How Today's Executives can Eradicate the Existential Stress of Not Enough Time

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 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 - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 0:41

Hello and welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire. I'm David Craig Utz, the resilient leadership guy, your host and moderator for the show today. And, as I said many times before, this show aims to support executives to improve their leadership impact and to gain insights into how to be more resilient in these uncertain and disruptive times. Today I'm very pleased to be rejoined again by my good friend and colleague, anatoly Yakarev, who is joining me from his home in Montenegro. Anatoly is a dedicated, seasoned ethics and compliance practitioner and the founder of World Without Corruption, and World Without Corruption aims to leverage regulated technology in the human spirit to eradicate corruption in the world, which is a good thing, anatoly.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:24

And your career, anatoly? You also spent 20 years working in the suite suite at BPMECO as a cross-cultural consultant, so you have a lot of seasoning and working with senior executives. And most important to me is you're my partner in the development of the resilience leadership method. And truly, this method would not be possible if it's not for Anatoly's resilient leadership reset process, which, in two short sessions, generates bulletproof resilience in the executive and raises an executive's capacity to lead to a much higher level. In fact, he's worked with over 15 of my clients and the results have been nothing less than stunning, so I really want to thank you, anatoly, for joining today.

Anatoly Yakorev: 2:06

Yeah, thanks, pleasure being here. Thank you for inviting me.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 2:11

Yeah. So in this episode, anatoly, you are going to explore one of the biggest dilemmas for executives still having enough time to have impact on their ability to achieve their priorities and get things done, while ensuring they actually have a personal life that's fulfilling and enjoyable. Now, this topic of time management has been spoken about since modern organizations came into existence. Right, it's been sliced and diced in so many ways, yet it seems to me we're still dealing with this challenge. And post-COVID, it seems that executives are busier than ever and at the same time, we continue to see rises in executive burnout. So this is becoming a big issue.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 2:52

So our goal today is to kind of address this conundrum. In a way maybe it's been addressed before, but more than that, to try to open up a new way of looking at why an executive sits in their role and faces these overwhelming days that never seem to get everything done. So let's dive in. I think you'd agree this whole idea that executives are operating in a business world that's increasing in complex, uncertain and ambiguous. We've talked about that, and it seems especially true post-COVID and, as I said, the challenges of managing time well are not new. Yet I'm seeing that executive seem more challenged, as I said. So what do you think that's all about? As far as what you would say about the whole issue with time management, especially in these times when organizations play its beginning fuller and fuller, yes.

Anatoly Yakorev: 3:50

Well, I think it would be fair to begin with why these days we're having so much difficulty understanding why we're having to deal with so much, and we don't even make any sense of it.

Anatoly Yakorev: 4:06

I think it would be fair to say that, because of all the incremental changes both in the market and politics and all our life around us, we have been presented with so many different changes, the nature of which we cannot really detect and, as a result, when it comes to decision making, there is so much unknown that a lot of managers feel safer if they keep adding to the workload.

Anatoly Yakorev: 4:39

So that's one thing. Another thing is that navigating this terrain for a lot of seasoned executives is equally challenging, because they don't know what that cost of their decision making, any mistake they make, could potentially become. So therefore, everybody is generating a lot of noise, making sure that the machinery is busy and everybody gets busy to do what needs to be done, but the quality of that suffers because nobody has enough time to think through about what needs to be done. So that's one. The second thing, I think we cannot rule out the fact that politics still play quite a big role in making decisions. So distorted markets, many new challenges and, combined with politics, creates this rather toxic conundrum for a lot of people in the organization.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 5:50

Yeah, I like to follow up on that one, just to get your ideas on this and maybe pull out an example of what's happened post-COVID, because the pandemic processes and ways that we engage that how is that seeped in? Can you give me a practical example of that or an example of how that might have seeped in that may be causing executives to be focusing on certain things or having to talk and tackle certain things they didn't before or wanting to do that that's added to their plate. Any thoughts?

Anatoly Yakorev: 6:27

on that. Okay, so let's look at two aspects here. First, what's going on outside the world? Because each and every company has to adapt to this new post-COVID regime. That market behavior has changed, and to adapt to that new behavior it takes time. But while it takes time, nobody knows what really is going on and how everybody else is reacting to that, how everybody's managing. That's the external aspect of that. Now here comes the internal aspect, because not only the COVID but anything associated with COVID has affected everyone internally. Like we're dealing with the hybrid and how we are working, like managing remote working as opposed to managing existing work relationships and stuff. People have been affected internally as a result as well. Now, combined both external and internal, you get a powder keg. Sometimes you don't know, sometimes people can behave irrationally, sometimes people can do certain things. That makes you wonder, but everybody has been affected. As a result, it's very difficult to make any decisions because you don't know what you're dealing with. Sometimes it's not right in your face, it's happening under the surface.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 8:09

I also think like an example would be it's a little harder to talk to your neighbor now about things you don't want to happen up a conversation that might explode. I was watching a Joe Rogan episode the other day and they were talking about how if I was a George Bush fan or a Clinton fan, it didn't really matter. My friends and I would hang out and talk about it. Now, if we bring that up, the other person's political favorite is an existential threat. I'm not going to bring that up and open those can of words and also disinformation and misinformation. So if we're confronted with something in an organization as an executive, that thing needs to change, is there? I might be a typically a bold person that's willing to bring out tough conversations, to make hard decisions to make sure they were being more productive, but would that still affect me to be more hesitant, maybe, and my nervous system to bring things up, not because it couldn't be talked about, but because other things can't be talked about? I'm being affected in general by that. Is that a fair assessment?

