The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Soil & Spirit: Seeds of Purpose, Nature’s Insight & the Deep Work of Transformational Change by Ian C. Williams

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

Soil & Spirit: Seeds of Purpose, Nature’s Insight & the Deep Work of Transformational Change by Ian C. Williams https://amzn.to/3YEmR7h Reviveuandi.com Stillpointinsight.com Monumental challenges threaten the sixth mass extinction on planet Earth. From increasing rates of infertility and chronic disease to soil degradation and climate collapse, reviving civilization requires changemakers to step forward and lead with their own unique genius. In Soil & Spirit, Ian C. Williams presents a simple solution: self-actualization. Solutions at scale begin with individuals organizing themselves. Ian guides the reader through that process via four primary landscapes: internal, social, external, and spiritual. These landscapes chart the path from personal to planetary transformation. Soil & Spirit is not only a message but a methodology for designing resilient landscapes, both inside and out. Creating a regenerative future means committing to self-cultivation. Once you learn to navigate the four primary landscapes and awaken to your life’s core purpose, you become a catalyst for true cultural transformation.

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We love it. We have an amazing author and gentleman on the show. He is both. He's not, you know, sometimes we just have amazing authors, and then sometimes we have gentlemen on the show. But today we have a gentleman who has both things going for him. I don't know, you know. I mean, when the women come on the show, they can't be gentlemen, right? So, see what I did there? Anyway,

they're like, that joke doesn't fly, Chris. Knock it off. Some jokes kill people. Some jokes die, and sometimes they're funny if they die and they kill. He is the author of the new book that just came out February 21st, 2023. The book is entitled

Soil and Spirit, Seeds of Purpose, Nature's Insight, and the Deep Work of Transformational Change. And I think you're really going to enjoy this experience because I like the imagery and the analogy that he's using here in his book on how to improve yourself and your life. Ian C. Williams joins us today. He is a best-selling author, speaker, and business advisor devoted to personal and planetary well-being. At the age of 24, a single mystical experience transformed his life forever.

We're going to find out what that means. Now he speaks and teaches about personal and spiritual development internationally. He also founded Stillpoint Insight, a social enterprise that helps mission-driven organizations scale solutions to global challenges. He's a gifted speaker and process facilitator who leverages a background in education and regenerative design to generate simple solutions for complex challenges. He has a Master of Public Affairs with an emphasis in leadership strategy, my favorite subject, and organizational culture from the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He joins us now. Welcome, Ian, to the show.

Much appreciated. Thanks for the opportunity. There you go. And Ian, there's a picture of you on your bio that you sent me that has you with very short hair. So you've changed quite a bit. You've got the long hair now. You've got kind of the earthy look more going on. Yeah, I may have had it pulled back. It's been a long time since I've had short hair.

Oh, is that what it was? There you go. There you go. I miss the days when I had long hair. So welcome to the show. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, reviveuni.com. It's the word revive, the letter U-A-N-D-I.com or stillpointinsight.com.

There you go. So what motivated you to write this book? Honestly, you know, the answer to this question is always the same. It was other people. You know, it all started with that mystical experience at the age of 24, which led to a deep journey inward, right into the soils of self, as sometimes I say. And as I just began sharing that process, and the insights that I learned and the self awareness that that came with that journey, I just had a number of people

over a number of years say, you know, where did you learn this? And when I told them it all just kind of came from inside, they said, you got to start teaching this. You got to share it. You got to tell people, put it in the message. So I think the book was a long time in the making. It started in different ways long before the book. But ultimately, it was like I need to put together this kind of manifesto because it's really the bedrock of all of my work personally and professionally. There you go. So why did you title it Soil and Spirit, Seeds of Purpose, Nature's Insight, Deep Work for Transformational Change? Give us the 30,000 overview of what's in the book, please. The idea of soil and spirit is really that there is, of course, it's kind of a double entendre,

right? There's a soil, there's a substrate to the spiritual process. And I really wanted to speak to that, right? Try and get down to the core of it all. So it's very non-dogmatic, but it's very direct. And of course, it's also a direct nod to nature and the natural world, right? So nature is used as this touchstone and this teacher and analogy throughout, because ultimately, that's where a lot of these insights, I mean, all of these insights come from, right? We come from the natural world, we will return to it. And that's the backdrop, right? And that's probably, well, you know, some people are now saying that artificial intelligence

may be the next greatest existential threat, right? Even greater than climate change. But the bottom line is we've got big challenges and therefore big opportunities. So that's really soil and spirit. But the subtitle Seeds of Purpose, Nature's Insight, the deep work of transformational change really gets into the content of the book itself, right? I'm just trying to connect people with opportunities to discover, uncover, design their own purpose, understand how that fits into the natural world at large, not just the environment, but also like social landscape in order to lead to that transformational change, right? So we want to change the world.

