“What if your problem isn’t what you think it is?” More often than not we find ourselves stuck in our heads, and so we try to navigate through stressful situations using our mind. Sometimes all it takes from us is to loosen our grip a little and open up our heart. Sometimes we need to feel our way through a problem.
In this episode, we interview Toronto based executive coach Jonathan Varkul. He helps people in leadership positions address problems from the inside out. For over 20 years, Jonathan navigated the corporate world as a chartered accountant and a seasoned operations executive. Jonathan talks to us about his journey with anxiety, which sparked a profound transformation in his approach to life and work.
Highlights
- Anxiety and Panic Attacks
- Qualities of Yin and Yang
- Processing Non-Cognitively
- Executive Coaching
- Cultivating Presence in Discomfort
Resources:
- Workshop Re-calibration: The Art and Science of Finding Clarity in a Noisy World
Listen:
We hope you enjoy!
Have you ever been loved like that? Poem inspired by this week:
Full Transcript
Adrian
Thank you for joining us, Jonathan.
Jonathan
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.
Adrian
Yeah, I think one of the, for me, I feel like one of the challenges with these meetings is there’s no shortage of things to explore and that to me sometimes brings a little bit of anxiety. It’s sort of like, okay, what do we want to prioritize as far as, you know, time and that sort of thing. Um, but I’m sitting here and sort of just tuning into myself and I’m getting the sense that I am really drawn to hearing your personal story. Again, I know you’ve shared it with me, but I think that’ll be a good place to start for listeners to kind of bring in, um, you know, what it is that we’re going to be diving into today, but if you can share your journey as far as where you grew up and, and sort of the beginning your professional life and how that took some changes.
Jonathan
Well, wow. That’s, um, that’s an interesting question. Apropos your whole starting point with anxiety. Um, because it’s very much a story of, I think about anxiety. Um, it’s about not realizing I was ever really anxious. It’s about being very adept at all kinds of things. And so not having to deal with anxiety necessarily. Call it a functional anxiety person. Um, so I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid years actually, um, which may be why energetically there’s a fair amount of anxiety in the, um, in the space I grew up, um, and I grew up in Cape Town at the tip of Africa there and a really spectacular landscape. Really, really, really quite beautiful and I had in many ways an idyllic childhood because I mean, what did we do? We just went to the beach and went to school and I played sport and hung out with my friends and it all seemed really quite, wonderful. Um, and in 1987, my whole family, I was 19 at the time, my whole family moved to Canada. Things had gotten really unstable politically. There was a lot more violence and the economy seemed to be unstable.
Thal
Have you been anywhere else in Africa?
Jonathan
Yes, I’ve actually been to nine countries in Africa. Starting in a Kenya and going across to Uganda and then down. Um, mostly the East Africa. So Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and the countries down below.
Thal
Yeah, my father’s is from Sudan. My grandma from Eritrea and my mother from Yemen
Jonathan
Wow, so you got the full.. Have you been to Africa?
Thal
I have been to Sudan in the late eighties and that was the one time I went there. It was ’89 and I got really sick and it was the one time. So I just wanted to share that. [laugh]
Jonathan
There’s something quite remarkable about the landscape in Africa and it smells and feels completely different to North America. It just really does.
Thal
It’s definitely part of your psyche.
Jonathan
100 percent. I can totally relate. In fact, what’s really weird is, I mean I have traveled a fair amount and spend some time in India as well and it was very weird because a lot of people would always talk about getting really culture shocked when they go to India. And for the weirdest reason, landing in India and just getting off the plane and walking out into the streets. Um, it didn’t feel culture shock at all for me. It was a very weird thing. And that’s not because it’s African in any way, but there’s something culturally about the space that kind of spoke to me in a way that just felt very, oh, this is, this is home in a way. I felt kind of quite home. It’s Kinda cool.
Thal
So then coming to Canada must have been a culture shock for you, which is interesting because, you know, you look a specific way and for you to have a culture shock here… [laugh]
Jonathan
It’s crazy because people say to me like, so did you have an issue with the language or language? So there was some culture shock, but nothing really, I’d say negative. It’s culture shock in the way. That’s weird how you do that. I mean, I remember one of the first things that, um, that I noticed that I thought was so weird was that just comes to me right now. It was just the, um, the newspapers were put in the boxes on the side of the street and you could put in a quarter or whatever it was to take the newspaper out and I thought we’d never have that in South Africa. Someone’s just going to take all the newspapers at once and then started selling them themselves. Like they would never have…
Adrian
The honour system?
Jonathan
Yeah. The honour system. It’s just very different. And um the African person in me was like, that’s nuts! How do you get away with that? And yet it absolutely worked perfectly. So that is really, really cool. So, um, yeah, the um, the culture shock wasn’t in a, in a way where I was 19, I was, went straight to university. So there really isn’t a whole lot for me to say about that in a sense that it was so impactful. I actually in many ways, um, fault a few things that were, what some people would have thought is weird is I felt more free, which is a weird thing because they go, “dude, you’re a white male from South Africa in apartheid. Like how unfree could you have felt?” But the funny thing is that genuinely I really did. And the question is, well, what kind of free did I feel because I don’t know, it wasn’t like anything I could totally put my finger on, but I’d say there was a lot of different little things and it all adds up. It’s the free that I didn’t have to be looking around me all the time. From a crime perspective. It’s the free that I, when I was doing a bachelor of commerce degree, I could choose breadth requirement courses and not just be only doing commerce degree as in South Africa at the time. Um, and it was the free that everything felt so possible. I remember the first summer and I went and got a job in the warehouse in shipping and receiving in a furniture warehouse. And it just felt like the easiest thing to do, there’s a process for it and you just can do it. And if you want to do something, there was something to help you get it done. And everything just felt so much more doable and easy and manageable.
Thal
It’s a shift from like a world where there were so many polarities really. And now you’re in a world where your options have opened up.
Jonathan
Significantly. Significantly. Absolutely. 100 percent. It was like either yes or no, black or white, right or wrong. And this was just one big thing of, well, why do you want to do? I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, whatever. And a very different experience for sure.
Thal
And inner liberation
Jonathan
Inner liberation, inner freedom, all of it. And so for awhile actually, um, life was amazing. It was great. I mean, I fed off that whole experience. And um, and then, um, I would say that I rode that wave till 2000 around the Y2K thing. I got it. I was in software, um, and um, we’d been doing a fair amount of system installation around the whole Y2K problem and everyone thought that planes were going to fall out of the sky and all that kind of stuff and people were putting cans of food and bottles of water in their basement thinking that everything…
Thal
It was the end of the world.