Anatoly Yakorev: 9:19

Yes, that would be a fair assessment. I think everybody just tries to stay very safe, Effectively blocking out anything that may potentially create an uncomfortable situation. But that comes at a cost.

Anatoly Yakorev: 9:38

When we start monitoring anything you say, how you behave, how you respond and react. That just creates this unnecessarily sterile environment where people can no longer trust each other. Because you cannot be open, you cannot be candid with me, how can I trust you to believe of what is expected? What if you have some agenda? What if you have some level of conditioning that gets in the way and then, effectively, you can execute what I have in mind? Not in the way that I have an old plan.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 10:16

Then you look at an example. Let's say you're as a merger and acquisition and now you're in the new company and you're part of one of the two or three old companies. This gets compounded then, right, because now you have a new boss in town, new sheriff in town who's now seeing how they can make the organization better. Now, this has always existed as an issue in any merger and acquisition. Right, it's not anything new.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 10:43

You realize that now some you may feel limited in your impact on your job now because it used to be more fluid, easier. I could just talk to Betty in customer service and get it all cleared up. Now I have to go through three different individuals to get to the person that could solve the problem or something like that. Even my ability to push back on that, that's even harder, because now I'm trying to adjust and make sure they feel like I'm a good citizen. At the same time I'm trying to get my job done At the same time. Now I have this extra layer of yeah, but I don't want to bring that stuff up because it could just cause a whole mess I don't want to deal with, right?

Anatoly Yakorev: 11:19

Yes, that's true, that's true. I'll just give you an example which is probably may resonate here, because I spent 10 years, straight, from the very first day until the very last day, in one of the JVs of BP, where they tried to bring together the Russian culture and the British culture of working together.

Anatoly Yakorev: 11:41

I can't imagine that. Yeah, so that actually required a lot of resilience on the part of the seconded BP managers to deal with all the challenges they had. But it's interesting enough, in the end it did work out much better than anybody expected. But comparing that with what we are having today, this is when everybody speaks the same language. The culture is the same, but the communication is different, expectations are different and people are always very cautious about how they react and how they lay out things, especially even for a company that's very similar. But again, during that merger, all these issues may just explode in your face because they've been exacerbated by all the underlying sometimes political, sometimes just emotional minds, and therefore navigating that is always very risky, but as a result, people are being too cautious, sometimes not attacking the problem that just sits there and keeps fast-turning, but everybody is really trying to avoid that.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 13:06

Yeah, well, I think we'll talk about this more as we go in. But the empowerment of an individual, being able to say there's a breakdown, there's a problem, you stand, it's not working and being able to say that in a way that points to real results that are being strangled as a result, is a big. It takes a bold move and really one of the leader's greatest capabilities is to declare a breakdown, make a declaration this is not working. It's not judging what's happening, it's just saying let's look at it, it's not working. It's limiting us from getting certain results occurring and we have to take a look at this for the sake of the organization, not the sake for me in my role, but for the sake of the good of the organization. And that again, as you say, you point to the challenges of doing that and just so we have a foundation to talk about this whole issue.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 14:06

And I think probably people saw the title of the show that they're coming in looking for something and I'm going to probably say right now we're not going to provide necessarily anything new, but I do want to touch on the two aspects of time management and I think that people deal with. There is the idea as an executive and I deal with this all the time with senior executives who are saying my team has so much going on and we keep on getting new initiatives that we have to that we're not directly responsible for, but we're being pulled as a partner to help in the process of resolving, and I've got 10 of those going on. At the same time, I'm dealing with just getting the books done and all the financial reporting we promised, as well as dealing with helping these other people get their projects done. That's happening. So, an individual executive, there's a lot of good systems out there and I remember I used to go into Stephen Covey stores where they would have these compass stores and they were compass stores or something like that. We'd walk in with all the planners and I would just feel like I could stay. I was going in to get my scripture or something I was going to save my life if I got the right planner, and then that all went to Hellman Basket by Wednesday the next week when I was trying to use this damn thing and it wasn't really helping me.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 15:29

But there are all good systems out there that can help you. David Allen, getting Things Done is one that's a very good system for helping you have a. His whole point is having a system that contains everything. You know where you define things, you have everything's organized within the system and if you keep it maintained it'll serve you. So there's a lot of good, and there's other people out there that have good stuff on time management for individual systems, and that's still critically important to have.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 15:59

The problem with that is that that bucket gets filled and overflows and pretty soon you can't even maintain a system. You have so much going on. Trying to maintain a system will take you almost as long as trying to get one of the things done. You're being asked to get done, but it is still a worthwhile effort.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 16:17

And then on the other side, you have Tim Ferriss's four hour work week concept, which is really you have to have a mindset of what is your fundamental result that you're shooting for, what is the fundamental outcome, why I exist in my role, or what are those series of outcomes that are primary to me and what is a productive use of my time around that and sticking to that and throwing everything else out. But that requires organizations to take that on, because organizations are the one that the stuff is coming downhill at the executives, and so you have to have some built dams and checkpoints and things like that to hopefully not have executives so well by unnecessary stuff, but they really have checks and balances around that, and that requires organization to be as strategic with time as they are with money. You point to a problem in that area, though. What's the problem with that? Though that makes logical sense, it's very rational, but what would you say is the challenge with that in Italy as far as organizations taking on that and actually doing that due diligence?

