E17 How Emotions Determine Work Success
July 2024
87 minutes
E17 How Emotions Determine Work Success
July 2024
87 minutes
Stream on:
Emotions are the captains of our life, particularly when left unconscious and unprocessed. Often we may also experience a mix of emotions that drive our behavior. In this episode, we explore several case studies where emotions drive derailing behavior within companies. And ultimately how to healthily process and operate with more consciousness in leadership.
Key topics include:
0:00-01:14 Introductions To Emotions At Work 01:14-18:30 Expressing Sadness At Work 18:30-32:45 Feeling Depressed At Work 32:45-40:23 Expressing Anger At Work 40:23-44:28 Navigating Emotions At Work 44:28-49:20 Becoming Aware of Unhealthy Patterns 49:20-59:10 The Impact of Fear on Organizational Commitment 59:10-01:01:54 Understanding Healthy and Unhealthy Fear 01:01:54-01:08:07 Managing Fear At Work 01:08:07-01:14:38 Finding Joy At Work 01:14:38-01:19:07 Celebrating Creativity At Work 01:19:07-01:22:42 Emotions and Workplace Culture 01:22:42-01:26:57 Owning Our Emotional Intelligence
is a global, leadership-strategy consulting company. 3Peak creates the roadmap that aligns behaviours, relationships and Functional Human-Systems™ to achieve your business strategy.
Co-Founder holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and did extensive research in Consciousness, Trauma and Physical, Emotional & Mental Health in various Institutes and Research Centers around Europe.
Co-Founder is one of the most sought after therapists in the world, mastering diverse modalities and opening wellness centers in Istanbul, Santiago, New York and Berlin. Her approaches bridges transpersonal psychology, meditation, bioenergetics, family- and business-constellations and more.
Co-Founder has extensive experience advising Fortune 50 and FTSE 100 C-Suite Executives in leadership, strategy, team dynamics, and organizational change. Before coaching, Mino worked in finance, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the three peak master leadership experience. My name is Mino Vlachos, and I'm joined by Dr. Mazen Harb and Krisana Locke. We are the co founders of 3Peak coaching and solutions, where master leaders build healthy systems. Our company provides coaching and workshops to executive leaders and leadership and well being workshops to employees. Our topic today is a continuation of a previous podcast, which is all about emotions. And today, in specific, we're going to talk about emotions in the workplace. And we talk about workplace. We are going to be using examples from working in businesses, in corporations, organizations. But work is not just working in a company or a corporation. Work is something we do each and every day. And so, as we talk about these topics, I encourage everyone to think broadly about the definition of work and think about how it might apply to your own life. And so, if you'd like to pick up with our previous podcast on developing emotional intelligence, we suggest starting there so that you can get a bit of a flavor for what it is to regulate the emotions, process the emotions, understand emotions, and then dive into this topic today as we talk about how that applies in the place of work. So, to begin today, I'm going to share a few stories. I'm going to be using myself as an example, and we're going to be having some fun discussions, as I say, secretly, maybe these are just my therapy sessions with the two of you, but we're going to be talking about a few stories that I think are illustrative of how an individual might feel within the workplace and illustrate some of the dynamics that might come up when we are at work. So I begin with one story, and from there we're going to use that to talk about emotions in business. So I used to work at a company, and I was tasked with a pretty big project, this company. They worked with leaders, and they had a model they were using for 30 years. And for the first time in 30 years, they wanted to replace the model. So my job was to go and do a bunch of research, to come up with a new model, to talk to people in the business, to influence them, to change their opinions, to move this model into the world. And the project ended up being quite big. It took me a year, year and a half, and it ended up having a bunch of projects under it. What was interesting was there was one woman I was working with who my head boss. And I decided to delegate one of the small pieces of the project to her. And so she got working and she went off kind of often her own, and started working on this project, and the project was big. And one of my frustrations at the time was I didn't feel like I had a lot of resources, so I needed support. I didn't have a lot of people that were working with me. Meanwhile, my colleague, who was doing a small piece of the project that rolled up to mine, she ended up getting two people to support her almost full time, and it seemed like she was kind of amassing more and more resources as time went. And so I just focused on doing my thing, and she kind of did her thing. And then at some point, I was invited to a meeting. And in that meeting, it was with my head boss, our whole team, her, me. And without kind of any previous understanding what the meeting was going to be, she started to share a PowerPoint slide where she basically presented her project and then did a comparison between her project and my project and why her project had all these check marks and was really amazing, and was all these things were fulfilled, and how my project had all these red x's. Things weren't going right. Things weren't doing this, things weren't doing that. Of course, she never talked to me, so I don't even know how she came up with that. She had no idea what I was working on or the status of my project. But I found myself in this meeting where we were in some sort of competition, and I was being told that my project, which was the big project, the umbrella, sucks, and that this small project was actually really good. And everyone was kind of talking, talking, talking, and ultimately, I didn't have a chance to speak until the last five minutes of the meeting, when they turned to me and they said, mino, what do you think? And what was interesting in that moment in time, because this was after I'd worked a lot with my emotions, a lot with personal development, is I actually took a moment to pause and to feel what I was feeling and to see what was happening inside my body. And at that point in time, I was towards the end of the project. I also knew that I wanted to quit. And when I tapped into my body, what I really felt was sadness. And my cognitive side could have potentially thought, oh, you should be angry because someone is competing and someone is saying bad things about your project. But really, I just felt sadness. And so they were like, what do you think? What do you think? You know, to be honest, right now, I'm not thinking a whole lot, but what I'm feeling right now that's coming up for me is I'm experiencing some sadness. And what I don't really understand is why we're comparing our two projects to one another. And at that point, my five minutes was pretty much up and I had to go to another call with a client. So I said, I have to jump to a client call, so I'll talk to you later about this. And when I talked to colleagues after that, they described it as I dropped a bomb that, like, oh, I heard in the meeting, you dropped a bomb. And I couldn't really understand because all I said was, I'm experiencing sadness. And the group took it like it was an event, like it was an incident. And it was, like, started to get a reputation of its own as, like, this big moment that happened in our team. And so one of the things that was illustrative to me was that just by sharing a simple emotion, being honest, it created this huge drama within the team. And ultimately, I was able to talk to my boss and we agreed with the path forward. So everything was fine, everything resolved. But it really surprised me that kind of being honest with the emotions was such a big deal and that everyone really just wanted to hear what I think, but not how I felt. So I really share that story because I open it as one of the things that really taught me that in the workplace, emotions are not always expressed. And even when they are expressed in a healthy way, they are not always received in a way that, at least for me, makes a ton of sense. And so that's what I'll start our conversation with. So, Krisana, when you hear that story and you hear about someone just genuinely expressing how they feel, and everyone else goes into this almost like shock that they heard something that was honest. How do you perceive that situation? What do you think is going on with everyone who's taking that in and is surprised by emotional honesty?
