Buddhist Executive Coach On: Professional Anxiety, Workplace Conflict, And The Power Of Mindfulness | Nolitha Tsengiwe

Summary

Podcast Summary: 10% Happier with Dan Harris

Episode Title: Buddhist Executive Coach On: Professional Anxiety, Workplace Conflict, And The Power Of Mindfulness | Nolitha Tsengiwe
Release Date: January 22, 2025
Host: Dan Harris
Guest: Nolitha Tsengiwe, Dharma Teacher and Executive Coach

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1. Introduction

In this enlightening episode of 10% Happier with Dan Harris, host Dan Harris welcomes Nolitha Tsengiwe, a distinguished Dharma teacher and executive coach based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Together, they delve deep into the pervasive issues of professional anxiety and workplace conflict, exploring how mindfulness can serve as a powerful tool to navigate these challenges.

2. Guest Background

Nolitha Tsengiwe brings a unique blend of qualifications to the table. She is not only an executive coach but also a highly trained Dharma teacher and a board member at the Dharma Giri Retreat Center in South Africa. Additionally, she is a graduate of the Insight Meditation Society's Teacher Training program. Her diverse expertise allows her to offer profound insights into integrating mindfulness into professional settings.

3. Sources of Professional Suffering

a. The "Never Enough" Mentality

Nolitha identifies chronic anxiety as the primary source of suffering in professional life. She explains that the relentless pursuit of efficiency and perfection cultivates a culture where individuals feel perpetually behind, never truly able to relax or feel content with their achievements.

"The bottom line then actually is living from a place of anxiety. Yeah, it's exhausting."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [00:37]

b. Workplace Conflict

Another significant source of workplace suffering, according to Nolitha, is the pervasive anxiety and awkwardness surrounding conflict. Many individuals prefer to avoid confrontation, leading to unresolved tensions that eventually erupt explosively.

"Conflict just gets avoided until at some point something just gives or there's an explosion."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [08:50]

4. Mindfulness as a Solution

Nolitha advocates for mindfulness as a strategy to mitigate these sources of suffering. Rather than replacing unpleasant experiences with pleasant ones, mindfulness teaches individuals to accept and be at peace with their discomforts.

"Mindfulness is not about replacing unpleasant experiences with pleasant experiences, but instead it's about learning to be okay with the unpleasant."
— Dan Harris [01:04]

She emphasizes that mindfulness can make professionals less hurried and more productive by allowing them to pause and regulate their nervous systems amidst chaos.

5. Practical Mindfulness Practices

a. The RAIN Framework

Nolitha introduces the RAIN acronym as a structured mindfulness practice:

• R - Recognize: Acknowledge the emotion or experience.
• A - Allow: Let the emotion be present without judgment.
• I - Investigate: Explore the components of the emotion.
• N - Non-identification or Nurture: Detach from the emotion or approach it with compassion.

"Mindfulness is a specific way of knowing what you're feeling that is different... Mindfulness is a different kind of knowing."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [40:32]

b. Integrating Pauses Into the Day

Nolitha offers practical tips for embedding mindfulness into daily routines:

• Set Reminders: Use alarms or habitual triggers to prompt pauses.
• Engage in Meaningful Conversations: Foster connections by incorporating pauses in interactions.
• Utilize Idiosyncratic Reminders: Personal cues, such as a song or a physical location, to signal moments of mindfulness.

"Just pause, observe your thinking process. And the more you do that, you will notice that there's a sense of growing ease."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [20:19]

6. Managing Workplace Conflict

a. Normalizing Conflict

Nolitha emphasizes the importance of normalizing conflict within the workplace. Understanding that conflict is a natural part of human interaction is the first step toward managing it effectively.

"We have to normalize it first. Most of us have grown up in households where it's bad to be angry."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [62:19]

b. Self-Examination and Understanding Conflict Styles

She advises individuals to introspectively explore their own responses to conflict, identifying whether they tend to withdraw, confront, or become rescuers or victims in tense situations.

c. Nonviolent Communication and Empathy

Nolitha highlights nonviolent communication as a practical tool for conflict resolution. This approach involves clearly identifying and expressing personal needs while fostering empathy towards oneself and others.

"One of the key tools in nonviolent communication is being able to identify, like, what are your needs in this situation? And to be able to state them clearly."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [67:41]

7. Integrating Mindfulness into Daily Work Life

Nolitha shares her personal practices for maintaining mindfulness amidst a busy professional schedule. These include:

• Morning Meditation: Starting the day with a mindful session to set a calm tone.
• Mindful Interactions: Being fully present during conversations, such as playing catch with her son.
• Physical Reminders: Using external cues like birdsong or even tattoos to prompt moments of mindfulness.

"For me, I know that if I sit for some extended period of time in the morning, my day is going to go better."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [52:48]

8. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode concludes, Nolitha and Dan reflect on the essence of mindfulness and its transformative potential in both personal well-being and professional efficacy. They reiterate that while mindfulness practices are simple in concept, they require consistent effort and patience to become ingrained habits.

"Being okay with not being okay is paradoxically the root to being okay."
— Nolitha Tsengiwe [74:34]

Nolitha encourages listeners to embark on their mindfulness journeys, emphasizing that direct experience and consistent practice are key to unlocking the profound benefits she discusses.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Understand Your Anxiety: Recognize the underlying anxiety driven by the "never enough" mentality and how it perpetuates professional suffering.
2. Embrace Mindfulness: Utilize mindfulness practices like the RAIN framework to observe and manage emotions without judgment.
3. Normalize and Manage Conflict: Accept that conflict is inevitable and use structured communication techniques to address and resolve tensions.
4. Integrate Mindfulness Daily: Implement practical strategies to incorporate mindfulness into your everyday work life, enhancing both well-being and productivity.
5. Cultivate Patience and Consistency: Recognize that while mindfulness is simple, it requires persistent effort to become an effective habit.

