The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 296: Emily Fletcher - The Secret Superpower Of Top Performers (Meditation)

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #296: Emily Fletcher - The Secret Superpower Of Top Performers (Meditation) For full show notes, go to www.LearningLeader.com  Commonalities of sustaining excellence: They have a magnetic quality.  Others are drawn to them.  People look to them. They have the ability to shift their state of being.  Not just being calm.  They are able to be variable and can adapt to situations Meditation increases adaptability Meditation helps you take care of yourself Rest, nurture your brain and body The failure of most when they attempt to meditate: Emily is on a mission to rid the world of "ex-meditators" -- people who have tried and failed and given up on it There have been 58 million downloads of meditation apps Free apps are gentle by design and not as useful Advice -- There is a difference between mindfulness and meditation. "Meditation is a tool that helps you get rid of stress from your past." Mindfulness is "the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment" Meditation gives your brain and body tools. "Kind of a nap sitting up. Mind alert, body getting rest." -- Relieve stress from now and past It is not a toy.  It's a very powerful tool.  You need proper training It's ridiculously simple, yet powerful Biggest misconception  -- "People think they have to clear their head.  They think thoughts are the enemy.  That's not true." "People think they are too busy to meditate... You know we're talking about your brain right?" Emily was on Broadway for 10 years... Living in constant state of anxiety... Sick, insomnia, was miserable. She noticed another performer had none of those issues.  She asked what she did and found out meditation was the key... Emily took a class, and liked it so much she went to India to be trained professionally. She created Ziva... An online meditation tool. It's about manifesting "consciously creating the life you love" "Don't water the weeds" -- Don't focus on the wrong things

The number one misconception is that thoughts are the enemy. Thoughts are not the enemy of meditation. Effort is. And when you try to meditate, or if you try to change your state, or you try to clear your mind, then you feel like you're failing even more, and then you're just faster to quit. This episode is once again brought you by Gusto.

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Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text, learner. to 442-2-2 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over-the-world. Tech's learners to 44-2-2-2. Now, on tonight's featured lear, the word mindful may come up a few times.

It's the great Emily Fletcher. She's regarded as the leading expert in meditation for high performance. She's the founder of Ziva Meditation. Before founding Ziva in 2011, Emily was a Broadway performer for 10 years. but ultimately left the stage to pursue meditation teacher training in India after experiencing the profound physical and emotional benefits of meditation. The New York Times, Today's show, Vogue, ABC News have all featured Emily's work. She's taught more than 10,000 students around the world

and has spoken on meditation for performance at Google, Harvard Business School, and many other places. Ziva graduates include Oscar Grammy, Emmy and Tony Award winners, as well as NBA players, CEOs, busy parents, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. A few of the topics we got into. The biggest misconceptions of meditation. Then a visualization technique that you can implement immediately to help your performance. And then the notion of being comfortable in your own skin and how Emily's work helps with this and why it's so important as a leader.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Emily Fletcher. All right, Emily Fletcher, it's so good to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. I like learning and I like leaders, so let's do this. You're ready. I love it. Okay. You know that I love studying leaders who sustain excellence. This certainly, you are one of those as well as a lot of people that you've helped and that you've surrounded yourself with. So I'm curious from your perspective, Emily, what are the commonalities you found in leaders who sustain excellence? Well, interestingly, the definition of a leader is someone that other people look to. And it's actually one of the chapters in my book where I talk about one of the things that

makes us drawn to people as leaders is their ability to actually shift their state of being. And a lot of people will think, oh, well, the more calm you can be in a high demand, high stress situation, this is an attribute of a leader. But that's not totally true because calmness. by itself is not enough. It's actually variability. And a lot of people are talking about heart rate variability these days. So it's not about just being calm all the time.

It's the ability to be variable to adapt to the demand as it arises. Sometimes that means going into battle. Sometimes that means negotiating. Sometimes that means compassion. But how adept are you at adapting to the situation? So that's one thing. And I find that meditation actually increases your adaptation energy, which is your ability to handle a change of expectation or a demand.

And the other quality that I find specifically about the sustaining part that you asked about is the ability to take care of yourself. Because a lot of leaders tend to love what they do. They're very mission driven and they want to take care of the people in their lives, the people that have given them the honor of looking to them as a leader. And so sometimes when you get into an act of service, it's very easy to forget to take care of yourself. And I find, you know, burnout is a real thing. Overwhelm is a real thing.

You know, we're living in this sort of age of stress epidemic. And I think that if you don't take care of yourself, if you're not taking time to rest and nurture your own brain and body, then eventually you tap out. Eventually, you don't have much more to give to the people who are looking to you as a leader. Interesting. So you're one of your, obviously, the, the key. focus areas that you are all about is meditation. And I think I'm included in this group, but there may be people listening who say, uh, that's not for me or maybe I gave it a shot or maybe I haven't even thought of trying. That's just for those other types that are woo-woo types.

And I think that's why actually I wanted to have this conversation with you, because I am personally about finding ways to improve, get better, to grow. to learn, to have a conversation with someone who may actually make me uncomfortable because it's an area that I've definitely failed. I mean, I've tried headspace and different apps in the past to become better at this and haven't really done well. So let's start from a foundational perspective, Emily, when you, I guess how would you define meditation? Well, I want to ask you a question. When you say you failed at them, like what does that mean? Does it mean that you quit? It means that you weren't enjoying it.

