Navigating the Top Series: Trailblazing Executive Leaders Share Their Journey with Guest Keith Zimmerman

Alex Kohl: 0:13

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, the podcast that aims to support executives in deepening their impact and resiliency on the path to growing their enlightened leadership Tuning into your needs. Here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and self-proclaimed end-of-the-road seeker, david Craig Utz.

David Craig Utts: 0:39

So welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire. I'm David Craig Utz, the resilient leadership guy, your host and moderator for the show. This show aims to support executives to improve their leadership impact and gain insights out of being more resilient in these uncertain and disruptive times we find ourselves in. And today I'm very excited to continue my navigating the top series. And during these episodes we hear from seasoned, trailblazing executive leaders about what they have learned in their career journey and to understand their leadership philosophy and the principles they led by, and also to learn what they're doing to bolster their resilience in these crazy times. And I'm doing this series because I know that executive clients highly value learning from other seasoned executives and their approach to dealing with very similar challenges. Now, on today's episode, we have a real treat. I'm honored to be joined by Keith Zimmerman, and Keith started his career as an engineer in the oil and gas industry and went on to obtain and degree in economic systems.

David Craig Utts: 1:38

His career led him to very senior roles, including being a senior executive for BP Amaco. His time at Amaco included responsibility for economic evaluation of its international exploration and development projects, and all of this led to a very interesting stint as Russia resident manager, in which he assisted Amaco in partnering with Russia oil and gas companies. Now, this experience helped Keith become masterful in cross-cultural development and dispute resolution, as you can only imagine. He left that role to become VP of business development at Schlumberger IPM and City Orient limited. Both organizations were internationally focused oil and gas companies.

David Craig Utts: 2:22

Now, in 2009, the tables turned upside down a bit for Keith and his life, as he suffered a severe concussion during a skiing accident that changed the trajectory of his life and led him to study advanced meditation practices that shifted his entire focus for his career. In fact, in 2017, keith joined the board of Mustang Bond Foundation, whose mission includes sharing advanced meditation practices globally. Keith was drawn to supporting this organization because of his own experience that he had with meditation, and also his desire to help others understand how to deal with traumatic brain injuries more effectively. Now Keith is also launching a new project called Collaborative Evolution, which explores the complex relationship between species, cosmic phenomena and the role of non-local and non-dual consciousness in shaping humanity's future. It recognizes that many people do feel a deeper purpose that guides them through challenges and opposition, and, while some can articulate these experiences, the project seeks to broaden the perspective on our collective situation and develop innovative solutions for this uncertain future we seem to be facing right now.

David Craig Utts: 3:32

Now in your personal life, I know you're an avid sailor. You live in New Hampshire with your partner, jen Bloom, who was retired in a career as a Harvard trained psychologist. So I imagine the two of you have some very rich conversations. So thanks again. It's a real privilege to have you on the show today, keith.

Keith Zimmerman: 3:49

And, david, it's my pleasure to be with you. I think this is a point in our human evolution that calls for increasingly capacity of leaders across the board, so I'm really happy to be out there and making this available to people who have such interest.

David Craig Utts: 4:11

Well, I appreciate you being here again. We're going to go dive into all that I wanted to. I thought we start a little bit with talking about your career journey into leadership and you know you moved into a very senior positions, especially at BPMICO, and maybe you could touch on a few key moments during that early part of your career that shaped how you viewed leadership and how you viewed your approach to leadership, if you would.

Keith Zimmerman: 4:36

Yeah, I'd be happy to go into that with you. I come out of a technical background, so I was an engineer and I was trained to solve problems and I was trained to do it in a Cartesian kind of context, very materialistic in that fashion. So when I joined corporate arena I came in as a technologist and I really had no exposure to the type of thing that you do with regards to organizational design and the psychology of an organization. Politics.

Keith Zimmerman: 5:15

I was always looking at definition of the problem, generation of comparative solutions, evaluation, of alternative solutions, trying to make decisions under uncertainty with regards to what's the best means to go forward. But I was really quite ignorant with regards to the dynamics of politics inside of corporation. I was actually quite ignorant and I joined an oil and gas company. Though my degree was in chemical engineering, I looked at the production of oil and gas and that was because I graduated in 75 from high school and 79 from college. And if you remember, that was we had the oil crisis of 73 and again 79, where East conflicts ended up having, you know, curtailments of embargoes of oil, and then we had price spikes and the United States really didn't have much of a view with regards to energy policy other than protecting all the resources or pursuing resources which were in the Middle East. So I realized that, from a technical perspective, we weren't recovering but a fraction of oil that was in place. And so I addressed all these challenges at the initial stage of my career as solely technical problems.

Keith Zimmerman: 6:47

And I do that inside the structure of a large organization, because energy projects require extensive amounts of capital and whenever you get a large organization, then you start getting the dynamics that you're aware of which somebody who just enters the workforce and has a technical background. They really don't understand anything about the politics of how organizations are structured and how things come together towards enhancing capacity through teams and through effective leadership. But I slowly, at 66, I've lived through different periods of leadership models Absolutely and so I survived the best I could, initially limited knowledge of how politics comes to play. It was early on, I think I had somebody mentor advise me, like you know, keith. You know everybody has an opinion about you. They're really strong advocates or they're kind of our cautionary. Well, look at those who are cautionary and see if you see something about them. You know it would suggest that perhaps their resistance may be that I'm not politically astute.

