Ja-Nae Duane Show
Welcome to the Ja-Nae Duane Show. My name is well, Ja-Nae Duane.
In this show, we will explore the systems that shape human behavior in society through the eyes of technologists, scientists, executives, and leaders, from the algorithms that govern our digital lives to the future of work. We'll be taking a closer look at how these systems function and their implications on our lives.
But really, what sets this show apart is how these future systems will impact humanity. We will ponder what transportation will look like over the next century.
How will artificial intelligence impact our economy? How can we reimagine smart cities to revolutionize urban living? The possibilities are truly endless. Now, you may be wondering, who am I? I'm a behavioral scientist who conducts research at Brown and MIT. My passions lie at the intersection of human behavior and technology so that we can understand that beautiful relationship a little bit better and understand not only how we influence technology but also how technology influences us.
Ja-Nae Duane Show
Ja-Nae Duane Show EP 5 - Wholeness in a Fast Paced World with Barry Brown
What happens when we build technology without addressing our own shadows? In this profound conversation with transformation expert Barry Brown, we explore how the ego-driven culture of Silicon Valley affects everything from product design to workplace dynamics.
Drawing from his background in divinity and leadership development, Barry offers a refreshing perspective on why technology's fixation with "fixing problems" often misses deeper opportunities for genuine healing and transformation. He eloquently explains how the parts of ourselves we hide away—our shadows—actually contain our most untapped creative energies.
We dive into why stillness has become a forgotten practice in our achievement-obsessed world, and how its absence affects the quality of what we build. "Healthy teams make healthy products," Barry notes, explaining how organizations that honor rest and reflection ultimately outperform those running at constant maximum speed.
The conversation takes fascinating turns through topics like mercy as a leadership mindset, the power of curiosity in addressing conflict, and why universities and other institutions might need renewal rather than replacement. Throughout, Barry offers practical wisdom for anyone feeling exhausted by ego-driven workplaces or seeking more wholeness in their approach to innovation.
Whether you're a tech professional, organizational leader, or simply someone interested in living with greater authenticity and impact, this episode offers a blueprint for integrating your full humanity into everything you create. By the end, you'll understand why acknowledging your shadows might be the most powerful step toward becoming the leader—and human—you aspire to be.
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For over 20 years, behavioral scientist Dr. Ja-Naé Duane dedicated herself to one mission: Make life better for one billion people. This award-winning innovator and expert on global systems focuses on helping corporations, governments, and universities understand and develop systems of the future using emerging technology such as VR/AR, AI, and blockchain. Ja-Nae guides companies forward, helping them get out of their own way to create exponential innovation and future forecasting. She has had the pleasure of working with companies such as PWC, Saudi Aramco, Yum Brands, Samsonite, Natixis, AIG, and Deloitte. A top-rated speaker within the Singularity University community and the author of the bestseller, “The Startup Equation,” Ja-Nae at helping both startups and multinational firms identify new business models and pathways for global scale. Her next book SuperShifts is due out in April 2025.
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Hello and welcome to the Janae Duane Show, where she explores the systems that shape human behavior in society through the eyes of technologists, scientists, executives and leaders. From the algorithms that govern our digital lives to what the future of work will look like, we'll be taking a closer look at how these systems function and the implications they have on our lives function and the implications they have on our lives.
Speaker 2:Well, hello everyone, welcome to the Jeanne Duane Show. Today's episode is an extra, extra special episode because I sat down with someone who was instrumental in kicking off this podcast. Actually, if it wasn't for this man, this podcast probably would not have gotten started, but he was the one that encouraged me to at least sit down with him and have a conversation, and thus it has all begun. No, I'm kidding, but today's guest is Barry Brown, who I am super excited for you to get to know and who has really not only inspired me but helped me in so many ways throughout the years. So Barry has spent about the last 30 years transforming individuals and teams, working with entrepreneurs, working with startups and leaders who are in transition, who are striving to really elevate their impact.
Speaker 2:He is a former counselor and presenter at Singularity University. He is a key player and co-founder of Hedu Labs, as well as at Formation Labs, and is a mentor at countless business leadership organizations. Barry brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in guiding people through really transformation and high performance. His background is in divinity and leadership development and it really gives him, in my mind, a lovely, unique perspective when he approaches, challenges that folks are dealing with or trying to work through, or even just processing, how do you get to that next step, whatever that next step is? So, in true form, to this podcast. This episode covers everything under the sun, from leadership to innovation, to the power of transformation, and with that, without further ado, I am incredibly honored and extremely excited for you to hear my conversation with Barry Brown. Enjoy Well, thanks for.
Speaker 3:Oh, I wanted to say yes.
Speaker 2:And then we got to figure out what yes means.
Speaker 3:But it's like you know you're going to get yes.
Speaker 2:But it was great, because as soon as you said, yeah, let's figure this out, I mean, that's all I needed to hear, was Well, we start talking and you're like you know there's something coming up here and I'm going to be in the Bay Area.
Speaker 3:Would you sit down and have this conversation with me? And I went, yeah, and then what's the conversation again? At that point I started taking a little bit more notes, like hey, something's brewing here that we want to be able to suss out a little bit more with each other and just getting time together too, just seeing you.
Speaker 2:I know I was thinking about that. I don't think I've seen you since 2019.
Speaker 3:And we've got hours together.
Speaker 2:Hours, hours and hours together.
Speaker 3:Actually, just even looking at you, I'm still putting everything together. I'm so used to hearing your voice.
Speaker 2:It's so fun to be able to sit here and put person and voice together, Well, you know. So one of the things that I love about talking to you and I know I've said this to you before is that, with you, in particular, I love to just, you know, just talk.
Speaker 3:Thanks for that gift. Good things come out. When you just do that, good things come out when you just do that.
Speaker 3:But I don't do that with anybody, no and that's what tells me that I'm a safe person, which I want to be that I'm actually able to give you a place to tap the deeper part of who you are. Sometimes, where you do your work doesn't always require all of you, and you don't have to do work for me, so you can show up with the parts of you that you're interested in, curious about, and so I get a deeper well of who you are and you get a chance then to dip out of that and go back and do some work or to make some integration. Parker Palmer is an old Quaker. He's got this great line of this listening where someone comes into a deeper sense of who they might be by the presence of another who just gives them that space. He has this line. This person heard me into speech.
Speaker 2:Ooh, I like that.
Speaker 3:In other words, I got talking in the safety of their presence and I came up with stuff in me I would have never heard myself actually say that I can own. It's the truth of me, but I didn't know it until I sat with you and you just heard me out. Isn't that a beautiful way of like how we do give each other the gift of ourselves again?
Speaker 2:well, you know, I, yes, but I wish. What I love and appreciate about our conversations is that I wish that more people were able to have our types of conversations and to be able to, to, to, um, you know, to come to the table and with that trust and that allowance of what's, you know, where are we going to head with this? What might that look like? And who cares? Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that I appreciate about when we chat is that it's more of a holistic approach, meaning, you know, some folks are religious, some folks are spiritual, some folks are atheist, and it doesn't matter, but it's the allowance of being able to. Whoever you are, whatever that looks like for you how might you show up and be present, like fully present, in that conversation?
Speaker 3:Everybody has a soul and we can argue about the soul all day long, but everyone has an interior. Every shape that I'm drawn to, that's beautiful or just gets my attention, because wow, that's just not symmetrical what the shape usually invites me into the substance. A person that I get curious about could be a shape. I could be with a co-worker or in a conversation with you. But there's another level of intimacy and wholeness when we realize that shape is allowing us possibly to move into something in the interior. And it's in the substance that you and I talk, see, and that's why it's not a peripheral, transactional conversation. It's once something of both of us that's called the substance or the soul. And I do think you're right.
