L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - ...But I'm Grateful: Reducing Stress and Anxiety in The Workplace with Gratitude and Grounding Practices

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

When we deepen our relationships with our jobs and the work we do, we sometimes let our connections to ourselves and others dwindle. Preserving these connections must be turned into a deliberate practice if we wish to live happy and healthy lives. But being deliberate with these relationships we often take for granted is surprisingly difficult. Lori Saitz joins the show this week to share some insights on the powers of gratitude and grounding to return us to the positive energy that fulfills us.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential and building a culture of learning in your organization. This week, my guest is Lori Seitz. Lori is a coach and consultant who founded ZenRabbit, an employee wellbeing firm that started two decades ago as a baking company.

We'll dive into that story momentarily. In addition to having helped countless individuals and teams improve productivity and wellness, Lori has delivered speeches for organizations including Women's Impact Network, AARP, and the Brookings Institution. Lori also shares insights of her own and other experts through her podcast, Fine is a Four Letter Word,

and through her newsletter, Workplace Zen. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Le, and today my guest is Lori Seitz. Lori, I'm very excited to chat with you. Thanks for joining today. Thanks for having me. So Zen Rabbit is your brand,

and you've been doing this in some form or fashion for a little over 20 years now, I think, if I'm not mistaken, according to LinkedIn and our previous conversation. In its current form, you're working with individuals, more or less as a coach, occasionally with corporate clients and teams and leaders, you're giving direct interventions and tips and sort of direct coaching. But it used to be cookies. And I would love to just start off if you could explain exactly

what was going on when you first started Zen Rabbit. Yeah, Zen Rabbit started as Zen Rabbit B Company, and it's been through several iterations since then. But that first business, I was making and marketing a product called the Gratitude Cookie that was based on a family recipe. And it was designed to be a way for business people to say thank you to their clients

and to people who supported their success, maybe referral sources, team members, things like that. And so customized packages of gratitude cookies that we're shipping all over the world. What was it that tipped you off at this point that something concrete and real and physical and delicious was what we needed to show gratitude to each other? In our pre-chat that we had before we hit the record button,

we talked about how, you know, I've done lots of interviews, not so much for this show in particular, but I've met lots of authors in the management space and the leadership space through my career. And books have been written on developing deeper professional connections, and sometimes gratitude is a topic within those,

sometimes it's not. But these books and these ideas have been around in sort of that self-development business growth world for a long time, up to a century at this point with some of the real classic books. What was it about 20 years ago that you saw or observed in people or in organizations or in professionals around you that made you say, damn, people need to give more to folks

and I got a perfect recipe for this. What were you seeing out in the world? Perfect recipe. I like how you did that. What I was seeing was I was seeing I had this cookie recipe and I wanted to do something with it and create a business out of it. But it was never my goal to be the next Mrs. Fields.

And with many years of marketing experience behind me, I came up with the idea of creating it as this tool that businesses could use. The thing though too, that I talked a lot about, so I had the cookie business, and I was also doing a lot of workshops and presentations around how to differentiate yourself in business. And gratitude is a perfect way to do that. Because so many people don't

do it. And I remember having a conversation with a woman in a networking event and she's like, well, why would somebody want to say thank you to their clients? I mean, they're getting paid, they're doing the work that they're getting paid to do. Why would they need to then like additionally say thank you? And I'm like, yeah, that's probably why your clients don't like you. But I'm like, yeah, that's probably why your clients don't like you. But I don't know. Take this cookie. But it's really like when you think about it,

like nobody gets too much gratitude. Nobody's getting too much appreciation. Like I've had too much today, stop saying thank you to me. Like it's actually the opposite. Like people don't get appreciation. And there was, I recently came across a statistic that 65% of Americans didn't receive recognition in the workplace last year, according to a study.

And so people thrive on recognition, on being told that they're valuable. And so that was really the basis of that business was helping businesses differentiate themselves in a way that made them more human and cookies are yummy. I'll say, it's funny that now that we are talking about this, it's bringing back memories of when I was in college and a business called Insomnia

cookies opened up on my campus. I don't know if they're still around. I would hope so. They were pretty delicious. I remember hearing about them though, yeah. Yeah, and at first I was like, oh, that makes me feel like they're going to give me Insomnia. But then it became very clear that most of their orders were happening late at night when one of my close friends started delivering for them between the hours of two and seven a.m. just to make some extra money. And I'm thinking like, yeah, you know, cookies are, like everybody wants cookies.

