381 Reclaim the Moment: Building Clarity and Connection in a Chaotic World with Greg Bennick

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Greg Bennick, keynote speaker, humanitarian, and author of Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now. Greg shares how his upbringing in a small Connecticut town with nontraditional parents helped shape his views on purpose, disruption, and transformation. Through vivid personal stories—including a near-death experience involving a truck crashing into a bookstore—Greg explores the chaos of modern life, the influence of technology, and the power of reclaiming presence and humanity.

Together, Mahan and Greg dive deep into themes of self-awareness, leadership, kindness, and the role of meaningful relationships in navigating an increasingly noisy and fast-paced world. With humor and humility, Greg invites listeners to rethink success, stay grounded, and embrace possibility—both in life and leadership.

Highlights from the Conversation

• Why noise and chaos dominate our lives—and who benefits from it
• How modern technology hijacks our attention and focus
• Reclaiming the now in a world driven by spectacle and distraction
• The near-death bookstore experience that led Greg to rediscover purpose
• Believing in the possibility of kindness to escape the trap of pessimism
• Why leaders must stop assuming the worst and start cultivating trust
• The importance of emotional buy-in and meaningful work connections
• Reverberation vs. ripple effect in leadership and idea-sharing
• Critique of traditional self-help and Greg’s human-first philosophy
• Daily practices that help Greg stay authentic and focused
• The role of relationships in countering isolation and building purpose
• Asking whether we are using technology—or being used by it

Connect with Greg Bennick:

Greg Bennick on LinkedIn

Greg Bennick's Official Website

"Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now"

Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:

Mahan Tavakoli Website

Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn

Partnering Leadership Website

Transcript

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

Mahan Tavakoli: . [00:00:00] Greg Bennick, welcome to partnering leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

Greg Bennick: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to see where our conversation goes. 

Mahan Tavakoli: I look forward to learning more from you, Greg, based on your story and your book, Reclaim the Moment, Seven Strategy to Build a Better Now. But before we do, we'd love to know a little bit more about you, Greg.

Whereabouts did you grow up and how has your upbringing contributed to who you've become? 

Greg Bennick: That's a great question. So I grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut, a small town in Connecticut literally with more cows than people. It was just a very small town. And I grew up in this town, loving being in the woods and just being outside and that sort of thing.

But what was operative about my time in Connecticut is that my father and my mother, We're instrumental with my upbringing. And even though we were living in this quiet Connecticut town, my father, who was living a corporate life, was really disillusioned with [00:01:00] it. He was working for this company and that company and traveling into New York City and going to work and home.

Traveling overseas for business trips. Always stressed. And eventually quit his corporate job and started his own business doing what he had been doing for corporate and became a consultant and made his living that way. Simultaneously, my mother decided that she wanted to change her career every ten years.

So she was a school teacher, and then she was a hypnotherapist, and then she was an educator for people with learning disabilities, and then she was doing Exercise every 10 years would change your career. So here I am growing up in this tiny town and it would have been very easy to just stay in that town.

But my parents were renegades. They were, thinking alternatively about how they wanted to live their life and approach their life. And that was really instrumental for me. So I had this kind of quiet upbringing and at the same time I saw the results of when chaos creeps into the quiet. And what smart people do about it.

And what my parents did [00:02:00] is they changed their lives to be what they wanted them to be. Essentially the reclaim moment, seven strategies to build a better now, not to pitch my own book title, but realistically they were talking the talk and walking the walk. So it was really inspirational for me. 

Mahan Tavakoli: What a beautiful origin story, Greg, that puts into context the importance of reclaiming the moment your parents to a certain extent, both in their career choices and in their focus were way ahead of their time.

What I find is We are surrounded with so much noise and so much chaos that it is very hard. I hear from executives. I work with, I hear from the listeners to the podcast about the difficulty they have to silence. That noise. Why is that? 

Greg Bennick: Oh, there's lots of people making lots of money from the noise.

That's why. If I owned a pizza restaurant and it was near where you're recording today, I wouldn't have just told you about my parents and my [00:03:00] upbringing. I would have told you that we have specials on pizza, two medium pizzas for 12. 99. And that the sale is only going on for another three hours.