Speaker 3:People will talk spirituality or religion or humanistic, or I'm an atheist or agnostic. All of those people still have an interior life that's worth knowing. And when they're with another person who allows them passage into their own truth, into their own type of soul experience, then the richness of that is almost indescribable for both people, because we honestly don't quite know how we got there and yet we stand in the richness and, like a lot of our conversations, are just simply getting our ego out of the way, getting other things out of the way that would encumber just how you doing. Tell the truth, there's nothing here that you have to say to me that makes me think you're worth my time or oh, this is going to really be valuable. We show up and in that kind of spirit and that energy, we've never walked away disappointed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree with that. You know, it's interesting that you bring up ego, because I find that more often than not when I'm coming out of conversations with other individuals. You know, I don't want to speak about anyone else, but I see it within myself too. How am I showing up and how is my ego getting in the way? Because I feel like I need to either be a certain way or you and me both.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, what do I think? When you throw that out here, I go oh, I have that too. It seems like this let's take a step back. We'll take a tack into this.
Speaker 3:Seems like this whole sense of monastic life, which is I need to remove myself from all the public persona in order to really walk, you know, in a more safe path to who really am I, because my ego gets involved in my role.
Speaker 3:My ego gets involved when I publicly face, when I'm with other people and they want things from me. The imposter lives out there. We've got different words, so there is an overreaction, which is, well, I need to get away from all of that and be more monastic and that's why I'm borrowing that word Like I really need to remove myself from all things that trigger my ego and that will make me safe enough to really have an authentic life. But when you and I talk, we actually need the peripheral of our lives and where our ego would trigger us or where we would show ourselves to be less than at home with other people, because our ego is still trying to figure out what do they want from me right now. Because that actually becomes the path that I can start and walk from that into a part of my own life where I don't enter a total monastic experience but I spend more time in what we might call my own inner space.
Speaker 3:In other words, I have a piece of me. I don't understand that my ego has engaged me with, in other people Like why am I so easily tempted to be greater than I am in that certain setting with those certain people? Well, that's really important for me to find that, so that I have something in my inner life to chew on and to meet myself in. So there's not, I have an ego and I battle it. I wished I didn't. Or, on the other extreme, you know, I got to get away from all that and really enter my own, you know, monastic experience.
Speaker 3:There's an interplay there. There's an interplay that we need, and I find that I need about two or three other people that I can share that interplay of both of me with, so that they keep me integrated, because I'm always going to have an ego. I'm never going to get out of the ego and I'm always going to have a need to go deeper into my own life, my inner life, and understand more of myself, my spirit, I might call that. And then I actually need a very small community around me that both understands my ego and I can be vulnerable. With them, we can almost laugh after some time, but they also are good guides and companions that guard my solitude and allow me to be known to myself and possibly to them. So it's not just individual work but it's work with a few other people who both see my ego and they know my true spirit and they're helping me work or transform my life as I'm going forward. Does that make sense? It's putting a lot on the table, but that's kind of a bigger map picture for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it totally makes sense. What I'm curious about? I'm curious about two things. One are, you know, sort of triggers for the ego. For you, like I'm becoming more self-aware around what some of those triggers are. Some of them are blatant for me and then there's others I'm like, oh okay, this really, you know, whenever that happens, I end up having more ego show up. But for you, how do you identify those triggers? And then what does retreating into your inner space look like? Like, is that just individual, or is that space, like you just said, with the few individuals who see how you're balancing, if you will, between we'll, I'll call it I don't want to call it self-actualization, but you know, maybe, who you're trying to be, yeah, or who in that. That's actually that's. There's a lot there. So maybe I won't I won't use that verbiage but, um, but maybe who you intend, or how you intend to show up, versus how you're showing up, and or who you can be intimate with as you're exploring that.
Speaker 3:So I don't know, I'll I have a few of those questions keep breaking it down because it's a great big question. I threw a whole lot out there. Yeah, the you know I understand that there's a part of me that's a deep, true part of me that's always looking for acceptance and a place to belong and to make my contribution right. So we go on searches of meaning or we go on deeper relationships to find out can I really do that with you? Yes, I can. No, I can't. It's telling me that there's a restlessness in me, and it's very true, because I want to live these days with all that I can present and receive from life. That's all genuine and good, right.
Speaker 3:The problem is when my ego tries to be the guide for that, because the ego is insufficient to take me to where my spirit really wants to go. And by the ego I mean this need I early on developed to protect myself from not getting the essence of me met. So I want to belong, but you might reject me. So my ego comes in and says, look, I'll make sure you don't get rejected. And my spirit's trying to say, well, well, make sure he gets belonging in there.
Speaker 3:But the ego usually is the first response because it's defending pain hurt, right. So now my ego becomes what most people would encounter, because I need to make sure it's safe in the room before I drop the veil or say something that might not be everything that you would hope from me or expect of me or everything that I want to act like I've got together. So the ego, as we all know, gets to be pretty strong. It really gets into the workplace, because workplace is mainly the environment of performance, it's delivering a skill, it's meeting the expectation, which is just the ego's playground. So most of us send our ego to work.
Speaker 2:So let's stop there, because you just touched upon something that I didn't, I don't think I've ever considered, which is the ego, in many ways acting as a filter for these signals out there, and so it ends up being the front line, if you will, good way to say it. And you know we both have done and you do more so than I do these days that leadership development, particularly with executives, but where it's all ego all the time and I mean you just sit back and go.
Speaker 3:There it is and there it is. It's thick in the room I live in San Francisco. It's like the fog rolling in and it clouds the room. You don't see each other very clearly when you're in the ego of a lot of powerful people and there even is corporate culture that provides great access to the ego, trumps the ego. You get paid very well to where your ego, so that the whole sense of how we are supposed to be connecting is in the strength of our egos. But we find people don't connect through the strength of the ego. In fact it runs the interference, but you don't see that. If you're not aware of it, you think what's wrong?
Speaker 3:I'm the strongest person. I mean I've got all these strengths. I mean, what does my team not get about me? Have I not said it clear enough? Am I not providing 110% of my own commitment and your team's experiencing your ego and you don't see it. Your ego and you don't see it.
Speaker 3:So it gets super frustrating when the culture itself gets you and pays you for your strengths. Your strengths are wrapped around your ego and you don't know why you're not connecting with people. That gets to be a really big mystery and we say the leader gets lonely the more you rise to the top, and part of that ladder is because the leader doesn't see that their own ego can't connect to their own true spirit and it can't allow others to connect to them. And so you climb up more lonely yet, with more responsibility than you ever had before, and you have to blame or project this energy on something, and leaders get pretty aggravated at their own teams or their own culture or systems, with really a lack of awareness about how they are participating in it, almost designing it with their ego in charge. Is that does that?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's, I'm not a psychologist.
Speaker 3:We work with a lot of people and after all these hours you sit and you go wow, this person's not aware that they've sent their ego to work every day and they're really good at something and their ego is just using that strength and it's now working backwards on them rather than helping them connect.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what I found? And I love that you brought in the culture piece of this, because it really is when you have that cultural embeddedness of ego, yes, that's when there's so much work to do around moving the organization forward in a way that is, you know, I don't want to say healthy, but it is good for not only the employees but also good for the customers or the users. I mean because that permeates.
Speaker 2:And people don't realize that it permeates through everything that you're trying to build, yes, and you lose sight of what you're trying to do and build, yeah.
Speaker 3:I feel like the whole tech culture, watching from the viewing point of seeing Silicon Valley explode and over the last couple of decades, the infancy of the tech culture right now is still so swept by the superhuman, ego-driven, celebrity status type person and the Valley feeds on that and we sell that by simply where we give our attention in the story we tell about technology, which is more of an ego-driven person is still the highlighted individual at what we're aspiring to be in the tech culture and it just tells you how adolescent and young tech culture is.
