Conscious Conversation With Insight Timer Teacher Tomek Wyczesany

Okay,

Welcome back to Conscious Conversations.

It has been a big gap between episodes and I don't make apologies for that.

I would like you to understand a little bit of why there has been such a gap because,

You know,

I've had some things personally go on,

Not with myself,

But with my wife and my family.

So much has been happening where I had to be more available at home,

You know,

A lot more with the kids and sort of helping out,

Which then I had to prioritize my values,

What I'm doing in my actions and really sort of create real clarity on what are the needs and what are the wants.

And I'd encourage anyone to do this if they're feeling really busy and overwhelmed.

But one of the things that I had to take off the list for a while was the podcast.

They do take quite a bit of time to sort of,

A,

Get the interviews,

B,

Edit them up,

Get them online and sort of do it and you've got to continue the process week in,

Week out.

So it gave me a chance to sort of reassess where I want to take the podcast and also to fall back in love with it because I actually do like love doing it.

And I think it's a great platform for my voice,

But also to talk authentically about what I love.

So that did spark the engine again to really want to get into it.

So I'm grateful for that.

I'm going to try to get the frequency a bit less.

So it's going to be like fortnightly podcast,

26 a year,

But a real good quality as opposed to trying to do them weekly.

I just think there's too much.

And even the podcasts that I'm listening to,

Ones that I love,

Dudes are just filling it these days because they've committed to a week,

Every week and every third one's good.

But then the other two are just either someone they've had on again and they're talking about the same thing or they're just a sort of a nothing podcast.

And I just think it dilutes the quality.

And I want to try to increase the quality and then maintain the quality.

So that's really important.

So that's where I'm at.

I'm still being sort of on Instagram a lot.

If you want to check more of me out,

It's lukemclean.

Net online.

Got plenty of meditations up there and been doing some stuff.

So by all means do that.

I've got a blog there,

Sign up,

Get my mailing list.

Cause I've been doing a little bit that night when I can just be by myself.

I reintroduced the blog that I used to do because I did have that space by myself,

But I didn't have the space with other people,

If that makes sense.

Anyway,

I'm rambling and I want to get into the podcast because I hate podcasts that I just go for minutes and minutes and go through ads.

So no ads.

This one's about mindfulness.

We got Tommy Wixani.

Tommy,

I hope I got that right.

We're going to explore mindfulness from more the science-based element to it.

Tommy's got an awesome little business called Synergy Lab Sydney.

He looks around stress and sleep and how to reduce that monkey mind.

So that's where he's hitting it from.

And that's what this conversation is about.

My feeling on mindfulness is we're just going to try to find what works for us,

What allows us to become more present,

To become calmer and increase the quality of our attention.

Now that could be meditation for some people.

Some people might not be at that stage yet.

It may be just having your first coffee in the morning without your phone and just being present with the coffee.

We've got to hit it from,

We've just got to dip the toe in and find what you feel comfortable with.

It's like working out.

You've got to get to the gym and firstly enjoy the gym before you might get the real rewards later.

So that's what we do in this episode.

This conversation is we just go through what mindfulness is,

What it is and what we see has been really important in some of the themes.

So without further ado,

It's awesome to be back.

I hope you like it.

Here we've got Tommick Wicksani.

A little bit about the science around mindfulness that you've discovered and how you then look at,

Especially your view on,

Which I really am passionate about is around the mind training,

Not just like just sort of the actual discipline to train the mind,

Not just sort of the,

Some people see it just as the fluffy stuff,

But there's an actual need to train the mind to get better.

And I'm from a fitness background initially.

So when I talk a little bit about mindfulness,

I look at it through that lens a lot where if you just read fitness books,

You're not going to get fit.

So if you read about mindfulness and conceptually understand it without the practice,

It's not going to actually make you more mindful.

Absolutely.

So yeah,

I think that's where we could go in the conversation.

Wonderful.

No,

No,

I couldn't agree more.

It's that pragmatic approach to mindfulness that I'm interested in and that's how I see it.

That's how I see it and that's how it works in my life at the moment.

I try to apply it obviously on a daily basis in my mindfulness practice,

But most importantly over the past 10 years of my practice and me waking up to more towards this,

I've realized that this is something that incorporate in every single moment of my life.

So it's no longer going to,

It's like going to a gym and you ask yourself why you really go to the gym.

