Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 163: Michael Gelb, Applying Genius Thinking

Episode Date: November 28, 2018

Michael Gelb found his calling during a tumultuous time in American history. It was during the polarized 1970s Gelb decided he wanted to look for ways to help people clearly think through and debate real issues. He found meditation to be a good starting point, which eventually led him to England, where he studied the spiritual traditions of the world and how they're interconnected. Gelb explains how he took these studies of consciousness and self-awareness and translated them into practical techniques to help people think more clearly and creatively. Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail at 646-883-8326. The Plug Zone Website: https://michaelgelb.com/ Twitter: @MichaelJGelb 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 Dan Harris. Hey everybody, we've got a Renaissance man on the show this week. Michael J. Galeb can talk about meditation as it relates to everything from creativity to personal development, to organizational development, to innovation.

He's written a bunch of books including How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Seven Steps to Genius Every Day, also creativity on demand, innovate like Edson. Anyway, you get a sense that he's a prolific guy who thinks about a whole range of things. Oh, and he also talks a lot about posture as it relates to meditation and mindfulness. So I got a lot out of this interview, I think you will too.

That's coming up in just a second. We're gonna do your voice mail in a moment. First though, I just want to give you As an item of business here. I want to give you a sense of some new content. We're working on over at 10% happier the app We've got a new meditation up that you should check out. It's with my friend Jeff Warren the fantastic meditation teacher on He calls it holiday hilarity I think he's saying that with his tongue in his cheek.

This is a stressful time for all of us, and Jeff's got a meditation specifically designed to help you deal. Also, just wanted to let you know that we were just in the studio with Joseph Goldstein, the amazing Joseph Goldstein who still hasn't been on the show. We're going to be putting up a new course on the app from him. That's coming up soon.

All right, let's get your voice mails. Here's number one. Hey, Dan. My name's Joel from the UK, but live in California. So I started meditating about three years ago, thanks to your books and thanks for that. And I've seen some major benefits and some big chains in my life because of studying meditative, which is a great. But I've also had some strange experiences also. And I'm a science kind of loving guy, as I know you, and I've kind of struggled to reconcile these a little bit or interpret them. So things like when you're meditating strong

sensations of body vibrations or rushing energy or even on occasion I've been deeply meditating and I find my head moving around in voluntarily. And I can't explain these things using science and I can't reconcile them and they're weird and I wonder and they're hearing someone speaking about these and I wanted to use experience any of these and how you interpret or reconcile them. But thanks again. From what I understand, what you're describing is incredibly common.

There's a name for it in the ancient Indian language of Pali, which the Buddha is said to have spoken. P-T-P-I-T-I, sometimes translated as, I think it's rapture, I think that's the translation. Anyway, it's just, I use it and I hope I'm using it correctly, just to describe positive body sensations that come when the mind gets concentrated. And as my meditation practice has developed and I've gotten a little bit more concentrated, I don't want to just overstate my level of concentration. There are times when you can get everything from sort of tingles to sort of an involuntary

rocking back and forth. And it's a little weird at first. It's kind of in my experience pleasant. In discussing this with meditation teachers, it's usually a sign that your mind is concentrated, the level of discursive random thinking has gone down a little bit and that can have interesting effects on the body and mind. The one thing that the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein has said to me before is with the rocking back and forth, because that can be a little pleasant, you might notice that you're feeding it subconsciously, and you might look for that and see if you're feeding it and you probably don't need to do that.

So, anyway, I would say not something to freak out about. I don't know what the scientific explanation for it is. That would be a great question for us to pursue on this podcast. And so mental note, let's pursue that. Why scientifically does the body and mind do the body and mind react in kind of interesting ways to increase concentration?

But I get so without being able to ask you further questions to diagnose, so what's going on with you from my somewhat informed position, it sounds to me like this is a completely normal development and probably a healthy one in the course of your meditation practice. So onwards, sir. Voice mail number two, here we go.

Hi Dan, I'm, my name is Patiana. I'm a huge fan since very long time. I'm going from Switzerland. So I have a question, how do you combine meditation, being present in the moment mindful with making plans for the future? So for example, if I want to make a career or I strive for something, I realize that it has also something to do with the attachment to the results So what's your experience been like would love to hear your thoughts on that? Thank you Thanks Tatiana. I've wrestled with this mightily, but the answer I don't think I don't think the answer is that complicated

First of all you can plan I mean any planning you're doing will take place in the present moment. And so you can be as mindful and as aware as possible when you're making your plans. Obviously, you're going to have to start thinking about the future and learning from the past in that process, but you can continually touch in from a basic blocking and tackling meditation standpoint. As you're doing that or anything, you can always touch back into the present moment to be a little meditation teacher either by being in touch with your body, being in touch with what you're seeing hearing. Any number of basic

meditation techniques that we all know or we hope we all know that you can use to make sure you're kind of giving right now a little bit of a kiss while you're doing the planning. The other thing about planning is, I think it's, you have to do it. I don't think having a meditation practice means that you should be perpetually present. I mean, I would be great if you could. That's not happened to me. So the way I approach it is,

see, yeah, I mean, there's a certain amount of planning and plotting and stress and walking around pacing and thinking about the angles and how things are going to play out and blah, blah, blah. That you have to do in order to have a healthy career. And I would not want to discourage you from doing any of that. What I find, the old Joseph Goldstein expression that he mentioned to me when I first met him on retreat back in 2010, that has been just incredibly helpful in this process is on the 87th time that you're running through all the scenarios in your head Maybe ask yourself the question is this useful and that little mantra is this useful? just

Giving yourself permission to do the plotting and planning you need to do to have a healthy Successful career, but then throwing in that little mantra of, is this useful when you notice yourself going down the rabbit hole? I, in my experience, really helps me walk that line between doing what I need to do in order to survive and stay afloat in a, in my case, a pretty cutthroat career, and also not make myself miserable and everybody else around me miserable.