Speaker 3:You know, other business Industries have their own way of doing it, but especially in tech, we tell the whole story of tech through some pretty big egos that we still idolize and and People pull into town as an entrepreneur with the big idea, hoping to be the next big name that's actually designing the world. I'm all for aspiration, but if we don't check our ego then we don't get to the aspiration that's deeply ours to give to the world. The truth of our spirit won't be lived out in what we do if we don't see the ego, and I think a lot of the tech industry is making that discovery presently. I'm hoping as we go forward.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense? I was like are they? Though?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I don't want to be, like you said earlier, sitting here judging others, but you can see nine out of 10 people that come to this valley fail. See, we're after the one we don't talk about. What would you do with nine out of ten people that really had a great heart. They got here and somehow they stumbled and didn't find funding or they didn't get past the Q1. Like, don't we have a better program than to shoot our own wounded but believing that that one is going to be worth investing and finding, and therefore that'll be the story of tech, when the wreckage of nine out of ten is laying on the beach and it's like, well, hold it, what industry walks away from nine out of ten people only in search of one and calls itself healthy or without ego, so that there's these kinds of things that are the shadow coming into the work that tech is starting to see in its own, I say, rearview mirror.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to touch upon sort of that shadow and almost like that dark side of tech, but before I do, I mean tell me what you think. But I almost feel like this has the same trappings as religion.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, Isn't that good. You got appings as religion. Oh yeah, Isn't that good. Oh, you got a response from me. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know, as someone who has a background in divinity, like, tell me a little bit about, and I'm just curious, like how, when you have leaders and executives that are obviously showing up ego first, because that is, that's a culture, you know, and that's an you know, that is absolutely something that gets touted what are some of the ways, do you, that you work with them to even try to figure out what are some of their triggers, how they can become more self-aware? I mean, what are some ways in which you get them to almost find or identify an inner space?
Speaker 3:It's a great question. One way I want to play with it is, you know, stepping back into the 18th century. Up to that point, religion pretty much had its say-so, it had its pedestal, and most of the world looked to it to find what was true, what's real, what they could trust. And in that enlightenment there was a turning point where religion was shown its own shadow, because great explorers and discoverers were coming back with just absolute evidence and experiences that the ocean doesn't stop at the horizon. We rotate around the Sun, you know.
Speaker 3:So the church saw its own sense of claiming ultimate authority and certainty now called into question and therefore it had to see its own shadow. Oh, wow, we could be wrong and have not known it, all the while saying we hold the truth. So you can just see the the kind of way the whole world begin to go. Oh my god, what's then to be trusted? Yeah, okay. And now I feel like science is coming to the point of having replaced what religion stumbled on. Science has been given its own pedestal by all of the pedestrians and pawns which we are. I don't know what those PhD people know. I don't have that kind of expertise.
Speaker 3:Hey, careful there so now we've assigned to them to tell us the truth of our world again. It's almost like a repeated performance of what we gave to religion. Now science is burdened to be ultimately the ultimate authority of knowledge, the epistemology. How do we know? How do we not know? And science, I think, is more humble. I think science is trying to say look, it's always changing, Look, it's all interconnected with this quantum mindset science is telling us. No one discipline should mount the summit of knowledge and say, hey, we're it.
Speaker 3:I think technology is the child of science and it's too young to not see its own shadow and ego. I think technology is either over-promising what it's going to do to solve our problems, fix our world, or we're so surf-like in the way we view our technology that we're asking of it what it can't provide. And the disappointment now with handheld devices, the disappointment now with some of the things that we've just organized our lives around, is starting to come back as a backlash to the powers we've given technology. So we've got to get off this idea of you know, religion had the mountain, now science has the mountain. Now technology is kind of the kin of science and we've got to understand that the way we're looking at things is going to need a different tact. So I want to pause there because I didn't get to your question. So what do we do with people that are up there, whether they're coming from the religion world or the science world? But does that background, does that sketch make sense? Do we want to go to the question?
Speaker 2:No, so it totally makes sense, I think, when I and again I don't want to lose, I don't want to get off of the triggers. But what I'm also contemplating is when we look at what technology can do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, example of this okay where he's like this is great instead, because he did it for google maps instead of just, you know, I have to move my map over, I can just scroll. Little did he know he? You know, he saw the positive yes in you know, in his creation, yes, if you will, and, and. Then he went around and started touting you know, and and and started doing a roadshow around. Hey, look at what we can now do. And now we have the death scroll right, like we're constantly scrolling, and we know the mental health effects.
Speaker 3:We never get out of the scroll.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, it's a doom scroll, yeah, yeah, but so knowing that? So so I come to that because I think it's a really great example of when you have, when you're looking to technology to solve a problem, yes, and you're identifying a solution. I'll say a because I don't believe in the solution. Ok, but to your point, we're not either thinking through consequences or thinking through implications. Right.
Speaker 2:And we're not necessarily thinking holistically around how are we coming to this? As a behavioralist, I go, okay, well, how many use cases did you go through to come up with that? But we're just looking to technology to solve all these things. Yeah, to fix things. Yeah, fix things yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a real headset. If we've got a problem, it's at a scale we've never seen before, speaking for humanity, and thank God, there's technology. Let's put on technology all the deity, all the ways that we want to believe. It's magical. And technology, of course, as we see the problem, it creates a need for us. We want to solve the problem, but it's a sense that there's technology always looking outward at the problem, always looking outward at the scale, and people that are always looking to the external don't know how to take the tools for the internal work.
Speaker 3:That has to be part of any good design. You don't design something good for the world if you treat the world like a consumer, if you treat the world at the exterior of their own lives, if you don't think about the soul of the world or the brain development of the world, but only how to give the world what it thinks it needs, then you're really part of the problem. And then the best thing we do with the problem is say, well, tech will solve that problem, and then tech will solve the problem. And the problem is that when you design something, you have to have a process to awaken the internal part of what the design is looking for? To not fix the problem Now this would be tricking language but to actually mend or repair or heal. So you don't want to fix the problem with something that gives you another problem to solve. So the market keeps buying your product. You actually want to design something that helps the world or the user, not need you.
Speaker 3:If I had to go to my doctor every month in order to have health, I would say to my doctor you know, I think you're just playing me. You're always selling me again. You know my health has a shelf life or an app deadline and I've got to re-up. A good doctor is someone you don't have to go to all the time, because they're actually developing a holistic understanding of who you are and they're treating you like that.
Speaker 3:And I'm not sure that tech understands its responsibility to what we know is a broken world where we need menders. We need people that are in tech, thinking about how to design in a process that the world doesn't need so much tech anymore. The world actually needs a walk in nature where things are taking care of one another and there's a culture of care, and yet there's death, decay. There's summer, winter, spring, there's lack of rain, there's over rain. There is an ecosystem that we're trying to learn from as to how humans need to flourish in our world, and tech needs to be learning about how it can be responsible for our real wellness, rather than the use of the products that we find ourselves becoming dependent on in a scary way, as good as they are.
Speaker 2:So how do we build that though in? Because, you know, in a previous conversation we've had, we've actually talked about design thinking and how we both agree it's lacking in. Yeah it a methodology right um right so, because I want to get at least a little tactical here, like how would you try yeah and I'm not saying it's going to be perfect, but how would you try to start to incorporate some of that into a design process?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question and thank you for pulling me back down to the tactic, because I mean, that's where the real work is and if you go there too fast, I'm backing up just a second. If you go there too fast to the tactical and I'm just a second. If you go there too fast to the tactical, I don't know if you can really own the problem and you just get lost again in the details and in the way that we think in the tactics is the solution, it's in the whole mindset of what are we trying to design. Once that begins to drop into a person or a team's mind, then they're capable of going to the tactic. If they don't have that vision of what we're good for, they'll just use tactic time to keep recreating the same problem.