By blending modern psychological strategies with ancient wisdom, Nolitha Tsengiwe provides listeners with actionable insights to transform their professional lives and achieve a more balanced, fulfilling existence.

Transcript

[Dan Harris]

Wondery subscribers can listen to 10% Happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello my fellow suffering beings.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

How we doing?

[Dan Harris]

I love my job. I really do, and my job is.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Probably my greatest source of stress.

[Dan Harris]

I suspect I'm not alone in this, at least in the latter part, about.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

How work is stressful.

[Dan Harris]

Whether you love or hate your job, work really can bring up some of.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Our deepest and darkest issues. Today, I'm going to talk to somebody.

[Dan Harris]

With some pretty unique qualifications. She's both an executive coach and a highly trained Dharma teacher. She has some incredibly helpful thoughts on.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

How to weave mindfulness into your day.

[Dan Harris]

Without requiring some big formal meditation session.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Although those are good too.

[Dan Harris]

She argues, and I really agree with her on this, that this strategy can make you less hurried and more productive. We also talk about our often futile search for security through work, how mindfulness is not about replacing unpleasant experiences with.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Pleasant experiences, but instead it's about learning.

[Dan Harris]

To be okay with the unpleasant. And and we talk about her strategies for managing something deeply unpleasant for many of us. Workplace Conflict My guest is Nolita Tsengiwe. She's a Dharma teacher and board member at Dharma Giri Retreat center, which is located in South Africa. She's also a graduate of the Insight Meditation Society. Teacher Training this is part two of.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

A series we're doing this week about.

[Dan Harris]

Professional success and work life balance. If you missed Monday's episode on the Science of Burnout, go check it out. For anybody new to this show, we've done a lot of episodes on work and we call this occasional series Sanely Ambitious. So I will drop a link in the show notes to a playlist of all of our prior episodes. Anyway, this work series we're doing this week is embedded in a larger month long series we're doing on the show during the month of January called Do Life Better. Every week we take a popular New Year's resolution and we examine it from the angles of modern science and ancient wisdom. Our signature mix. We started with fitness, then we moved on to personal finances. This week it's Success and Work Life Balance, and next week it's everyday addict, from food to booze to your phone. So it's a big series and this week we're doing kind of a series within the series.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Anyway, enough out of me.

[Dan Harris]

We'll get started with Nolita Tsangiwe right after this. Before we jump into the episode, it's been a particularly noisy news cycle this week. So [e-mail], i'm offering up some live events to help you find a little sanity and community every day at 3 Eastern 3pm Eastern where we talk about some sanity inducing strategies. On Wednesday, we're welcoming the bestselling author Sharon McMahon, America's government teacher. Live events are open to all subscribers, but only paid subscribers can submit the questions in advance and you will get some preferential treatment there with those questions. Check it out danharris.com the Happier Meditation app has introduced a new course called Even Now Love A Prescription for Connection. Led by the renowned teacher Joseph Goldstein, this timely course offers practical tools to pause, breathe and reconnect even when it feels impossible in a turbulent world. With fresh perspectives on relationships and self compassion practices that actually work, it's a powerful way to approach the new year with love. Download the Happier Meditation app today and explore Even Now Love. I love Staying in Airbnbs. Last year a bunch of families got together and we had an Airbnb near a ski lodge in upstate New York. It wasn't even snowing yet. The point was just to hang out and we all spent the weekend together in this house. It was incredibly cozy and fun. As my friend Zev sometimes jokes, it's really cool to get out of the dinner industrial complex and instead of just spending time with your favorite people over, you know, this kind of regimented two hour meal at a restaurant, which can be super expensive. When you get a house together, you're really, really hanging out and it's a great way to get to know other people's children. My son was so happy during dinner he got up from the table just to dance, which is always a good sign. Long way of saying I like Airbnb. Maybe you want to go somewhere warm over the winter while you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money toward your trip. Whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home or spare room might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host nerds when it comes to finding the best financial products, have you ever wished someone would do all the heavy lifting for you? Take all that research off your plate? I definitely have and the good news is that with nerd wallets 2025 Best of Awards, that wish has come true. The nerds already did the work for you, reviewing over 1,100 financial products, things like credit cards, savings accounts and more to bring you only the best of the best. I'm just not great at paying attention to like this. When we get into the details, especially if it involves math, I'm out. And so the fact that the, the good folks over at NerdWallet are doing this work for us, just deep bow, man hat tip. Check out the 2025 Best of Awards today at NerdWallet.com awards. That's NerdWallet.com.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Nolita Zangiwe, welcome to the show.

Happy to be here. Dan.

Extra credit to you for zooming in from an entirely different continent. Usually our guests are coming from the United States of America, but you're coming from Johannesburg, South Africa. So thank you for making the time. Really appreciate this. And I'm excited to talk to you because you come at this issue of work life, balance of ambition from a really interesting sort of set of perspectives. You're an executive coach, you're a psychologist, and you're a dharma teacher. So I guess I wanted to start with a very general question, which is I'd be curious before we talk about how you work with your clients. What kind of suffering have you noticed in your own mind as it relates to your own work life?

Source of suffering is anxiety. That seems for me to be the driver to do more and more and more. And it never gets to that place where it's enough now I can relax, I can pause. That is my main source of suffering in my own work life because I work with environment where that is the culture. There is this compulsion around efficiency. Do it right the first time, don't fail, don't make mistakes. Do more and more. So the bottom line then actually is living from a place of anxiety. Yeah, it's exhausting. At some point I try to sleep. I'm still thinking about the client and what I need to deliver. It doesn't stop. The not switching off is a source of suffering. And I see this in my clients at this time of the year. So in South Africa, we close shop for about a month. December is an extended holiday time. So now we're in the middle of November. The levels of exhaustion are huge. Everybody is just trying to keep going until the end of the month. And then they go through. They are holidays.