And if you get in there, I'll give you a two liter bottle of Coke as well. You would have been. Pitched on going into the pizza restaurant and you would have had to disavow what I was saying as quote unquote noise The fact of the matter is multiply that times Oh a billion and that's the amount of noise that exists from the media from social media from all over the place and it's not conspiracy theory sounding rhetoric when I say Eyeballs on screens yields advertising dollars.

So if my eyeballs are kept on the screen because you're doing better in life than I am And my jealousy keeps me scrolling through to see what you're doing to see if I can keep up with you Eventually i'm going to run across an ad for hiking boots because the app knows that I liked hiking boots Recently, so then I think oh my gosh, you know what my friend is doing so well But in the meantime, let me buy some hiking boots All the while forgetting [00:04:00] what I intended to do that day, which is probably something completely different other than be jealous about your life or buy hiking boots.

You see how the chaos gets infiltrated into our existence. That said . We have to cut through it. 

Mahan Tavakoli: I would love to get your perspectives on how we can tackle that I don't know if you've come across , near a y'all's work or not. He wrote a couple of books. One of them is called hooked near was one of the people who worked initially with Silicon Valley companies on how to develop apps in everything from the way they message us from the notifications to the coloring.

We are constantly hooked and we want more of that. And I see it with my girls as well, Greg, in that there is a difficulty to stay away from our technology. As you say, it might not be a grand conspiracy. It's the fact [00:05:00] that's where the revenue models come into play. We know that, but it's hard to control it.

You talk about,, a better now, why is it so hard for us to focus on now? 

Greg Bennick: I would say first and foremost, now is when everything is presented with immediacy. What I was going to say a few minutes ago, and it applies here just as well, is that I talk about it in the book.

There was a man named Guy Debord who wrote a book called Society of the Spectacle in the late 1960s in France. And Debord talked about the way that we are surrounded by spectacle. The images of life that surround us have superseded in importance Actual life and he suggested that we see images that make us feel as though we are living when in fact We are arms length away from living meaning you and I don't have to have adventures.

We see images of adventure We don't have to fall in love. We see images of falling in love And the sense of living has [00:06:00] become more important than actually living so we have the sense of adventure and living from watching Tick tock reels and whatnot of people doing wild things when in actuality We should be doing wild things.

Why are we not doing wild things? We're living vicariously, but not really We're not really living is what he would suggest and this is years before the internet decades this guy is probably turning over in his grave because now Is completely consumed by the spectacle our now is completely consumed by the spectacle even earlier today I am flipping through wondering, my gosh, how did those speakers get on that speaker event?

How did that author get to be, you see what I'm getting at? We all play this game. Our now is completely lost. There is no now. We don't have one anymore. So what we need to be doing is reclaiming it and building a better one of it. And my thought is that and what I speak about. Is the idea that we need to center ourselves [00:07:00] away from imagery away from the spectacle and we have to do that so that when we move into a world, which will always be consumed by spectacle, we at least have.

A tiny degree of a sense of self and a sense of direction and a sense of purpose, or in the case of business and leadership, a sense of the mission statement, say, of the organization we're with, so that we can do our work when we get bombarded by Greg's Pizza Place with two pizzas for 2. 99 and the TikTok videos and everything else.

At least then we're moving forward together. Through it like a hot knife through butter. Proverbially. 

Mahan Tavakoli: That centering becomes even more important. I love Yuval Noah Harari's work and not sure if you're familiar with him, but he spends a month in a silent meditation retreat in India. I'm not sure I could do that.

But part of what Yuval says is the fact that AI is going to get to know us even better in many instances that. We know ourselves, [00:08:00] therefore, that noise is going to become much more specific. And in order to be able to. Cut out the noise. We have to center ourselves to the point that you made Greg.

Greg Bennick: And it is hard, but it becomes even more important. It's much more than those outside messages about Greg's pizza or anything else. Now AI can emotionally connected much more effectively to each and every one of us.  

Try to convince me that all of this is going to be easy to navigate.

Greg Bennick: This is going to be really difficult and impossible to navigate at times. So again, my, my book. Is about is a book about humanity and what we're talking about. More importantly, let's say for the moment than the book is about our humanity and how do we maintain our humanity in the midst of that chaos, even if you take and I know people be listening to this well into 2025 the election cycle.