You don't really go to the gym to do 100 squats and I don't know,

100 push-ups and pull-ups and whatever.

You go there to actually function better on a moment to moment basis.

And the same with mindfulness.

It's very,

I mean,

I'm not saying this is a wrong way to start to just sit down to feel more relaxed and again fluffy,

So to speak.

That's a great start,

But once you go,

Once one goes deeper into that,

I think it becomes more the way of thinking and more way of perceiving things.

And that essentially impacts your awareness of everything.

Because even though,

Even though if you say,

I usually use that metaphor,

If you go to the gym once a week,

That's great,

But you cannot expect that this is going to,

And if you go to the gym once a week and outside of the gym session,

You,

I don't know,

You eat junk food and you treat yourself badly,

It's not going to really matter.

And I think the same with mindfulness.

If you just sit for even for 20 minutes twice a day,

Which is like the beginning,

Beginners dose of mindfulness,

Daily mindfulness,

And outside of that time,

You just don't do anything and you just,

Yeah,

Whatever.

I meditate,

I meditate.

But when you mistreat yourself and then treat other people around you badly,

Then it doesn't really matter.

It's just become another thing that you add to the list of things and it doesn't change your mindset.

In my,

I devised kind of a funny title to myself because I can't find a really job description to myself and what I do.

So I called myself a paradigm shift scientist and I believe this is,

This is the heart of what I do.

I try to facilitate a change in thinking,

Try to facilitate a change of behavior that flows from the different mindset.

And again,

That mindset is not just turned on when you sit on a meditation cushion or on a chair and then switches off for the rest of the day.

It's more,

Yeah,

Something that you try to keep on for most of the time,

At least for all the time you want to feel happy,

Fulfilled and be more yourself.

This is outside of that space of running on autopilot.

And that's what Harvard researchers talk about,

Right?

And they found that 47% of the time we are simply not aware of what's going on.

And that's a big problem because if you're not aware that dynamic that psychologists called negativity bias kicks in,

Which means that our brain naturally shifts towards those negative experiences.

And I think Rick Hansen talks about it beautifully using metaphor of a Velcro and a Teflon,

Right?

Like our thoughts and our mind is like a Velcro towards those negative experiences,

Negative thoughts and like a Teflon to those positive experiences.

So when the moments that you are not aware,

And that's how it works for me,

My consciousness flickers,

So to speak,

Like a flame.

And during the time when I'm aware,

I can make conscious choices,

Right?

Whether it be this or that,

Whether to choose one experience over the other.

However,

During the time when you are unconscious,

Right,

Your mind will almost automatically shift towards those negative experiences,

Towards worries,

Towards what's wrong with me,

Towards what's wrong with other people and the world and so on and so forth.

So in a sense,

A mindfulness training at the moment is more,

Again,

It's a training,

It's more trying to see in the laboratory of your mind how this work.

Yep.

Well,

Another example I give,

If an athlete goes to the Olympics and it's about to run a hundred meter sprint,

The time for training is over,

Right?

There's no time to think,

Okay,

This or that.

No,

You just use everything that you trained yourself for and you just run.

And I think on a daily basis,

It's exactly the same.

You sit on a cushion,

Again,

I'm using this as a reference,

Not as something to hold on to,

Twice a day for 20 minutes and then you rely on that training to be sort of active for the remaining time of the day.

But at the same time,

What that training tells you is awareness is everything,

Right?

Awareness,

How you feel,

Awareness,

What you do and that applies not only to what you think and your thoughts,

But pretty much everything.

And based on those experiences,

I created a program called Six Pillars of Wellbeing.

And this is the fruit,

So to speak,

Of all my experiences.

And at first,

When I started my meditation practice,

I thought,

Well,

Sitting on the cushion,

That's all about it.

Stay within your thinking process,

What's going on,

Pay attention to your thoughts.

But then I realized this is just one aspect of it.

And those six pillars include both mental and physical aspect.

And I think as if you come from a fitness background,

You can appreciate that,

That we are not just the mental process,

We also a physical body,

As in our consciousness manifests itself in a form of physical body.

And therefore,

Both of them we have to include in what we do and how we think about ourselves.

So say six pillars are divided,

Basically,

It's a framework.

I'm a scientist.

I love really using frameworks and protocols,

Because they basically help me to focus my attention away.

And that's how I operate.

It might be not great to everyone.

