249. The Hard Truth About Success: What No One Tells You After You’ve Made It with Andrew Cohn

What happens when the pursuit of success starts to feel hollow, and the desire for deeper meaning pulls a high-achieving lawyer toward a completely unexpected path? 

Imagine stepping away from a lucrative, respected career to embrace uncertainty—and finding a new life mission that blends leadership, spirituality, and personal transformation. 

In this episode, Andrew Cohn shares his remarkable journey from law firm billables to becoming a sought-after spiritual leadership coach, revealing how early personal development planted seeds for his bold pivot and how embracing inner clarity can unlock extraordinary potential in leadership and life.

Who is Andrew Cohn?

• Former corporate lawyer who turned away from the traditional path to follow a deeper calling
• Spiritual leadership coach specializing in helping high performers integrate purpose with professional demands
• Champion of practical spirituality in business, illuminating how leaders succeed not just through strategy but through presence and meaning

What You’ll Discover in This Episode:

• Why leadership grounded in values and spiritual awareness is a game-changer for high achievers
• How to navigate overwhelm, burnout, and relentless demands by resetting priorities and boundaries
• The practical steps to start shifting your own career and life toward greater alignment and impact

Why This Episode Matters:

If you’ve ever questioned the cost of success or felt the pull toward something more fulfilling, this candid conversation offers a roadmap for how to courageously redefine achievement on your own terms. Andrew’s story and insights are a powerful inspiration for anyone ready to rethink what leadership means or ready to take the leap from a secure career into a life fueled by purpose and authenticity.

Connect with Andrew Cohn

• Website: https://www.lighthouseteams.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcohnusa/ 

How We Can Support Adrienne—and Each Other

Our community’s love and presence are powerful. Here’s how you can become a catalyst for this shared journey of transformation:

1. Share Your Voice with an Honest Review on Apple Podcasts. Your thoughtful reviews help spread Adrienne’s message to those who need it most. Take a moment to leave a genuine review and strengthen our community together. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/health-bite/id1504295718
2. Stay connected by following Health Bite on Spotify. Share your reflections in the comments and join the conversation. Your experiences and insights add richness to our collective growth. Follow and comment on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2jwdHPnWJaoBs2ZJe0nnP6
3. Send #LoveNotes and Reach Out on Instagram. Let Adrienne know you’re walking this path with her by sending a #LoveNote or a direct message on Instagram. Your encouragement fuels her journey and fosters the connection that makes this community thrive. Adrienne’s Instagram handle here: https://www.instagram.com/dradrienneyoudim/

Together, we’re creating a space where vulnerability is met with support, and transformation is celebrated as a courageous act.

Transcript

Adrienne Youdim:

Welcome, Andrew. I'm so happy to have you on the podcast.

Andrew Cohn:

Thank you. It's wonderful to be here and to see you there.

Adrienne Youdim:

And I'm really excited about the conversation. I think this is so top of mind, at least it is for me personally, but I also feel like talking about leadership, spirituality, maybe the other side of high achieving performers. This is something that I think is kind of in the zeitgeist and I I know that our listeners are going to appreciate you. So thanks again.

Andrew Cohn:

You bet. It's a pleasure.

Adrienne Youdim:

So you have kind of an interesting trajectory where you have pivoted from being a lawyer to becoming a coach in leadership and spiritual leadership at that. So I'm curious, first of all, how that came to be. How does a lawyer practicing at a firm end up becoming a spiritual coach?

Andrew Cohn:

Great question. I wasn't just a lawyer, I was a person. And I was a person who had the benefit of falling into some beautiful personal development experiences from a young age. I was in public open personal development workshops between my years in law school in LA. I was always the youngest one in the room and people would pull me aside. So lucky that you found this when you did. that you're being exposed to some of these important questions about who you wanna be and how you wanna live and what's the impact you wanna have and how do you wanna show up in the world and how do people perceive you getting feedback that way. I remember a beautiful exercise in one of the workshops that was a one-to-one, you'd face off with somebody and maybe you knew them a little bit because you'd been in a room with them for a day and a half. Just by way of example, I know I'm getting granular really fast. The inner beauty I see in you is X, and the way I see you hiding it is this. And what I want for you is this. And it's like, I don't know if this is explicit. I don't want to say bad words on your website, but like, holy moly, this is getting, you know, all of a sudden. And what's interesting is very intimate, very clear, not always very accurate, but usually. And in fact, even that little exercise is something that I use often in a closing circle in my men's retreats. You know, we see each other. What do we see? What do we want to see more of from a place of encouragement and blessing and that sort of thing? And to be able to really be seen. So that's just, you know, one example. Like I was exposed to that in my, you know, my early 20s. And so that takes a place in my consciousness so that when I get to the law firm and I start billing hours and conversations like that are nowhere in the galaxy of my professional life. there was always something there simmering a little bit that was waiting for a particular expression. So for me, I was lucky in that, first of all, I worked with great people in the law firm. They were good people. I was clear after five, six years or so, it took me seven to get out, but I didn't want to be that guy at the end of the hall. But it's not because he wasn't a good person and a family person and grounded and wasn't some backstabbing Cheating you know la lawyer wasn't like that all the good good good people. But I was just clear that this is not my path and so for me it was the experience and some of that personal development work it was the experience in a men's retreat that challenged me to think about. You know, what do I want my mission, however you want to define that, to be? There's different ways to define that. Mission as a man, and to be mission-focused, and to be kind of a warrior. I do like the term spiritual warrior, although it's overused. It's a bit of a cliche. But a warrior in support of that mission, and that mission is very values-based. It's not outer determined what kind of world do I want to create. That was a seminal piece of work for me. And maybe even mostly, I did a wonderful two-year master's program in spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica. And I don't think they're doing that program in person anymore. There's still some online things. It's an incredible alumni community. I'm sure you know people who've gone there, if you're in the LA area especially. And that really pushed me towards, wait, there's work that I could do where I could bring these dimensions and the skills into the workplace. So the short answer to your question, which I obviously have not given you, I've given you one of the longer answers, is I was exposed to a number of things that really planted the seeds for me to be doing this type of work. I was fortunate in that just in terms of life circumstances when I was completing the master's program, which I did, by the way, on weekends while working for the law firm. Nobody asked. Nobody cared. You bill your hours. They don't care. And I started to find opportunities to moonlight and have little bit side hustles in the consulting space, learning from people, reading books, interviewing people, exploring a career in consulting. And then a couple of years after I graduated, I was able to make the move in part because of the wonderful support of my now ex-wife. And I moved from the West Coast back to the East Coast where I grew up. And when I moved back there, it was, all right, I'm moving back. What do I want to do? Do I want to sit for the Pennsylvania bar exam and start all over again? Or do I want to like move into this new space, which was scary as I'll get out because it was so open and I didn't know what I was doing. So a couple of lean years, which we went through together. But it was the learning and the exposure to these different processes and reflections. It was the seeds that were planted early that really, that just, it had to grow. The fact that it worked out reasonably smoothly for me, I'm super grateful. But it was those experiences of early exposure and the early conversations, both participating in these programs and then assisting in these educational programs in LA, in Russia, in Bulgaria. which really also contributed a great deal to my sense of universality and spirituality, because the conversations that you're having with people, like the one I mentioned to you, but to do it in Russia, back in 1991, where I grew up in a world, well, I'm not that old, but it's like, well, who are these Russian people my age, and do we trust each other, and what's that all about? A couple of years after the wall came down. is a bit different. Anyway, that's my long-winded answer.

Adrienne Youdim:

So I'm hearing there is this evolution and it kind of was spawned by seeds that were planted early in your life in terms of open-mindedness to this kind of work. And yet there is something maybe, you know, unconventional or even bizarre about, you know, lawyer turned spiritual coach or And I heard maybe hints of this. Is the opposite true? That there was actually something that you saw in your work that spawned a need for this work for people like you?