Jonathan
Yeah, so remember that. And I remember my, my ex-wife and I at the time decided we were going to go traveling and quit our jobs and sell our house and um, and we said we would do it after January 2000 because that’s when the planes would have fallen already and now we could go fly. [laugh] And so, um, we went traveling and that’s in that time. That’s really where I, um, did the nine countries in Africa thing. Um, before that having lived in South Africa, I’ve only touched on two other countries in Africa. And so it was interesting that I had to leave South Africa to then become more worldly and go traveling. And so nine countries in Africa was part of that as some of the, um, Southeast Asia and Europe. Um, so we didn’t have a specific time for when we’re going to come back. And I think what was really amazing was I was on this great trajectory before having achieved some management position in a consulting company and I thought, wow, my life’s going somewhere and it felt good and I built this whole thing. And yet it seemed like an exciting, fun thing to do that we could just take off some time and just go traveling and then see what happens. Um, and so there wasn’t …. interestingly enough, it was a time when there was a fair amount of anxiety that had cropped up because just before we went away, I started to have vertigo issues. Massive amounts of spinning, couldn’t actually function properly. And we’d go to the hospital every now and then to just get infusions of sa-…, like whatever the liquids were. Because I had basically vomited every single thing in my system. Because I couldn’t, I couldn’t actually function properly from the spinning in my head, so I was eventually diagnosed with this thing called Meniere’s disease, which is an inner ear condition. And suffice to say that I actually don’t know what causes it, don’t know what triggers it and don’t know if it leads to anything. So it wasn’t really a hope, but evidently an elevated system anxiety, which was one of the things that people seem to think triggers it. So obviously despite the fact that the trip was going to be very exciting and despite the fact that we were selling our house and had no ties in a particular kind of way and I didn’t have to work and there wasn’t really a financial pressing need. And despite all that, at some level there was obviously something deeply disturbing in going traveling even though it was the most exciting thing in the world, which is quite interesting. So, um, I went on the trip and had to manage the symptoms for a little while while going on a trip and it slowly started to subside while on the trip. Um, it may have actually been six months in India doing yoga that may have led to, uh, yeah, to, to shifting that a bit. Um, but we only came back to Canada a year and a half after we’d left with, because we’d never set a time period and felt like we were done, ready to come back. And um, after we came back, um, I didn’t know what I was going to do next and an opportunity presented itself where I would, where I was asked to help build the infrastructure of a company in the automotive space. And the idea was that, “oh, we’re smaller about 10, 15 people and we’re looking to grow really fast and we don’t have any infrastructure, we don’t have systems and processes, we don’t have people organize in a particular kind of way and you come in and see if you can help us figure that out?” And so that again, really exciting, really, really exciting. But yet again, the same underlying anxiety around, “wow, this is the next thing!”. On the one hand, it felt, um, really purposeful. Um, but on the other hand, it felt…. It felt at first no pressure and then suddenly after about a month end, it felt like I got to make something happen here and I started to feel the pressure of that. Um, and I can now remember biologically what that did for me was my whole system then ramped up. I actually remember that now. It’s really interesting. My system just totally ramped up, geared up. I went into that Corporate Warrior Mode, um, and, and I remember we had our first kid and our second child was on the way and I remember waking up one night in the middle of the night and I had, um, my arm was numb, completely numb. I tried to shake it out and um, you know, normally you get pins and needles and you shake your arm out and then suddenly what happens is, um, your arm eventually kind of starts to get the feeling that comes back and you feel good. So I shook my arm and nothing happened and it just wasn’t like the numbness wasn’t kind of going away. And so I started to feel a, that’s weird, so lay down and as I laid down I started to like break out in a sweat, like my face started sweating and all of a sudden I started to feel like the only way I describe it as really, really weak. Almost like I’m slipping away. Like I felt like I’m alone. I just felt myself slipping away and I’d like no energy. So I turned around to my wife at the time. And I said to her, “honey, I think I’m having a heart attack!” And next minute the paramedics are coming in. And I’ve been, uh, you know, uh, taken to Sunnybrook hospital and the doctors are looking at me the whole night I was kind of there. And you know, you kind of go into these experiences where I think I showed up there probably must have been midnight or one in the mornings by like the time they’d done all the tests and everything else. It was probably like seven or 8:00 in the morning or something. And I remember the doctor coming in and he said to me, “well, whatever you’ve got, um, you, it’s not going to kill you because we’ve done every single test and whatever the heck it is, it’s not deadly at this point”. It’s not physical or it’s maybe physical, but it’s not deadly physical because we only deal with this part of the medical system. We only deal with things that are going to kill you right now. And it’s certainly not going to kill you. Um, so say, “what do I do?” He said, well, you’re going to have to kind of tap into another area of either the medical profession or something else to help you deal with whatever this thing is. But we’re outta here. Like it’s not our thing. Right? And good luck for that. But at least on the one hand, there was this huge sense of relief that, okay, I’m not dead, I’m not going to die. Um, but in the other hand, there’s a sense of, well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that. And um, interestingly enough, I went to see a Traditional Chinese Medicine guy because now I’m back on this thing again. Let’s say anxiety. What the heck’s going on? Um, by the way, this experience occurred a bunch of times before I went to the TCM guy. I kept thinking I was dying of a heart attack or something was happening. I was getting up from the office and walking over. I actually walked into an emergency room at a hospital downtown one day and the woman said to me, “what drugs are you on?” And I said, “none”. She says, “well, you look like you’re completely high on drugs”. And it was just, obviously something was happening in my system
Thal
In many ways. You were lucky to have someone to tell you that hey, the medical world is not going to help serve you. Like many people get stuck and just go see one doctor and the other. And really, their problem is not that. So in many ways you were given that permission to go explore.
Jonathan
100 percent. In fact, I had a great family doctor. He said to me, “look, I can give you something if you want. I mean, my sense is this is more closer to the realm of anxiety than anything else. Um, I can certainly give you something for it, but I think you should explore other alternatives to see how you can help yourself with that.”. And so that was kind of neat in a way. Um, I didn’t feel like I needed him to help fix me. And so I explored, I went and actually met with this guy he’s a TCM guy. Now TCM, I’d never had traditional Chinese medicine and what they do is I think he asked me to stick my tongue out and he looks at my tongue and then he feels my pulse because he pushes on it a little bit too and felt, I guess the different types of pulses that you do have. And he looks at me after a bit of this and he says to me, “um, you have almost no yin in your body”. So…
Thal
Wow.
Jonathan
Well, it’s interesting you say that because I just went, “So okay. So what? Like, give me something. Like what’s the big deal right?” He said “you have virtually no yin in your body”. I go, “yeah, so?” He looks at me. He goes, “no, you don’t understand you guys. That’s actually not a very good thing at all”. So I go, “why?” He says to me, “well, picture this,” he says, “you’re like this ball of fire. Okay? But there’s no substance to you in the middle. So there’s only a filament of flame on the outside.” And he says, “there’s nothing to you.” He says “when I push down on your pulse, I get nothing back. Like there is almost no life force to you. You’re basically just burning up! You’re just this Yang fire thing with nothing and burning up!” So at that point I was like, well that sounds kind of about right because I feel a bit burnt out and, and whatever, that feels fine. So I’m still at this point feeling like that’s okay.
Adrian
A burning corpse.
Jonathan
Burning, burning out. I’m okay. Big Deal. Like I’m sure you’ll fix it. And he says me, but he says “it’s not good”. I said, “why?” He says, “well, because if you don’t address it,” he said, “first of all, no one’s going to tell you this”. He says, “because if they take your blood and they probably have, they will not see it in your blood, and if they assessed you physically, it’s not apparent at the physical level in the way that you normally would assess your energy. But the reality is if you do nothing about it, what’s going to happen, and I can tell you what’s going to happen in a few years’ time and I don’t know if it’s five years or 10 years or three years, you’re going to show signs of some degenerative disease and I don’t know if it’s Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. He says, “but what’s going to happen is people are going to go, ‘well, you’re the one in so and so at your thing, statistically.’ That’s what it is. And these are our treatments for it.” And he says, “okay, so here’s the thing.” The minute he started to say that, I started to really freak out more anxiety. Um, and then he looks at me, he goes, “but it doesn’t have to be that way!”
Thal
Because it doesn’t matter how it manifests is what he was trying to tell you that.