It means you couldn't stop your mind from thinking. It felt like a waste of time. Like, what, what happened? So I'll take you exactly how I would do this. So I get up early and go to the gym. And I was actually listening to, this may be weird, but I was listening to the headspace app as I would sit in the parking lot prior to going into the gym. Again, this may be weird for people, but you ask.

So I'll tell you. And I just stopped doing it. I didn't feel like I just thought, I just want to go in and work out. or maybe, I didn't feel like it was really having an impact on me in the way that, and I don't know what I was expecting, but I was doing that for, I don't know, a month or two, not necessarily every day, but most days. And then I just stopped. And that was that.

And that's kind of where we are at this stage. And now, like I said, actually a fan of the show sent me all this information about you and said, you should have Emily on. and he actually works at the Pentagon as a colonel in the Air Force. So I thought, wow, I should listen to this guy. And that's how we became acquainted. So anyway, that's kind of the long answer to how I have failed when it comes to meditation. Okay.

Awesome. So I think it would actually be really helpful for me to just kind of walk you through what I would recommend because I imagine that you are not alone and that there's lots of people in a very similar spot who have downloaded the free app, did it for a couple weeks or a couple months, didn't really see a return on their investment of their most valuable resource, which is their time, right? And then they quit. And then meditation becomes yet another thing to feel guilty about,

yet another thing that you feel like you failed at, another thing on your to-do list that you're not actually doing. And this is a big part of my mission at Ziva is to rid the world of ex-meditators. Because there are, I mean, there was some new study out that was like, not a study, it was an article about like the two apps that are competing against each other. And it's a huge market. it's like 58 billion. I'm sorry, not billion.

There are not that many people on the planet. 58 million downloads and then a million like paid users. And that to me says that there are 57 million people out there that actually need to meditate, that actually need some tools because that means that 57 million people downloaded the app and then didn't continue on. And this is the story that I hear again and again and again and again is that, well, Emily, I can't clear my mind. I don't have time.

Or like you said, it just wasn't moving the needle for me. And here's the thing. Our time is our most valuable resource. So if we're going to invest it into something, we'd better be getting a return on that investment. And the reality is that a lot of these free apps are gentle by design, right? Because A, it's free. And B, it's, you don't, if you're going to put something into the mass market like that,

it has to be accessible and gentle enough. to where if someone was dealing with severe depression or severe anxiety or PTSD, that it's not going to throw them into some sort of a tailspin or put them into a dangerous situation. And so a lot of the free tools out there are just simply not as powerful as some of the meditation tools that are available to us. And that's by design. That's not meant to be mean or exclusionary. It's because this stuff is not a joke. They're not toys. It's not just sitting in a chair quieting your mind. They're actually very powerful stress relieving tools that go in and eradicate not only your stress from today, but the lifetime of stress is you've been

accumulating your whole life. And when that stress starts to come up and out, which is, P.S., that's how I define meditation is a tool that helps you get rid of stress from your past, all the stuff stored in your body and your cells and your epigenetics. When that stuff starts to come up and out, it can be pretty intense. And that's why I think it's very important to have a teacher, to have a community that can help you through that process, especially if you're dealing with anxiety, depression, or trauma, which if you're a human being on the planet Earth, chances are you're dealing with one of those

three things. Okay. So we're getting there from how to define it. And then, so what is the, assuming that people have tried some of these apps or some of the 57 million who've tried and not been successful are listening, which I'm imagining there are, what advice do you give to them? Well, I think step one is knowing the difference between mindfulness and meditation. And that might seem inconsequential, but I actually think it's very important because a lot of the free apps out there, a lot of the YouTube videos, a lot of the drop-in studios are actually teaching what I would call mindfulness.

And I define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment, right? Beautiful, powerful, necessary. Can you say that again? Sure, the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment. So anytime you hear someone say, well, you could just meditate in two minutes, you could just do like some mindful breathing. That's called breathwork or mindfulness. That's not meditation. So mindfulness is very good at getting rid of your stress in the now.

Like, oh, my boss yelled at me today. I'm feeling stress. Let me listen to this 10 minute guided thing on this app. And then I feel better in the now. like it's like drinking a glass of wine or taking an aspirin, it's about a state change in the now. And that's not meant to sound judgmental towards those tools because I think mindfulness is very valuable. It's actually part of the Ziva technique. But where this is a big important differentiator is that meditation is getting rid of your stress from the past, like I was saying earlier. And the

mechanism by which we do that is by giving your brain and your body tools to induce very deep healing rest. So what we teach at Ziva feels kind of like a nap sitting up. Your head gets droopy, your muscles go slack. Your mind is alert, but your body is getting rest that is five times deeper than sleep. And that's not an insignificant point because when you give your body the rest that it needs, it knows how to heal itself. And one of the things that it heals itself from is not only stress from the now, but also the stress from the past. And then as we go through this daily process of really a catharsis of this healing release, we start to free up more mental and physical energy

for the task at hand. And this is a big, I think important point for leaders specifically because all that stress from your past is the thing that's slowing down your brain and body. It's the thing that's keeping us from performing at the top of our game. And when we go in and systematically eradicate it, then we have more energy left for the now. And this is why meditators report this huge increase in productivity,

this huge increase in performance. This is why many of the world's top performers are starting to out themselves as meditators. And it's not because they have copious amounts of extra time. It's because they see that that stress is actually making them stupid, sick, and slow. And when we have a tool to get rid of it, then we can be in flow state more often.

