Proven Not Perfect
Proven Not Perfect
Mindfulness Matters with C-Suite Coach Dee Kendrix: Why Leaders Need to Start with Self
What happens when leaders drive without a license? When we race through leadership responsibilities at 180 miles per hour without first understanding ourselves, we miss critical details and create unnecessary risks—for ourselves and those we lead.
In this powerful exploration of mindful leadership, we unpack the fundamental difference between leading from performance versus purpose. For generations, we've been taught to focus on achievement, external validation, and technical expertise. We've become masters at interpersonal relationships while neglecting the crucial intrapersonal relationship with ourselves and our deeper purpose.
The conversation reveals a troubling reality: most organizational ecosystems are governed by wounded, unrealized individuals leading from places of unresolved trauma. Even successful executives struggle to answer simple questions like "Why are you here?" and "What do you want?" without resorting to rehearsed, performative answers. Professional trauma from microaggressions, discrimination, and demoralizing experiences becomes the playbook from which many determine their worth and ultimately lead others.
But there's a profound alternative. Mindful leadership begins with creating space for stillness—just five minutes daily to be quiet enough to hear yourself. This small practice initiates transformation that ripples outward, affecting every relationship and organization you touch. The most powerful question you can ask is simply: "What am I resisting?" This often reveals where your destiny clashes with your current paradigm.
The journey toward conscious leadership isn't about dismantling everything you've learned but rather integrating it while ensuring external validation doesn't drive your decisions. When we recognize our inherent value beyond our achievements, we create space for others to do the same—cultivating environments where excellence, authenticity, and grace coexist.
Take the first step today. Set a timer for five minutes of stillness. Your authentic self is waiting to be heard, and the world needs leaders who lead from within.
Drive, Ambition, Doing, Leading, Creating... all good until we forget about our own self-care. This Village of All-Stars pays it forward with transparency about misses and celebration in winning. We cover many topics and keep it 100. We are Proven Not Perfect™️
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I'd love to hear what you think!
D. Hey lady. Oh, you're looking so good and so ready and I'm ready for this conversation. We are going to jump right in. Micro leadership. When I thought about that as a topic true story I knew I wanted to have a conversation with you. I knew I wanted to sit in this space, I wanted to sit in this arena and I wanted to tease through an idea with you. I did not know what the idea was, I wasn't clear on that. I go flipping through LinkedIn just one day and up pops your no little dissertation and I said this is it, this is the assignment. This is the assignment Because we live in this space right now where everyone's talking about mindful mindful, this mindful that eating, drinking. I've yet to have anyone really take charge in unpacking this notion of the intersection of mindfulness and leadership. And when I saw you dare to be different and go there, I was like this is it, this is why. So what is mindful leadership?
Speaker 2:So, interestingly enough, and first of all, chandra, thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to be here and I won't go off on my soliloquies around why and how long. I've just admired your presence and your leadership. And so, literally since you sent me the title right, I know we had been working for a while like kind of thinking, like how do we catch up? And so I love how God works, though, right, how he never lets us get in the way of what he has prepared. And so mindful leadership is so powerful to me because it's something that I've had to live my way into.
Speaker 2:I personally was I don't consider myself a mindfulness guru or expert. In fact, when people ask you know what do I do, I say I'm in the people business. And if you want more detail, I say things like, hey, I'm a certified behavioral specialist. But when it comes to mindful leadership, here's, here's our, here's my personal definition of mindful leadership that mindful leadership is about showing up in presence and purpose and not performance Wow. It is about honestly starting at the space of self-leadership into self-mastery, which goes against everything that we have been and are taught and are encouraged to do in the organizational space.
Speaker 1:And I and it comes even from going from high, from college like this being graduation season, when you graduate with the degree in the thing you're told go launch and be great and prove to the world that you are the best at the thing.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And what you're saying to our young graduates that are listening to us is yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And yes, and yes, and yes, and so for me, I feel it's a way that I get to bring humans back home to themselves, not abandoning what they've been taught, but integrating it, but not allowing it to be in the driver's seat of their life.
Speaker 1:Tell me more Letting their core. Yeah, tell me more about that because this is good.