I was laughing and smiling a little bit when you started your answer, not because I thought it was silly, but because I saw so much of myself in that, like the never ending nature of it. Like I make a to do list. And I think the lie I tell myself over and over is that when I Cross everything off this to do list. I can finally relax. But then there's a new fucking to do list. You know, it just, it doesn't stop.

Yeah, it doesn't stop until the body perhaps is what says no in one way or the other. Something goes wrong that then stops you. Actually, it's not something going wrong. It's something going exactly as how it should be. Because this bodies, this mind is not meant to function like that, to just be driven by this anxiety to do more, to do better, never fail, never make a mistake. That's part of the psychology. Even if this is unconscious, we're not saying that to ourselves. I will get there when I get there, I will then relax, I will then rest. These human bodies are not structured, to be honest with you, for that. If it's not the body that breaks down, it's the mental health. Because to live just with that level of anxiety, and you can feel this in the atmosphere of the organization. I was just only yesterday working with a team and we were reflecting on the topic of alchemy of conflict because that's also a source of suffering in the workplace. Not to know how to be with conflict. So Dan, there is the work that you have to do, you're doing a job, but most of the time I think of two or three people. And then another source of pain is relationship in the workplace. Not able to confront and be with conflict. Largely conflict just gets avoided until at some point something just gives or there's an explosion. So it's interesting that the main tool in managing conflict is to be able to get your system regulated. Because the first question I was asking the participants, when you think about conflict, what comes to mind? Somebody was saying anxiety, I have an expectation that the outcome is really going to be bad. Somebody else was saying, I really get tight contracted. There's a lot of tension when that word is brought conflict. So we don't see conflict as natural that it's going to be there. So that's the second place I see as a source of conflict. That's not the main thing. Too much to do, no time to just pause, allow for regulation of the nervous system. By the way, this is where the practice of mindfulness can be helpful. Even just learning to pause for a moment, rest and do nothing and to teach that it's hard for people who are driven by this compassion for efficiency. No mistakes, no failures, not realistic until you help people really be able to see that. I was even impressed then with this group, with their responses, where a person says, oh wow, I notice anxiety when you mention the word conflict. So already there is some awareness there that we can build on just to be aware of how I'm feeling in any moment. We are cultivating practice of mindfulness because sometimes mindfulness we can think about as this thing that we need to make space full. Something I have to do maybe at the beginning of the day for 15 or 20 minutes or at the end of the day. That's not how I see as being a practical way of getting organizations where people are always busy to practice mindfulness. So just even now in this conversation, I notice for myself when we both pause. There's something really restful about that that gives me an opportunity to connect with you. Just in that moment of connection, I can feel that there is some space to notice my thinking, to wait for the next question from you. It's a different conversation once we are able to pause. And if we can pause, then we can have what I would call a meaningful conversation that then uplifts me and prepares me for delivery. Meaningful conversation influences the results that we produce. A good quality result in what we do has a lot to do with the quality of the conversations I have because we deliver true conversations. So just a pause, as easy as that, can change the quality of our interaction. Right? So that delivery of results, it's also about relationship.

Okay, so I've heard many things in what you've just said that I want to follow up on, just to recap. The two main sources of suffering you see in your own mind and among your clients in the workplace are first, this kind of never enoughness, always behind, always has to be perfect mentality, which is unsustainable. And the second is a lot of anxiety and awkwardness and reluctance and reticence around conflict. Let's come back to conflict. And let me just start with the first thing, which is this anxiety linked to this sense of insufficiency. And I suspect that you view it through a Buddhist lens. What comes to mind as I'm listening to you talk is the Four Noble Truths. For people listening who don't know what that is. It was kind of the first pronouncement of the Buddha post enlightenment. He kind of delivered a diagnosis of the human condition in the way that doctors at the time delivered their diagnoses, which was in these four part messages. And so the first part was life is suffering, which is kind of a misunderstood pronouncement. It really just means that life is going to be bumpy if you're clinging to things that won't last. In a universe that is characterized by impermanence. The second of the Four Noble Truths is that the cause of this suffering is thirst or clinging or craving. And I think that's what I would imagine that's at the root of this anxiety that you honed in on when I asked you, what's the source of suffering in the workplace. Am I right about that?

You're spot on. You're spot on. What I'm talking about here is this lack of enoughness of anything, right? So if you pause then, and actually observe the mind, when the mind moves, it moves towards wanting or not wanting. This is what the Buddha refers to as the source of suffering. This wanting that doesn't stop. If you are not pausing, it just runs the show. There's always something that the mind wants, Wants or doesn't want, which the Buddha has called it the craving of the second Noble Truth. Lack. That's another way of putting it. I see it as this constant dissatisfaction that then drives the wanting and believing that for my next project, once I accomplish this task, there will be a feeling of satisfaction. Maybe there is, but just for a moment, it doesn't last at all, because that impulse for more is alive almost all the time. Actually, if you are a good observer of the activity of the mind, so it can never be enough. And then you are practitioners yourself, you understand, I would imagine these teachings to some extent, there is nothing wrong with wanting. It's not bad, it's not evil. It is, though, a source of our suffering. So what we do with the practice of mindfulness is, is to observe, investigate this impulse towards something more and more desire feeds desire. That's why then we don't stop, right? Desire can never satisfy desire. That's not possible.

I sometimes joke that I have this supernatural ability to know what is in the minds of my listeners, even though we're recording this months before the listeners will even hear it. And I suspect that what's going through the mind of many listeners right now is. Okay, you guys are right. The Buddha was right. What do I do about it? You Nolita, have talked about mindfulness. Is that the answer? And what does it look like in practically in my everyday life?