Krisana Locke: One thing is that you expressed authentically what you feel. You didn't just have an emotional reaction, you expressed on a deeper level what was going on. So I can see what happened then was then it went round your team that Mino dropped a bomb, but you were being authentic, and then the stories went around that. Then it grew that you created a drama different to being authentic and being in touch with what emotion you were feeling then. So you were feeling sad. And also in. In the business orc, it's terribly frightening for some to feel that, to actually to be authentic and to be in touch and then to express it. So obviously then they all thought it was a big drama, a big bomb, but for you it wasn't. So it's uncomfortable for people to even grapple when someone's authentic in a clear way, in a requesting you requested. Also, you have to move on to your next meeting. You didn't make a drama, so it was probably a new scenario for people and they don't know what to do with it. When someone's honestly being healthily authentic with emotional intelligence and not creating drama, and it wiped the air out, it probably wiped the mind out where people had to feel their own feelings or come in contact with. What if I did this? What if I touched base and honestly expressed in the right way my emotion, how I'm feeling?
Mino Vlachos: Do you have any insight? Because we've been working with a lot of corporate clients. We're working with people in companies. What is it? Is it maybe just the person? And this is our cultures and the society we come from, and maybe there's something about work that's inherent in it. Krishana, why do you feel that potentially some people are uncomfortable touching the emotions or being authentic in these spaces?
Krisana Locke: Because some people are already out of touch of their own feelings and their own emotional states to even recognize how they're feeling, what they're sensing, and also to, how would I say, how to recognize and regulate that in their body and mind. So that's one aspect. And also, generally, the model of the business world has been more operational and performance, and old models have been. We don't really deal with emotions. So it's the way models have been set up. And I know these days now there's more about emotional intelligence and there's also workshops we give and we also bring approaches and programs about emotional intelligence, emotional self regulation. So people can come in touch with this in the work setting, besides feeling positive and negative emotions, like, I am feeling satisfied and enthusiastic, or, I know, frustration and. And anger and being anxious. And of course, they impact your performance, your engagement, and you're relating with people, but it's also recognizing. Yeah. When you have emotional challenges at work, when you can you understand how to develop emotional strategies to maintain emotional wellbeing. How will I say during interactions? And at the base of it is emotional intelligence to bring this into the new business organization. I hope that helped. I was just sharing some points.
Mino Vlachos: Yes, Mazen, as you hear the story about me communicating, just feeling sadness and the reaction that people had, what is your perception of what occurred in that meeting? Like what? What is your perception of the folks that went into this shock or surprised when they heard someone was feeling sad?
Dr. Mazen Harb: First of all, emotions are not something necessarily welcomed in a business environment. And even less in the society. It's not so much accepted because we do tend to see emotions as weakness. And then we can say, ah, but that's emotions. Deal with your emotions. But when we come to work, I want your mind to be clear. So actually, people are not aware that emotions are fully connected to the mind and fully connected influence how we think and how we act. So this is. So what happened is when you shared where you were or what happened to you, it created a dissonance. Funnily enough, like everybody, you have to understand cultures. Cultures, I mean, in a sense, the culture of a company, a culture of a family, the culture of an organization, we tend to create and have principles, unwritten rules, unwritten principles that we all agree on subconsciously. And then we start to act. The cells and the organs, they all imitate each other to have a resonance within the body. But also the people you're working with, you start to have one understanding. So you did something that was not written on this. Unwritten rules of behaving within your team. They knew you for so long. So, first of all, I understand them. Probably you're not happy to hear me saying that. First of all, I understand them, that they said it was a bomb, because they, we create an image of someone's identity because that person is really acting and behaving a certain way for over, I don't know how long you worked with them, two, three years or whatnot. And suddenly, because you did amazing work on yourself and you came and probably we did workshops together, even you came and you said, introduce something new. Yes. And that's now you told me, what's my perception? I'm checking my emotion on your story. My emotion is over empathy and understanding, not only for you, but for them. You shocked the system because that was not agreed upon. So the rules of the game has changed suddenly, but you didn't prepare them and you introduced. So whenever you want to introduce anything in a culture, something new, even if it's for the benefit of that cultural thing, we see it. We call it it's a revolution. So a revolution is something that's brought very fast, yet it's very helpful, but it's not introduced in a manner that it's really accepted and then weaved in. So that's what happened to the folks. They really got a shock because they couldn't imagine your identity doing that. So you introduced a new identity. First, you brought change, right? And some. In other podcasts, we spoke about adapting to change. We cannot dissociate emotional intelligence with adapting to change, like the people who've been following our podcast, you might notice, like, we're always constantly talking about different topics, but they are weaved in together. So you really brought change. Change bring fear. So what you brought is fear on the table. For them, it's a shock moment. So as Christiana said, the minds, our ego mind in a very healthy, the ego is a part of our self that create an identity. So we know how to deal with the outside world was super shocked and like, what do we do now and then? Because shock brought fear in them and they really didn't know what to do. Deal with you or this is on 1 second. You've been working together. And even though sometimes colleagues have like, miscommunication, misunderstanding, or deep down they say, I don't like him, I don't like it, or I hate this. When we work together for a long time, it creates a bonding, a belonging. Even if we say, even say, I hate him. You're part of one culture, so it creates something. So when you said, I'm sad, they also were touched and shocked and they didn't know what to do. They felt inadequate because one part who belonged to the tribe, to the team, is experiencing something and they're not ready to deal with it. So it creates a shock, a change, a fear. But then it's like, what do we do? For me, how I see it, it's probably subconsciously you wanted to bring a change into the system. It changed in this rational way, how we deal with things. And everybody was like, really hiding the truth. Overdose where we are now. So you were pioneering in that sense.
Mino Vlachos: And, Krisana, when you think about kind of sharing our authentic emotions and sharing it with, I would just say some responsibility, right? Not just like vomiting, what we're doing or reacting, but when we do share, like authentically in a grounded way, what is the benefit of that on our relationships and our communication?
Krisana Locke: When you're in touch with yourself, when you're in touch with your, when you're grounded, when you're in touch of your body, when you're in touch with, you're aware of, you can recognize your emotional states and you can regulate them. And then on a intra personal, and then when you come in contact with someone where there's an interpersonal, there's a relating happening, so you're aware of how to express and relate to the other person what is happening for you without saying what is happening because of the other person's effect on you. So the more that we're more in touch with relating with ourselves, it's much easier to be able to be in a relational field with the other person because we become aware of where we don't take responsibility and we throw blame or we project or we deny. So I just want to bring those aspects of, it really comes down to, even in business, if you want to have a good business relating or communication, one first has to start communicating and relating with oneself first. Just to put it in a nutshell.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, yeah, that's a big statement. Probably during the podcast, we'll go a little bit more deeper and explaining just that last sentence, how to relate to oneself through the awareness of the emotions.