We can be more creative. We can be more present. Our immune system is stronger. Our sleep is more efficient. Our sex drive goes up. Our skin becomes more elastic. you know, like the ripple effect of less stress in the body and brain is almost infinite. Wow. Okay. Maybe this is just jumping it, but how do we do this? How do we do what?

So what is it? Can you take us inside? Like, is this guided by you or somebody you've taught to like a train the trainer type thing? Or how does this work or do we have to go online? I mean, I'm just curious because, like I said, you've heard my past and that's probably other people's past. What's the next step? Or maybe it's the first step to actually doing this. And then, like I said, I love to kind of feel or hear what some of this is like because I'm hearing the benefits and kind of what it's about. But I love to kind of feel the actual action of it taking place. If that's possible, I don't know. So I think this is a great question and a great moment to elucidate that the reason why mindfulness is so invasive and so easy to access, why most of the meditation, quote-unquote

meditation apps out there and the free YouTube videos, they're teaching mindfulness because it is something that you can do in 10 minutes. It's something that you could be guided through. Like right now, I could totally do a guided mindfulness exercise if you wanted to. And it might make people feel better in the right now, but it's not going to be the meditation that I'm talking about. In order to do that, it is, because it's not a toy. It's a very powerful stress relieving tool. And it's like if you want the key to the car, it's my responsibility to make sure that you have the proper driving instructions. Because once people start that, it's like once you flip the switch to outflow and you start to release that lifetime of accumulated stresses, it's just really

important that people have the proper training and the proper support through that process. So it's not something I could do on like a one hour podcast. But I can absolutely share with people who feel like they want to invest and learn. I can share the next steps. But I would say that one differentiating thing as well is that know that it takes some time to learn the skill. But if you have a technique that is designed for you and if you invest the time in actually getting the training, then it is ridiculously simple and ridiculously powerful. Because I find that the most powerful truths are often the simplest and the same with meditation. The most powerful techniques are often the simplest. And where people, I think, get confused or frustrated is that they assume that because

it is simple, that it should be easy or that because it is simple, they should already know how to do it, right? Are you just sitting in a chair and quieting your mind? And then people sit in a chair and they're like, all right, brain, stop thinking. Like, hmm, I sure would like a snack. Hmm, snacks are delicious. I suck at meditation. I quit. And that's the beginning in the end of most people's career. But If you treat it like a skill and you invest the time to actually get the training, then you graduate. And that's really what I do at Ziva. I train people to be self-sufficient. So I have an online course that's about 15 minutes a day for 15 days.

And then I teach in person and I also teach a technique in the book. And the idea with all of those modalities of learning is that once you move through the training, you don't need me anymore. You're self-sufficient. You have the tool to take with you for life. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions of meditation? So number one for sure is this thought that in order to meditate, we have to clear our minds, and I have to find him and teach him how to meditate. The reality is the mind thinks involuntarily, just like the heart beats involuntarily.

So sitting down and trying to give your brain a command to shut up is as impactful as trying to give your heart a command to stop beating. It doesn't work, and yet this is the criteria by which most people are judging themselves. And then they feel like failures and then they quit. You know what I mean? It was part of your story. I feel like you're in the, here you are in the car outside the gym and, you know, having all these thoughts, not releasing a change in your performance.

And they're like, why am I wasting my time? And so the number one misconception is that thoughts are the enemy. Thoughts are not the enemy of meditation. Effort is. And when you try to meditate or if you try to change your state or you try to clear your mind, then you feel like you're failing even more, and then you're just faster to quit. So that's the biggest one. I say the second biggest one is this idea that people are too busy to meditate.

You know, I hear it day in and day out. Emily, I know it's good for me. I know there's all this neuroscience. I know that Oprah and Ray Dalio and Channing Tatum and Hugh Jackman and, you know, Sigourney Weaver and the Seahawks and the Olympics. I knew everyone's saying that meditation is the number one tool in their lives, but I'm busy. And so my answer to this is basically, you know, you know we're talking about your brain, right? You know, that thing that's like in charge of every single decision that you make and every single cell that's printed in your body.

You know, that's the thing we're talking about, right? Like to stay you're too busy to take care of your brain is, it's just a conversation that we have to change. Because you can either believe that stress makes you stupid or you can believe that stress makes you stupid or you can believe. believe that you're too busy to meditate, but you can't believe both of those things. All right. How did you get started doing this? Can you take me back to the beginning or when that, like, was there a compelling event? Was there a moment?

How did this get started to be your life's work? Yes. So I used to be on Broadway for about 10 years. and my last show I was understudying, which means you show up to the theater with no idea what's going to happen that night. Sometimes I'd start the show as one role and halfway through they'd switch me to a different one

or some nights I would just be chilling in my dressing room and someone would come over a microphone on the loudspeaker and say, Emily Fletcher, we need you on stage. And I would start panicking, going into full-blown fighter flight. And sometimes I'd be on stage before I knew which character I was playing. And I was, some people are really good at this job.