We need to change ourselves, that cliche, but eternally relevant truth. And so it's my attempt at offering that message with my own twist on it. But really it's just designed to connect people with themselves so that they can go out into the world and be effective agents of change. There you go. And using that soil and spirit sort of analogy, we'll get into some of the details here in a bit, really helps kind of paint a good picture. And then, of course, realizing we're natural beings.

I think sometimes we get the feeling of immortalization where we think we're kind of above it all, and we're kind of really not, last time I checked. Because, as you mentioned, we do return to the soil, body-wise. People believe all sorts of things about what happens after. But, you know, technically your body does stay here, last time I checked. I haven't seen anybody rising out of graves yet but there's still time you know the zombie apocalypse and all that uh so uh tell us your origin story there's this mystical

uh experience you had when you were young uh lead us through your journey how did you get here yeah so it's it's a little bit um it's got two parts, and I'll start with a little bit of context. One is that I've got a history of 12 years of substance use. I'm coming up on a year sober now, but... Congratulations. Thank you very much. It happened during that 12-year period, probably about 10 years in. And along the road, I was, you know, grappling with personal development and really trying to get out of substance use, but having a hard time doing so.

And so I adopted a dog along the way because I thought that it would be an opportunity to, you know, teach myself some responsibility. Right. If I could take care of this other animal, then maybe I can learn to take care of myself. Your own animal. Yep. She kind of, you know, she fell into our lap. I was living with some guys in college and we just kind of inherited her over the summer. And then our lease was up and it was who's going to take her. So I took her.

Fast forward five or six years that she was in our lives and it was intimate and intense and wonderful and challenging and at times really painful. She came from a checkered past and obviously I was in the midst of my own checkered past. And so we had some troubles, a lot of dog fights, a lot of people bites. And ultimately it got to the point where I realized this can't continue from a quality of life standpoint. You know, as a family, we had done everything we knew how to do. You know, I grew up in a dog family to try and help her out and just wasn't changing. As I look back on it now, I think that's probably a large part because I wasn't changing, but point being we um, we had to take her to the vet and put

her down early, you know, let her go. So she was probably only six or seven at the time. And as traumatic as that is for anybody who's owned a pet before, right. They'll know that there's this period in the home where it's still a bit odd that they're not around, right. Cause you're, you're so used to them being their energy, being in the house every day. And so it was just a couple of days after we went to the vet for the last time with her and I was laying in bed awake and I was staring at the ceiling and I was thinking about some of the dreams

that I'd been having. And I felt her nudge the door open and I felt her walk into the room and then she hopped up on the bed next to me. And she was standing right next to my head and I could see her and I could hear her, but she didn't make an imprint on the mattress. And she curled up, and she let out that patented sigh that she did every night that said, it's time to go to bed. And I rolled over to face her,

and I fell asleep. And I woke up the next morning, and I was journaling about the experience as if it were a dream, because I thought it was a dream. And it was in the midst of that writing where I realized I was awake when that happened. And it was in the midst of that writing where I realized I was awake when that happened. And it was this totally transformational experience, right? I mean, it was totally beyond anything that I could comprehend logically, completely outside the realm of anything that I'd experienced spiritually. And it was a real change in trajectory. There you go. There you go.

There you go. And did that help you reach a point where you wanted to get off of your addiction and things that you were doing? It was the beginning of the end. There you go. I knew at that point that emotional vulnerability just comes with that type of traumatic experience. And I, it was part of what taught me if I'm going to really figure out this addiction

stuff, I need to learn how to embrace that emotional vulnerability because I'm using sentences to mask my emotional discomfort. Right. And so that started a familiarization process where I really started to lean into that emotional vulnerability and process at a deeper level. Why am I using asking those kind of existential questions about, you know, self and the nature of life and what I want to do with my life. And that ultimately led to my sobriety, which came a couple of years later. There you go.