Mino Vlachos: So what I'd like to do now is part two, which is now I'm going to actually, we're going to jump around in time. So now I'm going to rewind the clock. So that was an example, the first story where I had done like, years and years of working on myself, of getting in touch with myself, of learning about myself and learning how to express my emotions. But let's go about ten years back from that, we're going to rewind the tape, and I'm going to tell you a story about when I was in consulting, and I was in mergers and acquisitions. And so, yeah, Chris, I'm going to be asking you for a little support after my stories. My younger self is speaking to you through time and space. So at that time, I was on a project, and I was traveling. I was traveling every week. And the way the rhythm would go is I would travel Monday, I would stay near my client until Thursday, and then I would come home Thursday night, go into the office Friday, have the weekend, and then rinse and repeat. And I was at this client site. I was, my client was a big pharmaceutical company. And during that time, I was working a lot. So I was routinely working from 08:00 a.m. 09:00 a.m. to about 10:00 p.m. or 11:00 p.m. at the client site. So we're talking like 14, 15 hours. We were all stuffed in this conference room that had no windows. Me and the whole consulting team, I was on a new project, and I had very little capability, very little confidence. The only thing that was open to eat was a little cafeteria in the pharmaceutical company, where the food was pretty shitty, if I could just be honest. And when we get out at night, it was so late at night that there was no restaurants open. And so there was one grocery store that I could kind of go to and the hotel I was in didn't have any kind of kitchen or anything, so I would basically just get whatever they didn't have pre prepared food because it was so late at night. I would usually go to the grocery store like ten or 11:00 p.m. and so I would just get whatever was. I could eat raw. So I was eating like, raw broccoli with like, sliced turkey and, I don't know, whatever stuff I could grab. And I was under a lot of stress. But the thing that really stuck with me from that time was, and this, for me, was quite a dark period. I was very unhappy and I remember just being very numb a lot of the times. Every time I would the morning drive from the hotel to the client site. To be very honest, this might be a trigger warning for some people. Like, the only thing I could think about on that 15 minutes drive was ending my life. Every day I just kept thinking about, what if I just took the steering wheel and just rammed this car into the divider of the highway? And that was the thought track during my morning commute every day. And it was a very difficult moment for me because I didn't understand what was happening for me. What was. I knew nothing. I didn't understand anything. But I just persevered. That's all I knew, probably, was just how to persevere, how to just keep going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going. And so that is a former me who was also in the workplace and had no capacity to understand their emotions, feelings, body, nothing. And so, Kristana, if I were to come to you, whatever the whatever age I was at that point, 2022, 23 whatever, and I came to you and I was like, I don't know. What's happening to me know is that I'm having a tough time at work and I'm really stressed. And I. Yeah, I don't know. I'm having these very dark thoughts. What would be kind of your support.
Krisana Locke: For someone like that in that time, if you had reached out and came to me for support, that was the first step you did to, because you don't have you. You don't have support in yourself to cope. So this is why we offer sessions or coaching, and that's the first step. You needed outside support to support you. Get back on track. And I would have you if you had told me all those you mentioned, rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. So you were just in this cycle where you could not feel and you didn't have emotional support from the company. As you said, you were locked up basically food wise. You had to work long hours. It was a poor environment to be in. And, yeah, you did not feel any confidence. I would have worked with you to find resources for you. I would have given you support to find tools that you can bring for yourself. So when you're in this work environment, but actually, in that time, I would really question. I would question, why are you in this? What is it? Why are you pursuing this type of career? Are you happy? And if you were in your early twenties, you know, it's really what is going to give you a sense of happiness besides going for a career. So I would probably. I would have supported you more just to get you into a balanced homeostasis with your body, with your eating, with your sleeping, and giving you lots of resourcing to support yourself, to deal with this situation. But now I'm going to ask you, how did you support yourself? Because you did. Because when you said they were going to drive to work every day, you felt like ramming the car into the rails. This just means you had a lot of aggression. Like, I want to express myself and I can't. So it surges. So you did not do that because you're here today. Well, how did you support yourself? This is also. You got through it. So can you remember, how did you support yourself?
Mino Vlachos: So, one, it's fascinating to hear you share about the anger and the aggression, because again, at that time, I have no memory. It resonates with what you're saying, but I have no memory of ever feeling those things. And so I was really repressing that anger. I had no clue it was there. Like, that's just not part of the memory at all. For me, how I supported myself at that time was a few things, some, like small. One thing was I really like beverages. So I would, every day, I would get, like, one tea, a water. I would get, like, a soda. I would have, like, all on my desk. I would have like, three or four drinks at all times. And my team, I don't actually, weirdly, now the anger is coming up now, so that's funny. My team would make fun of me for having drinks and having so many drinks. Like, it was like it broke the whatever. Again, the culture of the team where it was like, what an unwritten rule, one drink at a time. But I used to brought me joy just to have, like, drinks on my desk that I could pick and choose from. As small as that is, I tried to befriend people on my team. So there was one individual in particular who I became pretty good friends with, who it was just nice to joke a lot, to make jokes, to have fun. At some point, I think it was probably actually towards the end of the project, I did go and get a therapist, to be honest. I mean, it was. It was, I guess, probably fine for the time or a step up. It was very cognitive, it was very heady. And in hindsight, I don't know that the therapy really supported much other than like, it did give me a space to go and it was someone.
Krisana Locke: Yeah. So if I had addressed it in that time and I would have said, how do you deal with the anger you're feeling? Because if this. And you'd say, what anger? I'm just having these images. So the only way is through the head, through the mind, and it would be getting in contact with your body. So if I had worked with you, then, as you know, some of the work I share, it would have been body based with breathing bioenergetics, a way to bring yourself into the body so you can have a safe container to express that's been repressed. And it's nothing to express for the sheer of expressing. So you get in touch with this so you can let go of the pressure that you were under, because it's a big pressure. So it would have brought a lot of body based into. So for people listening, that's how it would have worked. But I would have listened to what you're sharing and then bring in points, bring in the body where you go, I don't know. And then that's the journey where I would work with you.
Mino Vlachos: Can you tell me, Krisana, what would have been the benefit of feeling my anger in the context of work? How would that have been a support?
Krisana Locke: The benefit of feeling your anger in sessions with me is so that you do not explode with your anger. In a situation with a client where the coping mechanisms are nothing intact, and then something could erupt and then anger could be expressed at the wrong time. So in having sessions or coming to our workshops, it's a way to support yourself in personal development, to help you to take out these weeds, this repressed energy, in a healthy way, so that you grounded and you're able to be in a flow and you also be able to be responsive because you. You don't just freak out at anything. You respond. Yeah.
Mino Vlachos: My younger self thanks you across time and space for the support. So, Mazen, you're also someone that I can come to you for support. So I come to you and I'm like, dude, my. My life feels like it's falling apart. Like, I got everything I thought I wanted, but I'm really having dark thoughts at work. I'm really unhappy. My relationship with my girlfriend is, like, borderline disastrous. Like, I don't know what's going on. I really feel under pressure, but I don't know what. What's even happening to me. I feel foggy.
Dr. Mazen Harb: See, I'll take it in. And just. I would have, like, felt, hmm. What is the immediate thing you need directly? This I'm feeling, because I can give you the theory, but I was like, no, no, that won't help you. If now I start to explain to you, and that's what happens a lot, you will go even more in your head overthinking, because whenever we're not connected to emotion, we're overthinking. You're coming to me. That mean you're overthinking. You're not connected to the body. So the best way to make you feel, to connect to the body, I will try my best to make you feel safe. I said, okay, I hear you, so let us. And then first I'll give you this allowance. It's. That means if you're here and asking this, that mean the feeling of safety has been lost since a while. That's why you being the anger and everything, you do not feel safe. Regardless why you're going to say yes. Because I did this. I'm like, yeah, there are lots of self talk and then really bringing yourself down. The least thing you need at this moment is to beat yourself up. Why? Because that's why you're angry. Because you constantly, every day you're beating yourself up. So instead of telling you what you should do because. And adding more how you're beating yourself up, which is one of the main problem you had, is really make you feel safe. Connect a little bit to the body. Have a place where you can like, oh, and a place where you are understood. So not much talking and very, very, very little doing. And really, yeah. Open a chance for you to be present with yourself and slowly give inditration just to at least feel in a very healthy manner. Not your everything, but just like bits by bits. Because from safety, this is when we can start touching and feeling our emotions. But if we don't feel safe, someone is listening to us. Then I want to feel my emotion. I want to share it. Then everything will be unhealthy, unhealthy anger, unhealthy sadness, unhealthy everything. And we will project it to the outside. So instead of saying, you know, I own it, so I will help to start owning what you're feeling instead of projecting to the outside. So not complaining about the outside, feel safe. Start from here and slow, slowly building, regardless how long it will take us without feeling like we gonna solve it all. And I'm like, no, no, no, step by step.