Name one person in the United States who wasn't consumed in some way by the election cycle in the fall of 2024 [00:09:00] to the point where they were completely distracted from their own lives. That's not to mention all of the other things we're talking about as well. We have to reclaim our sense of self and our sense of humanity so that we can live with some degree of integrity in a world which will always be, and increasingly chaotic., 

Mahan Tavakoli: You also tell a pretty vivid story about nearly being hit by a truck. How did that influence your thinking about this need for centering Greg? 

Greg Bennick: Yeah your timing's perfect with this because the man who is at the end of the story, and I'll relate the story again for listeners, but the man who's at the end of the story I saw for the first time in a year, just two nights ago, and we had a great conversation.

So for listeners, the bare bones of the story is this. I had decided years ago that I wanted to basically sell out, and by that I mean make lots of money by doing something. It didn't matter what it was, Greg's Pizza or otherwise, and I decided to write a self help book. And not to, deny [00:10:00] the validity of self help books, but there's a lot of empty space amidst the space.

So I thought you know what I could fill some empty space. I could write a self help book probably in a weekend I just got to figure out what one's all about and I went to a bookstore in Southern, California Now if you take what I just said and apply it to what I said earlier I'm already living out of integrity out of my humanity.

I have completely been consumed by the spectacle I'm walking right into it by saying oh I'll contribute to it rather than doing something that actually has some life and value to it And I'm in a bookstore at the time In southern california that was next to a highway and I saw a self help book on the shelf I took it off the shelf.

It was by tony robbins and I started looking at the book and I thought wow, okay Yeah, tony robbins. He seems to have got this dialed in maybe i'll buy this. Maybe not I put it on the back in the shelf. I shifted over a handful of feet to my left and found a book called 50 Self Help Classics, which included Tony Robbins and 49 other folks.

And I thought, wow, maybe [00:11:00] this is the book that'll help me sell out and write a self help book. And I could just copy what they've done and cookie cutter my way into fame and glory. At that moment, I thought, A truck, literally a truck, crashed through the wall of the bookstore. It had gone off the highway.

It had lost control and crashed through the wall of the bookstore, right where I had been sitting next to the first Tony Robbins book. There's a photo of this. The story of it is on gregbenek. com forward slash reclaim. You can actually see a photo of the truck and I stood up with 50 self help classics in my hand and in shock walked to the front of the bookstore.

Everyone ascertained that the driver was, only mildly injured and not seriously injured certainly. So I walked to the front of the bookstore. I bought the book from a shell shocked clerk. I have it still here. It's in a frame on my wall. I walked out of the bookstore and I called my friend and mentor John, a man named John Wilson, who's the most brilliant man you've never heard of.

And I said, John what's basically the [00:12:00] deal? I had an interaction with a car the year before and then in an accident. And then this truck, Both times of which I was not living in integrity when these interactions happened and John basically said you need to Renegotiate your deal with the universe and what he meant was you're not living right now you are living you're living poorly.

You're out of alignment basically get your act together because you know you've dodged two proverbial bullets in the form of trucks. You might not be as lucky the third time how did that influence me? It kept me remembering it kept me remembering what happens when we live when we are out of alignment and that is not something that I as a quote unquote guru because I'm not and I say that in the book Live every day with perfection meaning I don't wake up and meditate and float through the universe and everything's great No, I make mistakes just like any everybody but in those moments when i'm making those mistakes every once in a while, I think Ooh, the reason i'm making this mistake is because i'm not supposed to [00:13:00] be doing this right now not because Some deity told me so in a whisper in my ear, but because I really feel in my heart of hearts that I'm on the wrong track.

The last time I did this, a truck almost hit me in the face in a bookstore. I should really rethink what I'm doing here. So that's how it affects me and how it continues to affect me. 

Mahan Tavakoli: It's a powerful story and a powerful reminder . Now, sometimes there are experiences like what you experienced, Greg, but the reality is whether it's with our relationships or with our comfort, with ourselves, lack of alignment has a way of exhibiting itself.

It doesn't necessarily always have to be a truck coming out. The store window, but you can sense it. There is a lot of that lack of alignment. Part of it because of the societal influences and impact social media and everything else. Part of it is we need to get in touch with [00:14:00] our own humanity even more, which is why I love one of your seven strategies is belief in the possibility key.

Kindness. 