Jonathan
Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. And so he said “it doesn’t have to be that way.” I said, “okay, well I’m very much listening to how it could be if you if you telling me. And what he did was he shifted my attention to a landscape where I got to view the world in terms of Yin and Yang. I’d never viewed anything in terms of Yin and Yang. I’ve viewed it always in terms of I want this and this is how I get it and this is how it go from here to there. And all of that. But he changed my relationship with the world to viewing the quality of things as they are rather than what they are. Um, because you can have water that’s boiling or water, that’s cool. And so the quality makes a big difference to whether it’s a Yin or a Yang. And I could be speaking in a meeting and I could be highly animated and agitated and filled with Yang or I could be speaking in a much slower and more connected and calmer pace and that could be more yin and starting to understand that the quality to things is relevant. I didn’t even know it was there nevermind relevant. And so it changed my relationship with the space and with myself in terms of now being aware of something I had no idea about before. Um, and so for, for a couple of years, I, um, I shifted my attention into looking at things through that lens and it really changed the way I engaged in group meetings and with people. And I started to find that I got 10 times more done with 10 times less effort. It was the weirdest thing. It’s almost like the organization, the infrastructure part and the operations, but it just built itself. And all I did was almost hold the space for it while it did that. And I didn’t know that that’s what I was doing at the time. But it was what came out of the experience of having faced some anxiety. Where I had someone tell me this is something that you need to deal with because of the anxiety that you have.
Thal
And it goes back to that quality versus quantity, which is so simple when we say it, but for you like your experience shows it at a very, um, embodied level really,
Jonathan
Right. A very embodied level. That was I think the very key, I discovered later on that the whole anxiety piece was really just the body screaming, come home, come back, come back. And with an obsessively focused Corporate Warrior attention on my objective, I for the longest time would not hear that until it had to send signals like the Meniere’s disease or the anxiety attacks or panic attacks. Um, for whatever reason, I’m a little dense and I’m very tuned in and goal oriented and focused. And people would say, wow, that’s a good thing. You’re a goal-oriented, results-oriented kind of guy. And that’s great. The problem is that to be so, to such an extent, it almost eliminates any ability to see what’s really here while you’re trying to achieve your goals. I think it certainly drained me of energy and limited me in terms of my potential. And so that was the first inkling that there was some…
Adrian
So what were some of the things you explored to bring some Yin into your life? So he had the observation that you were like a flaming ball and with no core. So what were some of the first things you explored?
Jonathan
So two things that are interesting was one is diet. Some foods are Yin and some are Yang and I was very much into the sugars and the processed foods, um, which are very Yang predominant. Into the red meat, it was very evidently Yang predominant. Um, and so what he said to me is you just got to eat more, first of all, fruits and vegetables and less processed things that are cooler. He also said to me to eat a lot of stews and things that just sit and that are hardy, they will give you some substance. And it’s weird because you think, oh, it’s, we think of that, that um, fruits and vegetables in terms of a component of something, but it’s more the energy of it that has the real, the real impact. So diet was, was one piece. He gave me some herbs that were Yang predominant, obviously extracted from things that are more the frequency of that energy. Um, the other piece was more activities. He, he kind of steered me in the direction of more… I was doing yoga and the yoga that I had been involved in, in practicing a form of yoga called Ashtanga Yoga. It’s a yoga that was very vigorous and very Yang predominant in a way. And so he guided me to shift into, um, into exploring activity that was much more Yin predominant. So there’s Yin Yoga itself, there’s recuperative yoga and more to spend time in the meditation realm to slow it down at night and spend time just sitting. Um, so those two things, the physical activity side and the diet side was a big piece and I think just being aware that there’s such a thing of Yin and Yang, that’s the mental aspect. I think that that really helped as well.
Thal
A paradigm shift in your life.
Jonathan
A paradigm shift in my life. 100 percent. Absolutely.
Adrian
Yeah. It sounds like a helpful framework. It’s just so simple because there’s two sort of poles to look at it. But then I get the sense that it’s finding harmony between those two. So it’s not that one is better than the other but having this awareness that, oh, there’s a quality to the way you are and the way other people behave and the interactions and even bringing in food and things we consume that also affect this quality.
Jonathan
Correct.
Adrian
And so that sounds like a very helpful model.
Jonathan
You’re 100 percent correct. I love what you say, you know, I noticed so much of the conversation today and in all walks of life is very binary. Which is in my, in my case, I happened to have a massive yin deficiency. So the focus was build up the yin. Um, some people would hear that to say that Yang is inappropriate or bad or not, right? It’s like, no, dude, you have so much Yang, you don’t need to focus on it right now. You don’t really need to cultivate that. It’s like you’ve got oodles of it. Rather just focus on the yin and then you will come, as you say, into balance where your Yang will be supported by the Yin and the Yin will be brought into its fullest potential by the Yang. And to have that come into play was really where things started to take off for me. Absolutely.
Thal
And to see it positively. If you have that much Yang, then that means you can actually develop that much Yin to match the Yang that you already have. And, and we do, um, we like we can acknowledge that our culture is Yang-oriented. And that just talking about Yin, like a lot of people would benefit from slowing down. Doesn’t mean that living the way that we’re living is pathological. It just means that it needs more integration. More of a whole holistic approach to living. Really.
Jonathan
Yes. Yang is agitative in nature. And what I found is that because we’re so familiar with it, we overlook the biological signals of agitation that call our attention away from what we’re currently focusing on that’s inappropriate. And so we miss the biological signals that are guiding us in the challenges that we’re facing. And so, um, it’s very much a part of the work I do at the corporate level. At the so called, Yang-predominant world,,um, is to help people tune more into the signals that they’re experiencing biologically, to help them extract the wisdom out of what’s appearing right now that they’re unable to see because they’re caught up in focusing on something to their detriment.
Adrian
So, you were beginning to see a shift in your own quality, as you said you were going into these new practices and the diet changes. Um, and you also mentioned you’re actually sort of paradoxically more productive but not as depleted as you were able to do that. What were you starting to move towards after that? What was changing in your life at that point?
Jonathan
So, it’s a really interesting point. I think what a couple of things was, I don’t know if I was moving towards it, but circumstances were changing where the business had grown to the point where the next phase became much more structured and formal and I was asked to play a much more structured role as opposed to the role that I’ve played before was much more of a, “well just float in and out of wherever you need to be to build whatever it needs to be built to deal with whatever is here to be dealt with.” Um, and the role changed into, “well, we’d like you to be the VP of operations and manage the operations. You can’t just waltz into accounting even though you are an accountant. But that’s for the accounting guy to deal with. You stay in operations and you have to kind of manage this piece very well, and then trust that everyone else will manage it and then you’ll have to kind of meet and integrate with them at different points.” And the truth is that’s a great role for someone who’s built for that, but it wasn’t something that I really felt drawn to or comfortable with. And I started to feel very much tied down. I’m constricted. Um, and so I started to feel more anxious, again. I’m bringing it up again and this time, no matter how much are you see, you can’t Yin your way out of that one! You know what I mean? [laughing] Like, so this, so in this case, the anxiety in the one hand that first, you know, um, maybe due to before, before the yin, whatever the anxiety was at that point moved into being the anxiety about not enough yin. Now the anxiety was about something completely different, which is, “where do I fit in the world? Like who am I? Where do I really belong? What should I be doing next?” And I didn’t know what to do. Um, I, I really struggled with that one. And I had to, um, I actually took myself off and I went and spent I think two months in Ireland in little retreat center just hanging out, walking around and the fresh air. Just trying to figure out what I wanted to do next because I really didn’t know. Um, I remember in Toronto, they were building the Tiff Bell Lightbox building downtown Toronto on King Street and we were right across, right across the street, um, and I, my office looked out over that gaping hole in the ground that they were building and it took them about a year to build that. And it took me about a year to watch it being built and just sit all day staring at that building. I’m trying to figure out what my next thing should be.