To simplify this, then we can say, just pause for a moment. Stop observe your thinking process. And the more you do that, you will notice that there's a sense of growing ease. Just pause. It's hard to do because we're habituated to continue to think and think. Nothing wrong with thinking. We function, we deliver, we get to results through thinking. Mindfulness just allows us to observe the mind thinking. And you can't observe the mind thinking by not stopping, just stop. It's like taking a step back and just observe. In that process of pausing and observing, we manage to disentangle ourselves from the content of the mind. And just out of that process of disentanglement, it can just be a moment of ease, some spaciousness, a sense of clarity before I go on to the next thing. So pause, do nothing. It's difficult, right? And it requires patience. That's the other thing the Buddha is teaching us about, patience. When we talk about mindfulness, we're training the mind in patience. So just by pausing then. And notice, impatience is already the practice of mindfulness. So we gotta simplify what this is. It's so simple that the mind complicates it. When you hear me say pause, stop, is that so difficult? Until you do it, you realize it's not. But if you're thinking about it, yeah, you're not going to experience what I am pointing you to. Try it out. Just pause and sense just the beauty of that moment of ease that allows us therefore, to think with more clarity. And when I work with people and support them, they can do this, and they can then taste the pleasure of pausing. Of course, on their own, it's hard to do because we're habituated not to pause, not to stop. So of course this is hard. In that sense, we're not going to get it right for the longest time, maybe, but once we taste the blameless pleasure of a pause, we're likely to come back to it. So for the longest time in our practice and training, we just coming back, starting again. Whenever you can remember to pause in your day, can you just pause? Right. Am I wrong then to say that the instructions for this are so simple, they don't change, it's just that it's hard to do because we're habituated differently.

Yeah. One of the cliches I actually like, I'm not a huge fan of cliches, but one of the cliches I actually like about meditation is that it's. Or mindfulness or both is that it's simple but not easy.

Right? And we like easy. We like easy more and more. I notice how addicted we've become to easy and comfortable. You are right, the practice is not easy. Who says it has to be easy just because it's not easy? Do we then give up and then continue to live out of a sense of agitation, restlessness, anxiety? It's not sustainable to live that way, it doesn't support well being. It doesn't matter how much we achieve in our lives in the workplace, it's not supportive of well being if we continue to get to our accomplishments, get to results the way we are doing. Pausing doesn't stop hard work. Pausing does not stop you from achieving as much as you want to achieve. It's not going against that so long. Also, then we understand lasting satisfaction is not going to come from completing this project. No, it's not. So where is it going to come from? If we're really looking for well being, we're looking for happiness whether we're at home or whether we're in the workplace. Here's the way. Just pause, I tell you. Then if you do this in your day just a few times, you can find a way of reminding yourself because you're going to forget anyway. But if you are able to put in place reminders and really just stop a few times in your day, like eight times in your day, I promise you by the end of the day, you won't feel as exhausted as you normally are. You'll get home and there'll still be energy to attend to your partner, to attend to children. You don't need to just collapse in your couch. And I don't know what object helps people numb tiredness at the end of the day. Could be a glass of wine, it could be coffee. You don't need that when you have been finding ways of pausing in your day. So we can do this if we can see that well being is not in things, it's not in getting to this and getting to that. Well being can be any moment when I pause and just attend to what is happening here, which actually helps regulate the nervous system. When the nervous system is regulated, there's already a sense of okayness, satisfaction. So that I then go to my tasks not out of a sense of desperation or lack, but out of enjoyment in doing what I do well anyway. So you can end up actually doing more. It doesn't mean do less. No, what I'm proposing here is mindfulness in the workplace of just pausing. Observe. Okay, what's going on here? Then I can feel and sense that, oh, Lolita, you're anxious. Oh, okay. Plus that to know that I'm anxious allows for a change so that perhaps I get to that meeting less agitated, less tense, because already feel a sense of okayness. Right. My well being doesn't depend on how well that meeting is going to go. My well being depends on my ability to just be.

[Dan Harris]

Coming up I challenge NOLITA in a very friendly way on the benefits of noticing. We talk about one of my favorite acronyms, rain, and we both engage in some interesting attempts to explain the ineffable this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. What do you want your 2025 story to be? Every January brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled in 2025. Maybe you're ready for a plot twist, or maybe there's part of your story you've been wanting to revise. Life isn't about resolutions that fade by January. It's about picking up the pen and becoming the author of your own life. Think of therapy as your editorial partner in this process, helping you write new chapters and create the meaningful story that you deserve to live. I have benefited enormously from therapy in my own life, and I really do think of the therapists I've worked with, including the one I'm working with now, as my editorial partners in this process. And I've been thinking a lot about what I want want out of this current year. A lot of it involves the status quo. I love doing this show, and I love danharris.com, but I also have other goals, like finally finishing my book. So I'll be talking about all of this with my therapist. If you want access to a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties, check out BetterHelp. You can easily switch therapists anytime, at no extra cost. Write your story with better help. Visit betterhelp.com happier today to get 10% off your first month, that's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com happier with a new year comes a chance to reimagine ourselves for the better and more importantly, reimagine our closets. This year I am resolving to refresh my look with some quality pieces and stay on budget. And I can do that thanks to our friends over at Quint's. I'm going to be getting on a plane later today and I'm going to be wearing my quince pants. These new quince pants I ordered. They're black, they're stylish, and one of the things I love about them is that they're loose fitting. You know, they look like they have a nice fit, but the material is kind of flexible so it doesn't, you know, pinch the belly. I don't know about you, but I really like that. I don't want to suffer for fashion too much. I also am a huge fan of their Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which start at 60 bucks. I think I've got three of those. However you choose to refresh yourself this year, all Quint's pieces are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. If you want to upgrade your closet this year without the upgraded price tag, go to quints.com happier for 365 day returns plus free shipping on that order. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com happier to get free shipping and 365 returns quince.com happier the happier meditation app has a new course. It's called Even Now Love A Prescription for Connection. It is taught by Joseph Goldstein and others and it invites you to pause, breathe and choose love even in life's messiest moments. With tools to strengthen connection, rethink relationships as a lab for love, and build self compassion, it's a useful way to approach the new year with clarity and care. You can download the Happier Meditation app and check out Even Now Love Today.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Let me challenge you on that just a little bit in a friendly way. I was talking to a friend of mine just yesterday and she is not a meditator, although she does yoga. And she was asking me some skeptical questions about the benefits of mindfulness. And I was saying something similar to what you said, which is we can be aware of our anxiety in a way that allows the anxiety to be there but not to own us as much, not to control us as much. And she said, and this is not an uncommon question that I get and I'm curious to hear your answer. Well, I know I'm anxious, but that doesn't help. And so when you just said can you pause when you're anxious? I'm hearing my friend Vanessa say, well, how is further acknowledging this problematic emotion gonna help me as I go into this meeting?