David Craig Utts: 8:20

Yeah.

Keith Zimmerman: 8:21

Like, yeah, no, you named it. You know you got to be a little bit more. You need to develop a little bit more political action. That's right. Yeah, I don't know how it's changed and hopefully, hopefully that's changed a lot in corporations these days.

Keith Zimmerman: 8:38

I worked for a large corporation through until my 40s, late 40s, when I went off to an independent. So I've had the opportunity to work for both very large corporations such as the NDP, but also very small, independent oil gas company like City Oriented, and my view of this is probably I was culturalized to operate in a well-defined structure, you know, and then to adapt to that well-defined structure and any oil and gas companies. You know each company has a slightly different personality but they're all oil and gas, they're probably oriented management and this type of thing. So you know it wasn't legal, it wasn't creative. You know creative organization, it was more. You know apply, you know rigorous engineering mentality, solve large capital intensive problems. But in doing so, you know, you find obviously that you're working in groups. You know to ask with specific projects in specific areas and then the whole dynamic of bringing multiple talents in that activity.

Keith Zimmerman: 10:20

And I worked for four years in San Francisco and then Alaska on production in Prudhoe Bay and at that point I realized, you know, there was missing in the equation more critical thinking with regards to the economics and the uncertainty associated with the number of these projects. And I went back and I got an ATS degree to apply something that went beyond just the problem-solving attributes of engineering discipline to something that was a little bit broader. But in that time period I also took a year off and I backpacked around the world and that was probably my best education and I subsequently utilized that. I did that when I was 29 and 30. I remember turning 30 in PG, but when I came back-.

David Craig Utts: 11:20

Not bad place to turn 30.

Keith Zimmerman: 11:21

Not bad place to turn 30. And I've been traveling for nine months up to that point in time and my biggest culture shock was returning to the United States and I was able to, you know, traveling that close to the cultures, I was able to realize how uniquely different each culture had in its own internal conditioning and the view of the world was really largely a function of how they had been conditioned. And the majority of us have been conditioned without realizing to the extent we have been conditioned and we don't realize that they have been imprinted on us. So there are positive attributes of culturalization, but there are often times there can be limitations associated with that as well.

Keith Zimmerman: 12:21

So I then, you know, with that kind of knowledge and then reentry into a corporate arena, I then began to realize that when I teamed with people Inside groups, it was, you know, very powerful to find the differences in the view that we each brought to the problem.

Keith Zimmerman: 12:38

There you go so slowly, you know, bit by bit, as I kind of evolved from, you know, just being an individual contributor to then leading teams of MBAs, evaluating opportunities around the world and this type of thing, or being part of a project team which was pursuing one of these larger projects, I began to develop the appreciation for the synergy that comes about in a well-aligned team and that, you know, for me meant one that had everyone around the table, appreciating the capacities of the other people around that table, and eventually, as I took on leadership positions of pursuing opportunities first in Ecuador and then subsequently in Russia, I really relied on something that I discussed but really not modeled or demonstrated very well in the large corporation of shared leadership, and so the focus there being one of trying to acknowledge the capacity of the individuals in a team and leveraging those capacities by sharing responsibility for some of the leadership of the group, and it was something that they could articulate and I could encourage, and in time, those that felt comfortable would actually stand up and take those responsibilities when we were in the pool.

Keith Zimmerman: 14:26

And everybody knows that they've been in organizations, they've been in systems and they've been in situations in which it either truly resonates with them or it brings just the almost nightmarish memories of how people, leadership style or another, frustrated the creativity of the group, or it's much more challenged than that need be as it moves forward. So a large fraction of what I learned through that time was the benefit of what I would consider collaboration, so collaborative efforts in groups, maybe they small activities or the organization in its entirety.

David Craig Utts: 15:14

So yeah, one of the things I want to follow up on it right there, as it seems like that backpacking trip was a big shift for you and you were able to kind of generalize that shift back into work and recognize that everybody's walking around with, as you're conditioning, as you say, which I think is a great, or they're programming whatever you want to say, based on their culture and that, through curiosity and asking questions and getting to know the way they think, you're unlocking more of their potential in their roles. Is that fair to say?

Keith Zimmerman: 15:46

Yeah, that's absolutely. The leverage is bringing people. I mean, I gotta tell you, if you happen to have a group of 30 to 50 year olds white engineers, in an oil and gas company bringing in diversification with the female MBA from Harvard, and it's a challenge for that individual walking into that group. And then the challenge of the people who are in the group that are looking at trying to maximize the benefit of first perspective comes to make it like how can we all not just get along, but how can we all leverage?

Keith Zimmerman: 16:31

appreciate each other come to the table. And then, of course, because I was working on international oriented growth projects, we had, you know, kids from around the world, both with experience from having worked and lived in foreign cultures, and then those nationals from the other locations coming to work. You know, in the home office we had quite a diverse, diverse community that we could subsequently, you know, identify and incrementally, you know, leverage over time.