Greg Bennick: I appreciate you bringing that one up. It's the, in my opinion, one of the most important ones, if not the most important one. And to your listeners the full name of the title, believe in the possibility of kindness, as you said to escape the trap of pessimism. And basically what I'm talking about in the chapter is the idea that it's very easy for me amidst the chaos that we're talking about to wake up in the morning and think to myself, Oh my gosh, there's so much to do.

I owe this person money. I owe that person time. I have to get to the gym. I, everything is wrong. And then as soon as something comes up where someone says something to us that we maybe don't anticipate, or maybe it's just a new piece of information, we think, Oh, Them too, right? As if they're out to get me too.

They need my time. They need my money. They need my attention. They need my focus. Realistically, [00:15:00] that's not always true. Meaning I could have signed on to this podcast and thought to myself, Oh gosh, okay. I bet there's a hook to this podcast where I'm supposed to pay 4 a minute to be on the podcast.

This is going to be a terrible conversation with an awful person. I just made that up. That's entirely in my brain. No one said that. No one suggested it. You didn't suggest it. You're very kind. You don't charge me to be on the podcast. The point is I could have easily made up that reality. And I think we do that all the time.

And we think to yourself, I shouldn't do this because, or this person's going to do me wrong because, or we see a news account that tells us about somebody and we think the worst of them and therefore that colors our perceptions. When if we believe in the possibility of kindness, meaning we believe in kindness As a possibility, and we create space for that, we can step into the world from that perspective and say, you know what, maybe this is going to be a great podcast conversation.

Let's try. All of a sudden we've created space for possibility where otherwise we would have denied [00:16:00] it. 

Mahan Tavakoli: I'm glad you created space for the possibility because this is going to be an outstanding podcast conversation. But to that point of opening up to that possibility of kindness, Greg, I wonder if some of the human heuristics play a role in it in that, if we heard a Russell in the woods and we assumed there was nothing there and happened to be a tiger.

Those forefathers or mothers would have been eaten by the tiger. We heard the rustle in the woods. We ran, even if it was nothing, it was the wind we would have survived. So assuming the negative. didn't over time have as many negative consequences as assuming the positive. Why do you think it's any different now where we need to leave room for that possibility of kindness?

Greg Bennick: We need to leave room for the possibility of kindness, but I think all too often we [00:17:00] default to the probability of negativity, if that makes sense. And I think that your example is a good one, right? So we learn that there's a Russell behind a tree that might be a saber toothed tiger.

It might be something else that will bite or kill us. But if we live our lives as if every Russell is a saber toothed tiger, we're not really going to make any advancement. So when we live with possibility, we then can deal with that. The saber toothed tiger when they, when it happens to jump out.

And I'm going to suggest this, that it's probably not going to be a saber toothed tiger very often. If I assume the possibility of kindness and the people that I meet whether we're politically diverse in opposition, or whether we're economically or socially in in different stratifications than one another, or we're from different countries, different sides of borders, you get the point.

I'm going to say that 99 times out of 100, if not far more, we're going to encounter allies rather than enemies. So my fear is if we [00:18:00] live our lives expecting an enemy, not only are we certainly going to find one, we're going to create one. Because I think that we as human beings need to create enemies to fight against sometimes in order to feel as though we're valid in the world and we're pursuing something with ambition and grandiosity and valor.

When we really don't need to do that, we just think we do. And if we search for enemies, we're going to find them. And likewise, if we search for allies and friends, we're going to find them too. And far more often than not, that rustle behind the tree is not a saber tooth tiger.

It's actually just the leaves in the wind. And I think that's a better way to live. 

Mahan Tavakoli: It is a better way to live. I wonder, how do you see that then? How do you see that helping us reclaim the moment? Greg? 

Greg Bennick: Sure. It's a great question. Ultimately, when we are living as if possibility is in front of us, and if we can be, for example, just kind or kinder, or assume that people will be kind to us, it creates a possibility for [00:19:00] connection.

It creates a possibility for relationship building. It creates a possibility for extensive teamwork development. It creates possibility for the development of ideas, Because if I go into an interaction and think to myself here we go again, this guy's going to talk me down, here we go again, we don't work together today, we're not going to work together today very well as a team, I've just said, saber toothed tiger behind the tree, rather than, let's go and see where This lands and we get to reclaim the moment and literally build a better now and a better future when we're working in conjunction with one another, when we're communicating more effectively, when we're better functional as a, when we're functioning better as a team.