But,

Well,

If you don't have any framework to work with,

Whether it's a meditation on what you do on an daily basis,

It's very easy to get lost.

So that's why six pillars comes very handy.

Yeah,

And I think,

Tom,

What you're saying in that is really important,

Because with mindfulness and the want to get mindfulness out to the masses,

That we need a diverse range of tools and resources and ways people think about mindfulness,

So more people can accept similar teachings on different levels.

So for people that are similar to yourself,

That like a framework,

They like the structure,

They like to see it in that way,

That they can actually get it and go,

That makes sense to me,

As opposed to someone that would like it a little bit more free flowing and a little bit maybe more,

What would you say,

Just a little bit more philosophical,

For instance.

And they like it that way.

So I think exactly what you're doing is right,

Because we all agree that it's needed and it's much needed.

We look at the depression,

We look at the suicide rates,

We look at everything and it's deeply needed within society.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I couldn't agree more.

And again,

Along this line,

That's how evolution of my practice and my approach to mindfulness kind of proceeded.

First,

It started again,

As I said already,

Sitting on a cushion and for a certain period of time,

So many times a day.

But then I realized that mindfulness is absolutely everything.

And it applies both to the mental and physical part of my life.

And that's why in this program,

I started talking about,

We have mental and physical part.

And the mental aspect,

There is a movement,

Right?

There's a nutrition and it's sleep as three fundamental parts of our physical kind of reincarnation,

If you will.

And then within the mental,

It's awareness that many people understand as mindfulness,

But I relate to it more as emotional regulation or emotional intelligence,

Rather than only mindfulness and there is interpersonal,

Which includes every basically relationship that we create in our lives,

Without which life would be not possible because I love the saying that I think Thomas Merton says it and that's title of his book,

Nobody's an Island.

But I think that term has been coined or that sentence was first said some in middle of centuries.

Yeah.

A long,

Long time ago.

But indeed Nobody's an Island and if we again,

If we focusing on the internal process,

At least that's my,

That's my realization.

It's to be able to include others into this,

To be better part of the community,

To be better part of the society,

To be,

You know,

Better father,

Better mother and perform or do our function as a valid member of society.

And then,

So that's the interpersonal,

Which again,

Many people think about mindfulness what do you mean?

I sit by myself in a cushion.

So that has nothing to do with how I,

How I interact with other people,

But I believe that nothing could be further from the truth because that has everything to do how you interact with other people.

Right?

Yeah.

Tommy,

How do you,

How do you tell that story that like that the stories that we,

You know,

Everyone else tells themselves that,

You know,

That just sitting on a cushion for 20 minutes twice a day or 30 minutes twice a day,

Whatever the period,

Then how you can clearly articulate that that is going to connect to relationships with your kids,

Performance and productivity,

You know,

Self awareness,

Self regulation by that,

That sitting in that practice provided that it's the right practice.

How do you tell that story?

Well,

It starts,

Everything starts with awareness.

So,

So again,

I'm going to use,

I'm going to come back to that framework of framework of six pillars because I really like it as a structure.

It comes to awareness,

Awareness of there's nothing without awareness.

So imagine having,

If you have even the best life and everything,

Everything you can imagine,

But you're not aware.

Yep.

That doesn't matter what you've got.

And you won't be aware of,

Of all those pressures and treasures that around you,

Around you or within you.

Right.

So within the framework of mindfulness,

What you practice is how it,

How I see it.

It's practice your ability to execute your awareness or to apply your awareness consciously and how it works.

And the more,

And again,

Research clearly shows that again,

Using the title of that Harvard research,

Wandering mind,

It's unhappy mind.

So if your mind wanders,

If you are not aware,

Your chances of being unhappy are much greater.

And how you react to unhappiness,

If you think to yourself,

How do you feel any unhappy?

Do you really feel like going to the party and interacting with people and,

And I don't know,

Talking to friends?

I guess not.

We actually feel,

I want to be by myself.

I don't want to talk to anyone.

You feel more isolated and alienated on the contrary.

When you again,

When you conscious,

It doesn't matter what you do,

Right?

You can brush your teeth or you can polish your shoes.

But once you pay attention to it,

And again,

Science is very clear about it.

Your chances of being feeling fulfilled and happy are much greater.

And when you experience when you're in that zone of,

I call the zone,

Right?

But basically when you feel,

And again,

It's difficult to describe,

But if you have the sense of fulfillment,

Fulfillment and happiness,

Then you don't need to try to,

To interact with other people.

