E2 Self Leadership, Learned Helplessness, Personal Responsibility
February 2024
46 minutes
E2 Self Leadership, Learned Helplessness, Personal Responsibility
February 2024
46 minutes
Stream on:
All real leadership starts within. In this episode we define self leadership, explore how inner leadership forms throughout our life, how learned helplessness keeps us from accessing our potential, and how taking personal responsibility allows us to make the most of our situation.
Key topics include:
0:00-4:04 Introduction To Self Leadership 4:04-14:20 Personal Experiences With Self Leadership 14:20-22:44 Learned Helplessness 22:44-25:47 Tools and Resources For Self Leadership 25:47-35:23 Applying Self Leadership In The Workplace 35:23-41:14 Importance of Inner Leadership In Companies 41:14-46:05 Positive Impact of Self Leadership At Work
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 podcast. I am your host, Mino, and I'm joined by my co founders, Mazen and Krisana. And this podcast is brought to you by our company, three peak coaching and solutions, where we help individuals and organizations break the crisis cycle by developing people and helping to solve business problems. So today's topic is about self leadership. And actually today we had a workshop where we were sharing some principles and exercises about self leadership. And so today we'll be sharing some of the lessons learned that we had as we worked with individuals to develop their inner self leadership. So to begin, I'm going to ask Mazan to define, in his perspective, what is self leadership.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I take a moment, it's a really big question because the word leadership is very loaded and then even less. Very few people use the word self leadership. But I'll start very simple and then it will help us to develop on it. First of all, to understand leadership, we have to understand that this is not just a label. Leadership is a quality that every person need to have. Normally, we have it to be really cultivated. It's about inner leadership. And inner leadership is about reaching a place when we become autonomous yet interdependent, being fully functional within ourself and within the society. And that requires self leadership.
Mino Vlachos: Krisana, How do you define self leadership?
Krisana Locke: Self leadership for me is knowing who I am internally, knowing where I'm going, knowing what to do. And it's also being aware of my inner reality, of my emotional states, my body states, and also my mental state, my mind. And so it's a bridging of both and being aware of my behaviors and the way I move into the world. So it's really self examining and changing. Being self leadership is changing things that were habits or beliefs so that you can start to lead your life in an upward, vertical, conscious way.
Mino Vlachos: So I'll share a little personal story and then I'll turn it into a question for you too. So for much of my life, I really operated on some sort of kind of blind instinct. I didn't really understand why I was doing the things I was doing day to day. So there were things that I thought I wanted in life, and I was again trying to do whatever I could and be strategic and clever and cunning to get those things in life without really understanding what was underneath that. So in that period of my life, I felt like I did not have self leadership because I didn't fully understand what was driving my behavior or how to change my behavior. And over time, I've realized that actually I can understand and shift the things that I desire, that can also shift the way I behave, and ultimately it changes the outcome in my life. So I'm going to start with Krisana. Where do you feel like you started to pick up on your own self leadership? Was there a moment in time or some experiences that helped you develop your inner leadership, your self leadership?
Krisana Locke: I was just saying this the other day to mazen that my self leadership started when I was very young. I used to do a lot of sailing in small boats, in these small sub boats. So I had to learn the water, the ocean, but not going far out in the ocean. And I had to learn how to sail, how to be in a boat with my brother and find tactical ways to move in a racing boat course. I guess at that time I was eight years old, so it was also waking up and having to know what the wind's going to be like and then racing where you're going to start the race. But a lot of my self leadership and inner leadership, I had good mirroring and parenting from my father because he supported in a beautiful way on not I do this, but to go out there and to feel the weather, the ocean, to start to learn how you are. So I would say, yeah, from eight years of age, I was put into a position to discover all this. Of course, we made mistakes, but it was also very interactive with other little boats and people following other kids following you in their boats and understanding in this complexity of sailing and being challenged. And it wasn't ever about winning. It was really, at that time, just trying to work it all out that you're in the boat. So that's when it started.
