014: The Power of Mindfulness to Overcome Burnout and Achieve High Performance: The Gautam Deviah Story

Gautam Deviah [00:00:00]:

The idea of leading from the front came from the military. The general is in the front. If you look at what causes militaries and armies to fail in war, it's not the skills, it's not the tactics, it's not the strategies. It's usually the supply chain. How are we helping our leaders and managers and professionals, knowledge workers, refuel, recharge so they can do the amazing things we've hired them to do? U.

Christopher Nelson [00:00:31]:

Welcome to Tech. Careers and money talk. I'm your host, Christopher Nelson. I've been in the tech industry for 20 plus years, and after climbing my way to the C suite, working for three companies that have been through IPO and investing my way to financial independence, I'm here to share with you everything that I've learned and introduce you to people along the way that can help you grow your career, build wealth, and get to that exit or financial independence. Today we're going to be talking about mindfulness in high performing teams. You may be asking yourself, well, Christopher, what does mindfulness, which is a wellness practice, do with high performing teams? I'm glad that you asked that question because we're going to be answering that today with my friend Gautam Devaya who spent the majority of his career as a global strategy consultant for Deloitte consulting. Very high paced, fast, intense work environment that led to a very extreme burnout for him. He shared this story with me before and we're going to talk about it and ask him about that today. So we're going to understand his career and what was missing that led to this big burnout event. We're then going to in the second half, we're going to dig into what mindfulness is. We're going to have him break it down for us and really understand how it can apply to us working in technology that, again, is fast paced, a lot of unknowns, a lot of change coming at it. How can it help us be high performing and manage a lot of stress and a lot of burnout? I'm excited to introduce you to Gautam. Let's talk to him right now. Well, I'm excited for everyone today to get a chance to meet Gautam Devaya, who is a good friend of mine. We went through phenomenal speaker training together. I got to know him and he is a consultant around wellness in high performing workplaces, in helping leaders and helping teams understand how they can incorporate wellness and mindfulness into their daily practice that makes them better leaders and makes their work more sustainable. And we know in technology we work really hard and in these current environments where there's a lot of layoffs, but we're expected to do more with less people. This is more important now than ever. And I'm excited to share his story because he didn't start there. But I'm excited to introduce everyone to Gautam.

Gautam Deviah [00:03:08]:

Welcome. Hey, Christopher. Wonderful to be here and looking forward to a really exciting conversation about, well, being performance leadership for your readers and listeners.

Christopher Nelson [00:03:22]:

And I just want to say this isn't where you started. I always love spinning the first half of the conversation, getting career origin stories and just origin stories in general, because there's a couple of things to call out. Number one is you came from a very high performing organization, and we're going to talk about that, and I want to talk about how you got there. But then you are somebody who is incredibly passionate about what you do. Like, this is really truly your mission and your purpose right now.

Gautam Deviah [00:03:55]:

Yeah, indeed. Most of my career was in Big Four accounting and consulting. I started my career with PricewaterhouseCoopers and I worked as a strategy advisor to Fortune funded companies at Deloitte. So these are two of the 50 $60 billion organizations, leaders in their industry and in the market.

Christopher Nelson [00:04:19]:

They are. And so I always think it's important to share with everyone. How did you go from because your resume reads really core accounting? I know at one point you were a CPA, and then the next thing you know, you're leading global strategy. So what were some of these skills? What were some of the lessons learned that helped you climb that ladder?

Gautam Deviah [00:04:44]:

Yeah, of course. So I started as a chartered accountant, qualified with PwC in India, and then transferred to the New York office, working in their mergers and acquisitions practice. But I really liked the numbers side, the financial side. But I felt like there was an element missing and therefore sort of like what many people do. A few years into my career, I went into business school, I got my MBA, and that's where I sort of developed this passion for business strategy, corporate strategy.

Christopher Nelson [00:05:16]:

Oh, that's really interesting because I think that's a topic. I get a lot of questions about that because I was somebody who went in directly into consulting. I worked for Accenture, one of the Big Four as well, and I made the decision not to MBA. But it sounds like for you, was the MBA really the impetus for the Pivot to go from accounting to strategy?

Gautam Deviah [00:05:38]:

Yes, and it was very effective. I think you have to weigh the pros and cons. When you make a two year investment, the opportunity cost of an MBA is really high. I do not recommend an MBA to many people. If you're going to stay in the same industry, you really don't need an MBA. But if you want to shift industries, you want to develop your leadership skills and you want to develop a global network, that's where I think a top tier MBA is particularly helpful.

Christopher Nelson [00:06:11]:

The people that I've talked to and friends that I have who have gone for an MBA at a top tier network, the biggest thing they get out of it. Education is always great. Like, they always learn a lot of things, but the highest value is that global network.