And that's only going to be possible if we say yes to possibility rather than deny it. And I think that there's a lot of reasons to deny possibility, meaning you're sitting at work. You think to yourself, I'm salaried. It makes no sense to try harder. You're sitting at work. You think I'm paid hourly.

I certainly don't need to try harder. If I sit here [00:20:00] and I make the pizza slower while working for Greg at Greg's Pizza, I'm actually going to get paid more per pizza if it takes me four hours to make a pizza. That is if they don't get fired. The point though is try? I think that there's a lot of opportunity and we get to bridge the gap between what we want and what we can have when we actually put in a little bit of effort and when we assume possibility is there for us, rather than assuming, eh, there's no point.

'cause realistically, no one wants to sit around doing nothing. No one wants to do less. We don't feel fulfilled that way. People at least wanna live fulfilling lives where they. feel as though they're valuable contributors to something meaningful. And the way to get there is to step into possibility and find out what happens.

And I, my suggestion is it's going to be a promising experience rather than a negative one. 

Mahan Tavakoli: And stepping into that possibility, Greg, is a beautiful perspective to also have in leadership. In that oftentimes, whether it is policies or approaches of managers and [00:21:00] leaders, they are made for the 1 percent likelihood of a person doing the wrong thing, rather than The possibility of kindness.

And I'm not advocating for companies not to necessarily have policies . However, the reality is way too many leaders and managers come up with reasons and excuses not to have that belief in the possibility of kindness that you talk about. 

Greg Bennick: Yeah , it's easier to be authoritarian.

It would be much easier for me because you know what I'm having to do right now? Answer your questions. That's more challenging than if I said to you at the start of the podcast, here's what we're going to talk about. And you start talking. I say no. We're going to be talking about this now.

It's easy for me to have my way with everything and have, that's not any way to live and that's certainly not the way that I want to live. And I'd suggest that the people who are quote unquote followers to the leaders who are being authoritarian [00:22:00] aren't necessarily happier. I would love to do an assessment of them and figure out if they're happier, and I'm going to put money on the fact that they're not.

People want to feel that they are valuable contributors to something meaningful. They want to feel like a vibrant, valuable part of a team. People don't want to feel like they are autonomous uh, automatons. automatons. And that they're just being bossed around we don't want that and I think that effective leaders now Especially effective modern leaders know that to be true I think that maybe our grandfathers and or maybe our fathers grew up in a time And our mothers and grandmothers grew up in a time Where leadership looked different and it looked more like having an iron fist, but I think having an open hand Is is more effective and more contemporary without a doubt to what people are actually looking for 

Mahan Tavakoli: And it's interesting, Greg, I've had conversations with people who've studied historical figures.

In many instances, they led more in this way that you are [00:23:00] advocating in seeing possibility of kindness. Some of those hierarchical Approaches to leadership are functions of industrialization and the way organizations were structured. What we have seen as these wrong ways to lead have not been with us for more than 100, 150 years.

Now, one of the other ones that I see as a major challenge for leaders is sharpening of focus. Right now, I'm seeing more leaders who are, Stress beyond belief, 

why is it important, but more importantly, how do you advocate For us to do that. 

Greg Bennick: So almost, inherent in the framework of the conversation is an answer And we created it together. It's not me as a genius telling you you know the deal we created it because you asked The chaos is all around us.

How do we navigate essentially? How do we navigate the chaos? The chaos quote unquote exists also in any Company environment in any environment where a [00:24:00] team is working together. And I think that, when leaders have people meet and get reminders of why the work matters and why their contribution to it matters, you get emotional buy in from people and then they don't have to memorize protocols.

They're going to organically say, Oh, yeah, that's what we're doing here. And that's why I'm here because this work is important and it actually helps people And yes, I hear the voice in the back of my mind already from the person who says yeah But what if my job doesn't do anything to help people?

At that point I would love to do a half day or full day training for that group and say to them Okay, let's figure out a way for you to connect to this work. How can we make the work better? Even if you're literally fashioning an object on an assembly line, how can we make that work? At least, if we have to work, at least make it fulfilling so that we do the best work possible.

At least then that'll be that much fulfillment. But not all the time am I hearing that. What I'm hearing all the time is a lack of [00:25:00] connection to the focus that the leader wants to bring. So there's a gap here. And I think that leaders who want to connect with the people who, with whom they're working need to somehow figure out a way.