Anatoly Yakorev: 17:34

Well, I learned from the best, those senior BP executives. I learned from quite a lot. They were dealing with very similar issues at the time. And going back to your original statement, would there be anyone who would say, hey, houston, we have a problem, so we just have to stop and reevaluate what we have been doing because it's not working? So I think this is the first issue If there's nobody to say that this keeps growing like cancer, you know, stifling resources, killing the morale of people and all that, okay, that's number two. You know, in this kind of climate, everybody's afraid to say that. Well, you know, keep people, keep saying everything is important. You can't treat everything as equally in being.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 18:23

it's a stupid.

Anatoly Yakorev: 18:25

It's really stupid. But the trouble you have to understand, the trouble between the, this challenge between the senior management and anybody below the senior management keeps generating ideas because they really wanted, you know, justify their own existence. How about this, how about that? Yeah, exactly, I mean goodies I want to throw around, but all this goes down and basically people feel like, okay, I've got a set of five things, I've got a hundred and five, and Nobody's thinking about that, right? So?

Anatoly Yakorev: 18:55

And then you know you mentioned all this wonderful system, the trouble with those systems. They cannot manage this. Keep, you know this Incessant, you know, flow of new ideas, initiatives, creative thinking, so to speak. Because you know you can't, you can't handle that. So therefore, somebody has to say, like, enough with this BS, you know, so let's, let's address issues that really matter.

Anatoly Yakorev: 19:21

Okay, and then maybe you know so basically I'll just share the way those people and BP you know JV at the time Handled that, because they were also all completely Overwhelmed by initiatives coming from, you know, the Russian owners and the BP management, and they were like, okay, if I don't Pay attention to what the Russian owners are saying, I can get Myself fired, but at the same time, if I'm not, don't do what.

Anatoly Yakorev: 19:51

You know. The VP, senior, you know, management managers are saying I can get myself fired as well. So what do I do? How do I, how do I, you know, handle that? And that's how everybody developed that creative way of Pretending where it's necessary and doing the right stuff when it's necessary. You know. And then you know checks and balances in the process. Okay, so unfortunately, that was the only way at the time for them to survive. Okay, now Are we dealing with the same thing because it comes at the cost. If everybody says like, okay, I have to decide for myself what is like BS and what's something I really need to get done, you know, but when everyone starts thinking for themselves, that's gonna create an issue, because my perception of what's important, what's not, could be different from my peers.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 20:49

Yes, well, I mean, could it? Could it be? Could it be addressed more? It's possible that could be more addressed at a team level, where you have Almost your internal community that puts up the walls right and you have a leader in that community that's willing to be at the front gate to ward off the Leaders of other armies. I mean, that's a terrible metaphor probably for that, but you know, but it is so true. You know, we, I think you know there's the, the.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 21:18

We look at leadership leaders as being creators, and Then you have people at various levels of consciousness around leadership who take that on in different ways, one of them being it'd be great if we just had everybody innovating around here. So we're gonna do innovation awards this year. Who has the greatest innovation is going to win a prize. I'm just using as example, right, so, without any other instruction. That's the instruction, because the, the leader in their Infinite wisdom, is consciously saying this will be good for their leadership development. They've got to figure this out. They've got to talk to people, They've got to talk to senior people, they've got to talk to their peers, they've got to have better relationships to do this, and then, under that, we're gonna have these outcomes that are gonna save me a bunch of money in the bottom line. I'm gonna look great out of this, right, and that's what they think. Or we say we have the partners around here. So they say start being a partner. But un underlying that definition of partnership is partners always say yes, partners always say yes, and so pay everybody saying yes. And now you know you have a dictatorship, basically Because everybody has to say yes. You know so.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 22:37

Those are a couple other examples I just wanted to with off. You know you know off of you what you're saying. So we have these two things and we're not gonna. Those are obvious. You know you can read the four-hour work week to get ideas that you can read David, I was book on the personal side and get that addressed. You can certainly talk to me about it and we can help you out with those things. But there is, you say it's not gonna hold water.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 23:01

So at the end of the day, when I'm hearing from this, is you really have to kind of dig deep within yourself and come up with determining how do you want to individually deal with this as you look at what you have to ultimately generate that is most valuable for the organization that each role has a central mission to it, right, that might have particular strategic priorities that support the evolution of that mission. Right, this goes back. These are old concepts that are still how you highly have high utilization, right, and then, and, and even better than that, if you can get some alignment with people above you on that Agreement, that that's your primary mission. That gives you strength in negotiation, right, but what's the change? You know we're also dealing in a world, well, where that's basically taking on my own personal power. Right, that's understanding what not power over, but my own power To create what I want to create. That I care deeply about.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 24:13

And to me, that's where leadership begins. Right, we all have our inner compass that directs us and we know it's directing us because we find in certain activities I'm feeling fulfilled, in passioned, excited, and I can also then look out usually at that if I'm really good at what I'm doing, because it takes competence to go from from where? From that passion, to actually generating results with others as a leader. But if you have those in place, you know you are, you have, you still have it. You then have to come to a choice point, as you say, which is not an easy choice point. So what gets in people's way and a totally of making that choice? Is it because they don't know they have that choice let's say, they you know, you get you know or is it because the obvious has gotten so covered over, because they're enamored by All the stuff that's coming at them and they just are taking care of it, or they're afraid? What do you think is at the at the heart of why people don't make that choice?