Gautam Deviah [00:06:27]:

Yeah. And the amazing thing is it's really paying dividends right now. 20 plus years after I graduated. So I had the privilege of going to Harvard Business School. And the network, the alumni network of that school is phenomenal. And as I've made a Pivot from accounting to strategy, and from strategy to coaching and advisory, now I found that alumni network to be a very powerful and helpful network for me, peer network for me.

Christopher Nelson [00:07:01]:

So as you were in this transition, what were some of the soft skills that really helped you get ahead, that helped you navigate going from, okay, now I'm working on the accounting side to now I need to have respect, I need to have presence when I'm walking into boardrooms into different conversations.

Gautam Deviah [00:07:24]:

Yeah. And I think really, the idea that I learned at Deloitte that should be very powerful for even anyone in the technology sector is to understand your value proposition. What value do you bring to a business? What value do you bring to your team? What value do you bring to the leaders in your organization? Have a good understanding of that. Start with a frame of that value proposition and then test and refine. And iterate that through conversations both in your industry, in your company, but also outside, and then identify what strengths and weaknesses you have that can help you enhance the value proposition. Because really what you get paid for is the influence and impact you have in an organization, the value you add every day. So this obsession I've had about economic value add for a company can also be applied to what is the economic value you're adding to a team or a business or an organization.

Christopher Nelson [00:08:35]:

This is so relevant right now to what I'm hearing from everyone. I'm hosting Meetups and I'm connecting with people on LinkedIn and Live is I talk about this in my teachings as well, in the sense that your career capital, your education, experience and results, this thing of value and how you talk about it and how you position it is going to then also allow you to climb the ladder. The thing that I think that you're highlighting is then this obsession of the devalued delivery, or what I'm calling like, the results that you deliver. Being able to understand that complete cycle and how you're also positioned in the marketplace is truly essential. And this applies to whether you're in a W two job, whether you're working as a private consultant or educator all the way around.

Gautam Deviah [00:09:31]:

Yeah. And you got to not only master the hard skills. In my case it was financial analysis, storyboarding PowerPoint skills, but also the soft skills. Right. How do you motivate and inspire your team? How do you have influence and impact with a client? How do you have influence with people who don't directly report to you? How do you have difficult conversations so you can move an organization or a team from A to B. Understanding each of these things is very helpful in understanding, hey, where do I add value? And for me, thinking about what is my unfair advantage? Not unfair as in an immoral, but unfair as in, like, what do I bring that differentiates me? So when you think about value proposition and competitive advantage, that's sort of like my training. I think about what differentiates me in the marketplace as a strategy consultant and now as a coach. What are my sources of unfair advantage? Is it an education? Is it experience? Is it technical skills? Or is it social and interpersonal skills?

Christopher Nelson [00:10:42]:

Right? Or is it back to the storytelling? I think that one of the things that I've been communicating a lot recently about is how you tell your story and the way that you are able to demonstrate the value that you've generated or the influence that you've created is then going to allow people to see and understand what that is. Because what I learned over time is there's nobody sitting behind me writing my biography and story and giving me the short notes that I can tell someone. I have to tell my own story and be able to articulate all of those things that I've created.

Gautam Deviah [00:11:21]:

Great point. Great point. Yeah. Humans don't understand things through PowerPoint slides and bullet points, but through a narrative, a story. That's the way humans connect with each other.

Christopher Nelson [00:11:34]:

And so it's obvious to me, and it's interesting because you and I haven't had this conversation really on the corporate side before in your corporate life, but it's obvious to me now, hearing that, that it allowed you to then ascend very quickly, it sounds to me, and help us understand the story. When you came to business school, came out of business school, went into Deloitte, you were then taking down big projects and delivering some big oh, yeah.

Gautam Deviah [00:12:06]:

And with an organization like Deloitte, you get the opportunity to work on very big projects with some of the most prestigious Fortune Finder companies, but also work across a variety of industries and geographies. With Deloitte, I had the opportunity to work in about ten to twelve different countries. So that kind of opportunity and impact you can have also requires you to step up. Step up to perform at a different level. And that's kind of where I realized that it is not just about the technical skills. It is not just about strategy and financial skills, but it's also about understanding how humans engage, how humans perform, and how humans influence each other. And really starting with myself, how do I manage myself, how do I lead myself? So in some ways, this idea of mirror neurons is embedded in my work. Humans mirror the behaviors and patterns they see around themselves. I love it that you talk about how your peer network of five or ten people help you thrive and succeed in your work and that same logic applies in the context of a team performance. You are going to perform and behave like the people around you. So as a leader, you have to step up. You have to know how to lead yourself before you can effectively lead and manage others. And that's sort of the big shift I started to notice, to differentiate myself in the workplace.