Mino Vlachos: So thank you for that. My younger self really receives it, and I appreciate across time and space, the support the two of you have shown. And I think these are things that I eventually did get in touch with you, too, and I did start to work with you and to learn from you. And so I did make a lot of shifts in how I was operating. And so a lot of that numbness, a lot of that, again, just the word for me was kind of misery started to dissipate, and now I'd like to move to another example. So now we're going to skip forward in time a few years. And so this is kind of the middle of the journey for me. So we started where I was talking about the project with the woman and expressing sadness. So that was kind of the end of my corporate career. I talked about more towards the beginning with being at the pharmaceutical company and being depressed. So now we're in the middle. And in this third story, I had started to work on my emotions. I started to realize that I had tons and tons and tons of anger that were repressed. I started to find spaces to actually feel my anger. And I entered a period of life, a season of life, where I said, you know what? I need to really feel this and express it. And I even at times, gave myself permission to say, I've been so bottled up and I so much want to be perfect that I'm even going to allow myself to be imperfect in how I share this anger. So I'm going to allow myself to even, quote, unquote, unhealthily share my anger. Like, just. Just say it. Just say the thing. Just be angry. It's okay. It's allowed. But as we enter story number three, the situation was, this was during the COVID period. And so I think I've shared this in a podcast before, but I live in New York City, and so I spent the duration of the lockdowns in a basement in Brooklyn. So I was in a very kind of confined space, didn't really have access to sunlight, are kind of basic things. And a lot of us went through the lockdowns. So I'm sure a lot of people have similar ish stories of being confined inside. And then that summer was when there was a lot of protests in the United States with the murder of George Floyd. So my partner and I decided to join in on one of the protests. And that's probably a story for another day when we talk about stress more. But there was a lot of violence from police, and so we had an incident, and there was. We had to basically run home. There was violence, so there was a lot of, for me, activation in my nervous system. And for like, a month, I was having a lot of stress. Like, I was having. Couldn't sleep, I was having nightmares, and just. Yeah, generally, like, my mood was all over the place. And it was during that time at work where I perceived my boss at the time was kind of not doing his role, was not doing his tasks. So we had clients, and as we were trying to service our clients, he would miss deadlines, he wouldn't communicate. He would say stuff and then do different things or, like, just. It was stuff that was very aggravating. And I remember at that time, again, I was like, okay, I can now feel my anger. But it was a very uncontained fire that was kind of raging within me. And so I'm also a clever guy and can. And having. I've been moving away from my manipulative side, but I used to be quite manipulative. And so at some point, I was like, man, this isn't working. So what? It didn't exactly happen this linearly, but somewhere along the way, I was like, let me do a coup. Let me organize the whole team and go to my boss's boss and give feedback and try and get something moving here. And so I rallied around. I had all these, you know, backdoor meetings. All my colleagues, I was telling them, this is what happened. This is what happening. And I was very passionate. I was very emotive, very dramatic. I was very angry. I had a lot of rage. And I was like, this, this, this, and this. And I went to the next person, this, this, this, and this. And then once I had one person, I'd be like, okay, I go to the third and say, it's two of us that actually feel this way. And then once it was three, I went and four. So I organized the whole group. Group. And then we had a meeting with the boss's boss, and just whatever did the coup, ultimately, nothing really came of it. Like, whatever. Some feedback was given to my boss, he had, it seemed like a lot of feelings of kind of betrayal and sadness, but he didn't really verbalize that to us. He kind of just internalized everything. And then from there, nothing really happened. Nothing really changed. And it was a moment where I had a lot of, again, frustration, anger. And so I would like to use this as a different example of emotions in the workplace. And I know with three peak coaching and solutions, our company now being on the other side of it, I can say we go and support businesses where this exact thing happens. And so it's kind of funny to now see it from the other side. But let me start with Krisana. So you hear some of the things that were going on, right? This kind of youngish guy, he's feeling his anger, right? So before we said, you need to feel your anger. All right, I felt my anger, and then I staged a coup. So when you hear this story, what do you feel was going on for me, and what would be your kind of support or guidance to a young gentleman such as myself?
Krisana Locke: I would say when I said to get in touch with your anger, to feel your anger, now I feel my anger and then throw it on someone. So I just start from the beginning when you said, in 2020, lockdown, you're in shutdown. So basically, you know, in this trapped sensation, and you went to a protest. Everyone goes to a protest, because even if it's for good political causes, a protest is to protest, to express something. So you tried to channel this, and of course there's going to be violence. At that time, there was. There were so many bottled up emotions. So that's one. You said you perceived your boss not doing something right. So what had happened was he's not. You perceived he's not doing it right. So you went around and said, I'm right and he's wrong. So this is a big, self righteous anger. So it's not even anger. It's self righteous. Yeah, it's self righteousness of I'm right and the other is wrong. Anger, in its pure form is an energy. It's an emotion. Something wants to be expressed. And it doesn't go into that. The other is good or bad. It's just that something has made you get in touch with a feeling of anger that's been hidden or buried inside of you, or something has brought this emotion up, this fight, fight, flight. So it brings up in the fight. I would have said then, that is to get in contact with your anger in other ways. Dancing, boxing, running. Yeah. Finding other healthy ways to get in contact, to do boundary work in, you know, being able to assert yourself with a no, but in a safe space and not in role playing, but not role playing in a business orientated situation. I know these days there's a lot where companies now do role play, you know? Now there's also virtual role play where you can come into role play how it is to be in other positions, but come back to yourself to get in contact with your emotions. Dynamic meditation, active meditations. A place playing football, sports where you can move this energy that wants to be expressed. That's what I would have said. And to understand what is self righteousness and what is feeling. Your anger.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen. So I come to you, right? Younger, younger me comes to you. I probably did come to you, but let's play it out again. Round two. Now, we've been doing these lockdowns and, man, it's tough. And now I went to the protest and, you know, that was difficult. And then I did a coup against my boss and that failed. And, like, I'm just so frustrated and angry and, ah, so what support would you give younger me?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I'm gonna use the f word. And I'm gonna start with, what the fuck are you doing? I will look at it like, what the fuck are you doing? And you're gonna. You're gonna be like, what are you talking. I come here for support. I'm not judging you. What are you running away from? Why you're throwing your fight on everyone around you. Where are you? What is happening? Why are you blaming the world about something? You have an internal fight because you disrespected on multiple times your boundaries. Hence, I give another definition. Why anger is there. Anger is to create a healthy boundary. You crossed it before anyone else a million times. You felt so angry, instead of taking responsibility and check where every time you disrespected your boundaries, you went on and wanted to throw it on everyone else through a revolution, through a coup. And saying, the world did that to me. Ah, poor. So I will tell you, stop playing this victim personality. Because now you are the biggest perpetrators. Perpetrators. So instead, before everybody is a perpetrator, you play the victim and then you turn round. And now you attack everyone. But you never question where you are. What was your anger stirring? You trying to tell you why you didn't listen really to your anger? Every emotion comes with a message. Tell us where we are at when we don't respect anger and consider it bad and we suppress it. We don't hear the answer of our subconscious mind telling us we need to change something. It really goes into a. And then that will bottle up. We start to be very passive aggressive. Not respecting emotions, not respecting anger won't allow us to understand why we have it in certain place and we have really disconnected from it. If it's something alienated for us, the outcome is we try everything on the outside to use it, but everything will be unhealthy because it's very unconscious and it's only done to get rid of something that is within you. And then I look at you in the eyes, I'm like, take a breath. With me, we are safe. You didn't do anything wrong. You can still correct. And I ask you now, you have choices. What would you choose? Suppress your anger or respect, accept and own it, and allow to see how we can find solution to those issues you already brought online. And you brought it into the works. So we start solving from there.