Andrew Cohn:

Yeah, I mean, being a lawyer is not an unspiritual job. Whatever that means, by the way, we could unpack that probably too much. We can do anything from a place of spiritual groundedness or not, right? I mean, you could be an abusive priest, God knows. So it's not the job, it's what we bring to the job. And similarly, even in the work that I've done now, so when I, just as a transition, I moved into facilitation work, I did a lot of client off-sites. Really what I tend to focus on in my work is teams as much as individuals, but teams are made up of individuals. And individuals at work are made up of human beings. So the questions get deeper and more personal in service to that individual, but also in service to the team and to the business. I've always been very clear, even in the almost 30 years since I've been in the leadership development space, I love working with people in business. I do not have the stomach to do clinical work, and I love to meet people at the level of business problems and business challenges, and then get to, there's always something personal that's beneath that waterline, if you will, right? Or in the roots of the tree that's resulting in this rot on a branch, to use a, I guess, unpleasant metaphor. So I love working with people in business. So my work evolved from different types of facilitation work, including in the diversity and inclusion space and leadership retreats and team alignment. And I did something for a number of years called service-based team building, where I was helping to grow corporate teams through shared community service activities. So is that a spiritual thing? Service, you could call something spiritual perhaps, but it was all in service to the team coming together and the people on that team feeling more fulfilled as well as more effective and productive. And I love that combination of the business problem and the business impact, and then the personal contribution and the personal impact. And so for me, that intersection has always been super important.

Adrienne Youdim:

Yeah, and I think you're kind of describing this, but I do think it would be helpful for you to define what spirituality means in the context of business, in the context of leadership. What does that really mean?

Andrew Cohn:

Yeah, I mean, it means different things to different people. And I don't define spirituality. One of my mentors said to me a couple of years ago, actually, as I was starting my podcast, Spirituality and Leadership, he said, how do you define spirituality? And I said, I don't. And he said, good, don't, because it could be problematic, because ultimately, It can be such a touchy word, and that's the whole point of the podcast actually, is how do we have an inclusive conversation with people so that it's a dogma-free zone and we can talk about what has meaning to us. Some people talk about In answer to your question, while I don't define it, for me, it relates to a number of different things, and I like to talk about it that way. It relates to universality. It relates to something personal and deeper within me than my personality or than the physical level, you know, living of life. It relates to a timelessness. dimension. It relates to a sense of awe. And that's to me, it's not a mental thing, it's an experience. And like being in a certain place in Naples, oh, I'm at the Grand Canyon, it was a spiritual experience. Well, why? Because it connected me to something. We're wired to connect with nature. And that wiring, I mean, you know more about the human brain than I do. certainly anatomically, and it's like we're wired to, I don't know if you've ever seen some of the books by an old friend of mine in Philadelphia named Andy Newberg, and Andy writes books on how we're wired for spiritual experience. Books like Why God Won't Go Away, and Andy was one of the people featured in that movie years ago called What the Bleep Do We Know, that you may remember. But the point is that we're wired for these things. It's a part of us. And that doesn't mean that I need to go to your church or whatever it might be. It means that each of us is capable of finding something that stirs that type of awe within us or that activates that sense of meaning within us. So for some people in the context of business, it may be what brings people alive or what's someone's sense of purpose or meaning or mission. Or it's how do I be of service to other people? Some people would define that in some way as spiritual. I think I can get behind that definition. So it means a lot of different things, but whatever it is, it's something that inspires us. It's something that connects us. It's something that grounds us. So in other words, when I'm in touch with that thing, whatever it is, I feel more solid. I feel more peaceful. I feel more available. I feel less distracted.

Adrienne Youdim:

Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt. I was going to say, and why does that matter in business? So, you know, like I think a lot of times people understand these things to be important to the personal self. Just like in my work, people understand good food, movement. These are important practices to the personal health and wellbeing. And yet we neglect our personal selves. And often, you know, we'll do something that is in service of our caretaking or our professions. Um, so, but I really am intrigued by the juxtaposition of leadership of spiritual leadership. So why should the business person. Care outside of, and I don't want to be so flippant about this outside of what it gives back in terms of our, our sense of self and personal wellbeing and that kind of intangible that you're describing.

Andrew Cohn:

Well, two responses to that. It's a great question. I mean, it's sort of like the obvious linear research-based diagnostic question that I would expect you to ask.

Adrienne Youdim:

Thank you. I'm here for you. I'm here for you, Andrew.