Thal
How old were you then?
Jonathan
Um, I must have been around 40.
Thal
Would you consider that a mid-life crisis in a way?
Jonathan
Well, it’s a wonderful thing because it truly, truly the timing spectacular. I mean, you definitely can nail that one down as a mid-life crisis for sure. There’s no question about it. Mid-life in so many different ways. And so I watched this thing built and when the building was built, you know, kind of became clear to me that I’m not going to make any headway here. I have to leave in order to figure it out to something we were talking about earlier, the whole courage thing in terms of stepping into something you really don’t know what’s gonna come next. And someone asked me a little bit later as to what it was that led me to do that. And the only thing I could come up with at the time was, um, the pain of staying where I was was greater than the fear of stepping into the unknown. That’s the equation, right? And that was all it was and it was like, I can’t do this anymore. And so I left not knowing what I was going to do next. And I spent some time really just sitting with the, um, the angst. I’m trying to “figure out” what the next piece should be. That was a very, there was a very interesting, interesting piece and I think the executive coaching, I didn’t know that that’s what I wanted to do at all. In fact, what I actually did was I took the time to look at everything I’ve ever done between my chartered accountant days that Ernst and Young and software consulting days and the infrastructure build operational days. And I looked over it and just decided to be incredibly hardcore evaluative, if that’s the word, to see if I really look at everything I’ve done, “where have I gotten results as far as to where people have kind of said, ‘wow, what you’ve done is really good’!”. And I could clearly know that it was good. And then “what did I do to get there and “what, of what I did, is absolutely the same across the board?”. In other words, that never changed no matter what. I want to know what that core thing is. So what fell by the wayside because all the jobs, all the jobs were different was I knew about this or I knew about that or I could do this or I could do that because that job didn’t require it. And all I came up with was when people came into my space, they left my space feeling better than when they came in. That was it. And I was horrified. I was horrified because I had to get honest with myself and when I got to that point of honesty, it was like horrifying because I thought, Holy Moly. Like what am I going to do with that?
Thal
You distilled your values to just like the core.
Jonathan
The core thing. It’s like, who really cares about that? How can I possibly monetize that? So took me a while for a few weeks. I actually was just like stunned in a way. Like okay, my actual feeling was one of worthlessness because there’s like, I don’t have anything. All I’ve got is a stupid thing that when people come into my space I feel better when they then when they, they leave feeling better
Thal
You know that that’s everything! [laughing]
Jonathan
So it was a weird thing. So I sat there and then what clicked over, I had to sit with that for awhile and then what clicked over was, well, “it can’t be that bad if that’s the thing that resulted in all the things that actually got the results!” I hadn’t at the time I was, I was so freaked out by the fact that it was that simple and that kind of benign in a way like, well, nothing that I, um, I missed the point that I’d started out by saying, but it’s the thing that actually got the big results. So at that point, that’s when I realized, okay, it’s the thing that got the big results, but it’s a tiny thing that doesn’t really have substance to it at this point because I haven’t cultivated it in any way. And one of the things I’ve learned from the president of the company, who I had helped build this with, he had always guided us. He was a successful entrepreneur and built lots of businesses. And he always said to me, the only thing that matters is value. He says, I don’t build a business for any other reason. I look to see where’s the value and if I can see value, then don’t be scared that other people can’t see it. He says, if you can see value, then your role then is just to “do you want to just cultivate it?”, and he said that’s a very difficult thing because there’s nothing at the time that’s going to prove itself out at the stage. He said, but the funny thing is is if you spend enough time cultivating the value, what’s going to happen is eventually other people are going to see it and he says, and when they’re going to see it, they’re going to want it and it’s worth a lot more than when you originally started cultivating it, so then that’s how you build businesses and then sells them because then they’re worth a lot more he said, but the cultivating values a very difficult thing. No one wants to do that. It’s scary. It’s challenging. That’s never been done before because it’s in its infancy and we don’t know how to do it and…
Adrian
It can be slow. It can take time.
Jonathan
It can take a ton of time, you don’t know, and it takes a fair amount of courage to do that at the deepest level. And I decided, “you know, what, everything I’ve done up until this point had been, um, surface driven in a way, but the anxiety that I’d been feeling was an existential angst around my place in the world and it felt like if I’m going to find my rightful place in the world, I better start with what’s the core piece of what I’m here to…what I can offer people of value. Otherwise I’ve got nothing to offer. It’s all just learned.” And so I actually just started to meet with people. I went down and chatted with people and spoke with people and after a little while people would say to me, you know, it’s really interesting. I get a really good feeling that if you could, could you do me a favour and come in and speak with, Pamela in my organization. I just have a feeling that she’s going through something. If you could just spend some time with her. Um, it would really help her and I think it would really, you know, she’s got so much talent but she’s just missing something in someplace and my sense is you could really help her based on the way I’m hearing you speak. And so I would say just fine not a problem. And that turned into wow, she’s really turned around, what did you do? And I’m like, I don’t really know. I just kind of sat and listened and spoke. And I don’t know what I’m doing. Um, and so over time started to have these engagements with people in a corporate setting and only corporate because I didn’t know what other setting really to hang out in because that’s kind of where I came from. And so people would have these experiences where they became more productive or they became better at what they were doing or they understood their problem better or whatever it was. And it became more clear to me over time that, oh right. They feel better after spending time with me because they became more clear about something. And that’s what made them feel better. So that really the value is in providing clarity to people and so that’s when I put up my website, which was clarity, guidance, results. I didn’t call myself an executive coach. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. Um, and I had no formal training. I didn’t kind of have a certification or anything, I didn’t know what that was all about. And so I started to cultivate this value, grow this business, meet with people and connect with people over time and eventually discovered that what I was really doing was thing called executive coaching. And so that’s how that came about. The cool part about it was that because I’d never taken a course, I never had a paradigm to work with, I just got to work with people as they are and synthesize that information into my own body as I am. And so I got to discover some really cool stuff about the things that hold people back because all I would do all day would be sitting with people and all they would tell me was what’s a problem? Where do they want to go? Why they can go there? What’s in the way, what’s not in the way, what they wish they had. And, and unpack this with every single different type of person you can imagine in the context of what they consider to be the biggest problem or challenge that they’re facing to date. I learned so much you cannot believe it. I mean, I couldn’t believe it because what it felt like was that they were paying me to discover what’s inside of me that’s holding me back.
Thal
That’s amazing.
Jonathan
Oh, it’s ridiculous. I mean, it was unbelievable.
Adrian
The Yang part of me is like, “okay, so what’s the code?” Like you clearly have cracked the code and let’s spit out the 10, you know, secret…. right?