And finally, you mentioned non-attachment to results. You know, I wrote about this in my first book. It's easier said than done, but I certainly attempt to do it to the best of my ability, which is just to recognize that we live in a universe where most of the things are out of our control. So we can do a bunch of work on whatever it is we're working on. We can think about our career and try to, you know, network and go to the right school and get the right internships, whatever it is, but you can't control all the outcomes.

That's just the deal. So non-attachment to results is the only sane way to proceed. Again, easier said than done. I wish I did it more than I do, but as a north star, it's a pretty healthy one. So great question, Tatiana. I wish you the best of luck. And I hope the foregoing has been to call out or to echo Joseph's phrase. I hope the foregoing has been useful.

All right, let's get to Michael Galb, our guest this week. Here's just a couple of lines from his bio. He is the world's leading authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development. He's also a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, executive coaching and innovative leadership.

It's a long way of saying he works with individuals and corporations, including major ones like DuPont and Microsoft and Nike on helping people be awesome. He's a professional speaker, he's an executive coach, he's written a bunch of books, I listed some of them earlier. Also, this is a great interest to me. He's a practitioner of the Alexander technique, which is not named after my son.

It's a way to get people, especially people in performance positions to have better posture. And that, of course, has a huge mindfulness component. So here he is, Michael Gell. Nice to meet you. Pleasure. As I told you before we started rolling, I am woefully. I wouldn't even say under informed. I was just completely un informedinformed about you. You came

through a friend who recommended you in the most lavish of possible terms. So I listened to this friend. She's very smart. So I'm really glad to have you here. And I know you're interested in a lot of things that I actually don't know much about. So I'm excited to learn. Lovely. A long way of saying welcome. Yeah, thank you. So I always start with this. The only

question I plan in advance is the first one, which is how did you come to meditation in the first place? Hmm. I was 19. I was in college and I was studying political science because I thought maybe we could just figure out how to make the world less crazy. What year was this? This was 1972. Yeah. And so the world at that time seemed totally divided, really filled with stress, kind of like today. I'm going to say it sounds familiar. Right. It sounds familiar. And I quickly realized that sounds familiar. And I quickly realized that political science wasn't really much of a science, and people seem to be polarized and not really thinking. So I switched to psychology, and I was thinking, okay, let's understand the mind and how we can open and shift the people's mind so they can be better able to think, actually think about real issues.

And that was fascinating. I love psychology, but it seemed academic. It seemed kind of limited. My professors were wonderful and brilliant, but they didn't seem to me to be really fully integrated people. So I switched to philosophy, which also was really cool. I love probing the great questions, but that also, they couldn't back it up. So I discovered a group that was meditating, and I started going on meditation retreats my 19th birthday.

What flavor of the meditators? It was the Baskin and Robbins of meditation. It was all kinds of different flavors. No, it was actually with a group, the person who led the group had been the secretary to GI GERGIF. Who is that? Was he Turkish? Armenian, Turkish, and who was a amazing teacher of meditation,

spirituality, self-awareness, and they had a group, the sky had helped, was the secretary to Gurjeev and helped write his greatest book known as All in Everything. And so I used to go every weekend and we would learn self-awareness and we would just sit and be present, which did not come naturally to me at all. My mind still tends to go in a zillion different directions all at once, but it was such a wonderful contrast.

I thought, that's the place to look for the answers that I am seeking. So that was the beginning. And how did it go from there? Well from there I thought nothing's more important than understanding consciousness. So I actually finished college in three years so I could go off to England where I spent 10 months at a residential school to study the spiritual traditions of the world with an amazing genius who had pretty much mastered and integrated all of them and It's called the International Academy for continuous education

What was her or his name? His name was J.G. Bennett. Okay. He had been an officer in World War I, the British Army. He got blown up and found himself, found his consciousness floating above his body, which was in the trench. And eventually he recovered, and he thought, well, that's kind of fascinating.

It sort of shifted his whole world because he had pretty much a conventional orientation up until that point. Later he was posted as the British consul to Turkey. And he was fluent in Turkish. He spoke 11 languages. And Turkish was one of them. So he started to meet people who seemed to be able to explain this experience to him.

They were various Sufi teachers. So he began, he became an initiate of Sufi tradition. And then long before it was a cartoon in the New Yorker, he traveled to India, climbed a mountain, met a guru, and asked, you know, what is the secret of enlightenment and so on, and he was able to do this in whatever language was necessary because he could speak Hindi and he was familiar with all of the languages. He brought back that wisdom

and really his whole life was devoted to this quest, but he also was a mathematician who became head of coal research for Britain during World War II. It was a very accomplished, brilliant scientific mind, but the driving force of his life was to understand consciousness, to understand who we are, why we're here, how do you make your life meaningful and purposeful? So here's this opportunity to go spend 10 months with, I think what's more important than

knowing why we're here, why I'm here, what is consciousness? I'm going to go find out my possibly can. And it was a phenomenal 10 months. We had a Buddhist monk, a bit of a Cambodian monastery who was in residence and taught us meditation every evening. And it was, we fasted once a week. We had days of total silence. A lot of what people call mindfulness practices now, it was just part of what we did. And he would every afternoon, he would give a talk, and he would cross, correlate the great

spiritual text of the world, and talk about what they really meant in a practical way. So it was an unbelievable opportunity. Having said that, he also had an amazing gift. And I found this gift in many of the most potent teachers I've met. And the gift is they create this mirror that cuts through all of your rubbish. And oh my God, it was just torture.