Mino Vlachos: And Mazen, how about yourself?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I was so immersed in Krisana's explanation that I forgot what you asked, actually. And I was happy while in it. I was self aware. There was self awareness, awareness that happened. I'm like, what was the question? Should I prepare? And then I remembered, no, I'm in full listening, full presence, and I will dare. Yeah, ask again. Beautiful.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. So is there a moment in life where you started to feel your self leadership, your inner leadership emerge?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Poo. That's a tough one for me. That's a complete opposite of Krisana's experience. It took me ages. I come from a more. I had more events in my life that were more harsher for my small physical body and nervous system to deal with it. I can tell you more about non self leadership, how I was, and that was the most thing that helped me later on to understand and then find healthy regulation, healthy life, healthy relating.
Mino Vlachos: Can you give us a small example of something that was the opposite of self leadership in your life?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Do you have 2 hours for the first one? Small example, first episode? No, I went the other route. I went more the darkness route, the negativity, the fear. I went through the fear route. So I can explain about how fear stripped me out completely from my own self leadership, inner leadership. Later on I say those words. After so many years of releasing my trauma, understanding myself, studying, doing my phd, understanding the body in and out, and then I'm like, at the end of all of that, I was still struggling. And then I had really to go in deeper to understand the root of it all. The root of it all was really based in fear. The fear was happening around me around four years and a half, five years and a half old of age. And the fear stripped me away from my own inner leadership. If you don't mind, I would like to use for myself the word inner leadership. I feel more comfortable saying it than self leadership. They can be interchangingly using it. But yeah, see, this is part of my self leadership requesting that I would like to use better the word inner leadership. I like words and I like to relate to them. So it's more by fear stripping away that actually power within of. I became disempowered from disempowerment to victim. Very fast to victim. So this is my first memory from being, coming as a child, being entrust in like, trust was not a word, because when we don't have something opposing to it, you won't question it. I was living life was, and then something happened and my trust vanished, like. And then I learned what the word trust is by losing it. And fear took over. And from that moment, victimhood. And that's it. That's my journey. That took me probably around 26 years to release that trauma of victimhood and that trauma of that event. We can speak about it, the event, if needed, but now it's not needed, probably. And then I held that event and that mistrust that happened within me and about others and adults and everything. 26 years it was trapped in my body. So I would really honestly say 26 years I had non inner leadership, non self leadership, but I was thriving. I was trying, I used everything possible. I used substances, I used the friends, I used the mind a lot. And then I ended up using the mind the most to understand. To understand. And yeah, I didn't succeed, but I collected so much data and it gave me so much relaxation. Then the moment where I had really to dive in and really feel it, to get back to my ordinary leadership, I had built trust along the way within my own body, within my own organism, so I could sit and allow that. And then the journey of self leadership, I would say it started. Yeah, the most healthy way started in my arriving to Berlin when I was 30 years of age. And then the moment, actually, I had two weeks coming in. But anyhow, I knew I'm coming here to transform something, and self leadership started the best thing ever happened to me. And then I can tell you everything after 30, when it comes to self leadership, and before 30, battling with my own negative darkness, seeing it as bad as negative is bad, and later on, and said, actually, no, it was really the disempowerment that made me see negative emotion as bad and then really be enmeshed in my own darkness, identifying with it and not understanding. It's part of me. I have to let go to it and love who I am.
