Hi, welcome back. Happy you are here taking a moment for yourself to reflect, to meditate, to pray, to do what you need to do to calm your brain, calm your ego, calm your body, even calm your nervous system. That's what we do as contemplative leaders. This is contemplative leadership in action. This is where we take a moment for ourselves intentionally. It is a non-negotiable. It is on our agendas. It is one of our top three things that we do every single day. It is what we need to anchor ourselves into something bigger and greater than our egos. It's a way for us to reflect on things that are really important to us in our lives, in our personal lives, in our organizations, even within our teams. This is an opportunity for us every week to gather around, gather around with me and shut the office door and Put the do not disturb on your phone and really check in with yourself and check in with that inner alignment. And that inner alignment is really the core of what we do in contemplative leadership, the core. I've been talking for years about you being the nucleus, you being the core, the center of your universe, of your life, of your family, of your organization, of your team. Even if you have a formal leadership title or not, you are the nucleus of your life, period. period. And it is the core, the core that interests me so much more than the surface level, face value, things that you say, those behaviors that are people pleasing, that are for performance purposes. I don't care about any of that. I care about you, the core, the nucleus of who you are. Why are you in leadership? Why have you been called to do these leadership roles? Again, formal or informal, you are leading people. You're leading yourself first and foremost, right? You're leading yourself first and foremost. And so I want to get to know that first, the inner self, the inner alignment, the interior of the leader. And this has been really the core of what I've done, even in my research, even in my institute that I founded and that I have where I train hundreds of leaders. The core has always been of great interest to me. While other leadership approaches and leadership styles are focused on performance and the output and KPI and OKRs and all of that, I'm so hyper-focused on you, the core. Because if we support you, the nucleus, then the output, the results, those performance measurements are going to inevitably be reached. This is what makes contemplative leadership approach so different from other leadership styles and tools and strategies. I know this because I've lived this, because I've spent a great deal of time, three decades in this field of study that I love so much. How about you? Are you a doctor? Are you a nurse? Are you an architect? Are you a filmmaker? Are you a college professor? Are you a counselor? Who are you? Are you a teacher? Are you a police officer? Are you a firefighter? Who are you? And think about what you're obsessed over, why you're so interested in that field of study, why that excites you so much. I have a client who's going to get her PhD in communications right now. She sent me a text the other day and said, I'm answering my divine assignment. I'm going to go keep honing these skills because I love this field of study so much. And then with all that knowledge, I want to be able to give it to others. I want to be able to share it with others in a capacity of teacher, professor, researcher. Like that is amazing. What excites me about you is that you've taken on this field of study, whatever it is for you. You've answered that divine assignment. You followed the breadcrumbs. Ooh, and they were delicious. I have a breadcrumb every day. They're so good. They're so good. Oh my gosh, because I am open. I'm reflective. I'm contemplative. I'm meditative. I pray. I'm open to receiving. whatever it is I'm being called into next because I'm so obsessed with this field of study. I want to be a part of its transformation. I want to be a part of helping leaders like us out here who are done suffering. We tolerate pain. Leaders, let's talk about that. You and I are made very differently. We're different people. Yet we all have answered this call into leadership in whatever formal capacity you were called into this role. And we know that there's going to be sacrifice and we know that there's a level of pain that is going to happen. Either pain in our own bodies, pain in our spirit, pain in our relationships, pain in Like we go into these roles knowing, okay, we know life is going to happen and there is a level of expectation, right? Of pain, like that's going to happen. But for some of us, it has turned into suffering. For some of us, it has turned into burnout and overwhelm and worse apathy when you don't care anymore, when you've quite quit on yourself and your team and your people, right? And so there is level of expectation that we're going to experience some hardships because we're not immune to life's circumstances. We're not immune to those variables on the surface of the raging seas, those violent waves that we are leading on. There are variables that are out of our control. And as leaders, all we have to do is navigate through those storms, navigate through those circumstances. And