Anatoly Yakorev: 25:18

Well, let's begin with this idea of how much you can actually control. Okay, so if you are, you know, being part of an organization, and then there's only this much you can control, you can actually pay attention to what you can control and your reaction to that. Okay, because anything that sits outside of the control, you can just make peace with it, right, they just accept it as a given, okay. But and you, if you can look inside of you and realize, you know, I can Pretty much decide how I react to what's going on, and that's gonna have a change on what I make of what's going on and, ultimately, my decision-making. I'll just give you one simple example, one you know CFO, one of those JV's you know who used to stay up late every night, until like 10 pm, before going home.

Anatoly Yakorev: 26:16

So he was shipped off to a very expensive training. When he came back, his only decision was okay, I stopped working at 6 pm and I'm going home. I don't care what you guys are doing, but I'm going home. I just realized my head, I just realized my health matters to me. This work is always there, okay, and you know. You know what I discovered when I was at that training. I discovered hey, actually have a family and two kids. Okay, you know, I want to learn, really meet those kids and meet that wonderful wife that I have right.

Anatoly Yakorev: 26:56

So so this is so. This is the idea. You know, you look internally within yourself and this is this journey. Yes who understand what really matters and what, how you make sense of what's going on.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 27:13

I Even, and that is really, I think, what drove me to or what motivated me to become a coach is because, you know, I think a lot of us that are in this profession tend to have an inner awakening, to recognize what you're saying and that empowers us to make certain decisions, like I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to attend to what my, my heart is directing, not just what my head tells me I should be doing, and I'm going to. I and I'm gonna. And it's first. It feels like you're riding, you're making a major drop in a roller coaster when you do that, because it feels like I'm doing something and I'm afraid I'm going to be found out and I'm going to be kicked out. You know, and I would say probably in that case, if that happens and you probably Was a good to do, a good thing, maybe, but at the end of the day, you find when the roller coaster drops and you adjust to it and you realize that you can, you can control a lot more than you thought you did, but it's all contained within. To me, the major area of of control is what am I putting into the role of the coach? What am I putting my attention on where and people, for they leave that out and Get pulled in Externally, sucked into all the stuff I have to do and, because I have a capability of a human being to do that I lose touch with. And then what really causes the burn down, I think, is that that attention just gets directed so many different places that the brain gets fried Because it doesn't. It doesn't go back to resourcefulness, it doesn't go back to where it gets its power from, which is inside. Our battery is inside, if you will. Or our resource of source of energy is inside us, not outside us. You know, I'm only because we get drink a cup of coffee and things like that. It helps, but but you know that only goes so far, right? So we have, we have a world that, in a sense, is got. All these external to a digital, external distractions now on top and we talked about this earlier right on top of that, are pulling us out and pulling us out worried, concerned, you know, in certain level, rightfully so, and then we have to have all the more stuff coming in as it work. So what long story story seems to me. It comes back to me. Inter resourcefulness. Yeah, so we've developed this thing called the resiliency leadership method and I want to talk a little bit about that today because it you know it is.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 29:52

I've had, as I said at the start of the show, I've had 15 clients go through this process and every one of them has found, has tapped into more deeply than before Now, that they weren't at all tapped into it before, but they were more deeply because some of these people worked with me as a coach and I was directing them there. But what I would? At the same time, there was something that, with greater ease, that they had access to it and they were like the external BS was not affecting them the same way. I had one of my clients, as an example, that went through this process that said 30% of his calendar is opened up and I said what did you do to do that? How did that happen when we were talking about it? And he said well, I just realized that I was being asked to come to meetings to be, to kind of be, another human being sitting in the room listening and with the hope that at some point I might have something strategic or important to say.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 30:56

But rarely did I have anything to add and I was going to a lot of meetings and I realized I was wasting my time at those meetings. Now, I was going also because my director, of course, maybe we were leading these meetings and I thought I wanted to be there to see what they're up to, but I realized that was hindering them in a certain way. So I started just declining requests and I said, well, what were the implications of that? He said you know, there haven't been any implications other than I'm playing more golf and I'm spending more time in my family and I'm much more relaxed and less anxious. I'm not saying that's a solution for everybody, but in your idea and we'll talk about the reset itself a little bit more what is happening pre and post to him in that situation? What would you say might have happened for him in that situation because of the reset that gave him permission to do that?

Anatoly Yakorev: 31:56

Well, technically it's sort of like a pretty quick you know neuroplasticity fix that suddenly freed up additional resources for him that he could evaluate his own life and performance and his own reaction to what's going on and basically say, like you know what the box stops right here, because with this extra clarity, I see that I'm wasting my time.

Anatoly Yakorev: 32:26

With the same extra clarity, I see that I need to have some quality time for myself to be able to excel at what I do.