Jonathan
It’s so interesting…
Thal
The yin part of me wants to just sit and enjoy this. [laughing]
Jonathan
This is awesome. It’s brilliant. It’s so awesome. So, it’s actually funny, it’s the two together that actually has the thing. There’s only one, there was only one. There’s no 10. That’s the really cool part. And um, what I discovered is that in facing our challenges, we overlook our biological experience. And so what I realized was there was a significant amount of people that I was helping bring them back to the biological aspect of their challenge, not the conceptual aspect of their challenge. They’re all very, very strong conceptually. I mean these are people who have gone through university and programs and all kinds of things that are able to conceptualize and think through very complex things. So they thinking mechanism is perfectly fine and they were struggling with a problem because the problem has an aspect of it that isn’t thinking related. And so to assist them to process information in a non cognitive way is completely at odds with that landscape. And so the piece that was missing was really, I would say, is the connection to one’s own sense of self or presence. And that gets heard in a conceptual way. Um, it’s nowhere near like what people actually hear it to be. Um, so that’s when I changed my website relatively recently to ‘What if your problem isn’t what you think it is?’ Because most of the things that we’re doing are all about how we’re framing them up.
Thal
It’s more experiential.
Jonathan
Yeah. Yup.
Thal
And in a way it’s like, I’m so tempted to say this, I’m going to say it. Um, it feels like you’re humanizing the corporate world because a lot of time people just make it sound like, oh, the corporate world. And it’s like very, you know, it’s, it’s as if this entity that’s not, but it is a human world. It is. And we need more of that. We actually, like, there’s no way we’re going to dismantle corporations. I mean that’s what we’re made of. This is our society, this is our culture. So how do we humanize that world? It feels like this is part of what you’re doing.
Jonathan
Yes. And what I’m discovering is that what’s great about it is that the approach that I’m being led to take is not in the cerebral realm. So it almost, doesn’t get caught up with or get trapped in or get tied up in all the trappings of the complex thinking dynamic because it leaves it alone to be as it is. So I don’t mess with it. Um, and what I’m really doing is expanding the perspective around a problem to say, well, that’s great that you’ve described your problem as… The fact that you don’t have enough resources to do this particular job, but tell me what does it feel like in your body when you think about that problem? And the first thing is, is most people don’t even know how to even answer that because they go, “what’s my body got to do with it?” And the answer is everything because you’re the one that’s been tasked with solving it and your body is intelligent and it has information for you to solve that particular problem actually, because I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t want to help you get a result in solving that problem. But the reality is that you’re missing a ton of information and your body can offer it to you. Just like it offered it to me each time I was having these panic and anxiety attacks that I was kind of so bluntly and blatantly ignoring. And um, so that’s an interesting process to take people down.
Thal
Absolutely, thinking with your body.
Jonathan
Yeah. Literally, I would call it processing with your body, and so people learning to actually process information rather than believing the only way to process information is through thinking, um, and, and see what arises as a result of that processing. And it’s been quite remarkable. Mostly what I’ve found is that a big chunk of it is people’s inability to be with biological discomfort. And so we short circuit the biological discomfort by latching onto ideas that we can play over and over and over again as somehow a promise that if we kind of figure them out, then the discomfort will go away. But the reality is we’re suppressing and masking the discomfort. And we’re not opening to the information that the discomfort is sharing. So we can become better delegators because we’re terrified to delegate. You’ve learned all there is to know about delegating and you’re still not delegating well. Why is that? Well, because it’s biologically uncomfortable to delegate. You want to have executive presence, but the reality is standing in the feelings of agitation in a meeting where people are sharing information you don’t agree with is too uncomfortable for you to do so therefore you talk when you shouldn’t talk or you interrupt when you shouldn’t interrupt and therefore you don’t have any presence and it’s because you’re too uncomfortable to experience the discomfort of presence. And so people starting to really having to learn that actually, um, they have to become more aware of themselves biologically so that they can actually shift beyond the limitations that their current tolerance level is. I’m holding them.
Adrian
It sounds tricky because if one is used to this strategy against you know, minimizing the discomfort by turning away and I’m hearing in you a suggestion that perhaps it’s actually towards or there’s a relationship with the discomfort that needs to be explored there. But that must be so hard. Especially somebody going an intense anxiety experience and their body is numb and there’s pain and then, you know. Um, so how do you, how do you coach somebody to…
Jonathan
Oh my God, that’s so much fun! Oh my God, that’s the best part! So the thing that I’ve discovered, the thing that I discovered is that there are two components to information. Um, there’s the thinking component and there’s what I would call the charge component. The component is the part of the information that’s being conveyed or you’re being experienced that you feel it on your cells in your body. It’s like electricity almost. And that charge component could be positive, negative, and it could be really very intensity, positive or really intensely negative. But it’s there. So if I said to you, how’s that assignment coming? I’ve said, “how’s that assignment coming?” And that’s like four words. But the truth is you felt a whole lot of stuff. When I say that you and depending on what was going on, you’d feel a different thing if you’d completed your assignment and going really well, you’d feel different to, oh, I’m behind the gun on that or something bad’s going to happen. So there’s a charge component to that. The problem with us is that people don’t know, and aren’t aware of that charge component, and it’s that charge component that sets in motion the focus to really want to fixate on the thinking part of the problem and what happens is that when we do that, because the charge can’t be processed because we’re using the wrong part of our brain. What we do is we cover up that charge with thinking and we pretend it’s really about some thoughts. So you would say to yourself, if let’s say someone said to me, Jonathan, you didn’t get the promotion. There’d be a charge component to that information and the cover up of that charge component would be thoughts like, “I didn’t want it anyways” or “what a bunch of assholes this company is” and “they never liked me anyway” and “I don’t like them” or whatever that is, which has nothing to do with the verbal side, which is simply you didn’t get the promotion. It could be a million reasons, but my brain is now putting that all into the space because it’s really converted charge, trying to pretend to be relevant information masquerading as verbal things. It’s kind of noise in the way. So when I’m having a a session with someone, what happens is they are experiencing these two things together, which is why they’re struggling with whatever problem they’re having. Part of their problem is that there is verbal information that’s relevant and then a ton of verbal information that’s completely irrelevant. That’s really unprocessed charge and so in a coaching dynamic, what I have to do is I’ve got to sit in the space and I have to process the charge on their behalf. So what happens is as we’re having a conversation, I can feel that charge because I’m feeling it in my body, not in their body. I can feel the uncomfortable situation and my role is to to be connected to the sensations of that charge in a way where I don’t go cerebral. So what really happens in this case is a bit bizarre to share with people because it would seem like I’m not really doing a lot or it’s very dangerous, but there’s chunks of space where people are talking to me and I’m not interpreting or listening to a word they say in the traditional sense, but I’m absolutely 100 percent present to what they’re saying, but it’s being processed non thinking wise until what happens is something that they say hits my brain in a way where I go, oh, that makes sense. Now I can talk about that. And so what often happens is someone will speak to me for 20 minutes and say a whole bunch of complicated, complex things. That’s really all kinds of stuff and I’m just sitting in processing the charge and what happens is when something comes in terms of the verbal thing that makes sense, it’ll make sense to me. Otherwise it won’t make sense to me. It’s all noise. And when it makes sense to me and I share it with them, they go, “how did you just get that from everything I just said? That’s exactly what I was trying to say, but I couldn’t say it with everything that was there!” The crazy thing is it always kind of nails it because as long as I’m trusting the fact that I just stay away from everything that’s charged base and just process it, then what’s left is obviously relevant in some way. Don’t tell white way and then we can work with it. Now what happens there is because I’ve found the one piece of relevant information, all the charge can then no longer come up because what’s going to happen is as they start to work with that, they’ve trek’d a little deeper into their problems so they’ve gotten a little further than where they were before. Because before they were at some point in the process where all that other information seemed so relevant. So now they’re further along in the process because now they’ve got a piece of information that’s much more relevant in all of that and so then what happens is all of a sudden if they don’t know how to process charge within a day, an hour a week or whatever, what’s going to happen is the new more charge is going to come into this space. It’s going to make that progress where they have feel like they attract again and so unless they know how to process the charge of their experience, they are constantly behold and almost to someone who’s going to process it on their behalf. Which is why I started to put together workshops and programs to help people process their own charge, calling it …. I don’t even know what I called it, but it’s something that says recalibrating… ‘The Art and Science of Finding Clarity in a Noisy World’.
