The Journey of Self-Mastery: Dan Blackburn on Building Resilience and Leading with Presence

Opening to Show: 0:17

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast that supports executives to deepen their impact in resiliency in an increasingly chaotic and uncertain world. Your mission facilitates the growth of enlightened leaders who build empowering, high-performing cultures that unify great talent and turn profound visions into reality. Now, tuning into your needs, here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and the resilient leadership guy, David Kreguts.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 0:49

So hello and welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire. I'm David Kreguts, your host and moderator for the show, the resilient leadership guy. Now, today we're going to continue on the theme of self-leadership that Anatolia and I spoke about in our last podcast and, to that end, I'm honored to be joined on the show by my good friend, dan Blackburn, who's a fellow executive coach and is an author of a new book, lost and Found the Journey to Self-Mastery. Now, dan was on this show about a year ago and because he recently released his book Focusing on Self-Mastery because I did that other show I scrambled to reach out to him and say it would be perfect timing for this, and he moved his schedule and mountains to be on today, so I'm really appreciative of him spending the time.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 1:34

Before writing his book and becoming an executive coach, dan had an extensive stint in wellness and health and followed by a 17-year stint as an executive at Whole Foods. In addition to this, he has an executive in addition to his executive coaching business through his company Tula Organizational Wellness. Dan also co-founded a highly respected Tula Yoga Studio, which is a stable for avid Hatha yoga practitioners in the Twin Cities metro area. So, dan, thanks for coming back on the show today. It's really great to have you.

Dan Blackburn: 2:07

Thanks, David, I forgot it was following Anatoly. That's quite the follow-up. I mean I don't know. Yeah, it's good.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 2:13

It's perfect. It's perfect. So I appreciate you making the time, so let's jump right in. I mean, I loved your book and I understand it's kind of an autobiography, right and can you share a little bit what led you to write Lost and Found and explain why you chose to write it in the format that you did the story format?

Dan Blackburn: 2:38

Yeah. So when I first left Whole Foods Market, I was doing a lot of executive coaching and I still am. But the common theme from a lot of people was just that burnout aspect. They had forgotten who they were. They needed to get back to some semblance of balance, which, as you and I know, is never 50-50. It's always it moderates. But they couldn't even figure out what that baseline might be.

Dan Blackburn: 3:07

And it brought me back to where I was when my boys were six and two and that journey of finding myself and exploring and figuring out how am I going to live in this space healthy and actually be around for the long haul, be part of my kids and my wife's actual life, and not just this kind of person that comes in and out of life, is a good provider but not there. So when I started thinking about that and I started thinking about everything that I've learned through becoming a yoga therapist, it all kind of came under the umbrella like, oh, I can actually use my story because I've been there and I really, david, you and I have read a lot of how-to books and some kind of dry coaching books which I like. I get a lot out of them, but I also really, really, really like a good story. It pulls people in better. They get it from a different part of their brain, and so that's why I wrote it that way.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 4:17

Well, I thought your writing was really really good. It was very entertaining. It was very enjoyable to read. So you're a good writer. I can encourage people to pick up the book, more especially the executives out there that are struggling right now. Now you named the book Lost and Found and you kind of intimated what that was. But the title what was you know? Another way of saying what was lost. The one was found. Is there something about yourself? Was it? You were, you were afraid you were losing yourself in your, in your work, and and then somehow there was something you you needed to rediscover. Is that kind of the sense of it?

Dan Blackburn: 4:54

Yeah, absolutely yeah, I was. I mean, I literally was lost. I thought that I knew what I was doing, but I wasn't. I mean I I was doing my job, but that's all I was doing. My me as a person was lost. And being able to find that person again and and actually be, you know, a partner to my wife and a husband and a father to my kids, but also really a a better I use the word boss, but a better boss, a better leader, somebody that was actually present and not a commander in chief kind of a person that you know the command and control kind of person who I had come from and really wasn't happy with. I just couldn't figure out how to get around it.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 5:43

Well, where did the command and control kind of sense come from? Did it just come from the conditioning of our society and how you were trained? Is that fundamentally where that came from?

Dan Blackburn: 5:52

Part of it. Part of it came from my wife, not my wife, sorry from my father.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 5:58

You're going to have to pay for that one.

Dan Blackburn: 6:02

She is far from that

Dan Blackburn: 6:06

Corps when I was young, the, the tools that I had learned was and what. What I was taught, even in in leadership, was what I tell you to do. And you know when, when somebody would say, why aren't you getting this done, I took personal responsibility which, you know, kind of forced it. You know the old expression shit rolls downhill. It's like I forced it downhill and you know I. I got results, but I also lost people. So the, the results that would be repeated, became harder and harder to come by. It was these were kind of one and done things and I I wasn't celebrating those wins. I wasn't developing good leaders that could lead their team. It was I was developing people who wanted to be that same command and control, which is a pretty narrow view of of, you know, execution of of orders. It doesn't develop leaders.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 7:09

No, it doesn't. It doesn't it, it doesn't spawn creative critical thinking was what you want. You want them to be creative and surprise you, right. Versus you you know, and it is. It's true, if you command and control, if you dictate and many leaders that we've come across even use fear to motivate Big time you just create all kinds of messes and passive aggressiveness and all kinds of weird things, right?