Speaker 2:So you hit a really good point around how we've been taught that way since school. Truth be told, we've been taught that even before then, right? So I grew up being raised by a single Black mother and her parents, and I've lived with her parents my entire life right her parents were, in their second stage of life, pastors, pentecostal pastors at that, of a very large church in Brooklyn, new York. Shout out to Brooklyn all right, all right.
Speaker 2:That's where Zoe oh, should I say that didn't say it so, and so I've been taught to focus on the act of presentation and performance, but it was all within good intention, right. And so, while I was being raised, I was taught about myself, but I was also taught how I'm supposed to show up. I was also taught pick what you to show up. I was also taught pick what you want to focus in, make a career out of it. Right, with all good intentions. I believe that the leaders in our lives, both familiar, community-wise, and in our career, our professional leaders and mentorship, I think with the best of intentions, oftentimes taught us how to be for others but not be within ourselves. And so, along the way, we become experts at interpersonal relationships, but not always intrapersonal relationships. So relationship with self, but, most importantly, I think, the transpersonal relationships. So, relationship with self, but, most importantly, I think, the transpersonal relationship, which is, which is theory of the relationship you have with yourself and something bigger than you, so whether it's the divine. But, more importantly, where I tend to teach this and train this and advise this is the relationship with your purpose. Yes, train this and advise this is the relationship with your purpose, yes, with the core of yourself. And so, to bring it full circle. When I say mindful leadership is really around, hey, showing up. But within yourself it is saying listen, yes, I'm supposed to be dynamic, yes, I'm supposed to walk in confidence, yes, I'm supposed to be a master in whatever field I have I'm applying my attention to. But what intention, what space is that coming from? What fountain is that coming from? And then I think that that's where the divide is and that by the time we start graduating from high school and college and and for me it happened, you know, probably before then school and college, and and for me it happened, you know, probably before then, but deeply in my corporate career it became that that's when we start climbing someone else's ladder. For us, yes.
Speaker 2:And then, when it comes to trying to deal with the obstacles that come just as a matter of life, we wonder why it hits so hard. We wonder why we can't really we can't find where to pull from. We wonder why, you know, we need so many deep spaces of therapy. It is literally because we need to have this journey of, first and foremost, not dismantling everything we've been taught, but, first and foremost, giving some space to the core of who we are, to the purpose of who we are.
Speaker 2:You'd be shocked at how many people Chandra, in the C suite, when they hire me or my team and they bring us in to solve whatever big issue, that they're looking for me to kind of go to the textbook for whatever X, y, z. You'd be shocked that when I asked this very, very question, how many of them are stumbled. In fact I have yet one that hasn't been, and we're talking CEO level, not just, you know, vp level. And I say, why are you here and what do you want? Yes, why are you here? What do you want? Yes, oh, why are you here? What do you want? And essentially what I'm asking is what's your purpose? But typically that's just too esoteric for them and oftentimes when I ask what their purpose is, they have a rehearsed answer yes, so that's the world with goodness, but yes but let me.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you this, because that's good. I think that what you're saying at the root is are we cultivating leaders that really know how to sit in themselves and sit still, to almost soak up who you've become, yes, and to get clarity around the direction that you're heading. I think too few leaders, self-included at times, take the space to do that. Because it's coming faster, it's getting louder, we're doing, doing, doing, and without that compass, to your point, what are you springing forth, what are you springing from and why is someone going to want to follow that aroma?
Speaker 2:Think about this how often in our lives have we been taught the mastery, the focus, the priority, the urgency, the criticality of having a relationship and working on the relationship with our self?
Speaker 2:Not often For self's sake. Often for self sake, typically, when it's encouraged, it's only so that we can, uh, correct something, right? You know, you need to sit with yourself and think about your counsel, you need to sit with yourself and think about your plan, but it's always for the purpose of something else. And then we connect the bridge of like where we're seeing. You know, some people say, okay, this sounds great, this is wonderful, but but what's the risk? You know some people say, okay, this sounds great, this is wonderful, but but what's the risk? You know, what is it that you're solving? What are you helping people solve?