I am not one of them. And so I was living my life in this constant state of anxiety. Even when I wasn't on, I was terrified that I was going to be thrown on. And so this like anxiety led to insomnia. I couldn't sleep through the night for 18 months. I started getting sick. Very often I started going gray at the tender age of 26. Started getting injured.

And it was confusing to me why I was living my dream on Broaddard. way, doing the thing I had wanted to do since I was a child and I was miserable. And thankfully, this amazing woman was sitting next to me in the dressing room. And she was understudying five of the lead roles, which means that her job was much harder than mine. And this woman was crushing it. Every song, every dance, every bite of food was a celebration. And I said, excuse me, what do you know that I don't know? And she said, I meditate. And I rolled my eyes and thought, oh, God, another one of you. And then I just kept sucking at my job and going gray and having insomnia. And finally, I thought, you know, this is not who I am.

Like, this is not what I'm capable of. This is not why I came to New York. And so I went along to this intro to meditation talk and I liked what I heard. I signed up for this four-day course. And the first, after the first days, it was only two hours a day for four days. And after the first class, I slept through the night for the first time in 18 months. And I've ever night since, and that was 11 years ago. And then I stopped getting sick.

I didn't get sick for eight and a half years. I stopped going gray. I'm going to be 40 in March, and I have no gray hair. I was legitimately going gray at 26, 27. And then I started enjoying my job again. I actually started becoming a much better performer. And I thought, wait, why does everybody not do this? And so I left Broadway.

I went to India, and I started what became a three-year training process to teach. and then I opened up Ziva in 2010, I believe, and it's been the best thing I've ever done. I've taught over 15,000 people. I've just finished my first book, and I created the world's first online meditation training, and it's been the most exciting, rewarding thing I've ever done. And people ask if I miss performing, and the answer is no. I'm still performing. I try to make this stuff as entertaining and accessible as possible.

But now I feel like it's able to. to help people in a much more significant and much faster way. So it's, uh, really, it's been a really fun journey. So you named it Ziva, which I believe means bliss, radiance and kindness, correct? Yes. Nice work. And, uh, and so the style is, is it, can you, I may pronounce this wrong, VDIC or Vedic, uh, is that, well, actually, no, like what I teach now is, is, is actually a trifecta of mindfulness, meditation and manifesting. Gotcha. So it's, um, And that's come out of largely like very similar to this conversation. After teaching lots of high performers to meditate, I realized that meditation alone was not enough.

And so we use actually mindfulness as a tool, almost like as a runway into or as an appetizer to the main course of the Ziva technique, which is meditation. And then we end with manifesting. But I define manifesting simply as consciously creating a life you love. it's you getting intentional about what you want to create in your life. And I'm constantly amazed at how infrequently people take the time to do that to ask, well, how much money do I want to make this year? What's my dream vacation? Or, you know, what does my sex life look like?

What's my relationship with my body? You know, really looking at the magic wand scenario versus complaining about what is or what I call watering the weeds. You know, we put our attention on all the problems that we have to solve. So the manifesting portion of the Ziva technique, we do at the end. So right after you finish meditating, we basically just curate those two minutes where I teach people a technique to imagine their dreams as if they're happening now. Imagining your dreams as if they are your current reality.

And that is a simple shift, but it's a very powerful one and can have profound impacts. Because even when a lot of us think we're manifesting or praying, we're some, we sometimes sometimes mistakenly worship the distance between where we are and where we want to be. And that is actually the definition of stress. The distance between where you are and where you think you should be, that's stress. Whereas manifesting is imagining your dream as if it is your current reality, which changes the whole vibration of your body. It changes your headspace.

It changes what you think you deserve. And it allows your dreams to come in a bit more elegantly. How does that, this may be wrong, but when I played quarterback and particularly before big games that were on national TV, Emily, I tried to visualize doing, I tried to simplify my role because as a quarterback, it can be tough. You got 10 other guys. You need to know what all 10 are doing. You got to beat the defense, right? But I tried to say, focus on visualizing, just executing my job and then visualizing what would happen when I just focus on. executing my role. And in a way, like, there wasn't any science behind it. It just kind of, it helped me, I think, ease some nerves prior to a game or that anticipatory feeling before you go out on the field with all the people there. Is, is, is, is, is, is, are there?

Or how does how does this manifestation what you're talking about relate to something like that, perhaps with athletes or any, any high performers? Yes. I think it's exactly that. It's, it's simply a visualization. And I'm assuming that as you would do that, you would imagine. imagine you actually playing the game. You would imagine it in the...

And scoring a touchdown and winning the... Yes. And feeling it and going through the motions and the cool thing. The reason why it works and the reason why Olympic athletes do this and professional athletes do it is because the brain doesn't know the difference between a real memory and an imagined memory. And this is a really helpful tool for actors because the best actors go in and they create a mental image or movie in their mind and then they go out and they tell the truth.

Actors aren't lying. They've just created these imaginary memories, and then they go out and tell the truth about that imagined memory. And the same can be true with manifesting or sports visualization. You imagine the dream case scenario, the magic wand scenario, as if it's happening now. And then when you're in it, like in the case of sports, it's like, well, you've already lived that, so it doesn't feel as intense or as foreign when you're actually in the position. And then I think in the case of manifesting, the whole gig is about getting into the feeling space of the dream. Because we're never chasing the dream itself.

