Another Tumultuous Era: Why Cultivating Inner Peace Is the Leadership Work of Our Time

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose program, which has been brought to with passionate and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Already thanks for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes. If we have not met before and you don't know me, I'm a workforce advisor or organizational psychologist, management consultant, speaker and author, and my team and I at Gusto Now help companies to unlive and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture, inspirational leadership and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at Gusto dshnow dot com or my personal site at Lascortes dot com. Today we have with us Stephen Post, PhD, a public speaker, social philosopher and scholar and health and social sciences, philosophy and global spirituality, as well as an opinion leader, mentor and educator. He currently serves as Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at the Stonybrook University Renaissance School of Medicine. Then as a man asked an incredibly full and distinguished career prior. He is the author of Pure Unlimited Love, Science and The Seven Past to inter piece, which we'll be talking about today. He joins you today from Stonybrook, New York. Doctor post a hearty welcome to working on Purpose.

2:14 Thank you, Elisa. It's nice to be with you. It's wonderful. As you know, I loved your book, and I've been looking forward to having you one here to talk about it and share with my listeners across the globe. So let's start with since they haven't read a book yet and I have, let's start with why you wrote this book and what's its promise. The world seriously needs love, because we're so divided, and we've forgotten how to smile and how to laugh and how to have a warm heart. So I wanted to write this book at this time. Although I've been working on the topic for as long as I can remember, even thirty years, forty years. I've written a number of books about love and kindness and so forth, but this one I think is the best of them all. It's written by a certain kind of depth and power and authenticity.

3:11 It's written for the moment, and I love writing. I love writing things that will do good for the people who read it. Works for me, and yes, we do need this right now in the world desperately badly. So I am looking forward to being able to share what you've written here and hope that it will land in our listeners and viewers in a way that starts to really open their hearts and connect them. But let's talk first about calling. It's fascinating to me that you found your calling at age seventeen, and obviously it's very clear to me by reading it both even cultivating it for a long time along with your own spirituality, your piece, your understanding of various expressions of the ideas, and I love that you understood it. And you also had to really negotiate with your parents to litch to convince them to let you go after it. So let's hear the story of how you discovered your calling so early.

4:06 Well, there is an origin story to this, and it's an interesting one. Even when I look back on it now, i'm a little bit surprised. I went to a high school in New Hampshire and conquered New Hampshire and at the age of fourteen, I was tutoring young French Canadian kids who came from very destitute backgrounds, and I enjoyed it so much, and I knew early on that I wanted to be a teacher, which is remarkable for someone that young, but I just knew it, and I had a lot of support. So life went on. But then when I was seventeen, I finished high school and I was home. My mentor had found me a job that summer in the Bronx, and my parents were completely set against it because they thought it was much, much too dangerous. Actually, of course, I, being an adolescent male, didn't believe it was dangerous in the least right, but nevertheless, we had some knockdown, drag out arguments about this for at least several days, and I was headed to Swarthmore for college, and my mother ultimately she said, no Swarthmore, I'm not paying a penny for that if you insist on this job in the Bronx. And my father, who'd been a lieutenant commander in the Navy and it has a very strong personality, he supported her. So really at the end

5:41 I relented and I said, now, Dad, what can I do? What can I do this summer? And my dad, who was the president of W and J. Sloan's department store on Fifth Avenue, he said, you can work and build de Bono's lampshade factory, which is in the town of Patchog on the South Shore. Really close to what she wanted to do, really. Very close, very close. I lasted for about two weeks. I drove my dad's second hand gray Mercedes one ninety, which had seen much better days, to Patchog every morning early and I worked cutting card work between two very largely shaped Italian women, very nice, and Bill DeBono would look over our work with his cigar. And eventually, after two weeks, I realized I just am not going to do this. So I drove out to West Hampton, which is the east end of Long Island, and there I met with some of my friends and I decided that I was going to go west because I'd had a dream about going west, and this was very much in my mind and on my heart. So late one night I took that Mercedes. It was a Saturday night, and I just drove due west through New York, through Manhattan that is, and over the George Washington Bridge, and there I saw two signs, one said Route eighty west and the other said ninety five South. I knew I was