Speaker 2:We are in a space, right, where I believe the statistics recently have been that something like 70% of Americans are not happy working. Yeah, that the corporate culture, right, organization, because it's not just corporate. Here's the challenge the organizational space has become a space focused on technical expertise and not human experience. Yes, post COVID, we have become a, a humanity of individuals that are now sensitized. We woke up, if you will, and so everything we feel and everything we do is increased, and our humanity matters where things hit deeper, because when we go through as a universe, what we experience through COVID not just the individual families losing what they lost, but just that trauma as a whole. Our priorities shifted, whether we all want to acknowledge it or not. We could not do things as we used to and so, as a result part of the reason there's this focus on toxic workplace nothing's really changed in the workplace.
Speaker 2:Nothing at all Except our awareness, our sensitivity, and so what we're seeing is the result of decades of teaching people how to lead things, versus leading people, starting with themselves. Yes, because how can I to your point when you're like, hey, it comes fast, you know, I find myself in a grind? I do too, and I work for myself now, but I do too. How can we inherently and instinctively stop to think about how our actions are going to impact others when we don't really have that inherent discipline to think about how it's going to impact us? Right, it's beautiful, right, so beautiful, yes. And so what I'm trying to do, one human, one organization, one leader at a time, is reintroduce that relationship priority. Right Without judgment or shame, right Without.
Speaker 2:Because once people sit in the gravity, there's always this moment, whether it's in the advisory or I'm in kind of a C-suite intensive there's always this moment when it hits them Like, oh my God. Some say I feel like I've been, you know, sleep for the last. How many lives have I, you know how many people have I sent, soul broken home? And it's in that moment that I have to say no, no, no. This isn't for judgment or shame, no shame.
Speaker 1:The awakening happens when it's supposed to.
Speaker 2:The awakening happens when it's supposed to. So when that happens at the top of the house and what we forget is at the top of the house, in any organization, in home, isn't necessary the leadership, it's the person that's right. When it happens at the top of the house, in intrapersonally, then it happens interpersonally, then there's soul alignment within the group that's running any space, whether it's a home or an organization, then it funnels down. Then the reparation of the foundation, the cracks in the foundation, can be fixed. Then there's a clearer look at the infrastructure of how principles and values are either being honored or absent, takes place.
Speaker 1:You're getting deeper. You're getting deeper. Yes, here's what I want to say. What's come to mind as I listened to you speak? Um, in the mid-2000s, we all wrapped around Simon Sinek's it's Not Good why, and it was amazing and it was brilliant, and I myself and many other leaders have used that in the room. The thing that I think really hits me is that Simon was addressing the institutional components. What you're driving us and pushing us to think about bigger as leaders responsible for people, is the humanness of the whole thing. That same starts with why is a human problem, but if we unpack it for ourselves, then we're almost driving without a license to drive other people.
Speaker 2:What happens when you're driving a without a license, or and or, going 180 miles per hour, even if you're good at it? Right, how many things do you miss? What are all of the risks? Right, if anybody's driving 180 miles per hour, and that really is the challenge, right, we're all driving 180 miles per hour without the licensure, without the licensure, but you're hitting it dead on the nose. And? But here's what I found is that oftentimes it's not because people choose this approach, it's not even completely that they haven't been taught to. If that, underneath all the good at the core of it, is that there isn't a self-sense of value, that they deserve it. Wow.
Speaker 1:Girl. Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 2:Most of our confident leaders are walking around still trying to prove something to someone else, and that's where the performance comes in. That's when it becomes more focused on what things look like than how things feel. That's when what you decide to make your studies in and get your degree in, or what promotions you pursue, become more about a master plan connected to some subconscious seed soul through God knows when, versus even entertaining the idea that you are valuable enough, you are good enough that what you really want and who you really are is always more than enough, and it will give you the life of your dreams and it is even profitable.
Speaker 1:Honestly, mic drop, really mic drop, because what you have just packed there, I mean I just really hope people are. This is going to be one people are going to listen to twice. You're going to have to in order to catch it all, because there is so much depth in every single sentence and statement. Believe that it has the power to unleash the thing, because I believe that some of the most popular platforms and apps have become successful and built upon this notion of the more M, the Bs, the as, the J, the Ds, the M, the S, the A's I can keep going. The more you add, the more influential you are.