David Craig Utts: 17:10

Yeah, yeah, I mean it seems like you know there's, there's people are. They walk in a room with, let's say, the female MBA and an oil gas company and that's not. You know, you may not have worked with somebody like that before. Or you look at when you did the Russian residential resident manager boy, that's on steroids, right, there's your. You're meeting a whole different culture condition in a completely different way. And it's when we face our conditioning. It's almost like we hit a wall because we're looking over there at somebody else that does not compute and we go into and would you say it's very kind of jumping your survival mechanism and that sends to put up a wall even further. And your job as a leader was somehow to break down those walls and get people to listen to people and appreciate hey, they may have a different perspective, a different set of programming that has, that has potentially insights into what we're doing that could improve it.

Keith Zimmerman: 18:01

Yeah, absolutely, and it's you know, this idea of breaking down the walls and breaking down the barriers so people can benefit from you know, sharing, you know, diverse perspectives. I remember a female MBA I was describing and she was extremely bright and she was wanted to work on Russia and she had studied Russian history and language and it was quite a interesting and an exciting opportunity to pursue oil gas investment opportunities in the early 90s. You know, russia was just opening, having gone through barestroika and the revolution, and Yeltsin was in charge and things were transitioning. So she was very excited to be working with Amiko on its activities in the former Soviet Union, but she was embedded with predominantly some domestic oriented engineers that were looking at these larger projects and it was very much an engineering mentality.

Keith Zimmerman: 19:14

She was supposed to support and provide perspectives for the non-technical risk which dwarfed the technical risks. We needed her to be able to provide perspectives for these teams to think through things that they weren't even considering and I had to and she found it. She came at it in one direction and those teams came at it in another direction and I was supposed to leverage the MVAs supporting the teams evaluating all these opportunities and I had to let her know. It's like look, this is not Goldman Sachs, we are not operating at that level. But you need to be effective. You're going to have to win the trust and respect in years.

Keith Zimmerman: 20:02

And initially they were a bit put off by the view of here's, this know-it-all female Russian MBA that's telling us all these non-technical risks and what does she really know? And it takes time to build that recognition. And I made sure that periodically we'd have reviews and then I could reinforce with senior management that the non-technical risks that we were facing were warfing technical risks. And so that slowly but surely her advice became more and more important for the teams to create rational proposals so that they could move forward with well-thought solutions.

David Craig Utts: 20:51

And that's a great story. As you look back at that one, you can generalize it to all situations when you're trying to build collaboration and mutual understanding and get, in a sense, initially build some respect and trust and rapport right.

David Craig Utts: 21:05

So that as you build trust and respect and rapport. As human beings, we tend to then begin to open up to the other person. Is that fair to say? And so what is it that she did, or what did you encourage her to do, that helped her start to develop that rapport with these engineering-focused individuals that were not quite, you know, that were different than she had come across before?

Keith Zimmerman: 21:29

Well, I remember, she, I came back from a trip and all of a sudden, I was confronted by one of the groups that she worked with. Like you know, what is this, what is this? What's happening with this? This, this, the advice from this individual. And I said, well, what exactly are you talking about?

Keith Zimmerman: 21:57

And we looked into it a little bit more and it was just a simple issue of. It was a simple issue where she hadn't adequately educated the individual about the aspects of the risk but actually, just, you know, had gone right to directly to the bottom line on this risk is not going to be acceptable, and I'm, like you know it was. I had to tell her. It's like you know you're going to have to explain it to them, you know, but you just aren't going to be able to have to, you know, explain it once or twice. You know you're going to have to explain it and so they can actually truly understand it. And so you know you have to have, you know, patience, because they do not come from your orientation and your viewpoint in your back. So you know, I think the second thing was that, as I noticed that in that particular case and I almost, and every other didn't all want to.

Keith Zimmerman: 23:04

People come forward with their individual perspective and their centrist view that they're coming into this group but they're carrying them. They're seeing themselves more as performing this function inside this group, and so they're looking at the group and they're looking at the activity and even they're looking at their leadership position as the perspective of the eye of the team, you know, and to lose some of that egoic centricity and more identify with the team, you know. That is where, then, the respect you know and the exchange develops. You know, she actually begins to learn a little bit more about, you know, the engineering aspects of oil and gas, at least to the point where she can actually intelligently discuss some of the technical matters with them. So they're not looking for her for expertise but for, you know, some kind of you know perhaps creative alternative view that they even might not think about.

David Craig Utts: 24:04

So you see that all the time. Yeah, it seems to me that you know, first of all, the while the there's all your competency and your skills and your intellectual prowess is always important, but primary to that is being affiliated with the team and its focus and also that you demonstrate some care to be in relationship with others on the team, like there's a genuine interest in being in relationship, you know to some degree and understanding their perspective as a door opener.

Keith Zimmerman: 24:40

And I would say that you know, and it's another interesting analog on all of this you know, you learn how to be effective member of a team and you can eventually, you know, learn how to be an effective leader.

David Craig Utts: 24:53

Yes, exactly.