This interaction flows out of you because it's in that state of mind,

It's more natural.

I feel happy.

Imagine yourself,

You just achieved something and you're very happy about it.

Then you come out of the,

I don't know,

Conference room,

You just get a raise or get a promotion and you're very,

Very happy.

How you feel?

Do you feel like,

Oh no,

I want to lock myself in my office and celebrate by myself?

No,

You want to grab your friends,

You want to grab family,

You want to share with people.

Because that's how happy state manifests itself.

It's you naturally start connecting and interconnecting with others.

So in a sense for me personally,

Every time I find myself a bit of,

Oh dear,

I'd rather stay at home.

This is a red light for me that what is going on with my internal process?

Where does it come from?

And I start being mindful about what is going on internally with me.

And very frequently I find that,

Oh well,

There's some dissatisfaction.

I'm fixating on some negative emotions.

So there's a message behind it and that's great.

And that's what mindfulness to me is.

It's not just focusing on the positive and ignoring all the negative.

It's the recognition of the emotional state in all the shapes and forms they come.

And then taking the message that that emotion has to offer.

And that's the beauty.

Yeah.

And I think Tomik on that,

Exactly right.

That mindfulness and meditation doesn't mean that the negative thoughts and the fears and the judgments just go away forever and they never come back.

It's almost that you build an awareness or a better relationship with them.

So when they do come back,

You can meet them kindly and you can talk to them and then they don't,

They no longer have the power or the hook on you anymore because you're aware of them and you've almost made peace with those feelings that they're real and they happen,

But they don't drag you to past or they don't drag you to future.

You just meet them where they are.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I think you can take it even further and say that you may,

I'm not saying I do it all the time and I'm successful with that approach all the time,

But you can take those emotions that we perceive as negative and take it to your advantage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Because again,

Every emotional state,

It's a representation of something.

Emotions do not come from a void.

They usually,

I love this path described by,

As a famous psychiatrist,

Actually Australian psychiatrist that,

You know,

I'm paraphrasing it,

That every emotional state is caused by experience and we have always a choice to choose our response and in that choice lies our freedom and our growth.

It's a famous Australian.

Yeah.

So that was,

I think that was by Victor Frankl who was in the concentration camps.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

So I'm paraphrasing this,

I'm paraphrasing is that he obviously uses that phrase in much more elegant way,

But the gist of it is that what we perceive as negative or unpleasant has as much value as the positive.

Yeah.

If we allow that message to come across and to give you a very tangible example of it is when now every time I feel upset or angry,

I try to feel translated what it really means and very frequently I,

What I find is that I'm dissatisfied with a certain situation because I care too much to let things be as they are or accept the status quo and if you again retell that story of what you're experiencing as anger,

As anger,

As attention in your body in that way that you care,

Right?

Experiencing because you care,

That changes the paradigm shift,

Right?

You no longer are identified with the emotion of anxiety,

Of anger or any strong emotion.

You simply putting humanity into it in a way that help you to understand yourself better and to act the more skillfully,

Which is the most important thing,

Right?

That's what Victor Frankl says.

That's what our growth is,

Right?

That's where you're growing versus just putting yourself in the hole where you stay and on the cave where you want to stay and not to talk to anyone.

Well,

Yeah,

You get the choice and you still might want to react and yell or haul someone over the coals.

That's fine,

But you choose the response.

You don't,

So it's a response as opposed to just a reaction or an unconscious reaction,

Which then you regret later because you didn't have the space to choose.

And I'm with you,

Tommick.

I definitely,

When I've got five kids,

So when the kids,

When I start to get really frustrated and for whatever reason,

I'll generally take a breath and just ask myself the question of what am I attaching to?

What am I attached to that's causing me to feel this way?

Because generally for me,

I'm attached.

So we've got to be somewhere at 10 o'clock.

I'm attached to that time of being there on time.

And the frustration is that the kids are still playing and not getting dressed.

It's not them that's causing me to get frustrated.

It's my attachment to the time of wanting to be there at 10 o'clock that's then causing me the suffering because I've made that commitment and I'm hooked on that being the time.

So once I can let that go and go,

Well,

It's 10.

30 and no one's actually going to really care and I'll probably get the kids dressed quicker if I'm a bit less negative and reactive,

Then this is all going to work out a lot better.