Andrew Cohn:

Thank you for that, yeah. Yeah. So first of all, those personal impacts have an impact on the business. So just as I've heard you talk about, if a leader is distracted or stressed or overwhelmed, that impacts her decision-making, that impacts how she responds to people who come into the door. For those of you who still have a door that somebody could come into, that impacts a level of reactivity that I might demonstrate, that impacts how open-minded I am, right? Because I'm feeling stressed, then I'm not thinking clearly, right? I've got this narrow band of possibility. My understanding is that in terms of the human brain, is that the more stressed I am and the more fight or flight place that I'm in, the narrower my focus becomes for biological survival reasons. And therefore, I really can't make good decisions. And I don't want to hear any new ideas. And God forbid, the kid comes in the room while I'm on a Zoom call and gets the short end of it. So those personal benefits of paying some attention to this translate into my relationships, certainly my emotional intelligence broadly defined, my awareness of self, my management of self, my awareness of others, and my management of those relationships are greatly impacted by whether I'm balanced, whether I'm connected to my purpose, whether I feel grounded, Or on the other hand, if it's in the opposite direction, I am overwhelmed and stressed or have lost sight of my priorities. I don't know what's important to me that has a business impact. In addition to broader levels of things that businesses measure, for example, engagement, retention, discretionary effort, loyalty, these are all things that matter an awful lot in business. Because business, especially as business becomes more virtual, With a wider demographics and different people in the workplace working together, relationships are more important than ever. And that interpersonal dimension of work is more important than ever. There's less and less work being done alone, I believe. So all of these dimensions that we're talking about and how they impact us, impact our relationships. Not to mention our presence, which is a whole other area we could go into as well. what businesses will measure turnover. They'll measure certainly employee satisfaction and things like that. And who are the people that attract the highest scores in that area? The people who are less likely to bite your head off, the people who are less likely to give you a run around, they'll be clear, they'll admit mistakes. These are all connected to what we're talking about and they translate to good business.

Adrienne Youdim:

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you that a lot of kind of these phenomenas that we've named in recent years, engagement, resignation, quitting, burnout, right? Like so many of these, you know, experiences that are playing out in mass and in professional spaces really come down to the absence of attention to that individual, to the core of the individual, as you're talking about. Can you describe an anecdote of something personal or perhaps a client that you worked with who was experiencing something along these lines of, well, I want to say spiritual crisis, and then I want to walk away from that because I don't want to put words in your mouth. But yeah, somebody who's kind of in the professional space, perhaps they're performing well in the professional space, who had a yearning or a longing, either knowingly or not, for this work and what that outcome was.

Andrew Cohn:

Yeah, I would say I rarely talk with people about spiritual outcomes or say, I mean, the focus is for me, I don't present to the world as a quote unquote spiritual coach, but I include the spiritual dimension. in the work that I do with people. And I don't necessarily talk about it as a spiritual dimension. I may talk about what has meaning for you or what engages you or what lights you up or asking those questions about the people on your team whose lives you have a very significant impact on and what that means in terms of your awareness and how you relate to these people. So I don't think like progress for me is generally not spiritual progress. It's more about the opportunity to leverage things that we know, that we feel, that we value, which may be bucketed and labeled as spiritual, to bring to bear, to help in the challenges that we face. Whether those challenges may be a personal challenge for a leader, for example, work-life balance, overwhelm, you know, et cetera, spending the time that I need and the ways that I need to spend it in order to maintain, keep my head above water, et cetera. Or even if it's a business challenge with a difficult colleague, a global team, working cross-functionally, which leads to challenges and differences in mindsets and managing that level of frustration. and detachment, or feeling of like I'm a victim of my circumstances, I'm overwhelmed. So whatever the presenting challenge might be, there's most of the time, there's some sort of foundational core dimension to be accessed, to be leveraged, to help with decision making. Or that could be part of the solution, for example, if there's some type of a, I don't know that I would ever call it this way on its face, spiritual remedy, if you will. So I might talk with people about forgiveness, or I might talk with people about acceptance, which is the first law of spirit as I've heard it defined, which is super practical, and it's not churchy in any way. It's very, very practical. But I won't measure progress, and I don't encourage my clients to measure progress in spiritual terms, but in terms of results, both subjective and objectively measured results. So To answer your question about a specific example, I was speaking with a client recently whose struggles was a very high-level senior guy at a professional services firm based in New York City. Extremely artistic, extremely creative. loves his job, loves the people components of his job. Congratulations, you're very successful. We'd like you to lead this office. We'd like you to lead this initiative. Oh, and by the way, your college called, and they want you to be on the board for the university in Baltimore. He's in New York, and he's overwhelmed with good things. So I sometimes will say to people, oh, you've been hijacked by your values because these different opportunities are coming to bear because of what your values are. And people see what you can do and they want you for all the right reasons. Congratulations. You know, this is what it is. You know, it's like a physician or a healer who is so high in demand that you could easily burn yourself out. So we have had a number of conversations about how to be like, how to acknowledge the strengths and acknowledge the blessing of being invited to be asked to do these things. And he's very free, not free, he's very open in discussing how privileged he knows he is. Although, interestingly, at times, what I feel like is coming after he says those words is, and it's really, really freaking hard, right? To whom much is given, much is expected. So for example, those conversations, to answer your question, I will get around to your question, by the way, To answer your question is how do we work together to help set priorities, to help set healthy boundaries? You're going to tell me that your work relates to this too, in some way too, but to help set priorities, to help set healthy boundaries, to talk about some different, both mindsets, but also tactics around communication, around delegation, which is a very big thing for leaders in the workplace because high achieving people want to do stuff themselves. And the higher up you go, the less able you are to do that physically. Just you cannot do it to the same degree. You have to let it go and change your mindset so that you're getting work done through others as opposed to doing it yourself. So just to give some few examples, with that gentleman, it's largely about prioritization, personal practices, and boundarying those. tactics for communication and delegation, ways to, like, what are the guardrails and the bumpers that for him will help him track to see if he's on course? Because that's not my job. I'm not, I mean, I could be talking with him for years, but ultimately he's the one who, when he wakes up in the morning, is going to need to know, is he too close to one of these lines? And those are some of the conversations we might have for someone who's, what I would say is aware of the need to do something to keep the train on the tracks. He would not talk to me about something that he would define as spiritual, but he would talk about and has talked about, I want to do what's most meaningful. I want to be of service to people to be sure that if I'm delegating something, that it's something that I'm talking about in a positive, mutually beneficial way with somebody. They don't feel like something's being dumped on them. When I walk into a room, I, you know, one of the things we talk about, I talk with a lot of my clients is that your emotions are contagious. So what are people catching when you walk in the room? Are they catching overwhelm and ugh, and a train, or are they catching, wow, it's, I'm so happy to be here and this is hard work and we have to do it. And I just feel fortunate to be in the room with you.

Adrienne Youdim:

You know, I heard you say something in that, that caught my attention, which is, you know, People, we all know, at least when we're starting out, we all know what matters, what we wish, the impact that we wish to have. But in the case of the person that you are sharing and many of us, it gets lost in, in the day-to-day, you know, grind or in the opportunities to come. But just to kind of spotlight what you've just said, you know, stepping back and redefining our to-do list or redefining the priority list in terms of all the things, opportunities that we have from that lens of what really matters to me is a great form of bringing this kind of spiritual expression or soulful, you know, a person's like true north to something that's very practical and tactical like setting boundaries so that you can actually execute that objective without being cluttered with other priorities.

Andrew Cohn:

I mean, we just we perform better when we're clear and when we're mindful. And that's not a woo-woo thing. It's paying attention on purpose without judgment. We just perform better when we're operating from that place. And whether it's a corporate lawyer or a senior consultant or a surgeon, God knows, who do I want operating on me? You know, what's going on in her mind when she picks up that very sharp tool? I want her mind to be super clear and very focused. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And it's very practical. And what I'd say is, I don't, I mean, I don't lead with anything that's labeled spiritual because I don't need to. And I'd rather listen to your language because I want to talk with you about what's important to you and the way you describe it. That's what's important. And as a coach, I mean, international coaching federation guidelines, it's always the client's agenda. It's not the coach's agenda. So in a way, if you were to ask me a question about where are people typically resistant, one way that I would answer that, just anticipating your question, is it is a bit self-selecting. I'm not interested in coaching people who don't want to have coaching conversations. I do sometimes work with leadership teams, or teams at all levels, where there's somebody in the room who doesn't want to be there and says, I don't want to be here with this consultant, I'd rather be home, or I'd rather be in my office alone. But for the most part, it's self-selecting, to be clear. So the people who walk into your office, hopefully, are people who choose to walk into your office. Like, how much more difficult is it with people if you were just knocking on their door and say, oh, I got these statistics, you need my help? That would be difficult.