Speaker 1:And when I think about these spaces, I can say kind of around 2020, when things started to slow down and stop and you really just tapped into how you feel about so many things. There's goodness in these spaces. Do not get me wrong. However, I began to see that who I was showing up as was always waving my own flag of another letter or alphabet or another accomplishment, and it didn't sit well with me because in my quiet moments, in my quiet space, I know that, no matter what it is externally, I'm needing and requiring the work to be done internally. And when I don't do it internally, it is a mess externally, right? So I love you saying that, because I really want people to. I really want us all, whether we are coming up in our career, whether we have the privilege of impacting lives and people. I want us to appreciate that you cannot be as impactful as you will be or intended to be if you don't take care of the own gook in your own trunk. And that's what I hear from you.
Speaker 2:Quintessential definition of self-leadership, which leads to self-mastery, which leads to mindful leadership, leadership and when people like you lean into that, as it's clear that you have, then what they find themselves, what I call, is that the pinnacle of mindful leadership, which becomes conscious leadership. That's when you start, when you move from just leading things to cultivating ecosystems of change and impact, and that is exactly what A this platform is doing right and so, as you have kind of taken that banner of okay, you know what I'm listening to? Self Number one it started with you giving yourself space to hear yourself.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes, people will ask you it's scary girl, it's scary to hear yourself.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes people will ask it's scary and what people don't always understand. For those who are aware, right, those who kind of have awakened what they may be experiencing, I might speak specifically to those people right now. They've had the awakening, They've started leaning into self, they've applied that, they're trying to figure out why in this phase it's feeling like it isn't enough. It's not that it isn't enough, it's that you're at the next level of it. It's that you're at the next season and simply, just like our school system, the topics don't change. Nothing changes just the expectation of performance and understanding and application advances based on the information you've been given. And that's how it is and that is exactly how our journey in life is.
Speaker 2:That is the journey of self and oftentimes we assume it's linear and oftentimes a lot of this self-development piece that we're taught culturally and in the movement is that it is linear, that there is some pinnacle, that there's some Mecca right, and instead of understanding that there is no mountaintop here, there is no mountaintop, you get to one mountaintop and then you end up at the next valley for the next level. But it all starts with and I want folks to really hone in on what you said in your quiet time you had the courage to number one sit with yourself, because that is the biggest hurdle is how many. That's why you find it's interesting to me how oftentimes, when we read these articles and they talk about the most successful people, um, you know in the world and you always notice number one, that it's always but whatever right there's a whole nother podcast we're gonna do that too, right, these billionaires.
Speaker 2:And and then they run down how they start their day, at four and five am and etc. What I always notice is that they're always doing something, that it's still preaching this message of doing versus being, and it teaches us this misaligned message that the two cannot coexist. Yes, yes, right, where there's us who recognize that it's not easy, but they can coexist. And, by the way, when they do coexist, that is actually when you stop aging 10 years at a time, right, that's actually when the stress is, that intentional stress that you have to navigate, not the stress that's sending you in panic mode, that has you constantly sick, that has you constantly needing to only show up in therapy in what they would call severe, you know, crisis. It is, it's not easy, but it is home, yeah Right, home, yeah Right, it's home.
Speaker 2:But this fear of rejection in performative presence in our lives that we've all been indoctrinated with, mostly from birth, is is still there, and here's what I'm here to tell people. It will never disappear. The goal isn't that it goes away and that you, you know, it's this boogie monster that you shoo away. The goal is that you take it out of the driver's seat. So there's this. Listen, I'm not a PhD and I'm not an expert in this system, but there's something called family systems.
Speaker 1:David wasn't really a warrior, but he had a rock a warrior, but he had a rock.
Speaker 2:See, there is a study called family um systems, and what it really talks about is this art in the study of accepting all of us but understanding that it's parts of us. So the parts of us that we're often taught um are our. You know, achilles heel, that are the critical bad parts that are in the way of our progress, right, the bad habits, et cetera. We're often taught to get rid of those. Those are the bad things. What the integrated family system theory teaches you is why are you trying to get rid of something that is already a part of you and instead of it, why don't you take space and time to understand what it is that it's there, name the thing and reposition its role in your life, right? So for me, I'll give an example. So I have an interesting career story, et cetera. I won't bore people with all the details, but I ended up in the banking industry, okay, and I ended up in the banking industry and I ended up being a branch manager after leading call centers for a number of years, and my goal when I got there, I promise you literally was like I am going to be a regional leader, I'm going to be a VP. Listen, okay, didn't have banking experience 101. Okay, couldn't tell you what an FDI or C was, but I wanted to be the regional leader. Okay, so, okay, so fast forward. It does happen and there's a beautiful testimony to that.