Mino Vlachos: Yes, thank you. I have a similar prize story to you in the sense of it took me many, many years to come to some of those principles of inner leadership, self leadership. And it was really through the experience I had working with the two of you and going to your workshops on personal development and leadership development, that I started to awaken the leader within and understand that again. If I can really listen to myself and listen very carefully, I can start to really understand. And something emerges, an inner awareness. And from there, I can detect why I want certain things and how to modulate that. It was the first time in my life I understood how to start to relate with the world in a conscious way. And so I know that in speaking previous to this podcast, Krisana always comes with the gems. And so she relayed to us that the kind of opposite, the polar side of self leadership, inner leadership, is learned helplessness. And I'll share one of my favorite experiments done in psychology before asking a question, which is, there was an experiment done, it's quite famous, where they were working with dogs, and they had two zones in the room, and they had a shock collar. So anytime the dog went to the one side of the room, it got a minor shock. And this is what some owners use in yards with the electric fences. And so over time, the dog learns, because there's a stimulus, negative stimulus, it learns not to go into that zone. What they did then was remove the electric shock, and the dog absolutely refused to go into that other zone. So even though the zone of safety had increased once more, the dog no longer went to the other zone. So it really chose to place itself in a smaller zone that it knew for sure was safe and not expand and try to try things out and see if the shock had gone away. And what we've seen in psychology is that there is many parallels to how humans, we learn things, or we're conditioned into certain principles, and then we don't unlearn those. So we think one zone is safe, but then we stop trying to see if the other zone might be something that's interesting. We like, we want to partake in. And so when we're in that mode of learned helplessness, we can often feel some of those feelings of out of control victimization. I can't do anything about my circumstances. So my question will be to Krisana. First, when you work with people, when do you observe learned helplessness? And what supports people who are in a mode of learned helplessness?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Nice question.
Krisana Locke: Yes. Generally, when people are in learned helplessness, it's such a habit and it's really encase them that they're sometimes not aware that they're in this victimhood, that everything they see is a perspective of there's no way out of it. Look outside everything around all their perspective, they see their habits of keeping in them in this learned helplessness. Like there's a belief there's no way out. But generally, before this learned helplessness happened, there are times in one's life where there were experiences where you were curious or where you had joy or where you weren't in learned helplessness. So when you have achieved things, or when you did something that was very creative. So when I do work with people, I often go to resource them to remember, or what have they done? What have they achieved in times way back, because the body remembers everything. It remembers the good and the bad. So I do a lot of resourcing with people to empower them to have a resource, to start having a reset, and knowing that they can come out of this learned helplessness. And it's a state where they've put themselves in and they don't know they can get themselves out of it. So there's techniques, there's wellness habits, there's creating routines, there's different ways we work with people, but it's really supporting people to understand what you're saying is, in a learned helplessness, aha. So it's the first to get them to look in and inquire, do you know? This is what you're in? And then there's a spark. It's not get out of it. But to start to inquire and to understand and work with, I have a capacity to get out of it. I do have a chance. I am here for a reason and I'm going to follow that path and be creative.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen there's oftentimes some folks might feel a sense of I can't control anything in my life, really. Everything's happening to me. I don't have any power. There's nothing I can create in this life. How would you work with an individual that has some of those belief systems?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Hmm. I sat with silence. I was like wondering, give them presence like first ground in myself. That's how I work with them now. I'm feeling my legs on the ground, I feel my belly, I feel sense of myself and just really receive them because they really need to feel at least in one place received, safe and received. Once this is established, then things are a little bit easier because in that case, in their case, their case, we all go through that. In the case of that where we are in trapped, what we really need is a little bit of foundation, a place where we feel accepted. Why? Because we really struggling with and we're suffering. But by not accepting ourselves, what does that mean on the biological body by not accepting all those emotion, what does that mean on the mental body? By not accepting the story that happened to us. So there is this tape that is really being like is it always on play reminding us of the story. So we lose sense of the now and we're always in our head in the past recording, repeating the same story of look what happened to us, look what happened. From that lens we project the future of but see this will happen to us something similar and we don't deserve it. But on the biological emotional body what happened is that we're in a constant not accepting this part of ourself and those emotions, what that entail, it brings fear of