181: Whose Choice Are You Living? With Graham Skidmore

If you’ve ever looked at your career and thought, “I did everything right, so why do I feel so wrong?” this conversation is for you.

We sit down with Graham Skidmore, co-founder of Harmony Health, to unpack what happens when corporate success collides with wellbeing and why the system can feel fine until you step outside the lanes it was built for.

We talk about the moment Graham hit the C-suite in a 20,000-person organization and realized he was the most miserable he’d ever been. From there, we get practical with a definition of happiness he uses as a compass: leading a life of self-guided choices while loving yourself, others, and your surroundings. That leads to one of the simplest, most disruptive questions you can ask on a hard day: whose choices am I operating on right now?

Then we zoom out to leadership, resilience, and the future of work. We challenge one-size-fits-all systems that demand conformity and then blame individuals for struggling. We explore individualized support, neurodiversity, and why investing in humans as individuals can unlock overlooked talent. We also take a human-centric look at artificial intelligence: AI as a way to augment human intelligence, personalize learning, and free people to do the creative, empathic, problem-solving work machines can’t.

If you care about employee wellbeing, ethical AI, and building healthier workplaces that actually fit real people, you’ll get a lot from this one.

Graham Skidmore believes we can create a world of happy, healthy, productive and empowered people, by investing in people as individuals and their potential. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-skidmore

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@understandingthescienceofyou

Harmony Health Institute: https://harmonyhealthinstitute.com/

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Transcript

When The System Works For You

Graham Skidmore 0:01

As a straight white male executive, the system absolutely benefited me, right? It was only when I started to operate outside of that and through a different lens that I where I then experienced all the places where the system is broken. And all the and when I'm by broken, I mean not providing the support, the understanding, the compassion, the empathy to help people throughout all walks of life and in all different aspects of life.

Meet Graham And The Big Idea

Manya Chylinski 0:25

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. My guest today is Graham Skidmore. He is the co-founder of Harmony Health, and he is all about creating a world of happy, healthy, productive, and empowered people. And that is what we talked about. We talked about investing in people as individuals, about the mismatch between what systems expect of us and our own personal behavior. It was a fabulous conversation. I know you're really going to enjoy it. Graham, I'm so glad that we finally got together today for this episode. Thank you for being here.

Graham Skidmore 1:09

Oh, me too. Thank you again for like you said. Thank you for not forgetting about me and sending me the email reminder. Don't worry. Yeah. I mean, you've got a lot of great stuff going on in this podcast and some great content. So, you know, I feel uh privileged to be a

A Book Title That Reveals Everything

Graham Skidmore 1:22

part of it.

Manya Chylinski 1:22

Well, thank you. Well, to kick us off, what would the title of a book be about you if your worst enemy wrote it?

Graham Skidmore 1:33

Why do you have to make everything so difficult?

Manya Chylinski 1:35

Okay. You're asking me that, or that's the title of your book? That's the title. I like it. Why do you have to make everything so difficult?

Graham Skidmore 1:44

Because when I look around, I can refuse to believe this is as good as it gets, even before I went through everything I've gone through over the last eight years. And so, you know, if there's a way to make things better, then I don't understand why we're just maintaining the status quo. I don't know why we're accepting crap as the default setting and then just kind of providing optimization within a broken system when we can make when we can improve the system, when we can make things happier, we can make things better. And so inability to be a conformist or just go with the flow certainly has its benefits and it certainly drives some people bonkers.

Manya Chylinski 2:14

Yes, yes. I can I completely understand that. So, all right. Well, that's a great name for a book. Thank you for sharing that. I am on board the train of uh why should we accept things the way they are if they're not necessarily working out. I want to ask you many of us have had a moment in our life that changed how we think about leading or how we think about taking care of people. What was

Corporate Success And Private Misery

Manya Chylinski 2:42

one of those moments for you?