contemplative leadership positions you as the anchor. That symbol of the anchor, steady, full of matter, full of purpose. This is why that anchor symbol is so important to me because we're leading in our boats with our teams, with our community members, with our constituents, with even our family members. We are on that boat with them and we are tasked as the leaders to make sure that every single soul on that boat stays alive. more than alive, thriving. We want them to flourish. We want them to be nourished. We want them to be prosperous, right? That's essentially what we're doing in that boat. We're keeping everybody afloat, but there are variables that are trying to take you and your team out. And what do we do? We turn ourselves into the anchor. So when you become the anchor, And you drop down all the way down to the bottom of the ocean floor where it is still. You are disconnected, detached from those violent waves. You are down below. You are down below. You are now steady because up there you lost your footing. You were about to fall out of that boat and so was that team or you were about to crash into those cliffs or that storm took you five hundred miles on the opposite direction. And oh, my gosh, how do we get us back on track? uncontrollable up there. But down below, down below where the ocean is quiet, away from the violence, away from the anger, away from those high intense emotions that we have, We're down below. We're settled into the sand. Ah, just the picture of that anchor landing in the sand. That's you. That's the contemplative. Oh, that is so exciting to me. I've seen a lot. I've experienced a lot. I'm what you call a traumatized leader. I'm from a generation of leaders that were taught to abuse their power. We're witnessing it. We are seeing it all over social media, all over politics, all over Netflix. Those in power, in positions of power, abusing it, destroying spirits, destroying lives, destroying careers. We're seeing it every day. That's the generation that I come from. And guess what? I perpetuated that same cycle of abuse. And many of you out here are living through those decisions, are living through your consequences, are living through what you've put out into the world. And so I've seen a lot, I've experienced a lot, which is why this style of leadership is the answer to my prayer. And I know for many, many out here as well. So you become the anchor in this scenario. We land at the bottom of the sea. Yeah. And we're buried in the sea, in that sand, and we are able to think for ourselves. We're able to separate ourselves from the violence, the anger, the resentment, the bitterness, that chaos, that chaos. We're able to detach from it so that we can think for ourselves, so that we can regulate our nervous systems. Whew. that alone, my friend, that alone, my friend, will help transform the way you lead. So you bury yourself down below. And it's not escape. We're not numbing. We're not escaping our responsibilities. On the contrary, this is very active. We're being proactive, okay? We're not relinquishing our control. No, we drop down intentionally because we know this is where we can think for ourselves, where we can put our spirit back online so that we can tell our tiny ego, it's okay. I got you. I got you. Let's just put that ego on the shelf, better yet in the closet or in the trash can, whatever. But now this is my time. This is my time. This is the time I need so that I can contemplate, so I can reflect, so I can meditate on what to do next. And guess what? We're not down below for days, okay? Right? We're anchors and we anchor into something bigger and greater than ourselves and our egos. And once we touch down, it could be as easy as a quick thought that comes to your mind and it feels good in your nervous system. And then you reemerge back up on the surface of that ocean. You're back on that boat leading your people. But that anchoring is going to be important. to detach ourselves from that emotional stress, that crisis that we've been thrusted into. This is where we take matters into our hands, where we regain our power. That's the intentionality of being the anchor in this scenario. That's contemplative leadership in a nutshell. In a nutshell, there's so many other components and aspects of this approach. And you've heard me talk about the five spiritual principles we anchor ourselves into. Spirituality, not theology. Spirituality, universal spiritual principles that no matter what religion we have or what dogma we subscribe to, We have spiritual universal principles that we can all land on. We can all anchor ourselves into. I talk about these five all the time. And so if you're new to this approach, well, welcome. It's a new way of leading. It's where you're in control again. It's where you're intentional. And your focus is going to those five principles so that you can anchor yourself back into what really matters for you, for your family, for the communities you lead, for the organization teams that you lead. That's why those five spiritual principles are so important. But those five spiritual principles are very, yes, very, very important, but that's not all. We have three very important modalities that we use to integrate