7:11 going west. It was intuitive, and that's how I got my start. So as I stopped in the middle of Pennsylvania at the Lewisbourg exit because the generator for this car had fallen apart, there was no place I could go. There were no gas stations around, no telephone booths. So I wrote a note to the Pennsylvania State Police, which is in the book. Yes it is. It's fantastic. I wrote in pencil, by the way, because I wanted to hear the graph fight rolling understand yep, to the Pennsylvania State Police. Please return this car to Henry av Post forty four, Davison Lane, East West Islip, New York, phone number five one six six nine five six five five from his son Stephen, who no longer works in the lap Shape factor.

8:09 That's such a great story. And that's how I got my start. So I hitched a ride out to Chicago in a big white truck and then I had a ride with a van full of hippie types. And when I got out to Omaha, Nebraska, one of them said, so you better call your mother. She must be worried stiff, and I did. I got out along the highway and I called collect to my mother. She picked it up and she said, oh, my god, Stevie, you're alive. We thought you were dead. And then she said, I can call off the Pinkertons. Now this is really very adolescent. I said, Mom, why did you call the Pinkertons.

8:56 Didn't you get my note you left for the state police. Yes, that's right, and I won't go into the details. But eventually I made it out to San Francisco that summer, and I went up to Oregon to read college, and that was really the beginning. I just knew that I had to put my foot down. My mother eventually recognized that they probably should have let me just take that job in the Bronx. That would have been on yea than Dad having to go out to Pennsylvania. But such his life. So I did fine, and I can't say too much more about it. But the point is when you feel you have a calling, and I felt I had a calling, sometimes you have to really fight to stick with it. You know, what is a calling for me?

9:49 The first chapter of this book, May You Give and Glow. It's how elated people feel when they contribute meaningfully to the lives of others, using their talents creatively. And of course that's nice if it's sporadic, But if you can get to do that every day of your life and blur the line between work and play, then you have a calling. Then you found your calling. And I've been teaching in medical schools for forty years, University of Chicago, Michigan, Case Western for twenty years, Stonybrook for seventeen years now. And every day I come into my office and I feel elated. I have a helper's high because I know I'm doing what I want to be doing and I feel that I should be doing.

10:39 So celebrate that, doctor post, and I really appreciate that you had the wherewithal and the courage and the capacity to push back on your parents. And there are so many people who don't do that. I meet them then in their forties and fifties, and they are then wanting to start over, you know, really pursue what really matters to them, and that's a whole different way. I'm grateful that they get there, but maybe it's a little bit cleaner route if you could just do it when you know you're already convicted at a younger age. So celebrate that you just had that. Conviction and you just went for it against the odds. Against the odds, and that story didn't live on in my family for a long long time. It's neither here nor there. But I'm from Oregon, we say Oregon, and I really wanted to go to Read college and when I was younger, so I lived a little.

11:25 Bit vicariously through you through that experience. But that aside. So you told the wonderful story of how you knew what your calling was and how you began to pursue it, and now you spent forty some years in it. We would be remiss if we didn't start this conversation about your book definding about what you mean by pe or unlimited love? What is that? Well, there are two definitions in the introduction. The first one is unlimited love. What is love basically in the sort of ordinary, everyday human sense. And I borrow a little bit from a psychiatrist from the University of Chicago named Harry Stack Sullivan. Yes, and he was very bright, he did amazing things, and he had his struggles. But he defined love as follows when the well being and the security of another is as real to you as your own, and sometimes even more so, you love that person.