Graham Skidmore 2:43

Yeah, I mean, the last eight years of my life since June 2018 when I left the corporate world has been an accumulation of those things. So I guess I'll try to make it short here. So over the last eight years, I you know I left corporate America, played the game of life the way that I thought that I was supposed to. I checked the boxes of income, status, achievement, et cetera. Right. I was in on the C-suite of a 20,000-person organization, and and I was at the, I was at the misery, I was the most miserable I was ever at in my life. And so I said, Well, this can't be right. If I'm doing the things I'm supposed to be doing, and I'm and I'm feeling this horrible, something again, something's got to be something's got to give. And so, you know, I ended up leaving uh corporate America and then from there going through a variety of of catalysts that helped me understand myself through a western, eastern, spiritual, indigenous lens, and getting to understand my to to know myself in different ways until I was able to be as happy, healthy, and healed as I want and being confident to take the next steps into my next chapter of life. So that really and it and it really and it turned out that um I needed to, you know, reclaim myself. I needed to re-remember who Graham is as my, you know, and I needed to get rid of the guilt, the shame, the conditioning, the fear, the anxiety, all of those things that you know held me back from remembering and operating as who I was. And so now I'm kind of stepping back out into the world, you know, without those layers and with a whole new perspective.

Manya Chylinski 4:07

Someone found themselves in a similar position today. One of our listeners is feeling like you were feeling when you left corporate America. What's a question for them to ask themselves to figure out what

The Happiness Test And Next Choice

Manya Chylinski 4:22

their next step should be?

Graham Skidmore 4:23

Yeah, I'll give you uh a definition that I've created for happiness and then that and then that kind of can they can use that to guide us. So I define happiness as lead leading leading a life of self-guided choices while being able to love yourself, others, and your surroundings. And so a lot of the times, whenever whenever I find myself less in an optimal state, the first question I ask myself is, whose choices am I operating on? Whose choices am I acting on? Is it those, is it what I want to be doing, or is it, or is it what others what I think I should be doing or what others are wanting me to do? And then from there, there tends to be a disconnect. And if it's the choices that I'm making and I'm still feeling that way, I'm like, okay, well, what is it about this? Is it that you know what I thought I wanted isn't what I wanted? Is it what is what's preventing me from still from loving myself and the and this path that I'm on? And um, and then what would be the next choice that I need to make to you know fill in that gap? Because it is, you know, it's a with life is you know, live and learn as we go. So not everything's gonna be right. I make a choice and now all of a sudden everything's perfect. In many cases, to get to that more ideal state requires a series of choices which tend to come from trial and error, or you know, or I should say, you know, living and learning.

Manya Chylinski 5:31

Yes. And I love the framing of that question. Whose choice am I following right now? Whose choice am I am I doing? And if you realize, well, this isn't even what I want to be doing. And I think it can be so easy to get caught up in doing something we think we're supposed to be doing.

Graham Skidmore 5:53

Oh, absolutely. And it's one of those things that, you know, there are some things that and challenges that I faced that were really in the status quo. And then there are other things that I face that I would call in more of the spiritual worlds or can or live communities. And but operating on somebody else's agenda and operating off of trying to live inside of somebody else's box is one of those things that spans, you know, all aspects of uh

One-Size Systems And Individual Support

Graham Skidmore 6:15

you know of life and being.

Manya Chylinski 6:16

Oh, absolutely. And you and I have, I think, similar views on the role of systems versus our individual responsibilities. And I think we really think our system is kind of one size fits all. And then we blame the individual when they don't fit into that system.

Graham Skidmore 6:36

What you're talking about is exactly one of the biggest changes when I talked about being a very different person than what I was in the, you know, in the first 40 years of my life. In the first 40 years of my life, if you would have asked me about, you know, my opinions on the currency, like, of course we should be investing in AI, of course we should be looking at how to remove humans out of the equation, of course you should be focused on profit and all these other things. And, you know, because look, if somebody hasn't made it, well, look, then you know, there's I didn't understand, you know, I figured however we're born is what we are, and you know, maybe there's a little bit of upside based on education and experience, but essentially we are what we are. Well, over the last eight years, I absolutely disproved that theory to myself. And and so now I fully recognize that the greatest opportunity that we have right now is investing in humans, and it's investing in humans as individuals. So all of my work in this next chapter of life is providing a set of systems and education and tools that support humans as individuals, you know, and in starting in health and wellness, it's you know, is understanding ourselves as having individualized physiologies and providing the systems that can support individualized physiologies. Um, and that is just something that without walking through the, you know, without walking in the shoes of others, so to speak, right, I never would have gained that perspective to recognize how that where this, because I, you know, look, as a straight white male executive, the system absolutely benefited me, right? It was only when I started to operate outside of that and and uh through a different lens that I where I where I then experienced all the places where the system is broken. And all the and by broken, I mean not providing the the support, the understanding, the compassion, the empathy to help people throughout all walks of life and in all different aspects of life. And again, but without experiencing that firsthand, I just I didn't I didn't have the capacity at that point in my life to understand it through other lenses.