It just because I, like I was there, you know, I thought my dream, my ideal was getting light and study spirituality, learning about all this, be inwardly free. But what I, you know, I became aware of, I was so attached and identified to my physical desires, to my egotism. I mean, it was just highlighting, you know, we were there, one of the things we would do is cultivate deeper perception. And I still laugh at myself myself because the perception that I got good at cultivating was

I could tell the biggest piece of toast in the breakfast line from you really far away because I was just hungry the whole time. I remember I met a different feeding you enough. No, you know, it was it was sort of it wasn't real asceticism, but it wasn't lavish. Minimalist. Minimalist. And you're a 21 year old kid. Oh my God, it just, I'm never forget, I'm meditating. So there's this wonderful Cambodian monk,

we just call them Vante, which means monk, and Mr. Bennett, who is this very powerful and wonderful figure, and we're in this meditation. And I just remember seeing a hamburger. Please just give me a hamburger. But there's something about I remember. But there's something about how we take these experiences of humiliation because it was humiliating, but in a way that turned out to be wonderful because I eventually reached a point. I went to Mr. Bennett.

I requested an interview because that wasn't a normal part of, you had to make a special request to come and see him and I went I told myself look I'm crawling out of my skin here. I mean, you know, I'm so not spiritual. I'm so not This is not working for me. I mean I'm anxious and and Self-obsessed and all this stuff and sounds like it's working to me Well, that was the funny thing. It was great because, first of all, I'll never forget this because he really listened and he said,

first he said something like, yes, that's true. You know, like, but then he said, he said, what I remember, the specific thing I remember him saying was, the work of transformation is in your essence. It is your very nature. And it's just working, you know, what I got from this, not his exact words, but what I got from this, just, it's just working through this individual with this drama and this story and this yada yada blah blah blah.

And I felt this alignment with that inner working, that inner presence. And I experienced this wonderful sense of peace and freedom and... In that moment? In that, well, for the next three months, because this happened three months before this course ended. So for the last three months of this, this is in the English countryside and the Cotswolds squizzily beautiful place.

And I'd say probably for the longest stretch of time in my life, I was just felt this sense of buoyancy life. I was just felt this sense of buoyancy and peace and inner light and loving kindness. And I was, we learned this Sufi meditation is called the Zikr. And it's a breathing practice. It's like a ujai breath in yoga. It is all sorts of different variations of it. But this one was very powerful, very simple. And it was happening spontaneously the whole time for the last three months of this. Just because of this one conversation. Well, we've been studying all this stuff for the previous seven months, but it's just after that one conversation, I just stop worrying. just after that one conversation, I just stopped worrying. It just, and it felt like it all was just flowing through me.

Yeah, so it's like you had all the learning and the practice, the doing the practice and then intellectually absorbing the ideas, you were blocking it a little bit through your own neuroticism. He points out, he points out, this is okay. This is human, or part of your human condition of the very least, to be the way you are. And then you were like, yeah, I'm like, I try so hard and worry about these hang-ups.

And then all of a sudden that stuff comes through. That's kind of it. Yeah. And then he said something I think was also really wise when the 10 months came to an end. He said, don't try to do any of the practices that you've learned here. He said, just let it all go. And then see what emerges naturally to you. He didn't want to, he was very smart. He didn't want to create people out there doing some things, some system that they were imposing on the authentic self. Rather, he said, be receptive and see what's really yours, see what has really been integrated

into your life. So you built a career subsequently in mindfulness, meditation, spirituality, is that everything you've done has flowed through that lens well that's up until recently it's that's been my that the secret underpinnings of everything i do so i knew that i was going to figure out a way to express what i learned and share what i learned and i wasn't sure exactly how, because the next thing that happened to me was that kind of a panic and it was, okay, cool.

You know, I've been on this metaphorical mountaintop for almost a year and had these fabulous experiences. I knew I wasn't a monk ascetic type, so I wasn't gonna go live in a spiritual community or go to India or anything like that. It's all my friends had dysentery. Said, I'm not going to India. Said, I have to figure out what I'm gonna do in the world.

How will I translate all this into the marketplace? And I knew my criteria were really clear. I knew I wanted to do something that would help heal the world. And at the same time helped me to experience wholeness and happy, full self-expression. So I wanted to be fun, something I could learn, and something that would make a difference. And I was so naive in a wonderful way, and idealistic, I really didn't think about money. I did not think about, I mean, I figure,

if I do something good, it'll be sustainable. And, but just those criteria, it has to help others, it has to be something I will love to do. So I thought of going to medical school. But in those days, they did not have integrative medicine. You just had to study disease, which I really wasn't interested in. So I thought of getting a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

Same thing, you had to study neurosis and psychosis. There was no positive psychology yet. So that's when I had my juggling of piphany. I became a juggler when I was at Mr. Bennett's school. And it's funny because previous guest, Dr. Mark Epstein had a similar thing. Yes, did basically the juggling cause him to relax the thinking mind.

So yes, I experienced that. and actually then worked my way through graduate school as a professional juggler. And I once juggled live on stage with the Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones on a stage an interpretive juggler on a stage shaped like Mick Jagger's mouth, no kidding right on the tip of the tongue at the never-worthy rock festival and actually I was I taught I taught John London how to juggle on Good Morning America 24 years ago. So you have good enough at juggling to put yourself through grad school. Well with you know my parents helped me but I definitely supplemented my grad school education.

So what did you decide? Obviously the juggling thing was important, but what was your professional choice then in terms of grad school? I decided to become a teacher of the Alexander technique. Okay, I've heard of this. My brother did it once. Yeah, my son's name is Alexander.

In his case, the technique is taking a poop in your pants. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, pants. Which I'm sure he does effortlessly. Yeah, he really gives a natural. He's a natural, right? It's what's all about that. Yeah. I love it. So yeah, I had discovered the Alexander technique.

I had a few. Can you explain what it is? Less, sure. It's a method for developing poise and ease in your everyday movements, which then become, becomes particularly relevant if you're a performer of any kind, if you're on stage. It's really secretive developing stage presence, which is a function of what you don't do. It's what you leave out. It's not, yeah, if you're talking like this,

we don't wanna watch you. He's not gonna watch you. He's not gonna watch you, so. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Right? So it's one of my favorite definitions of it, descriptions of it, somebody called it the secret of keeping your eye

on the ball applied to life. I don't understand that. Good. So, so what's like juggling? You have to let go. You can't grasp too much. And then things find their perfect rhythm. You look at your, your, how old's your son? Three. Three. Perfect. Okay. So I bet he does everything with amazing energy and a lengthening spine and probably a very expressive face. He said for brushing his teeth, but yes.

