitive resourcing is low, when we walk out the door to go have to do a mission in a combat zone, that to me is really telling. I know when I deploy, I want to be at the top of my game. I don't want to be missing and having degraded performance. With the mindfulness training, she was able to show that actually it protects our brains. So we can actually leave on a deployment despite the stress before we leave in the same cognitive resourcing state. And so I think that's a powerful statistic.

I use it a lot to try to emphasize to the leaders in the military how important this skill set can be. And I use the analogy all the time that we will inoculate our military members with every possible vaccine just in case when we're in a deployed environment we come in contact with something. So very environment, we come in contact with something. So, very important, we do that, but we know that there's going to be stress. We know there's going to be emotional trauma that most of us will see in a deployed environment, and we don't do much to protect our brains.

We do a lot on the backside, right? We have a lot of programs and a lot of things to deal with, post-traumatic stress, and everything once we get home, but when we're leading up to it, it's something that the research proves can protect our brains, and so that's really one of the main arguments I'm using for bringing it into the forefront of what we do as a service. Do you think mindfulness is potentially a national security asset? Yes, definitely. I think when you think about even children today, there's only about 25% of them that are eligible

once they get to the age of 18 to join the military. I think that's one of the latest statistics. Why? Just because of whether it's a health issue, right, mental or physical, whether it's problems with crime, whether it's they're not graduating from school, there's a whole host of reasons that we don't have this eligible pool of young people to serve in the military. And I think a lot of it goes to this idea of how stress is valued in

our environment and our culture and what it does to us from a, whether it's preventive illness, right? Kids are getting diabetes. And I know nutrition has a big play in that as well. I found in my dissertation the reason why we make poor choices with respect to our healthy lifestyle behavior. So what we eat, how much we stress, how much we sleep, it really comes down to the amygdala. When you're stressed, you make an emotional decision. That's the part of the brain and that is associated with stress, one of the parts of the brain. Part of the primitive brain. And most of the time, I don't think we have the cognitive capacity to overcome the unhealthy default options that surround us, right?

The candy bars, the burger king. And so when you're stressed, you're going to make poor decisions with respect to your health. So what mindfulness can do for us and could do for America's youth all along the way is that emotional regulation, the ability to keep us more grounded and aware so we can make better decisions. And ultimately, a lot of those better decisions, if you start at a young age, can lead to not only a bigger pot pool for us to pull from, from military service,

but I think, and I know Tim Ryan, Congressman Tim Ryan talks about this a lot, you know, a more mindful nation, right? People that are interacting, build relationships better. You're talking about it from a broad perspective, which I share, but from a military perspective, protecting the brains of our airmen and women and service men and women generally, I would imagine, I would imagine you would argue, will make us safer. Definitely. When you hop on a plane, you don't just hope that you're pilot. That's all their cognitive resourcing and is ready to do their mission. You expect it. And so with all of the military jobs we have, and there's a whole bunch from humanitarian

to these combat environments to all the support functions, we are expected to perform at the best of our ability. And I think because of the way our brains operate, because of the stress we're under, and also technology, sometimes I think we live more in this digital reality than we do in the actual reality that's around us. And so all of that kind of combines to not have people performing at their highest levels.

And so I think this can help military members really be the best that they can be when they're out there doing their jobs and that could save lives. Do you think it's something we should be teaching in basic training? Yes, yes, yes. Do you think that will happen? I'm going to say I'm cautiously optimistic. I mean, I'm extremely fortunate to be able to speak about this openly across the Air Force.

And many wing commanders, so that's like a base commander, invite me to, in fact, I'm here on the East Coast in New Jersey giving three different briefings at the base on this type of topic. And everyone I think has a desire to perform better. And I think especially when I talk about, not only will you perform better, but you won't have to sacrifice yourself along the way.

You can find a better way to harmonize your laboring and your hard work with all the joys that are in your life. And so I think people are responding to it. but you're right, there's still skeptics. What do you hear? What do people say you? I remember once I was at Camp Pendleton back in 2010 and I was taking a look at the study that was being done on Marines in meditation and the press guy referred to it as men staring at goats, which was a name of a movie where like they tried to get paranormal powers into

the military. So I've heard the skepticism from members of the military before, but what are you here? So, one of the critiques I got when I was leading a squadron in this manner, people would say, well, you just make people feel good. And my first response was always, well, there's nothing wrong with making people feel good. Right? That's a great thing, but I think they weren't tying what I was doing to performance. And the other thing, when you're a leader, you give direction, right?