How do you differentiate yourself in a business saturated with deliciousness? It's like, what do you do there? Well, the fact that people were sending anything to say thank you was really the differentiating point. But then these cookies, which I have never, like it was the most basic recipe and it was a family recipe,

we used to make them for the holidays. People, I had a meeting yesterday with somebody I haven't seen in 15 years, and she's talking about the cookies. Like people are still freaking talking about these cookies. Yeah. Is it a secret family recipe? Yes.

Okay. But they're kind of a cross between a butter and a sugar cookie, and they're just really plain and delicious. Please, please, please, Lori. I'm really interested in these cookies. I would love it if you could just maybe one of the secret ingredients, just anything you can give me.

These sound really delicious. Very excited about this. Absolutely. Here's the thing. Lori, I am not kidding when I say that might be the most ingenious creative concoction of cookie ingredients I have ever heard in my entire life. Anyway, moving on. You mentioned a study I'm wondering if it probably wasn't the exact same one, but I

read a Harvard Business Review article actually that was based on I want to say it was from Gartner or something like that. And there were it was just about management and how managers are struggling. And I think it was the year 2023 last year. There was a lot of reported disconnect between managers and employees at the personal level, but also at the functional and operational level. There was something in the realm of more than half

to two thirds of people felt as if what managers were providing to their direct reports just like wasn't work that was relevant to business goals and it wasn't clear whose fault it was the manager or whatnot but there was a lot of disconnect going on. It became clear that there is just multiple degrees of disconnect between managers and direct reports and I think we've all probably felt this at some point in time. So if you don't mind, I'd like to jump in and talk about some of these practical things

that you actually do. So in the world of gratitude, obviously you have the gratitude cookie, but since then you've developed many more tips, tricks, directives, things that you do. I would love to just talk about some of those tactics. Have any of these gratitude tactics been most effective in your observations working with your clients and as a coach? Yeah, all of them. But we can talk about one specifically that's really easy that anybody

listening could take away and use right now. And that is what I call the, but I'm grateful for exercise. It's so simple. It seems like stupidly simple, like how could this work? But I guarantee it works. So we live in a culture that tends to focus on things that are going wrong and complaints and criticisms. And we're all guilty of it. Like I'm not pointing fingers or making judgments.

What I recommend is that the next time you catch yourself complaining or criticizing about anything, could be anything, like the bus was late or the car broke down or whatever it was, catch yourself in that moment and say, but I'm grateful for, and then come out, come up with anything that you're grateful for. It doesn't even have to be related to the situation. But I'm grateful for. You may have, have you ever heard that you, that it's not great to use the word, but in a sentence like, you know, you're giving somebody some praise like Tyler, you did a great job,

but next time now you just negated everything, all the good stuff that came before that. And that's exactly the reason we're doing it here is because we are deliberately negating the complaint or criticism and focusing on the what I'm grateful for part. And the more you do this, the more you train yourself to do this, the more quickly you, one, you will become a more naturally grateful person

because not everybody is naturally grateful. I actually think we're born grateful, but somehow it gets conditioned out of us as we live, you know, grow up and stuff. But this helps you become back to a naturally grateful person and the more you practice this exercise, the more you will this exercise, the more you will automatically go to gratitude. Like I had a situation a few months ago and my car broke down

in the middle of six lanes of traffic. It was just turning into evening into night and I, my car did not move and I'm sitting there. And I immediately, you know, I called roadside assistance and got that taken care of. And then I immediately went into gratitude of, thank goodness I have roadside assistance. Thank goodness they're coming to get me quickly. All the good things I could think of in relation to this situation.

I was only a mile from the Airbnb where I was staying. Like all of these things I could think of in relation to this situation. I was only a mile from the Airbnb where I was staying. Like all of these things I could come up with instead of being angry about it because that wouldn't have changed the situation. But feeling the gratitude for it changes my energy and it changes the way I show up in the world. I'm glad that you framed that in terms of the reframing using the word but. I'm familiar with the yes that in terms of the reframing using the word but.