Speaker 3:So, it's really important to do what we just did. You get the big vision of wow, could tech be a healing agency in our broken world? And if it were, it would need an inside track, something we're holding language like the interior or the soul space, and then people go, okay, now you lost me. What's the tactical, practical thing you're actually trying to say? And I get that.
Speaker 2:How do I create a soul space? That's right.
Speaker 3:And I'm saying you engineers are so good at going tactical that again, if I don't pull you up and get you to look up, you'll. So now you're looking up and you're saying, ok, now I want to go tactical. And we're saying, and it's a part of an interior development, in a team or a person's life, that they need practices or tactics. So possibly, and we can be very creative in the interior, in the soul space this is the beauty of it. There isn't like a linear mindset of, well, you've got to do one, two, three, four, in that order. It's very creative to get down into the space we're talking about with teams or people that in the design thinking process there just needs to be one part of a sequence that engages.
Speaker 3:The good question Is this being designed? And what is the ethical or the good implication that we are putting into this design so that the user isn't left with the burden of an on and off switch? Yeah, so we're not gonna offload, so that the user isn't left with the burden of an on and off switch. So we're not going to offload a lack of ethical thinking in a design process and putting that responsibility on the user and saying, well, it'll be on you and your kids.
Speaker 3:We need designers who actually have sequencer process, where at a certain point they've listened to the customer, they've done user X, they've got their data points back, and then they need to sit in a reflective space with their data and say what's now the good that we can begin to think our design should incorporate, having heard from our users. So there's empathy there, which are, you know, big words that's not a new word out there but there's more emotion, intelligence, that teams need to have a point of pause in our design and reflection to make sure that we're not over programming with just algorithmic logic, what obviously we should be designing, but there's more of a human touch and I don't. I don't know if the design process is honoring that like it can, so I'll pause there as an example of a tactic yeah, I can tell you.
Speaker 3:I mean the idea of reflection yeah, that I mean true, true space for reflection it doesn't, it doesn't well it doesn't exist right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Timelines as far as deliverables within an organization. There's just not-.
Speaker 3:There's not time. Yeah, and this is the whole thing the industry in its infancy and it's the summit that we've put tech on. They don't have time to reflect because we want to know the next thing out. We're not even treating them fair and the name of the game inside is fell fast. It's speed and human beings biologically, we are made to go about three miles an hour. That's how we walk, and when you walk five miles an hour for very long, you injure and then you start. If you don't rest and stop and reflect, then that injury turns into a real problem. Then you're carrying a wound around. That's something of an arc that technology is trying to outperform by its own strength rather than just to admit. Speed isn't our friend. Speed is not helpful for reflection and tech needs a reflective mode of designing and it would only come from.
Speaker 3:We always say the profit has to be found within the company. If the profit isn't heard within the company like, hey, we need to slow down, the profit is the hey, we might not be 100% right on this. If you don't have that within the company, you're going to hear that from outside the company because people will start to complain you're killing company. You're going to hear that from outside the company because people will start to complain You're killing us, you're dragging us through stuff. We don't even know where the future of all this lies. Does anybody know? And I think you brought up a good point in that? Speed is driving the industry and it's not allowing reflection and we desperately need tools of reflection, right.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean otherwise. You're solving a problem that isn't necessarily the core problem that you should be, and tech fixes the wrong problem all the time.
Speaker 3:Einstein said the level you find the problem on is not the same level you'll find the solution on. So what he's saying is you've got to what I would say you've got to drop into. You've got to go under that level with more reflection to find out what is the solution to the problem that we're trying to solve. And tech doesn't take time and it doesn't have in its own leadership bandwidth, the ability or the tools to know. How do we reflect without losing pace? What's the process that honors that? If we don't reflect, we're just going to build something that's not as good as it could be built. So that's part of the tactical is that we need tools for the interior or for the reflective. Look at our work understanding all the data we're gathering, but not justifying what we were going to build with it, no matter what. But finding that reflective space is very valuable right now in leadership with tech.
Speaker 3:I know more people that are in higher leadership literally trying to clear their schedule of meetings to be able to sit inside the space we're talking about and have some time to simply check ego, which is oftentimes with speed and efficiency only, and beginning to ask the deeper questions and until those leaders actually change themselves, they're not going to change their product. Healthy teams make healthy products. Fast teams, teams that are pushed by deadlines they're not making good products. It's not fair to put humans in that situation and that's why we can go to that burnout side and a lot of people feeling very frustrated because they're not given the humane process in their design. So I think reflection's big Emotional intelligence Is this good for the whole person. These kind of things, I believe, are where tech's doing some important work. It feels soft to them, but I think it's going to be critically important. They're shaping our world.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that. You know, it's really interesting to think about the speaking of reflection. It's so hard for us this goes beyond tech but it's so hard for us to think about stillness. And how can I incorporate stillness into my own life? Or if I'm working with a team, I mean those dynamics. If there's nothing but ego in those dynamics, I mean the product fails in many ways. The whole team fails.
Speaker 2:The organization fails. So when at least for me, when working with folks, it's okay are you actually taking the time for yourself to be able to sit back and go? And it sounds very much to what you just said, where you know you're checking the ego but you're giving yourself that, that space, and it feels very much, almost like that inner space that you started to talk about earlier, where you're really just checking in with who you are, where you are, what's going on today and are you showing up in a way that you're happy with?
Speaker 3:Big time.
Speaker 2:You know, because I don't know about you, but almost all of the execs I talk to are not necessarily happy in their day-to-day.
Speaker 3:No, it's really. It's true. I mean, there's so much to be said about that. Thank you for putting a valuable word like stillness, an unused word. If you drop stillness into a meeting, people would look at you like what are you talking about? Synonyms, a pause, a pause. Can we pause? Can we reflect for a moment? Can we check in with other parts of what we have to bring? But we never have an opportunity to bring it. This is just called work. It's all up in my head. So I think that there are ways people can find the value of stillness by maybe finding the word that's closest associated for them, but they've got to get to it.
Speaker 3:Because, human beings. We don't live well and we don't design well if we don't have a discipline of stillness. But when you ask a very busy person to get still, it can almost be the scariest invitation that you can give them.
Speaker 2:And why?
Speaker 3:Because the ego for so long has been the chatter and the driver that to be still the ego doesn't know what to do with that. So they're meeting another part of themselves that's not their ego and there's very little coaching and there's very little tools to use that word to help them understand. If they're not busy with their ego, then who are they and what good are they for? And they haven't tasted enough of the stillness of their own spirit to find the parts of them that if they were able to bring that to what they do in their work, it would be so much more of a well-being and a flourishing environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so there's a lack of context for most of our meetings and the way we do our work to come to stillness. So we almost have to leave work and promise ourselves we're going to get stillness in some other part of our life. I'll get up at four in the morning and go, because that's the only time unassigned maybe I can be still. Then. We're not really talking about adding another 15 minutes of stillness to your incredibly overpacked, overscheduled day that your ego is running you around on. We're talking about a new appreciation for stillness that allows an integration into what you're doing. So I don't want to build another compartment because this is what a lot of leaders will do. Okay, I work out here, I do my family thing here, and now I need to add stillness.
Speaker 3:It gets exhausting. Stillness is a mindset. A lot of times we work with people in terms of even their breath as a way that they can, in a moment's notice, turn to the power of stillness. And this is why so many times you feel a little weird when somebody says just take three breaths right now and don't say anything. Just take three deep breaths. It's amazing the shift and the change that can happen with just that brief pause.