Anatoly Yakorev: 32:36

And then this is an interesting trade off which is done very intelligently, because at the end of the recent you also you know getting lots of goodies. Like you get your energy up, your performance goes up, you know you get your focus, you get your clarity, creativity, resilience. When all of that comes at the same time, it helps you make you know, right decisions about how you react to what you have on your plate, how you can reorganize your workload, because suddenly you see blind spots and you know certain areas which you never saw before because you were so busy. Okay, and I think this is like almost like reinventing yourself very quickly in the process, using your own inner resources, because nobody tells you what to do, nobody advises you what to do. You just wake up one morning and you just say to yourself okay, from now on I'll do this like that, because I have this confidence deep inside of me that tells me this is the right thing to do.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 33:48

Yeah Well, what you're saying, what you're pointing to, is there's a part of us deep down that's deeply wise and knows and and, in a sense, directs directs the personality or directs the individual that we appear to be in the world to do what it has to do in a very natural way, right and a certain way, what we're saying is a lot of what's happened in our initial talk about this. This is a lot of artificial BS going on that we think we have to deal with. But if you cut the thoughts out of it the, the, and, and you looked at what you really cared about, which is more heart centered, the, the, the thinking mind tends to generate more problems, generates too many problems. It's because it generates all the problems, many of the problems. I'm not saying we don't have real problems in the world, but the problems in which, how we face things and deal with things, are because there's this almost an unc, there's an unconscious processing going on right that is based in thoughts and beliefs that we're not even aware of.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 35:01

So I I would intimate, going back to the reset, that somehow, when you do the reset, a lot of those cords are cut from that unnecessary and you get back tapped into your deeper resourcefulness, which is where the real gold is, where the real decision making happens. You know, while thinking as a useful tool, it's not necessarily actually decisions don't have to initially come from that right, they can come from simply. That's the right thing to do. I know it and I trust that, knowing I don't have to think about it, I don't have to, you know, I know I don't have to do that, so I'm not going to. Now, of course, we're not asking everybody to become rebels and say no, everybody, but but it is.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 35:45

It is a matter of of how do you tap into that. So so what is it? You know, we we might have touched on this in an earlier podcast, but just in a summary, what are the things that the reset really addresses that have us in that kind of uh is a servient position, with our thoughts right and and and losing touch with our deeper resourcefulness and our deeper wisdom? What has happened in the human being that has caused them to to that to occur?

Anatoly Yakorev: 36:20

Basically, yeah, basically, what we're dealing with is just with, you know, uh, those very early layers of conditioning that we uh get as we grow up, you know the way our belief systems uh being formed, and then, with all the traumas that we get, all our reactions to the outside world and environment.

Anatoly Yakorev: 36:44

All of that impacts our formation as a person, our personality. So, by the time we gain new knowledge, we go to university, we go to colleges and everything, by the time we get our shirt, in a position to make decisions, we have so much blockage inside of us that cuts off our access to our true and genuine resourcefulness. Okay, and as a result, we just, you know, react in a very primitive manner to all those challenges. Okay, we just tend to be reactive, you know this. We react with our primitive, lizard brain, you know reptilian brain, to things that you know uh tick us. So that is not good, because we evolve as quite intellectual and intelligent beings, but all that blockage that sits inside of us and prevents us from tapping into our dormant potential, that's what you know essentially is the biggest blockage, yeah, so it's like yeah, and we're flowing against kind of like a kink and a number of kinks in the hose right.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 37:59

It blocks the water. So that's a way of thinking about it, that there's energy that's always flowing. There's this resourcefulness always available and it's, you know, unlike time. In certain ways. Well, unlike time, it's not limited. As long as we're alive and breathing, we have access to unlimited resourcefulness. Would you agree with that? Yes, that's true, that's true.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 38:24

The body is the only thing that can't keep up with all that. Right, there's a limitation to the body. We have to get rest, we have to eat well, we've got to take care of it. But, going back to what we were talking about earlier, we're having less and less time for that. You know, we only have time to put junk food in our mouth so that we feel like we're full, so we can continue to work, right, as an example. And I'll have time to get to the gym, because I've got all this political silliness I have to deal with, because if I don't, somebody's going to add something more to my schedule, like having a talking to with me. So I don't want to avoid that talking to. So I'm going to get this done.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 38:59

So we kind of set ourselves up. We've kind of set ourselves up to this hamster wheel because of a lot of BS. Really, I'm sorry to say that. I mean it's true, but that we've also cut people off from their because of their upbringing through the, when they grew up in the land of giants, when we just listened and absorbed, we some of that was good, but some of that blocked, put those kinks in the hose, if you will, to our resourcefulness.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 39:29

So what I would then say is that you would say that the reset does what to take those kinks out. So we talk about it takes you back to original factory settings of your nervous system, or at least a good portion of that, and what does that mean? Original factory settings. So when you do, when you do the leadership resilience reset with you after the two sessions, people report more energy, more focus. They for this unkinks nature, they have a particular focus that they take out of those sessions to keep it going. So they know what they're trying to create in their lives. But what is actually occurring in the reset and what does it mean to go back to factory settings, original factory settings?