Because he doesn't want to do that, right? Yeah, I don't want it. So the things he wants to do are done so naturally with the whole self, full presence, upright poise, a naturalness. This is our birthright. But then we go to school and into the workplace and we slip into what some researchers have called

the startle pattern. We lose that natural poise. The fear response, what do people do? They tighten their neck muscles, hold their breath. Tighten their shoulders. Tighten their shoulders. They hold everything and compress. And this isn't particularly good for your functioning

or your stage presence. And if you are in a stressful environment which most of us are, stressful job, a stressful relationship, this becomes a habit. We get locked into this startle pattern becomes modified form of startle becomes our way of being. And we begin the crooked person who walks the proverbial crooked mile. We lose that natural poise and aliveness. Well, Alexander was a Shakespearean actor

who was losing his voice in the middle of performance. He went to all kinds of voice therapists and doctors to help them. They told him vocal rest, all this stuff. Not if it worked. Then he said, it must be something I'm doing that's causing the problem. And what he noticed that as soon as he even thought about reclaiming a piece from Shakespeare, he started to tighten up

just the very thought of it. So he saw that that pattern then became much more exaggerated when he actually began the siloic we, for example. So he thought, how can I free myself from this? for example. So he thought, how can I free myself from this? And he said, I didn't have video back then. This was 1896 in Australia. He set up a system of mirrors. And he watched himself in the mirror to see if he could notice what was where he was going off. And sure enough, as soon as he even thought about speaking, he saw this tendency to just throw his head back a little bit, shorten his neck and start to raise his chest and tighten his shoulders. So he said, what happens if I let that go?

And eventually he learned to let it go while actually doing the passage and the result was, he became renowned for the power of his voice, for his effortless stage presence, and people began to come to him for lessons, including a group of doctors who had an amateur theatrical company. And the doctors got the idea, maybe this guy could help some of our patients with chronic stress conditions, breathing problems and backaches and so on. And Alexander helped many of them so much so that the doctors helped sponsor Alexander to go to London,

this is 1904, where he soon became known as the protector of the London theater. Because he gave lessons to many of the leading actors and actresses of the day. And you'll find that my colleagues here in New York who teach the Alexander technique are working with a lot of the people down the road at Lincoln Center and on Broadway. It really is a trade secret of high level performers to have that sense of effortless poise on the stage. But I always thought of it as posture. My brother, my brother went and I remember,

he stopped going, so this is not the case anymore, but I remember one day he was in my apartment with his kids and we walked out to the elevator to go take a walk or something. And I said, what is different about you? And he was just standing taller. And he said, you have to do in this thing all the Alexander day.

And that's really, you have to do in this thing all the Alexander day. And that's what it's related. I have terrible posture. I have really bad posture. My wife is always on me about this in a good way, pointing out that I'm just crunched, hunched and crunched. So I always thought of Alexander's technique, not so much about stage presence, but primarily about your posture, but I have that wrong.

Well, the only problem with posture is it tends to be something of a static concept. And you're always in Tai Chi, we talk about stillness and movement and stillness. So posture tends to be a static concept. Like we think we're frozen into my eighth grade algebra teacher would turn and write on the board. And we'd all slump. And she would say, posters! And everybody would try to sit up really straight with effort until she turned around again, and then we'd all slump. So posture is not a dynamic, organic concept. Alexander

talked about the use of the self and he said use affects functioning. Now what does that mean? Well, if you slump, for example, if you tighten your shoulders, if you hold your breath a little bit, if you stiffen your knees, you'll feel this right away. If you stiffen your knees, it locks down your diaphragm. You can't breathe as well. Even as I'm imitating this, you hear my voice is starting. It's not getting more resonant. So I free myself from that. I breathe a little more. The voice opens up. So the way we use ourself moment to moment affects our functioning, affects

our our respiration, our ability to think, our ability to be present, which is why if you think about meditation, what's Zen? It's actually the sitting. It's if you can really sit there and be really present. And they never say and then just slouch around, do that. I mean, every meditative tradition says effectively align around the vertical axis, expand into your full stature. Be natural, like your son. It is this renaissance of our birthright. We have this birthright of poise. We have this birthright of almost unlimited energy and wildly fabulous imagination. But people lose touch with that. So and you think the way you carry yourself, your presence, we're not always on the stage,

but let's just say stage presence impacts the way your mind is operating and vice versa. Yes. Yes. Alexander called it the universal constant in living. So what that means is you're either getting better all the time, you're getting worse all the time. If you are not aware of how you use yourself, so you are just taking life's traumas, the traumas of everyday life, the title of a market. Another jugular. But I love that title because it is the traumas of every life that are then reflected in how you tighten your shoulders and maybe you think you're

defending yourself by sticking your chest out or maybe you're depressed, you're depressing your body. And if I, if you sit at your full stature, if you open out and expand, and it helps to have a little inner smile going on the whole time, which they know, again, what do they say? In meditation, they try to be cool about it. They don't want to tell you to smile. They just say, turn the corners of your mouth on it. Well, hello. By the way, this is what Alexander figures. They just think of something funny to smile. Basically, have that free, humorous, playful attitude

in life. And yes, this affects your attitude moment to moment because you you cannot feel depression if you're aligned around your vertical axis and you lift up the two sides. Really? It's try it. I'm not depressed right now. Yeah. Next time I'm depressed. So in other words, but if you, like, if we go, if we both slump together, it'd be a lot easier to feel, if we wanted to feel depression, it's a much easier to do it. If we ease up, be more like your, your son, like sitting there like, my, harder to feel it. And you, you had Amy Cuddy, You talked to her. Wonderful conversation.