Speaker 2:And that's exactly what peak performers do right, like they know to do that. And here we have executives who consider themselves peak performers, who consider themselves peak performers but yet rail against the idea of I need to have a slower heartbeat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I need to take that time. It's not believed yet. Yeah, no, right on. And what they're doing in their high performance is they're moving quicker to burnout and they don't know it Because they're not quote burned out and they'll find other, alternative ways to enthuse their own broken system Again. The tech world is addicted to fixing rather than healing and mending. I just want to keep drawing that comparison. It's apparent.
Speaker 3:And mending and healing is not some soft oh too bad, you couldn't fix it. Mending and healing is how we come to wholeness, and stillness is a friend to wholeness. Stillness is saying that, before I get to the end of solving the problem, there's a way of peace for me now. I'm not only as good as my productivity, I'm actually a human being in the process of producing. I don't have to have it turn out right to be right with myself. Stillness is accepting something rather than accomplishing something to tell me I'm really good at that.
Speaker 2:How do you think we got here, though? I have my own hypothesis, but I'm curious what? How we got here yeah, I mean, how did we get to the point where we are? We just assumed and assume that that tech you know that fixing things with tech is is the is the right approach is what they're here for.
Speaker 3:That's really important thing. The job description for tech and our society is fix it, and that's not fair to anybody. And yet tech has said well, if that's the market right, here we go. Yeah, and short-term, it looks kind of great, you can bring them a product to that market and make a handsome sum yeah. But long term, which now we're saying after over a decade of handheld devices, we're realizing maybe there's a flaw in that kind of thinking.
Speaker 3:You know, going back to how did we get on that train? We lost as a society, for different reasons, the value of living holistically and living still, of living holistically and living still. And the world sped up with its problems and its needs for us to be 24-7, and we kept designing in ways that we didn't give ourselves time to appreciate what is the value of the Sabbath, what is a rested person like? We kept going on the trail we're on and we just simply started doing research on happiness and we wrote books on it. We're trying to convince ourselves that you can be happy in productivity but we're not able to handle kind of the ancient tools of what is it to know stillness, what is it like to walk in the virtues of patience.
Speaker 3:What is self-care like in this world? And I'll pause there because you can almost begin to see the split of hey, we desire those things and I think they come when you make enough money or when you get the right team, or if you just had a better job, vocational match. And we're still in that mindset of it's just the carrot at the end of the stick of this Protestant work. Ethic or this 24-7 or this drive. Ethic or this 24-7 or this drive. And that road is trying to say to us that it's actually in developing our own inner abilities to practice the stillness, the patience, the things that we're lured by in our deeper humanity. That's not coming by the way we're living our lives you know as a Bostonian that Protestant work ethic.
Speaker 2:I know it runs, we can go down there, yeah it runs deep in that culture and I find that it runs deep in me. It's really interesting me too. Um, I wonder where I see it and I'm curious from a timeline perspective. But I see that it's really sped up, or really sped up at the dawn of the industrial revolution, and that's really when at least from a Western perspective that's really when we started to create these centralized systems, including our business models. Where you live, you work, you go to school, all of these systems are built around the factory and built around work, and the whole intent of that ecosystem and all of those systems is to keep that overarching ecosystem and all those systems well-oiled and running together.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know so.
Speaker 3:Machine language comes in, yeah, and humans have now entered the life of the machine and we use machine language to describe ourselves. We're losing our humanity as we're trying to approach the problems of humanity through a mechanism that's industrial, it's systems. You give yourself to the system, you play by its rules. You don't see its own shadow. It promises you what it can give you back a wage, access to things that you couldn't have before. And what we don't know is that the humanity that's being entered into the life of the industrial age and the machine is less and less able to know itself in necessary ways, which are the ways of stillness, sitting in a rested spirit. You can take a team that is working in the industrial mindset and measure them, and you can take a team that's practicing a Sabbath rest and over the same amount of time, both teams are working.
Speaker 2:You'll be shocked at how well the team that honors a rested spirit begins to outperform the team that is absolutely burning the midnight oil and what I just want to pause here, because what I find is that they both have what I'll call time constraints, but how those time constraints are framed are totally different.
Speaker 3:And there's a time restraint framed for the people that are honoring that they're humans and it feels there are time restraints to practice Sabbath. And it feels there are time restraints to practice Sabbath and see that talk threatens the industrial team who says no time restraint is getting product out the door, prototyping it, iterating it, finding out its flaws and getting it back to the market at a better price point. That team grows over time in exhaustion, employee retention, creativity. Those things begin to plummet where the ones who practice the time restraint around. So we're knocking off for an amount of time, just for our well-being, are you?
Speaker 2:serious. How dare you? We're going to get passed.
Speaker 3:That team actually outperforms, people stay on that team. Creativity flourishes on that team. There's a restraint that is part of the overall design and creativity process that we want our lives to be informed by, by the tools that are available to us, by what's offered to us through the machines that we've made. But the machines that we're currently using don't tend to practice or have embedded in them this sense that we're humans and we need to limit ourselves to human capacity so that we can be healthy about being humans, rather than buying the fact of no. I should be able to stay up as long and run as efficient as machines and use that language to talk about my environment, who I really am. We're just not made for that, uh is that sort of the dark side?
Speaker 2:or the you know sort of the shadow of of technology, one of the shadows one of the shadows.
Speaker 3:for me it is it's not seeing. You know the shadows where I keep things I don't see or I'm not aware of. And it's not like they go away. They're operating under the surface. I'm just not aware of them and until I turn and begin to see them, they're enemies. When I can see them, they can become actually really helpful. If you will, friends, to help me come to wholeness. Oh my God, I didn't realize that. Thank you, that's now part of what I'm aware of. I have new choice because I have more awareness. The shadow blocks the awareness and it's not like I'm not carrying it around. I am A lot of leaders I work with who don't see their shadow. Their team does.
Speaker 2:And do you view that shadow as an individual thing, as an organizational thing?
Speaker 3:Collectively. Yeah, yeah, I do. It plays all the way from person to team to collective Young would even say in the archety shadows. How in the world Hands down? We can spend a whole other podcast on how do we do? World War II and I, out of a country that was the most Christianized, had the most universities and churches and yet led us into the most devastating wars. That's a shadow, see, it's not seen. It's all progress and we're developing the world and yet we're going to give hundreds of thousands, at that point in time, of our young men. And that's unseen force at work in all of our productivity, our inability to reflect on our own humanity, design a course that's good for all of us. No, we just went off and then obviously, the industrial complex came and now we've got weaponry. We've got so much technology involved in keeping that kind of world.
Speaker 2:Another system?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so and we're giving up human beings the most precious commodity we have on the earth to keep that system going. And it has a shadow in it and leaders aren't willing to see, either in their personal life the shadow or in the team life or the country life, the shadow. And, by the way, if you address someone's shadow without them wanting to see it to shadow, and, by the way, if you address someone's shadow without them wanting to see it, there's hell to pay. So there's a lot of leaders that aren't paid to see their shadow. Teams are working at a speed, there's no time to reflect, so the shadow remains in the design.
Speaker 3:I mean, you can almost feel the tendency for us to say where is there leadership? And I'm not trying to put psychology at the heart of all this, but there has to be an ability to reflect on the interior of how we're designing and working. That values again a sense of how do we do our best work if we're not honoring what it takes to rest, to listen, to have empathy, to put care in what we do with each other, if we're moving at a pace that doesn't provide care to each other. How long can we keep that going before you'll just leave me, and then of course, I'll just replace you and get somebody better.
Speaker 2:With a robot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, in time, it's not the system that we're made to flourish in.
Speaker 2:So we've talked a little bit about shining a light on the individual shadow. Okay, at least that's what it feels like to me, and tell me if you disagree. I mean, I mean no.