12:32 So that seems pretty workable. It doesn't rely on ancient languages. It's fairly matter of fact. You could use it with an old friend in Starbucks who's having a hard time. You can do it with your kids as they grow older and have to figure out life. But that's basically what I use as a definition of love. But then what about pure unlimited love? That's a different matter. So as I was sitting in this office with Jeff Trilling, who was a wonderful colleague of miney just retired, I asked him what's your definition of pure unlimited love? And he thought very carefully about it. He was a nephew of Lionel Trilling, the editor of the New York Review of Books, so he had away with words, and very carefully he said, pure unlimited love is the first thing you will see when you close your eyes for the last time, hopefully. So that gets into the metaphysics that somehow love is an ultimate reality. And because you're a businesswoman, among many other things, you might want to know that I had a lot of mentoring from Sir John Templeton, the investor, and Sir On died in two thousand and

14:04 eight in Lyeford, Key, and as he was dying, he realized there was a book that he wanted to write. He'd written some books over the years, but he was not going to have an opportunity to write it. So his son, Jack, who was a pediatric trauma surgeon at chop the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, called me on my flip phone. I was on Route eighty by the way in New Jersey when he called and he said Dad is dying. I said, Jack, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do? And Jack said, well, actually there is. Dad has a favor to ask of you. He wants you to write a book which he will not be able to write. And I thought carefully about it, because that's a fairly audacious thing to do. And I said, did he give you a title, Jack? And Jack said yes, Ultimate Reality is Unlimited Love. And I was in the medical school at Case Western, and I thought about that for a moment, and I said, could you go back to his bed and ask him if we can get a question mark at the end of that, because it would take a little of the pressure off me. So, you know, plausibility is easier than proof. So I waited a minute and Jack came back and he said, yeah,

15:36 Dad says, is ultimate reality, unlimited love question Mark and I went ahead and in a couple of years I wrote that book and published it with the Templeton Foundation Press. And it was really true to Sir John's thinking. He trusted me with that because we spent a lot of time together, and so that's a wonderful thing to be entrusted with someone's legacy in that way. It certainly is. That is so beautiful and what a wonderful way. Let's let our listeners and viewers reflect on why you wrote this book, why it's so important, and let even that definition of pure and unlimited love thinking a little bit while we take our first break. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortez. We've been on the air with doctor Stephen Post. He's a public speaker, social philosopher and scholar and health and social sciences, philosophy and global spirituality as well as an opinion leader, mentor and educator.

16:36 We've been talking about where this book came from and why it's important to him. After the break, we're started diving into those seven paths that he talks about in his book. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Alease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise Alise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose.

17:51 Thanks for stating with us, and welcome up to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes, as I am dedicated to helping create a world where organizations thrive because they're people thrive. They're led by inspirational leaders that help them find a country with their greatness, and we do business that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books, so one of my latest came out called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically inliven your business and I rooted to help leaders understand today's diverse and discerning workforce, what do they want from you? And then I give you twenty two best practices to equip you to provide that through your leadership and your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or wherever you buy your books, or my website at least core test dot com if you are just joining us. My guest is doctor Stephen Post. He's the author of Peer Unlimited Love Science and The Seven Paths to Inner Peace. So before we dive into some of these paths, I want to situate for our listeners and viewers how you did this.

18:42 So you provide our seven paths, and then you then let us delve into each of these paths through your Wheel of Love, which has ten forms of love and why they're so important to healing. And I want to just call out that one of those which we can as we go along week and talk about a few of them, but one of my favorites of the Wheel of Love is the care frontation. I just think that that In fact, I already shared that with somebody that I've been coaching for a while, doctor Post, and they loved it as well. So I just want to call that out. And as we're going through as many of these paths as we can get to and talking about them bringing them to life, I would love for you to share your choice of one of those Wheel of Love applications as we go to kind of help bring the path to life.