So that's my little bit that I try to always do because generally for me,

It comes back to an attachment to something,

A real fixed belief on this is how it has to be and I can't see it through another lens.

That is very true.

And according to Tom Campbell,

Who's a nuclear physicist,

But also a consciousness explorer,

The close ones,

Which is our family,

Kids and wives and partners,

These are people that from whom we learn the most.

They give us the biggest challenge and the biggest ability to grow.

And on that topic,

And once for a moment,

Coming back to your initial question of mindfulness and reactivity in a very tangible way,

Mindfulness is a tool to increase that space between your emotional space,

The state between the experience and your response.

So imagine people who are untrained or unskillfully react to certain situations.

Simply the ability to create that space between the experience and the response is very minimal or does not exist and it happens automatically.

Again,

That's what negativity bias kicks in.

However,

Practicing being on that meditation cushion and I call it a cognitive training,

Your cognitive fitness.

What cognitive fitness is to me is exactly the volume of that space.

How much you give yourself,

How much space you give yourself between you jumping to the conclusion.

And again,

Many people having that choice,

They would choose correctly.

The problem is because of that space for so many of us,

Because we are untrained and we react unskillfully,

The space is so limited that we don't make any choices.

We simply react and that's what you're referring to,

I believe,

When the situation happens.

You having your practice and repeating it like you go in a gym and you do repetition,

You're the same,

You have the other,

Get it right at the first time but by repetition and interacting with your kids on a daily basis,

You learn how to respond skillfully,

Respond mindfully.

And that's what mindfulness is indeed.

It's not how much you can,

How much you can,

I love people who say,

I cannot make my mind blank.

And I said,

My goodness,

There's not a single person that can do that because you were just denied 200 million years of evolution was working so hard for our minds to actually be able to think and to process information.

And now you want to just make it blank,

That's just not going to happen.

That will be actually silly.

So yeah.

And I love the terminology that you use,

Tomy,

Which I think is spot on,

Is a skillful response.

Because especially in leadership and parenting,

In relationships,

That's what you're wanting is you're wanting a skillful response.

Like you're wanting a response that works and the awareness that you've got that works for the situation and you're skillful.

And I feel like what you're saying that it's not a blanket response every single time.

The response has to change depending on the environment and the person.

And when you've got the self-awareness and the awareness of others,

That you can respond in a skillful way to get a good outcome to that moment.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's nicely put and I think really important.

How much work have you done with leadership,

Mindful leadership,

Which is again,

Something that's now becoming more popular is around the ability to be more mindful and to be skillful at the practice actually then blends into good leadership,

Blends into reducing stress in leaders and within teams and cultures and environments.

Listen,

I wish I could tell that I did a lot of work because that's certainly my area of interest.

But the truth is that my experience with corporate world is not great.

It's because again,

Perhaps it's my personality.

I cannot as a scientist,

My business skills and ability to approach the business world are not that great.

And therefore,

It's still a lot to learn for me with that area.

However,

Speaking to my friends who are CEOs and CFOs of big companies,

I can tell how much emotional turmoil they go through and how much they could use that.

And particularly that obviously those leaders have a massive influence on the employees.

So they create that they are responsible for creating the culture of the whole companies.

And obviously the big influence they have,

The bigger responsibility there is.

So within that framework,

I love what is being done by Search Inside Yourself Institute created by Google and what they do about in the field of mindfulness of mindful leadership.

I think it's absolutely necessary to implement that and teach leaders about emotional regulation,

About emotional intelligence and how to be able to include this variety of emotions that they have to deal with and not only within themselves,

But the emotions of people that they surrounded by.

So yeah,

Indeed,

I think it's a great topic.

However,

Again,

I don't have much at this stage personal experiences to share with,

Except those of my friends and my circles.

Do you think Tomek that that's a little bit,

I agree,

The silly Search Inside Yourself platform is great,

But I'm with you a little bit in terms of I think the leadership and mindfulness as a performance tool in Australia,

Especially where I always feel like wellness in Australia,

We're about five,

Sometimes maybe 10 years behind the US or the bigger companies that are really evolving for us.

We've got to play catch up or we've got to see that it's worthy to come to Australia and for leaders to then embrace it as normal.

So I've noticed that with a lot of the wellness stuff,

I built a wellness program for the Cotton On Group and we were lucky that we were quite advanced and ours is comparable to sort of any other health and wellbeing programs globally,

But most companies even just with health and wellbeing programs either get their wellness program and put it in with HR or they put it in with health and safety.