ourselves, of our dose emotion because we ignore them and we don't know what to do with them. So we disown them and then fear rises. So if I work with someone first really in accepting where they are at, you know what happens, they will be mirrored, certain acceptance, they will feel relaxed a little bit. So really first show them that where they are at, it is fine. Not where they are at in the past, in the future, I don't know probably where they go home, it's something really horrible or abusive or in the future, I do not know. I do not know about the past, I do not know about the future. But what I know very well is about the now, and I'm not the only one. The body knows only about the now when it want to reach safety. So I bring them to a moment of now and then from the now, where we feel safe, we establish safety together. We from there, we go out and then see what is needed. Before that, I wouldn't bring any intellectual understanding or anything that requires the mind and the words and the thoughts.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah, this is where I feel called to say that many times it feels like this is where there could be a fork in the road, where one of the roads leads to ideology and what is satisfactory for the mind and the other one is what is practical and works for people. And what I've observed is that ideologically, it can be very tough when someone goes to an event that they experience as overwhelming or stressful and can't regulate. And so we put the labels on of, it's unfair, or I'm a victim, or something happened to me. And in a sense, we could say, okay, that's true, but if we form an ideology out of that, the question is, does that actually serve the person to move beyond that event, to actually regulate their emotions, to process the stress? The other road, which is the practical one, which, to be honest, is the one I'm biased towards and more interested in, is how do we support people? How do we allow people to actually healthily regulate through events that are stressful? And what we see time and time again is empowering people, giving them a sense of dignity. If we give people the tools to feel their inner power, their inner security and safety, then they can really move beyond almost anything on this planet. If we go into the ideology and kind of say, no, you're a victim, and things are unfair, it might be true. But I don't know that that actually helps people. It helps them maybe feel a sense of identity with what happened, but I don't know that that supports them to move beyond it. And that's what I care about, is helping people to move through life with vitality and health and love. So, as we talk about inner leadership, and we've also talked about a bit around the learned helplessness, what are some resources or some tools that can support people to shift into their inner leadership? So I'll begin by asking Krisana, what are maybe some of those resources and tools?
Krisana Locke: First of all, I would start with the body, and I would start with, what is it in your daily life? Do you sleep well? Are you drinking? Hydrating well? How many hours are you overworking? Just to give an understanding to see where they're at, where already they can have some self control of their personal environment. But a lot is first, sleeping well, food, getting, looking at their diet to see if they're eating healthy, and also asking how they relate with themselves, are they in a relationship or not? But how they relate with themselves. So first is the ground levels, like how they are with their body and their daily day to life with themselves before even stretching out to go, okay, but it's the environment I'm in. So this is the first I will start to support them with. And also, as I said before, to resource them or to see what's going to help them to find safety in their body, but also to be able to come into their body, to understand and to feel their body sensations when they can start becoming aware of what emotions they're feeling. And also when they're too much in their head. And the way to come back to now is a lot about bottom up, like starting with the body, noticing what's going on in the body, what's happening when you get caught in the head, what's actually, what are you feeling, and what do you notice in the body? So, to start to bridge that the body is the place where everything, any experience, anything that we go through happens through the process of the body. And so we make this the first start to really understand that is coming into self leadership. You start to direct yourself. You start to be able to make healthy daily routines and not the shoulds, but what is care for you? So that's where I start.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. So I want to turn us to the workplace now. Sometimes we do personal development outside of the work, and then we go to work, and it's almost as if all the personal development goes out the window. And we don't think that the principles that we learn outside in personal development can apply to professional development. So I want to give a personal example. And then, Mazen, get a little bit of your take there. So I used to work at a company, at a corporation, and we had to do a lot of manual report writing. And so being the clever and sometimes lazy guy I am, I decided to make an automated program that wrote the reports for me. So I used all the data inputs, so I automated it. And then I secretly tested it. So I sent the reports to people that needed to approve them. Tough people who are really going to go very critical. And again and again, it was like, great, great. This is the best report we've seen in a while. And then I tried to share this report with my organization. So I started by sharing with my boss, who was pleasantly surprised, and then their boss, and then their boss. And then eventually, I was directed to a team that was in charge of actually the same task. They were trying to automate report writing. And in that moment.
Mino Vlachos: I don't think.