This is a good question. I'll tell you what. For me, that awareness of my experience helps me towards well being is if I stop and notice I'm anxious already, that allows me a sense of ease. You gotta practice this to actually know what I'm talking about. Because when you are thinking about it, it doesn't make sense. And thinking and anxiety and worry, those things go together here. What we are proposing is pause, step back from the thinking. Just notice what's happening here now. Because as soon as I notice I'm anxious, something about the noticing brings a sense of kindness. It's okay, you don't have to go on like this. You have a choice. It's interesting. I was referring to you, to the team I was working with yesterday. I had a call facilitator, and she was asking me at the beginning of the session, theresa, how are you feeling? I had to pause and like, oh, I'm anxious. And I could tell she was surprised by my response. And she's like, why are you anxious? And then I had to pause and think, I want a good outcome out of the day. It would really be great if we can create conditions here for this team to know that conflict is normal, just to normalize that and then know how to work with it. Okay? The conversation continued in another direction when we took the break two hours after the first part of that conversation with the team on the alchemy of conflict. She says to me, you know what? N. I could only know that I'm anxious because there's a sense of urgency. I release my anxiety through busyness. Had we not had that conversation at the beginning where I was honest about how I feel, she wouldn't have had that awareness. But just out of that conversation where I was honest, because for me, then, if I'm anxious, I'm anxious. I'm okay to admit to that because it's just a normal, natural feeling to be anxious, to be fearful, to worry. It doesn't reflect me. It doesn't say anything about me. It's just part of nature to have this whole range of emotions and feelings. So going back to your question, what does it do to know how you are feeling? It helps you to notice what's going on so that you don't override your own experience. Instead, you come into relationship with your experience.

Here's what's coming to mind for me as I listen to you talk and I think about the question, this smart question from my very smart friend Vanessa about like, what good does it do for me to know I'm anxious? I know I'm anxious. That doesn't help. It really is in the way in which you know mindfulness. And this is my answer, so I'll throw this out for you to respond to. Mindfulness is a specific way of knowing what you're feeling that is different, I think, than what the culture might suggest about self awareness. I think a lot of people think, oh, yeah, well, I know I'm pissed, but that doesn't help me to know I'm pissed because I'm still pissed. But mindfulness is a different kind of knowing. And one way to discuss that's coming to mind for me. There are lots of ways to discuss this, but right now, what's coming to mind is this practice that's an acronym known as rain. So it's a four part practice that I'm sure you're familiar with. I'll just say it for the listener. R is to recognize. Well, that's the part that's easy. I know I'm anxious. That's Vanessa's question. That's the first step to know the second A is to allow it. Now, this is where it starts to get radical. Instead of, as you said before, Nolita, instead of compartmentalizing or self medicating or indulging, it's just like, ah. Let me pause and let me just let this be here for a second. It gets even more radical with the I, which is investigate. Check it out. This feeling I'm calling anxiety, what is it really? What is this meteorological phenomenon I'm calling anxiety? Well, it's made up of component parts. A buzzing in my chest, maybe some heat around my forehead or ears, A starburst of a certain kind of thought. All right, let me check this out. Let me put this seemingly monolithic emotion through the cheese grater of mindfulness where I'm seeing that actually it's a bunch of changing components. And then the N. There are two ways that people use N. One is non identification, which you referenced before when you said, this is just nature. I don't have to take this personally. One linguistic way to do this is instead of saying to yourself, I'm anxious, you can say there is anxiety. I got this from Joseph Goldstein so that you're not claiming the anxiety as yours in some way. Now, other people use N to mean nurture, which I also like, which is you can talk to yourself in a supportive way like, all right, Nolita. Yeah, you're feeling anxious, but you're good. You've been through this before, and in a worst case scenario, you're still gonna be fine. So that's a very different way of acknowledging your emotion. That makes the pause make sense. Okay, I said a lot of words there, but do those words make sense to you?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think where people understand this differently, that word recognize can mean different things. Right. Just because I know I am anxious. I love it when you said, it's how I know. Because there's power in mindfulness awareness. That's why people like Jack Kornfeld talk about loving awareness. My teacher Kirisaro would say, awareness that blesses. So there's a quality in the state of mind called awareness that has benevolence that I don't even fully understand. It myself.

Me neither.

So this power we can't fully understand about mind knowing what is happening in the here and now, we're recognizing in that moment not just our experience, but we're recognizing the knowing mind, which is another step, you could call it, in a complicated way, awareness of awareness.

Yeah, yeah.

But another way of putting that is the knowing mind. Recognizing that and trusting and appreciating that as a place of safety and refuge. So I've used a few words there. There's that recognition. There is trust. Right. There's resting. And of course, you've got to do this. You're not going to get it just by hearing these words. You got to try it out. It's by direct experience that honestly, this makes sense. Otherwise it doesn't.