Anatoly Yakorev: 40:15

Well, the idea is that basically, our bodies can repair ourselves. Essentially we cannot tell our own physical body to repair itself, for obvious reasons, but the way our body can react to certain auditory stimuli can set in motion this self-healing process. For example, if you go to an opera and you want to listen to some good music, you get music chills. So that's the way your body reacts and it's great. Okay, you get those chills, you get those goosebumps and everything and shudders and jolts, but that's the way our sympathetic nervous system reacts to the outside stimuli. Now, same thing that happens in the reset. To put your body in that self-healing mode all people have to do they don't have to actually listen much to what they say, but the way I say things resonates with their body and their body gets to action. And it's interesting that the self-healing process, their own physical body, decides what needs to go. So your mind is not part of the journey because you don't know what to do about it.

Anatoly Yakorev: 41:37

But our body fix themselves miraculously. And that's why when I found out that this is the process that actually runs in the background until it's full completion. Now, when we talk about going back to factory settings, it's because what I heard from my clients who said you know, it's like going back to the time when I was seven or when I was eight, when I was six, that's how I saw the world, that innocence and that acceptance of the world. Once you go back and reconnect with that feeling gives an idea like, okay, I have expunged, I have flushed out all the garbage, all the junk I have accumulated over the years and I really enjoy that original state. So that's why I think a lot of people truly appreciate their own journey as healing themselves.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 42:42

Well, that's when we were kids. We were on our own journey, weren't we? I remember when I was very young and I was at a time when it was an exciting time post-World War II right. There was also deep tragedies during that time with the Kennedy assassination and all that was going on, and I remember feeling the sadness during that time. I remember feeling like the days around his funeral and everything and feeling as a kid I can remember feeling just genuinely the grief right, I was feeling it.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 43:19

Even if I didn't know what was going on, I could take it in. I could feel it, and then you know, and then and then you moved on. You got into the next phase, but there was this sense of I was, you know, and through my imagination, as a kid, I was creating my own reality and playing and having fun without a care in the world, right, and I knew exactly what was next to do. I was either called to dinner or I had a chance to go play, right, and it was a very simple time. Obviously, it's not that simple when you're an adult, but what would you say to that?

Anatoly Yakorev: 43:53

How does that innocent service as an adult in this more complex, challenging world of a grand Well, that's a very good, that's a very good observation, because we crave, we actually miss that innocence since the time, you know we were kids, you know, like you just say, like you know, carefree, you know, and being like you know, like you said, acknowledging that something is happening in our world but it's not part of our world. So that freedom was truly precious. Now, getting that freedom back, getting that authority back over our own lives, be that internal, we can still have something to do with it, right, we can take it externally, we can project it the way we deal with other people and we will touch the lives of other people that we're working with. So that's why I truly believe that the reset can also have that ripple effect in teams, because Well let me ask you a question about that.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 44:56

Let me ask you a question about that because it'll be, you know, and anyway for anybody out there that wants to know more, we're not going to be able to go into detail today about the whole method. You can go to my website, resilientleadershipguycom, and we talk all about the Resilient Leadership Method on my site. Please go there and take a look at it and feel free to reach out if you have any questions. But I want to go back to this, this issue of teams.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 45:20

So if I was a leader of a team and I'm probably thinking in a post-pre-reset state of mind that I might be here I might look at oh my gosh, I don't want all my team to have autonomy. I'm going to be hurting cats. Nobody will do what I want them to do. What am I supposed to do? How am I? If I empower everybody to that degree and everybody's into their own resourcefulness and their own wisdom, we'll never get anything done around here. Or they'll be doing stuff that is inconsistent with what I want them to do, or they might get so empowered they'll just leave and leave me behind because they want to be the next CEO of somebody other company. So what would you say about that concern? Is that a valid concern?

Anatoly Yakorev: 46:06

Well, it's a bit of a selfish thinking because you think like okay, well, think about this, if everybody goes through the reset, let's go back to the original concept, since everybody is so preoccupied with the threat of burnout, at least you know that your team has been taken care of from the perspective of their well-being. Good, so after the reset, the team they have addressed their own issues a deep inside. They've been reset. There's something going on. I can benefit from them being fully functional Now.

Anatoly Yakorev: 46:46

But you raise a different thing which is interesting. Like what if they become autonomous and they start challenging my authority or they find a different way of doing things? Actually, it's for the better, because you can benefit from this. So you're like look, you can use that reset against them by saying now, since you have become so wise and unencumbered, you no longer suffer from your activity and stuff that you had before, so now we can tap into your infinite wisdom, so we can actually take our communication to a different level, because I would expect you to function and perform at a much higher level, being relaxed, being more calm, but, at the same time, being wise as a result. So I, for example, as a team leader, I would rather listen to somebody who stopped being reactive, who found their own holy grail, and then I would benefit from that. I'd say, okay, tell me why we're having all this BS, or what's the way to do a party go-by-do? Yeah, exactly, can you imagine taking that human relationship to a totally new level?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 48:03

Well, that's the world and, quite frankly, that's the world we all want, you know, and the world that is we're seeing far away from right now, where we have highly wise, conscious, autonomous human beings and because they're human beings, by the way, they want to be in community, they want to be connected. We're not that far from the Bedouin-O-Ape and you look at their society, it's probably a better shape than ours, because they're going from pure instincts, of that connection and that love and that affection. So that, to me, is a great point. We have to remember that. What does the reset do for relationships, would you say? How would you speak to that? How does that reconnect you to your species and the connectivity that we all, whether you're introverted or extroverted, when you're hanging out with good friends or you're hanging out with people you love, there's nothing like it, right, and that's where we prefer to spend most of our time. So what happens in the reset around that, would you say?