Christopher Nelson [00:13:48]:

That was a big shift for me too. I remember I went into a meeting, it was actually this peer networking group that I belonged to and it was a large organization. And I had a core group that I mean, we're still great friends to this day. And there was always a presentation and then a dinner where we got together and at the presentation there was the Chief Information Officer. I was in it. So that was the C suite that aligned with us, was presenting to us, and it was the Chief Information Officer of AMD, a very large hardware company. And when he was presenting, he looked us all in the eye and he said, to manage my team effectively, I spend 80% of my time managing myself, 20% of my time managing my team. Now, I was probably two years into being a director at this point in time. And when I heard that, I thought to myself, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I may need to unplug mentally from this meeting. That was my initial reaction. I thought that that was insane. As I listened to his talk and I understood concepts of leading from the front servant leadership, it became clear to me that this was the secret, that this is the other way of thinking, that I have to lead myself first. Because they say this in parenting, more is caught than taught. And it's so true that the way that we manage ourselves is going to have a larger ripple and a larger influence. That's what real influence is versus me continually trying to teach people what to do.

Gautam Deviah [00:15:37]:

Yeah. And I think in the old workplace model, that control and command and manage model that could have worked, where you give instructions, you micromanage, you expect sort of incremental results. But in today's uncertain, volatile, constantly evolving, innovative marketplace, you can't command and control your way to innovation and growth. You have to inspire your team, you have to motivate your team, you have to bring out, you have to create the conditions. The language I use is the leader's job is to create the conditions for the success of the people on their team. And that condition allows not only you to thrive, but allows your team members to shift from struggling or surviving to thriving in the workplace.

Christopher Nelson [00:16:35]:

So was this the mindset that you had when you were the global strategy lead at Deloitte?

Gautam Deviah [00:16:42]:

Yeah, so my pivotal moment was when I experienced my own burnout. So I was working on a very large multi billion dollar project, a project across multiple locations, multiple countries, traveling back and forth, working long hours, not taking care of myself, trying to lead a team of about 1820 people in multiple countries. And I talked about this, and I passed out during my lunch break. I stepped out to grab it.

Christopher Nelson [00:17:20]:

Where were you?

Gautam Deviah [00:17:22]:

I was in New York City. In Manhattan? Midtown manhattan.

Christopher Nelson [00:17:28]:

That must have been a shock to everybody around you, because, I mean, you literally passed out on the ground.

Gautam Deviah [00:17:33]:

I was on the ground, yeah. And I don't know anything, because when I woke up, I was in the back of an ambulance, and I went into the emergency room. They ran all the tests, MRIs, et cetera. Thankfully, everything came back negative. But I was in a place where I could not lead myself physically, mentally, emotionally. I was burnt out. And how can I lead others if I'm not able to take care of myself? And that's where I started to make the shift. Like, my first responsibility, like they say on the airplane, put on your oxygen mask first. My first responsibility is to take care of myself. And when I take care of myself, I can create the conditions to take care of and lead and manage my team.

Christopher Nelson [00:18:28]:

So this is the pivotal point, right? This is really, I would say, your defining moment, because when you were in the hospital and you were experiencing this, what were some of the messages that you were getting around you? It's okay, we're in the middle of this project, but it's okay. Stay in the hospital. Relax, get well.

Gautam Deviah [00:18:53]:

Yeah. More than the messages that I was getting from others, which were general queries about what's going on? When are you going to come back to work? Is the pressure I was putting on myself. And that often is the harder part. As a leader, as a project leader, I said, I need to get back to work. And so I did. I tried to go back to work the next day, and I had the same symptoms. I didn't pass out again. But I started to notice that level of panic and anxiety creeping up in me. And that's when I realized, like, I need to do a bigger intervention to get myself into a place where I have optimum health and well being. And with that, then I can help the others on my team. Now, some of the suggestions I got was, keep this on the download. This was about 13 years ago, so the conversations around well being were very different. So some of the points were, keep this on the down low because it might affect your career, it might affect your promotion. And I find, like now, on the contrary, this has become my message, my mess, my struggles has become my message. And how I'm helping others navigate challenges, navigate struggles in their own life, and find ways to thrive in the workplace.

Christopher Nelson [00:20:24]:

And I think this was your defining moment. You passed out in New York City, you go to the hospital, you realize you had some crazy burnout. And what I heard from you, clearly, and I think this has happened to a lot of us, is that while you were clear that the goal was to lead yourself first, you were leading yourself in a way that wasn't healthy, that wasn't conscious of everything, that you really needed to be the best leader for them.

Gautam Deviah [00:21:00]:

Yeah, it was more of the push push drive model, working towards really aggressive deadlines daily, weekly, monthly, trying to get the most short term results possible from myself and from my team members. And I can imagine if I was experiencing this, what my team members were going through themselves.