Speaker 3:I think it's right. I think we just touched on it. But, yes, we a flashlight, possibly looking into the shadow. Yeah, so that I mean that's that's part of the concept, if if somebody wanted to really listen to what you and I are after. We're not trying to be negative. We're saying your attempt to be at the top of your game and perfect your strengths is often in the way of you seeing what you've kept now in the shadow, and the reason we think that's important is not to go see we found your shadow. Are you guilty enough? We're saying wholeness lies in you, seeing what's in the shadow, and when you get all of you, when you get more wholeness on the table, you design better and you live better, because you're now into something not fixing by your strengths, but you're welcoming parts of you you don't see that can actually put what you're doing into the world in a helpful way for others. So something like that to me, belongs to the benefit of why the shadow is so wonderful and not some guilty trip we put people on.
Speaker 2:Because we need it too. Like to me, you need the light, you need the dark as much as you need the light. That's right, you know, and it's that balance and it's the recognition, and I think you hit upon it, or at least for me, you hit upon it when you talked about the awareness of it.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Right so it's almost like when you have a superpower, you know something you're really good at, it's the ego that continues to utilize that same mechanism or tool, and then that's when it starts to, you know, almost be a detriment to you as a person or your team Great point Janae be a detriment to you as a person or your team Great point, Great point, Janae.
Speaker 3:And what we try to do is outperform our shadow with our strengths.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that.
Speaker 3:So it's like, hey, I don't actually have to own that, see, I just have to get better at what I do. So all of these books, soar With your Strengths, find your Strengths, strength Finders. They're all helpful. We just have a lack of well, if I don't know my shadow, if I'm not aware of it, then are you really coaching me that really my strengths can outperform my shadow? It's not good in any relationship or any kind of job. So where are the tools? And how do people again take an awareness light and begin to look? Not because they're looking to where they're imperfect or guilty. Wholeness is part. Your most untapped energies of creativity are in your shadow. Doubling down on your strengths again gets you very little in success. What you're really looking for in your next major step up is in your shadow.
Speaker 2:Well, and I also find that these shadows in my mind grow longer when we work with other individuals. I mean, whether or not we're talking about building a product and we're talking about being in an organization, we're talking about your relationships and your personal life. Yep, it's about the dynamics, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right and so I don't know about you or where you are in your journey. For me, you know, one of the things that I've been working on is that are those dynamics Like, if I'm feeling more of the pull from someone, am I going to pull back or am I bending like the willow tree?
Speaker 3:It's so true. See, that's where the stillness and the solitude in your life if you're working with that gives you an inner grounding. So when you show up in the pool of someone else's shadow force, you're not so likely to play along. You're wise enough to not combat them because you're enlightened. You just have some self-knowledge that you're not going down that without some questions, without some thought. But that came from an inner grounding that you didn't give your agency away because the whole culture or the whole team was moving that fast.
Speaker 3:And I think this inner what I'm going to say is the authority lies within our lives to change what we usually gripe about on the outside of our lives, like don't you see that leader does it that way, or this is what they always expect of me at work, or we tend to project and blame what's in the shadow out on the external powers that be and it's a call to grow the inner person we are, so that when we show up in that arena we're not such an easy prey in that job interview to go yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this sounds great.
Speaker 3:No, we're doing it. There's a little bit more of a reflective person you felt in order to look at the ways that other people's I don't know what you want to call it influence doesn't make you so quick to buy what, the opportunity or what's being sold. It's hard because the tech industry is so full of young people they haven't had time to know themselves and so they're trying to find themselves in what they do or in the external. But you're right on to point. That's the gift of being able to know who you are before you get into these high currents of what technology often offers itself through intoxicating.
Speaker 2:Well, part of what I'm wondering as you're talking, one I wonder do we ever really know ourselves, or do we just know who we are for today, and that you know? For me, I sort of view that, as you know, sort of shifting sand, you know still the same beach but still still shifting Um.
Speaker 2:But then I'm also curious you know we've talked a lot about um, about focusing on the individual how could an individual sort of shine a light on sort of the dark side of some of the decision-making that's being made in tech? Because, as you and I know, there are many decisions that are made, sometimes made in a silo, sometimes made by an individual and sometimes made by an intersection of thoughts and ideas, but with the idea that, you know, we have a directive and a mandate and we're going to build towards that because I don't want to lose my job, because I have mouths to feed or otherwise I'm gonna be homeless.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, how much you view how a person could take agency around, shining that light on sort of the long, the long tail of tech, long dark tail of tech?
Speaker 3:It's a great question. I don't want to put out any type of thing that marries itself to perfection. If you just do this, it would end up. These are incremental changes. The first thing you would do is know your own shadow. Now you're not participating so quickly in the long shadow of others. You would learn how to engage through questions. So you're not trying to be the opposition, or you're not trying to be the the negative or the know-it-all, so you're thinking more.
Speaker 3:Before I speak up in this meeting, what I'm feeling, what question serves the team to experience? Maybe the wisdom I would want to bring or just the check I have in me, right? Thirdly is I'm not looking at a win-lose on this particular product or this particular meeting. I'm going to know that I'm going to be in this place for maybe months, if not a few years. It doesn't have to change me fast, but I can't lose my voice. I need to help it bend towards being a better company over time. So I'm not losing my conviction, but I'm also willing to compromise so that I can stay in the conversation to see if we can't begin to design something better, because I'm staying in a seat that's not absolutely all clear.
Speaker 3:Do I do, what do I do? And what we're trying to say is let your mind work towards how we're talking and the skills will come to ask the question, rather than just say I'm just not comfortable with this or, you know, I've got to leave because I don't think we're doing this right. The other thing that comes to mind is I would think in the interview process, people are switching jobs so much more think you have to be we have to get wiser and a little bit more astute, and when we interview, are we truly matching up with the kind of culture that we want to support and be shaped by?
Speaker 3:yeah so I think early on we need to spend a little bit more time. Is this the right match for me, rather than just the opportunity? Yeah, so I mean those, those kinds of thoughts. It's a long road. I don't act like there's magical companies and ways to do it right.
Speaker 3:In one meeting, people go right, because there's not yeah, right, so so to do that, you have to build the inner disciplines or the practices in your own life in order to afford the incongruities that you're going to run into, because there's no perfect world out there for you to match up with, and I've met too many idealistic tech workers who think there is that, and so they're always dismayed by the company that hires them after three to nine months.
Speaker 2:I find that they're prevalent here in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3:We almost yeah, it's almost how we get along is to allow that to keep happening. There's something so idealistic about finding the West Coast with your idea. There must be an ideal company. There must be an ideal place for me.
Speaker 2:Well, it's manifest destiny.
Speaker 3:And we say that there is and it's manifest destiny and that simply leads to nine out of ten. Don't make it, because we never helped a young person or an older person realize. What's in your way is your idealistic thinking of what's really here. It's hard work. Roll up your sleeves. If you don't have inner work, the current here is way too fast. But if you are thoughtful and mindful about this, there's a real shot at doing something fantastic for the world.
Speaker 2:So how does this translate to society? You know, and we talk about. I mean, we've talked about world wars. We've talked about you know the fact that we've now created these systems that are keeping us in. You know these systems. How does an individual it's much easier for an individual to take that sort of take what they're working on themselves and translate that into the dynamics in which they find them in their day-to-day, you know, in the teams that they're on? How can we do that collectively? Yeah, I mean I, I don't know, do you?
Speaker 2:have any ideas. Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:I thought last night I mean, I know there's still land out there on our planet that's uninhabited. As we keep needing housing in San Francisco, you would think well, let's just spread out. We know better than that right. Just spread out, we know better than that right. It's almost like we're at a time in human history where it's not time to move somewhere else and start something. It's time to learn how to renew and refurbish.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree with that, what we currently have Now.