We're never chasing the zero in the bank account. We're never chasing the girl or the guy or the car or the shoes or the followers on Facebook. We're chasing the feeling that we assume that thing will bring us. Right? We want the comfortability. We want the confidence. We want the freedom that we assume that the attention. of that desire will bring.

And so when you go into manifesting, you're basically giving yourself the gift of getting into that feeling space right now. And that sort of paradoxically allows the dream to come to you in a much more easy way because you start to believe that you deserve it. Now, the trick to this comes in that if you're not meditating every single day, then manifesting is so much harder because if your body is riddled with stress, chances are you don't believe that you deserve your desires. And where this gets tricky is that we don't get what we want in life. We get what we believe we deserve. And so you could make vision boards

day in and day out. You could watch the secret on repeat. You could manifest all day. But if you're not meditating and your body's riddled with stress, it's just harder to call in those dreams. Now, the converse of this is that you could be meditating all day as well. You can meditate day in and day out, but if you're not clear about what it is that you want and you're not taking inspired action, it's also very hard. So I find that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. And that's why I created the Ziva technique. It's why we do the trifecta because I think that it's, you have to de-excite the nervous system.

You have to access that right brain, access that collective consciousness. And then in the manifesting portion, it's like the analogy I use is that you're placing your order. You're telling the cosmic waitress. at the cosmic restaurant what it is that you actually want. And you wouldn't go into an actual restaurant and sit down and tell your waiter like, hey, I'm hungry. Can you bring me some food? You would get specific. You'd be like, I would like a Cobb salad with the croutons on the side and no dressing. That sounds like just lettuce. That's a boring order. But you want to be specific with what you order. And then your waiter is happy to bring it to you. But a lot of us forget to

place the order with nature. And that to me is the power in manifesting. So let's let's get specific in how we relate this to the person who may be listening or even me right now. So not a quarterback, not performing as a Broadway performer. For the person who has has, let's let's just paint an exact avatar. They are 34 years old. They are a manager of 12 people working at a big corporation. They're leading a team. They're very busy. They have meeting notices coming in constantly where they have to go to meetings that half of them are not useful or more. They're trying to be a good leader, be a great manager, like do all those things, right? And meanwhile, probably are making some mistakes because we all, all of us listening or and me as well, who got that first promotion,

we messed up a lot. So I'm trying to help people avoid that. They hear you talk about, this and my sports background, your Broadway background, they're like, that's great, but I don't play quarterback and I'm not a Broadway performer. How does this impact me? What advice do you give to that person right now who's listening saying, I want direct application for me? Okay. So I would say we all want things in life, right? You could want your kid to sleep through the night. You could want these unproductive meetings to actually be productive. You could want your team to be cohesive and well-balanced and fun. You could want your team to crush

or even double your goals for the quarter. So whatever is on your list of things that you want in life, whatever you pray about, whatever you think about, whatever's stressing you out even, instead of worrying about it, right? Instead of speculating about it, which is actually a giant waste of your energy and your time,

you know, what's that quote, worrying is a waste of perfectly good, imagination and it feels responsible. You know, it feels adult to like worry about money and to worry about your team. But it's not actually moving the needle. It's just wasting your energy. So instead of worrying or speculating, you could take this, I could say even less time. And instead, imagine crushing your goals for the quarter. Imagine your kids sleeping through the night. Imagine having more time with your family. Imagine hiring the great person, you know, the perfect person for the role with as little effort as possible.

So you could just choose one thing at the end of, if you don't yet have a meditation practice, you could do it right first thing in the morning when you wake up or as you're falling asleep at night or perhaps right after a workout or in the shavasana at the end of a yoga class. Anytime we're sort of in between that waking and dreaming state of consciousness, these are the most powerful times to manifest. And then you just take a few minutes and you imagine just one thing, just do one at a time. So let's say it's your team crushing Q1 goals.

I would imagine what would be the moment that you find that out? Would it be you logging on to some screen, some piece of software and seeing the numbers? Would you see that? And then how would it feel? You know, who's the first person you'd want to call to share the news with? And then imagine you telling that to your team, like calling a meeting to congratulate everyone. Maybe you take everyone out for drinks. So whatever the thing is, it's just an exercise and creativity.

and imagination, but the most important piece is getting into the feeling space of what would it feel like to congratulate my team on outperforming this quarter. What would it feel like to call my wife and say, hey, honey, I just booked our dream vacation. You know, I got a bonus and I booked two tickets to Bora Bora, you know, whatever the thing is. But it's getting into, it's imagining it as if it's happening right now. And I actually invite people to even imagine. Imagine having the conversation. So who is the first person you'd want to call to share the news with? And what would you say?

Like, dude, I did it. I don't know how, but we did it. We crushed our numbers. Or, you know, it's, because what's that quote? A joy shared is doubled and a sorrow shared is halved. And so if you have this joy and you go through the imagination of sharing it, then it allows it to just feel more real in your body. And then when you open your eyes, it doesn't feel like such a faraway goal.

And it starts to color how you interact with your team, how you email, the level of confidence that you bring into the room, what you assume will happen. Because a lot of us are very almost secretly held back by our limiting beliefs, you know, and the tricky thing about them is that oftentimes we don't even know that they're there. We don't know that we're capping our own earning potential. We don't know that we're capping our own leadership potential because we have these secret insecurities or these secret stories that we learned

before we were even eight years old. And so sometimes it's easier for us to just spend a bit of time. Like imagine being thrown into the middle of a game, right? And you're the quarterback, and the stakes are high, and you're on TV. But if you would never imagine that mentally, if you'd never visualized it, it probably would have been 10.

