E14 - Dr. Mark Lund

Dr. Mark Lund is an Interventional Pulmonologist, ICU-Tested Leadership Expert, and Author of the 'Critical Leadership Playbook: 10 High-Stakes Skills from the ICU to Lead Boldly, Build Thriving Teams, and Achieve Wealth'.

Expect to learn how to lead in a life or death intervention, Dr. Mark's "Voice-Trust Framework", Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) best practices, why yawning is contagious, how we go from the Me to the We to the Us, where today's corporate culture zeitgeist went wrong, proof that a single act of kindness can save a life, and so much more. 

- Check out Dr. Mark Lund's new book 'Critical Leadership Playbook: 10 High-Stakes Skills from the ICU to Lead Boldly, Build Thriving Teams, and Achieve Wealth' available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Leadership-Playbook-High-Stakes-Thriving/dp/B0DT216PJD

- Learn more about Dr. Mark Lund's coaching practice: https://twinlightscoaching.com/

- Reach Dr. Mark Lund directly via email:
mark@twinlightscoaching.com

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, and comment. We love hearing your thoughts. 

Host: Kurt Bruckmann
Co-Producer, Associate Director: Alex Fabio

Transcript

Hey Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Core Energy Experience. I'm your host, Kurt Bruckmann. I hold my mastery in Core Energy Dynamics.

I am a certified global coach. I'm an internationally acclaimed best selling author, and I write for Brainz Magazine. Today, we are fortunate to have our guest, Doctor Mark Lund. He has forty years of high stakes leadership experience in building thriving teams and achieving wealth. We are also here with our co producer and associate director, Alex Fabio.

Whatever platform you're on, please like and subscribe. We appreciate it. Here's our conversation with doctor Mark Lund. Hey, doctor Mark. How are you, my good friend?

Absolutely stellar. Wonderful to be here and to see you. That's fantastic. We're so happy to have you on, my friend, you know, and, you and I have history, and it's a very good history, so, I'm very excited to have you and bring that out. But, what we wanna do foremost is, let you talk about your life from whatever period you want to start, to present and or future, and then we're gonna just go from there, if that's alright.

That sounds fantastic. You know, I'm a man who's driven by by purpose. And, at this point in my life, I find purpose in doing what I can to literally create large waves that carry across and add legacy. So how did I get to a place that I actually am able to teach, to train, to mentor in leadership? I didn't start out looking to study leadership.

It's interesting, and I wound up going to a military college, the Virginia military student. That certainly gave me some foundations. But, you know, Kurt, what I've realized is that leadership and life in general, they deliver the skills that you need without necessarily studying them. And when I look back at my life, that's certainly it. So did I learn how to lead high performing teams in the highest stakes circumstances when I went to medical school or residency or fellowship?

No. The place where I started to learn how to lead in in high stakes environments was on the mountain faces as I would climb mountains, in college with my my climbing buddy Rich, where decisions were sometimes life and death, where you didn't retreat, but sometimes you needed to advance to the rear when you couldn't find a way forward and you needed to figure out how to make the way to the top, how to get to your goal even though the way you were taking was not necessarily wide open. Right. The stoics said that the obstacle is the way. Well, I'm a man who hates heights.

Oh, boy. But when I was in the beginning part of my first year at the Virginia Miller train store, they call the rat line, we came to a cliff after a long run. And I was one of the first ones that they had go off the cliff a hundred, hundred and forty feet Woah. Down. Woah.

And, I was sort of voluntold. Down? You say down? How'd you go down? Well, climb down?

You're at you're at the top, and you get hooked in, and you have a rope that's about half an inch diameter. And you literally lean back and go over the edge of this cliff You're rappelling. And you go down. So you're rappelling. Repelling.

Woah. Yeah. God bless. And, again, I hate heights. Oh, boy.

So Too much. You know, hey, Lund, get up here. You know? Do, you know, you're gonna do this. Thinking to myself, do I have a choice?

But I don't have a choice. So over the side, a little bit of cajoling and a little bit of a push, and I got over the side, and I did what I need to do. Well, I found that going through that fear created something that I absolutely found passion in, which was climbing and the challenge, both internal as well as the external challenge. It turned out that that was teaching me things that I applied in the ICU, that I applied in the emergency room, that I applied in the operating room. Mark, let me just remind you, if you could tell the audience what that means, because we haven't introduced you, other than doctor Mark Lund right now.

Sure. So I'll let them know what that is, please. Sure. So, my pathway, I guess, was I went to the Virginia Miller Transitute because I wanted to be a Green Beret. I wanted to jump out of airplanes, run through swamps, and make things go bang.

God bless. God bless. I decided, partly through, actually into my senior year or first class year, that I really didn't wanna do that, and I wanted to go into health care. What was what was the trigger, Mark? What triggered that?

Kind of an understanding that when I was the age I am now in my fifties and now 60 that, I may, not necessarily wanna be doing that, and I didn't know what that future looked like. And also, I always had a interest and passion on biology and had a, professor that taught parasitology or, how parasites, infect and, and injure the body. And I found that fascinating and decided to pursue that. Initially, got my, physician assistant degree and certificate at Emory University and went and worked up in Far Northern Maine, which is one of the places that I had to step up and learn to lead, truly because we had a motor vehicle accident where a woman hit a moose out on 95. Oh, wow.

And those are devastating accidents. And we're waiting for the surgeon and waiting for the, anesthesiologist, and I looked around, and this was my second shift alone ever in this ER. Woah. Second shift alone after graduating from a physician assistant program. They leave you alone in the ER with no no no other doctor, just yourself?

You were that was it? There was a, it's a very small hospital in far rural Northern Maine. Yep. Wow. About an hour north of Bangor.

Wow. You're way up there. And, We, you know, we had physicians, surgeons, or, other docs who would come in, but there's a lot that happens before somebody gets there. And I realized that this person's life hung in the balance, and leadership is always a decision. And I realized that this team was very good, but they were only good if they came together aligned in vision and purpose.

And at that moment, I made a decision. I had to either step up and say I am a leader and start to lead forward, or I needed to just let sort of the dice roll. And I knew that that was not setting this this young lady up for, success and for a chance to live. So I made a decision. I then went back to, to medical school and decided I wanted to go into pulmonary and critical care medicine, wanted to go into the ICU and and study, lung injury from ventilators.