19:27 Yeah, yes, we can do that. Okay, you've already talked about the first path, which is give and glow, and I love that. I love the whole idea of you being able to give in a way that causes you to glow. I just love that. Don If you want to say anything else about that, you've already kind of mentioned it, but it's up to you. Well, it's just a wonderful notion because so many people suffer with the mistake and assumption that everything is transactional. M Yeah, give and glow freeze them. It allows them to realize that they have within themselves a certain natural affinity for kind giving, and that if they can stay in touch with that, they will be happier and healthier, and they will probably, as we've shown, live longer. So there's nothing wrong with that. It's all positive and you don't have to count the paybacks.

20:31 Yeah, it feels you reminded me just very quickly. On the fourth of July last year, I sat with my twenty two year old daughter and we were having a meal, and there was this woman with her two children, and they appeared to be like four and like maybe eight or nine or something, and the little girl was drawing a picture and he was reading this one of the books that I forget what it's called, but it's a very very it's a very challenging book for adults as well, for alone away. I came up and chatted with them and just said something about her drawing, and she. Just lit up. And you know, it's not hard to make someone's day, right, And so we left the restaurant. I paid the tab, and then all of a sudden, the little girl boats out of the restaurant and she runs up to me and she's waving this little piece of paper.

21:18 She said, I drew this for you. I drew this for you. And I looked down and it was a picture of me apparently and her, and so I said, can I give you a hug? And she said yes. And so it turns out that they were from Korea and she was the woman was here to join her husband but that was just a simple example of this right, and I got so much goodness out of that, and it was not a difficult thing to do at all. Beautiful. It is beautiful, and you know, one of the things I was very fortunate to be involved with. When I came to Stonybrook from Case Medical School. It was the summer of two thousand and eight, and that was just before the financial downfall. Yes, and so two thousand and nine was a tough year. And I was contacted by United Health because they wanted to do a survey of adult Americans and they asked them how often did you volunteer?

22:22 This was in early twenty ten, looking back, how often did you volunteer in two thousand and nine, and forty one percent had done volunteer work. How much? Not a whole heck of a lot. One hundred hours for the whole year. If you break it down, that could be an hour or two a week, not huge. And then we asked them questions in positive psychology about how that made them feel. So seventy three percent said, lower my stress levels eighty nine percent, improved my well being ninety two percent, and here is purpose for you ninety two percent enriched my sense of purpose in life sixty eight percent.

23:11 Volunteering made me feel physically healthier. Recovery from loss and disappointment seventy eight percent. It's amazing, actually, And they were freed from a lot of anxiety and the feelings of helplessness. So we did a study of widows and widowers who had been happily married, but now they were struggling a bit with not necessarily depression, but they were having to adjust to a new life and it wasn't so simple for them. And it turns out that the ones who could self report that they were helping others in their neighborhoods, or maybe in their vicinity, their hospitals, the Alzheimer's Association, whatever it might be, they were getting through this process of grief and bereavement a little more quickly and in a little more lasting fashion. So I got a call from a New York society of widows and widowers. There is such a thing, and they said, we're having our annual talk in Manhattan, and why don't you come in and speak with everybody. So I came in. I gave a plenary address about this study, and at the end there was a guy in the back of the room and there are a lot of people there, and he started waving his hands quite frantically, and he said, I don't care what you say, buddy, I don't do nothing for nothing. And there you have it. And what I realized was that he was so caught up in that attitude.

24:45 I said, are you happy? He said, no, I've never been terribly happy. So we talked about it for a while, and I don't know what happened to him, but it just shows you that sometimes people are so caught up with this idea of you have to get back in order to justify giving, or else you're just a sucker. They're so caught up in that that it hampers them and keeps them from discovering their deeper selves. Yeah. Yeah, So what you talk about that in the book? I remember that story. That's interesting. Well, do you want to share something from the Wheel of Love that would help bring that one to life?

25:29 Well, the Wheel of Love, you know, there are there are ten expressions of love. I get up in the morning and I pray for half an hour. I meditate a little bit and prep myself for the day. Then I drive down Route twenty five a on Long Island to get the Stonybrook Medical School, which is where I am right now, and I'm envisioning. I'm being intentional about what form of love I want to into my office because I have people I'm responsible for, and I can't just talk about love because it's sort of you know, what kind of love? Are we talking about? Love of chocolate, designer jeans, you name it? So you have to navigate that.