Manya Chylinski 8:17

Right. We talk about individualized sort of solutions and thinking. And in the world of work and the world of leadership in work, I think there's a lot of fear of I want to have this one size fits all solution, and everybody is gonna act under that and not have to think about what do I need to do for Graham? What do I need to do for Manya? What do I need to do for the next person? I think there's a lot of fear around that.

Graham Skidmore 8:46

I think anytime you're well, change in general, right? Doing anything different is always a you know a case of I think, you know, incites some sort of fear in people, fear of the unknown, right? Um, and and then there is also some aspects of truth from logistically, right? Like which is if everybody is an individual, everybody's a snowflake, then how do you create systems that support, right? And so the and look, and I and I and there is absolutely truth to the truth to the to it not being easy, right? If it's easy, somebody would we would have already figured out we already be doing it. And I think that we're and I think at least for me, and the way that I approach it versus what I've seen out there is that in order to provide individualized support, the way I look at it as we we understand we still operate with the same set of goals and expectations, right? That doesn't change, right? We all in order to be productive members of society, that signifies something. We're all making contributions when we come into work, we all need to operate a certain way, we all need to treat people with respect, we need to operate with dignity, we need right, but the way that we get to understand our coworkers, the way that we understand how to read the room, right? Because we all don't read the room the same way. And when we all read the room, some of us read different things, right? But so we can all operate with the expectation of we need to read the room, but what we need is an individualized understanding of how we read the room and how that may be different than the way others read the room. And as a result of that, how do we create bridges and recognizing, hey, what I'm reading may be different than what you're reading, or what I'm reading isn't isn't it's maybe the minority. And so here's what the majority is. And I think that's where look, AI and technology provides a great opportunity to bridge these gaps because it because it allows us to provide the an individualized learning experience, right? And I think that that's where a lot of the struggle with the individualization comes, is the is the time that it takes to help somebody understand it for themselves. Pre-AI world, you know, technology could only do so much, which means that it really was it was about the it falls on the role of the leader, the manager, the boss, whatever, to then spend time with each and every person to make sure they get it. Well, well, that's now all of a sudden, yeah, that does become very cumbersome and that does become very prohibitive. But now when you can use technology to leverage people in through that learning process, now you know, now you can start to provide those individualized experiences and then individualized understanding, you know, essentially I it's once everybody can kind of get their feet under feet underneath themselves and recognize the differences, then they can fill in the gaps, right? But it's that first, those first few steps is where I see a lot of the disconnects. And so that's what I focus on, right? Is how do we use technology, how do we use understanding, how do we use empathy, how do we use stewardship to help people get comfortable in their own skin, get comfortable in their surroundings, so then they can navigate situations known and unknown, and you know, do it in a way that is aligned with the predetermined goals or outcomes that we've kind of all agreed

AI As A Tool For Humanity

Graham Skidmore 11:39

to operate with.

Manya Chylinski 11:40

Right. I think it's so interesting. The discussion right now, just out in the world, where there's so much fear and confusion about artificial intelligence, for example, even though that's a very wide um field and we we think of it very narrowly, but there's such a fear because some people are thinking, great, AI can replace our humans. And you're talking about using technology to become more human-centric in a way.