I'm familiar with the yes and tactic, you know, instead of saying but you say and yes and from both the world of comedy when I used to sort of study comedy in school, improv, you know, you don't say no, you say yes and and you push the scene forward essentially. And also what I've just been learning in, you know, nonviolent communication principles, both in my own personal social romantic life, but also with other folks on this show. You know, I've heard of this tactic of,

yes, ending somebody's point when giving feedback or when sort of reframing something, it's better to stay in the positive than utilize the but which kind of just implies a reversal or something that's contradictory, I guess. So I'm glad that you framed it that way. Also in our pre-chat, you mentioned that this is a scientific thing as you just began to talk about

that this quite literally sort of reframes your brain in that way. Like that is actually sort of a neurological change that you're undergoing. Do you wanna say any more on that and sort of what that underlying impact is? Yeah, thanks for that invite. Uh, it, what, practicing gratitude literally strengthens the neural pathways in your brain.

So the more you practice gratitude and getting into that energetic level, which I don't want to get too woo woo, cause that's not what I'm about. I actually am known for making too woo-woo because that's not what I'm about. I actually am known for making the woo-woo practical. But we are energetic beings and gratitude is the highest level of energy that you can achieve. So when you are operating from that energetic level, you are strengthening neural pathways, your body is releasing feel good chemicals like dopamine and serotonin and reducing cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

It increases the effectiveness of your immune system as well. And so all of these good things more than that even happens when you practice gratitude. What about gratitude toward others now? So moving back to, you know, gifting a cookie, other tactics that you have in that world for showing gratitude for employees since you've gone from the bakery to what you're doing now. Have you advanced into new strategies?

Any new ideas that you're giving people these days? Yeah, there's an exercise I really love doing with my business clients, with corporate teams. And it's, it involves writing a gratitude letter. And it evolved out of my individual executive coaching practice where I had people writing gratitude letters, three gratitude letters to people who had supported their success in some anyway in the past.

And so then this expanded to in corporate teams, having each person on the team write a gratitude letter to another person on the team. And not to make it overwhelming, let's say there's 50 people on the team, each person writes one letter to one other person and it's organized so that everybody gets a letter, nobody's left out.

But the impact that has on the person and it's organized so that everybody gets a letter, nobody's left out. But the impact that has on the person writing it as well as the person receiving it is absolutely incredible. And I get sometimes get pushed back because isn't that going to be awkward? It feels awkward. It feels uncomfortable. And isn't the other person going to feel uncomfortable receiving it? Like, it's going to be weird. And it has never, ever been weird for the recipient. Like, nobody has ever said, ah, this is corny. Again, it comes back to they're just so overwhelmed a lot of times with emotion, because somebody is recognizing their value. And we're talking about letters that are more than just like, hey, you're a cool person, thanks for being on my team.

Beyond that. Yeah, I feel like you're just teaching vulnerability here, which is so rare in the workplace because quite frankly, things are pretty cutthroat, especially nowadays in business. It's competition. That's what we're dealing with in capitalism is fighting our way to the top and being the biggest and best. And unfortunately, sometimes that encourages behaviors that don't align with vulnerability

and close connection. And going back to my initial point of just wondering what was going on between managers and direct reports where they don't seem to be able to communicate these issues to anybody except for these anonymous surveys or the Gartner surveys that that that they're receiving. Have you seen long-term change result from this? Once you encourage them to take that first step into vulnerability and saying, hey I appreciate what you've done you know recognizing and thanking them, showing gratitude in this very physical, you know, tangible way almost. Have you seen them, these people that you're working with develop, you know, more long term habits that express vulnerability and invite

closer connection? Yeah, because what we're doing is we're setting up, we're setting the stage for trust and for building interpersonal communications. You know, we have all of these tools for connecting virtually and communicating. And now we have AI and all of these ways of being not face-to-face, but as humans, we have not evolved past the need for interpersonal connection and communication. And so this is opening the door for that. And there was another study, you mentioned a study earlier, I saw a study from, and maybe it was the same one, but Harvard and Wharton that showed receiving a thank you from a supervisor, boosted productivity by more than 50%.

Wow. But at the same time, people are less likely to show gratitude at work than anywhere else. And that only 10% of the people who expressed gratitude made it a daily habit. And then on top of that, 60% of people never or rarely expressed gratitude at work.