Very few have a standalone health and wellbeing department or program that's its own program that connects to performance and works with teams.

Yeah,

You're absolutely right.

Actually as a matter of fact,

I checked a couple of job offers and the wellness program comes with HR and usually has to do with people that have undergone a serious accident or trauma and wellness is being perceived as a remediation of that unfortunate event and the things like,

And that's obviously it's post-factum,

Right?

When something already happened,

We have to respond to it in a certain way.

That's what they call wellness,

But in the part where they actually train people to prevent those situations to happen,

The emotional distress and that emotional turmoil is a very small part because it's still,

And again,

I'm not an expert in this field.

I don't want to say much about it,

But at least to me personally seems that because there's no immediate benefit in a monetary sense in teaching people mindfulness in various forms.

Again,

It's not just sitting on the cushion,

But ways to deal with emotions,

Not even mindfulness,

But I would call it emotional regulation and emotional intelligence,

Right?

They can't see the immediate benefit of it and there's no immediate benefit of it,

Then perhaps we can postpone it.

Versus you have a situation when a person at work has an accident,

That's something we have to deal with immediately,

Otherwise there's a lawsuit coming with it that may cost us millions of dollars.

So to me,

It has to do a bit with how about long-term looking at the wellness of the company,

Not just reactive,

But proactive.

And Tommy,

Predominantly in Australia and around mindfulness and wellness within that,

We're prescriptive,

Like,

Right,

If there's a problem,

What's the prescription?

So how do we fix it?

If there's a problem with sick leave or stress,

We need to fix the problem as opposed to being preventative in terms of,

Okay,

It's not there yet,

But we can see it's on the horizon.

So we want to,

Before it gets to a prescription need,

What's the prevention?

What's going to be the one that's going to sustain our wellness and also improve performance?

And we want to get ahead of the curb and companies and leaders as a general rule are not thinking that way about the wellness and the mindfulness of their people.

And I think you actually hit the nail on the head by saying that leaders are not aware of this because they're not aware.

And if you don't have that perspective,

If you don't have awareness of it,

Even if the solution is there,

You won't be able to perceive it.

We coming back to the very beginning of our conversation where we essentially described awareness as a glue that holds it all together.

And obviously awareness of the leaders of this kind of situation,

It's absolutely crucial.

And it doesn't come from the leaders.

And that's why I think mindful leadership is so important because if it's not going to come from there,

Basically it's going to be stifled at that stage and it's not going to serve the purpose of prevention,

But only reaction and solving the existing problems.

Yeah,

And it's the way we can articulate and talk to mindfulness and how we can normalise meditation and normalise starting a meeting and then just asking if everyone's okay,

Potentially having a pause within a meeting to make sure everyone can get clarity and have that space to think.

And for that to be just become normal,

Not out of the box or not silly or not soft,

But seen as this is a really great way to do business.

That's the bit that I'm like you working with groups.

It doesn't become extra and add on.

It becomes built into the way we operate as people.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Obviously that's the goal and that'll be wonderful to see.

But what I'm encountering is even if people recognise the usefulness of form of cognitive fitness,

Mindfulness,

Meditation and yoga,

I think it happens on the superficial level.

So they may smile and they recognise,

Sure,

Let's sit in silence for one minute,

But because there's no awareness of what's behind it and why you actually do it,

It washes off very quickly and basically that information doesn't stick.

And I think that's where practice,

It's fundamental,

Right?

Because during those periods of mindfulness,

Daily mindfulness,

You understand,

You start having firsthand experience of those moments where this is not just a concept of,

Oh yeah,

I just sit in silence for one minute because someone told me it's good for me.

Yeah.

But you actually experience it.

And one of the things I was pondering upon even this morning was how can you change a belief system of a society or of an individual?

And the conclusion I came to,

Which is not a new one,

Is you cannot possibly do it by telling someone that this or that is true.

That can only happen on the individual level by having the personal experience.

And I think Rob Monroe has this wonderful saying that beliefs are not necessary once you have personal experience.

So the beliefs with capital B are converted or transformed into knowns with capital K and then the belief is no longer necessary.

If I always give that example,

I can tell you that vanilla ice cream,

I tried a French vanilla ice cream,

Tastes this way and has this texture.