But because you had been doing that work, it felt a little bit more familiar. And it probably changed your confidence level when the stakes were high. Yeah. So you talk about this being a performance tool, which I love that phrase for the type, especially for the type of person listening and certainly for myself. With that said, Emily, and I know this because I receive emails, there are people who right now are skeptical of what you're saying. They're giving you a shot.

They've given you a shot. They believe, you know, that we're trying to grow, but they're thinking, I still don't know. Like, I've heard about this stuff. I don't know. How do you respond to people who are skeptical? I say, good. Be skeptical. Be very skeptical.

This is your brain you're talking about. This is your time you're talking about. And you don't want to waste it. And you want to be careful about what you're putting in your brain. So I would say, you know, step one is fine to teach. that you respect, find a technique that is designed for you. Where this gets a little tricky is that mindfulness was originally designed for monks. And this is why a lot of people think that meditation is hard because they go in trying to do something that wasn't actually designed for them, where Ziva was

designed for people with busy minds and busy lives. And then really the proof has to be in the pudding. You will only know if it works for you if you actually do it and commit to it. And here's how you'll know if it's working. Your whole life will get better. Your sleep will be better, more intuitive, more present, your skin will get better, your immune system will be stronger. And that all sounds like magic, I know, and I get that I sound like a used car salesman when I say that, and people will often ask, Emily, how on earth could meditation possibly do this many things? But the better question that we should be asking ourselves is how to stress F so many things up. because the ripple effect of stress is huge.

There's new science coming out from Harvard Medical School suggesting that stress is responsible for 90% of all doctor's visits, 90. Scientists are calling, you know, stress the black plague of our century. It is teen anxiety levels are higher than they've ever been. 44% of American women are on anti-anxiety or antidepressants right now. And so it's like we all are anxious and, depressed and no one's talking about it. We're all hiding it from each other and pretending like we

have our shit together. But I think that if we start to get rid of the stigma around anxiety and depression and start talking about them, then we start to look at what are the actual sustainable, self-sufficient tools that we can use to heal these things. And while I have no judgment on medicine and medication and a lot of people need them, a lot of people meditate and are on medicine, and that's great if that is what you need. But I don't believe that 44% of American women have a Zoloft deficiency. Don't think that that's true. And I think that we've not been given the tools that are really moving the needle for us to adapt to modern society. It's not normal or natural for us to look at screens all day. It's not natural for us to wake up in New York and

go to sleep in L.A. It's not natural for us to eat food out of a microwave. It's not natural for us to eat mangoes in the wintertime. And so every day, many times a day, we're asking our bodies and our brains to adapt. And that costs us something. That's, that's P.S. how I would define stress. It's any time you're asking your nervous system to adapt to something that nature did not design. And in modern day society, that's all day every day. And over time, that can really take a toll.

It can lead to chronic stress, chronic inflammation, chronic burnout. And so to me, meditation is not this. like far out hippie-dibby thing and it doesn't have to be your identity. But it is so far the most powerful stress-relieving tool that we have as a species. And not only can it help your performance and your productivity, but it also has the potential to eradicate unnecessary suffering from your life and ultimately the planet. Like suffering is a part of life. You know, people die. There is pain. There is sickness. Like that is part of the human experience. But unnecessary suffering like insomnia and anxiety and overwhelm, that's just dumb.

Like, it's dumb that we are suffering unnecessarily when there are tools that are very accessible for us to cure it. How much pressure do you feel to live this kind of stress-free, perfect almost life? I mean, this is, you're kind of the product in a world. away, right? And I've obviously watched you on stage and you have a like a glowing appearance, a really contagious, awesome laugh, like all these good things about you that, that I mean, you do, I think you represent the product well. But how much of that, like, do you think about that a lot? Is there a lot of pressure on you to be this kind of perfect spokesperson for

meditation as a whole? Or I'm just curious of how much you think about that. Thank you for asking that question. I think it's a really important one and I am happy to talk about it. I don't feel pressure, certainly not from anyone else. If there's any pressure, it's pressure I put on myself. And I think that, you know, obviously there is a certain standard that you have to hold yourself accountable to for anyone to want to learn meditation. No one's going to learn meditation from someone who's sick, tired, and stressed all the time. Right. Like you look, you look very healthy. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the first person that's told you that. When you see her on stage, you're like, she's funny. She looks the part. Like, you look the part. Yeah. And I, and I do a lot of work, but it's not even work to me because I want to feel good and look good and be happy. Like, that's just the standards that I hold for my life, even if I wasn't a meditation teacher. But that said, I have a six-month-old son and I just wrote a book. And if anyone who's ever birthed a baby or birthed a baby or birthed, the book will tell you that those are both extraordinarily intense things to do, and I did them both at the same time. And I'm also running a company, and I have employees, and, you know, it's a whole thing. And there are definitely moments where I feel overwhelmed. There are definitely moments that I feel stressed. And I've never preached or promised a stress-free life. Like, to me, it's not about not getting stressed. It's about the ability to adapt and the ability to