Keith Zimmerman: 24:54

Participate in enough different teams and you have the dynamics of working in you know. You know it doesn't matter what the problem is. There's team dynamic issues that are always going to be at play, and you understand how to work through some of those as a contributing member. Then, when you have responsibility for being teams, you have the experience of how teams have either gotten into problems based on inter dynamics or how they've gotten through or found solutions based on developing the confidence to leverage one another. And that, more than anything, I think, was my evolutionary path of my leadership skills, you know, had me developing truly a kind of a shared leadership view. My strengths is going into developing countries and putting together an integrated team to work a project. It doesn't really. Currently we're building a monastery in Nepal and we've woven a multinational team there. You know.

David Craig Utts: 26:02

That's pretty cool.

Keith Zimmerman: 26:04

That by the Nepalese in a remote location. It's in Mustang Valley, on what is the Annapurna Circuit. People may know of that, but anyway, we're building a fairly significant structure in a remote location in Nepal and we have. It has different religious perspectives in Nepal, so we have a Hindi project manager and it's a bond monastery, and we have a project engineer from Mustang who is a Buddhist, so it's we have PWC PricewaterhouseCouples providing some auditory oversight and some support in regards to engineering construction.

David Craig Utts: 26:56

Oh, very cool.

Keith Zimmerman: 26:57

But you know, we've woven this team together and right now I have what I consider to be a world class. I mean, we're under budget, we're on time, we're moving forward and I think we'll have a very successful result. And it's it did. There were some as in anything, there's a period of six months of startup that you know how to weave the team together, how to have people recognize that you know, if they haven't done this before, that they can lean on. Some of us who have that says look, this period, we're exactly where we should.

David Craig Utts: 27:38

Yeah, yeah, as frustrating as it feels, pretty much anything.

Keith Zimmerman: 27:41

There are some problems, but it's like you know that's the cut in the teeth type thing To get everybody you know comfortable with you, know where they're at, what they do, how they, you know who they can rely on and how we have to rely on one another, you know, to execute a project like this.

David Craig Utts: 27:58

So it's amazing how life takes you on a journey and seems to kind of it kind of pushes you down a path. Here you are, you know, having had that experience in BPMCO, now helping to build this monastery in Tibet. With similar qualities and I want and as you're talking about this, you know building this cross-cultural collaborative teams, as you say it. You know there's a ramp up and a period of expected frustration as you get these teams put together. But in order for you to go through that process again and again and again, there has to be an enjoyment level in it for you. So what is it that you most enjoy? Because I think this is an instructive leaders out there that actually the best leaders I've seen kind of fall in love with leadership and fall in love with developing others and fall in love with the actual process. They don't lose their intellect because as they rise up, they're doing less of the work and more, actually, they're being paid to have conversations, as I say sometimes.

Keith Zimmerman: 29:04

So in this situation that's exactly what this goes I have the ability to see what it's going to take. You know what's the size of the project? Okay, it's a, you know, $2 million capital construction project. That's not. You know what's it going to take? Well, you need to get governmental approvals at a regional level, in the district level. You've got auditory issues. You've got your funding issues. You've got, you know, managing the expectations of the back table, which is the foundation itself that's trying to promote the construction of the project.

Keith Zimmerman: 29:36

You have putting together the team that has the capacity to come together and exercise the project and you're doing it remotely. It's like, well, I know what we need is we need an appallee, you know construction or project manager that can take this forward, but also that we, you know, have enough, you know the relationship and knowledge with that we can deal with some of the problems that would typically be presented in a developing country in which there's known issues with regards to corruption and this type of. So I understand everything that goes into the picture and as I saw the various pieces coming together, it was like, well, you know, I need to support, you know, the project manager we've identified and he can certainly grow and actually has the capacity to execute this, and he just needs my support and backing. And other people need to understand, as this group comes together, you know it will demonstrate, you know where its deficiencies are, if there are any, and then it can identify how to, you know, leverage its strengths. And that's exactly what we've done and we've got.

Keith Zimmerman: 30:51

You know, we've been at now about a year and a year and a bit, a year and a half, and we've gone through like the first phase and with the success of this group, we've had like to continue and we'll add another million dollar, you know addition to the front wing of the of the monarchy. We'll take it up to the total probably on the order of a three million dollar project. That you know has come together and we've got the local contractor but we also have local management team that's pulled together with the sponsoring entity there in Mustang Valley and are are are limited but you know, very effective project team that's come together around.

David Craig Utts: 31:37

That's great. What sounds to me is, if you know, the recognition of the value of collaboration with the outcome of a project kind of gets married for you. So it's like I know that we have to do this, I have this ability and I'm trained to see things in a certain way and I understand that we need this kind of competency. And this kind of competency it's going to come from different places and I've had experience in putting teams like that together to get this result coming, and you know, so it all comes together for you in that way. Is that fair to say? Is that one way of looking at it?

Keith Zimmerman: 32:10

Yeah, I've plugged in and out of multiple projects. I wasn't just in one team, so I was off, yes, of course, for five teams at a time, you know, being the commercial advisor structuring the deal or negotiating the contracts with foreign governments. So I had you know in that regard. I had the benefit of many, many team team engagements and saw you know the issues of how teams come together and, interestingly enough, you get enough. You know, you have enough opportunity to do that. You begin to realize who should be on the team. You can look around and, oh, these are the 15 men and women you know and these are the countries that we would like to have represented in whatever kind of project you're looking at. It's like you're going to need a little bit of this.