Wow. Things that can save us can also hurt us. But along in doing that and being in a in a what's called a wet lab and doing the things, at a scientific bench research level, it just wasn't my passion. And a one of my professors said, you know, why don't you do interventional pulmonology? And we had heard about it because he was doing it, but there were only a couple people in the whole country.

And, said, sure. Let me, let me try that. And he had a couple reasons, and I agreed to to walk the route with him and wound up being one of the first, you know, several interventional pulmonologists in the country and opening up a new area of medicine. That's fabulous. What is what is that for the audience?

Open intervention? So interventional pulmonologists, so a pulmonologist is a physician who studies and treats lung disease. Interventionalists, cardiologists, there's interventional cardiology, and they put stents in and do casts and things like that. Interventional pulmonologists, we go down. We do, advanced diagnostics, and we do therapeutics.

So I would use, argon plasma cutters. I would use, YAG lasers. I would use electrosurgery, and I would take cancer out from inside of the airways in the lung, by going down through the mouth in the windpipe instead of cutting through the chest wall. Wow. And, then we would put a stent in to, to help to keep the airway either open if it was collapsed or to keep the tumor from growing back.

And then, obviously, they would need to have their chemotherapy or radiation. But, again, though those were an an opportunity to to really learn what it's like to step into the void. No matter who we are, we have fears. Sure. No matter who we are, we have comfort zones.

What is not known, if you could let me just share a story for a moment, is chemotherapy takes a while before it kicks in. Radiation therapy is relatively fast, but the first thing it does is cause his tissues to swell, and then they constrict as the tissue dies. And we had this man come in who had a cancer in his windpipe, and he was whistling in and out because the windpipe was so narrowed. The normal trachea is about, 25 millimeters. He was down to about, roughly about eight tenths to a millimeter of airway.

The rest of it was choked off with cancer. Jesus. And he could not have radiation. It would swell. He would die.

He didn't have time. A little bit of extra mucus would kill him. And it was positioned in such a place that they could not do a tracheostomy and get a tube in below it. So, really, his only chance was for me to intervene. I believed without any hyperbole, Kurt, that there was no question in the next twenty four, forty eight hours with the way he was progressing in his tumor that he would choke off his airway and die.

Jesus. I also believe that if I was absolutely perfect and by the way, I'm not. I'm as human as you are. I'm as human as every listener out there. But the fact is is that if I was perfect, I probably had about an eight out of ten chance of killing him in the operating room.

Woah. And I had to look this man in the eye and say, look. This is what we can do. This is why we can't do a, b, and c. This is what I think your risk is.

That's if I'm perfect. I'm not. Your chances of dying on that table might be nine out of ten, ninety five out of a hundred. Wow. I said, but I'm willing to do what I can do for you if you want me to.

And he looked. He says, tell you what. Yeah. Please do this. I trust you.

Let's see what we can do. When you look in someone's eye and you understand the gravity of what's there and you know that in that point of massive uncertainty, in the point of all risk, that you have to take all of those nerves, all the anxiety, all the stress, all the pressure on your shoulders from looking a human in the eye and saying, yep. We're gonna do this. Put that aside and just focus. And you need to make sure that you have the best team.

Teams will outperform an individual every time. It wasn't how good I was, whether it's in the ICU, in the emergency room, or in the operating room. And it's never about how good the doctor is. It's how good the team is. Right.

Yep. And if the team comes together, because why? Because, yes, they had to trust me, but they had to trust me. I was gonna do the right thing by them as well as the patient. Right.

We had to have accountability. We had to have a culture that was deep and rock solid. Because when those people come together aligned with vision and purpose, I knew that Because when those people come together aligned with vision and purpose, I knew that I could take on the most incredibly challenging thing in the world. And there are others who've done things like that. I'm not special in this.

Our Navy SEALs do that. Our firemen do that. They're special people. If we think They're special. They're special.

Yeah. I I was just, looking at, some stuff from a friend of mine who's one of the people that was on the Miracle in the Hudson flight. Oh. And Sully. Yep.

He is one. Again, I'm not special, but we can learn from what we need to do to accomplish those great things. Because it wasn't about just Sully. It was his first officers, the team. Right.

So Knowing that that was there's leadership, if I may. There's leadership in there, and that's what you're alluding to. I can hear it coming. And I'm sure the audience too, that someone or some of us are gonna have to step up and and go, not be the king or the one, but to your point, in a collaborative form, which is what society is understanding more and more now that we work together more significantly than we do alone. 100%, Curt.

I mean, that is that's spot on. So an individual who makes a decision to lead must lead boldly, but they have to put the position into context because what's most important is not just your bold leadership, which does empower the team, but how the team comes together. I don't care who's on the team. I don't care what grapes they have or where they come from or anything else. As soon as they walk into that environment, as soon as it goes quick, all that drops and you focus on the job at hand.

That's a high performing team, and they do that no matter how dire the circumstances are. A situation that has the highest stakes, life and death, cannot be managed by every team. But every team who can operate in that circumstance can operate in any other. Right. And that's why you choose to create your team that they can operate in that environment.

Because then when anything happens, they come together and they move forward. They know their job. They know their competency. And my competency is not theirs. I might have to make the decision, but I can survey those people, not that the tail wags the dog, but I can therefore open possibilities.

We're gonna talk about later the the the the concept of of human energy. And one of my favorite levels of of energy on a on a simplistic level is is what we refer to as level five. And when you have level five, all the blinders come off. You know, people talk about, you know, opportunity. Well, if life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

No. That's only the beginning. You see, because when life gives you lemons, first you zest the lemons and you save that zest. You sell it. And then you harvest the pits and put them aside to to plant and to grow an ever large, you know, grove of lemon trees.

And then you get your lemon juice to make lemonade. And then you crush those peels so you get all the oils and essences out for cleaners, for scents. And then you finally compost that to make sure that those trees are healthy and robust. So you don't just say, oh, when I get given lemons, I'm gonna take the lemonade. Sure.

That's great. But what about the rest of what was given to you? Right. Yep. So that's what a team can do because we all have the possibility of putting blinders on.