Mino Vlachos: They really appreciated what I did. They viewed it as a competition with their own project, and they put a stop to my report writing tool that I created. And in that moment, I went into the learned helplessness. I don't have control. How dare they? I'm trying to improve the organization. I've invented such an amazing thing. And so if my younger self came to you was like, I have no control. I really don't know what to do. This big, bad company is not letting me innovate. What would you share with a younger.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Me in that specific situation?
Mino Vlachos: It can be both specific and then more generalized, I think.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Krisana, you have something to say? I will send you to Krisana first.
Krisana Locke: I would first start with, how does that make, you know, you would have relayed this whole event, this heated event for you that created a lot of emotions to play. So that's the first thing. So how does it make you feel and how did it make you feel in this moment?
Mino Vlachos: I feel a sense of joy. So there's nothing. I processed it in the moment. I felt a lot of anger, and I felt a sense of unfairness and this. A bit of this. Can't you see what I've done? Can't you see how I've solved this problem? So there was this righteousness and rebelliousness that was going on inside me.
Krisana Locke: Yes, of course. So there's this expression, healthy expression, that you're doing something, and then it's been squashed. But you have to process that. You have to be aware of that. That's what I'm feeling, instead of bottling it up and putting it into political righteousness or something that goes through the head. But of course, yeah, you do feel an emotion about it, and how to process that, digest that, support yourself. And then when that has been regulated a little more, so it's come into a bit of equilibrium and balance, then you would have been a bit more cle headed to like, okay, what's the next steps? As a young, up and coming career person, what's the next healthy steps? I can do? I have choices. But when your emotions are on so high, they're reactions, their actions just reacting. So, yeah, I would have listened, said, how do you feel? And honestly allow that person to really, I don't know. But if I get to it, I'm feeling this. And yes, of course, you would feel angry. Yes. And then work a little bit with the body to help support, to unleash in a safe way, in a safe container so you can feel and the energy and the life forces moving again. So basically is your life force moved and then it got squashed. And it's like, okay, let's get it moving again into this expansion and contraction. But then it's doing this again. It's in flow.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Then. That's perfect. That's why I send them. Send you, your young you to Krisana, and then I'll catch you after that, once you're regulated. And then I remind you, which is. I really bet you did that. Can you please stop going to all your friends, family members and tell them what happened to you and pull you and repeat the same story? And you know what's worse? Everybody's like, oh, I understand. And that, we think, is empathy. This is not empathy. This is collective, learned helplessness that support each other because they agreed that you are poor. You. There is a difference between love and then swimming in fear and victimhood and they. And blame. And they did it to me. They did it once. Come on, let us bring some science and facts. How many times did they do that to you? In that example?
Mino Vlachos: There was one event. One event? Yes.
Dr. Mazen Harb: How many times did you tell the story?
Mino Vlachos: Oh, I was furious so many times. Coworkers, friends, family, anyone that would spare me an ear.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Okay, so imagine, I don't know, a big number. Every time. When you said the story, you felt the same feeling, right?
Mino Vlachos: Oh, yeah. It just was actually building. It wasn't even the same. It was amplifying.
Dr. Mazen Harb: It was amplifying. So, see, the last time, when you said it before you healed it or before you found something, resolution with it, and remember the event. How does the picture, the inner picture of the emotion, feeling, sensation, thoughts, mind, was compared to when the event happened to you? Do they look anything alike?
Mino Vlachos: No.
Dr. Mazen Harb: So what you were told the people was something else than the event itself. It was your anger. You fueled it. And your fear and your victimhood. You lost every sense of inner leadership. That mean you were very far away from the solution. Because if that was the solution, it would have minimized. But something got more than reality itself. And this is where you lost your inner leadership. I'll keep it at that for now.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah. I will share the end of the story, which is. This is absolutely true. Everything I experienced. And then I did finally go and process the emotion. I sat in silence. I did all the things that helped resource me. And what I chose to do is even though I was told not to distribute the tool, when I checked in with what I really wanted to do is I picked my friends that I really cared about and I sent it to them anyways. And it was just something I shared friend to friend with people in the company that might have enjoyed some support on the report writing. And I was okay with facing the consequences of doing that and knew that I was doing something that was against the company but felt good for me.