Thal
Because you’re trying to use language to describe something that’s nonverbal.
Jonathan
Yes, and the thing is, is in the actual part of the brain, it’s the parietal lobe that actually processes nonverbal information and the frontal lobe processes verbal information, and so you actually, by being in the sensation of something can process nonverbal information and by processing it I mean move it away from the frontal lobe that has been burdened by it. It’s almost like cleaning up the malware on your processor and so then it gets freed up and it goes, wow, I can do all this stuff that I couldn’t do before because it’s no longer submerged under a whole bunch of malware, for example.
Adrian
So this ability that you discovered to filter relevance sounds like is a trainable muscle because you just mentioned that you have developed workshops to try to enhance that. What’s coming to my mind is I’m curious around how you discern what is relevant and what is not relevant. What is noise? What is signal?
Jonathan
What such a great question! Well, um, so it took me awhile to really get clear on what are the fundamental things, but there are four signals that you can tap into biologically that are guaranteed to tell you that right now you need to process at a nonverbal level. The first one is agitation. So you’d say to me, no, come on Jonathan. If I’m agitated, there’s got to be something… the truth is 100 percent. If you’re agitated, if you are biologically agitated, you should be processing nonverbally. If you are constricted in some way, you should be processing nonverbally. If you’re tense in some way, you should be processing non verbally. If you’re euphoric in some way you should be processing in a non verbal way. The the first three are tough for people, but they get there because they can relate. In some ways, euphoria is tougher. One the most difficult ones. The last one is if you’re feeling any dissociation, you need to be processing non-verbally too.
Adrian
And how does that… how does one experience that? Can you describe dissociation?
Jonathan
Very, very difficult to know because the dissociative process is one of making you believe that everything’s okay because you’re genuinely not feeling anything because you’ve genuinely cut off from the feeling. Let’s call it up and out. That’s exactly how I would describe it is up and out. And so the thing is, is what I’ve found is giving people a paradigm doesn’t help. It’s almost like that’s the one way they need a reference point in the coaching. To be with someone where they experienced themselves up and out and bring them ever so slightly back to a particular sense of being and then to feel what that feels like to have a reference point for it. And it’s very, very difficult to work with. Um, and so those are the people that, um, they’re often considered uncoachable in the leadership realm because people don’t like their behavior, but they can’t recalibrate to adjust their behaviour because they’re too heady. And so, um, and they find themselves moved into spaces where they are much more working on things than working with people. Um, in, in some ways if there are working with people, they do it in a very, very highly evolved cerebral way that makes them seem like they’re very smart and figured out because their brain has figured out how to outmaneuver any way of feeling anything biologically. So they appear really better at being in tune than anyone else. But the fact is that 100 percent attitude, they’re the most dangerous people in that space because everyone will think that they really got it going on.
Adrian
It’s like a very evolved compensation.
Jonathan
Very evolved compensation. And I can relate because I’ve been there. So takes one to know one. And so I can call it out. And I’ve made the mistake of calling it out. And the thing is that’s not going to work because no one’s going to get it, right? But the thing is, what I have learned is not to co-create with the interference of the verbal. So if someone’s giving me all the legitimate reasons for whatever, that’s absolutely fine. Don’t have to add my perspective into it verbally. It’s not part of the process, it’s not what I do. Um, so, so that’s, um..
Thal
it’s interesting that you use that word non-coachable. It’s very interesting because you know, then it’s probably another realm that they need to experience or maybe other issues to address.
Jonathan
There are some people who are coachable in that realm, but that’s normally where you’d find a lot of people who are considered uncoachable. That’s where they fall in that category where people just throw their hands up at some level.
Adrian
Can you share more about the nonverbal? I’m interested in that level of processing. So maybe in the context of making a decision. So someone’s got a really tough scenario and a decision needs to be made and then they have those experiences, I forget which ones…agitation was one of them.
Jonathan
So okay, maybe how about we do this. I’ll take you through something and you’ll see if you can do it. So, um, if you put your hand on your lap right now with your palm faced upwards. If you put your attention on the sensation of your hand, you can feel the sensation of your hand. I would assume. That’s biological. You can feel the sensation. Now when you’re putting your attention on the sensation of your right hand, what’s actually happening is you’re activating neurons in the parietal lobe of your brain because the parietal lobe is where you feel sensation. Different parts of your body feel different sensation. It feels sensation based on where they are connected in the parietal lobe. So if you’re putting your attention on your right hand, you will activate the sensation neurons in that area of the brain. Now what you can do as an experiment is think about a scenario that you find highly challenging or agitating. So do you have one that you can think of?
Adrian
Just even the project of this podcast, like there’s certain challenges to it.
Jonathan
Yeah. Okay. So when you start to think about it, what does it feel like in your body when you think about that challenge?
Adrian
Well, I noticed the moment I started talking about it I actually forgot about my right hand. So that was the first thing I noticed. The loss of connection.
Jonathan
Yes. And what happens to your body?
Adrian
A little tighter around the chest.
Jonathan
Okay. So perfect. So as you think about the project, there’s some tightness in your chest. Now the tightness is some form of constriction. So the first problem that we have is most people aren’t aware that they’re tight in the chest, so people have to become more self aware and you have to start practicing. And so we’ll talk about that in a second, but I’ll take you through this and I’ll bring you back to what you can do to practice. So if you now put your attention on the sensation of your hand and I say to you okay, we’re going to play a game. What we’re going to do is your role is to stay focused on the sensation of your hand at all costs, so it is the primary attention. But while you’re doing that, bring in the idea of the challenge you have around the project and see how the two can coexist to the extent that you have to stay in sensation and see what happens. So tell me what happens when you start to do that.
Adrian
I’m starting to notice that I can do that. So I’m maintaining focus on my right hand. It’s, it’s a little cool. I can feel the air. I’m starting to run through scenarios of the stressors about this project and deadlines and that sort of thing, but I have contact with my hand.
Jonathan
How does your chest feel?
Adrian
That was actually interesting. So not as tight. So when I was noticing that, when I turned attention, it was actually just occupying more volume.
Jonathan
Okay. And so while are you staying in the sensation of your hand so you’re putting attention on it, what is your relationship to the challenge that you had before compared to your relationship to the challenge?
Adrian
Now it doesn’t seem as as big of a challenge.