Adrienne Youdim:

Yeah, and I do want to touch on the barriers or the resistance a little bit more, but not before I ask you. So let's say somebody, you know, is hearing this and they agree that some of these practices or that this intention of leading with spirituality, even though we don't really want to define that, but the whole gamut of things that you've discussed, is something that they need right now, short of working with you. What would you say to the average person if they just want to dabble, or how does one begin?

Andrew Cohn:

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not used to being asked that question, but great. So if you want the self-directed version, self-paced class, if you will, Think about what's most important to you. And really, why is it most important to you? Because everything flows from there. Everything flows from what are my values? What are my priorities? Some people would say, what am I here to do? Some people can answer that from a religious framework. Some people could say, I just want to be the best person I could be. Great. We can build on that. And then where are the places where it matters most? which for most of us who have families, that their family is part of that equation, family, community, what are those communities that matters most? Where are the places that it matters most? And then what to begin to think about, what are the things that I want to do, continue to do, or do for the first time in those places that are consistent with those personal values? It sounds very simple. It is very simple, but it's not easy. And the other thing I'd say, I'm sorry to interrupt. The other thing I'd say is if you are going to do the do-it-yourself route, which is certainly often very, very helpful, is who could be your teammates? Don't do it alone. So who can be your support team? Who can be your mastermind group? Who can be your once a week we connect just to check on progress? It's a little bit like some of these wonderful books that have been written on habit in recent years, right? Atomic Habits or Good Habits, Bad Habits by Wendy Wood is another great book. The most supportive thing for developing new positive habits is to have people around me who are supporting me with those habits. It's very difficult to quit smoking if you live with a smoker. It's much easier to go to the gym and keep my commitment to go to the gym if I promised somebody I would meet her there. So who are the people that you want to have around you as support for that? Even if they don't need any professional expertise or something, but people who are interested in supporting me and perhaps there's something reciprocal and I want to hear about their goals as well.

Adrienne Youdim:

So back to the point of barriers, let's imagine not the person who is closed-minded or uninterested in this work. But for someone who genuinely is interested, what are some, and is engaging in this work, what are some barriers that come up, like, despite themselves? You know?

Andrew Cohn:

Yeah. Well, there's really a number. That's a delightfully broad question, or frighteningly broad question, depending on how you look at it. One is, of course, in working with high performers, mostly in the business world, is we can figure this out. right? We don't need to pay to come in and help us with this. So there's that sort of self-confidence, which is a great quality. We can figure this out. So that's one level of resistance that often happens. I would probably say there's probably a longer list, but just to jump to the one that I think may be most important is There's a certain level of maturity that is required to, well, I remember hearing years ago that the real definition of maturity is the ability to hold opposing thoughts in your head at the same time. That's maturity. It's very difficult to acknowledge the physical level limitations of our own abilities and our own performance when we're being asked to do much more. And I'm not interested in freaking somebody out and having them like, oh my God, I'm never going to be successful in this job because this coach is overwhelming me with what's real and true and possible or something. I don't want to do that. That's not helpful. But to begin to acknowledge, oh, wait a minute, I really do need to change some things. It requires a certain level of maturity. and willingness to do something a little bit different, just like a certain level of maturity is required, I would imagine, in the work that you're doing around habits and discipline and et cetera. And I don't want to make this about you, which I would like to. And the other thing that is very important in terms of overcoming, I don't want to say overcoming resistance, but in terms of just acknowledging the challenges is normalizing some of these challenges. So when this client of mine in New York was talking to me about, he said, the challenge that I have, it was beautifully worded, he said, the challenge that I have is that I really want to do everything impeccably. Guess what? You can't. You have to be willing to acknowledge there are going to be some things that I cannot do impeccably. So either that, because just physically in terms of time, as I take on more and more, either some things have to be let go and I'm not going to do them at all, or some things I'm going to do with a certain level of impeccability and other things, I'm going to consciously decide where I'm going to allow myself to, quote-unquote, fail my own standards. Because just in terms of the physical level of time, you know, it's a little bit like I remember hearing Jean Houston, who I love in her own way, talking about, think about the level of stimulation that we human beings faced every day on a daily basis 100 years ago. What was happening in our lives in terms of like, what type of stimulation were we taking in in our lives 100 years ago in 1925? And real carriages. or whatever it might be. There were newspapers then, there were whatever it was, we were living in cities or whatever, and fewer people were living in cities. And think about in those hundred years, how much has changed in terms of stimulation and levels of stress, et cetera. of bombardment, sensory stimulation, mental demands, things like that. And how much has our physiology changed in a hundred years? How much have we evolved in terms of our physiology in a hundred years? Probably not very discernible amount. So we have to work in different ways. We can't just keep doing more and more the same way we've always done it because we're not capable of carrying that much. And that is not, to my point of normalizing, that is not an expression of failure or an acknowledgment that I'm in some way a failing or not a good enough leader or person or father or this or that. It's an acknowledgment of the world that we live in is going to overwhelm us if we allow it to overwhelm us.