So she Amy Cuddy is famous for her theory around the power pose that she says her research suggests that if you strike a powerful pose that actually can help you put you in the right mind state for high performance, although there have been a lot of questions raised about the quality of her research. Yes. And the, it's both a, I think it's a wonderful thing that she brought a scientific lens to this. People call it the mind body connection, as though they're really these two separate things.

And our language, you know, Sanskrit has all these words that express the wholeness of body and mind and spirit. We don't have we don't have many distinctions So we'll just say body, mind, connection. It's great that somebody's Putting out this work and making people just aware of it that I've been teaching this by the way for 40 years that before you give a speech stand in We this is thousands of years old, by the way, and Chi Gong and Tai Chi, martial arts traditions, you stand in a, any one of a whole range of different poses, and you prepare yourself to be really focused and really get the job done, whatever it happens to be. If it's a meeting

you're going into or a speech you're about to give, but the only limitation I'd say to the way people are thinking about Amy's wonderful work is what if what if instead of striking the occasional pose when you think you need to raise your game. What if you are raising your game all the time? By the way, you move from one thing to another. By the way, you pick up your, and how would that affect your son? By the way, you pick him up and the quality of your touch and what he's reading unconsciously about your energy and your body language and your sense of wellbeing.

So my passions, how to integrate that into our everyday lives, cause then also, then it's really there when you need it. You know what I actually really, way going way ahead in the story, what I actually mostly do for money is I give speeches around the world to sometimes very large. You and I spoke at the same conference for MWE, the law firm. I was the day before you. I don't remember this. Yeah. I do a lot of speeches. Yeah, I know you do.

So do I, but I just remember that you were there. I said, oh, the 10% happier guy is there. Cause I, so I was the day before. So you know what that's like. Yeah. And you're, it's one thing to be on stage. And, but it's also, you're going to the airport. You're getting to your hotel. It's not that glamorous, that part of it, right?

You just put out all this energy, you get all the, people love you, great, you get the big applause even from, I think we did both the pretty well with the attorneys. I heard the, you know, tough crowd, but we want them over. But it's not, it's not just all the part that is on stage and on the lights, it's how do you comport yourself? How are you utilizing your energy? What's the quality of your being? As you go through all these different moments and scenes and roles that you're playing, and Alexander technique is one of the most most just magnificent, wonderful. I wish everybody, I want everybody to know about it.

Well, because I, let's describe it because I don't know that people are gonna understand. So how does it work? You go into a place where they're teaching it and somebody you like tickers with your posture and shows you how to do, what's the deal? Yeah. People go for different reasons. So the deal is a little different.

You know, if like they teach it at the jewelry art school, around the corner. So if you're a violinist and you're raising your shoulder, a little bit more than you need to and tightening your neck, we can hear it in the sound. So Alexander teacher will work with you and help you become aware of what you're doing. How? Partly verbally and partly through the subtlest, most elegant gentle touch that kind of gives you this little suggestion of, it's a reminder of what it was like when you were naturally poised. I'm really interested in this because you know, I've noticed that I lack

grace in my movements. I had the distinct. I hosted a failed game show on ABC news and as part of as the game. I watched the game show when it was airing and ever aired again after a couple of years ago and called 500 questions, I think you can see it on YouTube. Anyway, and I watched the show and this was really the first time where I actually see myself walking around a large space and it just seemed like I just, I did, no grace. I mean, and then I go to Soul Cycle, the spin class of my wife and my wife's next to me and she's so grateful and I'm like a running moose

that's been swapping into the bike. It's just a mountain goat or something like that. And, you know, sweating and my, I'm hunched over. And so I'm really intrigued by the notion of the Alexander technique. And I believe, and I'm sure you're going to get this, that there is a big overlap between mindfulness and how you carry yourself, because one requires the, how you carry yourself requires that you remember.

Yes, yes, yes. It's, it's, it's a missing link for a lot of, a lot of people. You know, they go to their meditation class, they sit on their cushion, It's a missing link for a lot of people. You know, they go to their meditation class. They sit on their cushion and hopefully they have an experience of well-being and freedom and their mind settles down a little bit. And that's wonderfully restorative. But you're going to spend much more of your life outside of that meditation class or that yoga class.

So what's your yoga? What's your mindfulness? What's your meditation of brushing your teeth, of driving your car, of getting in the subway, of cutting a carrot, of going to soul cycle, of doing everything you do? But you have to keep going, right? Because my brother went a couple times and I could really see it in the way he carried it and then he stopped going and now he's a schmoelike.

Well, it's so, it's... I hope he's listening. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha. It is, I mean, just, you can't take a couple lessons and okay, now I mastered meditation. Thanks a lot. It's a life practice.

Poise is a life practice. Alexander is the most elegant, efficient, and here's the thing. I got to tell you something else. I just, I still only really like to do things because they feel really good. And it feels so much better to move gracefully in the course of your life. I mean, I started, I was on the high school wrestling team. I played basketball. I was on the tennis team.

I was on the soccer team. And I had that athletic carriage. And that just disappeared. It just melted off as I went and had Alexander less. And I can still, it actually made me much more athletic, much better able to learn various performance arts, juggling, for example. I mean, I got really good as a juggle.

I could, you know, I could juggle five balls, I juggled flaming clubs. Never, you know, no animals were harmed in the making of this podcast. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. So, and then I realized that I wanted to bring this to people who might not normally experience it because, you know, they teach us at the Julliard school,

they teach this at the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Academy of Drama. It's woven into the fabric of professional performance schools because these people, the difference between tightening your shoulder and your neck while playing your violin and not is the difference between tightening your shoulder and your neck while playing your violin and not is the difference between you sounding a little scratchy and the tone being pure. And you don't have to be a sophisticated music lover to hear that.

You can do it before and after Alexander Damish. you'll hear it in a singer, you'll see it in a dancer, you can even see it in a juggler. But I thought it might be useful to people who were in leadership positions. And I created a company, my first company in 1978 called Self-Management. And my thought was I'll go into the offices. So instead of them coming to the Alexander Technique Studio, I'll go to your office and I'll watch you. And I brought, actually, I brought the sketch artist with me to sketch the flow of your movement.