26:14 But you know, once you start talking about the expressions of love, it becomes very easy and you have a real practical, concrete leadership philosophy. So I'll go with carefrontation. Okay, Sometimes you know, one of the people I work with has just sort of gotten off track. They're going away from what I know is they're better have And I don't want to be confrontational. I don't believe in the idea of tough love because it usually doesn't work. But carefrontation works, and I didn't invent that term myself. I have to fess up about that. Yes, pack, Yes, I'm Scott Peck who I had been at Case Western Med for twenty years. He graduated from there before I got a Case, and he wrote a great book called The road Less Traveled.

27:06 It was the first book that I read that left a major impression on me. Yes, that's great, And he uses the word carefrontation. So up here in my cabinet, I have a whole file of letters between Scottie Peck and myself, and he tells me, you need a form of love that straightens people out in a loving way and it's not confrontational, but it's something deeper. So he said, I give you permission to use my word care frontation. So I have that in writing in its signed But yeah, carefrontation is an art form. And I'm in a department of preventive medicine too, so a lot of patients come in here and they have challenges in life that they need to correct. And what you have to do is very respectfully. You have to ask them are you ready for change? And if you are, what would you like to try to do? Give them a chance in a caring way to feel loved and engaged autonomously as they figure out how they can solve some of their problems. And then I asked them to write it down and come back in a couple of weeks, which works. So carefrontation is an art form. And we need it. You know, people have gotten so confrontational in our culture. It's hard to imagine that some of our lives could go on in this sort of an environment

28:36 at all. Right, So we either get to carefrontation as an expression of love or we're out of business now. Sometimes people have a great calling, but they get diverted, They get tempted by something with a little more money or maybe a little more presidious institution, and that takes some carefrontation, because those are the things that really take people away from their true callings. Indeed, Well, what I have found interesting about that using that idea with the people that I work with, the leaders that I'm out to develop, is when you when they think about, well, I need to have a conversation with somebody because if they're not performing as well as they need them to, or I need them to come back closer to.

29:23 The market or whatever it is. What I already love about the idea of carefrontation is if you have that in your mind, you're what you're essentially saying is I want to have a conversation with this person because I care about them, So that's the centrality of it. Whereas if you have that feeling, Oh, I have to discuss this. I have to confront this person that's negative. So I really love the idea that you're going to have this conversation because you care about this person. And I think that's a very different way of relating with love to somebody who you're out to help elevate. Certainly from the advantage point of leadership, exactly. Couldn't be more the case. Well, there are many, many others. I want to get through as many as we can here, but I just I do want if you can distinguish we were talking about this first path to love as which was give and glow. You're another path that you distinguish as may you heal with kindness? How is that one different from give and glow?

30:20 Well, it's related. A lot of these things are related. But you know, I'm in a hospital setting here right now, and I've been in medical settings for most of my life, and you know, people come into medical school because they really want to be kind and caring and compassionate and take good care of people who are otherwise vulnerable, and sometimes they lose that quality. They get routinized. I call it through the routine helping patients, but they lose all the energy of love because love heals, and so you can heal with kindness. You don't need to be a doctor or a nurse or have any degrees at all.

31:17 That's important. Just our tone of voice, the way we interact with people. That is how we can heal the world, and that begins with us. You know, it's not easy sometimes to keep up with it, and you have to do some kind of practice. That's why meditation, mindfulness, prayer, depending on your tradition, can really be helpful if you're thinking about how to maintain that attitude in your heart. So I love it and all the best doctors I've ever known, and I've known a lot of great doctors. They've been known for their kindness, for going the extra mile.