Christopher Nelson [00:21:32]:

Have you ever had a chance to talk to them since then? Oh, yeah, definitely reflect on that moment. I'm curious about your point. 13 years later, it's something interesting too. I know I came from a very high performance work environment at Accenture, and I know that we do reflect back. I know in the early two thousand s, I remember having a project where at one point we did 36 hours straight to meet a deadline. I know this isn't shocking then, it's incredibly shocking now with all of the things, but we did 36 hours straight to meet a deadline. And in reflection, we weren't aware enough of what we needed to advocate for ourselves and say two things. Number one, this is counterintuitive. Like we're not doing our best work right at hour 24. The quality of my work versus hour three, completely different. So are we really delivering the value, number one? And number two, how do we as a group start advocating for better boundaries, better measures, so that we can then deliver said value?

Gautam Deviah [00:22:50]:

Yeah, I think we're of the same generation where those overnighters were things that we were proud of. Oh yeah. Today I worked overnight. I can still remember getting ready for a presentation for the CEO of a large tire manufacturer in Ohio. And basically the team worked overnight and went straight into the presentation in our clothes from yesterday for an ATM meeting with the CEO. And those are the kinds of things we were proud of. We would celebrate. But if you look at where all the mistakes happen, where all the errors happen, where the poor quality work is happening, you're right. It's happening. When you're working overnight, when you're working long hours, when you're not taking care of yourself. The science is really pretty clear that peak performance only happens when we are in our peak mental, emotional and physical state. I mean, if you look at the athletes, if you look at the military, if you look at firefighters, they're always taking the time to not only train, but also recover. Put themselves in a condition, in a mental, physical, emotional condition that allows and creates the conditions for peak performance throughout a big name like LeBron James or Alcaraz the tennis player, they're not showing up to play the biggest games exhausted and burnt out, and when they do, they lose.

Christopher Nelson [00:24:29]:

They do. Yeah.

Gautam Deviah [00:24:31]:

Hands down in the French Open semifinals.

Christopher Nelson [00:24:34]:

Yeah, right. No, it's so poignant. And so we're at this great transition point where now we're talking about it. We're getting into peak performance. I want to take a quick break, and then I want to come back and I want to talk about what your practice is today. I want to talk about wellness and mindfulness and how we can leverage that to reach our peak performance at work. We'll be right back. All right? And welcome back to the second half of our podcast here with Gautam Devaya. We're talking now, we've transitioned, we've gone through your full career, the burnout, and now you realize for peak performance in the workplace, just like athletes, we need wellness and we need mindfulness. How do you define those?

Gautam Deviah [00:25:28]:

Yeah, a great question. Mindfulness is simply the practice of paying attention to what's happening in the present moment. And what that allows us to do is instead of reacting to things that are happening in the world, we find the space to choose how we want to respond.

Christopher Nelson [00:25:51]:

Right?

Gautam Deviah [00:25:52]:

We find the space to exercise our agency. We find the space to express our freedom of thought, our freedom of action. What happens is when there is all this volatility and uncertainty and pressure, it triggers us. Humans go through what is called that fight flight freeze syndrome, the Amygdala hijack. And we are reacting to social media. We're reacting to the news. We're reacting to that email or call from your boss or colleague that triggers us. And when we are mindful, when we are paying attention, we start to calm the mind down. We calm the body down. And instead of reacting in a way that we might regret saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing right, we are more thoughtful and we choose how we want to respond. So this is really about agency, about exercising your agency, creating the conditions for that, right?

Christopher Nelson [00:27:01]:

And I think that's really important. And that's one of the things that I heard you imply was that to be mindful, we have to turn off some of the noise we're inundated with today. And I know that I can sit and be having lunch with somebody and their phone is going off with alerts, with, oh, here's what's going on in the news, or I got the latest email, or I got my latest text message. And I always ask, how do you think, how do you operate with all of these stimuli coming in and in our workplace when we're constantly on email or taking calls or text messages as well? Slack. Whatever your source of inbound, to be mindful, we have to be aware of the noise and we have to be able to have an on off switch for it. Is that what I'm hearing?

Gautam Deviah [00:27:59]:

Yes and no. So the real power of mindfulness is where you can still be focused despite all that noise.

Christopher Nelson [00:28:07]:

Okay.

Gautam Deviah [00:28:08]:

Because it's a fool's errand to stop the noise in the world.

Christopher Nelson [00:28:12]:

Right.

Gautam Deviah [00:28:13]:

We're never going to stop the noise. We're never going to be able to disconnect from social media, from Slack and all these other tools. But how can we, despite all that, find a way to navigate to a place of focus and calmness? And the human brain, the mind has this really powerful capacity to have this open awareness about everything that's happening while also being focused on something. It's kind of like your iPhone camera or if you're a Google user, your camera has a focus lens and a wide angle lens, right. And your brain has the capacity to shift and be between those two. Nearly interesting.

Christopher Nelson [00:29:02]:

Go ahead.

Gautam Deviah [00:29:03]:

So the practice of mindfulness allows you to develop that capacity to switch between having that open peripheral awareness to being focused in an instant.