So it's communication, and I I do want to take away a little bit of something from your book, and we're gonna get into that in a little while, the book that you've written. There's a quote in there you have from, George Bernard Shaw. And if I may, the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. And this is where what you're describing to us, the the leadership ability to understand that we are all can be leaders under the same guise if we collectively and collaboratively work together knowing that shit's gonna happen, that the tables are gonna turn and, gosh, you know, you being in the ER room and all, you've seen so many things of what we're talking about in this moment that we have to go back and the plan, the goal, the intention has been broken. So now we have to co create, right?

Get ourselves set up again like you would in the operating room. So let's go there a little bit. Let's talk about you know, the collaboration of teamwork and how that elevates performance and the transition of life and however you want to pin that out would be great. You know, as we know, life is not simple, but it is understood in simple terms. So sometimes we have to break things down artificially because each of the pieces interacts with the other, and they interact not just directly, but directly and indirectly, and they interact in a synergistic manner, I e, one and one is something bigger than two.

So the first place we start in an artificial discussion, when we start to think about George Bernard Shaw, and and he is so right, is what I refer to as the voice trust framework. We have to be able to trust each other. So what are the underpinnings of trust, particularly in those high stakes circumstances? Right. Well, the first thing is is communication.

And communication is a cycle that feeds on itself, a into b and then b into a. So what is the a? It's open discussion. And this communication structure we talk about is what I refer to as authentic communication. Yes.

Indeed. So we have open communication. What is open communication? If you go back to the old, childhood book about Horton Hatches the egg, He's sitting on Maisie Bird's nest, and he says, you know, that, I said what I said, and I meant what I said, and elephant's certain 100%. And that's a little bit of a a a broken approach to it.

But to mean what you really are gonna say and to say what you really mean and most of us don't do that. Right. So to express yourself truly openly, not hiding things, not not trying to play games or see if you can catch someone. This is what I'm thinking. This is why.

And to do it with that middle part of that circle, which is vulnerability. Most people think that being vulnerable is a weakness. Yeah. It's an incredible strength. Absolutely.

So express yourself openly. Now we'll come back to that open expression in a in a moment. You know you know what it helps you know what it helps with, Mark? Great point here because we're talking also about the, you know, collaboration and and and, you know, the the breaking and then resetting and all that and having to trust one another, which is extremely important to your point. Be raw.

Be authentic, man. That that's where the action is. That's where everything lies. So if I may, you know this and the audience is learning too, we end up learning in times of, of discomfort, something has changed amongst the team, if you will. We go from the me to the we to The us, right?

Exactly. I know you and I have talked about this many times. I do want to, at this point, let the audience know that, Doctor. Mark and I attended the same Institute for Coaching Institute, for Professional Excellence in Coaching and, we met there. So Mark's background as you hear as a doctor of his many ways and my gosh, a pulmonologist and cutting edge in the ER room and leadership he's talking about.

Mark and I met through IPEC and IPEC, I wanna give them a little gratitude because they have a saying that really stuck to me and Mark enjoys this too. Everyone we meet is our teacher and our student too. And Mark is a perfect example of this. Coming in from such an intense field, you hear his background from military education all the way through to where he is now. Now we're segueing into what Mark was referring to earlier as life experiences are everywhere and his the intensity that that Mark has lived, being in those, you know, calling situations that needs to be attempted to immediately and decisions have to be made immediately, relying on other people for their immediate reaction to align is something that is not just learned but is in us and we have that as part of the core, the core energy and and Mark and I have discussed this at length and we're gonna hear some of it today but it's part of it and this is what Mark's leaning into, the leadership ability to be able to connect and to go from the me to the we to the Us.

So thank you for letting me take a little sip of water. I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah.

So, again, there's authentic communication, which is from me to you, and we'll need to come back because there's a part that I'm I'm leaving out purposely. Now there's also active listening, and this is where we start to make some mistakes in our communication, ones that are in the active listening but also in the expression. So no matter how good we are, if we're Shakespeare, our words are only 7% of the message that we wanna get across. Another 38% is our intonation. Now I don't know about you, but my mother was always telling me growing up, it's not what she said.

It was your tone of voice. Yes. Okay. So and that's what we hear. So when we send a text, when we send an email, you're getting 7% of the message to the other person, or you're getting their 7%.

If you leave a voice mail or you're on the phone, you're now getting 45% of the message, and that's it. You're not even getting half. So what's the missing 55%? It's our body language. So when I'm talking to you, if I'm not careful, I could just be listening to retort, to reply, to show you how smart I am, when, actually, I'm missing a lot of the message that you're trying to get to me.

Yes. If I am wanting to really lead, whether it's in my home life relationships, whether it's in business, whether it happens to be because leadership is never a position but a function. No matter where you are in your company, in your community, you want to be the person who's actively listening and picking up on the whole message, including the unspoken part. Performance performance equals potential minus interference? Ex there you go.

That is that is the magic equation. Right? There we go. That is the magic equation. Yes.

So we wanna make sure we're doing that so we get the whole message. Otherwise, we're working on only part of the information. Right. And we can imagine all sorts of scenarios that that's not a good thing. However, if we step back from there and go back into active expression, open expression, what we wanna be doing, and most people, unless they are trained, no matter how good they are at communication, the place they fall down is they do not proactively use their body as a tool for expression.

We listen with our with our, you know, eyes pretty well to some of the more visible things with body language. Not necessarily subtle. Yeah. Isn't it true when some we're when we're talking with someone, we're really watching their lips move more than anything, And people think that we're engaged in in eye to eye contact, but that's part of the listening process to what, you know, we're we're discussing now and a very important part of communication with the body language on top of it, you know. And and, I just wanna, put this in there, you know, change equals awareness plus understanding.

So this is what you've been doing, to the public since you've been out, and exercising all of your understanding of leadership ability and performance, well-being, transition, you know, you speak the language of the core energy in a different way. And that's what the the audience is learning learning that. What is core energy dynamics? Well, there's a lot to it. But we start with the four concentrations of leadership, transition, performance, and well-being.

And, you, Mark, has all of it in him and he's been executing this, since I've known him in such a way that everyone he's getting a lot of traction. So we're really happy to have you here, Mark. Let's keep going forward. When we're talking about communication and whatnot, let's talk NLP a little bit. What do you think about that?