Dan Blackburn: 7:38

And then you got to clean it up.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 7:40

Yeah, then you got to clean it up. Well, and at the outset of the story, you, you, you introduce a main, you know another character who's it becomes a key person for you to book, named River. So who does River represent in this journey and what is his ultimate purpose in the story?

Dan Blackburn: 7:58

So River this is. This is so funny. So I got to tell you that when I first introduced River to my editor, they did not like the name, it was too like hippie-ish, but I I really wanted the name because a river transforms the landscape and there was this kind of rock hard person that needed some transformation. So it fit, the metaphor fit for me and as far as people you know there are so many teachers, mentors, partners that I've had that when I started looking at listening to those voices, they were kind of stored inside me and started seeing what what they were really saying or how it affected me personally.

Dan Blackburn: 8:45

River became a conglomerate of all of those people and and really everything that was inside of myself, things that I knew to be true, that I just wasn't listening to before, and and so that's, that's pretty much it. It's like the having a good conversation with somebody a mentor or an elder that you hear them in the moment but don't act on it, but somewhere in there it's there, the voice, the voice is there. And so first, for whatever reason, that when I started to listen to those things, like I could hear those voices and I could even see what they meant, and then I started to apply it and it and it brought me to even more research, which met, you know, river got expanded in his views and so, yeah, very good so he's a conglomerate of all those lessons that we learn in life and he's kind of that.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 9:44

The the holds that space for that in the book. Yeah Right, you know.

Dan Blackburn: 9:49

Yeah, and for me, you know, gosh, in the 1950s or 60s this conversation might have happened at a bar with a bar tenure. Yeah, right Nowadays, and for me especially, you know, sitting next to somebody with a cup of tea, cup of coffee, some kind of a healthy beverage or whatever, and having a really good conversation. I mean, that's where whole worlds are born, you know, it's we need more.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 10:14

We need more of that in the world. We need that happening a lot more. I mean, you know, yeah, absolutely Well, and in the beginning of the point, you do do this job of painting a picture of this exhausted, burnt out executive, and I think you did a really good job of of, like you know, almost, almost collapsing into the camp that you went to. You know, it took you a few days to shake it off and you did a really good job of describing that. Let's talk about this corporate grind that's out there, that's still, and it seems to me I think we talked about this on the last show it seems to me that executives are busier than they've ever been. They're being pushed harder, and not only that, they're having to deal with all kinds of things they didn't deal with pre-pandemic, before the pandemic, and I don't know what that is. Something changed and it just seems. So wha

Dan Blackburn: 11:47

Yeah. So for me, david, I think if we look back at the short history, when the pandemic happened and there was the quote unquote grand resignation, which to me was just like it was going to happen, it just all happened at once Because corporations or big businesses weren't in alignment with what was coming up in the world and there weren't really taken much time to develop that relationship anymore and get people to really communicate as teams and celebrate as teams and work as teams to fundamentally be part of the business that they were in. So whenever it started I couldn't actually tell you when it started, but we started to separate the people from the business again and keep them in their own silos, not involve them in. I mean, you don't have to go through a P&L with everybody, but it does actually help to say listen, here's the work that you're doing, here's how it contributes to the bottom line, here's what we're giving back to you. So it starts to become more of a well-informed base of employees that can start to get attached or not necessarily attached, but really involved with the mission of the company.

Dan Blackburn: 13:11

And often that is overlooked these days. And it's even worse now because after those bunch of people left, everything got stuck in the hands of these executives to get done. Well, they don't know how to do it anymore. They've been out of that field, if they were ever trained in it in the first place. So it became command and control.

Dan Blackburn: 13:28

You've got to do this, which then again separates those people even more from their leaders, and to me, fundamentally, that's what's happened here is that leadership is if they're leaders at all anymore have become much more managers and they are separated from their team, and so what has to happen is to bring them back. Let's have a whole unit. Let's start to understand how we communicate with each other, start to. Not everybody on your team is going to stay with you for 20 years. That's almost impossible these days but you can help them get where they want to go, as long as it's also there's some reciprocity there, they can help you and your team move forward, and everybody learns from each other and we grow as a unit. So it's kind of a long wind to dance, or I hope that made sense.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 14:25

Well, I mean no, I know, I mean he says I mean, look at I don't want to overuse sports analogies but if you look at good NFL teams, the ones that do the best prayer development, it seems like they lose 15 players a year to other teams and free agency, but then they restock again because they're developing people, they're developing players and they're happy for the players that are. They're happy for the players that move on. You're not part of. You know you're making more money. We'll just develop players from the other, and so that's an example of it. It's like when you're developing people, not only are you doing good for your organization and you're creating a strategy that's a long-term maximization of the beautiful talent that's coming into your organization, you're also making the world a better place.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 15:07

You're sprinkling seeds everywhere when they go out, and they're also not going to pull it up with the corporate grind as much, because if they don't have that experience there, they're going to be more demanding when they go to other organizations. So they're going to be a positive influence in the world, right.