Christopher Nelson [00:29:15]:

Wow, okay, thank you. Thank you for this detail because I think my understanding previously was different. And this is very interesting because mindfulness becomes the practice where I call that my meta self. Like I'm in myself or I sort of have this meta view of looking over and I'm able to sort of make decisions into that self. But what I'm hearing you say is that the practice of mindfulness then allows us to understand the entire concept and then we can strengthen the muscle too.

Gautam Deviah [00:29:50]:

Be able to switch between the two indeed, indeed. And find that space. That space, it's like a physical space. It's a moment in time where you start to notice everything that's happening, but you're not reacting. It's just happening out there. And you can still, amidst all that noise, choose how you want to show up, how you want to respond, how you want to act. And when you develop that capacity and it comes to training, it's not going to happen overnight. But with training, you can develop neural pathways of muscle memory, if you will.

Christopher Nelson [00:30:31]:

I'm understanding the concept of mindfulness now to help me understand how mindfulness and wellness improves our overall performance. Right. We were just talking about a previously high stress workplace over stimuli. How does this all help?

Gautam Deviah [00:30:47]:

Yeah, so what mindfulness does is two things that are really powerful. It increases our level of self awareness so we have a much better understanding of what triggers us, but also what our strengths are, what our weaknesses are, what situations and conditions affect us. And it gives us the capacity to manage ourselves in difficult and challenging situations, but also motivate and inspire and push ourselves to rise to challenging opportunities or challenging situations. So it helps with self awareness, it helps with self management, it helps with motivation. Just the practice of being aware about what's happening. You can start to increase your level of self regulation and motivation. And when you're able to do that, you are able to perform.

Christopher Nelson [00:31:40]:

You are. And then this is combined with some type of wellness practice too, meaning focus on rest and recovery, on states of mental health so that mindfulness essentially becomes the throttle that says, okay, when do I need to bring wellness or how much wellness do I need to apply? Because with self awareness now, you're not in this state that you were before burnout where you were, hey, I'm leading from the front. I'm just grinding, grinding, grinding, trying to leverage all of my strengths to get everybody across these impossible goals to now I have mindfulness that is helping me throttle that says, oh, we need to get this done, but I need to rest. The team may need to rest or we may need to do some other things to sharpen the axis, they say.

Gautam Deviah [00:32:37]:

Yeah. And to build on that analogy, the idea of leading from the front came from the military. Right. The general is in the front. And if you look at what causes militaries and armies to fail in war, it's not the skills, it's not the tactics, it's not the strategies. It's usually the supply chain. Do they have the fuel to feed their equipment and their people? That's where usually things break down. Have their people rested? Have they been fed? Have they been given a place to live and take care of themselves while they're doing these amazing things on the warfront? And the military understands that. So what I'm saying is, in the corporate workplace, how are we helping our leaders and managers and professionals, knowledge workers, refuel, recharge, so they can do the amazing things we've hired them to do. And mindfulness really sort of enables one of the tools, but it's a very powerful tool for mental, emotional and physical resilience.

Christopher Nelson [00:33:47]:

It really is. And so how are you seeing this being applied to leadership today? So now you're on a mission to take this concept of mindfulness and help transform leaders. How are you seeing that unfold? What's working? What's not working?

Gautam Deviah [00:34:08]:

Yeah. So one of the clients I do a lot of work with, they actually did a study tracking and observing team performance. And one of the simple things they noticed is that when they attended team meetings, 80% or 90% of the talking is done by guess whom?

Christopher Nelson [00:34:32]:

The leader. Yeah.

Gautam Deviah [00:34:36]:

Right. And it's not because the team members don't have ideas, don't have solutions, don't have perspectives and points of view, but the leader has not created that safe space, the psychologically safe space for them to contribute, for them to share, for them to show up as their full self.

Christopher Nelson [00:34:57]:

Right.

Gautam Deviah [00:34:59]:

But leaders who are self aware, who know how to manage themselves, who are inspiring and motivating are different. They notice that, hey, I'm the one talking, others aren't contributing or I'm the one who's having this. Impact on my team members. They understand this concept of mirror neurons. They understand that they need to create more empathy and compassion on their teams to get the best performance of their team members.

Christopher Nelson [00:35:32]:

I'm not sure I'm familiar with the concept of the mirror neurons.

Gautam Deviah [00:35:37]:

What is that mirror neuron? So let me give you a simple example. You go to a theater or at home, you're watching a TV or a movie. You know, it's a fictional story. You know, they shot it years or months ago. You don't know the people. Why are you crying and laughing when you watch that show?

Christopher Nelson [00:36:00]:

Right? Because you're empathizing. Yeah.

Gautam Deviah [00:36:05]:

So your neurons are simulating the emotions of the actor on the stage.

Christopher Nelson [00:36:12]:

Wow.