So this brings it back to like bottom line, what businesses are looking for. You want more productivity, start being more grateful. So before we move on from this, I do want to sort of need a little bit at this because I have seen this term thrown around either like toxic gratefulness, toxic gratitude, or weaponized gratitude in some cases, which seems to come from like more like abusive relationships and that sort of thing. But I have to say I have seen this in particular when I was working in in Los Angeles, never with any of the people that I worked with or the companies that I worked with, but I interface with a lot

of like just baby age startups, where the leaders would encourage gratitude like this, almost like you are as a coach, they would encourage that among their employees, you know, we are starting something so like innovative and new and world changing here. Be grateful that you get to be a part of this team, you know, be grateful that you get to change the world for a living, that sort of thing. And it wasn't done with any sort of malice. But I do think that gratitude has sort of, you know, made its way through certain circles as high energy, as you mentioned, I do think that there are certain parts of industry that are more or less aware of that. And it usually tends to be in that entrepreneurial realm

where energy just has to be conserved and really optimized to push the limits of things, especially in tech and in that realm. And I just, I wanna ask you, if you've ever seen this sort of thing, I want to encourage that we don't go into that sort of weaponized or toxic realm of gratitude because I do think that there are times when people are encouraged to be grateful

for what they have, when in in fact they probably deserve more. You know, it might just be compensation. It might just be energy that might be really burning themselves out and they're grateful for the opportunity to work on something like I was saying. So world changing, but it's not always good for you. And sometimes you have to, I think, you know, put that gratitude aside and say, okay, I may have to sort of fend for myself here instead of just continuing the gratitude.

Do you understand what I'm saying there? Any thoughts on that? I understand what you're saying. And I think that that use of the term gratitude of like, just be grateful for what you have is like hitting somebody in the head with a bat. Like it is weaponized. And I don't think that's true gratitude.

That's kind of like control and victimization. And that's not true gratitude. True gratitude you feel good about. If you're telling somebody, be grateful for what you have, like that doesn't come from a place of love and vulnerability and like that high energetic, that's just kind of putting them down, putting them in their place. Like it doesn't feel good.

So what I'm trying to say here is that true gratitude in the real sense feels good. If it doesn't feel good, it's not real gratitude. true gratitude in the real sense feels good. If it doesn't feel good, it's not real gratitude. Yeah, I would assume that the work that you do results in people, like I was saying, almost conserving energy because less of it is entropy and more of it is positivity.

So at the end of the day, by sort of adopting this gratitude mindset, they hopefully have the energy, the wherewithal, the confidence to pursue what they deserve if they are in fact in a situation where maybe they're not getting compensated what they feel is fairly, or if they just don't feel they're being treated fairly. Hopefully this sort of practice, you know, encourages them to pursue a better situation. Have you seen that sort of thing happen in your work? encourages them to pursue a better situation. Have you seen that sort of thing happen in your work? Yes, absolutely. And then as you were saying that, I was thinking, if you're in a situation where you feel you're being taken advantage of,

but being told to be grateful for that situation, that's not, no, that's not okay. Yeah, of course. I think this is, I think you've written about this actually, but this is one of the reasons why I think it's sometimes important to work with an outside coach or an outside leader who's not a part of your company because, you know, having somebody internally who's telling you to be grateful when you may have qualms about what's going on is problematic and having a coach who comes in and says externally, you know, what are the things that you can be grateful for? You know, I, I support you in seeking what you deserve, but also as somebody who's objective here, I can teach you how to find gratitude in the things that you

should in fact be grateful for. Maybe that's just the answer there is having that outside source. Yes. The other part of that is never negating your feelings or anybody else's feelings. They're valid, whatever they are, they're valid. And at the same time, still being able to find things to be grateful for. And maybe it's not, I'm grateful I have this job, like, because my boss told me I should be grateful

I have this job. It's, I'm grateful I have an income while I look for something else to do. Or I'm grateful I have an income while I look for something else to do. Or I'm grateful, I have support at home and I can go there and feel comfortable. And whatever it is, there's other places you can find gratitude and let that support you as you move forward out of a situation.

But that's not to say that you're, you know, be grateful and don't recognize that you're in a situation that doesn't suit you. Yeah. I'm glad we went over some of those options and sort of where you draw the gratitude farmer. I think that's really important to give examples of are there any other practices within the gratitude realm that you teach

or that you utilize in your daily work with clients? It's really interesting. I spent, I think, especially with high achievers, it's easy to get caught up in, yeah, I did that yesterday and keep going and never stop to recognize and celebrate successes no matter how small they are.