Mino Vlachos: And that's really what the journey and path for me looked like after that, those events, I felt very out of control within myself, destabilized. And so I tried to control outside of myself. And what I now perceive is that I was carrying a lot of stress, a lot of fear, and didn't feel safe. And really was throwing that without any intention, just throwing it everywhere I could. I was really acting out. And it was interesting because it's just not a pattern of acting out that I had done traditionally. I tend to go more into freezing, collapsing, disassociating. So going into a fight was a bit of a new one for me, but a learning nonetheless. And to your point, Mazen, one thing that was interesting afterwards is I realized I never actually sat down with my boss and tried to give any feedback. I never once tried to communicate with him. I never once expressed how I was feeling with him. Instead, I plotted against him. Him. And instead of seeing us as one team, I really created separation. I said, we're the in group, you're the out group. And so I became the biggest bully. And like you said, one of the biggest perpetrators, which is fascinating because younger me, that was one of the big things I never wanted to become. And so I was doing everything in my power not to become the bully. And what did I end up doing was becoming the bully. And so it was a very, very interesting learning experience. And so through the support of two amazing professionals who give support sessions and workshops called Krisana and Mazen, I was able to kind of get in touch with what was going on with me and what I in moment of meditation, what I realized, what came to me is I need a break. And so for the first time in my life, I've worked, worked, worked, worked, worked. I've worked like crazy. I've worked like a dog. The first time in life, I'm like, I need to stop. And so I chose to take a two month unpaid leave from work that fall. And it was the first time in my life I stopped. And I gave myself two months to just be. And I allowed myself to just wake up every day with no plan and check in. What's my intention for right now, for this moment and then the next moment? What's my intention right now for this moment? I gave myself that gift, and I used, this is an exercise that I've done with Krisana many times. I would really constantly just check in and say, if I said yes to my body right now, what would I do? And those two months were the most life changing. It was really. And even in that, if I am honest, the first two weeks, I moved, I moved, I moved apartments. So even in that, the first week and a half, two weeks out was packing, moving, unpacking, and the last week was the 2020 United States elections, which was its own kind of mess. So I really have five weeks. Even just five weeks of the eight I took off where I really did this. So just to say it doesn't have to be like, an infinite amount of time, I took five weeks to, if I say yes to my body, and it was the seeds I planted in those two months that transformed my life. Years later, three p coaching and solutions. Our business only exists because I took the two months off during that time, because it was the first time that I stopped and could feel and realize, like, all this fear I'm running on, all this survival energy. If I stop working, I'm not going to die. If I stop working, I'm not going to immediately lose everything. I can actually take a break and everything is okay. So I uncoupled something in my mind. And so everyone I've talked to, at least in the United States, because we have a very interesting work culture here, very scarcity run. Everyone I've talked to, us who's taking time off, it changes their life. It's the first time an American can be like, wow, I can stop working and I'm not going to die. But that's really, I think, in the back of our mind, in the US, is, if I stop working, I will die. I will lose my healthcare, I will lose this, I will lose that, and I will die. And the truth is, for most people, everyone I've seen who's taken a break, it's only made their life way, way better. They get much more in tune with themselves, what they want, what they need. And even when they re enter the workplace after they find a way to integrate those two lifestyles a lot more, it creates something that is hard to shake. And so in the three stories that we told, the three kind of case studies, I'm going to relate it to this concept, this model, it's called organizational commitment, which is why do people show up to work every day? And depending on why they show up to work every day, their motivation, you get different outcomes. So the three main reasons when researchers have found is happiness, I want to be here. Fear, I need to be here. And then guilt, obligation, I ought to be here. And then there's a fourth, which I think we'll also have fun and talk about, which is habituation, which is just inertia. It's like, ah, you know, whatever. This is where I show up. So I don't want to change anything, but we're going to really stick to the top three for now, which is happiness, kind of unhealthy fear, and then unhealthy guilt. If I relate to my own stories, when I was working on the first story where I was kind of expressing my sadness, I was really enjoying that period of work for the first time, really prior my life. I enjoyed doing research, I enjoyed contributing to the company, I enjoyed not being client facing for a moment in my life. And so I actually wanted to be there. I didn't feel any pressure then. As I think about the time I was working with the pharmaceutical company, that's when I felt tons of guilt. I felt really, really like intense forms of guilt. Like, I need to be doing this. Like I ought to. Like, I really have to. Like, if I don't do this, I'm betraying my team, I'm betraying my family. Like, there's all kinds of stuff that started to pop up when it came to the coup. That's where I was really running on fear, where I was like, I need to do that. I need to be, I need to do all this stuff. There was a lot of fear going on for me. And what research has found is that if you, it's probably pretty intuitive. If you want the most from your employees, you get the most when they come to work because they want to be there. When employees feel like they need to be there or ought to be there, what research has shown is that you end up losing productivity, efficiency and money. So you can create cultures of fear and it can work for a little bit of time. But in the long run, it's going to cost you a bunch of money. So if you care about money, I would say try not to create cultures of fear. If you care about well being of people, I would say try not to create cultures of fear. There's a lot of arrows that bring us to try not to create cultures of fear and obligation. And so now I'm going to turn it to the two of you. Krisana Mazen. So if I ask you, Krisana, about the guilt thing again, so there's healthy guilt. We've talked about in the previous episode, an unhealthy guilt. Can you tell us a little bit about again in the context now of work, how unhealthy guilt can show up?