Totally. Yes. I want to drill down on this mystery that you nodded towards of awareness being loving. Because you hear this a lot. I hear it a lot from Dharma teachers, and I don't fully understand it either. And I'm not expecting you to fully explain it to me because it is a mystery. But it is so interesting. And I want to signal before I go much further in this, I want to signal to the listener, look, as Nolita said, this is stuff that's hard to understand just listening to people talk about or to read about. Like, you kind of have to do the practice to start to get a toehold in this. And even for me, as somebody who's practiced for 15 years, I only understand this episodically. But let me do my best to put my words on the ineffable here. And this is connected to the N in rain of non identification. Like, we can know anxiety in a way in which we're like fully in it. We're standing under a waterfall and all the water is just dumping on top of our heads. We can also ask ourselves the very interesting question of what is knowing? The anxiety. Then you step out of the water and you're actually looking at it for a few nanoseconds at a time from a non judgmental remove that we might call mindfulness. So there is this capacity we all have in our minds. And this is hard to talk about, but there's this yawning chasm of pure knowing that exists in the mind. That is, when you start to look at it, it has this warmth to it. It has the awareness in itself is loving. Maybe just because it's accepting and that is a form of love. I don't know. But. Okay, now I'm yammering. Am I making any sense to you and what would you say in response or to build on it.

You're making a lot of sense because language falls short here. It's an experience to feel this loving, holding quality. We can call it awareness, mindfulness, consciousness. The only way really we can know it. It's directly. It's not through listening to Nolita or to Dan talk about it. Words, they just point us to something that is so life giving, so beautiful, so nourishing, it meets the very need or drive that brings us to even listen to a podcast like this. There's something already that is known that we want to listen to a conversation on mindfulness. I could call that a drive for, well, being, a drive for being fully awake. So I'm not worried actually about people who are listening to this and say, I still don't get this. Of course you don't. But I know you have this drive for well being that has made you curious and interested in this practice of mindfulness. That drive is not just going to disappear, it's going to be with you. We can sense then that there is more to life than just what we hear. See, touch. There's more. But what do we call that? Whatever name actually you call it doesn't matter because it's about trying it out.

[Dan Harris]

Coming up, we get granular on how to integrate the pause into the flow of your day. Nolita talks about the single most important thing she learned from from studying with Joseph Goldstein. And we talk about how to have healthy conflict in the workplace. It's resolution time. And we all know that resolutions can be diabolically difficult. Habit change is hard. One of the best ways to make a resolution stick is to make it easy. If you lower the bar, you're much more likely to do whatever it is your goal is. One of the best ways to make it easy is to make it automatic. Which brings me to one of our sponsors today, Acorns. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing so your money has a chance to grow for you and your kids and your retirement. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you and your money goals. You also don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you invest with the spare money you've got right now. You can start with $5 or even just spare change. And you don't need a ton of time. You can create your Acorns account and start investing in just five minutes. You don't need to feel like financial wellness is impossible. Acorns gives you small, simple steps to get you and your money on track. Basically, Acorns does the hard part so you can give your money a chance to grow. Head to acorns.com happier or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future. Today. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns Tier 3 compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors, LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. View important [e-mail] Happy here as some of you may know, exercise is a significant part of my life. I don't think we need to overdo exercise, but the evidence is very clear that consistent exercise has all sorts of benefits for your brain and the rest of your body, not to mention your psychology and your relationships. Which is why I'm happy that Anytime Fitness is a sponsor of of this show. Anytime Fitness has all the equipment you need to reach your goals along with expert coaching to help you optimize your personalized training, nutrition and recovery plan. I have found personally working with expert coaches to be really helpful in my own fitness. So expert coaching is incredibly important. Anytime Fitness gets that you train for your life to be a stronger, more confident, more badass version of yourself. They get it because that's what they're all about. They're here with the expertise you need when you need it to hit your milestones and truly live better longer. At Anytime Fitness, you get more than machines. You get a personalized plan in gym and in app coaching support and a welcoming community. Get started@antime fitness.com.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

Okay, on that note of trying it out, let me take us from the deep end of the pool to the very practical aspects of all of this. You have in this conversation very elegantly described the benefits of regular pausing during the workday. And so let's get very granular. What do you recommend to your clients about how to integrate pausing into the flow of our day?

You need reminders at the beginning. If perhaps you can even set your watch after every hour, or maybe after every conversation or interaction, you got to find your way. What's going to help you to remember? Of course it's helpful if you join a group at the beginning of the day, even if to sit for 15 or 20 minutes. Many of those now are available online that can then help you to remember in your day to pause. The challenge is in remembering because I know even if you've been to a retreat and really experienced the benefit of this practice, when you go back home, conditions are so different. You start to practice for a Few days and then in no time it's gone. So here then you really have to find your own way of reminding yourself. Unless you have that, you're not going to go far with this. You will think about it, but you won't. Don't. So the key word is reminders. What helps you then in your own practice during the day? You said you've been doing this for 15 years already.

Well, it's interesting. I can hear birdsong behind you, and sometimes birdsong is a good way to remind me to wake up. There's actually a book by Aldous Huxley called the island, in which I believe the birds call out here and now. And that's always kind of stuck in my head. So I like to create little reminders because I completely agree with you. The easy part is listening to a podcast like this or reading a good book and hearing about the benefit of mindfulness. That is the easy part. The hard part is remembering to do the thing. And I want to normalize that. It's hard. And so we need to go to some lengths, many of us, to remember. So it can be about setting an alarm on your watch to do a minute of mindfulness every hour, if you're up for that. Doing the work of creating an abiding habit. For me, I know that if I sit for some extended period of time in the morning, my day is going to go better. And I've really taught my nervous system over time that if I can get that in, it redounds to my benefit. And then little things like idiosyncratic things for me about hearing the birds will be a trigger to wake up. Another thing for me is I have a nine year old son. He wants to play catch a lot and I love playing catch with him, but sometimes I don't feel like it. I always say yes. That is my policy. Unless there's a house on fire, I always say yes. And then I try to be as awake and aware as possible in the process of throwing and catching with him and to bring to mind like my 80 year old self and think about how much money would my 80 year old self pay to be back in this moment, even though I don't feel like doing this right now. So just building these little things into my life to wake up. I'm also a big fan of tattoos. I only have one, but if, and this is again, idiosyncratic. I'm not saying everybody needs to do this, but like, I think it's fair to go so far as to tattoo your body with Reminders to wake up.