Speaker 2:But that's not the point of the story. I continue to move through that. I eventually get on the corporate side of banking. What I will tell you is that who I became as a professional was completely built on all of the judgments that were given to me about how I was showing up. Ok, it was the, you know, it was the very tone deaf executive, white female leader telling me I'm not really sure how you got here, but you know these, these slides don't look good enough. Ok, we talk about Rondell's being out of place by two millimeters. Right, it was the, uh, the person who was supposed to be my mentor, who told me after a panel that I got significant praise on. I'm sorry. Did I hear you say acts instead of ask?
Speaker 1:last night. Wow right, I love that you're bringing in the cultural nuances, because these are real. They're real stories that everyone needs to know about.
Speaker 2:It is the it was can.
Speaker 1:I add one. Can I add one? Yes, please. This is me adding one to your story. Your story, it is the colleague coming into my office and giving me a compliment of my attire and then asking which JCPenney do I get that from now? The point is, there are all sorts of assumptions in there, and there's nothing wrong with jc penny nothing, believe there's nothing wrong with it. My point is, though, when you start a question by pigeonholing the recipient of the question to what the answer must live within, bringing in biases that are inappropriate, and that is your point, right, you're bringing biases that are inappropriate.
Speaker 2:Okay, keep going, cause I had to add one and that is listen, I'm glad you added that in because, yes, pile that on, compound it 500 times, I'll add one more and then I'll bottle in like what I'm trying to say here. It is the experience that I had and it still chokes me up and, honey, I've been in therapy over this one for a long time, so it's not like I'm not working on it. It is them telling me and assigning me and saying she's the affluent market girl and assigning me to statewide regions to lead for banking systems and networks that are affluent, and typically in banking, the people who lead the branches in a neighborhood are normally residents of that neighborhood, so a lot of affluent leaders. They want to be in the affluent leader market. But also then sat me down in front of a firing squad of my entire team and told me I'm too much, I'm too harsh.
Speaker 2:I believe I was told I'm like a bull in a china shop. She doesn't belong here. If only she were a little more less, if only she were a little more humble. I should also add that at that point in time and I'm not making this just about race, that you get my point None of my direct reports were of diversity other than gender and for me that never was a big thing and in fact I probably was a little aloof to it because I was raised to be so culturally hybrid and right I was raised in the church I was raised.
Speaker 2:I was raised in the church, and not only was I raised in the church, right, I shared. It was second career for my grandparents, so our ministry and family businesses were in Brooklyn, but our home was in Long Island, and so I literally lived two worlds. Yes, but here's no. Go right ahead, right, right, a hundred percent. Here's the thing, though.
Speaker 2:So all of that happens to us, and because we're resilient, yes, we take it, we learn. It impacts us, however, we impact us, but what it does is it adds to the bucket in us that's already been subconsciously inside, saying uh, perfectionism, and we think about family systems as little bubbles in our lives. It already adds into the notion of look like something other than what you want to authentically look like. Show up how, how deirdre. Then does that come back to mindful leadership? Because for every person who's experienced anything like this and their own versions of that, yes, that becomes the playbook by which they determine their destiny, their actions, their decisions, their value and their worth, and so it becomes very difficult if you are leading others, spaces and places, including yourself, from a space of what other people told you to be that, by the way, wasn't correct and didn't come from their healthy place, because normally they're saying it to you, because they're triggered by you in their own junk. There's nothing human centric, there's nothing self-valuable that is going to pour out of that.
Speaker 2:And then what happens is you start looking at other people, places and things and saying, listen, nobody considered me, they'll be all right, they have to pay their dues. Oh, their feelings are hurt. You stop thinking about what people need, what is distinction, but, more importantly, you stop to pause and say does this align with who I am and what I want? Does this? And so you're empty, because the only way we get filled and fueled is by when we're aligned, and soul aligned, to anything and all things in life. So you're not getting poured into.