To remind people that they are valuable contributors to the experience and have them connect to the work in a way which is visceral and immediate and real to them because when people have a sense that what they're doing matters, they're in, they're excited. I feel like this conversation matters.

So I could sit here and talk to you for the next four hours. I'm excited about it. I think that the same is true for the way that people work and the way that they approach work. Focus is really important. Vastly more important now because the opportunities for distractions are vastly exponentially greater than they were before.

Certainly, if we were sitting in a factory in 1910, certainly the workers at that factory would be facing less distractions on a day to day basis than we have today. So reconnection to the mission, why it's important and why each contributor and the team [00:26:00] overall Matter is an essential way to approach that 

Mahan Tavakoli: it helps both with clarity of thought and then clarity of action that can follow that focus. 

 Building relationships matter. 

Mahan Tavakoli: How can we reclaim the moment by building relationships that matter? 

Greg Bennick: Ultimately we have a dread of isolation. Human beings are social creatures and we need each other. We need to connect. We need interaction and relationships that matter are relationships that are stronger, relationships that are rooted in a deeper listening.

They're about connection to me really. Appreciating that you exist that you're trying to do something good and trying to figure out what it is that you're doing and Really get into get into in sync with it so that I can hear you better and uplift you and We can do something better with this conversation than just sitting here Staring at each other saying words in a common language, which is beautiful All we essentially needed to do today is just look at each other and say words.[00:27:00] 

But instead we're having something more happen here. When we develop relationships, conversation, teams that matter, we outsmart the dread of isolation. Because isolation is always going to be there and be alluring to us. Meaning it's easy to be isolated more than ever. If I wanted to stay in my studio today and read books and listen to podcasts and watch TikTok videos until I withered from malnutrition, I could probably do it.

There's enough content out there. So I don't want to do that. And it's better to have relationships and have connection with other people. So we reclaim the moment and build a better now, certainly when we feel as though we're part of something. And this goes back to what we were talking about before, that when leaders invite people into an understanding of why, what they do matters, all of a sudden, it's a People are bought in.

People are outsmarting that dread of isolation. They don't want to be isolated. They want to be part of something bigger. Even [00:28:00] amidst the last few years since the pandemic, when people were working from home, there's no one who said, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I get to work from home. I don't want to interact with anyone and my work involves me sitting A closet by myself with the compute.

No, people are still interacting. Maybe you don't have to listen to the chatter of the co worker in the next cubicle. You're still interacting. Humans are social creatures. We will always continue to be social creatures. And when we develop relationships that matter, social creatures advance and are elevated without a doubt.

Mahan Tavakoli: To connect people to that purpose that you keep talking about, which is so true and beautifully stated, Greg. Relationships are a critical part of doing that. And to be able to have those relationships that matter requires that presence in the moment and focus, which I find is rare. Whether in virtual meetings or in person meetings.

And I've [00:29:00] seen many executives where they have reasons for it, but whether it's the cell phone or the laptop or just a mind wandering aren't in that present moment to develop the relationship, to be able to connect the person to that purpose. 

Greg Bennick: Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to put the phone down.

It's hard to put the laptop down because something's always pressing, meaning I could sit here and think, okay it's 2 10 PM where I am at three o'clock. I am interviewing someone at four 30. I'm being interviewed by someone at six o'clock. I'm interviewing someone. I could sit here and be lost in the questions and the process of the upcoming interviews.

Or I could stay in the conversation with you. You know what? I'm sure someone on my phone since we've been talking has texted me. And I haven't paid any attention to it. What a glorious thing that is. I think about my friends who have shut off their social media accounts and don't really use their cell phones as much.

I actually have a friend who doesn't have [00:30:00] a smart phone, as the case may be. He has an old flip phone, like we all had. 30 years ago or 20 years ago. He has a flip phone. He's not really very textable. He doesn't really answer his phone you know what the people who have such devices and who have gotten rid of social media have in common?

They're all happy It's unbelievable Like they're happy. They're excited They go through their days and they feel good. And when you call them and actually reach them, you have a great conversation with them. It's pretty remarkable. So that's a lesson to take away, not to get rid of our social media because I recognize that I'm not a Luddite.

I don't, I recognize that social media is a great connective tool and I'm not a Luddite. I don't want us to get rid of our technology. It's facilitating our call right now. And this is great, but let's at least remember that there's more out there than just pixels on a screen. I think it's really important.