Krisana Locke: Unhealthy guilt can show up when you have got a work that your family is so overjoyed that you have this position in a career and it benefits them to feel good that my son or my daughter or is doing something that they would really like to have done. And that person may be doing it because it makes the family happy, but if the person in that choice of work realizes they're not happy in it, they will feel guilty that they want to change their career or their work. So they don't. So this is an outside influence from the family or so that's just one I can say, or feeling guilty, obliged to work also, others are obliged to work and then they feel guilty because they haven't really. I'm feeling guilty to do this work because I haven't looked and stopped and paused to see what other avenues of work I would like to work in. So I just feel obliged when you said guilt and obliged because it's just like a dead end. There's no way out. So I start feeling obliged, as you said, with the guilt. So it's really tapping in again. Like, what type of work would you like to do? What type of work? The work. Finding the work you love and allowing that possibility, that creativity to open up, that there are possibilities. So that's how I would frame it at this moment. And then survival. Survival as well. Like people maybe working in some industries that people say, how can you? But I. Sometimes they're doing that because, yes, it's a. It's a mean of taking care of money for the family, providing for the family, so they don't look beyond. Beyond. If the company they're working for, an industry, is bad for the environment, they am trying to meet their own survival needs on another level inside their family. So guilt being obliged, I would look on a more personal level.
Mino Vlachos: So, mazen, I come to you, and now I'm going back again to that moment with the pharmaceutical company where I was feeling quite depressed. And I'm like, you know, I have actually had a chance to introspect a little bit. Thank you both for your support. I realize now that I feel a lot of pressure to please my family. So, growing up, we're immigrants. I was told you could do three things in life. You could be a lawyer, doctor, and accountant. And I really just, like, they came to this country with nothing. We've built ourselves up. I'm sitting here and like, I'm doing finance and I'm really trying, but I really. I'm really afraid that they're going to judge me, me if I leave this job and do something else. How would you support that, young man?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I will. I said it once in the other podcast. I'm gonna say it now. I'll start with this explanation. It might feel very. It's an example of thing, so it shouldn't be taken as, oh, that's the only truth. I will start by saying there are two categories in the world when it comes to our emotional expression, implosive and explosive. Implosive are the ones who suppress their anger and express their fear. Explosive. Who are the ones who suppress their fear and then express their anger. So first I'm checking which category you belong in. The most primal of all emotions, fear, guilt, and anger. So that means if what I tell you doesn't apply for someone who's more on the explosive side, I'm gonna go explaining just the two. On the exploitative side, we go and blame them. Oh, they're very aggressive. On the implosive side, that they more have the fear present and suppress anger. They're so nice because they become people pleaser, but they are the most passive aggressive. So we either this or that, but also does not mean it's a profile for life. We can fluctuate between both. I've been all my life more the implosive, so passive aggressive. But then I changed. Then at certain point, working on myself, something shifted. And then it's not that I became explosive, but I had to learn how to express anger, respect, anger accepted, and instead of playing the victim. And what. So in that scenario, where does guilt go? Comes when we feel guilt. If you belong to the more implosive profile, you will immediately be taken by the main dominant emotion that you express and feel, which is really take on you, which is fear. Then you feel guilty because of your upbringing or your genetic line or youre culture, where. And then you feel, oh, my God. And that fear will breed the incentive for you to go do the work. But since you're doing the work based on fear that comes from the guild to belong to the family, it start to bring in you so much inner anger and revolt because you hate all of that. You're doing it for a wrong reason. So this one I'm advising now doesn't apply to someone who are explosive, because when they feel guilt, they suppress fear and say, ah, but I'm not afraid. And then they will go and then bring anger. So when they feel guilt, they become angry. No. And they start pushing and putting boundaries. But actually, it's unhealthy boundaries because the root of it, the guilt and fear, are coupled so much together. So, see, it's a complete different thing. I will be working with someone who's exploding with guilt first to make them accept that fear is okay. It's not an emotion that makes you feel weaker, that it's okay. I'm like, no. Many times we float with more explosive people. I'm said, yeah, because there's fear. Fear, no, never. Not me. I'm like, I know upbringing, it was really a way to be find our own autonomy and then really go through challenges. But this is our primal, most survival energy and emotions that we go through it. So that's the differentiation between both two. And then for you, I will explain that for someone else, I will see what's really the primal. I'll go to the root of it.
Mino Vlachos: And as I look at the example of the coup. So it's because, like you said, it is fluctuating, right? So the first one, I was more the implosive. I think in the second one, I was actually more of the explosive, more characteristic, where I was really unable to admit that I was feeling a lot of fear. And I was so afraid, and so I went into the anger instead of actually managing the fear. And so, Kristana, if I ask about fear, and you think about fear in the workplace, what is a healthy expression? Or what does a healthy fear look like? What's its utility? And what about unhealthy fear? What does that look like in the workplace?
Krisana Locke: So when we're feeling fear, it's not an expression, an outward expression. It's more that we go into, we have to protect ourselves because it's one of the primary emotions. Like, oh, I'm under threat. So it's an indication. Be aware. So it's an indication, like, is there a threat? Oh, no, there's okay, I'm okay. And then you can come out of this, you know, alertness. But if it's. If it's a fear that you already have inside of you and you haven't been able to regulate it and you, you put in situations at work where you feel threatened by your own sense of yourself with different situations being, having to challenge yourself a little bit more to express yourself, to be in new teams, to get the. To have a good performance at work, it can bring up a lot of fear for people, other people. It's like, yeah, I'm super motivated, I'll take the challenge. But if you're on the more fear orientated, what will start happening is that you'll get irritated and then you'll start to not express yourself so much. You'll go more into mental processes to try and rationalize your way out of dealing with what is happening. So fear response in the body is a more of an inward pulling. And it feels like you, you kind of withdraw a bit. And your orientation with your eyes would be to look around to see if it's all safe. So it's a movement where some, your expression goes more inside of your body, deep in the belly. And you try to hide any expression. So if you do it a lot, you can start to feel numb, as you had said. You can also feel like it's very hard to stay in communication because you will go a lot more into your head and stories. So a healthy fear at work is just to acknowledge when, oh, I'm feeling nervous. And this could be because, why am I nervous? So this is meaning that I'm having a fear response, or we call it a flight response. And how to cope with that is to give yourself space, time to go and regulate, maybe to find a way where you can process it. To take five minutes off to make a tea, to settle, to breathe, to take long breaths, to be able to come in contact with the emotion inside. Anger is outwards. Anger is like, you feel heat. Anger is like, I want to express something, but this is a more inward emotion. And it's really coming in contacted and feeling the fear and feeling and then allowing. Usually when you get in contact with it, there's a sense there's a bit of a trembling in the body, there's a bit of not feeling so safe. But if you breathe and slow down and have your feet on the ground and connect with yourself, you can move through fear. You can move through it in a safe way. And also so even with your partner or with intimate friends you can practice at home, being in touch with when you notice the emotion of fear is coming and to honestly share. Like right now I don't feel so safe because right now I'm just feeling fear about something and to acknowledge it on your body level and not to give yourself a hard time about it and it usually then can pass.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I will give a living experience, living story that just happened this week. So Krisana and I, we are life partners, but also we are business partners and so we share the same work, but also we share the same house. So we have similar stories happening here and there. Of course, that requires lots of boundaries. So imagine the amount of anger used to be between us because we didn't know which role we're playing. So now to let go of anger and have fear of crossing the boundaries really constantly in evolving to know how to deal with that. So we really made it so difficult to be life partners and business partners. You know, we like the challenge. So we can probably sit one day like here and share on a podcast all those experiences. So everything we're sharing is really come also from lived experience. Not books are amazing, but the books are not enough. So one, we need to connect to the emotion, to the living experience. Books are for knowledge, but books. And living experience brings wisdom, but books never bring wisdom. So anyhow, you like this one, right? So, yeah, we define just what is wisdom and we never, we never say, I'm done. I don't have fear. I don't have anger. Even I worked on all my traumas and I don't have this. And I'm like, if I don't have this, I'm not a human anymore. So first to accept even the deep work I do on myself and this, those emotions, when they come, I have to know how to own them. The idea of healing and supporting myself in the workplace or in my private life is not to get rid of those emotions, which is mainly the basic root problem of it is to know how to work through them. The issue with me, I worked a lot on myself. So when they come, I feel a little bit shame. That's another emotion. Why? How can I feel? I'm now in a shock. I'm in a fear and a survivor threat. I'm a good, you know, consultant, I'm a good guide, I'm a good healer. So, you know, your identity start to plays out and then that brings shame. Funny. Another emotion I have to deal with. But that shame made me go into being not seeking out support because I put the threshold so high for myself. So I give you example. This week we were in a meeting.