Dan Blackburn: 15:22

Yeah, and I like what you said there. It's about making the world a better place, just like the sports teams that develop the teammates, you know they're making the sport better in the long run, and if it's all about the individuals, I mean that sport's going to die. Yeah, and that's just the way it is.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 15:40

Well, and it just kind of brings me back to kind of the first scenes in the book when River's talking and he's sharing you're sharing your plight as that exhausted executive and he shares, among other things, the five major causes of suffering. Right, I don't want to give all those away so people read the book, but what had you start with? You can name them if you want or whatever you want to do with that, but what had you start with that? What was your thoughts on that foundation in the book?

Dan Blackburn: 16:11

Just yeah, when I started writing it and I thought, ok, how the hell did I get here in the first place? And I'm having this conversation with River, you know and the only thing I could say is, nanny, number one wouldn't have got me there. It was like, ok, that's a little too soft, it's a bit of a softball. But that second one, you know really that false sense of self, so to speak, and you just bought in. That was where I was, and so that's why I started with that. I started with number two, worked my way through five and then backed up to number one to say, okay, let's look at the beginning, because it's a-.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 16:56

I liked that because I was actually reading the books in Number two was number one. I was actually in that same I went back pages I said where's the number? I missed it, I really misread it. And so you had me and then I was like, oh, there's number one. And now it makes sense what you're just saying about why you started with number two, because it really is. That is the core.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 17:14

When you coach somebody, when you're coming into coaching, if somebody hasn't had an executive coach before and they're coming to me and they haven't done much development and they really they might have a spiritual or whatever. They've been, some Tony Robbins things or whatever they've done, but not a lot. Am I going to start with team leadership, how to become a team leader or how to be great leader in your organization? That would be foolish, because the true core of it and this is what gets to the highlights that you know, anatoly and I spoke in the last podcast about and you share in one of the things, first things actually, river says in the book is you can't lead others until you know how to lead yourself. And there later in the book you have a quote from the Bhagavad Gita yoga is a journey of the self, through the self to the self and the wake up as you're mentioning.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 18:05

That is when you're like you're exhausted, you're like you're working, your you lose yourself in your job, you forget about yourself. I hear this all the time like why am I showing up there at work every day? What the heck am I doing there here every day? And I make a lot of money. You know, I like my team, but sometimes I'm trying to understand what we're doing here. Now, I'm not saying that people are, you know, they're that overly, that confused. But we have days like that, let's put it that way. And one of the first recognitions right is that I've been trying to be something other than I am. At one point in my life I was innocent and playful and having fun and creating, and somehow I lost that right, and so do you do you view is your view of self-mastering, self-leadership? Do you see them as like synonyms in a certain way?

Dan Blackburn: 19:05

Yes, I do, and I also want to recognize that it never ends. Right. We can't go back on automatic pilot and say we've accomplished this because we'll be right back at the beginning and right but it is. Those are the same things and, you know, maybe we're a master of self for a split second, but it never ends.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 19:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really beautiful to see that this recognition is beginning to show up in so many places. I mean, it used to be in the bastion of spirituality, but now, if you've heard of internal family systems therapy and Dick Schwartz, who created that, he basically says we become these multiplicity of parts that express and are triggered in different ways, and the Course he talks about the core self in the same way that the Bhagavad Gita talks about the core self, or some of the mystics have talked about it, and physics talks about that the same way. And neuroscience has found out that we have these two brains, and one is more creative and core and another one is more survival. So it all, we're starting to see a triangulation of understanding, which is an exciting time to be alive.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 20:19

And what we're trying to do and certainly what I'm trying to do, I think what you're trying to do in our work is reenliven that in our clients. Right, yeah, that what you need is truly inside you with these qualities that exist already. You've just gotten away from the treasure house and it's kind of like you know. You've been on this journey like the prodigal son and went away from the riches to try to just give me my inheritance now, dad, I'll go out and just enjoy life. I'll get it early and he found out that was a you know. Thank God his father welcomed him back, right, but anyway. But you know so what I'm getting and what I'm intimating from what you're saying and what was said in the book. Beyond improving one's ability to lead others, self-leadership or mastery ultimately provides us with so much more. So what would you say it brings to our daily lives in general, as you gain more connection to yourself and gain more mastery? What does it bring to our lives or bring?

Dan Blackburn: 21:19

back into our lives. So I want to jump back a little bit on something you just said. So you know those two things right the joy which really brings us to the front of our, of our brain, and then, or the fear, or you know that survival mode which keeps us in the back, right, right. And those studies have actually shown that the more you exercise the front, that creative space you know, the more gray matter grows there to support that, whereas if we're stuck in the past, or stuck in that survival mode which is the past, that's where we stay, that's our brain.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 21:55

It's cool, you know it's pretty wild.