You know, it's a journey. It's a pathway. But sometimes it's those cathartic moments in life that are deeply challenging. And, you know, many times they force us to grow. I mean, we really don't want to grow usually through cathartic stuff. Like, I really don't want to experience, you know, some sort of thing that's going to force me to change. But sometimes we need these moments in life to become something better, recognize things inside of ourselves.

And so, uh, it sounds like you kind of crossed that, uh, that, uh, paradigm there and, uh, the threshold where you, uh, where you, uh, you know, started your journey on, on doing more work and self-healing. Um, you know, dogs are wonderful beings, very challenging, and my dogs made me a better human being. Well, I don't know if I've gotten worse. I might have gotten worse, but I think I'm a better human being overall. I think I'm better than I probably would have been if it hadn't been for my dogs. So let's get into some of the details of the book here.

There are several analogies to use that I really like. I think analogy is the proper word. I flunked second grade. There's four primary landscapes you talk about in your book on processing stuff. There's the internal, the social, external, and spiritual. Tell us a little bit about those and how those play in to how you help people deal with their issues. It really ties into, I mean, again, this is a lesson that comes from natural law, right? This law of interdependence.

And I think one thing that we particularly in the West have a habit of doing is compartmentalizing. And so I wanted to take that concept of compartmentalization that, again, people are, at least here in the West, relatively familiar with, and structure the book in that way so that it was a little bit more manageable or linear, just in terms of the way that people move through the book, you know, contextually or cerebrally. So, but I think about them as these concentric circles, the internal landscapes at the center, the social landscape, the external landscape, the spiritual landscape. The idea is the further we move outside of ourselves, the more kind of ethereal the realms become. But also to suggest that at each one of those within each one of those landscapes at each one of those stops in the concentric circles or rungs we have work to

do right and we have responsibility to take as individuals in order to impact that specific landscape so i think it's easy to draw the parallel like you're responsible for what's happening in your internal landscape but it becomes more and more abstract the further out we move, right? We're also, we have responsibilities in the social landscape and responsibilities to the external landscape, the natural, the physical world, as well as responsibilities to that spiritual landscape. And so I really wanted to structure that book in or structure the book in that way to help people move through the text, but it's a big idea book, right? And it goes straight to the heart of matter.

It's for deep thinkers and big feelers. And so it's really, it's not pulling any punches, right? I mean, in the introduction, we start talking about the sixth mass extinction, because that's really what we're up against right now as a species. So, you know, here we are kind of starting at the 30,000 foot view, but then really trying to drill down into the tangible nitty gritty nuts and bolts of what can an individual do and how do they do that work? There you go. Uh, you know, I, I like the, the, I think paradigm maybe might be the right, but I like the paradigms you use for this because,

uh, it's kind of more more an expansive view of the internal spirit of being the internal social external and spiritual you're talking about landscapes charting a path uh and etc etc and also recognizing that we're natural we're part of a natural world because we do live in the universe last time i checked uh some people are living in their own private Idaho, but that's another story. I love that analogy. So how does this tie into, you know, what's going on in the world? I think, you know, there's a lot of skeptics of climate change and our environment that's going on. I mean, I certainly don't think anyone can dispute or should be disputing that we do pollute a lot. We seem to be a growing species. We're now 8 billion people, I think now.

So we're growing very fast and rapidly fast. In fact, I think we hit the last billion faster than ever before. And, you know, you look at stuff. We just went on in Maui, Hawaii, where they had the massive burn down of the whole town and just something that happened overnight with little to no warning. In fact, within an hour or two. You know, we're seeing all these massive events.

We're seeing huge heat things here. So, I mean, you can dispute, okay, well, maybe there isn't climate change or whatever. I know there's people out there that are going to say that, but you can dispute there's some really wild stuff going on with our environment right now. And I think we're starting to see, you know, some of the impact of what we've done with, uh, on the planet. And how do you merge that between our, our spiritual selves or, or natural selves natural selves and trying to take better care of the environment because, you know, it has an effect on us. We saw it with COVID. We saw that with, you know, heat changes. It definitely has an impact of us and probably, you know, the heat

sometimes affects your mental state lately. A hundred percent. Yeah. This is really, it's a, it's a line that i wanted to walk but not cross in the book right so um you know there is a sentence in the book that's like something to the effect of this book is not an attempt to convince you that climate change is real okay um this phrase like believing in science is one that i pick a bone with but um regardless of one's opinions right about climate change, about AI, about any of these potential existential threats, the whole central narrative, the taproot of the book is that we can address all of these things and individuals by doing