Graham Skidmore 12:12

That's exactly what it is. It's about being human-centric. I've recognized that I have I possess much more or many more gifts, abilities, and wisdom than I ever knew. But it was all underneath that the conditioning and the guilt and the fear and the shame and the trauma and the anxieties. And so, and you know, and in my walk of life, I've recognized there's that's the same thing with everybody, right? And so, right now, what what I what I feel like we're seeing with AI is what we're seeing is a byproduct of the one size fits all systems that conditioned us to all live inside of a box. And so now the box is essentially we'll just call it understanding math, right? How well can we all understand math? And then AI represents a calculator. So now we're like, okay, if we're going to measure intelligence by how well can we all do math, well, who's better served to do that? A calculator or all humans? Well, in some in many cases, it's a calculator, but a calculator is reactive to its inputs. It's not creating new problems, it's not creating new algorithms, right? That's what humans are. And so, look, I absolutely believe that AI is a valuable tool, but it should be a tool to augment human intelligence and capabilities. And so it should free up and so let it do the the heavy lifting, let it do the the cumbersome work so that humans can spend their time on the things that that require more human skills, that require interpretation, problem solving, uh creative thinking, and revenue generating items, things that will really move a company forward as opposed to the current focus, which with AI, which tends to be just how do we improve the bottom line. Right. But when you invest more in humans, I think you have a much greater opportunity to grow the top line and create meaningful impact.

Manya Chylinski 13:48

I really appreciate the twist, especially when we're talking about AI, of from what I hear most of the conversations these days, where you're actually saying we can use it to really improve ourselves as humans and really do that personalized work that is so hard to do, especially thinking about in a work environment. You can't necessarily know everything that's going on in everyone's head and respond individually.

Graham Skidmore 14:17

Yeah, it's um again, it's it's it's it's definitely being able to understand these things from this way, uh recognizing only again, only in hindsight of recognizing how I wasn't able to operate at my potential because of the tools that I lacked. And it wasn't because I lacked access, right? I mean, I had plenty of I had concierge medicine, I had executive coaches, I had plenty of people that were willing to work with me. But they un but it was all about understanding the world from their perspective, understanding the world in their box, in their modality. And what I needed was somebody to understand it from my perspective so that I could understand why what I was registering was different than what others were registering and why I was constantly being misunderstood, anyhow. And so um, but yeah, I definitely had to go through um a lot of my own pain to you know to get to that point and kind of understand and make this decision as my next chapter of life of like, no, we really need to be investing in humans and not trying to not trying to replace us or minimize what it means to be human or minimize the capabilities of humans. And I think that's really where we're selling ourselves short of in a lot of these conversations, is we're minimizing the upside and the potential of humans. We've kind of already accepted, yeah, we're tapped up. Yeah.

Manya Chylinski 15:32

I mean, what do you where do you think that's coming from? What's that barrier to seeing what you

Education Rewards Conformity And Profit

Manya Chylinski 15:39

see?

Graham Skidmore 15:40

We're rewarded for being able to fit into the system. We're we're rewarded for operating in in tune and in alignment with the system, which means going to school, learning a certain way, learning a certain set of uh a common set of facts, rote memorization, taking tests that determine our intelligence. And then based on a degree on the wall that kind of is an indicator of our intelligence, you know, we then go to, we then use that to get access to a job, to pay money, to pay bills and live inside the system. We know we very, you know, very few, while it exists, very few things exist to teach us how to be free thinkers, to think as entrepreneurs, to dissect what's wrong with the system and to create, say, to to dissect what's wrong with the system and figure out how to how to find better ways of doing things. And while and then what the challenge then becomes, even some of that stuff, that stuff happens, right? You've got plenty of idealistic entrepreneurs that come out, but then you've got the capitalist side of things, which then says, Oh, well, let me buy that organization. And now the ideals and and and what the and the promise that this tool or approach had now gets behind other things or forgotten about because of it was bought out by a larger company to maintain the status quo or to maintain their market share, their value cap, whatever it might be. But and and that's one of the, you know, look, there's no capitalism is a double-edged sword. And if we don't and if we and as long as we believe everything is too big to fail, we really inhibit our ability in up to to invent and innovate.

Manya Chylinski 17:12

Right. Capitalism is a double-edged sword. The market-driven profit motive. Do you think there's a place for the kind of world that you want to create to fit within a capitalist system?