Dan Blackburn: 21:59

So the more we practice that and that's why those are the rare moments right the more we can practice being present fully, the more we're actually going to get out of the day, the more we're actually going to see our place, not only in society as it is, but in our family and in the places that we choose to be. We're actually going to be rather than just kind of a, you know, a seat that somebody sits in but nobody recognizes because there's nobody really there. And so, to me, when you're, when we're really practicing getting into the present, being in that creative self, like sense of play, and truly getting out of survival mode, then we can actually be here and now we can make the world a better place instead of just a place to survive, which are very different skills. Right, if you're going to survive, you build a fort and sharpen knives. If you're going to play, you go out and interact with your neighbors, and that's a very different thing.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 23:00

Yeah, we have a lot of people that are pressing in the back of their brain right now. Right, because they're. This is why it's so important right now to get this workout into the world and help people understand it, because, you know, what we're seeing on the news is instilling the back of the brain. It's reinforcing the back of the brain, the belief that half our country is whatever, you know, and we have to be on guard now. Half the country is dangerous. We have to be on guard for the rest of the other, the enemy, and that just is.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 23:27

And you wonder if I don't know. I'm not going to say whether it's being done on purpose or not, but the main thing is, the other thing is, as you said pointed out, I love this research. It completely makes sense to me because it speaks to the whole notion that what we focus on grows, and literally this is gray matter grows based on how we focus, and I always talk about, well, you can focus on vision and creating, or you can collapse into current reality. So the first one is a creative front of the brain and the second is survival and fear.

Dan Blackburn: 24:02

Right, so it's like it's all these things, it's great, it's great. You're also kind of creating a gap, then, which, for coaches, is great. Okay, how do we get to this vision? I mean, you're, you're here. If you want to stay here in that past limbic system, I can't help you because that's you know, you're already there. You're already a master at that. How do we get here to the future to play?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 24:27

Yeah, Well, you and this is like it's also reminds me of the part of the book where you know you're just about to go home from vacation and River is sharing the Aristotle's quote we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, that is not an act, but a habit. I have that. Asked you to consider what you're aiming for and to look at your strongest habits and see if you're doing what's serving your definition of excellence and, to me, the core of understanding what we aim to do and why we're here, why who we are, our identity, like who am I right? Why are we here, our purpose and what's most important to us, our values. You know, and holding ourselves accountable to that is what life is about in a certain way, and discovering what those things are is part of the fun. Now, as we saw in the story, this is what I wanted to ask you and you get your point on this.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 25:21

You know, articulating the vision is easy. Getting that's the fun part right. It's the fun part of saying getting down. And sometimes you're still asking clients someone have you gotten here? Have you done that reflective exercise? They hadn't gotten to it yet, but when they do, they usually get charged up and excited. But that's the simple part, right, the, the, the activating of it is not so easy, right, and that's where we talk about self mastery. So, dan, what makes that so difficult? I guess if it was easy, everybody would do it right. But to what makes it so difficult to turn a vision of our highest and best selves into reality? What's the challenges?

Dan Blackburn: 25:58

we face. It's just. This is the challenge. You're absolutely right, and there's a couple of things that are in my mind that are happening here. One is A we are a product of who we've imagined ourselves to be at this point in time. Right, it's these habits. So we're a product of our habits every day. We're also living in a world who sees us as those habits, and when we start to expand our vision or start to change that vision, there is resistance everywhere within ourselves and everywhere around us, because they've been able to trust who you are at this point. They might not like it, but they can at least trust your.

Dan Blackburn: 26:36

Habits are regular. You know they can adapt or compensate or however they want. You, or myself, has learned how to adapt and compensate using the habits that I have. But if I have a different vision or I want to evolve in some way, then really have to let go of some of those things that have kept me there or supported me in that old vision. Create some new things, which means I start to become a new person, not only to myself but in the eyes of everyone around me.

Dan Blackburn: 27:05

Absolutely, and it's much easier to stay in your own lane, you know. Just do what you've always done. It's a back to science. Back to science. We know that the brain takes up 20% of your energy, 2% of your weight, 20% of your energy. So if you're actually and so we have these habits to actually save energy, that way you can do other things with your, with your mind.

Dan Blackburn: 27:32

But now we're saying to the mind wait a minute, we're creating some new habits. Well, the mind is going to basically say are you f and kid me? Here I'm going to start making you tired, I'm going to make you angry, I'm going to make you upset in any way possible, because I brought you here, like I created these habits for you to stay safe, and now you're telling me you don't want them anymore. It's like this whole internal dialogue. So that's part of what makes it so hard. On the other hand, if we can lean into that and be curious and laugh at it, it does start to become fun. Like you're on a treasure hunt, finding the real you. Yeah, it's true, it is a treasure hunt.

Dan Blackburn: 28:15

And the thing is is that.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 28:16

It's what I want to tell the listeners. You're guaranteed, if you stay on that hunt and you have good guidance, you will find treasure beyond your wildest imagination. And this is sometimes what I love to see in clients. Obviously, there's the awakenings that happen in the recognitions oh, it could be a lot easier than the way I've been doing it and I tried that and it does work. Or or taking some time to take breaks during the day makes me more productive, not less. You know things just simple. Things can happen.