32:03 A little story there about Joe Foley, who was the most famous neurologist of the twentieth century. Camp from from Harvard to Case Western, and he was my mentor there. He's the one who got me there. And Joe would take his students, his residents studying neurology into a patient's room. First, he'd knock on the door and tell them to make sure that the patient was clothed. Then they would walk in and Joe would sit down, making contact eye contact with the patient at their level, and he would ask, is there something that I can do to make your stay in this hospital in the University Hospitals of Cleveland a little more comfortable? And one of these patient I described in the book blurted out she'd had a stroke and no one knew she could talk at all. She blurted out, I would really like some iced tea with lemon. Yes.

33:11 Doctor Foley went out, yes, and he got that iced tea with lemon and he brought it to her and it was absolutely mesmerizing for all of his students to see that. And Bob Haney, who's in the book too, Bob is a great human being a physician. Bob never forgot that. He said it shaped his entire career just seeing doctor Joseph Michael Foley, doctor Foley approach a patient with that level of humility. I love that in the book. I remember that story as well. Let's let our listeners and viewers also reflect on that while we take our break. I am doctor Leis Cortez, who're on the air with doctor pri Stephen Post. He's a public speaker, social philosopher and scholar and health and social sciences and global spirituality, as well as an opinion leader, mentor and educator. We've been talking about a couple of the paths to pure a limited love and also how to apply them in the end of the real life.

34:11 After the rape will continue the conversation. I will also continue and share a little something about my recent experience since we're talking about medicine and love. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infuse cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at eliscortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a LISEE at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose.

35:26 Thanks for saying with us and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes. By now, you know that this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. So if you want to learn more about how we can work together to help you elevate yourself through the gustinew Academy for leaders and individuals alike, make your way to gustodesh now dot com and then go to the training tap and you can find the academy there if you are just joining us. My guest is doctor Stephen Post. He's the author of Pure Unlimited Love Science and the Seven Paths to Inner Peace. So I wanted to sharge a little bit, as I mentioned before the break, since you know that I just recently had emergency surgery in December, obviously clearly unplanned. I got to experience and be on the other end of that kindness that you were talking about, and it definitely facilitated my healing. And I was often amazed at what the staff was doing, what the nurses did to try to make me comfortable to listen to me.

36:21 It was really amazing at what they did and I really got present too, because I really haven't had to stay like that in the hospital for just what a beautiful, caring profession medicine really is, especially when practiced with love and kindness. So I just wanted to share that I was six days in the hospital and they really made it beautiful for me. That's wonderful to hear. Yeah it wow, who it was amazing. So not that I want to go back in a New Yar future or anything like that. I did go back to tell them all thank you once I was upright and moving about, but not that I want to return visit. Okay, So I cannot let you off this this show because it just wouldn't be right if we didn't talk about one of your seven paths, which of course is may you follow your callings. We've already talked about that somewhat with your own journey. But a couple of things that I just wanted to call out from your book that really spoke to me that I would love for you to comment on, you know, And this is why I want our listeners and viewers to get more present and connected to this, because if they don't, if you don't know your purpose yet or you're not connected to it.

37:26 This just may help you. But you know, this idea that you talk about is that you know, a calling is more than just a job or an occupation. It's it's a feeling of being beckoned to draw on your abilities. And that is what I have experienced, that feeling being compelled that I must do this and that it was obedient to it. And you say, just as we have a unique that what we have is unique. Is so just as we have a unique something about ourselves, there's this effort asent energy that never that can if we don't live a purpose, it never really engages with the world, and then therefore or we don't really get this opportunity to really reach more deeply into our potential. And that's what I wanted to speak to is what I've learned is what for me is and for others is there's something about the notion of reaching our higher potential through our purpose that I think compels people about purpose, but they don't understand that, they just feel it. So could you speak a bit more to this notion of may you find and follow your callings in that vein?