I think neuro linguistic programming is a really incredible tool. It's an incredible tool for connecting. It's, an incredible tool for both proactively connecting with others as well as understanding them. And that goes into some of that body language you just talked about. We have mirror neurons in our brain, and, there was always this question.

We'd see somebody yawn, and yawns we know are catchy. Right? Isn't that wild? And do you have an answer for that, doctor Mark? Could you help us all with that?

Yep. Definitely. And it's it's because of, these mirror neurons. We see someone do that, and we have this need. If you walk down the street now granted, if you're in the middle of Manhattan, you might get some different, responses than if you happen to be in Atlanta, Georgia, than if you happen to be in, you know, the, the the Plains Of Georgia or in in Kansas.

So there is an environmental, aspect to it. But if you smile at somebody, frequently, they will just smile back. You don't even have to know them. That's the mirror neuron. That's part of, that deep neuroscience, neuropsychology of why we need to be connected with, with individuals.

That is that is that is great information. We just, you know, upon everything you already delivered is fantastic. But learning why we yawn and things of that nature is is is great. So thank you for that. Well, why we yawn in response to somebody else?

Right. Why we yawn itself? Yeah. So, NLP. So so let's remind the audience that the NLP is, how language, influences thought and behavior.

Right? So that they we can clear that out. So, you know, I can get a little more deep into that. So they understand that. And is what I've the example I use, Mark, is, you know, goal oriented.

We get so gory goal oriented. In other words, we're gonna I'm gonna lose 10 pounds this week. I'm gonna take a week and lose 10 pounds. Now I only lose eight. So I get that cortisol dump, you know, and reach to 10.

But you know what? It's still successful because I lost eight. So replace goal with intention. You know, my intention is. You see?

So we're teaching the audience to understand that NLP is everywhere and to speak kinder to ourselves, internally as well. So if you would go ahead and expound upon all that, that'd be fantastic. I I I I I love it. And, again, so NLP is so powerful. So in one way, it is, again, using our body in subtle ways to establish deep rapport.

How do we do that? How do we do that, Mark? How do we get ourselves into into that understanding so the audience can practice that? Well, some of it is, and and they talk about mirroring body position, and we see someone is in the same position that we're in, but they're, you know, in the mirror. So right side is left, etcetera.

But let's let's take this just, you know, a a little, more subtly. My team needed to know that I trusted them, I cared for them, and they were my people. Now, by the way, I am not here to tell you that I was always perfect at this. By far and away, I was not. Maybe the reason I'm good at teaching this is because I had to learn some really hard lessons along the way.

True. Right? No doubt. So I don't stand here like, you know, I live in a glass house, because I don't. But it is critical.

Those men and women who are on that team needed to trust me, and I need to trust them. If you've ever talked to a Navy SEAL, they, and I had the absolute luxury and pleasure of, being coached by one for several years. Wow. And they're going in to do some sort of a high stakes action, and they would nod their head. And in that one head movement, there's a lot.

My life is in your hands. Your life's in mine. I've got your back. I've got your six, as they say, no matter what. Yes.

Right? I will not leave you. And then the nod would come back with the same thing back. That meant a lot. So when you have a team that is truly cohesive and you have each other's back and you know how to come together, it creates an incredibly powerful team.

You get there through a lot of little things. So why am I waxing poetic on this? I'd go to walk into the ICU, or I would walk into the operating room. And I knew that I needed to connect with them very subtly but powerfully. My body knows how to do that.

I may not know how to do that always, but my body does. So I'd walk in and I come into rounds because I'm going into rounds, and you know something? I don't know whether there's gonna be calm or whether it's gonna be absolute chaos. And I needed to master that state of uncertainty every single day because nothing I did had a certain outcome to it. But I'd walk in, and I would sit there, and every person on my team that I would see in my mind, not verbally, I love you.

I freaking love you. You are the best. I'm so glad you're on my team. I'd be sitting there and saying that. Why?

Because my face is going to show things that they will see and interpret that I simply don't know how to do, but my body does. Self mastery. One of and by the way, I I just I thought about it. I knew I knew NLP. I knew body language.

It was part of what I was studying. In writing this book, I reached out to a classmate of mine. What's the title of your book so the audience knows? And we're gonna we're gonna promote that a little later, but go ahead now. It is the Critical Leadership Playbook.

There we go. The old me and the new me. Excellent. Excellent. That's great.

I read it. Thank you very much for sending that to me, by the way. My pleasure. In putting that together, I reached out to this classmate of mine. He was a lieutenant general, a three star general in the Marine Corps.

And I asked him, I said, you know, what is the single most critical leadership skill that you demand in your chain of command as a senior marine officer? Hard question. And that's what I thought. I thought it was a good question. Yeah.

Definitely. It's an easy question for him. He says, you know, you're gonna need to understand why. Because I'll tell you the answer, but he says it won't make sense at first. He says, the single most important leadership skill that I demand of everyone in my chain of command is that they love the marines, men or women who are under their leadership, that they love them.

And he says, the reason you'll probably wonder about that is because our job is not a pretty one. No matter what else we can do, our true function is to close with and annihilate the enemy. Yeah. Tough. And he says it's brutal.

He says, but if I'm going to ask a young man or young woman to do something that puts life or limb in jeopardy, they need to know that I care for them at an amazingly deep level, and if it were not critically important, I would not be asking them to do it. That younger man or woman doesn't get up out of the proverbial foxhole and run across a machine gun, you know, covered field, forgotten country. It's for the man or woman in the foxholes next to them, including their leadership. They have to know that without any questions. Right?

Leadership performance. We're triggering right into the transition transformation. Yeah. And and that's why by the way, as you and I both know and your audience is learning, that's why the core energy principles, that's why human energy is so critical in what we do. And when you start to talk to someone about it, the first thing they say is, well, this this is some woo woo stuff, you know?

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then they start to understand exactly how powerful it is and how we actually connect, we inspire, we motivate, and we create transformation in our world, in others' world, and in the world at large through this understanding.

Yes. It's you know, you mentioned earlier on, Mark, that, breaking things down to their simplest form. And that's what we do in the core energy, understand dynamics. It's what you do, in different language a bit, but the same is and in this world, it's so fast now as you and I know. We've grown up, similar throughout all that's gone on in our lives, but it's the fastest and we don't need not go there totally right now, but we understand as much faster than what our great grandparents went through and their transitions, transformations, our grandparents, our parents, you and I as parents to our children, woah, you know, these limiting beliefs are long gone.