And you might believe me that this is absolutely an amazing experience,

But that doesn't matter.

Because the moment you try it,

You actually get to the bottom of it,

So to speak.

And I think the same with leaders,

Right?

They obviously,

They were trained,

They went to maybe a training where they were told that the mindfulness,

Emotional regulation,

And emotional intelligence are important for the well-being of their own and the companies,

Right?

But if again,

And that's something I really mentioned,

If you don't practice it yourself,

If you don't have a past experience of it by yourself,

This always will be just empty words and words,

Right?

And words do not transform people,

Experiences do.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I do agree with that,

Tomik.

And I'll throw in one more thing,

Which I think can sort of sway it is the environment in which society is positioned ourselves and that the leader has the experience potentially and of mindfulness and believes in it.

But then if the environment's not inviting of it and appreciative of it,

The fear of the leader looking out of the ordinary or looking like he doesn't fit in can also stymie that progress for that person because the boss doesn't do it and doesn't believe in it or whatever or the culture isn't supportive.

And that can also,

The environment has a huge influence on how we think and act.

And I believe that's the challenge we've got in society is the environment's not inviting because in some ways it wants us to stay unaware and unconscious because that's where the money's to be made in terms of buying stuff that you don't need and eating food that it's not good for you.

That happens predominantly at an unconscious level and that's where the money is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's very true and what you call environment in my head,

I call a collective consciousness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we,

You know,

Doesn't matter how hard you try,

There's a collective consciousness.

It's a powerful source of emotional state and therefore behaviors.

And again,

An example that comes to mind is many people complain that they work in a toxic environment,

Right?

What it really means that the majority of people or the collective consciousness of the company,

Of the people that created is actually it's a collective unconsciousness,

So to speak.

So many things are hidden from them and therefore they don't know why but they feel horrible.

That's why they call it toxic environment,

Right?

And I think that's what we try to do.

We try to bring light to that unconsciousness and bring it to the surface because once you bring it to the surface,

Even any person can actually make the right choice.

But the problem is if you are not aware of it,

If the conscious is not there,

How can you recognize it?

How can you avoid it?

How can you make the right choice?

So indeed,

The collective environment or collective consciousness,

It's an important thing and I think that's something that en masse is very difficult to change.

First of all,

Because it's huge,

The scale of it is massive.

And the fact that you mentioned that we seems like Australia,

It's 10 years behind,

Things that happen in the US,

That might be the thing because all the spiritual teachers from India,

They,

Or many of them at least,

Moved to the US.

And even on the inside timer,

When you look at it,

How many meditators are there from the US versus how many meditators are in other parts of the world,

You can see quantitatively how it looks like.

Oh,

It's crazy.

It's crazy when you look at that.

I've looked at that too and sort of,

Yeah,

There's an awareness.

Obviously there's more people,

But there's a huge,

Much greater awareness in the US for the need for mindfulness and for meditation.

Can you talk a little bit about,

Tommy,

Your inside timer and sort of what you've got there?

You've got a really great following at Insight Timer,

Which I actually think,

And I'll suggest to anyone that's listening on the podcast,

If you're looking to learn to meditate,

You want education that's really cheap on mindfulness,

And sorry,

Good education by good teachers around mindfulness and meditation,

That the Insight Timer app,

It's definitely your go-to one-stop shop for mindfulness.

And also it's got a great community where you can join groups and share a little bit like Facebook,

If that's what you're into as well.

Let me begin by saying that that's not something that I just say,

It's my personal experience.

The best things in the world are for free.

And I think Insight Timer is a prime example of that.

So I don't know how many meditations they have,

I don't know how many programs because it's just meditation to music and whatnot,

But it's good over 10,

000.

And they all,

For free,

And everybody with an access to the internet and a smartphone can go there and listen to absolutely top teachers.

And that's for me,

Absolutely mind blowing.

So for someone who says I have to go and spend thousands of dollars to see Tony Robbins,

Tony Robbins visited Sydney just recently,

And I think you have to pay for four days something like,

It's thousands of dollars.

And don't get me wrong,

I think it's amazing experience just because of that collective,

I think,

Consciousness.

And when you go as a group and you experience that as a collective,

That's very powerful.

But that's exactly what Insight Timer offers.

You can see the meditators that you're meditating with on a moment to moment basis.

Right?

And for me,

Insight Timer is absolute gem.