38:27 Yeah, so following to find your callings, I mean We have a lot of young people who volunteer in this hospital, and I sometimes debrief with them, and they're doing all kinds of things for the first time. They are high school students. For example, they might be in this department for a week, they might be in the surgical suite for a week. They'll do different things because they want to try to explore and find out what they feel strongly about and what they feel draws on their talents. So volunteering is very important. Yes, Gub and Glow. You know it is so key because you can also discover yourself in that process. Yes, yes, now you know as far as as far as your question goes, repeat that one more time.

39:23 It was the notion of there's what I called that on that little bit of your book. Was the connection between when you really give yourself over to following your calling, that you're really tapping into a deeper connection of potential within yourself. You're drawing on more of your deeper talents and energies, which calls forth a deeper sense of potential from yourself. Yeah, because if you're just fitting in at your job and a lot of education, I'm afraid to say focus is on just getting people to a point where they can fit in with their jobs. But that's really not what you want, you know, Montessori in the Montessori system, believe that you want to educate people to discover their creativity.

40:09 When I was in Cleveland, I used to drive out about forty five minutes to the west on Route ninety to the birthplace of Thomas Edison Milan, Ohio. He was thrown out of school when he was eleven years old because now mind was completely unfocused, and so he came home to his mother on the farm. She said, Thomas, what you can do is tinker in the in the barn. They had a big barn. It's a big red farm still there. It's a museum. And she said, maybe you can be a light to the world. And you know what he was. So he spent his whole life, he said.

40:57 You know, he loved working. He loved what he was doing so much. It was such a calling for him. It was so fulfilling that it clearly brought out his best. And if you think about it, in our world today, so much energy and time and talent is wasted and lost because people are not educated or encouraged to find their callings. So this is a little bit embarrassing. But I actually one day was in Penn Station and I looked around and there were all these wonderful young people, but they were just so morose. They were just heading out, not going any place or doing anything, and they were smoking and whatever. And I walked up to him, one of them, and I said, do you know that you are a miracle of the universe and a wonder of creation?

41:52 That I was out of my mind, and maybe I was, but we talked about it for a while and I said, I told him that I think everybody as these special, unique gifts, and our calling in life is to find out how to utilize them in the service of others. And that's what Picasso said, that's what William Shakespeare said. If you look at philosophy and theology over the centuries, that's what it's all about. And if you can do that and stick with it and not be diverted or tempted away from it, you will have a glorious life. I think that was another thing that stuck with me Doctor Post about the idea of calling, was that it does speak to that you're calling from or pulling from your best talents. This is the best of you that you're putting forth. And I think that's another thing that I wanted to celebrate about that that we don't often hear when we're talking about callings or purpose. So I wanted to celebrate that aspect too.

42:53 Oh yeah, it's so important. And you know, having a calling will mean that you never have to work. There are drudgery elements to every job, including my own. Believe it or not, sure, but I always come to work with a smile. I love what I do, and because it's a calling, I'm endlessly creative as I think you are. You know, I'm just endlessly creative. I never feel depressed, I never feel slowed down because there's just so much I can do. I just love teaching these brilliant young people. Yeah, and it's such an honor and you know it makes me happy every day.

43:34 Isn't that wonderful? That's what I'm out to help more organizations create or create an environment for them to experience and step in two as well. So I am one hundred percent with you, doctor pos Let's take it on the road. Let's go. Sure, Okay, there are many other paths. I mean, you have seven in your book, but I have to have you talk because I really align with this one as well. One of the passes, may you cherish the gift of nature. There are so many people that I meet, doctor Post, who say I grew up in the cement jungle. I don't know what you mean. What do you mean nature? I am somebody who I go out and commune with the rain. When it rains outside, the rain talks to me.

44:15 So speak a little bit about this path about may you cherish the gift of nature? You know, psychiatrists now without embarrassment, talk about nature deficit disorder. Yep, it's not formal as a diagnosis yet, but I think it will become back. And when you get out into nature, you shut down all of the negative emotions, the bitterness, the hostility, the resentment and so forth, because the awe of nature. Nature is so awesome. And this is why people at Berkeley like Keltner and others have written best selling books on awe yes, And you know, awe is such an important feeling to have. But unfortunately, by the way, when I was at read Jobs, slept on my floor and we read the autobiography with Yogi, just so you know.