Speaker 2:And so now you're searching, and the only thing you can search for is satisfaction, worthiness, and you're going about it by every way. You've been taught indirectly, which is what other people have taught you to do. So you lean on that thing that everybody else is saying relationship to everybody but yourself, yes, and we don't realize we have a literally organizational system being governed, directed, set by a bunch of wounded, unrealized, dreamed, hurt, devalued human beings who are leading from that place. And that's for homes, that's corporate environments, nonprofit environments, it is churches yes, it is. It is social organizations, it's sororities, it's fraternities. All of the above, no-transcript, to recognize their value, to pause and even acknowledge not even their worth, not even their worth yet, but acknowledge what they really want.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Then the ripple effect for that, because I'm not here for the whole journey. Typically, I'm normally here. Normally, when I engage with my clients, it is. It is at that point where they're hitting ceilings and wall and they can't figure out. They're normally in crisis, whether it's organizational or individual.
Speaker 2:Normally, if a leader calls me to come and help his org, everything he tells me is symptomatic. He doesn't know, he or she doesn't know it's symptomatic, right. So they'll say things like you know, we can't seem to align on our strategic direction, or there are all of these, you know team dynamic issues happening in there and I need my team to align. So we're seeing the issue between you know, engagement, service, et cetera. When I hear that, I immediately know symptom, symptom, symptom, not root, root, root. And so they never call me because they're not in trouble. And when I come, the first thing that I need to do is get the team and or the individual first to even stop and understand. I said forget what the data says, forget what your goals are. What do you want? It normally takes us six hours to get to what you really want like not what you think you want.
Speaker 1:What do you really want?
Speaker 2:And there's what do you want? And you'd be shocked at how many of these very successful people are. They become almost adolescent like and even scared to say should I say it out loud Like right and if I? That's always the seed. And then normally that goes from us getting clear to what they want, to understanding that they've been robbing themselves of value, to understanding right, the inter intra intense personal relationship dynamic, and helping them understand the framework of conscious leadership and how it starts at mindful leadership. And they start a two-pronged journey, an individual and a team journey, and normally my journey ends or shifts with them.
Speaker 2:When I finally see them number one spiritually, I could feel it shift in the air. You feel the break. You feel the break and it's normally always related to some professional trauma, some historical like. It's always connected to that. But normally trust is at the bottom of it. And once I hear them be able to say and they get to the point of, okay, great, can you help us now build and execute XYZ? And I had to learn that that is not what I'm called to do. I actually spent the first five years of my business doing that work and couldn't figure out why I was so burned out, well-paid and empty.
Speaker 2:But that was me responding to the Sonias in my life the Jones, the Jane Doe's right. It was me responding to them and still proving to them that.
Speaker 2:I'm good enough that I can do this, that I am valuable, so I had to, once again, at every stage, live my way into it. To say, every stage, live my way into it. To say this isn't the part I'm called to. I'm called to help you find breakthrough, awareness and alignment, and then I can help you find the support system for the next steps. Now what typically happens, though, because they don't want to let go. System for the next steps.
Speaker 2:Now what typically happens though, because they don't want to let go, and I don't mind them. Not wanting to let go is, then, they want that support, somehow supported through each rung of their leadership and that's typically how I never leave Chandra is that I'm starting to see a hunger and a desire for more within this space. I'm starting to see more leaders find themselves in the space you found yourself back in 2020 to say there's something off, yes. Yourself back in 2020 to say there's something off, yes. And instead of me performing my way around it, instead of me trying to achieve one more thing, yeah, I'd rather pause. It's, it's it's the big, spiritual, philosophical, personal awakening pause.
Speaker 2:And and it went from it being my business having to figure out how to encourage leaders that they needed medicine that they didn't think they needed, to now helping them understand what they're experiencing in and really kind of just being a guide through right and a facilitator through this part of the journey, but also, to your point, introducing this concept of mindful leadership, because also often people immediately associate the word leadership with people management. Yes, instead of realizing right, it starts here. We start with how well we lead ourselves, yes, and so to see people who are on the front line experience that moment for the first time and kind of have these ahas Now. That is the stuff that fills me, that's the stuff that makes me say it's all worth it right, it's still hard, and that's when you know you're in alignment.