Adrienne Youdim:

And that is a place where we really, you're right, that is a place that I think people are very clear on right now, that we are being inundated by stuff right? Whether it's, you know, news and information or challenges and worries, we're being inundated with stuff. And I think people are feeling, particularly right now, I mean, I feel like it's getting ratcheted up, you know, every season. I do think that people are starting to feel weary by all of that. Which leads me to another comment and or question which is I personally feel and again this might be my this might be my personal bias because of or selection bias because of the lane that I live in. The people are more wanting of spirituality. I heard this there's this app called hollow. It's actually a Christian prayer app and this is not to conflate spirituality with religiosity. For some people, it means the same thing. And for some people, it has nothing to do with each other. But it is kind of a sign of the times for me. that over the summer, they're a relatively new app. And over the summer, there was a news article where they had hits, a million app downloads and three million prayers or something of that sort, which is like, wow, that's really a lot. And their demographic was younger people, which you don't necessarily attribute a desire for spirituality or religiosity in your youth. I personally think that, again, what we're talking about in terms of what's going on in the world right now and the fact that we are inundated by so much information is what is, is one of the things that is driving us to crave that spirituality. And I wonder, you know, if you're seeing that too, do you feel like we're moving into this space where people really want and are longing or desirous of this work? And if so, why?

Andrew Cohn:

So the answer is yes. Why? It's because the world we're living in, to your point, is becoming more chaotic, more demanding. Instead, we're more filled with stuff that we really don't need, but we're told that we need. I remember sometime in mid-COVID, I was reading this wonderful article somewhere that said, this pandemic is going to end. There have been things that you have been living without for months, and you've been happily living without them. And beware of the marketing machine. And this is not to condemn marketers or anything like that, but beware of the apparatus that's going to come back and tell you what you can no longer live without. Guess what? You can live without it. And you have lived without it. And this is where I think as people, as humans, because things can be overwhelming, because we have all this sorting to do, because we have to grow this level of self-awareness so we can look at, well, what am I actually doing? And is that aligned with what I said I want to do? And those types of inquiry are often really best done with some sort of a partner. So like I said, get support, get a group, whatever it might be, even if it's your family at the dinner table talking about what I did today and how it connects to what my values are, what my priorities are. And this is where very often I'll get calls from senior leaders that They don't need to be senior. I'm not snobby that way. But the higher you go, the harder it is to talk with people honestly about these challenges. It is lonely at the top. And it's helpful to have an experienced outside civilian person to whom you can bounce these ideas off of or express your frustrations or express your fears. We need that kind of support. That's what we need. We don't need to go buy enough stuff that therefore means I need to go buy a shed to put all this stuff in. And, you know, blah, blah, blah. We don't need that. But we need to do the exploration to determine, if you will, what we really need or what we really want. So I wouldn't necessarily call it a spiritual inquiry, but that's what it is in my definition, because it's like, well, what has meaning for you? And are you finding that you are actually doing that? And I will say to people, open your calendar and tell me how you spent the last week and how aligned that is with what you've said is important to you. And if it doesn't match, it's not because you're failing, it's because you're doing what most people on the planet or at least the Western world are doing. But how do you get underneath it? I'm fortunate enough to work with people who read enough books and listen to enough podcasts or whatever, like yours and others, that they realize, oh, wait a minute, I want to do something here. And again, or the business teams who recognize we need to do better than this in order to operate better and to support one another, which supports us in operating better.