Krisana Locke: So you took your responsibility in that you knew what you're doing. You said, okay, I'm responsible for that. Okay.
Mino Vlachos: Yes. And I was happy to take with no emotion any consequences that came of that decision.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I'm going to play on words. Krisana, already I felt in her, she weighed on the word responsibility. I don't know if consciously you played on it, but you did. And so in the case where it went south, where it went really disempowered, you went and reacted. Right. So I'm going to introduce a small word here. You went on full reaction, and then when you solved it, Krisana is the word. Responsibility is the ability to respond. Responsibility. This is how the word comes together semantically and even for the brain. So you had an ability to respond. That's responsibility. You got back your own self leadership. So now just to bring it to, what are the opposite words here? What is supportive, what's not supportive? Reaction is most of the time based on fear and victimhood. Responding is based on finding a solution, accepting what happens, try to accept it, try to process it, and having the ability to deal with the event itself instead of the overaccumulated stories and the story that's not anymore related to the event itself.
Mino Vlachos: And so when we think about more generally in the workplace and business.
Mino Vlachos: I'll.
Mino Vlachos: Continue with you, Mazen. What do you see in terms of people taking inner leadership and self leadership? Like, do you see folks doing that in the workplace? Are there moments where you see them going into learned helplessness? What do you observe? As we worked with clients in the.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Corporate world, the first honestly thing that now popped up is like the moment we say and believe, but my boss did it, but my leader, the moment we start believing in leaders outside of us, believing in authority outside of us, that obliges to do something that we really not ready for it, we don't have the talent for it, or the moment where we put our power outside of us is the moment we start to blame outside of us. Actually, it's a trick we do. It's really easy to put my power outside. I can blame something, but if I go and remind you, but Mino, your power is inside of you, you'll be like, oh, but who to blame? I want to blame my mother, I want to blame the neighbor, I want to blame my boss, I want to blame my partner. Once the power inside of us, you have by fact, by truth, to search for what is right for you and how to respond. So you search for the truth of the event, of what you really need, and then you find ways to express it. But when the power is outside, you are, use the good term. You are taken by fear, the power of fear, the power of split, the power of separation, the power of like they did it. Poor me. The moment, poor me. Nobody knows how great I am. Nobody knows my talent, poor me. But do you know, if you know, take it back and find a way to express who you are by responding and not by reacting.
Mino Vlachos: So I'll ask Krisana one more question, which is to end a little bit more on a positive note, if you were to imagine a business where everyone was tapped into their self leadership, inner leadership, what do you feel that would enable the company to achieve.
Krisana Locke: A lot of very good collaboration in teams, a lot of understanding that in your own inner leadership that I'm part of this company. I know my role, I know my talents, my tasks and communication. You would be very good. There would be a lot of collaboration. There'd be a lot of understanding how to be a team player, also understanding how to be in your role, and also understanding the bigger picture than there's you. But where are we all going? What's the mission? What's the goal? We're all in this together, and I do my part, but where are we all going with this? And yes, this is really healthy self leadership. You really enjoy to work with teams, you know your place, you know to support. There's reciprocity. You also understand when you know there's boundaries, when you've overextended your boundaries, when to pull back in. Healthy communication, if there's conflict, it's very easy to find resolution very also healthily to understand when the organizational structure has gone a bit off to come into balance, and you're also in check when it's work time. And now I leave that and I go home to enjoy with my partner, my friends, my family, take care of myself. So it's a whole weaving. So this is, for me, really healthy self leadership in a company.