Keith Zimmerman: 33:03

You're going to need a little bit of local perspective. You're going to need, you know, and you want people who can come together and work in that kind of collaborative fashion. You know, yeah, that's great, it's. You know, at least that's been my observation. And now as I go, you know, beyond just the activities of energy projects and into, you know, more esoteric activity, even still, we're launching some aspects that look at broad perspectives of human evolution, and even there, you know, it's the same type of thing trying to build a team.

David Craig Utts: 33:47

Principles apply.

Keith Zimmerman: 33:49

As expertise in these various areas, and given that these various areas can be viewed as somewhat siloed at times, who has, in those various silos perspectives that they realize that they're, you know, integrated in all the others as well, so that they can be in the interdisciplinary kind of perspective? So it's quite interesting yeah good.

David Craig Utts: 34:14

Well, I'm going to get to that project in a second. I want to jump into more of the personal realm with you, which is an important transition that probably led you to actually be involved in that project and that was your experience back in 2009 when you had your skiing accident that resulted in a major concussion, and can you touch on that experience and talk about? Obviously, that had major implications on how it changed your life and shifted your career trajectory and led you into the study of profiled deep meditation practices. So if you could open up that story a little bit as a transition, then we can come back to that project a little bit and touching that towards the end.

Keith Zimmerman: 34:56

As I said, up to that point in time with my life I'd achieved some success in the large corporation in oil and gas. I'd been a conditioned Midwest engineer that then looked at broader perspectives and making decisions in the face of uncertainties from an economic perspective, and I'd taken a year off and traveled around the world and had some perspective of the culturalization and the kind of iceberg perspective of what we know about. How we view the world is very superficial. A lot of our conditioning is something different about it. But, having had success, I was working with a small independent when I was off on a ski trip and we were close to we actually were in an international dispute but that's a total other story. But it was a challenging period of time. We were either going make millions or lose millions. I was on the bubble and I had this ski accident and I don't remember anything. It was a severe concussion. I was out for a day that's intense. Very few I had isolated memories of that day, including one which was an out of body kind of perspective.

David Craig Utts: 36:27

And that led you. That process led you, I think, to rediscovering or discovering kind of meditative practices. Is that fair to say that there was a? How did that connection get made? As you were in your healing process and adjustment to what had occurred, how did meditation show up as a support for you?

Keith Zimmerman: 36:49

Yeah, for me. Like I say, I had a severe concussion, so it was probably somebody who would describe it as moderate to mild TBI, but I definitely had. I had the loss of some prefrontal cortex capacity. I had extremely high integrative math, kind of like a human calculator. I could look at the gas deal and I could just assess it most immediately. Factors that you put together and you throw these things together and it kicked out over here. So a lot of the wiring of the brain was impacted. So that was like a noticeable impact. Curiously, sarcasm is something that can be manifest. The lack of ability to pick up sarcasm, oh, got it. It happens with TBI because you have to pull together three or four. What is the person saying? What's their visual manifestation? What's their body language saying? And in the context of the conversation, are they being serious or are they joking?

David Craig Utts: 38:00

Right, right exactly.

Keith Zimmerman: 38:02

A lot of times sarcasm would just go over my head and I found over time it was like that's not real loss. I just had to yeah, that's not a. I think it was like people are just like so what it's like? I didn't get it, I didn't get it, but anyway, a combination of things actually. I think they talk about physician, heal yourself, you find your own way, take care of what you need in life, and at the same time I was riding motorcycles a lot for recreational activity and also I found I enjoy sailing and I enjoy riding motorcycles. These are things that enable you to go into the state of flow. So yes, and lots of people experience this that maybe they're outdoors and naturalists, they're into music, they're whatever their activity is that puts them totally into a situation or immerses their sensory processing, so they're not capable of thinking at the same time, or they don't. They have to If you're right on the edge of the sailing and you're keeping the boat just totally lined out and you're right there everything can happen.

Keith Zimmerman: 39:13

you ain't thinking Same thing with the feel of motorcycle flow, riding down the road and that type of thing. So these two forms of sailing and meditation were, in retrospect, my natural entry to meditation. That makes sense. On the other hand, the motorcycle, I think it had a big.

Keith Zimmerman: 39:37

V-twin motorcycle not a Harley but a Yama, anyway I got out of position on it and I twisted my back and I had sciatica. I found the only way to get through the sciatica was to do some yoga stretches. And so to resolve my yoga problem or to resolve my sciatica problem, I got deep into the this of the asana, the body practice, yeah, but parallel to that, of course, I was exposed to meditation and deeper relaxation. And then things started to develop and I went off to a yoga center in the Pahamas to stabilize my physical practice so I could make sure that the sciatica was totally released. And I did do that when I stabilized the practice. So I don't have that problem. But I then subsequently opened up more and more into different meditative experiences.