to come back to where you want to be mentally and emotionally. Because it's actually not bad for you to get stressed. What's terrible for us is to stay stressed. It's that chronic ongoing inflammation that leads to so much disease. But there are moments where, like, you know, so I went through postpartum and I had a very intense, almost like brutal postpartum period. It was a lot of physical complications and my stitches came out and I wasn't making enough milk and sleep deprivation and jaundice and I mean it was just a lot and I really thought to myself

you know why how anyone goes through this without meditation is beyond me like I would have been a total wreck had I not had meditation and there were days that I took breaks there were even weeks when I was postpartum where I wasn't meditating it was almost like I needed to be stressed it's like I needed the adrenaline and cortisol to get me through that time because you're on the clock it's you know 24 four hours a day, you're on call. And I needed actually to be stressed to make it through that. That adrenaline and cortisol was the thing that allowed me to go through such an extraordinary time. But then when things started calming down and I was able to sleep and I started heading back to work, I got very religious about the twice a day meditation again. So I think that also we owe a debt of

gratitude. All of us as leaders owe a debt of gratitude to Brunee Brown. for introducing this idea of vulnerability from a place of strength. And I think that she's very much empowered leaders to be more vulnerable and highlighting the fact that it actually makes you a better leader, that the more honest you are, the more vulnerable you are, but from a place of strength. And I think it allows people to connect to you. And I think it actually makes you a better teacher. Because if someone sees you as infallible or a demigod or something, then we get into very dangerous guru territory.

And I am very decidedly going the anti-gour route because I have no interest in telling people how to live their lives. I only want to give people tools that allow them to act in accordance with what they already know to be true. I don't want to tell anybody what I think is true for them. I just want to empower people to be able to feel that for themselves. So the more I share from a place of authenticity, the more it actually resonates with people, especially in this very curated social media life that we're all living. You know, we're seeing everyone else's perfectly edited, curated, filtered life. And so when you are raw, I mean, you do share your struggles, especially if you stepped up

and agreed to be a leader, I think that it's people appreciate it and we're hungry for vulnerability and real connection right now. And so I don't know if I answered your question. So I think one of one of the things I've been writing a lot recently and one of the topics I've been thinking about is being comfortable in your own skin. And I think that's a quality and a leader that I really value. And I don't know if this is an age thing, an experience thing or maybe it's innate in some. I don't think so. I do think it takes time to learn.

and I sense this about you and my favorite interviewer, I don't know, you may know him, he's in New York as well, Brian Coppulman, he's a writer and a creator of movies and TV shows, has a great podcast, and he has talked about this and just, I get this incredible sense that he's so comfortable on his own skin. And one of the things he talks about is that he journals every morning and he meditates twice a day. Yeah. Yeah.

And so I'm not sure if you know them or not, but obviously, you know, you know, you do this as well. And I wonder if this is part of it because I've tried to get to this place. People who are comfortable in their own skin are very secure. They don't typically need to like talk negatively about others to make themselves feel better. There's people you kind of want to be around. You want to follow. You want them in your circle.

I think it's a, a quality that is so important for us all to kind of get more comfortable just in ourselves. And so I'm wondering, what do you think about? about that when it comes to meditation and has that, like is that something that you've actively thought about as like this comfort level and self? Hmm. So I agree with you and I find it's so intoxicating and so attractive when people are comfortable

in their own skin because when they're comfortable, when they're calm, when they're relaxed, when they're fully present, it allows you to do the same. You feel better when you're around people like that. And we're actually making t-shirts for the book lunch that says on the front, detachment is sexy. And on the back, it says neediness is not. And to me, being comfortable in your own skin is actually a version of detachment, right?

I don't have anything to prove. I'm not here to get anything from you. I'm just here I am. If you like what you see, awesome. If not, have a nice life. And I think that that level of detachment is challenging to access if you don't have a meditation practice or some sort of like a higher power, something you connect with that's bigger than you, that you feel a very intimate connection with. Because what's happening when you meditate

is you're actually, like when you're eradicating that stress from your nervous system, it's basically increasing your level of consciousness, which is another way of saying performance capabilities or another way of saying comfort level in your skin. Like one of the attributes of that or one of the attributes of higher states of consciousness is how comfortable you are in your skin. And now I think that we only have access to our waking state, which is what most people are in, you know, right now. When we're in our waking state, all we have access to is our left brain, which is our individuality. And that is like a laptop computer, just a solo laptop computer. But when we start meditating, we utilize these tools to help us access our right brain.