That's what you do. You give military, we give orders, we give direction to the people we lead. And I have this philosophy with the organization I work now with is called the Professional of Arms Center of Excellence, and we educate and inspire airmen across the Air Force and leadership and professionalism. But we like to say you have to have connection before you give direction. And so if you don't start by learning how to be present, by learning how to be aware of who you're leading, right, you're not going to get as far with your direction. I mean, we can use our rank and say, I outrank you on the boss, do what I say. And there is some, some, once of a hierarchical

structure in the military, but we can get so much further and create better organizations when we start with the connection piece. So I really truly believe that's kind of what, that's what mindfulness does for us. The other kind of critique, I guess I would say, is people say I don't have time for that. I don't know if you've gotten that before. Why don't I? The biggest stuff. The biggest obstacle.

Yes. What do you say? So normally, what I say is I ask them, well, when you do a task at your computer, so we have performance reports. So if you're sitting there spending time at your computer, working on your performance report, and you're performance reports. So, if you're sitting there, spending time at your computer working on your performance report, and you're a little email dinghs, right? And so, it's in your little right corner. Every time that email dinghs, it distracts you,

right? And so, now you're thinking about that email. Oh, I wonder what that was about. I wonder if I should respond, or maybe even open it. And people think they can multitask, right? From a brain standpoint, you know, you can't do that. You can't switch efficiently, right, without degrading some of your productivity. So what I tell people is, first of all, turn off those distractions when you want to focus on a task. The other thing I always tell them is,

think about how much you mind wander, right? We've all read a page in a book, got to the bottom and said, I don't even remember what I read. Drown your car someplace. I don't even remember how I got here. That's all mind wandering and unintentional mental time travel. So when I tell them that the science will tell us 50% of our waking moments, we do that, we mind wander. So they say, well, it takes me two hours to get through a performance report.

Well, half of that is mind wandering. Half of that is because you've left your email open and you're distracted. So I help them design better ways to not get distracted using mindfulness as well to keep their attention longer. I like that. To build more white space in their day. So now you have time, right? Right. Do this and you will have more time. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. for this really hit me one night when I was giving my son a bath. I was doing what I always do. I was trying to multitask, great bathing and thinking and running through my to-do list. All of a sudden, my son looked up at me and he said, he grabbed my face in his little hands and he said, Mommy, why are you so sad?

Mm. And I love you, Mommy, why are you so sad? And I love you, Mommy. And it just kind of crushed me there for that minute, because I was thinking, but I'm here, right? I'm physically present with him. What is he talking about? And then it dawned on me that I was mind-wandering. And the majority of the time we mind-wonder,

the research will tell us that we mind-wonder about unpleasant thoughts. I was mind wandering and distracted instead of in the moment with him, laughing and loving and seeing all the joys that we have in life. And it was then that I realized and started kind of this new focus on what I call the four Ls. Labor left learned love. So every day I try to focus on harmonizing, not balancing,

because that's an unrealistic expectation, but harmonizing, my laboring, my laughing, my loving, and learning, and even at the end of the day, I sit with my kids and we take two deep breaths together before we go to bed. And I ask, did you labor today? Did you work hard? And did you love? You know, if we didn't, we all give hugs. Did you work hard? And did you love? And if we didn't, we all give hugs.

Did you laugh? And if they did in the tickle monster comes out, did you learn something? And I was missing a lot of my life and all the good parts of my life. And sometimes we even do this thing where we plan out the good parts in our life. And we say, oh, I'm in a laugh, and I'm in a love

when I go on vacation in three months. And you just focus on looking forward to that vacation. When in reality, you should be looking for those things in your everyday life. We just never stop playing with our phones or listening to the judgments in our head long enough to witness the great things that are going on right in front of us.

Very well stated. People want to learn more about you from you, how do they do so? So I have a website, genelmacali.com, where they can learn more about me or contact me through that through the website. I also have a TED Talk. Okay. Searched my name TEDxABQ was the event that I spoke about. Albuquerque. I also post a lot on LinkedIn, on human performance areas, so people can follow me in that social

media aspect as well. Awesome. I salute you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful to get to meet you and to share some of my experience. Likewise, it's valuable. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% happier podcast. If you liked it, please's valuable. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Tohan, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who help make this thing possible.

We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. you