one simple thing, which is self-actualization. Right. And so the idea is not, Hey, we need to necessarily rally together and, you know, all believe the same thing so that we can orient around a single movement or initiative, but rather we need to go inward and do that internal work of self-discovery and awareness so that then as we look outward, we can understand where we fit in terms of, you know, the giant puzzle of life and what skills

we have to offer, what passions we have to pursue and how we can kind of triangulate those things with who we are. Right. And so it's not a raw, raw book about, you know, Hey, we need to rally the troops and address the climate crisis. Even though those are my personal opinions, I tried, I worked really hard to keep those out of the book because the idea is again, if we can just focus on self actualization, that's the single linchpin that's going to be the cascading effect that's going to lead to, you know, change at scale. When more individuals do that internal work, then they can go out into the world and be more effective at creating the change they want to see. There you go. And this also connects back to the addiction recovery and sobriety piece, which is a big part of my healing journey was just spending time in nature.

And that was one of the first places, the first environments where I really felt included, right? Because I could disappear into this landscape, this wilderness, and the birds and the bees kind of forget about you if you sit there long enough quietly. That was that first place where it's like, okay, this inclusivity piece is, it's not just real at a human to human level. It's real at an environmental level, right? We're not living on this planet. We're living in this planet. And so to take those things and to try and translate them into actionable to-dos was really part of what I was trying to drive with the book because it's, I've been the person who's asked these big questions. What do we do about climate change? What do we do about social

injustice? What do we do about X, Y, Z? And you just tie yourself up in knots thinking about where to start. Yeah. It's, it seems pretty big to try and tackle, right? Uh, so that was beautifully said. I love what you put there. Uh, thanks to, uh, Adam for calling in the show. Thanks for ringing in there, Adam. And I'm glad you're enjoying the show. So I like what you talk about. I recently started doing this thing where I go sit in my backyard and there's beautiful trees and nature out there. And I get to spend some time with my two huskies. But I started a thing where I went out and sit in the morning with my morning coffee.

And sometimes I'll take my shirt off and I'm just collecting my vitamin D. And I'm trying to also reset my rhythms. What are those things called? Your Arcadia rhythms? Circadia rhythms. I wouldn't call them Arcadia. I think it's a video game. But my circadia rhythms.

And so I started doing this thing about a few months ago. And I'll go out and I'll sit on the bench in the sun in the morning and my body really likes it. I don't know, you know, it could be psychosomatic, but I go sit out there for 15, 20 minutes to try and soak up my vitamin D, my natural vitamin D. I go try and get those circadian rhythms done and easily sit in peace and quiet. And I just kind of listen to stillness of nature. Sometimes a lot of times I'll read meditations by Marcus Aurelius or some other stoic, Seneca and things like that. And try and just kind of get into a calm state of mind before I begin my day and kind of get a frame where I feel really in control

before I greet all the emails and all the craziness and all the people yelling at me on, you know, whatever, you know, they need and whatever I need. And, you know, you know how it is when you open that email and you're like, holy shit, you know, you kind of feel sometimes disempowered and you're chasing the emergency fires fires of the day and so it kind of gives me that little time and it's kind of interesting uh every now and then i maybe won't feel like going out or something's going on or something and now when i go out in the sun my body goes hey you need to go uh sit out in the sun more and stuff my body really likes it and so i've kind of started trying to connect better with nature i I guess what I'm trying to say.

And I'm feeling the vibe with it where there's a sense of peace and tranquility that I do get out there. I mean, it's a bit obvious when you say it out loud, right? Like we're natural beings. It's like, yeah, duh. But to think about the level of naturalness to the lives that we lead sends us down a deep rabbit hole. I mean, there's no question that the technology, it seems like we've taken incremental steps to move further and further away from nature connectedness. And from an evolutionary standpoint, all of our rhythms, you know, the circadian rhythm being one of them, are directly tied to the natural world, right? And I'm going to forget the, you know the nitty-gritty science because i'm more of a systems thinker than i am a detail guy but um andrew huberman's also got a great podcast science related talks about the importance of light right and the importance

specifically of getting light early in the morning because it triggers a specific neurotransmitter that then sets your sleep clock for later in the day. Yeah. Right. And so we can stumble upon these things intuitively, like I did wandering off into the woods because I just needed some alone time and some stillness and then starting to uncover inclusivity and change being a constant and et cetera, et cetera. But we can also start to look at these things through a scientific lens, right?