We can't rely on what we were taught to, how we should, bring up our children, not applicable. So, you know, it's that it's this time, and time is our friend. Right? Why? Because if we're in that catabolic state, we're in that draining, destructive, breakdown state, we're down into that rabbit hole, and we've all been there, and we feel as if there's no way out.

Well, the core, we start reaching back into our core and what you and I have been talking about, what you and I have learned, and what we have been educated on, and now are are able to, speak it to the world because it's needed now more than ever, is that in the middle of chaos is calm. And in the middle of the storm is gonna go away, you know, wasn't you know, it's like, the hurricane. Right? It's all this noise around, all this noise around. What's in the middle?

And people's hands, they go up. Oh, yeah. The eye. Isn't that interesting? Right?

So what you and I are pushing out here is to help people bring themselves back into themselves, to believe that they have all four of these things and they do leadership, transition, well-being, performance. These are all demanding things that our core has in each one of us. And just let the audience know, you know, Mark has his background as you heard, some of it, and I have mine as a as a trader in the commodity pits, open outcry, yelling and screaming. Stress everywhere. Stress everywhere in Mark's position.

Stress as a trader in the floor, you know, minute by minute. And, this is one reason why Mark and I resonate so similarly because the operating room in the emergency situations are very similar to what happens in the trading pits. You have to you have to make a decision. You have to honor that decision immediately and you have a team with you. So, this is what, you know, I know that Mark is trying to help people with and I as well.

And we really appreciate having him here today because we can talk about this and help others understand, look, everyone has value and we all can come out of that rabbit hole. And we end up, as you know, from where we dropped into the rabbit hole from, when we come out of it, we rise above that and we go even further because now we're in an anabolic state. We're filling, we can feel that we are worthy, that we can do this, and then we really start to elevate ourselves. And that that that place where we fell from now becomes our foundation. We don't go back there anymore.

We know how to retrieve and recover and and be resilient. So, go ahead, Mark. I love what you're saying, by the way, and I I I just hooked on to something you said before, which is, I think, really, really important. If you're in any position of management or leadership in whatever you do, understanding that everyone has value. So let me just lay a scenario out for a minute.

As a, attending physician in the ICU, we we may take care of a patient for two weeks. We rotate off. We might not be back on for, you know, another two, another six, another ten weeks, whatever. And sometimes you'd have in those you know, every two weeks, you have a different attending, and the patient would still be sick. And now you had a lot of different people thinking about it.

Maybe in that week that you're on, you have a couple of other attending physicians, maybe a a cardiologist, a a surgeon, maybe a kidney specialist. And you have their teams, their fellows, and their residents under them. Right. But they're just not getting better. And this is where the blinders come on again.

And you're like, okay. It's this diagnosis. The most fun thing in the world, Kurt, is in that place to make sure that, most importantly, when the youngest, the most naive, the most wet behind the ears individual, the medical student or the nursing student says, well, why can't it be this? That you stop. You stop and you truly think about it.

Think about it because, a, you're showing that they have value in just asking the question. B, it's your opportunity to teach. But more importantly, it's your opportunity to learn and to serve the patients. Yeah. Because we get to a place that, yes, we have all this knowledge and experience, but we're like this.

And every doctor that passed office, this is what it is. This is what it is. Now that person comes in, and if you just sit there and go, they're just a medical student. You miss it. Yeah.

So you Why do you think that? So you have choice. Right? So it's it's choice to either do and, execute the way you're describing it. That's called conscious choice.

Right? The other choice is a knee jerk, and then you shoo it off or however it might be. But you're expressing conscious choice now. Conscious choice and then processing it. And it is not common, but it does happen that the right answer comes from that question.

Right. The right answer. And it is critical because a human life hangs in the balance. It is not about our ego. It's not the level one, level two.

It's not about our superego when we're level three, level four. It's finding that level five, the high superego or into the connectiveness that we are able to step. And as a leader, we impact everybody. We impact the team because even though it might not have been everyone on the team, they saw the team was being listened to. It was that person who is someone's father, mother, wife, husband, whatever, that we are then impacting.

We have the ability in that moment of decision where your destiny is forged, where you step up as a true energy leader to truly impact people outside of what you could normally do. Absolutely. And it's it's so empowering, you know, to take those actions. Mark, let's segue a little bit into the business world because what we're talking about audience applies to everything we do in life. Our personal life, our family life, our business life, our environmental life.

We have influencers, right, Mark? Spiritual, environmental, social, mental, physical. So with that being said, Mark, you work with corps like I do, corporations and and businesses, entrepreneurs, or mid level or high level. We are noticing now that the the C levels, the higher levels are now understanding that for the best performance that they can get out of their company is to talk to the people that are being brought in and introduced to the company head on, whether it's, you know, through Zoom or in their office or in groups or whatnot. That's one way of forming a team.

The mid managing level and things of that nature, we get all that and or they need a yes. But the the issue is that if we can talk from with honesty and rawness and the health of understanding that everyone has value and that just because I'm a C or a CO or whatever I am, and the individual starting is now just coming in as an intern or just learning the business, there's a lot of performance going on there now. It's not as dysfunctional. It's not as intimidating to work for companies and go to the seat, tap the seat, and say, you know, I think of this or that. They're holding more, conferences within their organizations to find out what really people are thinking.

Everyone. I think for the first time in a long time and maybe certainly in my lifetime that I know of is actually, understanding that they are part of it. And it's so important to let people understand that as soon as we can because, again, we are all part of the equation, however that is in our life in some way or form. You you know, Kurt, you're talking about two things here that are vitally important, and I just wanna pause for a minute on one and then go to another because I'd really love to share a story if I could. Sure.

The the first is a culture of safety. And I don't mean safe spaces the way we talk about in a lot of ways. A culture of safety is the ability to speak up, to be able to bring an innovative idea or to point out something that is a risk. You know, putably, the, the the the Challenger disaster with a with an O ring seal was because they didn't have a culture of safety. They didn't feel that they could speak up.