45:20 That you mentioned that, I was like even more envious. Yeah, but those are the days. And you know, the thing about having all these wonderful white devices on every surface in your home is that it keeps us away from one another. We relate to each other through these devices, not person to person. I was up in Canada not too long ago, and I had a conversation with the guy who got the Nobel Prize for AI. He's now at the University of Toronto, and you know, so he gave a very very profound address when he received the prize because he said he did not think that this artificial intelligence was going to be to the benefit of humanity.

46:14 Now it may be in some ways, even in a hospital, can help you read a picture, an image, an X ray, an MRI. But ultimately, if it's dehumanizing, it's counterproductive. And a lot of our young people, I'm so sorry to say this, a lot of our young people are struggling because they've just been brought up on these devices. I was with a friend of mine, Nick Duncan, at a French restaurant in Manhattan some years ago, and there was a three generation family sitting next to us at a table. Grandma and Grandpa, the parents and the two kids. Two kids were completely locked in to their devices and they were holding them. They're held up on little stone and the grandparents. You could see we're trying to get through to their grandchildren with positive psychological messages about gratitude and kindness and creativity. But the kids didn't even batten eye.

47:16 And you know, that's what's happening where we wonder why some of our children are suffering so much, because it's because they're not really in the real world. You're evolved, and you know that we developed our brains to connect. Person to person, not person through machine, right right, right right, yeah, I echo that. In fact, one of your rather pathways is may you raise kind children. And we don't have time to talk about that, but let's just put that out for our listeners and viewers. That's one of your pathways to pure unlimited love. So we've come to the end. Already goes by so fast, doctor Post. The show is listened to by people around the world. What would you like to leave them with?

48:02 So I think that we're going through a challenging time right now. However, a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt justfy my grandfather, Edwin Mayne. Post married a woman named Emily just saying that, and who told me not to put my p's on my fork with my thumb. I preferred. I preferred Emily Post to a lot of people, and she felt that you all need to get back to basics. We need to learn how to say thank you, how to be kind to one another, just in the simplest way, especially when we're young. That the one I really like is Eleanor Roosevelt, and one of her famous quotes the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

48:57 Of course, you've got to have dreamers to do that, So everybody, you just need to start start dreaming, stick with your dreams, don't give up on them ever, and you will live a fruitful, fulfilling life. What a beautiful way to finish, doctor Post. I am so delighted and happy to know you and to be an enlarged and enlightened by your book and now sharing with the listeners and viewers around the world. Thank you for being on working on purpose. Well, Thank you li Lisa, and keep up your great work. It's a very important mission. Thank you. I think I will I'm a bit. I'm a bit addicted to this calling listeners and viewers. You're going to want to learn about more about doctor Stephen Posts the work that he does in his books, including this last one that he's written, Pure Unlimited Love. You can start by visiting the site Unlimited Loveinstitute dot org. That will give you a good start to learn about him. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always get to be a recorded podcast. We were on the air with Green McDonald McDowell excuse me, talking about his book Craft a Corporate Camelot Where Leadership Becomes legend. He drew some alleering comparisons between the lessons we can learn about creating strong culture and leadership fit for today's times from really with legendary King Arthur and his leadership and his downfall.

50:14 It was quite an interesting way to talk about it. Next, we'll be on the air with Monica Brownie Mitchell talking about her fresh research where she explored the impacts of return to office mandates and ways to mitigate them in Fortune five hundred companies. This is the topic many companies are still grappling with, and Monica has a seasoned executive herself. She's been drawing on this research to shed light on the viable ways forward. See you next week for another educational and nursing conversation. Together, let's lean in and learn how to create destination workplaces that call forth the best from everyone, build our inspirational leadership capacity, and find ways to do business that betters the world. Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose, featuring your host, doctor Elise court Has each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires and passion performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.