Krisana Locke: I'm getting hot. That's what we're talking about.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, but it's good to share personal stuff. I hear you Krisana, like, but for me, no one is just in Arabic there's the word like dropped in from heaven. No one is dropped in from heaven. Perfect, the angel. Yeah, as a human, but dropping from ever and perfect. And that's the story we've been telling ourselves. I'm a human. And to be human is to have emotion and to have emotions. Constantly know how to manage it. Mastering it is not get riding of it is knowing how to deal and adapt with it. And knowing that emotions are part of who you are. And they only come as messengers. They don't define who you are, but they are messengers to make you change your way of acting, behaving, speaking, so you improve your environment. So. And then I was in a very shocked space because you know, sometimes things happens. We were in a meeting, Krissana and I, on the street, they chose a cafe because the other cafe was closed that have like a highway running through, very activating a nervous system. I slept 3 hours the night before because I was whatever, finishing some old project. And then in the same time we finished the meeting, I opened my phone, somebody asked me something. Krisana's phone rang. There's a problem at home with the, whatever, things like all of it in the same time. And, and I saw myself going into really fear response. So right then I was like, but it does not mean I don't know how to deal with it, it's just more, I'm like, so I thought Kisana just, she was on the phone, like, I will follow you. And really. So my first sense was to super control everything, right? That's my reaction, I want to control because I don't feel safe. So I held it together and then I was like, my brains, my brain start to be active. As we explained the old other podcast, whenever we refuse to feel our emotions because we don't feel safe and afraid, so the brain comes, how to solve it, how to solve it. I sat home, I was really not feeling good. And then at certain point I'm like, I am done. I went to Krissana, I said, can I ask you for support? And she says, yeah, what's happening? And for me, I had to get rid of that shame, you know, we are coach, consultant, guide, guide, mentors and healers. I have to go tell her I'm in a shock or I have fear response, and I don't know how to deal with it. So I had to overcome my ego, and I was like, and then that was it. And she's like, what's happening to you? And she has really given me that space. And slowly I'm like, my brain, you know? And then I start to feel safe. She guided me to feel safe again, really just being present. I said, I felt my body. See, look at my breath now. Then I went back, and then I'm like, ah. And then slowly I start to embody my body. And then, and then I check the story. Literally, in the story that happened, I don't have a necessary survival threat. Yes, certain things happened, but they were not so dangerous. Then my brain went, but why you felt like this? I'm like, stop the blame. Here comes the guilt and the blame. And I stood. My brain is acting out. My ego is acting out. It's like. And Krisana was saying, but how do you feel in your body? How do you feel now? I'm like, actually, I feel good. I'm like, so, so we did something and this has really helped me. But what the huge difference, Krisana said, can be done as with a partner, or it's like we cannot go ask everyone. It's just that to be with someone safe and then feel the presence and then get rid of our own shame. There's an emotion. Stop being ashamed of our anger, stop being ashamed of our fear, because this is another of our guilt, because this is another obstacle for all our self healing. Again, the body heals itself. We just need to be in presence with someone who can be just present with us, of course, and accept us, not like judge us and fight with us.
Krisana Locke: I would also like to say in that situation, when someone is be aware that they're having this response and they need support because of also we. We work in this work. It's really for, as I did, I was just like, yeah, how, you know, I'm here. I didn't even say I'm here. You know, I'm holding space. I didn't say that. It's just being very soft, receptive, and not giving opinions, just very listening. Listening, not judging so the person can be seen, can be heard and can be understood, so they can start to understand the rationale and then just guiding tracking to. And, yes. And what do you feel right now in your body as you're talking about that? So it's not like a very. And how is this? Or engaging in a very fast speed with the, you know, to, for the person. It's just really creating a nice milu so the person can regulate. So this is called coming into co regulation with each other and not trying to change the person, but just being there in. Yeah, in a space together.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I would like to use the word in a loving, in loving presence. All what I needed. I didn't need Krisana the therapist. I didn't need Krisana the colleague. Only. I just need the human. And I knew that she can offer it. And. And this is what we can offer so many people around us, a loving presence and not an advisor. That's when we are in fear and shock. Don't advise people. We need a loving presence to get out of this guilt and the fear.
Krisana Locke: And if you. If you. If there's people out there who are partners and are coaches or therapists. I don't do therapy with my partner. I don't coach my partner. That's a service we give in our work. It's really, as Mazen said, it's like coming into the dimension of a presence, loving presence. That's really important. You leave that field for the outside world.
Mino Vlachos: And so when we talked about, again, the organizational commitment, I'll return back to that little model. We talked about the guilt, obligation, we talked about the fear. And then one of the primary ways we can bond with our institution is to feel happiness, to enjoy what we're doing. Work can be a tremendous place of meaning, and where we get things where we want, whether it's money, so we can feel safe, feed our family, whether it is some sort of mission that we're accomplishing or something we feel in service of. And so just to tap that sense of happiness and joy, I'd ask each one of us to connect to a memory where we really just felt happy at work, felt a sense of joy at work, and we'll just take a moment to really connect with that, a moment of feeling joy at work. It's not just negative emotions, it can also be positive emotions. And I'm going to ask each one of us just to share a little bit about that memory, just to resource us and share a little bit of the other side of working. So, Mazen, would you like to share with us a moment of enjoyment in. In your work?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, it's more of a. On an intuitive introvert note, my enjoyment, that comes up again. When I said I, that day, I slept 3 hours because I was engaged in reaching joy. And on that night that I stayed awake really late, but I was super happy because I finished something that it's been on my desk since a very long time. And that something was beautiful, but I never had time for it. And then I created time for it. And just the sheer joy I had when I uploaded all those videos, it was content creation. Right? So it needs a bit of time. And just sitting there working for, I don't know, the last five, 6 hours, I barely even stopped and took a break. But after waking up, after 3 hours, I was alive. I had so much energy. I was not tired. I was surprised. So it gave me meaning. I finished my task. I fulfilled something that I really loved, but I never had time for it. So it was with full motivation and, and I love to finish tasks. So I'm like that. I love. And then I. And that gave me lots of joy back. Lots of aliveness in the body.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah. Thank you, Krisana, what memory do you connect to that brings you enjoyment in a work context?