And our right brain is the piece of us that is connected to everyone and everything. I like it to the Wi-Fi router, right? It's the thing that allows you to get onto the internet. And so if all you have access to is your left brain waking state, then it's as good as a single computer, which is good. It's a powerful machine. And that's what most people are, like an individual. It's I, I, I, I, I, me, me, me. But when you start meditating, you tap into this collective consciousness, to this collective intelligence. You tap into creativity itself. You start to be able to listen to your own intuition. And when you do that, you start to feel more connected to your own divinity, to a higher power,

to something bigger than yourself. And when you do that, you allow yourself to get your ego out of the way. You realize that it's not actually about you, that nature is using you as a vessel, that your ideas are not your own, that you are actually an extension of the divine, or whatever you want to call it. And when you get out of the way and you see that it's not about it, you, that allows you to be infinitely more comfortable in your skin because you realize that it's not even your skin. It's these ideas, it's creativity using you as a vessel. And then if someone

doesn't like your idea, you're like, well, no big deal. On to the next. It wasn't my idea anyway. Wow. Well, Emily, this could go on for hours for me because I'm fascinated by your topic. But I do think it would be useful for people to look further into this. Obviously, your book coming out soon, stress less, accomplish more, meditation for extraordinary performance. Why was this the right time to publish, to write and publish this book? Well, because everyone knows that they should be meditating, but no one's actually meditating. And the neuroscience is in, the leaders have out of themselves as meditators, but people don't have a tool yet that has so far been worth the time investment. I don't think people have a tool where

they're getting a return on their investment. And so I think by now, you know, the groundwork has been laid. The neuroscience is in. Now people just need to implement. And so what I'm doing with this book is that I'm trying to meet people where they are. I'm trying to wrap the very powerful medicine that is meditation in the candy coating of like, hey guys, this is going to help you make more money and you're going to have better sex. And so it's like the Trojan horse. That's the tagline. Like, okay, now you got to buy it. Yeah, exactly.

So I think that's why now. And I think people are ready for it. We're realizing that we can't caffeinate ourselves all day and drink ourselves to sleep at night and then wonder why we get cancer at 45. So we're looking for different tools. And I wanted to make this just as accessible and entertaining as possible. So, yes. Got you.

How much time do you spend meditating a day? I spend about 44 minutes on my best days. but I also have a six-month-old. And so sometimes it's 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there. And sometimes it's in the middle of the night. And so it's not about letting perfect be the enemy of good, but it's about understanding the rules and then getting them to fit into your life. Is 44 for a specific reason or is that just kind of an average?

Well, I do about 22 in the morning and 22 in the evening slash afternoon. Okay. Gotcha. All right. I'd love for you to come back at some point in the future, too, because I have a ton more questions. and this is something I'm really, I'm happy that we had this conversation. Again, the book, Stress Less, Accomplished More Meditation for Extraordinary Performance. Two, one other thing, Emily, at the end of these shows, I'd like to have an end of the podcast club.

And basically what that is, is that people reach out to us on Twitter. So yours would be at Ziva Meditation, which is Z-I-V-A-M-E-D-I-T-A-I-O-N, and me at Ryan Hawk, 2. and to share one really useful thing that you learned from this conversation, just so we continue the dialogue. I think it's impactful and powerful. And I'm very curious to hear what that is from each person because I have pages of notes from this conversation. So into the podcast club, reach out to both of us.

Tell us what you learned so that we can amplify this message even more to those who haven't heard it yet. I'm good. I hope it's that people think the right brain is a Wi-Fi router. I don't know. Here's what I learned from Emily. I know. It'll be funny to hear what people said, but there's so much here.

I'm excited. Emily, where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Okay, so I would say they could get the book on Amazon, but then if they want a bunch of bonuses, they can go to stress less the book. com. And there's a bunch of audios and beautiful complimentary exercises. And they actually get days one through three of my online training as a thank you for getting the book. All right. That's what I'm going to do.

So stress less the book.com. That's right. I'm going there. That's what I'll do. I encourage everyone to do that as well. Emily, thank you again for being here. I know in the midst of everything you have going on when we,

by the way, just for the listeners, when we connected, Emily was feeding her six-month-old. And it was one of the few times I heard of baby crying as we were getting started, which was pretty cool. I loved it. It was great.

It was very real. And I could tell, I'm like, this is real. This is real life. So I appreciate it. And I absolutely want to continue this dialogue as we both progress, Emily. Yeah, I'm excited to hear about your journey. And if you want to do Ziva online, let me know.

I'd love for you to do it. Then maybe we could do a follow-up podcast and you can share with listeners what your transformation is like. Let's do it. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. The research leading up to this really piqued my interest. And it's very, not very, it is somewhat scary because of my failures in the past. And I actually don't have many close friends who do anything like this. So maybe we can start a meditation club. Maybe we need to do something like that. We can do a challenge. I do know though, it's a commonality among leaders who sustain excellence, though.

I've heard that time and time again when I read about them and talk to them. Tim Ferriss says that 90% of his podcast guests start their day with meditation. Yeah, I know. I know. And it's very common with the ones I talk to as well. And these are always the busiest people in the world, or at least you'd think. And they're the ones who are able to figure it out. So if they can, then I know that we can.

And just like everybody in the world needs a coach, everybody needs, it sounds like needs to be doing this. And I need to raise my hand myself and lead from the front. So thank you for bringing this to my attention. I'm very appreciative of this talk. And it certainly won't be the last one. All right. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks.

Okay. Bye. Bye. Wow. Now that was quite a bit different than most conversations, but I'm so glad we had it. I love the energy that Emily brings. And I learned a lot. took pages of notes, something I'm certainly committed to moving forward.

And Emily and I talked about it more after we got done recording. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. If so, I love it. If you would spread the message, tell a friend, as well as write a review, subscribe, and rate the show in iTunes Apple Podcast. That's write a review, subscribe, and rate the show. Hopefully five stars in iTunes Apple Podcast. It continues to help spread the message worldwide.

and gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I am so grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you next week. This episode is once again brought you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of The Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free,

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