Dan Blackburn: 28:43

But you know you're really your point, david the, the person who just said hey, can I just have the money that well, he didn't work for it. Yeah right, so he never earned it. And that's the thing about you know, changing your habits, creating this world. You know you got to do the work, just like you as a coach, you can't just give somebody the answer because they're not going to earn the reward and it won't stay.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 29:07

Well, and this this speaks to a little bit of you know, you know Anatoly, and just to mention him real briefly, we, we noticed the beginning of doing the resilient leadership method, where he does his, his process of relieving people of the trauma and so forth, that people that got it quickly, like because it's only two, one hour sessions, right, and they had this amazing, amazing opening, but then they didn't work it and they kind of started wondering what happened. And then they go on vacation, they report oh it's back Because they got so busy and they used kind of all the energy they got to do more of what they were doing before. So that's why we had to kind of started deploying coaching in that process, because it really had to slow people down and appreciate what they got, because if it comes too easy, we have to work for it a little bit, we have to appreciate it and do that research a little bit. Now in the book.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 30:02

Going back to the book, as it happens it just so happens that River happens to live in your city. Well, we met him at this camp and he happens to be in St Paul and he runs a coffee shop called the Karmic Bean, right. So that's just amazing when you meet the teacher. They're also convenient. There's a convenience factor there. But from the first meeting and over the course of the book, he becomes a guide on your quest, as you mentioned, to find what you lost. And as you have insights and obstacles, you get to meet him. As you said earlier, like for those different, he would make you different kinds of coffees and teas and you would talk about and you would sit and talk to him and have these amazing conversations.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 30:42

And one of the first assignments that River gives you that relates to this habit change process is he's at your, at the company. He gives you the rare process it's an acronym for Reflective Awareness Response Exercise and I think this would be a good one to share with the audience. If you wouldn't mind sharing a little tidbit for the book about you've framed your sense of self, your ideal self. You've done that right. You got an idea of who you want to become more of or be more of. You've got these habits that are staring in the face, that are making you tired and making it difficult on you to change the habits and be consistent with that. So I think this exercise fits in there right as one way to engage. So if you could talk a little bit about the exercise and what you suggest clients do with it, it might be a good one. That could be a takeaway for people today.

Dan Blackburn: 31:35

Sure, yeah. So one of the number one things that I was doing was I would get up out of bed and I was at work before I thought about anything Like never taking the time to acknowledge that I just had this great night's sleep or I didn't. You know what happened Never setting my intentions for the day, it was just go to work, like get things done. So when I started to actually sit down, find your breath, find a good, steady, easy breath so you can get back Instead of jumping out with that energy and just getting to work that's my survival brain Like how can I sit down for a moment and really be present with the day, set some intentions and then reflect on how my sleep was, all those other things? I started to say, ok, I can do this, and I started to do it twice a day. So in the morning I'd get up and ask and it'll kind of come through a little bit as we go along but I'd wake up and say, ok, how was my sleep the night before? Just to acknowledge what it was, what are my intentions for the day and how do I want to celebrate when I come home, those kinds of things. So basically, just three, four questions that are going to be who do I want to be today? What kind of a value do I want to show up as? Am I going to be playful? Am I going to be a dick? For lack of better words. And so I could actually set the intention before I even left the house, before I ate breakfast, before I did anything, and just like, ok, let's sit down and do this. It takes two minutes, like it's not much time at all, and obviously I mean you can write it down, which is better. If you do, then you can actually have that memory for you stored on a piece of paper instead of in your brain, so you don't have to think about it. And then at night I'd come home and say, ok, well, how was my day, what did I observe, notice those things, and so how did that feel in my body? But then also set the intentions for the night what kind of a dream. Who do I want to be in my dreams tonight? So I'm constantly setting those intentions, bringing those values back in. Yeah, and that way I mean I wouldn't.

Dan Blackburn: 33:54

It was interesting because when I first started, I'm sure you know that when you're really into something and you're kind of hyper anxious and not taking very good care of yourself. Your sleep is like Not great, not great. There's no way of nourishing yourself in that time. And that was a big deal for me. Like I slept for four and a half hours a night and thought I was doing great, but then I started to actually sleep a little bit more with a little bit more quality not so restless and then I started to shift. So those just twice a day is all you need. Now. I did it even during the middle of the day when I'd start thinking huh, am I actually being the values that I set out to be? What does it feel like in my body? Get the breath back in, get more present to who I want to be. Again, it's two minutes. Like it's not much time. Yeah, not much time at all.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 34:52

Well and again and I think in the book River talks about this the benefits of that expanded self-awareness, being more observant of yourself and others, especially when you're in a. I mean remember you talk about being in interactions with people and the stores and how you found this greater relaxation and spaciousness opening up to you. And I'm just thinking about you know you say that to an executive spaciousness and relaxation. How is that going to help? No, I mean, I'm being facetious, but in a certain way, we want to enhance performance and foster accountability. What are you talking about? So how does spaciousness and relaxation enhance performance and accountability for those people looking for ROI right?