Which is what are the effects that are happening in the body when we do X, Y, and Z, when we engage in nature in X, Y, Z. And it's one of the reasons I spent some time in the field of nature-based therapeutics. There's a whole, you know, body of scholarly work devoted to what's the impact of nature on our health and well-being. And, you know, for people that are really science-minded, if there's, you know know a sense of like this being a little bit too woo-woo um just go read the science right i mean go read the data it's the same with mindfulness-based practices if that all seems a little bit too woo-woo just go read the data it's out there yeah we we come from nature hey uh you know nature in the universe uh you know last time i checked i don Does anybody feel like they, I mean, unless you're an alien, you probably came from another planet,

but there's still probably a nature on that planet you came from. So let's get a plug in here for your two websites. You have Revive You and I with the initials you and I, and then you have StillPointInsight.com. Tell us about these websites, the work that you're doing for individuals and companies, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So Revive You and I is really, it's my own personal website, right? For the speaking and the teaching that's largely connected to personal and spiritual development and nature connectedness. So if people are interested in,

having me on a podcast or bringing me out to a conference or an organization, et cetera. Revive You and I is the place to go. As I was moving through my own individual journey, I realized that in order to have the impact that I felt I could have in the world, I needed to start working with organizations, specifically organizations that are working at solving these big problems. Because I've been a part of mission-driven organizations, and I know that burnout is real, and I know that organizational dysfunction leaves a lot of meat on the bone when it comes to the impact that these organizations could have. So I took a lot of these lessons

and I just applied them to organizational development, right? Took the personal development lessons and applied them to organizational development. That's still point insight. So we help mission-driven organizations not only build culture, but also capacity through a number of different initiatives, right? One is leadership advising, leadership strategy, another is employee well-being and engagement, and then third is social environmental impact. The idea that we can move into these organizations and really, again, from the inside out,

build robust, resilient systems. We can increase the positive impact of those organizations. That's entirely separate. It's not just me as an individual. It's an organization, other people in it. And so I felt like it deserves its own website, its own place to live on the interwebs. There you go. And these are important factors. So do you find that you talked about

leadership? Do you find that getting people better connected to themselves, to their nature, and to nature, their nature and to nature, see what I did there? But basically helps an organization run better, perform better, get better results? Absolutely. Right. I mean, again, I think there's a lot of, we tend to think of business as, you know, some of us tend to think of business as like a hard science, right? Certain inputs create certain outputs and all the squishy stuff like organizational culture, employee wellbeing, we don't really need it. Right. And that's not what the data says at all. Right. Some of the most successful companies in the world are because they focus, leaders have

focused on personal development and the organization at large has focused on organizational culture, workplace wellbeing and satisfaction. Right? We are, again, and this ties back to natural law, we're social beings, we're social creatures. And though we, you know, depending on your belief system, may be made in the eye of the divine, we also have the potential for flaw, right? And we're messy creatures, we're not perfect. And so putting those things in the context of an organization, where we have a bunch of individuals trying to function as a singular organism that can create roadblocks and challenges. use the term leaders, we're not just speaking specifically about people in positions of, you know, traditional hierarchical power positions, you know, the C-suite, the managers, etc. There's also leaders of culture, right? The people that actually make that workplace sticky, because people like working with them, people enjoy spending time with them, etc, etc. So we're

trying to move into these organizations and again, support them from the inside out. We do that through helping them build robust business processes, right? Resilient business processes, but also then providing foundational skills in employee well-being. Because the idea is if we're healthier as individuals, we have greater capacity to affect greater change. Right. greater capacity to affect greater change, right? So again, it's that same kind of in-to-out theory of change, but it's absolutely targeted on those specific levers or leverage points within the organization, which are largely people and process and purpose. There you go. And I imagine it makes quite a difference. Give us some examples of some things you've seen where organizations are transformed with your work? From a business process standpoint, you know, kind of one of our flagships is that we work with the team.