Gautam Deviah [00:36:13]:

That's how you experience the same emotions because you can't feel what's going on in their body. So the way the body works, the mind and the brain works is it simulates those same emotions, and you start to laugh or you start to smile and you start to cry because that's what you're noticing now. That's the same thing that happens in a team meeting. Have you ever kind of, like, walked into a team meeting in the old days when we had more physical in person meetings and you immediately walk in and there were five, six people there, you get a vibe of the room right away, right? Were they joking? Were they laughing? Were they talking about you? How do you do that?

Christopher Nelson [00:36:55]:

Right?

Gautam Deviah [00:36:56]:

That's the mirror neurons. And so your team members are picking up on how you're feeling. The bosses mood immediately, within seconds before the speed of thought, because emotions move faster than thought before this leader can say anything. They know how the leader is feeling.

Christopher Nelson [00:37:18]:

Interesting.

Gautam Deviah [00:37:19]:

So leader has to understand that if they don't have self awareness, they can have the best analysis and recommendations or presentation. No one's going to buy their story.

Christopher Nelson [00:37:30]:

Wow, this is really opening my mind, because I saw mindfulness almost as a practice that fit under wellness, because I practice meditation and use it to calm myself, but I didn't see it as this very important tool that is different. I think mindfulness unlocks wellness. Mindfulness opens up a lot of opportunities. How can mindfulness be so we're talking about it from a leader's perspective. I know there's so many people out there that today have a lot more responsibilities in tech because of the layoffs or under a lot of stress and pressure. How can mindfulness help them?

Gautam Deviah [00:38:17]:

Yeah, I think it goes back to my original point. We were talking about a value proposition, right? And I would phrase the question as not only how do I add value, but how can I be of service in this situation, in this context? What is the opportunity here? So the way I like to think about mindfulness in the context of uncertainty and change is first we pay attention. We see what is happening. We notice what is happening. Not only within us, but around us. Second, we accept it. We accept it not from this defeatist point of view, but more from this realistic point of view. Like, this is happening, change is happening, technology is evolving, countries are at war, supply chains are broken. Whatever the situation is, accepting the reality of this moment. And then action, action comes by. Reframing. What is the opportunity here? What is the learning here? How can I be of service in this situation? And if I may add, we talked about psychological safety as being creating empathy and compassion for your team members, but it's also balancing that with accountability, right? You don't want a situation or you want to create a situation where people are rising to the high performance standards you expect from them and from yourself, and you're creating a safe space for them to do that. And here's the really interesting thing about how mindfulness unlocks a whole different level. So it unlocks empathy. It unlocks compassion. And when it unlocks compassion, it unlocks courage. Because what's different about empathy and compassion is empathy is you feel what other people are feeling. Compassion is when you feel what other people are feeling. But you can step into that difficult situation to act. And when you step into difficult situations to act, that's when you're a courageous leader. That's when you have difficult conversations. That's when you create the change in the organization and in your team, is by having difficult conversations. Not just by being woo woo and friendly and all that stuff, right?

Christopher Nelson [00:40:55]:

Not just saying, I understand how you feel, but it's truly leading in and saying, okay, I am here to make some change. Wow. So if mindfulness, this amazing tool, is a skill, it's a skill that like lifting weights, swimming, whatever it may be, we need to practice it to get better at it. Is it hard to learn? Is this like black belt level stuff or are there ways to ease into this?

Gautam Deviah [00:41:27]:

Yeah, there is a progression here. And what I like to do is to encourage people who are new and interested in mindfulness, so those who have had a practice before and want to start again or go deeper think of it in two ways. One, maybe find ten minutes a day to develop some kind of a basic mindfulness practice. I usually recommend a breath based practice, observing your breath or observing your feelings for five to ten minutes. But the second skill, which I think is really more practical is how do you integrate it into your day to day life? It's like you can go to the gym and work out for 60 minutes. Or if you live on the eighth floor in your building, you can just climb up the stairs. How do you integrate well being and mindfulness into your daily life? Maybe do a short 1 minute practice before a meeting, before a difficult conversation at the end of your work day or while you're listening to someone, give your full, undivided attention to your child, to your spouse. These are all simple practices that we can integrate into our daily life.

Christopher Nelson [00:42:47]:

So what would be a very simple breath exercise? I know it can be confusing. I remember at one point, I heard meditation. Meditation? I just went and picked up the book, How to Meditate. Gave you five or six different ways. But when you think about mindfulness, what is one breath practice that people could walk away with?

Gautam Deviah [00:43:09]:

Oh, yeah, definitely. So the one that I love to teach and a lot of people love to practice is the three breath practice. I think you've tried that with me before. I'm happy to do it right now.

Christopher Nelson [00:43:21]:

For your help, let's do it. Let's share it. Let's share it. I think it's great.