Keith Zimmerman: 40:42

And yeah, that's what led me to meet my partner Chayna, who's a psychologist by that, through a meditative group. The advanced Indian and Tibetan practices you know actually enable the individuals almost rewire their mind. Yes, we have our normal conditioning. We have the way our mind normally operating. We have you maybe you've heard some of this neurological studies. You know the default mode of thinking. You know default mode is a self-referential thinking. We think about I, I this problem I need to think about what do I need to do next? You know all these I issues. So I found I learned a lot about you know my own. You know mental conditioning and my own, my own what the viewpoint of life, and then began to look at exploring that a little bit.

David Craig Utts: 41:51

Yeah, so it's like the meditative practice allowed you to kind of be connect, be aware of that. I conditioned self and and and then also also got you connected to a deeper resourcefulness of some way of way of processing and looking at things. That was additive. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I mean, you know, if you however you want to describe it, I don't want to get too too too too. Right, yeah, yeah, it does.

Keith Zimmerman: 42:18

It is interesting that you know. I will say as I I sat in. I sat in a meditation group early in my period and I haven't been at this but for maybe eight years you know, I 2009,.

Keith Zimmerman: 42:36

I had the, the ski accent with TBI, I had sciatica and I got into the yoga and I slowly got into a simple meditative concentration. You know concentration, examining the mind. You know I'm different. There's all kinds of different meditative. You know practices and there's a lot of people who are focusing on the benefits of meditation. You know John Kabat-Zinn and the mindfulness you know based. You know pain treatments and just you know, deep relaxation.

Keith Zimmerman: 43:15

But as I've gone further on some of this examining the mind, I see that there's an interesting corollary between going beyond thought into deeper contemplative states and I think it's. Some of the theoretical physicists did so much, you know, in the early 20th century the Einstein's, the Schrodinger's, pauli's. These theoretical physicists, they would somebody, I forget who it was was a tribute. It's like as soon as humans learn to be able to sit quietly for two hours right, without thought, but just, you know, trying to, you know address in some fashion a problem, they'll be amazed at what develops. And so a lot of the breakthroughs in these, you know very deep theoretical and I know I have no capacity in that area, but these significant breakthroughs that people have in these extremely challenging problems, I think is almost some kind of you know manifestation of wisdom coming back to them in some fashion.

David Craig Utts: 44:34

Well, I think it's you know, and sometimes I, you know, I encourage, to some degree of success and a lot of failure, to get my clients to take on a meditative practice, simple meditative, nothing overly complicated, you know, and many that do commit to it for at least 30 days start finding value simply in the relaxation they get. But what you're saying is as you, and this is also the experience I've had with people that do it for a long period of time. They tend to start connecting to a deeper resources, a deeper sense of wisdom. They can't really explain it's not coming from what they know, but it comes to them and it makes sense and it actually, if they play it out, it actually works. So, you know, that's the value of it.

David Craig Utts: 45:16

But you know, and I think what we all face is, our conditioning says no, our conditioning says you're fine, you know the identity of who we are is and there's nothing wrong with that. But that's what is sometimes the block. But if you were to say any, if you were to, you know, give a good reason for an executive to try it for 30 days. What are one or two reasons you would, you would suggest as good reasons?

Keith Zimmerman: 45:44

You know absolutely, surprise yourself. You know absolutely. You know it doesn't have to be extended. In fact, you know, if you start at five and 10 minutes, you'll begin to, and you then you practice and observe your mind. You see how rapid our mind is running around. You can't really contain.

Keith Zimmerman: 46:06

So if you think, you know, like if anything, if you could, if you could train your mind to find some stillness and in that stillness be able to have, you know, more clarity of analysis and thought, if you could sit and see how things trigger reactions in you, right, you can understand what is, what is a triggered response and what is your own internal consciousness. And oftentimes we have a lot of conditioning and so we have. You know and everybody has these kind of things that you know something will happen and you'll get triggered and you have, you blow off. You know you have response, and the response is really not a thoughtful response. The response is how that person triggered you relative to something that you had experienced previously.

Keith Zimmerman: 47:02

And now you know you're coming out with this reactivity and so you know one thing one can do is by having a meditative practice, even if it's, you know, being sitting quietly five minutes a day, twice a day, in the morning and the evening, you can begin to at least see, you know, develop a cognition or an understanding of your, of the working of your mind. And once you do that, then then it becomes more interesting. It's like it becomes like almost intriguing project of how can you go, you know, deeper into some of these concentrated states of letting go of the thought and getting you know. Once you do that, you start, you start beginning to have meditative experiences. Yeah, exactly, you know stillness, clarity and bliss, and people will typically be oriented to one of the three of them, and the stillness probably brings wisdom. You know, as I'd say it, and you know, surprise yourself, try it for 30, 30 days and see if you don't feel you know, yes, yes, yeah.

David Craig Utts: 48:07

Well, that's, that's to me the first two things are they feel more relaxed and they also start catching themselves before they add. One client said I started recognizing I get ramped up, my team and then I'd be going, then I'd be like frantically yelling at them and it would like I did this, and then I started noticing that I was going to do that and I was able to stop doing that because I knew it wasn't going to have a good outcome. And that's amazing right there. And so those are the seem to be the first benefits of it. And then over time, I think, as you say, you get more. Would you say that you more find flow easier now that you've had a longer practices flow, more accessible to you sets of flow?