Adrienne Youdim:

So given that there is this kind of surgence of interest in this work, How do you see it playing out? How do you think this will change how people work and move through the world in the future? Or do you think that we will always have the tug to kind of go back to our day-to-day and our checklists? How do you see this evolving?

Andrew Cohn:

Yeah, I think that we will always have the tug. One of my spiritual teachers loves to say that the world is designed to make us forget.

Adrienne Youdim:

 Love that, that lands very much it for me personally in this moment, so yeah.

Andrew Cohn:

So I just want to kind of honor that for a second. There will always be that kind of a tug. It's a little bit like, and this may be a bit of a detour, you could decide whether you want to edit this out, but it's a little bit like, will there always be a doubt if for people of faith who may be people of faith to say, well, is there a God or is there something bigger or is there something better or whatever? We will never have definitive proof of that in my belief system. Because if you had definitive proof, then you wouldn't have faith, and you wouldn't have to have faith. So there's a certain little thing. There's that Indiana Jones bridge that you cross, that you take the first step, but you're not sure. And if you were sure, it wouldn't be faith. So there's always going to be that belief factor, if you will, which is part of the great mystery of faith, in my view. But to answer your question, there will always be that tug, I think, because this world, this physical level world, is always going to contain more than we can possibly do. The choices that we will have will always be more than, even if you're the richest person in the world, and all you need to do is figure out where you want to go next on vacation in your private plane or whatever you might be, or perhaps you already have that problem. I don't know. Perhaps you do. Not yet. But even if you did, you still couldn't go to all the places you'd want to go. You still couldn't satisfy that. And if you could, you couldn't do it all at the summer solstice or the eclipse that you wanted to see from the top of Machu Picchu or the whatever. You can't. You can't do it all. And to that extent, I think that I'm not here to talk about why the world is set up that way. And God knows I weigh about my pay grade. It's more than we can possibly understand. And, but what we can do is we can make choices and we can make, we can make tough choices and we can communicate from those choices and live from a foundation of those choices of like, okay, this is what's really important to me. And this, I know I'm going to need to let go and I'm happy to do it. You know, I may need to let go of this potential promotion in order to be home with my family. Or I'm going to need to say to my partner, I can't be there at this thing because I just had this work opportunity, and right now that's more important to me. Sometimes the work thing is more important, but these choices will always have to be made because the demands are not, I don't think, are going anywhere. The niggling voice chatter in our head is always going to be there. It's always going to be there. And that's not a curse. That's an opportunity if we approach it the right way. But it ain't easy and it ain't for the faint of heart.

Adrienne Youdim:

Yeah. And these practices are precisely situated to address that very need that you described. So if people are curious to learn more about you, this has been a lovely conversation. How can they learn more about you, the podcast? Where can they find you?

Andrew Cohn:

They can find me on the beach. No, I'm just kidding. They could find, well, sometimes. Actually, if I'm at the beach where I'm thinking about being right now, please don't find me. I will leave my phone somewhere else. So my business is called Lighthouse Consulting. It's lighthouseteams.com. My podcast is Spirituality in Leadership, which is at spiritualityinleadership.com. It's on Spotify and Apple, and more of it's being migrated over to YouTube. and I'm certainly on LinkedIn, Andrew Cohn, C-O-H-N. And I'm grateful to speak with people who are interested in this topic in whatever form or another. That's part of what my mission is, is to help encourage these sorts of conversations and invite healthy, inclusive conversations that have been really helpful to me and hopefully can be helpful to others as well.

Adrienne Youdim:

Yeah, and you've certainly done that today. Thank you for your time and for your thoughts. And thank you to the listeners who stayed with us for this episode. I think this is really top of mind for many people. So if you found this of value, please share it with a friend or someone that you love and follow us on wherever you listen. Thanks so much, Andrew. Thank you all.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you.