Jonathan
Okay. So what you’ve done is in that process, as long as you’re processing the charge of the challenge, because if you’re not processing the charge of the challenge, feel what happens if you take your attention away from your hand, the charge will come back to the challenge related, and you will start to feel the constriction and your possibilities will narrow. Now if you want to face the challenge, you want to expand your possibilities of what’s there and so you’re going to have to process the charge like we spoke about you have to literally be in a nonverbal thing. It has nothing to do with the problem as you think it, but everything to do with the problem as it’s being experienced in the body, your body. Now what happens is now you can actually face your challenge. So the big problem with this is that first of all, people aren’t aware that they’re either agitated, constricted, or tense in their body to begin with, and so you have what has to happen is they have to build up. They have to start a practice of strengthening the muscle that would alert them to the fact that they actually are agitated, constricted, or tense, and so the way they would do that is they could sit for five or 10 minutes in the morning when they get up in the morning, the first thing they do and sit and put the attention on the sensation of their hands or their feet and just feel sensation and do that for five or 10 minutes before you go to bed at night, just before you go to sleep. Now, what’s remarkable about that is that that activates neurons in the brain in the parietal lobe. What it’s going to do is if you do it for long enough and for regular enough, it starts to form neurosynaptic connections, which means that now you start to actually form new neural pathways and those neural pathways are like your muscle building and so you will start to feel things you’ve never felt before. it’s weird, I’ve had clients who say to me, “dude, okay, that’s great. Three weeks ago you told me to do this practice, and what I can tell you is that since I’ve been doing it, I felt nothing but agitated and anxious and it’s making it worse.” What I often say to them, or almost all the time is, well, what it’s showing me is not that it’s making you agitated or anxious. It’s that you finally aware of how agitated and anxious you actually are in the thing you’ve now raised your level of awareness to something you weren’t aware of before. So now you may not like it, but the fact is you’re now at least in contact with discomfort that you were completely not in contact with. So then the other pieces is to include that and to expand the practice to maybe every hour for a minute, have something beep on your phone or something and say sensation and you feel a sensation for a minute. And then the other pieces during activities such as driving your car or going for walks or you know, watching TV, see while you’re doing it, if you can be in sensation while it’s occurring. What I often do is I take people through a real quick exercise to show them that nothing bad’s going to happen because when you’re in sensation, you’re not actually interfering with your frontal lobe. So your frontal lobe can process perfectly fine. So if someone goes to sensation, stays completely in sensation, I could say to them, what’s 10 times three? And they have no problem with answering 30 while in sensation. At first, they’re binary, I often catch them, they go “30!” and I go, “you left sensation didn’t you?” And they go, “oh my God, I didn’t realize that!” And so at first you have to get to sensation. But what they discover is that there isn’t a time when they’re in sensation that their frontal lobe become stupid or can’t process or they forget how to drive or they don’t change lanes at the right time. Actually things improve because the charge component that’s masquerading as relevant information isn’t there, so they become a better driver and they’re cooking food or making tea or doing something or vacuuming the house in a way that’s much more cohesive and integrated. Be in alignment and enjoy it. They start to feel more enjoyment but not because from the outside it’s making them any happier. It’s just that there’s less stuff pushing on them.
Adrian
Yeah. So increasing the vividness of their sensations.
Jonathan
Correct.
Adrian
So both painful and pleasant.
Jonathan
Getting real!
Adrian
Right.
Jonathan
Getting real with yourself and learning ultimately to accept the reality of whatever is here, but not cognitively because cognitively I could talk myself into accepting it, but the truth is I don’t really. My body is agitated. So why don’t I accept that reality and just be with the agitation in a nonjudgmental way, but not nonjudgmental in a way we think about it. Nonjudgmental in the way where you’re not thinking about it at all. It’s not judging it at all. You’re just really processing it so it’s not for everybody because that takes courage because you only going to kind of do that if ‘a’ it’s very clear to you that this is something that’s relevant and it doesn’t promise anything because it’s not embedded in the realm of the cognitive that says, well, if you do this and this’ll help and then you’ll get here and then you’ll speak to him, and then this’ll, um, it doesn’t do that. It really just offers you an avenue beyond what you’ve tried for however many times you’ve tried it and realized that wasn’t working. And so you’ll try something else?
Thal
I feel like someone listening would say, well, what’s the point of going outside of my comfort zone if it’s gonna hurt.
Jonathan
Right. And so the only analogy I have for most of my clients is the weightlifting one or the gym where two people could walk into a gym and they both want to get stronger. And so that’s kind of the point. They both pick up the weights and one person goes, “that hurts” and the other person goes, “that hurts”. And the second person, when it hurts and they go, “ugh, ooh” and they put it down and they go, “that’s not for me.” Then the other person goes, “well, you’re telling me that if I keep lifting this weight, my muscles are going to get stronger.” And I go, “yes”. And they go, “but it hurts”. I go, “what’s going to happen is if you keep doing it, your relationship with the pain is going to change. That I can guarantee you that if you keep lifting those weights and doing that, within a short period of time, the pain will still be there, but the way you feel it will be very different. And so you’re almost will start to enjoy the pain and the pain is no different. And in fact what’s going to happen is when you start to get stronger and that weight becomes lighter, you’re going to want to put more weight on to get more pain”. And they go, “really?” I go, “that’s how this works”. So this is the same thing.
Thal
And results!
Jonathan
And results. So the idea behind wanting to face your pain/insecurity, whatever those agitative, biological discomfort is that at the at the behind your biological discomfort are the things you deeply desire or want at the deeper level, not at the level of like one more money, but at a deeper level of I want more of myself in the world, that one more of whatever that thing is that I’m trying to track towards and I can come into alignment with it because I’m blocked and I know deep down that I would be a better leader and I know deep down that I know what to do. But the truth is I’m scared. And the thing is absolutely. So scared would mean you’re agitated. You constricted, you’re tense. You need to process the charge that’s commensurate with you being scared so that you can ultimately experienced a little bit more space to inch your way forward into the land that you would normally never go into. And that’s the way you will get the results. But to paint some wonderful map that’s cognitive will not yield the result. Because the minute you feel uncomfortable, your brain will short circuit and tell you why, you know, today’s not a good idea to go there.
Adrian
Yeah. And just to piggyback off that analogy with exercise, this is coming to mind the importance of having different ways to approach the practice and finding one that suits you because there are many forms of exercise and maybe running on a treadmill isn’t enjoyable, but perhaps you know, doing stretches and lifting weights might actually be your jam. And so as you’re describing these practices, there seems like there’s overlap with this mindfulness popularity. And in that, like exercise, there are many offerings, many techniques, many different traditions. Is it intentional that you didn’t want to use that word ‘mindfulness’? Because I know there is a current phenomenon happening with the popularity and the commercialization of it.
Jonathan
It’s a good question. Um, you know, I started, funnily enough, a little while ago, I started to kind of jump on the mindfulness bandwagon thinking that that was where I was going until actually worked with someone who helped me get a little bit more clear about where I am going and what came out of that is this idea that for me at least, it’s not about a concept like mindfulness. It’s about my own journey. And so what was the answer that I got was for me, it’s beyond mindfulness. Not because mindfulness is irrelevant but because if I started getting stuck in the concept of mindfulness personally for me, it would hold me back because then I’d be beholden to mindfulness as a thing and I’d have to become an expert in mindfulness and I don’t want to be an expert in mindfulness. There are plenty of those. I just wanted to kind of do my weird and wacky thing and learn from it and share. And if there’s something useful that comes out of it, then people will take it and go, “this is exactly… I can see what you’re doing. There’s so much commonality to mindfulness!” In fact, I’ve had a lot of people say to me, “now I get mindfulness, whereas I never got it before. Now I can see the relevance of it”. I’m like, great, awesome. Go play in mindfulness, go playing whatever you want to play in. For me, it was much more simple as to the fact that it’s more about simply finding a way to access a part of yourself that you’re overlooking while you’re struggling with something.