Keith Zimmerman: 48:47

I don't want to be. You know, I used to need sailing. I used to need, you know, the motorcycle. I used to love to go skiing, you know, and I still do love all those three things, but I did them largely to get into that mode. Yeah, and now it's like, you know, not that I'm flowing 100% of the time, of course I'm getting you know like this I'm in flow, I'm in flow, I'm not, so it's and it doesn't. It can be, you know, it can be just, you know, going about daily activity and not not getting caught up in the default mode Once you can check the default mode off, you know, and and the huge gift, huge gift things start opening up yeah.

David Craig Utts: 49:39

Well, with a little bit of time we have left, I wanted to check in on, come back to talk to you a little bit about the collaborative evolution project. Maybe you could just share with me kind of what launched that and what are some of the key elements that are emerging out of that. That. You see that are going, that you want to give that, that that project wants to give to the world, if you will.

Keith Zimmerman: 50:01

Yeah, it's an organic project that really, you know, started with my own personal experience and interaction with friends, learning some of my experience on this, on this personal growth path that involved some of the meditative experiences, and comparing that across some traditions and add some friends who are encouraging. You know other religious practices, and I said you know, as opposed to like you know my practice in your practice, what you know, what, what about looking at what common factors are, you know, and so the, the, the practices that we do at a meditative level, kind of like, there's gradations of them. So simple mindfulness practice or relaxation practice, you know, is a meditative type practice, and then you shift beyond that, you go more into something that would be considered contemplative practices, and these contemplative practices also have different gradations of practice. And and all the all the while you're going into deeper levels of, of of meditative states or, you know, people might even describe them as altered states of consciousness.

Keith Zimmerman: 51:27

So I've done a lot of Christian mystics, though I came through the endotubatin perspective, I see a lot of Christian mystic, you know, comparisons and overlaying, and I looked at some of this stuff and, and so that that was where I first came at this, saying you know it would be good. And even inside the, even inside the endotubatin traditions, there's different wendages and so there's, you know, kind of like you know, pride and ownership of the different wendages. They certainly don't want to dilute their teaching by you know you know, making it all up.

Keith Zimmerman: 52:04

And, on the other hand, there's not as much of discussion of. You know, we do share a real common technology of absolutely shifting our mind and training our mind and so, looking at that, trying to say what is the essence of really what's happening here. And of course I've had some. You know I don't want to go into it, but I've had some personal meditative experiences that I cannot explain, you know. Yes, just like I had an out of body experience during the day I had that, that discussion. I can't explain certain things I can't. I can't explain with my, with my, you know, materialistic thought you should.

Keith Zimmerman: 52:47

You know upbringing and everything like that, things that are happening are not something that I have an explanation for.

Keith Zimmerman: 52:54

So, looking at at some of that with regards to well, you know what is actually happening in something, though some of these deeper contemplative practices and bringing down the barriers between I say between and within the various religions, so that you know some, you know a broader, a broader perspective of humanity Could access the benefit of these elevated, of elevated, states of consciousness.

Keith Zimmerman: 53:24

So that's where that's where it really started, and then it is expanded to look at different aspects of what's taking place in our, in our experiencing of reality. So that's where we've drawn a broader Description of things that impact human evolution, and so we have personal development. So you know your whole leadership development and coaching and enhancing the capacity of an individual. Both you know their internal development of skills and capacities and viewpoints, and though a personal development path that could eventually be spiritual or not and certain about, you know Not, it's not mandatory for anyone Assume the spiritual path, but it becomes a. You know, I think you know after, at the age of 50, you know, having had the ski accident and that type of thing, it was just a logical point in my life to make that, that shift in that entry, though I'd been exposed to it earlier in my life and I you know the signal was there but I didn't, I didn't have you didn't follow.

Keith Zimmerman: 54:36

I wasn't right and that type of thing, and instead, you know, I was really practicing some of this, you know, by being engaged in nature and beauty, and I was experiencing my taste of what I describe as the divine, just by experiencing life and being open to it skiing or sailing also.

Keith Zimmerman: 54:58

Some place, and so you know, I've been, I had a very fortunate life and and I had very, very fortunate life and had a few challenges as well, and I found the meditation to be to be beneficial for addressing some of those and yeah we've, like I say, right now, we're looking at things that have you know everything from how one philosophically looks right To you know some of the essence traditions in the contemplative states that you know potentially shift, shift one's awareness or a contemplative state or an elevated states of consciousness, and these, these mystical practices that people talk about at that level, contemplative side of traditions. They often also to describe Gifts of non-ordinary capacity. You know, you know I will warn people you do not want to pursue gifts, yes, yes, or something that would come to you if you naturally, at first you get it, but don't, don't go after them looking for it.

David Craig Utts: 56:09

Don't make it a goal. Yeah, don't make it a goal. That can be dangerous. Well, and what? What is your if you were to say your greatest hope out of this product that you were really hoping Will be the gift from it? If you were to say that, that, what would you say? That would be, but you're.

Keith Zimmerman: 56:25

I would like to think that you know by, by, and it will require collaboration, just like you know, yes, I'm talking about this is like you have to come together.