And again, on an energetic level, and you may have heard the quote, I don't remember it exactly, but be grateful for what you have and you will get more. Like if you don't recognize what you have and like celebrate your successes and be grateful for them, then like you're not gonna get more.

If you're in a mood where nothing ever satisfies you, then you won't be delivered more good stuff. Yeah. Like it tends to be, again, coming back to like, if you're focused on complaining and criticizing, then you're probably drawing more complaining and criticizing into your life, more opportunities for that. Oh, yeah. A very practical version of the law of attraction. Yes. If you desire and recognize the successes that you've achieved, you're probably going to

pursue them in some direct or indirect way. And negativity just begets negativity. I don't think anybody will deny that as a general rule. Right. Exactly. And again, it's, it's hard for high achievers to do that, because we always want the next thing, the next rung on the ladder. Yeah. So once you achieve something, and you accomplish something, you're like, Yeah, okay, I did that moving on. And that's not to say to get complacent. It's to say, celebrate it. Stop for five seconds and celebrate five seconds a day, whatever,

go out and actually celebrate it because you feel good in the moment and then you have like renewed energy, extra renewed energy to keep moving forward to get to the next level. Yeah, I like to think my listeners are high achievers. So if you hear that folks, turn this podcast out and go celebrate your woods today.

Just kidding, don't turn it off. So I think we can move on then to other categories of wellbeing here. So you talk about reducing anxiety and stress in the workplace and you're an advocate of meditation. I just wanna kinda open the floor to you to explain your observations and your approach to meditation if you don't mind.

Absolutely, my experience with meditation, personally has been life-changing. And my experience in working with clients and business leaders around the word meditation is, I don't meditate, I'm not good at it. I can't do it. And so I like to reframe the term meditation and tend to talk about it more as grounding exercises.

And we can get into why people tend to push back on the term meditation, but grounding exercises, again, it changes your entire physiology. It changes how you respond to situations that are a lot of times beyond your control, how you respond to chaos. Like, this is the world, right? Business and outside of business. There's a lot of chaos.

There's a lot of stress going on. You can't eliminate that from your world, but you can learn how to manage it. You can learn how to respond instead of react with reptilian brain that isn't even thinking and get better outcomes. Do you have any entry level grounding exercises that you tend to teach, whether it's individually or group wise, how do you get people to start this pathway

if people are generally reluctant and resistant? What specific things do you teach or guide people through? This is gonna sound so ridiculously stupidly simple that people are going to, your listeners are going to go, really, that's it, that can't possibly work. I invite you to not dismiss it. And because it is so simple, this is exactly why I invite you to do it, okay?

It's breathing. Now I will make the assumption that everybody who is listening to this is breathing on someone, right? But people tend to breathe very shallowly and especially when they're stressed, they're not taking full deep breaths. So the exercise, the grounding exercise is to just

focus on your breathing for two minutes, two minutes, three minutes. It doesn't have to be long, as little as two minutes. And breathing really deeply all the way in down to your abdomen, feel your abdomen expanding. Breathe in so deeply and then let it go. Exhale and feel like a weight is being lifted off your shoulders or you're just releasing all of the weight just dropping it like dropping bags of sand out of your hands and do that for two minutes. Breathe in really deeply. Exhale completely and fully and what you're doing is you're oxygenating your body. You're oxygenating your brain. You're letting more

blood flow to your brain so now you can think better. And you're resetting your whole nervous system. So think about doing this exercise after you leave a tense meeting or a conversation and you need to go into the next thing. Like you just left a tense meeting and now you need to go focus on a project proposal. Do it two, three minutes, so easy, but so easy to not do. Do you advise making this a daily habit? Is this something that you've been doing, but is there a specific way that you recommend people systematize this sort of thing? Whenever you need to calm your whole body,