Dan Blackburn: 35:36

Yeah, no, it's a great question and I'm going to answer it in a couple of different ways. One is you know, when we get in that reaction space, we usually get up in our upper chest right. We start breathing shallow. Little hypertension exists. Well, the stress response in our body tells us we need to survive back into that limbic system. Right, we haven't got the ability to process then. So, if we can allow ourselves to take that couple of minutes, let the body settle, bring the breath down into the central diaphragm instead of into here, Then, when we're in that kind of open, relaxed space, hey, we don't actually have to know everything. Which is something executives really need to know is you don't have to be the answer machine here. There's more truth out there than you could possibly imagine. That's so true.

Dan Blackburn: 36:29

That's a major leadership lesson yeah, so how can you open yourself up to that To not have to be the one to have the answer and to acknowledge people that do and then spread it out? Well, that only happens when you're kind of looser and more able to interact with people without having that defensive shield up.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 36:50

Well, I mean, I think, as leaders being creators, one of their primary jobs and I think it's one of the key jobs is to create an environment that brings out the best in others and service to what you're up to.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 37:06

So their job is not to know all the answers and I think we've been trained in our own educational system the answers are more important than the questions. But in leadership the questions are more important than the answers Because probably fundamentally one person can't come. I don't care how smart you are and I've met some. Most people I coach are like 10 times smarter than I am. They can overanalyze me on a number of fronts, but you can't figure everything out and also you get contracted in your own little world and you can't be creative.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 37:41

And when you create an environment where you present the problem to the team, say what should we do about this? It opens up something in them too, yeah.

Dan Blackburn: 37:54

And so in the book I talk about the concept of. There's three main things. The very beginning is there's non-violence. So are we being violent to ourselves and how does that reflect in how we treat others? What is truth? And if our truth is all we're really dealing with, there's no room for any other truth. There's a problem there. And then there's the boundaries and the agreements that we make with each other, and I call that not stealing from each other or yourself. So those three tenets are the first three major steps on starting self-mastery. But it all starts with that non-violence towards yourself and being in that stuck stress tree. That is just. I still get there Like you can't really avoid it. You're going to have stress in your life. It's. The idea is to how to get out of it in a way that's so. It's not controlling you.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 38:57

Right First, how to recognize your own stress right.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 39:00

Because that's the thing that burnout executives figure out too late. They do and they're not recognizing the value of self-care. And what you're pointing to is self-compassion. And again this goes back to like Dick Schwartz's work at IFS. He talks about there's no bad parts, there's nothing bad in you, and he says one of the things that any modality that has you be tough on yourself and push yourself to the limit is not an effective modality for changing and transforming anything. It's really through self-compassion and self-care that we create the environment within us to do the same to others and to create a possibility that's greater than ourselves.

Dan Blackburn: 39:47

Right, and it's got back to listening and all that right, right, right, yeah. And and it does create kind of a I Know a repeat cycle, if you will, because if you're the one that has to have the answers, then you're the one that's accountable for them, and then you don't really want to be accountable for him because it's other people's fault, and it becomes this weird, you know, and there's, there's no way you can balance all that, whereas if you're, if your intention really is to grow the human Into being, you know, not only better at their job, but better at being a human being, well, that's a pretty, that's a pretty amazing thing.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 40:26

Yeah, it is a very amazing thing and again it's. You know, you see, when people relax and they do find that greater spacious in spaciousness in themselves, there's a lightness of being, that happens and people notice that. Versus, you know, if you're very intense and I think you're an eight on the intergram, is that right?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 40:50

Yeah, yeah so you learn that big time, right? You know your intensity can rub off on other people, right? So? And we all have our own version of that that we can do. But when we relax and spacious in our, in our hearts, and we're breathing, yeah it always reminds me of yeah, sorry to interrupt, but it reminds me of

Dan Blackburn: 41:10

no, and you know the movie Ben her yeah, you've got it's the end right and they're having the race and Ben her at least the Charlton Heston version has got he's doing that. He's just kind of, you know, getting those horses to go where you have the Roman guy I can't remember what his name is, but he is just whipping those horses well. Well, charlton Heston wins, at least in that version. I know there's another version, but I don't, I haven't seen it anyway. It's kind of that whole thing like the horses know your team members know who's in charge that day that shift, they know when you're not, and so you know they're gonna compensate in ways that Help them survive an environment and if you're treating them poorly, they're gonna compensate in other ways, not so healthy. If you're treating them well, generally speaking, 99% of the time they're gonna respect that and pay it back. Yeah.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 42:10

And, and, and your point like they are thinking about, like you know, busy executives and you know a big thing here is they don't have time for this, they don't have time for that. But you're not talking about a lot of time, you know, for the investment you do make. Let's say, you Start your day off with five minutes of reflection and writing for intentions and you spend 15 minutes meditating and you do the same at night. Yeah, and, and you're checking in mindfully throughout the day. You're talking about less than an hour a day. That probably returns hours back to you, you know, I, and and more insight, more creativity, because you're tapping into that part of yourself that is already creative, spacious, centered, confident. The more you're giving it space, it comes forward. You know, and, uh, you know, obviously you have to change some habits and all that kind of stuff along the way, so there is work involved, but it's, you know, it's, uh, there is real.