They were working 10 to 12 hour weeks, six to seven days a week, you know, essentially 70, 80 hours a week. We were able to help them maintain the same volume, sales volume, but do it in 40 hours a week. Right. So we essentially lopped off 40% of their working time just by changing their business processes. One can, you know, see the correlation that that would have also on quality of life and employee wellbeing. But the other thing is, you know, moving into a space where what we would call that kind of purpose realm, right? Where people are not, they're excited to come to work because they believe in the mission of the organization, but they also understand how they fit into it. And this is something that we experience and see a lot with the organizations

that we work with, largely they're growing organizations, right? And that kind of small to medium size or teams that are in that small to medium size range. And what I mean by that is like, you know, zero to 500, right? It's a huge, huge spread. But as the organization grows, the business processes become more complex, typically. And it's easier then for people to not really understand how they fit into the greater cog of that wheel, right, of the organization.

And so helping them identify what are the most important aspects of their job for business success, but what are the most aspects of their job? What are the most important aspects of the job for their personal wellbeing? Those are two separate processes, right? Knowing what's going to make you a high performer at work

is different than knowing what's going to bring value to your life out of doing that work. And so we really try and focus a lot of our services there on that self-awareness component. And we're also just trying to standardize the process, right? So we typically run a 10 week module that comes in and delivers all of these essential skills. We call it our essentials program that focuses on process people and then eventually purpose to help them understand how they're part of that bigger change. Right. And so we're often seeing increased workplace satisfaction, employee well-being

and engagement numbers are always going up. And ultimately, as that organization is just happier and healthier, then we can start to ask bigger questions. For example, what do we want the impact of this organization to be outside of the widgets that we make or the services that we sell, right? Like, could we do a implement a volunteering or, you know, giving back type of program that allows us to move beyond the impact of our mission as an organization and move into a place that's more specifically service oriented. There you go. I mean, the great thing about being a business is being able to give back if you're successful and contribute to the world in a much larger sense. And it teaches you a lot about gratitude and everything. And I like the concepts you deal

with because I'm a big believer that we've kind of created this victim uh based society this victimhood mindset society where it's almost it's gotten to a point where it's victimhood competition on steroids where everyone's trying to run around and if you read the news or most personal news it's it always starts with i'm a victim of this and you know whatever and it's like people there's some people running around trying to claim they're bigger victims than other people and and i'm sure there there are some that are but it seems like it's this badge people unaware and so getting back to self-actualization self-awareness self-reliance self um self-accountability is my favorite word of the day, of the years, decades now. It's a word that I think we should tattoo on everybody.

Self-accountability, that could be you. I was just reading, I think it was some of Seneca, that was talking about how you should look in the mirror first. It could have been that or Marcus Aurelius' meditations. But when you accuse other people of stuff, realize you're probably a hypocrite and you should realize it's your thing. It looks like you really resonated with our good friend Adam for the show. Does he have any books? I'm soaking up this info. I think he came in a little late. So we posted a link to it and he's

got it in his cart. So thank you. It's going in my cart for purchase now. Thank you, Adam. We really appreciate your support of the show and our authors. So you're resonating with people. They love the message. And I love the analogy that you used, of course, as well. In the end, when people buy your book, read your book and go through your services, do you do individual coaching, I guess, too, as well? I don't typically do individual coaching. I don't want to say that I've outgrown it, but it's just a matter of I'm really focused on having impact at scale. And it's hard to do that one to one. hey, if you can round up a handful of people, a couple dozen people, a couple hundred people, then let's talk. But this is also, again, why we largely focus on the organizational aspect too, right?

Because it's, for good or for bad, a captive audience. There you go. So what do you hope people come away with when they read the book? What do you hope that their thoughts are? I think this is actually a good segue to go back to your comments about the victim stuff and self-accountability right i think the roots of that cultural phenomena are also are connected directly to the western paradigm of individualism

right because if we perceive ourselves as separate from the rest of the world, then what that essentially means is that the world is happening to us. Life is happening to us, right? As opposed to for us. And that separateness then creates a whole understanding about the way that we move through the world that impacts the way that we show up in it. And, you know, if I could leave the readers, the listeners with one thing, it's this idea that, you know, the book, the work, all of our work is trying to drive the individual to the paradoxical truth that focusing on self will bring them to the reality

of non-self right and so this is a very like eastern spiritual philosophy concept but by non-self i simply mean responsibility to the greater whole right and by studying the internal landscape, we can understand what we have to offer the greater whole. And those things are not mutually exclusive. It's a two-way street. It's a Venn diagram, right? And we have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but we also have a responsibility to the commons. And so that's really what the book is trying to do, right? Is to guide the reader toward that inward journey into the soils of self. But ultimately, as we move through the different sections of the book, get them to start thinking about how those things can be reflected outward. And it's the same thing with the organizations, right? Let's start high level.