I practice meditation, I do a meditation, I do different ones. And I typically do guided, which is another thing like people think meditation, I got to sit for an hour on a mat cross legged with no thoughts in my head in total silence, I can't do that. That's why people push back on meditation because they don't understand what it really is. And it is as simple as a breathing exercise or I recommend for beginner people who are more interested in actually doing something a little bit more

than just the breathing is a guided meditation. And there's an app that I love, that I use myself, I have no association with it, I just love it. It's called Insight Timer. Insight Timer, okay. Insight Timer, it's free. They have a paid version, but I just use the free version. It gives you access to hundreds of thousands of meditations

and start practicing. Like whether it's the three minute breathing exercise, you could do it when you're waiting for your coffee to brew. You could do it when you're in the shower, whatever. I like doing it in the morning because it sets the intention and the tone for your day. And at the same time, any time during your day when you feel yourself getting tense or stressed out, calms everything down and you come back with a new perspective and

a new ability to focus and be creative. I have one close friend who is working very hard with a moonshotting startup right now, and she makes meditation a nightly practice. So she's meditating every night before she sleeps, probably in between in working more closely with startups in the past too. I definitely think that especially when you are in a busy, flustered world where things change constantly and things are volatile and sometimes not always as secure in the longterm that meditation has been a clearly effective tool for helping people center themselves and do the work that they need to do to guarantee

the highest level of success. And what you told me again in our pre-chat seems to sort of validate and verify that based on some of the more well-known people that you know who have meditation as a regular practice. Do you want to talk about any of those folks, some of like the sort of celebrity business folks and more famous ones that have been meditators for most of their lives? Yeah, I was just going to mention that a lot of the highest performing business leaders in the world practice meditation and they attribute their success to their meditation

practice and people like Ray Dalio, who is a Wall Street icon. Wall Street is probably as far opposite you could get from Woo Woo, as there is. And yet he is known for and talks about openly his practice of meditation. Bill Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Company, Richard Branson, Ariana Huffington, LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Carly Lloyd as athletes, practice meditation. And it helps them focus and get more into their game, whether their game is sports or business, it doesn't matter. And so I look at it and I think, well, if these people who are achieving the highest level

of performance out there are attributing their level of success. And yes, of course, they have to take actions on top of that. They can't just sit on a couch and meditate all day, right? But they attribute their success to their meditation practice. Then why isn't everyone in business who would like to be successful practicing it and thinking that they're not good at it? Like I can't do it because, okay, they have more time than I do. Really? Yeah, I myself, I mean, I used to be very skeptical and I started to realize that I

do a sort of meditative practice when I stretch. I do play a lot of sports and I'm a pretty avid weightlifter. I have bad legs. I had a piece in my pelvis pulled out of my pelvis when I was playing high school football. Ooh, that sounds nasty. I got some gnarly lifelong injuries from football and basketball,

but I still play all those things recreationally. And I have a very serious stretching regimen that seems to have kept me safe for a decade now since I finished college. And over the years, I do that every single time I do certain exercises or play certain sports. And I started to realize that as I'm doing this, I'm usually laying down for most of it,

I have a pretty specific breathing pattern and I sort of zone out while I'm doing it. And I started to realize I'm kind of just meditating when I'm stretching my piriformis deep in my leg and trying to sort of fix my little pelvic issues that I have there. Like I'm doing some sort of meditative practice. And when I started to realize that and identify it

and focus on it and double down on it, is when I started to see real changes in my flexibility. And I would argue hopefully performance changes, although I can't really verify that scientifically or anything with data or stats. But overall, I feel like I've gone from a skeptic to somebody who appreciates that much more. So I'm glad that we've been able to have this conversation because I haven't

talked about it on the podcast at all. So I'm glad you brought it up because it also helps reframe what meditation is exactly. Yeah. And that it's not always sitting still. For me, it's about the breathing. Like my body, I need to feel my body in a certain way because my injuries, you know, the pain that is just permanent from them makes me favor certain parts, certain muscles, certain bones, whatever it is. And when I focus and breathe and think about how I'm connected to myself, that's when I start to see myself as with better balance, with better strength, with just overall better ability.

So I definitely am confident that there's something there as well. What you just said is the essence of meditation that I want everyone who's listening to take away and it's getting in touch with the as with who you are, like you're getting in touch with yourself. Yeah, that's for sure what meditation truly is getting in touch with yourself and that inner voice, that inner physicality, mentally, emotionally, that's what we don't allow ourselves to do because we're so distracted. And that's the true essence of meditation, whether you call it grounding, calming,

whatever you call it. Yeah. Do you have any group grounding exercises that you put people through if you're working with a corporate team or working with a leader, advising them how to take their team through some sort of meditative practice. Do you have any recommendations for how to do that