Graham Skidmore 17:27

Yeah, absolutely. I think there is. I mean, that's that's what my work is all about, is demonstrating that, you know, and while I'm starting in health and wellness, it goes in from there, it goes into training and education, then how then employment and income generation as kind of the the three legs of the of the stools uh of society of how to have a human-centric society. But for me, you know, I do, you know, my my approach to AI and ethical AI is about augmenting intelligence. And so the way that I'm trying to break that cycle, and this isn't I'm not trying to try and send on an advertisement, I just want to almost answer the question, but by me taking the profits that I have and reinvesting them to support these societies. And I'm also starting my businesses as nonprofits, and my one entity that is a for-profit entity, right, is again it's the profit is then funneled back into them, into the nonprofits. And so it has to start small. And in order for capital, regardless of the economic system, capitalism, socialism, communism, if we want new to take form, it does have to be better. It can't just be different, right? And so that's where again my approach isn't so much now what we're talking about, right? We're talking about it now, but it's got to be demonstrated. If you want people to understand to see a different way, to adopt a better way, to be open to an or maybe another way, then it's gotta be able to show how it provides incremental gains to the current system. And so, yeah, so as long as we can show that, we can continue to maintain progress

Proof Through Wellness And Underserved Groups

Graham Skidmore 18:49

and evolution.

Manya Chylinski 18:50

Give me an example. How do you show these gains? How do you help somebody understand the real benefits to thinking about a human-centered system? Yeah, so that's why I'm starting in health and wellness, right?

Graham Skidmore 19:04

Because the the current approach is hey, what it means to be human is this one size fits all box. And you know, when we talk about person, and a lot of times we talk about individualization, it's really about creating a personalized journey to get into that box versus versus understanding your that you have an individualized physiology in the box should be your own normal. And so the way that I'm demonstrating it is by you know the three audience, the three groups. While we're open to everybody, right, investing in all of human humanity, the three underserved communities that we're working with are women, neurodivergent, and spiritually gifted. And by taking people that are only able to achieve one quality of life, one state of being, one state of health and wellness through the this Western lens, this one size fits all lens, and then have them instead now have them use a complementary system that approaches them as an individual with an individualized physiology, with individualized life goals, and giving them the proper support as an individual, now recognizing and seeing what their health and wellness looks like, what their quality of life looks like, what their potential now is, right? That is the biggest demonstration to show, hey, look, these are people that, you know, especially I'll just use the neurodivergent group because that's you know a little bit more obvious and it's got a lot more stigmas and unproductive stigmas and biases associated with it, is if you is that even you take a group of people that have those unproductive biases, and now all of a sudden, when you recognize how they're properly supported, you recognize how gifted and able and the and the amazing contributions that they can make. Well, now you now you've got indisputable proof of why we should be investing in humans, why we should be investing in human-centric future, because our humans as our greatest assets were underinvested in. And when now we show how by investing in them, what the return that's available is, you know, now we can start to open up a whole nother separate conversation, evidence-based, you know, with some evidence-based information.

Where To Learn More And Connect

Manya Chylinski 20:58

Right, exactly. Graham, I could go on and on and talk to you for hours, but we are getting towards the end of our um recording here. Tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and what you do and how they can reach you.

Graham Skidmore 21:13

Yeah, so I'm just kind of getting started. I've spent the last eight years in my living and learning and research and development and testing phase. And so now I'm just starting the harmony, you know, a co-founding, the Harmony Health Institute, which is focused on health and wellness. So if you want to, you know, check us out there, it's the harmonyhealth institute.com. But as far as my articles that I publish providing different perspectives on a lot of topics that are out there, as well as getting to know yourself, uh, or just connecting with me. You know, just find me at on you know, Graham Skidmore on LinkedIn, shoot me a message, follow me, connect, whatever it may be. And uh yeah, love to meet you.

Manya Chylinski 21:48

Great. I'll include those links in the show notes to make it easier for folks to find you. And thank you again. I so appreciate your perspective and and that you came on the podcast to talk about it.

Graham Skidmore 22:00

Yeah, thank you again so much for uh for having me.

Manya Chylinski 22:03

All right, and thank you to our listeners for joining us for this episode, and we will catch you next time.