Anatoly Yakorev: 49:10

Well, definitely there will be a. There is a heightened state of acceptance you know of people around you and especially if certain relationships you know that you have, you know you actually go to a higher level of acceptance of you know those people for who they essentially are and that that's definitely a major improvement Because you're not taking that level of reactivity back home or you're not taking it to your friends Right, you all operate, you begin to operate from a totally different perspective and I think that's a blessing for having that in your relationship with anyone you know and people would feel that. So that's why I've never heard about anybody reacting negatively to the post-reset person.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 50:05

Right. Well, I look at it. You know both my, as you know, my fiance and significant other, alex, has been through the reset as of I, and I will say that there have been definite growing moments in our relationship to that as we both came online more and more and more and more present, but it's led to greater joy in the relationship, there is no doubt about it in my mind. We have different conversations, we go deeper, we're willing to hold. You know, when I've overstepped the bounds of my authority, which I often do, and I realize I've been in trouble, not because I'm in trouble because she has some ruler out of it, but because I may have somehow not given her the space to say what she needs to say or say it in the way she needs to, or whatever. When I come back to my senses and give that space, you know, even through that challenging moments, we reconnected a deeper level. After that's over, because we're both willing to hang in there and even though there's an old part of our nervous system that are still reacting, that is not driving the ship. You can feel the reactivity still happening, the fires, the survival mechanism going off, but you are not. It's not. That's what I think I would say it's not in charge of me anymore. It serves me. You know, if there's real danger, I want it to be engaged right, but I also know when there's not real danger and I don't react to something that's not really dangerous by acting dangerous, if you will. So I mean that to me and I've also seen that in other people that you know there have been shifts in their relationship, but it can you know. So that's true and the way that they relate to other people.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 51:50

Just because I go back to the person who cut out 30% he didn't cut out 30% of the schedule and say I'm just not showing up anymore, get over it. He had communication with these people. He used them as coaching opportunities to sit down and say listen, you know you don't need me in there. You need to trust yourself more. So just CC me on anything you want to CC me on. If you need to bring me in, do. But I trust you. And that person did fine. They might have had an initial grumble about it and concern and maybe felt like they were a little bit, but it was good for them, as you say, you know.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 52:23

So there is also an intelligence that comes with this. You're just not going to just change things and not let people know why you're going to do it intelligently, as you say, yeah, yeah, so it's going back to our issue of time management. So I've seen more people be much more effective with how they engage time and those that are directing their time. It hasn't necessarily always taken away from their sense of busyness. They're also going to still have days when they feel very busy.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 52:54

But it's interesting, some of my clients that have been through this kind of and this is probably why this is why we've had a coaching on as a must have now and it's why it's the method and not just the reset, because in a certain way, this opens up people to a deeper sense of resourcefulness in them. They go more inter-directed, which many would call being spiritual. You don't necessarily have to use that label for this. We're not saying you would have to, but because most executives haven't had the background a lot of meditation and a lot of self-awareness building exercises and mindfulness. Necessarily they get this new fresh start. If you will, and have to be, grow accustomed to this new space of being, this new way of being, and there's something to be said about staying in touch with what's happened in the reset.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 53:53

That involves the reset. So, if you could, I would like to just touch on that. Why do you think and it goes back to what we're talking about your primary, most valuable resource is your attention, right? Because that's where you're directing your awareness, through your attention, thank you. So their attention is much more sharp. So what is it about? Staying in touch with what's happened helps the reset? What would you say about that in your experience?

Anatoly Yakorev: 54:22

Well, you know let's go back to this comment you made that you know the post-reset coaching is absolutely key because when people come out of the reset, you know they may not actually value some of those benefits they get and they may easily skirt right past them because there's so much that their mind needs to catch up with and on. You know. So they need to be told hey, you gained this and you know you got that unlocked for yourself, you know. So.

Anatoly Yakorev: 54:52

That's why you know the coaching provides all those milestones and all that extra level of clarity about the post-reset state Now how to sustain it. You know there are lots of things that you know a person can do. I mean basically just to maybe adopt some meditative practice, you know, do a bit of journal, self-reflection, you know, just to be aware of what has been gained and how to keep it live, how to keep it reignited, okay. So I know that a lot of people you know actually get to a point of abuse in their reset as they try to lay a lot more work, ask and go for a lot more challenges, you know, just to exploit that new state with extra energy, extra clarity. But ultimately self-care remains an integral part of the post-reset okay. So doing even minimal self-development and keeps this going and this is definitely critical.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 55:58

Yeah, because I think what happens is, you know, people can have memories of the way they were right. They could have memories. We call these ghost images a ghost that can come up like I used to get nervous about that. Maybe I'm starting to feel a little nervous and if they go towards those thoughts, they could start even starting to make me feel nervous in their body and it is a body for response to thoughts. And then, if I'm not doing anything internally and I'm just a lot of the goodies that come out of the reset is I just have more energy, I'm just more creative, there's a lot more serendipity I'm noticing there's just things that are happening. I can't believe that. You know, my focus is so sharp now and I just people don't bother me anymore. So those are the kind of the natural outcomes. A lot of people report, post it, but somehow that can start dropping away over time, partially because I think people leverage those goodies to now to get more stuff done right.