Mahan Tavakoli: To be able to build those relationships, we need to ask ourselves, are we using the technology or is the technology using us? And in many [00:31:00] instances, I see the technology and the technology platforms that are using people rather than the other way around. And I love You talk about starting a reverberation effect.

What is that, Greg? 

Greg Bennick: , it's a great question too because for a long time I've been hearing about and everyone has heard about, it's not just me. Ripple effect, be the ripple start the ripple effect. You drop a stone in a pond and it ripples out to the periphery of the pond and, everyone wins I guess on the edge of the pond because they see the ripple but I started thinking about That and I thought you know the ripple As an image isn't as strong as it could be because the ripple fades by the time it gets to the edge of the pond And I get the point. I mean whatever we're calling it I mean, we're you know, we you know, it's a six of one half of us and the other in a sense However, I like the idea of reverberation Where in a team environment in a leadership situation?

Where let's say a leader throws out an idea And rather than have that idea ripple to the edge of the pond and touch the people on the [00:32:00] periphery of an organization, and then it's gone. What if the leader promoted the idea that everyone's voice mattered more and it doesn't have to matter the same. I recognize that hierarchies exist.

I tend away from them, but I recognize they exist. So Let's just go with that and say, if everyone's voice mattered more than when the leader sends out an idea, maybe I take that idea and I say, yeah. And do you know what else we could do? We could try this and someone else hears that and bounces the idea back to someone else.

If everyone in the organization is trained in and responsible for their own listening and their capacity for listening, all of a sudden, the original idea is going to. Be amplified. It's going to bounce back and forth. It's going to go in different directions. It might end up being a different idea than it started, but it's certainly not just going to fade at the edge of the pond.

So that idea of reverberation is really important. The idea is being amplified, bounce back and forth, people listening, working more [00:33:00] effectively as a team. That idea makes me excited. 

Mahan Tavakoli: It excites me as well 

this is collaboration. It is building on each other. It is reformulation. All throughout the organization. It's not one directional , it's bouncing back and forth. And it's quite possible that the eventual form will be drastically different than that initial form. 

Greg Bennick: Yeah. And the thing is like That takes a new degree of courage, and I what I love about your lines of questioning and the methodology of your thinking is that it's more contemporary.

It's more future forward. It's more present rather than thinking. This is the way that things have always been done since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Therefore, we need to dot. I think that ultimately, when we're bouncing ideas off of other people, it takes a new degree of courage because we have to be willing for the idea to transform.

And traditionally that's not a model that has worked in the past. It's my way or the highway. It tends to be what has worked, but rather than that here's my way. Let's [00:34:00] see what highways lead from here. That's way more interesting to me. And I think it actually is more interesting to people on the team as well. In. The 

Mahan Tavakoli: book, you also opened up with the conversation about self help books, whether Tony Robbins or the 50 top self help books. You have a critique of the self help industry's focus on In what ways is your thinking different from self help? 

Greg Bennick: I appreciate that too, because, ultimately, I was asking myself at times when I was writing, I'm like, am I writing a self help book while writing a self help book?

But I think that the critique of self help is rooted in the idea that a guru, or let's take the word guru out, that a master or a person knows more than you. You are not as good as me, but you could be if you follow these steps. And what I say in the book is that [00:35:00] it's not me. I'm not the guru.

Basically this book is a set of reminders to myself as much as it is a set of instructions for all of us. It's not me saying I'm the guru. I know what's up. If you do what I do and do what I say, you'll be exactly like me. All will be wine and roses and sunshine and rainbows forever. Instead, I'm saying, I'm just as messed up as anybody else is I say in the book.

We are insecure frightened creatures We are hurtling towards an uncertain end We have absolutely no road map for exactly how we're supposed to be living and this book isn't an exact road map I wouldn't want it to be because the second I would lay out a roadmap. I would hope that people would find alternative routes.

So these are ideas to talk about and develop amongst each other and amongst ourselves rather than directives that I am offering to people, followers those under me, quote unquote, I'm saying that in air quotes , to follow so that they buy more into my program. Ultimately I just love conversations and ideas.