Gautam Deviah [00:43:26]:

So we'll take three breaths. In the first breath, we'll bring our attention to the in and out breath. In the second breath, we'll relax the body. And in the third breath, we'll silently ask ourselves, what's most important now? So let's try it with our first breath. Bring our attention to the breath. One, two, three. And the outbreath. One, two, three. And a second deep breath from the nose as we relax the body. Letting go of any tension as we breathe out, relaxing our shoulders, our face, our hands, our legs. And in the space now, we have created for ourselves this physical, mental, emotional space. Taking a deep third breath in, breathing in, one, two, three. As you ask yourself, what's most important now? What's most important now? Letting go. Letting go with the breath.

Christopher Nelson [00:44:41]:

MMM. Thank you. Noticing yeah.

Gautam Deviah [00:44:49]:

How you feel in this moment, the shift you might have experienced.

Christopher Nelson [00:44:56]:

Whenever I do breath work like that, that is actually my meditation that I choose is breath counting. I find it very simple. I do a four in, four out. I usually just do all my nose. Sometimes I'll do it through the nose, out through the mouth. But, I mean, it immediately takes away tension. It brings clarity. Because I find that when I do the breathing, I'm getting more and more educated on how important breath work really is, and profound it is with our physiology. But it then quiets me. I mean, I find for myself, having had a meditation practice, it quiets me. What I think is the subtle difference here that I think is really important is instead of just doing breathwork or the meditation to just find emptiness and quietness, the intentionality of asking what is important? I think now we're here in this educational moment, and so I'm sort of going through like, okay, what do we really want to educate people with? But again, my meta self sort of switched on, and I had the ability to see, oh, wow, just a moment of this while I'm spending time with my sons or with my wife. It takes away the noise. It gets me to that moment where I'm and I think that's really where the critical things happen, this world.

Gautam Deviah [00:46:22]:

Yeah. And it is also at work. If you're struggling with something in the moment, it can be a reminder why you're in that career, why you're doing this thing for the long term. Reconnecting with your mission and your vision, even in a split moment, can help shift how you're feeling and how you show up.

Christopher Nelson [00:46:42]:

It really can. And I thank you for taking us through that because I think it's just really important to break down for everybody what this is. Because even in these last 15 or 20 minutes, I have changed and shaped the way that I think about Mindfulness. So if that's sort of a starting point, give us a feel for what this looks like as you build a practice and you continue to evolve this.

Gautam Deviah [00:47:11]:

I think one of the things can be pretty surprising or maybe frustrating and challenging is what we start to notice about ourselves. And I think that is sometimes the biggest obstacle. I'll have people join me in my courses and programs and they'll be like, oh, I'm struggling with paying attention, I'm struggling with all my thoughts and my feelings. All this stuff is going on. And here's the counterintuitive thing I tell to them, I tell them congratulations because now you're noticing what is really happening in the present moment, right? And this thing is really counterintuitive. Mindfulness is not about shutting things out. It's about noticing what is already there and present in you and around you in this moment with this attitude of kindness and curiosity. And one of the things I recommend to people as they start to build their practice and you talked about intentionality, is to journal. Add journaling as a daily habit, as a daily practice, making a few, maybe five minutes after your meditation to maybe have a connection with your goals, maybe have a reflection on what you are grateful for, maybe capture some things you're learning or things you've done well this week. But I think journaling is another really powerful tool for us to like. The breath work is actually a bridge between the external world and the internal world because we breathe in from the outside, we take it in and we give it back to the world. Journaling is a very powerful way for us to have this bridge between the external world, all that volatility and uncertainty and change and our internal world. It's a space that we can control and create for our own selves. So that's the second practice I would recommend for your listeners.

Christopher Nelson [00:49:20]:

Oh, that's great. I think it's so interesting because when we do start becoming aware, self awareness, the first thing that we realize, and this goes back to the conversation at the beginning, which is it becomes more about self leadership. We realize our challenges and our struggles and the frustrating news, great news is it's frustrating because we have a lot more work to do on ourselves. But the great news is that the work on ourselves is truly the only thing that we can control. I can control what I am doing for myself. I can do that work, I can't change anybody else. So that to me is that unlocking power moment. And it goes back to the point of 80% of my time is spent leading myself and I need to spend the time, invest the time. The other comment I was going to make on the journaling is as I leveraged a five bullet journal for probably been doing for a year and a half now, just daily doing, like you said, some gratitude, some things that I'm working on, et cetera. The amazing thing is then when you start flipping back and you do see your own progress, you do see your own timeline and I love having just that lightweight record of seeing that, because that gives me hope, it gives me encouragement. It also lets me understand when I am in a tough season. And sometimes it is like anything else. It's seasonal and it can pass.

Gautam Deviah [00:51:01]:

Yeah, no, I think very well said. It's a great tool for growth and learning.

Christopher Nelson [00:51:11]:

And so I think that we've covered a lot here today. I'm so thankful for this. I want to take a moment and jump into the fire round where we ask people five key questions that, again, we want to deliver some value at the end of this. And so I know you're a big value guy, so let's start with what was the worst career advice you ever received?