Interesting. Then what's important in your response is acknowledging that I don't want to do this. Actually. Did you hear yourself say that the mind resists this, right? For whatever reason. Sometimes it may just be like, oh, it's a waste of time for me to just pause. It's hard to do this. Like for myself. I've been practicing just to sense from time to time, wherever I can remember, just sense my feet on the floor because that brings me to the now. And when I can do that, I can pause more and more. What I'm good at also is watching the mind. It's so interesting doing the four year teacher training under Joseph for four years. For me that was his main teaching because he was continuously saying, watch the mind. And because I had these international trips, 15 hours or more sometimes of traveling from Johannesburg to IMS, I would think it's okay, you'll just watch the mind. But it has taken me long to understand that, no, that's not what you were doing. Because I've gotten better at it. But I thought I was doing it. So we're so habituated not to be in the present moment. We're always leaning forward to the next thing. Even your friend, your yoga teacher, when you say okay, if I say to myself I'm anxious, how does that help me? But hearing that I'm thinking you're not really being with what is happening in your system around anxiety, you're still thinking about it. If you were to slow yourself down and just be with what is happening, something changes. It doesn't even mean the anxiety is not there. It may just mean, oh, there's more of a holding capacity for this anxiety. Therefore it doesn't control me. I can just continue with my day so long I'm aware what's happening when it's happening in my experience in many ways. Then you can also summarize this teaching to say of mindfulness, being aware, moment to moment, of your immediate experience. Just that notice when I say that how far we are from that. Because we just in our thoughts, future, past, never really hear when life is happening. Being with the immediacy of my experience. Even if it's anxiety or fear, just being with it's being truly alive. There's something immediate, there's something juicy, enjoyable about that aliveness of immediacy. So this is available for us any moment we can do it. Wouldn't it be a gift in your life just to be more alive? And how do you do that? Just pause, notice what's Going on. That's the first principle in the practice of mindfulness for well being. And then the next one, you can see how am I with this experience? So that you can see if you are grasping at it by either pushing it away or you want more of. Because already there we can see how am I causing suffering, going back to where we started then suffering. There is suffering in life and you can do something about it. You can pause and be aware and know for yourself what is in this pausing. Pausing allows us to befriend this human experience as it is. Isn't that process of befriending that whatever then you are experiencing, whether it's fear, anxiety, or joy, it's okay. It doesn't have to be otherwise. Right. Because sometimes we make this mistake. Even for experienced practitioners to think mindfulness is about replacing unpleasant experiences with the pleasant experiences, that's a misunderstanding. It's about being with the experience, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant. Just that awareness allows for letting be letting go of the suffering of craving. It doesn't really get more than that. Then actually, this teaching.

Yeah, it makes sense to me. And it's not just about befriending your experience and not being at war with reality. It's also about seeing that whatever experience you're having right now, anxiety, anger, whatever, it's impermanent, it's going to come and go if you can just sit with it patiently. That's a word you used earlier, patience. And you can then make decisions on the other side of the difficult emotion, which allows you to respond wisely instead of reacting blindly. And that's a game changer.

Absolutely. Because your actions and their impact will be different if we don't know our own experience. In the moment. I'm angry, and then I act out of anger. I speak out of anger. There's a consequence to that.

And that kind of brings me where I was hoping to go in our remaining moments as we're serenaded by your neighborhood birds. Earlier in our conversation, you talked about the fact that a big source of suffering in the workplace is this awkwardness and anxiety we feel around conflict. We don't want to deal with a hit, we'll sweep it under the carpet, and then it festers and can blow up. And I'm just curious, from a very practical standpoint, what do you advise your clients about how to have healthy conflict in the workplace?

We have to normalize it first. Most of us have grown up in households where it's bad to be angry. So we have to first recognize what's our own response or reaction to conflict. How do we think about conflict? Is conflict bad? Because the way we deal with conflict as adults is not unrelated to how conflict was managed in the household you grew up in. So that understanding is helpful for people to start with, right? In most households it was avoided because tension comes with anxiety and tension. That's why we want to avoid any unpleasant feeling. The instinct is really just to run away from it. Or in some household, it was acted out, anger was acted out. Therefore you realize I'll never be angry because anger is bad, it hurts people, it harms people. So just that's the starting point. Then what's our thinking around conflict?

Just to do some self examination around what have I been taught either explicitly or osmotically in my family of origin around conflict? And how am I bringing these attitudes, which are sometimes subconscious, into my work life?

Yes, it is a lot to do with understanding also your behaviors. Sometimes to avoid conflict, we can become fixers, rescuers, or we become victims. Those are different ways that people deal with conflict, for example. So I have to first understand how I think about conflict. What do I do in a situation of conflict? Am I the person who withdraws and doesn't stay engaged? Am I confrontational? What's your style? You already have a way that you deal with conflict. So just to unpack and understand that it's a good place for increasing your own awareness around conflict. And then of course, once you understand that better, there are certain tools that you can then use that can support you to engage conflict rather than avoid it.

And so once we've done that work, which is non trivial, once we've done the work of understanding what is our style and conflict, what are the practical tools we can employ next?