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

There's this quote, and I love you to dissect this one just a little bit for me from tick knock on you. Having the book I really liked, then I thought you would, of anybody, you would be able to help us understand this one. It says breath is the bridge, that which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. So I think we've kind of been talking about that. But anything you would say about what that means to you, what that quote means to you, yeah, that breath bring the bridge.

Dan Blackburn: 43:40

It's a bridge. So to me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna mix it up a little bit. So here we have our head right. It's often not present, it's usually there or it's, you know, somewhere else. It's in the future, it's in the past, and but our body, our lived experience is right here, right, it's not going anywhere else. This is where it's at, and so if, often, if we can allow the mind To kind of make best friends with the breath, so that you're allowing the body now to really do its job, let the central diaphragm do its job. There's a total side note. Did you know you have basically three diaphragms in the body and not just one?

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 44:22

No, I didn't. I didn't realize that.

Dan Blackburn: 44:24

So the central diaphragm this is anatomically the central diaphragm and the pelvic floor diaphragm work as one. So as the central diaphragm draws down, the pelvic floor kind of catches it like a trampoline and then it draws it back up. Now, under stress, the central diaphragm freezes because we use it as a Brace, so to speak, which means that our, our pelvic floor diaphragm isn't doing any work and all the work is coming up here into our scalenes and neck. Well, that's not doing anybody any good because it forces us back into that survival mode of the brain. It's not an embodied experience.

Dan Blackburn: 45:03

So if we can use the breath low and slow, to start to let the mind kind of travel With that breath down into the body, feel what's going on and let it go, we can start to use that as a metaphor for all kinds of things like what do we bring it into our life from the world around us? What are we letting go? And also, to remember there's the expression of you know, water today was once a diaphragm or a dinosaur's you know urine, if you look at the air like that is A blend of everybody else and every other thing in the world around us and we're bringing that in To our body.

Dan Blackburn: 45:44

We're unifying Yep, yeah, you're unifying and mixing it with our own and letting that out into the world. So to me there's no better analogy of of what that means. It's just, you know, so hard to just like. Okay, give me just a minute. I need to just breathe and process this. Yeah settle it down, Taking it. You know you can take it in a car, you can take it wherever you're gonna start it.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 46:12

You could start a meeting with breath work, right? You know like. Yeah and you do. I mean because you, what you're, what I hear you saying in the first part of that is, essentially, the breath is the bridge. It's bringing you you're, it's bringing your mind into the moment. The body is already there, it never leaves the moment, it's always present and and you're conjoining, or I can see the bridge now You're joining with your body and you're slowing yourself down so your mind can be present. Is that fair to say?

Dan Blackburn: 46:44

totally fair and you know in my the physical practice what I often think about. If somebody's having a really hard time with their neck, it's often because their fantasy land and their reality are just not lining it up for large parts of their life and they're holding it in like there's no bridge or it's out. Yeah, you know.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 47:07

Well, I mean I and I worked with this guy, steward heller, who was uh, was uh Ted, to six degree black belts and martial arts. He was an operations researcher and had a background in engineering. He was a very interesting guy and he would talk a lot about how the body could look at somebody's body and tell you there a whole story.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 47:27

Because our body does yeah, he could tell you know If somebody's neck was leading forward. He said you race around. You're always ahead of yourself, aren't you? You know, and you could see it. So we it's funny, our body does form with how we live life and and you know, you can, you can see it in people's physical experience. That's really great to bring that in. Well, tell me a little bit. You know just to, to help the audience kind of understand the main characters ultimate transformation. You know what, what? How does the, the character ultimately evolve in the book and what lessons are most relevant? Do you think to the leadership development journey for most executives, if you could pick one or I'm sure there's more than one, one or two, but if you could pick one or two ways in which the character evolves in the book, that's relevant, most relevant to Uh, as you're doing these things, these practices, and what happens for the character and their work in the book.

Dan Blackburn: 48:23

Yeah, so one of the things you just talked about, your, your body really does form to what you're doing, and that's earlier we talked about. Why is it so hard to change these things? Well, part of it is because your body has formed to what you were doing, and so One of the things I talk about in in in the book is really Allowing those pieces of your body to let go. You know, allowing the yeah, you can call it trauma or whatever but the stored memory in your body to let that go, which is really Harder than it seems, and there's always like this residual, you know, underlying programming. That's, yeah, the memory. So it it's not that you just let it go once, because it's going to come up, it's going to, it wants to survive by itself to help you survive. That's its habit, so it's really understanding how that piece kind of comes in and letting that go.