this work. So what we do in contemplative leadership, so when you see a contemplative in action, there's this integration of the spirit, the non-physical side of you, the non-human side of you. Ooh, that part, that part. Because you're leading like you're a hundred percent human. And you have forgotten that there is a divine assignment. There's something orchestrating your role as a leader, right? There or something orchestrating. That's so much more powerful, so much more reliable, dependable than your ego. That's the spirit side. That's a non-physical side of you. Hmm. That's the you that has the soul, the you that has that divine assignment. Yeah, and it is in this physical body. You have to carry yourself every single day in this physical body. So in this approach, we integrate spirit. We integrate science. Ooh, because that's the body, honey. That's what I'm talking about. That's your humanness. And we integrate strategy. That's your leadership approach. So spirit, science, strategy. Three modalities that we use to integrate these five spiritual principles. And as I'm writing the book right now and everything is coming through so clearly, the sequential order, the steps that we need to take. Oh my God, it's exciting to me right now. I'm following my breadcrumbs, my friend. I'm following my own breadcrumbs because I'm answering my divine assignments. And I know I have these sacred responsibilities that were given to me, to me, not to you, to me, not to him, but to me, not to them, but to me. You have the same thing. You have the same, you have a divine assignment different from mine, but you also have sacred responsibilities, again, different from mine. So what I'm explaining to you is what you have in a unique way for yourself, for this role that you were called to play. For this assignment that you were specifically given. So when I talk about that, I have a divine assignment. That's mine. And when I talk about that, I have a, you know, sacred responsibilities. Oh, that's mine too. Well, you too have a divine assignment and you too have sacred responsibilities and it is your job, your job to discover it for yourself. That's your job. And that's what I'm doing every week is helping us out here. Try to figure it out for ourselves. But inside the work that we do, there are three very important modalities that we use to integrate all of this. And like I said, I'm having a good old time following my breadcrumbs. I'm following a good old time right now, answering my divine assignment. My goodness. So there's so much more to this approach and I cannot wait for you to learn more about this as things start unfolding in written form, right? We have a conceptual definition and we also have an operational definition. As a public academic or researcher, this is the groundwork that we are forming right now so that we can build empirical research on this very specific leadership style and approach. That's exciting to me. See, that's my expansive vision that I have because I've answered my divine assignment because I have these sacred responsibilities that I take very seriously. I'm now able to see far and wide and deep. Oh my goodness. I just mentioned three principles. There's two more. There's two more because there's a total of five. Oh my gosh. If you want to know these five spiritual principles and you want to integrate them into these three modalities that I mentioned, the spirit, the science, the strategy, Because when we take care of the spirit and the science and the spirit and the body, then strategy becomes so simple. You show up in your leadership practice, inevitably transforming your people, creating the results, performance measurements that you were hired to create. Ooh, KPIs met, OKR met, done, done. Performance measurements, done. So contemplative leadership approach, is a very unique style of leadership, as you can now see. And you will deeply understand this as we unfold this together. Now, I have created a community. It's called The Sanctuary. And I want to invite you in there. Because in this community, I am unfolding, rolling out, and introducing you and this group of contemplative leaders to these modalities, to these spiritual principles. Coaching is happening in there. Communication is happening in there. Collaboration is happening in there. And reflection. Stillness is one of our biggest strategies in this community. And I invite you into this community right now, right now. So head over to drdeniessimpson.com. There's a tab. It's called the sanctuary. Click on that. Enroll as soon as you can. If you're watching or listening to this on Spotify, Google Play, iTunes, Apple Podcast, whatever, in the show notes, you'll have a live link and you're going to want to click that to join me in the sanctuary because I cannot wait to co-create this approach with you. So join me as soon as you can. All right, dear leader. I hope this episode provided some more insight for you, more resonance for you, more understanding of what we're doing here with contemplative leadership. And I do hope you take me up on this invitation and join me inside the sanctuary. All right, leader. Have a wonderful rest of your day and a great holiday ahead. Take very good care. Bye for now.