There's a variety of tools, a practice that has become popular. It's the nonviolent communication where you follow a certain structure that allows you to identify and name what you're feeling and what you need. Because most of the time we don't even know what our need is. Which when it's ignored, it's unmet. It can create dissatisfaction that can then lead to unresolved tension. So that's what's coming to my mind as one. Also, it's helpful to see when there's this tension, how am I engaging with it. I notice for myself if I feel tension between myself and the other. It helps me to be compassionate to that experience of sometimes fear around conflict. There's always some kind of pain involved in conflict. That if we were to recognize it and be compassionate towards ourselves around it. Something there can soften in that softening. It also allows me to be curious about what's going on with the other. What's driving a certain behavior that I may see as creating tension or conflict. So for me, the practice of empathy towards myself first allows for some settling that can then help me be curious about what's going on with the other, which in itself is a form of empathy if I'm curious in what's going on with the other.

So I'm hearing two specific tools there. One is first, as we've established it, is to do the inner work of figuring out what's your style and conflict. And once you've done a little bit of inner investigation on that score, there are a couple of tools. One is the popular practice of nonviolent communication. I've done some episodes on that and I'll drop some links in the show notes. But one of the key tools in nonviolent communication is being able to identify, like, what are your needs in this situation? And to be able to state them clearly. And then the second tool you talked about is empathy or compassion, which, and I hear a two step there that you're recommending is first, have some empathy and compassion for yourself. You're in a difficult situation, it might be bringing up a lot for you. And then to use that externally to see that this other person who you might be reflexively vilifying in your mind, well, they've got their own background and conditioning that have led to their current behaviors that you're finding objectionable or suboptimal. And you don't have to condone it. But can you see it within the context of empathy and compassion?

This is also a practice, Dan, that's not easy because we tend to be so attached to our own experience, our own views in a situation. So when I start by just acknowledging my emotions and bring kindness towards that, there's a softening that then allows me to be interested in what's going on with the other. So I don't see how we can resolve interpersonal conflict without some care in relation to my own experience of hurt or fear or anger and also care for the other.

One other practical suggestion that you alluded to earlier way earlier in this conversation is just bringing pauses and into conversations themselves into conversations where there might be some conflict. If you cannot topple forward and rush to make all of your points. And instead of actually listening to the other person, you're just thinking about the shit that you're going to say. Next, if you can just build some pauses into the conversation that may allow for resolution to arise.

So you can see they you need to have already been practicing pausing to be able in a situation where there is tension and heat, to remember to pause. Because in a conflict situation, the limbic brain just hijacks us for the unexpected. That's going to always happen in relationship.

You used the term before way earlier in our conversation. The alchemy of conflict. What is that referring to?

Alchemy comes from chemistry, where you need heat to change metal to gold. So when we use that word, alchemy, it's acknowledging that it's a process to resolve conflict, and it comes with discomfort and heat. To what extent are we willing to sit in the fire of the heat of the discomfort of tension and conflict? It's not a pleasant experience. Therefore, that's why we run away from it. Or we fight. We go into a fight, it's unpleasant. We don't like the experience of being in conflict and tension. Right. So how are we going to support ourselves? Practice of mindfulness helps us to build capacity to bear with difficulty, to bear with unpleasantness. This is another value that is so precious about the practice of mindfulness. Life has suffering, so we build in capacity to be with suffering, to bear with suffering. There's always going to be conflict, losses, some kind of pain or another in life, pain doesn't come to an end because we practice. We practice to build this capacity to be with difficulty in life.

Well said. What's coming to mind is something that our mutual friend Joseph Goldstein says. He has this little expression, it's okay, by which he does not mean everything's fine. He means it's okay to feel whatever you're feeling. You will survive, no matter how unpleasant. And that's directly relevant to this conversation around bringing mindfulness to bear within conflict. For many of us, the feelings of anger or the feelings of upset or hurt, or the anxiety around having to say a difficult thing, we don't want to sit with that. We have to feel a lot of aversion. But it's okay, actually. You can sit with it, watch it come and go, watch it change, and then you can enter the fray in a saner way. It's a very powerful technology, and as we said at the beginning, it's both simple and not easy. Nalita, we are really running up against the end of our time together, which has been great. I just want to ask two questions that I always ask at the end of interviews. The first, is there something you were hoping that we would get to, that we didn't get to.

I feel satisfied that I could share about my own experiences in relation to mindfulness in the workplace, mentioning these two sources of suffering and how to work with them. I'm good. I'm good. I just wanted to say to you about your last teaching that another way of saying the same thing you were saying is that it's okay not to be okay.

Yeah, exactly. Being okay with not being okay is paradoxically the root to being okay.

Oh, wow. There you are.

Yeah. Just sitting here talking to you. I feel suffused with okayness, which is. I'm grateful to you for that. The last question I want to ask you is if people want to learn more from you or about you. Do you have a website or is there a place where we can hear your Dharma talks? Where can we get more Nolita if we want it?

If www.couragetolead co za. That's the name of my leadership consulting company, couragetolead.

And if we go to Dharma Seed, will we be able to hear your Dharma talks?

I have a few talks. When I've had opportunities to teach at IMS or drug or irc, there will be some talks by me.

Okay. We'll put the courage to lead website in the show notes and we'll put some links to your Dharma talks. I suspect people are going to want to hear more from you. It has been an absolute pleasure to sit and talk to you and to listen to the South African birds serenade us. So just a big thank you from me to you.

You're most welcome. I really enjoyed this myself. Thank you, Dan.

[Dan Harris]

Thanks again to Nolita. As I mentioned earlier, this sanely ambitious, ambitious thing is an occasional series we've been running for quite a while here on the show. If you dive into the show notes of this episode, you'll find a link to our past episodes in the sanely ambitious series. If you're a [e-mail] you will already have in your inbox a cheat sheet for today's episode which sums up the major points and also provides a full transcript if you want to go deeper. If you're a subscriber, you can dive into the chat and talk to me.

[Nolita Tsengiwe]

And one another about what you heard today.

[Dan Harris]

One last thing to say before I go, I just want to thank everybody who works so hard to make this show a reality. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People, Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Kashmir is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10 happier and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.

[Unknown]

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