Dan Blackburn: 49:22

And at the, you know, for me it was the evolution of what, what really do I need to let go of in order to find this other life and let it be created. And I think that's the ultimate part of this book is, you know, we have been given informed our habits, which really helped us survive our childhood into young adulthood, and you know there's a belief system, but it's limiting, and it's limiting us. You know, to grow, though, we have to break through that limiting belief system in order to grow beyond it, and that means we got to let go of all kinds of things that are holding us in place right now, and so, to me, that was the evolution of who I was, and you know, that person is still here, but I've it becomes less and less and less of me, although I can appreciate where it was, where, how I got here, and be thankful I wouldn't have survived had I not had those skills, and it prevented me from growing into the bigger me that you see today before you.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 50:38

Yeah, it's true. I mean there's a quote in 12 steps. I don't regret the past, right, you know, don't regret the past, and I think it's. We become who we are and our gifts have come through even our traumas and what we and what we've learned from them, not just our trauma. So the development of us as human beings, in facing those limiting beliefs and overcoming them is is the biggest gift we have to give to the world. Just like you did in Lost and Found, your gift came from your suffering and overcoming it through your own process and finding the rivers that you found, you know, in your life to teach you Because there was there.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 51:22

I think all of us have this longing that we've been all given and sometimes that gets weighted down and we lose touch with it. But what I see, you know, and you sometimes see this in clients when you're working with them and they start working, this glimmer of oh, my God, I'm excited to be in this conversation. I think it's to become a better leader. But there's something more to this, because we're giving them permission to step back and self explore and get in touch with their core cells in some small way or big way, depending on the situation and that's really the gift right. Because then, once we see that, we can explore what the gifts are. But that tends to what's the quote you, you know the way out is through. You can't. You can't just skirt around or bypass the healing, and it is through the process of healing that the gifts emerge right and it's through the process of healing that the treasure comes forward.

Dan Blackburn: 52:23

So yeah, the treasure. And that's absolutely right, david, that's absolutely right. There is an abundance of treasure within all of us and you know, there's another expression in the book. We're all just walking each other home here and if we could use that. You know and realize that, you know this person's coming from their background, their experience, their contained belief system, and you can reject it, you can learn from it. You know there's, there's choices.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 52:58

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, you have, you know, it's just. Yeah, when you start talking to people about why they believe what they believe, you start realizing that people are more similar than different than you. Yes, we're all we're all looking for for that, you know. You know sense of self and joy that comes from connecting to that, and that's the simplest way you can put it. There's more to it than that, but it's we're all. You know that's at our core. We're the same right and that way, and and and community.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 53:35

And you look at community and friendships and having coffees together and having conversations together. It's not so much the words. What do you walk away with from those coffees and those teas? It's, you know, I, you know. It's not that I don't remember what people say, but it's the feeling of being connected and expanded and validated and validating another person, and we need more of that in the world. And, and you know we're at, we're at I think we're at a low within community right now and connectivity, but I think that's coming back. It's got to because that's who we are as a species. Connection is so critical to us.

Opening to Show: 54:11

And that's what I want.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 54:12

That's what I want to see, as Greater Union in the world, not division. Right, that's what we all want. Well, you know, as as we close out there, close out the today's show, we could go on again for another hour. But do you have anything else you'd like to share about the book, its messages, or anything you would want to? You know people to walk away from reading it and if there, any final thoughts.

Dan Blackburn: 54:36

One thanks for this opportunity. I've really enjoyed this conversation and then as far as the book, you know, read it. Send me a message, ask questions. I mean, that's what that book? I put that book out there to help people. That's the whole intention. Like you got questions, my contact information is in the book. Send them to me and we'll have a conversation.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 55:05

Great, great. Well, I want to really thank you, dan, for joining, taking the time to be with us today and sharing more about your book and your work. And I do believe this work of self mastery or self leadership is the most important development arena for executives today. And there's so much noise on the outside and much of what we hear seems to conflict. You know, it's all confusing and the times are just kind of disheartening at times. You get just gets disheartened. Yet, as paradoxical as it is, it is so true and we become quiet, we remain aware, we engage your body, mind, emotional states in an integrated way and take time to ask ourselves some deeper questions. As we've talked about a number of times. The answers are there and once you know so, we all have this sense of being lost. But we can be found by looking within and get some support from reading a book like yours and the answers come forward and it's not confusing at all. A lot of times it's just we've all had moments of crystal clarity and it doesn't come from reading a bunch of books, it comes in the moment when you're ready, right, yeah, so again, I want to thank you for joining us today and appreciate you joining us and to my listeners if you find these podcasts insightful and inspiring, please share them with those.

David Craig Utts - The Resilient Leadership Guy: 56:21

This is what this podcast is about is Dan Sutter's book is trying to help leaders become more effective and resilient, creative, and to enjoy life more and have greater well being. So if you have any suggestions or for future topics or guests, please email me. I'll put my email address at the bottom of this podcast and just send me an email with those. And finally, below this podcast, you'll also find Dan's contact information and a link to the Amazon to order his book. It's an extremely, extremely insightful and enjoyable read. I can't recommend it more. So thanks again for joining us today. I'd have a great rest of your day, and this is David Kregos, the resilient leadership guy, signing off.

Dan Blackburn: 57:03

Thank you. Thank you Dan Take care. You bet that was fun.