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. What that brings up for me is in our company, three peak coaching and solutions. We have an organizational diagnostic, so we get some data on an organization, and one of the things we measure is organizational commitment. So why are people staying at this job? And there are four things. One is you really love your job, there's a happiness factor. The others are a sense of obligation, like I have to stay because I'm loyal to the people around me or the company. The other one is fear. So I'm afraid to leave because there's not a lot of opportunities out there or I might get reprimanded in this moment, I can't remember the fourth element, but the point is, when we look at why people stay, if they're staying out of obligation, out of fear, then the actual performance of the company tends to go down quite a bit. So if we're actually working from that inner leadership space, because we are able to take responsibility for what we want and to healthily communicate that and negotiate that ourselves and the team, there's a lot of high productivity and efficiency within companies when we're all afraid or full of guilt, and it becomes very difficult to actually healthily communicate and get positive outcomes in the workplace. So to end the podcast, I'm going to ask Mazen the same question, which is in a minute or two, can you tell me if everyone in a company were to have really nice inner sense of leadership, what do you feel like that company would be like for you to work in?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Honesty in communication. Honesty in action. Honesty in communication and action. Actually, that's my answer, but there's something I didn't share previously. I want to add it here. But also to achieve that, we have to understand that everything has a beginning and an end. Every task, every single thing. The moment we start something and we don't know when it will end. I'm not talking about projects, I'm talking about I'm working on something, or I'm eating something, or I'm going even to the toilet, or I'm going to that. Whenever there is no specific direction with a beginning and an end, it's like tabs upon tabs upon tabs upon tabs. They're all on this website, like they're all on your page and they really consume energy. The brain is the same. Once we start to understand that, we have to close those tabs and then open them, close them, open them in our personal life and in our professional life, when it comes to sleeping, to exercising, to even physical hygiene, to going to the toilet. Everything should have a direction. So when start to have a direction, we create a sense of clarity. Things start to be understandable. We start to be aware of the things without have to work on awareness. We start to know when to start, when to end. Things are not enmeshed. It's not like suddenly we are in the ocean. Like learned helplessness. Interestingly enough, in neuroscience, when they test drugs and things, they put rats to test antidepressant, they put rats in a swimming pool, in a small pool, and then they see how long they're going to be swimming. And then when the rats stop swimming, they call it learned helplessness. I'm not going to go into that topic. It's very probably another day. It's sensitive topic and the tests are not whatever, but probably I'll slip it here. Most antidepressant are in the market based on that test. But okay, I'll move on. That's thought. Food for thought for next time. Speaking about our models in science and how it's based on fear. But come back to the company now you have to see it as an arrow. When you want to shoot and use a narrow, you don't like, oh, I didn't hit the goal. I'm like, but did you take the bow? Did you hold it? Did you take the arrow? Very good. Did you really trigger? Did you know when to start, when to end? I'm like, oh, no, I didn't. But lucky him, lucky her, lucky they, they really managed to hit bullseye. I'm like, but did it make sense? So we have to direct our life through direction, beginning and an end, even the simple thing. And this is actually where it starts to bring clarity and start to bring honesty. Then we can speak and how to connect to others. Here, I'm connecting it then honesty in action and honesty in communication is the key now and is the status quo of the company. So that means when my colleagues comes to me as like, hey, Mazan, I need this because actually I'm going to trust him. He's aware. He doesn't have a zillion tab. He started something I forgot. So I can easily take responsibility. So what happens is each one, Satoya take responsibility and a joy in this group dynamic because they feel they understand the success of one is the success of others. But for that to achieve, everybody need to take back their responsibility, back their power, bring the clarity and allow the honesty within to come out. So no politics and no victimhood. And the workplace can be a very joyous place, opposite to what we think it's not prison where we have to go sit. This is the place where you allow your energy to be used in a focused manner in something hopefully you love. And if you don't love, please question it. I'm not going to be pulling please question your life. If you don't love where you put your creative energy, question it.
Mino Vlachos: Thank you. So, on that note, everything has a beginning and an end, and so does this episode of this podcast. And so I want to thank Mazen Krisana and myself for the time today. I want to thank the listeners for the time today, and we're excited to see you once again in our next episode. Thank you. Bye.