Anatoly Yakorev: 56:57

Yeah.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 56:58

And when they do that, they're almost inviting the old ghost images in more. The old ways of being. Those memories start coming fighting back. Now what I've noticed with people is if they go on vacation or something, or they all of a sudden have a four day weekend, I hear back hey, I'm feeling the reset again because there's now spaciousness around them. They're not so contracted into their job. Those memories, which are not rooted in anything in the nervousness anymore, don't bother them and they feel oh, I'm feeling better again because literally what they're doing is what meditation would give them is creating more spaciousness, and because they're maybe outside of the work environment, they may be more naturally reflective, because we're naturally reflective as human beings. Is that a fair assessment?

Anatoly Yakorev: 57:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 57:53

Anything else you'd add?

Anatoly Yakorev: 57:55

Well, but again, the reactivity. Basically it's an interesting thing when you get into the post-tweets at state, it's rather difficult to become reactive again, because that part of your nervous system has been rewired by yourself. So to invite it back into the system you just have to try very hard. But at the same time, people may fall into old habits, which is a different thing, right, because our bodies cannot rule out our habits. We can mentally keep those habits live if we want to, but if we don't feel the need to have those bad habits, we can just let them go right.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 58:38

And so the old habits of getting frantic. I want to get this done. Whatever that habit can click in, it's not necessarily driven by the old trauma, but now it's now the habit. The habit is formed just because you repeated this so many times that your system remembers it and it's a comfortable way for it to express itself, right? So this goes back to why reflection and meditation those things are important, because it's also purview around the personal development to assess what new habits do I now want to form?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 59:07

And part of that comes through the joyless we ask people to create, which is a new way of operating, that they're beginning new habits. Right, they're not all the new habits they're gonna have to create in their life, but they're really important. Beginning new habits they have to address and how they address life and approach life. But then there's other ones, like revisiting how I manage my time or revisiting how I'm engaging my boss, or there's certain habits in all of those right that we have a certain relationship with authority. Well, everything is new after the resets, so you have to revisit that again and be mindful of it so that you can address that old habit and create a new one. That's more effective, but it's easier now. There's nothing holding you back. Like before, you'd have to deal with fighting the old habits to create the new habit right, and now there's less of that conflict going on. You can just put your attention on the new habit and it's easier to create it post-reset Is that? Would you agree with that?

Anatoly Yakorev: 1:00:05

Yes, yes, yes, you somewhat got very nicely, yes.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:00:09

Great, well, good, well, that well, I mean, we started this conversation today talking about time management. How did we get here? But let's recap this real quick and I'll see if you have any final comments. Anatoly, so we know there's this really issue of time management out there, that people are addressing this. We're not. That's clearly happening.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:00:29

There's a lot of reasons for what happened. We pointed to that and how that was exasperated by COVID. We talked about the two fundamental avenues. You have to go on if you really want to attack this thing directly, which is number one. You got to take care of your own personal ability to have a system in place that supports you, and organizations have to start being more cognizant of what they're asking and expecting their people to do. Do we want them to be just busy or do we want them to be effective and impactful? And there has to be a commitment to the latter, not the former.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:01:02

The problems with all that is the cat is already out of the bag and we've got eight plus billion people on the planet. A lot of them are in organizations operating disconnected from that idea, and there's various reasons why people will push back because most of them haven't been going through their leadership resilience reset. So they're dealing in traumatic, reactive nervous systems that are constantly just trying to stay ahead of the curve. So, all that said, those two avenues are still valid, but what we pointed to is this issue of the nervous system and it's build up of reactivity and trauma over a lifetime that, through Anatoli's work, we've learned can be reset, reactivated and, through the additional coaching, support somebody to live a different way of being in a world that's uncertain and ambiguous.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:01:59

The world is uncertain and ambiguous. That doesn't mean I have to be uncertain and ambiguous. It starts, it comes all back and everything comes back to one's personal power, and we have a society right now, quite frankly, that is trying to keep people from their personal power. Let me just say that. But this in the pathway to leadership is the core pathway of leadership is regaining full access to your individual power. That then allows you to go out and contribute by bringing other people together to address issues in the world. So that's what I would summarize, what we talked about today. I want to see if you have any other final comments as we close out. Anatoli, is that you'd like to walk away having people know?

Anatoly Yakorev: 1:02:45

Well, it's just the fact that now there's no quick fix, there's no silver bullet to solve all those issues organizationally okay. So, like you said, and we all realize that, the true power, the real journey begins from within, and this is the only way for you to reclaim your own authority over your own time and your own, or the way, your own way of actually how you perceive the world around you and how you function in your role. So that's why you really made a good statement about that. So, yeah, really enjoyed talking about it. So really thanks for having me here today.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:03:32

Well, we'll do this again. I told you one of my regulars, so we always I always enjoy our conversations and I hope people feel that they have something additional to add in their reflection on this issue and appreciate you joining us today, and I always appreciate my guests coming on board. I also appreciate the audience joining to listen to the podcast. So thank you again for coming and joining this episode of Unphased on Fire and we look forward to seeing you next time on the show. Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you again next time.