Speaker 1:Say that again, because that's when you know, when it isn't hard, when it just comes. I think that's when you know you're in alignment. So I want to be mindful of your time and your space and I do believe there's more for us to talk about and unpack here. And if you will, if you will so, oblige me, we'll make that happen. But my question is this as somebody is listening to this and they're tugged on as a leader period, leader of whatever dot dot dot, right, and you've given a lot of dot dot dots to fill in they say you know what? I'm not mindful. You know what's the one thing that I can do to just bring in a practice that gives me the courage to become more mindful? What would you say? That one thing is.
Speaker 2:I'd say the number one thing is to create some type of daily regimen that allows you to be still long enough to hear yourself Come on. And that doesn't have to be yoga, but it can be. It doesn't have to be meditation, but it can be right, it can literally be. And this is this is I'm glad you asked this question, because when I'm dealing with teams like that, the first assignment I give them is just five minutes to set their clock. For five minutes a day they can pick if it's first thing in the morning, lunchtime or end of day, but they have to do it. Five minutes where they set the clock to do anything they want that allows them to just be still. For a lot of them it's walking. Here's the thing when you take the first step towards self. The beauty about mindfulness it is a guide and it is not something that you have to figure out. It is the one thing in life you don't have to manage.
Speaker 1:It's already waiting for you.
Speaker 2:It's waiting for you. So when you take the first step, you the you who has been waiting to be heard inside will speak up. Yes, and I'll give one other bonus, because oftentimes I get asked where do I even start with prompt questions? Yes, the most powerful question you can ask yourself at any time is what am I resisting? What am I resisting? Because oftentimes the difficulty that we're experiencing, the discomfort we're experiencing, is normally our destiny, having a clash with our current state and our current paradigm and our current cycle, and it's normally the resistance that's creating the friction. If you can just ask what am I resisting? And here's the deal, you don't even have to have a journal. You could literally ask that question and go about your day. It will come to you. That's the most powerful question we can ask at any stage in our lives.
Speaker 1:I love that. All right, we're going to switch to rapid fire, because I want people to know you a little bit more. What's a dream project? You haven't started yet. Rapid fire what's a dream project?
Speaker 2:the next stage or next era of mindful leadership and human centric leaders for for literally the universe, but mostly, mostly organizational spaces.
Speaker 1:Okay, are you a planner or a go with the flow type?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but I can be flexible, but I'm definitely a planner.
Speaker 1:And then this last one, inbox zero. Is that a dream or reality?
Speaker 2:The dream that I'm also aware of will never happen, okay, but if we can at least get to the appropriate folders, I will feel like I'm in holiday, okay. So, yes, I actually have a little shame around if anyone looks at my email, or my text or my email.
Speaker 1:It's too much, it's too much, it's too much. And look, look, let me tell you this once you get to that place where you appreciate mindfulness, you are, you feel better about saying all of this is too much and it's gonna be right there too much later listen, I'm queen of let me star this and in my planning I will calendar out time to look at star emails.
Speaker 2:It's not going to happen. It took me a really long time right. Because part of my system is I call her Perfect Patty and Perfect Patty right, she wants to drive all the time, and so me and perfect Patty have come up. Right, she could sit three rows back on the bus, right, but perfect that I had to tell her listen, we're not going to get through all these emails. And if somebody emails me and says, hey, just pulling this back up in front for you, that's okay, that's okay.
Speaker 1:It's okay, because most of the time it will recircle. All right, look, I need to tell you you are just a blessing. I think the work that you're doing is worthy work. Keep going. Thank you for the flowers that you offered me. I tell my kids all the time you don't know who you're impacting. Show up, do everything like you, do anything and make everything you do with the focus on excellence and impacting another person in the way you've been anointed and ordained to do. That is the sauce. You're the best. I just have so much love that I'm sending your way. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Receive, and thank you for this platform. Thank you for your voice. I don't know if you are aware of how impactful it is for someone like yourself, with all of your ABCDEFGs, right, with your clear. I met you years ago and one thing that's always stood out to me is this clear, inherent presence of excellence. Right, it doesn't appear as something that you set as a standard or a goal. It just is who you are. Right, it is what you ooze. I don't know if you understand the impact of someone like you creating this platform, having these conversations to let individuals at every level understand that authenticity, grace and excellence can all be integrated and coexist Wow.
Speaker 1:I receive it and I thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, can't wait. I don't know what God has in store, but I'm excited and I'm already signed up.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go See you later. See you soon, Talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Talk to you soon.