And we have, you know, dead American heroes. Why? Be because somebody didn't feel that they could speak up. It wasn't safe. Let me go back to the most important thing that I, that I I I think I'm hearing in this, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but what we're talking about is culture.

Yes. And most every business leader thinks that they have a great culture. Most don't. But an impactful true culture that is truly purpose driven is the most powerful thing a business can have. And a culture is three things.

A culture needs to be led from the top. So not just put on the wall. It needs to be led from the CEO, the owner, the c suite. And the way that it is then brought to life is through the ethos. So a culture is lived, it's breathed every moment of every day by the employees in what's known as the ethos.

And that creates an environment that is palpable, and that is what is known it's an anthropologic term, but the zeitgeist. And that zeitgeist Explain that, please. Zeitgeist. So the zeitgeist is imagine if how would you feel to be walking on the streets of Philadelphia in 1775 as revolution is starting to to bubble up? It has a certain feel to it.

Right? There's there's certain smells. People are wearing, you know, wool and linen, and it's hot and and humid in in Philly. So there's gonna be some smells. There's gonna be horses around.

There's gonna be sounds. It's a feeling. The same is true if if you were to live in in in, you know, ancient times in Mesopotamia. There's a feeling. When a culture is well led and it is delivered moment by moment with a strong ethos.

There is a feeling, no matter who it is, the employees, the clients, the the vendors, the state inspectors. It doesn't matter who it is. When they interact with the business, either walking into it or someone who is leaving it to service them in the home, they have a feeling in that interaction. That is the zeitgeist of culture. Yes.

So that's how culture is lived. So I'd like to go back to how powerful that is and what you just mentioned about, you know, everyone. I'll try to make this story as short as I can, but it's incredibly powerful. Go for it. The last hospital I worked to was a cancer hospital, and we had a very straightforward, quote, unquote, culture.

And that was articulated, not how it was lived to breathe, but articulated in the mother's standard of care. Any person, the patient, the patient's family that you take care of, you do for them the way that you would want your mother, your father, your daughter to be taken care of. If you're doing something different, then you're doing the wrong thing. That's pretty straightforward. Yep.

There was a fella by the name of Big Lou. And you're smiling because you read the story of Big Lou, I'm sure, in my book because it's it's right there in the beginning. Yes, it is. But Big Lou was a giant of a man. I don't know.

Six four, six five, three fifty, four hundred pounds. Solid muscle, had not finished high school. If memory serves right, he didn't graduate from the tenth grade. And he worked in what is ostensibly one of the lowest positions in any hospital, which is environmental services. Picking up trash, cleaning toilets, mopping floors.

But he lived the culture. Every person who was in there, he would talk to. Hi, missus Smith. How are you today? How's your treatment going?

How are you feeling? Is there anything that I can do to make your day better? Mister Jones, how are you? How's your wife doing today? Right?

I see she's back. I'm glad she's here with us again. If she had to be in a hospital, I'm glad it's with us. In the room, out of the room, didn't matter. Never divulging patient information, but just connecting as a human to human.

So one evening, he was working the night shift. And what you need to know is that out back, we had hookups for camp for, campers. Patients on average traveled 500 miles to get to our hospital for their cancer care. And, some of them, in order to avoid hotel room fees and all that, would have their camper. We had hookups out back for it.

So we had all these campers out back. And one night, he saw this gentleman as he's walking through the bowels of the hospital in radiology, and he's, you know, sees his soul. He recognizes him. You know? Hey.

How are you? What's wrong? Is everything okay? Leave me alone. This man says, I don't know what's going on, but, you know, it it what can I do?

What can I help you with? Nothing. It's tell you what, you you need a hug. Don't you touch me. Don't you dare touch me.

Well, now Bigelow was a big man. He was a mountain, as I said, and You couldn't get around. And so he put his arms out. He scooped this guy up, picked him up in his bear hug, lift him off the floor, leaned in, and goes, you know, he says, whatever's going on, he says, you know, I care for you, others care for you, you're loved, and God loves you. He put him down.

This fellow says, I told you not to touch me. That's it. He says, I'm gonna report you. Okay. The next day, John McNeal, who is the CEO, is in the board meeting and is getting these recurrent texts that he needs to come down.

There's a a complaint about an employee, And after pushing off for a while, he realized the guy won't go away, he says, when I get him set up for lunch, I'll come down. I'll talk to him. Now the story I just related came to me through John McNeil. And as a a very, famous radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey used to say, and now the rest of the story. He told John the story that I just related to.

He says and now he says, let me tell you what was really going on. He says, you might not know this about me, he says, but my wife and I are only children. Our parents are both passed. We didn't have any siblings. We didn't have any children.

As a matter of fact, we don't have neighbors. For the past number of years, we've only had our motor home and we've traveled around. Yes. And when we pull into different campgrounds, we we see people that we're friendly with, but we're not in touch with them when we're not there. As a matter of fact, he says, our dog died a little bit ago, and the fact is that we decided until she was done with her cancer treatment that we weren't gonna get another one.

And then he said, my wife died in your ICU last night. Oh. And he says, I was sitting there holding her hand, waiting for the undertaker to come, I realized that I was completely and utterly alone in this world. I had nobody. I had nobody to call, no one to let know, no one to simply talk to.

He says, I was just alone. Heavy, heavy energy. Heavy. He says, and after I had taken care of paying for her care and they had put her on the stretcher and had taken her out, As I was walking back to my camper, and in that camper, he says, I've got a handgun, and I was going to kill myself Oh, my lord. Because I had nothing to live for.

He says, and then this man who always talked to us wouldn't listen to me. He wouldn't take no. He wouldn't stay away. He picked me up when I didn't want him to, and he gave me a hug, which I didn't want. And he told me that he loves me and that I was cared for.

Says in that very moment, I decided that I was not going to kill myself. So I'm here not to tell you in anger about him, but to thank him. Kurt, when the lowest person in an organization's hierarchy and totem pole with the least education saves a human life, which is the mission of the facility, the organization you're in, as sure as any high level doctor or nurse or the CEO who runs the place, you've got a darn good culture. Absolutely. Definitely.

Every person who's listening to this, they can have the same culture. That's what made the Ritz Carlton special, was their culture. Right. That's what makes so many places so powerful. It's their culture.