Krisana Locke: Oh, when you said this, I have memory, many memories of work context and happiness. And what gives me happiness, what gives me joy is when we have our meetings or when we're working on something. But basically it's in a relational field. When I'm working with people, when we have clients, I am the sense to be with the people. It's such a joy for me, even if there's challenges. Such a joy. And I can see many times because I have had a long career in working with lots of people and in different careers, and I am at my happiest when there is a group of people and I'm serving the need and on point and there's a. Yeah, there's a reciprocity. I even know at this stage with the learning and development that I'm furthering in our work. It's really like the intention, the people I'm meeting outside, you know, the people to. It's. It gives me great joyous. It gives me great joy. And I'm also aware that gives me great joy and gives me great joy working with people. And I also know it's so fulfilling. And then it also throws me into the joy and happiness when I'm also by myself because I'm so filled up. And then I know that it takes me into a deep silence of myself. So the relational field. Yeah.
Mino Vlachos: For me, what came up was the first workshop that we delivered for 3Peak coaching and solutions to a client. And we were outside of Amsterdam in Holland, and we were doing a beautiful two days, I believe it was on leadership development, team development. And I just remember while I was in the workshop, I'm so focused on the people in front of me, and so in service of the people in front of me. And there was these little glimmering moments where I. I had to remind myself, like, think about yourself almost in a way, like, take it in and think about yourself for 2 seconds, because this vision you've had is now a reality. And I remember it was after the workshop finally completed, everyone left. They got in their cars, go back to Germany, and we were there, the three of us. And that's when it really sunk in for me, where I was like, what we produced felt like magic to me. Like I could feel the resonance of that group, and I could feel the combined power of all our experiences that we've brought. And I just. It was a years long dream I had and to sit in it, and I just had that moment of like, one of the best moments of my life, to see creation come into reality. So for me, I always carry that as a resource for me, that memory. And so with that, we're going to now slowly start to bring this to a close. And we've talked about a lot of different topics, and this is one that, again, I'm sure we could do many more podcast episodes, and we probably will do many more podcast episodes. I've got more crazy stories, even more crazy, probably to tell you, because I've played every experiment I can in the corporate world. So I'm happy to shed light on someone who's in those situations. But we've talked about emotions, expressing emotions, different kinds of emotions, how to kind of process them. Again, unhealthy at times, displays of emotion, healthy ways to display emotion and process it. So with that, I'm going to ask each one of us to just share a little bit of kind of closing thoughts. I'm going to begin with Krisana and would love to hear anything you have as parting wisdom for us today.
Krisana Locke: We are not just our emotions. Yeah. So we not to get identified, to be connected to our emotions. We have feelings, and there's something deeper. And again, it's more to connect with something deeper in the being, being space of ourselves. We have emotions because we're alive, but also to get in contact with deeper deaths. And that's what I leave everyone with.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I have two categories. First, I wanna give the first wrap up or an insight about the workspace, and in general, emotions. First of all, when we create culture of fear in the workspace and guilt, the performance productivity starts to really go down. We might make things happening, we might even. We might see, oh, there's more things happening, but actually the results will be short term lived. So it's counterproductive to something. I would like to define and sustainable longevity that helps growth. We might. In one of our blogs you will read about it more sustainable longevity for growth. If we created a company without respecting the law of sustainable longitudinal for growth, so we're not respecting the law of success that makes us create a company. In order to do that, we need the people to have happiness, right? Okay, happiness is a big word. What is happiness? Happiness is a sense of belonging to the team, belonging to the work, a sense of fulfillment. So responsibility for the employees to do their task fulfillment because they love it, being in the right role, right position, those two will create fulfillment and belong. This will bring motivation and that all of those will make your employee happy. And as a result, you will have performance and productivity. But now that bring sustainable longevity, that allows full, conscious growth. Again, for entrepreneurs out there, weigh it. I'm not saying the other one is wrong. You might work with pressure, fear and pushing. If you need success, the next one year, one year and a half have. But know that it's not eternal. And then it will come to a stop and it will seize if you do not change it. So it won't be sustainable. So again, now, emotions, emotion, as Kristiana said, are not the thing that define who we are. We are not our emotions. We have to understand. Emotions are a mean that our subconscious brain, our brain communicate with us to tell us what's happening on the outside and on the inside, so we can adjust and adapt emotions, our is our mean to understand ourselves in the environment, in the time and space. And it's very understood. It should be very understood that emotions, when all the cultures we try to get rid of them because are unnecessary. Now we know that they are necessary. We have to bring, start to accept them, own them, bring awareness and understand their role. And first and foremost, to understand emotions are that thing that influence our thoughts, our actions, our words and our behavior. So when in the workplace, we say, but I don't feel anything, but I acted that way. It is impossible to react on something if emotion was not behind it. You're aware of emotions or not, that's something else. Emotions are the driving, the driving power, force inside of us that make us react a certain way. So the more we bring awareness to it, the more we start to have control over our environment and ourselves. So I give another choice, because I love to. This is how I work and I show people in business and in personal life, then there's a choice either to react out of fear, fear, which is I'm afraid because their emotions, I don't want to feel them, so I react. So it influences everything around me, or I bring awareness to those emotions. And then when emotions arises, instead of reacting and acting and changing things, I start responding. Responding. I have a choice how to respond out of understanding, accepting my emotion, what's happening. So I will adapt my response based on, really, reality, what is not on my suppressed fear and not on my reaction. So everyone has a choice and it needs a bit of training and awareness, but all is possible.
Mino Vlachos: And for me, when I do share the stories that I did share today, it's because I would like it to be an example of someone who's really gone through the experience and come out the other end. And I share it with intention. So I share it because when I was younger, it was as if I was driving a car, a plane, a spaceship, and there was all these lights blinging, all these alarms going off, and I was ignoring them and I was not listening to my body, I was not listening to my emotions. I was overly identified with my thinking, so I only listened to the thought. And in the process of ignoring these alarm bells, what I didn't realize is that I was still fully driven by emotions, so that whether I chose to look at them or not, I was going to be. I was going to be driven by those emotions anyways. And what I didn't understand is that I was loyal to some emotions over others. And so the anger was there, but I would rather listen to the guilt unconsciously. I didn't. I didn't really know what I was doing right. The. Sometimes the anger was there, but I didn't want to listen to the fear. And so I was picking and choosing winners and losers amongst my emotions and it didn't work. It doesn't work. Every time I say it really bluntly, I fucked up. Like, I really fucked up. And it was only when I started to really understand my emotions and not pick winners and losers between them, but to respect all of them equally and to actually process them all equally. That is the first time that I emerged into work and felt enjoyment, contentment, peace, happiness, motivation that was sustained over long periods of time. Productivity that was sustained over long periods of time. The things I'm able to do today with our company 3Peak is because I process my emotions, because I watch the dashboard and if there's an alarm going off, I listen to it and I don't say, I'm only gonna listen to one alarm and hide the other one. It doesn't make any sense. And so my message to my younger self and to anyone listening is that is why I feel that emotional intelligence is one of the highest pursuits we can have, because it allows us to live a more fulfilled life, us to live a life that is actually good for us. And it gives the platform to healthily relate with other people. And that, to me, is one of the highest endeavors we can do. And so I want to thank you for listening to this podcast and for listening to the stories, and we will see you again soon.