Speaker 3:Let's just go to the university and education. Let's just go to medical care and hospital, let's just go to. It's not time to like, start new things. That's techie, Not all bad, but it's time to find leaders and people who know how to awaken the ethos within these institutions that we once thought were going to deliver to our societies helpful, holistic ways to live. And it's time to find the voice of not like. Well'll, tear it down, we'll build something faster and better.
Speaker 3:We have to find ways of renewing our efforts in old institutions rather than just disorder them and deconstruct them and say we're going to go on. So the university itself would be a wonderful place to look at. How are we prepping and providing formation in the way that we certify someone vocationally so they can get a job because they got a degree from our university? How do we bring back something of the humanities that doesn't delay what they need to know for hard skills? But how do we put out whole people through the educational process that are ready to work in a world of uncertainty, Right, where you don't just bear down with your strengths and try to fix problems, but you have some empathy, you know how to engage. I mean, that's part of the educational process and we're better than what we're currently putting out in so many of these institutions and we're disillusioned by our institutions. So, rather than going out and tearing them down and starting new ones, I'm saying the conversation could be on time now for us to say how do we renew the institutions?
Speaker 2:Well, I love that idea.
Speaker 3:But is it practical? No, there's no. But.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I also love the fact that you brought up academic institutions and the educational system.
Speaker 3:You would know about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't know, but to your point, so much of it ends up being the output, like students are the product and you can get them in, get them out, and I'm not saying that that's the intent.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:But that ends up being the mechanism in which that's what's counted. Yeah, exactly, intent. No, but that ends up being the mechanism in which that's what's counted. Yeah, exactly so it. We could do this through viewing different metrics yeah you know.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's about, instead of you know, instead of just looking at, you have a degree. What were some of the classes that you've taken? Because now we have to, particularly when we're looking at some of these jobs technology, how we use technology. What does it mean to be an expert in something? What does it mean to be certified in something?
Speaker 3:Something.
Speaker 2:Or proficient, measuring what that looks like out in the workforce. And how are we measuring that also within? You know the academic setting. I actually think removing you know some of those categories would behoove us, but there has to be some type of measure of, to your point, of like mindset instead of skill. Yeah. Because skills can be learned.
Speaker 3:That's right, and they change fast.
Speaker 2:Right and going to change even faster.
Speaker 3:Mindsets are beautiful because they're more oriented to virtue. They're able to take a long arc to do their work. They're able to take a long arc to do their work. They're valuable across the board family, work, play. That mindset's going to help you. The skill set in a job is oftentimes not the skill set you need to bring back to the family when you return. So I'm just saying universities have co-opted themselves into skill set building and a lot of business development and coaching is about skill sets.
Speaker 3:There are a few books it's not like our new discovery here about mindset, but mindset is where education and institutions need to begin to return, because they've gotten hijacked by skill sets constantly changing and it's exhausting to be in a skill set world. If you don't know what's the mindset like, here's one, for example can I get one? Now? This is on a different track, but it shows that the skill set mindset if I say to you forgiveness is an important skill and uh like, that's a big jump. But yeah, we've got a lot of need to find out what's the skill of forgiveness in business and our relationships. Things that are left unforgiven suck energy out of our lives. So I convince you that the skill of forgiveness is really valuable. And you said, okay, I want to do that, I want to move to that. How do I do that? And I say, well, you know you use these words and it has to be authentic and real. You go, okay, I want to do that, I want to move to that. How do I do that? And I say, well, you know you use these words and it has to be authentic and real. You go, okay, great, great. Then you come back next week and you say, guess what? I got more forgiveness to give because somebody else ticked me off.
Speaker 3:You know like, well, after a while, about five or six of these you know forgiveness trips, you begin to life going to be this hard as self-management, to fucking forgiving, because I don't think I want that future right and I'm like your time now has you ready to learn the mindset behind forgiveness? You're like what I say, it's mercy. You've been forgiving people one-off, one-off, one-off. You've, you know, you've forgiven seven times. Now you're getting getting tired of it.
Speaker 3:You're asking for a mindset that is the source of that kind of forgiveness that doesn't make it drudgery the rest of your life. Let me introduce you to mercy, and mercy is a mindset. And when you are occupied by mercy, you find that forgiveness starts to flow out of it and it gives you back a return of mending and people like appreciate, like I didn't know, we could get past, that, we can restore, but it was because, finally you, you were ready for the mindset. I think this was really important when people are tired of skills and skill set change and that they're really crying out for I need a new mindset because it's so uncertain and so changing on me all the time. Right.
Speaker 2:I love the fact that you brought up mercy. Okay and no one.
Speaker 3:Because I just threw that in from out over the pips. But it is a mindset, skill set thing, right?
Speaker 2:Right, but no one talks about mercy.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:At all, I mean.
Speaker 3:It's just a word that's on the shelf.
Speaker 2:It's unfortunate if you have to talk about it.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, you had to go to mercy. You couldn't fix it, you couldn't be perfect.
Speaker 2:What do they say in the South? Bless your heart.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in the South. But yeah, it's like oh, you lost, so you have to have mercy. We don't see it for the reward, yeah, but you're right, we bring up a very foreign word when we say mercy, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, what I love about mercy is that it really embodies this idea of forgiveness and, in many ways, when we're coming up against something with someone else that is either uncomfortable or is frustrating or, you know, angers us, many times it actually has. Most times has nothing to do with us, that's right, and it could have everything to do with things outside of that. You know that relationship.
Speaker 3:Sure could be.
Speaker 2:So I love the idea of mercy.
Speaker 3:So if I give you mercy in that moment, one thing you're saying really well, mercy decides not to take what's done to me personally.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's merciful. And if I actually have that mindset again, working with it in my life, not looking for a merciful company that will hire me, owning the fact that mercy would start here, then I have a different response and reaction in time to the people around me. It begins to shape the world around me because when you give mercy, people don't go too often. Well, enough of that, they actually lean into it and they didn't give back what they were expecting, which is the game they're playing With you. Their game ended because you gave mercy, you didn't give back what they thought was going to come back. And so you begin to shape a little bit more and more the team or the world around you, because you chose to first step, if you will, with mercy. That's real leadership. That's really different than just running the gamut of what people give you, you give it back.
Speaker 2:I think a really nice compliment to that feels like curiosity would be a nice compliment to it, because so many times we are, we lack curiosity around even what's causing a dilemma or attention and we're not seeking to understand. You know. And so even if, even if you're unable to find out from that individual what's really you know at the core, just you know, opening the conversation, you know, and opening the space for a potential conversation, so that they're not immediately there to your to bring it full circle, like their ego isn't at the forefront saying no way, we're not immediately there to your to bring it full circle, like their ego isn't at the forefront saying no way, we're not, you know, we're not going to engage here. It it feels like a seeking to understand and having that curiosity can also allow for your mercy to be employed.
Speaker 3:I don't know yeah, no, I like that a lot, because mercy assumes I I don't know. Yeah, no, I like that a lot Because mercy assumes I don't know everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm not in that position of hey, back at you, I'm right and I'm going to prove it. Mercy is like you know. There's a curiosity to where we might go if I gave you mercy, versus if I just slapped you back with my truth and you gave me your truth. Or here's my fact, that curiosity is a. Like you said, holding space for mercy is a play with curiosity. It would say.
Speaker 3:The mindset is do I want to know her or do I just want to fix her? See, if I just want to fix you, do I just want to fix her? See, if I just want to fix you, then I'm going to bring you my knowledge, my algorithm, my logic, and one of us is going to be right, one of us is going to be wrong. We need to find that out fast and get to the right.