Yes. Yes. And the things that build the culture are not just trying to build the culture, It's the leadership skills that bring a team together cohesively because when a team comes together like that, then nothing else will stop them and they realize what their purpose is. There we go. That big word purpose.

That's it. You know, such great story, Mark. Thank you for delivering that. You know, it's interesting that we all experience similar things throughout the day, throughout our professional lives, throughout whatever life we're leading, right? That is stress.

Let's go there, Mark. You have experienced, you know, significant stress many different ways. I can say I have too in many different ways and our audience, each and every one has experienced stress in different way. Now let's talk about what you and I know and we can help other people with about how we deal with stress and what are the tools we can do that with. I love it.

Yeah. The the the first thing is to in my mind, anyway. That's a big that's a big mind, my friend. Well, you you know, we there's there's all sorts of constructs, and and one approach is not necessarily the the right approach or the only one. There's never one.

Right? We're we're multidimensional. There's one. No silver bullet. You know that.

You know, that's what you've been talking about. Exactly. Yeah. No silver bullet. But this was shown so eloquently and conclusively, and it's been proven over and over by Viktor Frankl, in his time in Auschwitz, during his, his incarceration there.

Carl Jung, You can suffer any what if you have purpose. So purpose allows you to drive through stress rather than to be crushed by it. Now we still experience stress, but the thing that allows us to keep going is that purpose, that higher objective. Now there are things, understanding, again, those levels of energy and where we want to sit so that we can tune our own radio dial. When I need to go into a place of apathy or victim and when I need to climb myself out to bring a team together and when I need to step up as a visionary leader.

Tapping your core. Tapping the core. The other side of that is understanding some tools. A lot of people have heard the the real sexy, term of brain or breathwork. And breathwork is good, but there are different tools for breathwork.

So some people will get the app, and they'll do, you know, box breathing. Well, box breathing's good when you need to be energized and highly focused to go in and be able to punch through a move. That's okay. It's not gonna settle you down if you are anxious and you are stressed to the point you're not thinking well. You wanna think clearly.

You need to do centered breathing or what is known as the four seven eight breathing technique. So you have to understand your tools and pick those things. So that's so tools. Where does the tools comes from? Our experience, our box of experience.

Our toolbox of experience is extremely important and it's not about going into the past because as you and I know and we're teaching the audience or whatnot, past thought is dreaming backwards. There we cannot recall that energy that we experienced hours ago, let alone weeks or years. And we well, so many of us get caught in the past. No. No.

No. No. That's true. That's a waste of energy. Same thing as, getting caught in pontificating about the future.

The the same idea, you know, how's the future look for me? Well, we're dreaming forward now. We're not dreaming backwards, we're dreaming forward. Again, the same thing, the energy is not there. How many times have we been told, okay, we have to go to this this event, I don't want to go to that event, it doesn't resonate with me, this that and the other thing.

Well we go and what happens? We come out of it and we're excited. Why? Because we went, we took the experience and we learned. And one thing I push, Mark, when we're talking about, you know, reaching into our toolbox of experiences is that experiences are you know, we have these man made words and and there's a little pushback here, but an experience is bad or is good.

Why do we need to conjugate them as that? Why can't we just conjugate them as an experience and I grew? Because growth comes from our experiences. Growth comes from in the now, not dreaming backwards, trying to recall the past, not, you know, whining in that, or the same thing as predicting what might happen in the future. So it's back to your point of being into that moment where when we are in the most stressful acts of the day, however that may be, that we lean in to our understanding of what it is to be in the moment, to go back to our survival mechanisms and realize that if we're raw, we are truthful, and we tap into our own spirituality, not religion, our own spirituality, because we're all born that way, right?

We will come out. Success is in the moment, as we know. It's not the final product. So we're being successful all day long, little do we know, because the inner critic is saying, well, maybe you should have done this or you could have done it this way. Well, that's all a gun.

Done and gone. Back to the moment. And and we talking, right now about both the past and and the and the future and not the present. One of the things that I found and, we'll we'll bring a little bit of IPEC, to, to our listeners here. But, you know, when you bring the past into the present, Now what do I mean?

You know, one of the biggest things that humans have to deal with is fear. Fear will destroy more dreams than anything else. And a lot of the fear we have is absolutely in no way connected to reality. And one way to look at it, although there's a a couple, are what we refer to as the Gaels. And, you know, gremlins, assumptions, oh my gosh.

I just blanked on the I, but, and limiting beliefs. And, Interpretation. Interpretations. Yeah. And an assumption is, well, it happened that way in the past, so it'll be the way it happens now.

Or be it happened this way, and therefore, I'm unable to do it, so I'm limited in my belief that I could do it. Time. Time changes. Right? Time is our friend.

Time changes everything. And and that's how we keep, you know, moving through our transitions and going moving towards our new transformation. And that is a cycle we keep doing. Back to fear for a minute, Mark. One of my one of my examples I like to use about fear is that fear is simply an alarm clock.

Why is that hurt? Well, because fear is coming at us and it's letting us know something's coming. It's not gonna be agreeable for us, but it's coming. And you know what? You can't stop it.

So it's coming. So it's letting us be alert that it's coming. That's a good thing. Because now we can take it with awareness, we can accept it, right, validate it, now we start to move with it and say, Okay, fear, I understand, I'm in this situation, but I'm gonna let go of you now. You've done your job, you've come, you've woken me up, and I know you're here and I'm addressing the issue.

So now I'm gonna move into my my consciousness of choice. And with that, I'm gonna open up opportunity, it's gonna capture me away from the fear, the moment's gonna change, it's gonna dissipate, and new energy's coming in, and now I'm gonna go through my transition, trust my process, and into my transformation. So I I exactly. I love it. You know?

Fear is, as you said, it's it's a wake up call. Yes. It's it's not it is not a warning. It is not a, you know, harbinger of of of dire impacts. It is an ability for you to say, wow.

Here's something that is a challenge. Let me embrace the challenge. Going back sort of where we started, the the stoics, the obstacle is the way. Yes. When we take the wrong Right?

Embrace the obstacle, don't force. That's it. Don't force. Embrace. Embrace it.