Let's move down into the weeds. And then let's make our way back up or out to think about what's that greater impact. And that is a tricky, messy, sticky process. But to come back to your comments about self-accountability, it's important that we do that work. Definitely. Definitely. And I like how you give people the visual nature of, of earth and, and getting out of the weeds and, you know, all these different analogies that can help people kind of get through

it. Cause when people are like, Hey, you got to change. You're like, I don't know, what does this look like? And, you know, having the imagery that you can associate with it, uh, really helps make it work. So, uh, what's the best way for individuals that are interested in working with you to reach out to you, et cetera, et cetera. Either one of those websites will get you to me. If you want to reach me directly for, you know, podcasts or speaking engagements, Revive UNI is the place to go. If you're looking specifically for consulting work, you know, if you're a business leader out there, Stillpoint Insight is the way to go. The reality is if you reach out to either one of them and ask for me, you'll find me. And I'm doing my best to get better in the social media realm. It's typically not the best

way to get a hold of me simply because I don't keep those apps on my phone and I do compartmentalize that aspect of my life. So reaching out through the website is one of the best way to go. There you go. It's been wonderful to have you on Ian. You made me rethink, uh, kind of how I deal with nature and I'll, I'll be thinking probably a lot of, uh, what we talked about here today. When I go out and sit in my morning coffee and my vitamin D, I really recommend it for everybody. It's really a peaceful way to start the day and, uh, you know, getting away from the beeps

and blips. And then when I come into my office, I just kind of sit down. I feel more in command of my life, and I feel like I've centered. It's kind of a weird thing, but I have a centering frame with it. And then when I, you know, light up my computers and stuff after sitting out in nature, I feel more in command of everything. Like I'm controlling how it's coming at me as opposed to just waking up and feeling like I'm dodging everything. Like I'm controlling how it's coming at me as opposed to just waking up and feeling like I'm dodging everything. Yeah. I mean, if I could, if I could offer one final, uh,

quote unquote productivity hack, maybe it's a quality of life hack. Um, don't start your day with email. It's the worst thing that you can possibly do. Right. So if you, if you have a morning routine, wonderful. If you don you have a morning routine, wonderful. If you don't have a morning routine, it doesn't need to be super complex. But I think what you're pointing out is the value of that centeredness, right? When you step into your day,

that is the portion of your day that's outward facing, the work that you're doing in the world. And to sit down at your desk at the first thing in the morning and open up your inbox, it's the worst thing that you can do. Because every single one of those emails is not only a different notification, but it's a different context switch. And that has a huge load-bearing capacity on the brain, right? So if you sit down and you're like, man, by 10 a.m., I just feel like my brain is a scrambled egg.

It's because it is. It's because you've context switched so many times in that first hour, right? So I always recommend to people, and this is some of the work that we do with organizations at scale, getting them to think about this laterally across departments, across teams. When you show up to work, what's the most important part of your job? What's that deep work that you should be doing? Focus on that first and eliminate the distractions. The emails can wait. There you have really a fire to put out, they're not going to be sending an email. They're going to be either knocking on your door or giving you a phone call, right? So don't mistake efficiency for effectiveness. Yeah. And whatever you do,

don't turn on the news for Christ's sake when you wake up in the morning. I mean, the news is important, but save it for later when you're kind of in there. You have a new fan, Adam Husky. Thanks for, once again, he says it will definitely help with his mental journey. So we've helped one person today. And I'm sure as the podcasts go out, it will help thousands of people. Ian, thank you very much for coming on the show. Really appreciate your deep insight today.

Appreciate the opportunity, Chris. Thank you. There you go. And thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and TikTok. We've got the new AI making the new TikTok formats. It's kind of cool. It puts us on top to bottom and it cuts the show. And we're trying to make sure it cuts all the funny parts of the show because I have some dumb jokes I tell during shows anyway guys thanks for tuning in be good to each other oh the tiktok is like chris foss one go see it or chris was show podcast thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time there you go great

show man i think