And that's why I put more and more effort into publishing my programs there and connecting with my audiences there.

And I started replying,

I always replied,

But now I actually make time almost on a daily basis to reply to the comments that people leave on Insight Timer.

And that's how they try to connect and communicate with me.

And it's absolutely fantastic.

And nothing warms my heart that much when I hear that person says that I helped through my recordings,

I was able to transform someone else's life for better,

Obviously.

It's absolutely mind blowing.

So for me,

It's a wonderful journey.

It's something I think in a sense,

It's been going on for me for maybe for three years now.

I don't know,

It's like three,

Maybe less,

Maybe more.

However,

I look on Insight Timer as a wonderful community of people.

And obviously the platform is just the representation of the consciousness that changes.

And that's a wonderful thing.

That's the most wonderful thing that you can see a transformation and movement,

So to speak,

Because it's over 5 million people.

5 million people,

That's already a significant number.

And I'm not saying that every person jumps on Insight Timer on a daily basis.

But if you look at statistics that you meditate,

If I meditate for 40 minutes,

I usually meditate with over 10,

000 people simultaneously.

That's absolutely incredible.

Yeah,

I've got a few meditations up there and this podcast will go up there and for free.

It's because it's done a lot for me in terms of that connection and that community.

And they're a really supportive and educated community.

That's the other thing,

The comments,

Even if they're negative towards your meditation,

They're negative to try to help you become better at your craft,

Not just to have a pot shot at your meditation.

So many times I've read a comment that it's like,

Oh,

You could have done this or looked at this and it's like,

Oh,

Thank you.

That's great feedback.

That's what I want.

As opposed to,

Oh,

I just hated it and it was no good.

I'm like,

Again,

I'm okay with the feedback,

But can you be constructive and help me get better?

So that's the other bit that I really do love about the Insight Timer community.

Tommy,

Before we wrap up also,

Where else can people find you or get involved in your six-step programs and start to work closer with you if they're liking the programs and the basis of this discussion?

Yeah,

So obviously I have a website called SynergyLabSydney.

Com and the company I'm running,

It's called SynergyLab Sydney.

Why Synergy?

Because I love combining science and mindfulness and wellbeing.

So it's a synergy across the mental and physical aspects of our daily wellbeing.

So go to SynergyLabSydney.

Com.

So obviously feel free to connect with me on Insight Timer and through my profile there.

I run private consultations in Sydney for those people from other parts of the country.

I do Skype consultations.

So that's one way of obviously reaching me.

Yes,

And I think that's that.

Awesome.

Awesome for that.

Mate,

Thanks so much for taking the time to connect.

This is my little give back to the mindfulness community and to try to raise a little bit of awareness for people around mindfulness to talk to it and get different teachers and different experts lens on it and to see if we can storytell and start to change that collective unconscious to collective conscious and start to really move the wheel in a more mindful and kinder way.

So mate,

Thanks so much for your time on Conscious Conversation.

Thank you very much.

Look,

I think you're doing a wonderful job and this is absolutely necessary to talk about it and to spread the word.

And again,

As we already discussed,

Raise awareness.

I think this is a wonderful tool of raising awareness about what's going on within our own lives and within the life of our community.

Perfect.

Well put.

Beautiful.

Thanks,

Tommy.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Look,

That was my pleasure.

No worries,

Mate.

Okay.

So that was Tommy.

It was a cool conversation.

I liked it.

I really did like it.

I thought,

You know,

We both had really aligned values and thoughts on what mindfulness is and where the needs are.

There's an absolute fundamental need for mindful leadership.

You know,

Leading in a mindful way,

You know,

Presence is performance.

And that's the tagline that I'm using at the moment when I'm working with leaders is it's hard to perform when you're not present.

And you could look at that in sport,

Look at that in leadership,

Look at that in parenting,

But it's the moments where you're fully there.

Mind,

Body,

Spirit's there and you're in that flow state where you actually bring a really good outcome.

And that's what really mindfulness is.

You know,

You're calm,

You're clear,

You're confident,

You're committed.

So that was the conversation.

I really hope you liked it.

Next Fortnite,

We'll have someone else on.

I'm sort of tossing up which one to hit you with next because I've got a couple sort of in the bank now because it has been so long.

So but I'm really looking forward to hitting you with a nice podcast and about a Fortnite.

Stay tuned,

Stay grateful and look after yourself.

And this has been conscious conversations.