Keith Zimmerman: 56:35

It's a very difficult thing to get to people to break down their silo and cross from their Culturalization and be open to the exploring, the culturalization of the other, particularly with some of these very deep, fundamental, you know questions, but you know, I think, a better understanding of you know what is the, what has been the trajectory of human evolution. You know it's potential. Yeah, no, it's an initiation through to where we stand today, the challenges we face. You know, I mean you know, but honestly, with the, the meeting between North Korea and Russia and China, you know we're at one of the more difficult times in a geopolitical perspective and Sure that has for sure the risk associated that we face.

Keith Zimmerman: 57:25

You know from you know, you know man-on-man and man-on-nature, you know it's like you know it's, it's a pretty profound. And yet we're also doing this at a time where it seems like there is a, you know, significant Shift in Collective consciousness. There are lots more people seem to be opening up way opening up to this you know, rapidly, and yet it's not.

Keith Zimmerman: 57:53

You know how well Articulated is, how well described it is to provide some more, you know, not structured, but to provide a framework where more people can access and openly discuss and engage in some of these discussions and and parallel to that, you know we have, you know, like I say, we have, a lot of challenges. Man it clearly. You know, and yet you know with you know, a blossoming perspective of collaborative, you know, participation in solving problems and and collaborative leadership. You know, and addressing and Framing up some of the efforts that go to addressing both, you know, problems at the very local level as well as problems at a global level. You know, I don't know, every little bit helps, I'm sure. And well, yeah, there's a lot that can be done, but it needs to be done both at the Personal level as well as that, some kind of, you know, organization or you know some Global, a more dramatic global, but you know it has to start in a relationship, right, that's exactly right and there's that relationship.

David Craig Utts: 59:09

Those relationships are breaking down and go back to Albert Einstein. I think it was Albert Einstein's quote you can't solve this, the problem, the same consciousness that created it. And right now we're not. We're trying. We're doing the opposite trying to solve the problem and and we're separating and not collaborating. We're going into camps and we all share a common experience. You look at it, but double apes, for example, they get along really well. They've they've created the culture which is very loving and caring and connecting, and you know they're just a shred away from us and our DNA. So we know that we have the ability to do it. We've gotten away from it. So I think the looking at your gifts on bringing collaborative teams together and you have I know we won't be at I have to go into all the names, but you know scientists and people from different spiritual traditions and coming together to look at the commonality, to so to help raise consciousness of the species and supported that, so that we have better resolutions of some of these challenging, seemingly intractable problems we're facing right now.

Keith Zimmerman: 1:00:08

Yeah, that's, that's in a nutshell. That's it's like you think of. You know how do you look at the world. You know you start from a philosophical. You know what is your, what are your belief systems.

David Craig Utts: 1:00:21

Yes, exactly.

Keith Zimmerman: 1:00:23

Any belief systems you know you're going to have. We don't. We don't realize somebody say I don't have any beliefs, I just, you know, facts, I'm a data person. It's like well that data then becomes the belief. So, anyway, philosophy, you have, the belief structures, and then you have, you know, your own personal development and how you interact in a group and the identification of problems and means by which you know one possibly contributes solutions of them. And then you know, you know it's think globally, act locally. You know it's like you can't take good phrase on the world's problems that you can, you know, address those that you can at local level and you can contribute, if you can, in some more collaborative effort, if, if, if called on and if so, moved. So that's, you know, making more of this available in a fashion that can be easily processed you know, digested and you know a starting place of course you know is is is personal development awareness.

Keith Zimmerman: 1:01:38

You know understanding one's own culturalization to then be able to understand. You know others culturalization and seeing the gifts of leveraging across those. You know differences in the team environment and then you know bringing forward the collaborative effort in which you know you know there's, I'm sure, in your leadership, as you've looked at. You know, wisdom of the team versus wisdom of the individual.

David Craig Utts: 1:02:10

Absolutely, and that collaboration, all that is so, add so much more value. It's a multiple. Bringing people together should be a multiplication, not addition, right, and certainly not a subtraction. That's not over that so well. I appreciate you know you. Coming on today, Keith, you know I, you really shared a lot about your, your, your pathway and your journey and the challenges and how you've kind of turned the lemons and eliminate and now are really trying to contribute through this project, which is wonderful. Any final words you want to say, as far as you know, wrapping up for yourself for today?

Keith Zimmerman: 1:02:48

If you're not having fun, something's wrong.

David Craig Utts: 1:02:51

There you go. I think that's that is important.

Keith Zimmerman: 1:02:54

It's supposed to be it's supposed to be a joy.

David Craig Utts: 1:02:57

Yeah, life is supposed to be a joy. Right, it's supposed to be a joy. We're not drudgery, that's. That's well said.

Keith Zimmerman: 1:03:01

Keep looking for the way to find your happiness. You know you have challenges, obviously everybody does, and he pays challenges. You know to face challenges as a group, you know it's it's much more profound and effective, fun and effective. Well, very good, well, thank you very much for coming on.

David Craig Utts: 1:03:24

I know that these are the kinds of shows and the kinds of people that I want to be talking to on a regular basis to hopefully inform you and open your mind to new possibilities. I want to thank everybody for taking the time to listen today, listen in today, and we look forward to seeing you back on our next edition of Unphased on Fire. I'm David Kregots. Have a great rest of your day.