Mahan Tavakoli: I love that [00:36:00] thinking, Greg. First of all what you're saying is you're not standing in front of a 10 million mansion with a million dollar sports car in front of it and saying, do this and you will to be able to have, and there is a lot of self help has been targeted at that. You do what I did and you will have what I have, whether half the time it's fake or it's real.

That's a different story. The other thing is, I think it connects very well to what we want in leaders. It's that level of authenticity. You are working on yourself, Greg, as the author, you are continually working on yourself. You are a flawed human being. , here's what you have found. It helps me relate better to your insights.

It's exactly the same way with leaders where they have a framework, they have their thinking, [00:37:00] they share it with transparency, what they're working on. It helps their team members connect better and relate better with them as well. 

Greg Bennick: I agree with you wholeheartedly. I would much rather somebody open a conversation with A story about something they did wrong and what they learned from it, rather than them telling me what they always do right and how I should learn from it.

It's just more accessible. I just want more access between people, and less comparison, and I think that you're absolutely right. In a couple things, one that I'm not in front of a 10 million home with a 1 million sports car, but also that that that vulnerability, or at least at the very least, authenticity is a better approach in terms of establishing connections with people.

Mahan Tavakoli: Greg, as you approach this, what might be daily practices or habits that you engage in? So I would love to know about some of your own daily practices and habits for that authenticity and focus that you keep emphasizing in the book. 

Greg Bennick: [00:38:00] Yeah, I love it. Okay. This is going to sound very basic, but exercise very important.

30 years. I eat really strict vegetarian diet. I find that helps keep my mind clear. I've also been 100 percent drug and alcohol, tobacco, caffeine free for 30, more than 30 years. I find that's really helpful too. Now, in the book, I say, you know what, that's me, you do you. But my point more is that I find that for me, having a bit more exercise helps, a consistent exercise.

And I'm not always the master of this. If you want the master of exercise, you can talk to my brother. He owns a gym in Manhattan. He's been literally working out consistently since he was 14 years old. There's very few humans in the world like him, like literally a masterful physical specimen.

That's not me. Consistent exercise, though, is easily accessible and awesome for the brain. And I think a healthy diet is, too. Staying away from drugs and alcohol is, too. But more to the point, I think that when I find myself, as I do every day, amidst comparison, amidst [00:39:00] what my friends who are even more spiritually based, certainly, than I am, would say is like an ego self.

When I get wrapped up in my own ego, separating myself from that, Even meditation can help. And I don't mean 45 minutes or three weeks or two, two years in silent meditation, taking a few seconds, taking a minute every once in a while, and just being calm and shutting off. The noise can help, recenter.

But another thing I do. It's I make sure to engage with things that I love every day that I'm absolutely excited about. I am could spend the next 16 hours talking about my love for an interest in rare coins. I'm a coin collector. I research and write about coins. I write for four different magazines on coins, and I spend a little bit of time on coins every day.

It just roots me back in reality. And then when I go back into something that is different, I feel grounded. So I would say exercise. Healthy diet. Keep your mind clear. Root yourself at least a little bit every day in silence and calm, but then also ground and root yourself through something that you [00:40:00] truly enjoy, even if only a little bit, whether that's active participation in a hobby or reading about that hobby, something that you just like.

Engage with that and those are good practices for sure. 

Mahan Tavakoli: What outstanding practices and I love whether the story you opened up with your parents, Greg, the experience you had with the truck or these other examples of how you are working on yourself. Because. It also helps us and the audience connect better to the human being behind these insights, which I truly appreciate.

So for the audience to find out more about your book, Reclaim the Moment, or follow your work, Greg, where would you send them to? 

Greg Bennick: I would say if you go to gregbenik. com, g r e g b e n i c k. com, you can find out more about me certainly. Same spelling, same name on Instagram, and of course I'm on LinkedIn [00:41:00] as well.

If you search my name on LinkedIn, you can find me there as well, and I'd always be happy to hear from people. I would absolutely love to be in touch with and hear from people, and hear what your stories are, hear what your processes are, hear what makes you feel as though you're a valuable contributor to something meaningful.

All the things we talked about. Write me and tell me about it. I would love to turn a stranger into a friend. So let's go. I would love to connect. 

Mahan Tavakoli: . I really appreciate it as you have turned this stranger into a friend and I appreciate your book. Reclaim the moment seven strategies to build a better now.

Thank you so much for the conversation. Greg Benik. 

Greg Bennick: Thank you.