Gautam Deviah [00:51:37]:

I have a slight different twist on my answer here. So it's not a specific advice, it's who do you get the advice from? And one of the things I've learned is make sure you're taking advice or listening to the advice of people who have done it, done it for many years and they know why they've achieved success or failure in their line of work. So when I switched from being a management consultant to being a leadership coach, a lot of people gave me advice and I listened to many of them for a long time. Do this, do that, build a brand or build a course or build something online presence and things like that. But I recognize at some point none of them have actually done it at the scale and level I want to see it done. So that's my response to your question. Make sure you're listening to the right people.

Christopher Nelson [00:52:29]:

That's great. That's great advice. How do you keep learning?

Gautam Deviah [00:52:37]:

And growth is my deep need. Like, if I'm not learning every day, this conversation has been a learning experience for me, right? If I'm not learning every day, it's like my oxygen. I would not be alive. And to prove it, I'll let you know. I have four educational degrees, so that's evidence enough that I love learning.

Christopher Nelson [00:52:58]:

Okay. Yes. There you go. So we talked about wellness. What do you do to recharge your batteries?

Gautam Deviah [00:53:08]:

I think for me, it's really about setting up my day for success. So it starts with sleeping. I go to sleep around 9930 every night, and I wake up after I've had 8 hours of sleep. So sleep is numero uno for me most essential. And then I start my day with meditation and some physical workout. 2030 minutes. And that I find, sets me up for hours of effective work, along with a little bit of intermittent fasting. But these are some of the things I do to help myself be in the best state to do my work.

Christopher Nelson [00:53:51]:

Right. So, yeah, preparing for that day, it's amazing. Sleep, meditation, physical activity. What soft skill has helped your career the most?

Gautam Deviah [00:54:05]:

I would say self reflection. So going back and analyzing why I succeeded, what are my strengths, but also analyzing what the failures are, and I must tell you, AI is a great tool for that. Now, if you go back and put in some of your reports, some of your presentations into that and ask it for suggestions, how can you do this better? What worked well? What didn't work well? You can use AI tools to help you continue to learn, improve, and grow. So that self reflection mindset, I think, has been one of my competitive strengths.

Christopher Nelson [00:54:53]:

Great. It's incredible. What has been the best return on time that you've had?

Gautam Deviah [00:55:03]:

I would say it's when I meet with people who inspire and motivate me and who can teach and are willing to share what they have done. Because, interestingly, you'll see it in the corporate world. A lot of people who are successful cannot explain fully in a detailed, granular way. They cannot reverse engineer their success for others.

Christopher Nelson [00:55:33]:

I've seen that a lot.

Gautam Deviah [00:55:34]:

And if you can find the right people who can help you with that understanding, that's what I find the most inspiring. So I like to surround myself with people who inspire me. That's kind of how we met at that time. Michael Port and others in the program inspire us to do our best work ever.

Christopher Nelson [00:56:00]:

You know, as I've transitioned to entrepreneurship, found that so much to be true, that the best return on time. When you spend time with somebody who's been there, done that, have what I call healthy scar tissue, right. A lot of lessons learned. And an hour, 2 hours of that time can help give you so many ideas, move you ahead. And sometimes it's just what I call juice. Like sometimes in this journey, especially on the entrepreneurial side, and you can in the w two world as well, right? It can be tiring. And sometimes you just need a shot of some juice that says, like, I can do this and that can get you through the next quarter, get you through the next six months until the next thing comes along.

Gautam Deviah [00:56:46]:

Yeah. And on a more serious note, there's an epidemic of loneliness in the country right now in the world, but especially in the US. And I think especially among younger people. I work with people in college also and straight out of undergrad, and many of them can't share the struggles and difficulties and challenges they're going through. So having that peer network, that support network, is so important.

Christopher Nelson [00:57:16]:

Really is. Well, I want to thank you so much for your time today, Gautam. How can people find out more about you?

Gautam Deviah [00:57:23]:

The best way is to go to my website, which is my name, Gautamdevaya.com, and I also have a free resource there for your listeners if they want to try their hand at getting started with Mindfulness.

Christopher Nelson [00:57:39]:

Excellent. I'm going to make sure that all of those are in the show notes. So for everybody here, all those links to Gautam's website, to his free resource, we're going to make sure and highlight that in the show notes. Well, thank you so much for the time today, Gautam. I learned a ton, too, and I am excited to reinvigorate my Mindfulness practice. And I would ask everybody here, thank you so much for your support. Please subscribe to this podcast. We're still new, so Apple, Google, Spotify, wherever you may listen. We would also ask that you leave us a review and tell us what you find impactful and important and then share it with others. Right. The intention of this podcast is for us to have open, challenging conversations around tech, careers, money, and how it all works together. Thank you so much.