Right. Now I just need an iPhone. Right, there's no iPhones back there. And we took Polaroid pictures. the flow of your movement. Right. Now you just need an iPhone. Right. There's no iPhones back there. And we took Polaroid pictures. And then I'd give you a person a report on how they used themselves. And then I'd give them a lesson. And we'd walk through the things they did and give them the experience of doing them with more ease, with more, it just feels better.

They know it right away. It's like so effortless. So that particular fellow was a high-level management consultant and he was doing a seminar in Vive Switzerland for the senior leadership team of digital equipment corporation and he invited me to come. And he said, would you teach them what you taught me and maybe teach them some juggling and some of the other things that I have been studying? So I went along and no clue about business at all,

but I shared this with them and I taught the meditation, which was not something anybody knew anything about then really at all. There's no mindfulness movement around it. It's like, what's he doing? But they liked it. And the head of HR for digital said, we want this young American guy on all our programs around the world. It's all the sudden, I'm in my late 20s and I'm flying all over the world, leading. It was called the mind and body seminar for people twice my age. And now I'm doing that for people half my age. But I have more energy and passion and love for what I do now than ever before. I feel amazingly blessed. But these worlds in which you move,

and not just you, but just the people to whom the Alexander technique is generally available, I mean, we're talking about elite performers and in your case, C-suite occupants and executives and people in business. How does a regular person learn how to have more boys and better posture? Well, save your money, go have Alexander lessons, go to, you know, the teachers teaching,

they're not over the place, right? It's all over the place. It's not that expensive. And when you consider, you know, tell people about anything like this, why should I spend my money on Alexander technique on Tai Chi lessons, on meditation lessons? If it doesn't work, you wasted your money. If it does work, it's the best investment you ever made. So, you know, if there was something that could

make you 10% happier, or 100% happier, and if you didn't have back pain, which is often for most of us caused by how we use ourselves. It's caused by the inordinate pressure we put on our lower backs because we're out of balance. You know, your head on average weighs about 15 pounds. If it's out of kilter, which it is if you're stressed and in that modified startle pattern, that's the constant pressure of 15 pounds pressing down on your spine and then it's worse with any time you do anything

challenging or difficult, you pick up your son, you brush your teeth, you drive your car, you do these everyday things, but they're slowly straining you to the point that then someday you say, oh, my back hurts. Oh, I threw my back out. So this is why this is about an approach to what you do every day. And it's, once again, it's pleasurable. And you go have some lessons. The teachers everywhere.

That's why the book I brought you is called Body Learning and Introduction to the Alexander Technique. And it was my master's thesis. But you can't just read the book and nail it, right? You need to... No, you need... There's people now because the world is the way it is.

There are people doing Skype lessons and coaching, and you can help. It's mindfulness in the flow of movement, so yes, you can help people and coach them. I can watch somebody, I can talk to them and I could help them. But look, I trained for three years full time as an Alexander technique teacher. And then I did two years of an internship to learn to get my balance and my nervous system harmonized enough that if I put my hands on somebody, it's going to give them this uplifting, integrating stimulus. So you don't want to miss that part of it.

Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newer series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one.

Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to veer Roo of course. In our series Roo Paul Born Naked, we'll show you how Roo Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. am I right about that? Yes, you are. So that's actually something we have not discussed much on the podcast. So I'd love to hear you just hold forth, if you will, on how that interconnection works. Well, as I explained earlier, my first awareness was of the importance of awareness.

And that that was the fuel or the space out of which everything could be created. And we just stop that for a second because the word awareness is tricky because we talk about drug awareness or mental health awareness. And that just means knowing that a thing is the thing or whatever. But when you talk about awareness, you're talking about the fact that the lights are on for us internally that we have consciousness that we know anything at all that we experience anything. Yes, that, that, that's my fascination with the source of awareness and how to be aligned with that source of awareness. It is the great mystery. It's the great, it's the great most wonderful mystery. So we know that we know stuff. In other words, I know that I see you, but I don't know.

I can't find what is knowing. I can look. I can look. What is knowing the sound of your voice? What is knowing the light on your visage right now? But I can't find it. Who's the eye? Who's the eye looking for the know?

You know, I mean, so this is a really interesting rabbit hole to go down well when was so when you in your conversation with Mark Epstein I love when he said he was talking about His father who's a physician and he had brain cancer and Mark said okay, got it. You know try to get through to my dad who's a scientific materialist, this notion of consciousness, just because I'll feel bad if I don't, you know, that's a betting book of the dead. I gotta get him ready for this journey. So Mark said, you know, I called up my dad

and I kind of apologized, it's, look, you know that part of you that you just relate to as yourself that you've always known that hasn't changed. If you think about your earliest memory, it was there when you were 30s, there when you're the earliest memory, it's there right now, it's there last time I saw you. That sense of the one constant, because we know our thoughts are changing and our motions are changing and the body is clearly changing So this but the sense I

Am is there's a continuity so Mark said to his dad so you know the advice that It's given as as one makes this transition is as you feel yourself going ride that out ride out on that that stream Well, don't wait to your riding out. We want to ride that stream. That is the stream. So that was my first interest. And then it appears that somehow out of that, we give rise to the 10,000 things, to the phenomena of what we call creation. So we're interested in creation. It's kind of natural to be interested in creativity. Well, sorry, sorry.