Thal
And like for me, it’s so tempting. I’m connecting it to different traditions. What you’re saying, I’m connecting it to psychology. When you talk about the charge and how, you know, when you don’t process the charge, it’ll come back. It really is about our unconscious patterns and our complexes is what it is. And like, you know, when you talked about the non-coachable or uncoachable people, well I’m thinking maybe it’s time for those types of people to explore psychotherapy and go deeper and then come back to the coachable world. So, you know, these are the connections that I’m making, but it’s just so important to see the experiential side when you talk about it, like it being embodied and practical and um, because a lot of people look at meditation like that’s a waste of time. But when you talk about go into sensation, take a break while you’re working, go into sensation. That’s meditation in a way.
Jonathan
No, totally is. It absolutely is. It’s much more in alignment with the, I think it’s the Vipassana meditation where it’s around feeling and being tuned in at that level to your breath and your sensations. So absolutely. I love what you said. When you were just talking right now, I was really loving it because what you’re sharing is about the relevance of everything! And that’s what I love is this idea that somehow one thing is better than another. It’s like “no, one thing is more appropriate for Bob because he needs that right now. But Sally needs that right now”. And the more we can learn about all the wonderful things that are out there, the more we can kind of find the perfect meal to suit the perfect body that in that way, um, and each person’s completely unique. And so that makes it a complete crap shoot if you think that somehow we’re going to take completely unique people in completely unique situations and put on some kind of thing that says, well, this is the way in which we should approach things. Um, it’s no fun anyway. It’s much more fun to play in a more magical way to say, “well, let’s see what’s going on and let’s see what’s out there”.
Thal
And people become overwhelmed by all these ideas and concepts and just turn away. And it’s such a waste because there’s an opportunity for everyone to grow and live an authentic life. Really.
Jonathan
Someone said to me the other day, I was talking about how I’m going to, um, someone said to me, well, you should be speaking. And I said, well, I don’t quite know what to say and what’s the message and where to speak. And they said, well, um, why don’t you just hire a coach and follow the breadcrumbs? And I think the ‘follow the breadcrumbs’ was the piece that really is what you’re saying is there’s people are scared. And the truth is because we all wanted to kind of have it planned out and know how it’s gonna turn out. And the truth is sometimes you have to kind of maybe do some yin yoga before you find out that it’s meditation that’s your thing and you have to go through trying out a few things before you discover that maybe psychotherapy was the answer and not the medication, but you have to take some medication. Then you have to do this and then you had to do that and you find your way there. And it’s not because medication was bad. It was because that’s how you had to figure out what the next thing you had to do and sometimes you figure out that it was good until it wasn’t anymore. Was relevant until it’s not. And so when we stop being so binary about things in a way where things have to be in or out and if they’re out there bad and if they’re in they’re good, we can start to be more… Just so much more at ease with… expansive …and allow things to kind of come into our space and leave our space too when they’re not relevant. And not to say, well no, now I’m onto the new thing and it’s wrong. It’s like, no, I’m onto this because it’s where I’m at right now. Not because where it should be.
Thal
Yes. “could, should, would.” [laugh]
Jonathan
Totally. Totally, totally. Yeah.
Adrian
Just this conversation right now, I’m taking moments to check into my sensations as I’m listening to… When you guys are speaking and I’m just sort of…
Thal
I’m buzzing. [laughing]
Adrian
Yeah. And there are moments where actually I’m also reminded that there are moments where nothing needs to be said either, right? So like sitting in that silence and just sort of processing the body sensations. It’s like, “actually, yeah, I don’t need to add anymore right now.” Right? And how important that insight is that I’m just connecting right now. Maybe in like a brainstorming session, you know, you’re with a group of friends and you’re trying to brainstorm ideas and sometimes it’s to not always be providing input and adding to it, but it’s just to kind of hold that awareness, open that perception, you know, bring in more information and sit with it.
Thal
And as you were saying that, I was thinking about something you had mentioned, Jonathan, earlier about wanting to be like more of yourself in the world. And that’s so important to be fully present, to be more of ourselves and to get there, yes, courage, but also, it’s going to sound very cheesy, but to really love ourselves, to allow it to come out into the world.
Jonathan
Yeah. What I’ve discovered is part of loving myself is being honest with myself about what I hate about myself. Because then I can at least be acknowledged and felt and it can be aired. And what a lot of people misperceive is that loving themselves is telling themselves positive things about themselves all the time. But what I’ve found is being ruthlessly honest with ourselves, um, and having the courage to allow for that is probably the greatest self love we can direct towards ourselves because it’s the deepest acceptance of whatever is really here as opposed to sanitizing what’s here in favour of what I think I should be or what’s appropriate for me or trying to be better than where I was two minutes ago. The truth is we’re only as good as what we are in the moment.
Thal
Absolutely. And being honest with ourselves. It goes both ways. It doesn’t have, it’s not about being harshly critical or just sugar coating everything.
Jonathan
“I’m scared”. “I’m embarrassed”. “I’m ashamed.” “I’m concerned” or “I’m worried” or “I’m happy”. Some people… Can’t believe …they don’t want it….they’re scared to be happy. And some people, terrified to be scared and it’s just because we don’t necessarily… Everyone’s got their own pattern. And so we can really know. It’s not typical to know what the thing is, but what it is is whatever the pattern is this hold back from feeling what is legitimately deep down already being felt at some level. For some people, feeling joy is actually a profoundly uncomfortable experience because it’s different and it’s unsafe and it means that I’ve taken my eye off the ball and I haven’t been whipping myself hard enough and something bad’s going to happen. So it’s for some people, you know, feeling joy would be appropriate, but then again, for other people they’re caught up in only feeling joy because there’s a sense of if I’m not feeling happy or joyfully pleasurable experiences, then there’s something bad going on. And so they shy away from feeling a negative experience and owning it all, experiencing and sharing it with the world or themselves at least first.
Adrian
Is there anything you want to share with listeners as far as, um, because we started this conversation with your story and there were so many juicy things that we dove into, but now also a, I kind of want to bring this story mode back and, and just a place that you feel comfortable leaving the audience.
Jonathan
So I think, um, what comes up for me is that if I think about where I’ve been and the journey I’ve been on, things I’ve learned on the journey, it’s um, it’s all really about being with whatever is there and allowing it to reveal itself fully. A lot of what we try and do is almost like project out in an abstract way. What I want and how I think I’m going to get there. And you know, I do a lot of strategic planning for the organization. It’s not a bad thing, but sometimes if what’s underneath is agitative or constrictive or tense, are we feeling depressed about something? So I’m going to now, while I’m in my constricted, depressed state, I’m going to try and project out where I want to be in the things I think I’m going to do when I’m depressed, it takes away from the experience of what I’m actually occurring inside. What’s actually occurring, I don’t get to experience it. So what I would say is in addition to the strategic planning and the figuring out where we want to go, which has absolute relevance in this world, let’s not get that wrong, we can include in that process a willingness to be with biological discomfort and the sensations as they are where we are in that moment just for a little bit more than what we would normally be with. To see what in that being with it, arises, what opens up, what, um, what transpires five, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. See what happens. Because that five or 10 or 15 minutes, it’s five or 10 or 15 minutes longer than you’ve ever done before. And so you’re giving your sell five or 10 or 15 minutes of a possibility you’ve never had before and then we don’t know what will come up in your brain in terms of giving you more strategic direction or what you think you could do next. Um, and that might be the very thing you need to have revealed in order for you to be inspired.
Adrian
Sounds beautifully terrifying. I love it. Jonathan. Thank you so much for joining us. It was a real pleasure.
Thal
Thank you.
Jonathan
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me guys.