Speaker 3:Mercy is like what if I chose to understand you on our way to developing something better between the two of us? And if that's true, then curiosity about what you think and how you got there would be one of my main drives in a conversation with you, rather than let me tell you what I know. Yeah, now, in a world where uncertainty is rattling our cages. Isn't it interesting that what we reach for the most is certainty, which is not a friend of mercy, it's not a friend of curiosity. It's so scary, it's so uncertain. I don't know if I can, you know, trust the future that I'm grabbing for certainty because people are looking for an anchor which keeps me from being anchored because curiosity doesn't work with certainty.
Speaker 3:They just don't go together. It's oil and water, and yet a person will swear no, I got to get to certainty. And it's like well, you won't get there unless you have the mindset of curiosity. I like to think of curiosity as wanting to know what I don't know from the inside out.
Speaker 2:oh, I like that you know, I wonder, because I I really do think that people try to cling to certainty because they're looking for that anchor, but but I wonder whether or not stillness, and identifying that stillness, can become an anchor for an individual.
Speaker 3:I think it's a way to bring us back around. That's why it's such a valuable tool, the anchor of stillness to be still.
Speaker 2:Need more of it in our lives. Yep, I love it.
Speaker 3:And you know, again, we have to say to people it sounds beautiful, but when you sit in it, as soon as you sit in the stillness for 5, 10, 15 seconds, you're going to be reminded that you have dry cleaning to pick up and you can do that on the way to picking up the kids, or, you know, the busyness of our lives will come rushing into our stillness to ask us to get better at organizing ourselves. Again, fixing tools will come into the quest for stillness and we even have to say to them you know, I'm not here for that, I'm here to be still. And what do you mean by that? And it's probably on other podcasts, but it's a way of experiencing our lives beyond what we do. It's tethered to who we are to be, to ourselves. It's treating ourselves like someone we would like to be around.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 3:There's a condition of life that will meet you every morning, but that doesn't have to determine the condition of your own mind and your own spirit. You are something other than what you do.
Speaker 2:It's hard for us to think about that.
Speaker 3:And when you realize the difference, because it's hard. But when you just understand the difference and you begin to feed the deeper part of you, like that spirit and that mind that I'm talking about in the stillness, it makes real effect on the conditions that you're facing. That you can't control at work, traffic, but you don't have to be governed by the conditions of your life. If you know how to get to stillness for a little bit, it can really help. It can really be an antidote to the speed and the busyness of fixing the world. But until I do my own inner work, I'm only perpetuating in the exterior world my own discontent. Oh yeah, we've got to get that better. I'm stressed, like you, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it could also help with at least the awareness of the dark side of, or that shadow that we all naturally have and that is permeating everywhere that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I see my shadow and I'm willing to be aware of it and I show you a little bit of it and you don't judge and blame and accuse me you might open up a little bit of yours and I look in there and I go yeah, I saw that about you before, but I'm glad you see it now, because now we can talk about it like how is it for you? And you tell me the story of how that began to happen in your life and I see that something that was put in the shadow actually was what you learned at an earlier time in your life. That is an amazing part of you and you just don't know how to bring it forward into the new light of what it could be today. Yeah, like I lost my dad when I was eight and a half years old to a malignant brain tumor, that's in my shadow. I don't know a day in my life when that would not like, in one way or another, be a part of my story, but I don't tell it to everybody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, so, right. So that was eight and a half. My age was eight and a half when that happened. Right, that has become an incredible gift for me now that I'm in my adult years, because it taught me empathy. It gave me a place to connect with people that are in uncontrollable situations. It was a shadow when it happened, and now it has become a way I connect in the world that I could never connect with or belong to with other people that I deeply value now, and so that's the power of what's in that shadow. That first happened, got assigned to the shadow, obscene, could become an incredible gift where you connect at levels. Your strength would never let you connect if it was just strengths.
Speaker 2:Does that? Make sense, yeah Well, I love the fact that you created that thread and I mean I've seen it in my life and through and through some of our conversations where you know I'm like here it is yeah I don't tell this everybody you know, but take it. Take, take what you like and leave the rest. But.
Speaker 2:But what I've learned for myself and I just heard it for you as well is that you know when we use that, these stories that we have, or these instances, yes these instances, yes, but we don't hold them in the same frame or in the same light, and then we allow them to be that bridge to something that might be completely new and foreign to us and how we relate to other people. But we just go and explore and go hey, let's see what pops up here it's so true, isn't it?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think for people that are looking for what we're talking about, a connection, it usually lies with them revealing something in the shadow. First of all, they've become aware of it, that it doesn't accuse them and identify them forever, but it did happen to them, them and to update that and to let it become a bridge builder to other people, which is a deep connection. It only happens when we begin to let that out of the shadow and move into space with the other person. And there'll be people that'll walk away because they're looking for the perfect company, the ideal job. But there'll be a whole lot more people that'll begin to say but there'll be a whole lot more people that'll begin to say thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 3:I didn't know that. And they become curious about the deeper part of you rather than just what you can get done for them or what can be transactional In that space between people. You'll look back and say how do we connect like this? And you'll realize it wasn't because we both found out we were brilliant. It's like, well, we just trusted each other with parts of ourselves that we didn't quite know how to update. But they're updating in one another's presence and gosh, that's, that's what we're saying, that's the new tap of energy, of, of creativity that helps us give some ideas about this podcast. What might we do if we put our voices together? What could we design if we thought about the whole parts of our lives, uh, and got really honest about it and got open with it appropriately?
Speaker 3:yeah yeah, and I think that there's real power there, that, um, as we started, I think tech wants to look for and all of us want in our individual lives and families. And uh, that's a I want to say. I want to say another little story, can I? Yeah, there's, you know, when you look back at how we like evolved into this age we've talked about, of technology and the digital age, we've come through quite a span of development. Anywhere that we've been blindsided, you know, we realize, oh, we had a blind spot there. That's why this awareness thing is so important.
Speaker 3:When the first group of people like us, let's just say, sat around a campfire at night maybe hunter-gatherer time, you know and let's just say that the saber-toothed tiger approached, you know, came right on the pale of that tire, and we said there it is. You know which one of us is the smartest? Maybe we should send you because somebody's got to deal with that. No, no, no, it's not the smartest. Who's the fastest? Because you've got to run. Yeah, who's fast here? Sorry if you're slow. No, who's the biggest? We should send our biggest.
Speaker 3:And we learned way back in that time of our own development that none of those things big size speed actually is our superpower. It was only when we decided if we collect ourselves and go together that we can take care of the fear of what's beyond the pale, the future. To the degree that we will connect with one another, we can move into a world we can't yet see. But if we go out there thinking let's get the biggest, the smartest, the strongest, the most funded, we won't make. It Isn't that powerful that we're made for connection, and our best connection is when we're allowed to give each other access to the wholeness of who we are and the story we're carrying. And in that is the creative process to design and actually shape a world we wanna show up in.
Speaker 2:And create something beautiful.
Speaker 3:And create something beautiful that we wanna be part of. You know, what do you think our ancestors are gonna look back and say to us man, I'm really glad they paid attention to this in 2024. Like what will they hope that we put into our work that's designing the world that they're going to show up in? What will they ask us, 30 years out, to be attentive to today, you with me?
Speaker 3:I think that's so powerful for us to realize we've got that kind of question before us and we can answer that if we can put new eyes, new mindsets onto that kind of thinking.
Speaker 2:I think that's a great way to wrap up our conversation. Great. Barry, thank you, my friend, thank you.
Speaker 3:I so enjoyed it talking and listening and working with you in it so much fun it was. Thank you, guys for letting us have your skills and gifts.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwjanaeio, as well as on YouTube under Jarnae Duane. See you next time.