outside of maybe using the app? Do you have anything specifically that you teach or advocate for? I like to start all of my workshops with a grounding exercise. Not first day, within the first five minutes of doing a workshop to do a grounding exercise short, less than like, again, two, three, three, four minutes

to help people get into the space where they're ready to receive information. And it can be the same way in a meeting, whether it's virtual or you're physically around a table together, it doesn't matter. Can you create some space for people to come leave everything else that happened before this moment behind you? If you want to pick it up again when we're done, great, you can do that. But right now, let's get into this. And it's that same breathing exercise could be one way to do it. Or it could be

a more formal exercise. Sometimes I do something like leading a more guided visualization or guided breathing, calming, grounding exercise. But most of that, when I do it, I usually just do it off the top of my head. It's not a formal thing I have memorized. Okay, I see. But any leader could do it. You could just, you could help people visualize a goal for the meeting, like what we're going to accomplish

in this meeting. And you don't have to tell like what we're going to accomplish in this meeting. And you don't have to tell them what we're gonna, like it's a matter of being more. Like coming with greater clarity and greater confidence as a result of just visualizing how you're going to feel coming out of the meeting, that sort of direction. Right, right, like setting an intention.

Like the intention for this meeting is that we're going to come up with some ideas for this business proposal that we're going to be sending out to this client. And let's just open ourselves up to bringing ideas into it, collaborating, setting the tone for the meeting, that we're going to be supportive of each other's ideas, that we're going to have fun doing this, feeling like we really accomplished something

and we've done some good work and we are energized. My biggest issue with this is that, and there are entire books dedicated to this now about how to reframe our meetings, but it's the fact that so many people are just in back to backs. We're just kind of like 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes and we don't,

like some companies have instituted like the five minutes in between. And I do think that there's something, is it like Murphy's law? No, that's the, whatever goes wrong will go wrong. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. But there's one that states that, you know, however much time you have to do something

is how long it will take to do it. I'll have to look up which law that is. But well, now that we've talked about grounding and really centering ourselves and the essence of what meditation is, let's go to swear words. We started with cookies, we moved into meditation, let's go to swear words.

On your website, in the above the fold center space, it says with one asterisk to cover up the word, it says, fuck being fine Uh-huh, and I love this personally. I'm from Boston. I do swear a lot, you know occasionally We'll let one out on the show. I'll probably bleep these out, but that hit me really hard I was like, yeah, I feel that and I have literally, you know spoken about this with close friends of mine who are Going through a tough time at work or in their relationships and you know their responses, it's going to be fine, it's fine. And that becomes a pattern, it becomes a cycle of just everything is fine and nothing is like good or progressing or

great. Do you see this sort of complacency, this malaise, this just being settled? And you know, what do you think about that? Why did you decide to, you know, put a swear word on your big brand headline right there? Was that important to you? For exactly the reason you mentioned is it hits people in the face and wakes them up. So I just made it through this whole interview. I'm not dropping F bombs all the time.

That's not how I speak. I mean, sometimes I use them, but for emphasis, for attention, I don't think that this malaise and complacency is new at all. I think throughout history, people have lived that way and said everything is fine. It kind of goes back to what we were talking about,

well, you should be grateful for what you have. Everything is fine. And that's not a way to live. If you wanna live your life that way, fine. No, if you wanna... But I really don't think as humans, we are designed, our souls are designed to grow and expand and staying in complacency is not okay.

People do it because it's familiar, because they know it and it feels, it's kind of a paradox because it feels comfortable, but it's not comfortable. It's comfortable because it's familiar, but nothing great, nothing amazing, nothing worth talking about, nothing worth reflecting on at the end of your life

is just fine. That hits deep right there. Before I let you go, for those who don't wanna be just fine anymore, how can we learn more about you and the work that you're doing and perhaps get in touch with you? Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me.

It's where you and I connected. LinkedIn and then on my website, zenrabbit.com. Perfect. All right. Well, Lori, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed this conversation. We hit some points that I've been thinking, you know, now that I'm 50 episodes in and I haven't addressed these couple of things related to stress and anxiety, I'm glad that

we finally had the chance. So I appreciate you coming on. For everybody at home listening, thanks for joining us. We will catch you on the next episode. Cheers. You've been listening to LND in action, a show from Get Abstract. Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never miss an episode. And don't forget to give us a rating, leave a comment and share the episodes you love. Help us keep delivering the conversations that turn learning into action.

Until next time.