So out of whatever the source of consciousness is, everything's coming out of that. I mean, that's a metaphysical claim. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not claiming it. I'm curious about it. And I'm exploring it. And I'm just like, okay, so I'm gonna continue

to explore all of this. And so it seemed to me going back to the world being crazy as it was then as it is now and helping people have better conversations, come up with better solutions. That seemed to be a very practical way to take all this study of consciousness and self-awareness and shift it into helping people with real issues. And so I started to study creative thinking. And how do you generate more ideas in less time and

make better connections between those ideas? What's the research on that? There's a lot of the Torrance work at Stanford. It's been burgeoning in the last 40 years since I started this, but I was lucky enough to meet and work with very closely some of the people who were pioneers in this field. The guy I was traveling around teaching that mind body seminar with was one of the big pioneers that he invented mind mapping This method for generating and organizing ideas that integrates the artistic An imaginative part of your mind with the logical and analytical part of your mind

And we teach this to these corporate executives and help them use it to write their strategic plan And they said that's amazing. We're doing this in half the time and it was so much more fun and we had better ideas. So, you know, this is so-called reality test. This is not theoretical. This is in companies, seeing if we could really help people be more creative in dealing with these solutions.

So, I, more and and more was asked to teach people how to mind map, how to think creatively, how to generate more ideas. To this day, people still call me up and say, can you help us think out of the box? So in those in those, in those sessions, I used to reference Leonardo Da Vinci because my grandmother was an Italian painter. And she told me about Leonardo when I was very young. And he became one of my heroes along with Superman. And I remember when I realized that Superman was only a comic book character, but Leonardo was real. So it was 1994, and I was speaking,

I was actually speaking in New York at the Plaza Hotel to a young president's organization, this global group of company presidents. And I was speaking to them about creativity and innovation. And I found out that they were holding one of their elite premier events they call them universities in Florence, which is my favorite city. So I really wanted to get invited. So fellow comes up to me says, if we were invited to Florence, what would you do? We want something really special. So in the moment,

I made up about how to think likely in order to Da Vinci. And he says, can you really do that? And I said, sure. So I had six months to make this baby up and this is really notoriously tough crowd. When you speak to them, you've probably spoken to groups like this where they rate you on a scale of one to 10. If you get below eight, you never get invited back. If you get above a nine, you're in the in crowd and you get to speak to them all over the world. It just, you know, they don't, they don't, they just look at you with a deadpan face, their arms are full, there's like, prove it, show me what

you got. It's a tough, tough, but they're the best. Once you get through to them, so I, I mean, I literally went to Leonardo's birthplace. I went to the place he died. I literally walked in his footsteps. I read his notebooks over and over again. I meditated in front of his works of art, I started having dreams and from these dreams I came up with these seven principles for thinking like Leonardo da Vinci, which I delivered in Florence and it was actually pretty funny because I sent in, I've written a little paper on the seven principles for thinking likely in Ardo. And I also sent in my biography so the person could introduce me. The person introducing me confused the two documents.

Ladies and gentlemen, members and guests, here at the Young Presidents organization, we've had many extraordinary resources. But never have I had the privilege and the pleasure of introducing someone with a resume like this, anatomist architect, boffinist, city planner, designer, engineer, painter, sculptor, Michael Gell. Anyway, that led to a book that actually came out 20 years ago, called How to Think Likely in Art of Adventure, Seven Steps to Genius, Every Day.

Big promise. Well, all I can tell you is my favorite, I still hear from people all over the world, it's 25 languages and it's really struck a chord with people, but the favorite thing somebody said is this book gave me everything I always wanted to teach my children, but didn't have the words to say. Because what if, and the promises can be delivered only because I readily

in art as notebooks over and over again, and I put myself in the mind, said the question was, what's he trying to teach us? And he gives actual advice to his students on how to be more creative. He tells them what to do. So what I did was just translate this into contemporary language. And then, because I've been leading workshops and seminars for many, many years,

I made up exercise that would bring the principle to life. How, if at all, do you think meditation helps with creativity? I made up exercise would bring the principle to life. How, if at all, do you think meditation helps with creativity? Well, you know, I asked, I asked Richie Davidson, a prominent neuroscientist, previous twice, guest on this show. But by the way, you know, when I, so I, when I came, I was telling you about the being at Mr. Bennett's school and doing all this meditation. When I came back, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I used to juggle in Harvard Square.

And this friend of mine, Rick Margillin, who's a physician, brought me over to Harvard. And there's this guy, Richie Davidson there. And I think Dan Goldman was there, too. And they put electrodes on my brain and asked me to meditate. I don't know if they still have the data from that very early. But I asked, I interviewed Richie for one of my previous books about the relationship between meditation and creativity, because I just, of course, intuitively instantly

assume, well, hello, but I like to back it up. So I figured, let's reach out to Richens. He says, he says, the research is still pretty early. It's not all that clear because they're too busy studying the efficacy of meditation for helping cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety. And so I think they'll get around more and more to creativity.

But if you study great creative breakthroughs, they're similar to enlightenment experiences. They don't happen in the office. They don't happen in the office. They don't happen in the lab or on the computer. And even just leave aside great geniuses, just ordinary people. I asked this question to groups around the world. I said, where are you physically located when you get your best ideas. Where are you? Mostly walking.

Walking. So it's walking, it's in the shower, the bath. A lot of times driving my car. Some people say it's when I'm done at the gym. Also meditating. And meditating. Huge, huge. Nobody ever says I get my best ideas in the office.

They're all times when we are usually by ourselves, so we don't have the fear of embarrassment of thinking or saying something that's outside of the norm. And they're all activities that shift the brain from a more active beta state, which we're in at work and conversing with other people to an alpha or a theta state, so slower brain waves. So basically we're relaxed and we're by ourselves. Well, that's, you can see why I naturally have a sense that meditation is...

It's training you to get in. Training you to state, or whatever. It's training you to get in. Training you to say to states or whatever. It's, yeah. That's what we know. And you read the sages and they're all saying, you know, you want to have the breakthrough idea, meditate. I love the, I mean, I've been on meditation retreats where I'm just, it's a tsunami of ideas. And then I've gotten home and looked at my notebooks and they were all horrible ideas.