Don't force it. Embrace it. Take it. I think this is hard for many people to understand, particularly if you're going and looking forward into your life Yes. Where you and I are in a point in our life we can now look backward, not necessarily into the past, but to learn lessons from the past, not to live in it.

You bet. If we were to take raw iron ore and deform it, it rusts, it cracks, it fractures, it doesn't hold an edge really well. But we put it into the forge, and we heat it up until it's molten. We add some things to it, and we have steel, and we put it back in the forge, and we heat it up till it's red hot. We take it out, and what do we do?

We beat the living heck out of it with a hammer, and we put it back in the forge, and we hammer it back in the forge. And the cycle of being burned and being beat on creates something that is a resilient tool that is a little flexible and has rigidity, but doesn't crack. It has the ability to hold that edge and to be the instrument that it needs to be, whether it's a paring knife, a chef's knife, or an ax, or a scalpel in the operating room. The challenges in our life allow us to grow into what we are meant to be. Yeah.

And if we don't grow through those, if we don't move through those fears, we get stuck. Indeed. And that's where a lot of people that's where in in our world, in in not only leadership coaching, but in life coaching where those two blend. Yeah. Because leaders are human and they have fears too.

Right. We all have a comfort zone. We don't wanna step into that all the time. We have to step through and into discomfort in order to grow. Yeah.

We wanna be we wanna be uncomfortable getting comfortable, not comfortable being uncomfortable. You know? That's right. We wanna be uncomfortable with it. You know, Mark, you have that was fabulous right in there.

The whole conversation, we could go on for a long time, you and I, we know it. So our time is coming to a close, Mark. And before we sign off, I would like to ask you one last question. And that is, you are now a blank sheet. You're a white paper.

As you well know, the world is very tumultuous right now. It is everywhere. It's so fast as we were discussing briefly, you know, the times of the Internet and, the fast pace of that challenge is changing into the AI world. Excited to not need to explain it all to the audience. So what would Mark, doctor Mark Lund, do with that white piece of paper?

What would you like to see happen in the world today as it is and going forward? It's interesting that you asked that question. I hope so. Because because that's that's what I needed to do a few years ago. Yes.

When you've done something for a few decades, you tie your your own meaning. You tie your identity to it. I am a doctor. I'm a pulmonologist. You're many things.

We know many things, but, anyway, yes, I get what you're saying. But we tie our identity to something. Yes. You know? Yeah.

Back when you were, you know, in the pits, I'm I'm a trader. You bet. Yep. You know? And, yeah, we have different facets.

You know? I'm a father. Yes. I'm a husband. Yes.

I'm a son. But I'm I'm the big thing is usually what we do. Yep. Or or or Can I know? Our our big purpose.

Right? Our big purpose. Nice. So what would I do? I'll tell you what I had to do because I'd do it again.

I'd step back and I'd look at myself with true intentionality and and mindfulness and say, what is my true purpose? And then how do I bring that purpose to life? So I am, in a sense, a healer. I always have been, always will be. Yes, sir.

How did I deliver that? Well, I delivered that not because of my skill and the trade I knew of what medication or or what setting on a laser, not even necessarily the leadership skills I needed to do to pull that together. But I am a healer because of the skills that I have and who I am that I can take different pieces of information, different people, different ideas, disparate, completely alien to each other, and look to bring them together and bring them an aligned vision and purpose. So what would I do on a very grand scale? I would pursue making a huge difference in this world by bringing together vision and purpose, because most of us will never be able to figure out how to make one of these, and most of us will never be Steve Jobs.

But when we start to impact those who impact others, it becomes a force multiplier. When I help people run their businesses better, when I help people who bring their teams together so they feel valued, so they feel like they are part of something bigger, And I do that where one person and one leadership team impacts a 100 or a thousand or 5,000 people, and I do that 10 a 100 fold. Now we're impacting not only 5,000 people times a 100, but the seven to 10 people that each of those people know. Now we start to make a wave that gains in its propagation, and it moves out. So little me can start to make a difference that others in a very large swath can feel.

And I have a chance to create a legacy of well-being, of culture, of servant leadership to others through the culture that I help each and every one lead. So that's my purpose. What would I do the same thing? What is it that I'm really good at? But not that's not my why.

I find my why intentionally. And I'd say, what is it that I can do and how do I wanna do it? I do that through leadership, through culture, through team building, so that I can impact people I will never see. But their life will be better because of what we did. We?

Who's we? Myself, my team, the executive team of the companies I work with so that we touch many more people than we would ever be able to individually. Yeah. That's beautiful. Back to your your your core and, the understanding that, it is about culture, certainly in the big grand scheme of things, you know, a lot of different cultures out there as we well know.

So how do we all get along and, collaborate and make that big wave? And you just summed it up very nicely, Mark, and we appreciate it. You have done a beautiful job and, it's been so nice talking with you about energy, about leadership, about the tie ins of it all, helping everyone understand more and more that we all are the same and that we have the same abilities to go out there and create a wave of purpose to help ourselves and most importantly, help others help themselves. So, Mark, thank you so much for that. If you will, to the audience, let us know, tell us, tell your book where we can possibly get that, also where we can reach Mark, Doctor.

Mark Lund at any point in time for your services, obviously, in your, leadership, area and all that you do. Obviously, as we explain to everybody, Core Energy is a part of each and every one of us, and we all maybe perhaps have something that triggers us to be more upfront than others, but we have so many tools. So if you will let the audience know, Mark, that'd be great. Of course. Well, thank you.

And, my book is called the Critical Leadership Playbook, and it's, 10 high stakes skills that really come from the ICU but can be applied to life in general and certainly to leading, businesses. If someone's looking for some information, on the book, they can find that on Amazon. They can also find out information, about me and some of what we do at, twin lights coaching dot com. That's twinlights plural,coaching,uh,.com. And, you know, they can always reach out and, send a, an email through, mark@twinlightscoaching.com, and, happy to, to answer any questions and be of service.

Kurt, it's wonderful to reconnect and to, and to share a little bit of, of of passion, purpose, and energy here with you and your audience today. Mark, thank you so much. You know, you're such a gentleman, and we're very touched by all that you've put out, and the content's been fabulous for us today. So we are honored to have you here, and we would like to invite you back at another point in time that would be very special for us. So audience, thank you so much for tuning in today.

Remember to strive and thrive and stay empowered.