So, it's not a guarantee. It's just an interesting, I mean, you will, I think you'll get a lot of stuff that comes up like once you, once the chattering mind slows down, creativity, there's more room for creativity. It's just, no, you don't know, you might not get the meal you ordered. Well, that's what makes it creative is you won't get the meal you ordered. You'll come up with a whole new recipe and new flavors. Yes, sometimes it's terrible recipe. Sometimes it may be, however,

like whoever came up with turd ducking. Can't argue with that. But when you, when you, in your own process, you get these ideas and they seem like crazy ideas. But when we, if we read about Einstein's experience of his own ideas or Leonardo's experiences of his ideas, Edison, you go back and find a great mind. They all give you the same advice. So I like this, like every meditation tradition says start by aligning around the vertical

access. Probably something to it. You know, that's what they're telling you in China, China, India, every tradition, cobalists, nobody says start by slumping or, you know, tightening your jaw or something. It's a unit, it tends to be universal discovery. Well guess what? Leonardo da Vinci tells his students wherever you go carry a little notebook with you and when something occurs to you write it down and don't worry about whether it makes sense or not. Edison gives pretty much the same instruction to the people who work in his laboratory.

And be careful of premature organization. So in other words, you look at the seemingly inter-unnot connected, crummy ideas, you've judged them and you've dismissed them, and then you miss the potential of what may emerge as you play with them and let them flow together. Now they still may ultimately not be a breakthrough idea. You probably have to come up with a thousand ideas to get a real breakthrough idea, but that one idea is a product of the other 999 seemingly silly or irrelevant ideas. So the ability to ride that uncertainty, to become comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing. And again, meditation is training your whole being

to be more receptive to that state. You know, my view, look, we're antennas, but we're filled with static and we're not getting good reception. Geniuses have cleared out the static and they're getting good reception. One way I think about meditation is, okay, let's tune the antenna. I love that. I feel like there are a million other things we can talk to you about, but we're pretty much at a time. Let me finish by doing what I like to, the opportunity I like to give every

guest, which is I call it the plug zone. Oh, it's plug everything you've ever done. Give me all the books that you want people to know about where can we find you in social media, the internet, all that. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's MichaelGelb.com, G-E-L-B. Look for how to think, likely in our adventure,

seven steps to genius every day. That's my best known book. My first book, Body Learning, and Introduction to the Alexander technique. And my most recent book is called The Art of Connection, Seven Relationship Building Skills Every Leader Needs Now. Well, now I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about it. I didn't even know about this. Can you just give me the headline, the take away of that one is, so I'm teaching people how to think like Leonardo

and like Edison, creative innovation, work with businesses around the world. And I don't just give a talk or a seminar and fly off. Clients put me on retainer, I work with them over years, I help them right there, their plan, their vision, their mission, their values values and then navigate through how you really make an innovative culture and and Promoto workforce that makes people love coming to work and love what they do and love who they serve and love their teammates and their vendors and this my passion is to help be part of creating

that kind of place for people to work. So what I've noticed, I'm paying attention all along is getting the breakthrough ideas is actually the easy part. Implementing them is the challenging part. That's why we're at the Art of Connection because it's the most important things I've learned about how do you build relationships with yourself That's why we're at the art of connection because it's the most important things I've learned about how do you build relationships with yourself with others that will help you actually navigate through

the objections to change the resistance people have to innovation and creativity. So it's the playbook for and creativity. So it's the playbook for how do you really make this happen in the world where people aren't always so open to change in innovation? Well, I would call that book, why won't everybody just do what I want? But that's part of the problem is that's the way we feel. Yeah, I've just expressed, I've just crystallized the problem. Yes, thank you. I love it. I'm here for you.

Right. Yeah. Good. Good. So what is just one more question for sure? For those of us, we all live in an interconnected world, whether we're in a corporation or a family or some sort of nonprofit, we need to work collaboratively. So, and given that a lot of people listening to this, I do have a meditation. Sure.

At least if not a background, at least some curiosity in it, what would you say from what you learned would be the most meditative technique to this? Well, first of all, emotions are contagious for better or for worse. So decide what you want to catch and what you want to spread. And when you get that your state is rippling out for better or worse. And when you get people becoming aware of that, yeah, so I was, I have a client in New Jersey. They started by remediating asbestos. And now they do risk management and engineering,

the brilliant, the helmet consultant, great people. And I've been on retainer to them for a couple of years. And I just led their second strategic planning retreat under my supervision. So I thought it was time to introduce a wellness program for them because a lot of their senior leaders were struggling with stress and various stress-related ailments, one of them had heart attack.

And so we're helping them have better healthier food and the CEO who's just fabulous guy immediately says, let's get pay for gym memberships and help. And then the last retreat, I taught a meditation. And this is something also about how the world has changed today. It's something so exciting and wonderful to me. So we had just two or three short meditation classes. And just I had, I just had a meditate for five minutes, just to feel, get the toe in the pool sort of thing. So in the last morning, I sat down,

we were gonna do, we do a thing at the end of these meetings, everybody stands up and they say, what they're gonna do exactly and by when it will be accomplished. So it's real accountability. I'm going to do this specifically. Here's how I will measure that I did it and it will be done by this date. So these are all the things we've all the creative fun stuff we've been working on. It's now, okay, let's figure out how this is really going to manifest. But just before we did that, I thought I'll review meditation with that. So I sat down and, you know, before I, I mean, I, I aim to be flowing in that stream all

the time, but there's a special responsibility comes here now, saying, okay, I'm going to lead this class. So I was about to begin repeating the instructions for meditation, explaining what I was going to do, but I didn't have to. They all were quiet, and there was a silence in the space. And I felt this sense of there's an intelligence here that's greater than the sum of the parts of the individual bodies in the room.

And I sense that it's just so different than when I first taught meditation 40 years ago. I don't think that would happen in a corporate, but people know that the zeitgeist has shifted. And with all of our difficulties, there's more guist in the zeit. Lovely, great place to end it. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. My pleasure, 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 DanBHarris.

Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohan, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped 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 1-3-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.