Don’t Lose Yourself: Staying Strong, Sane, and Grounded in a Divided World

0:00 The topics and opinions express 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 explicitor 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 Cortes.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working Purpose Program, which has been brought to with Passionate Prize since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor A Lease Cortes. Most leaders are sitting on untapped human energy. I help them unlock it. I'm an organizational psychologist, logo therapist, workforce advisor, and the founder of the Gusto Now movement. But the title I live by, which is actually much simpler, is just simply eye traffic and energy. That's what I do. That's my jam, not service level motivation or another engagement initiative. The deeper force what I call Gusto, the life force for performance that drives commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of a shared mission in the clients we serve. You learn more about us and how we can work together at gustodeshnow dot com, or you can visit my personal site at least courtes dot com for information about my speaking in books. In today's program, we have with this back for our think the fifth time. Doctor Arthur Cerra McCaulay.

1:56 He's a licensed clinical psychologist who has been treating clients through more than forty five years. He is the author of several books, including Echoes of the Heart, A Journey to Emotional freedom, inn strength and self love, and the power of soulful healing turning wounds into wisdom. Today we're talking about his latest book, Soul Fire, Igniting Inner Strength and a Fractured World. He joined today from outside of the Boston area. Doctor c As his patients and friends often call him a hearty welcome back to working on purpose. Good to see you, Elise. How are you, my beautiful friend. I'm so happy for you. This last beautiful book that you put out. I think you said you feel like this is your best yet. It was. It's just chock full of so much wisdom, your wisdom and years of experience in so many practical ways to be able to really ignite your soul fire. So I just really want to say thank you for doing this yet again.

2:48 Sure you're very welcome. So I know. Because I know you, and I also because I read the book. But so I know your book is really informed from these forty five years that you've had serving in clinical psychology, and I really appreciate just who you are. I know that you're sitting with them in their darkest moments. We're also helping them grow into their higher potential over the years. So you've already written so many books already, Why did you need to write this one. I was really driven to write this book at least because of what's happening in our country. I mean, we're at a time where if you express your truth, you could lose your job, your friends, your safety. And we're at a time with a lot.

3:29 OF's voices outweigh the wisest, and outrage seems to be more acceptable. Than reason and civility. And we see among our leaders that division is used as a way to gain political cloud rather than bringing together people in unity. So I was thinking, what can I do? Because every day my. Patients, my friends come to me, especially my patients, people who are vulnerable at this point in their lives, and they're just filled with worry and fred and saying, you know, what's going to happen next, what's happening to our World's happening to our country. So I felt that I needed to write something that would help people cope with this fracture time, because I don't believe we are in a fracture time.

4:13 Indeed, indeed, those of the listeners and viewers who haven't read your book yet or aren't really acquainted with the topic. What is soul fire, Well. Soul fire is that aspect of ourselves that where goodness lies, and many many theoticians that described it as the spark, the divine spark, the soul. I like the idea where something Theatricians that has declared. It as the breath of God, meaning that it's a place where the essence of us is located, our truth, our day. And I think in these times we don't always remember that it's there because people are so put down and the burden of living in this current culture has really costs them in terms of stress, anxiety.

5:02 And depression, so we lose track of what soul fire is. But when you look over history, I mean you had soul fire Moses and Martin Luther, King Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Machado in Venezuela, and I think even President Yulenski in the Ukraine. I mean, these people have brought together in unity their whole countries where they were under tremendous stress and pressure, and they located that part of themselves that spreads so far is an ember that's inside all of us. But then when we express it and we are out of the people who also have it, or we allow other people's. Embers to start to fire.

5:44 We see that this is a mechanism that not can only change individuals and societies, it can change the world. You know, I'm reminding me, Arthur. I think the first time I had you on the podcast, and this for years ago. I don't remember which book we were talking about that thinks. I think this is your fifth appearance, and you are the winner, by the way, people we guessed before you, my friend, take the prize for the greatest number. But one of the things that impressed. Me about about you then, and I want to say this here now again, is I really appreciate that you are a learned man and you also have reverence and respect for all the religions of the world, talk about working to try to heal a fractured world.

6:28 I really appreciate that about you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I try to learn from every tradition because I think they all have something to give us. They do too, Yeah, I do too. One of the things I thought was interesting that I have to have you speak on here is you say in this book that then it's really about the great remembering. I think what I mean by the great remembering at least, is that people don't always realize that there is this strength with them, that our truth lies, and it can be buried by circumstances. We know it can be buried by personal circumstances, but it can also be buried by societal circumstances.

7:10 And I think many Americans have. Forgotten that it's there because people always say to me, well, I don't feel. Like it can do anything. I feel it. I'm just helpless. Well you're not, You're not. I mean, look, we just have the largest rallies in the history of the United States the other day. So we can do something. We can do something. We can address prejudice, we can address people who are not acting in appropriate ways, are overly aggressive. Many people want to avoid those kind of conversations, but I think if we. Can have them within the indignity. They're necessary because we have to get back to understanding each other, not opposing each other. We're in us and them society. There's the good guys and the bad guys.

7:51 And historically for society that has destroyed nations. We have to form a unity, which has been missing for some years now. So your book starts by talking about how we recognize that our inner spark is still there. I think it would be useful for our listeners and viewers for you to describe what people look like and feel like, and how they're moving about the world when that inner spark has been eclipsed or diminished. What does that look like. I think you know it's there and it's manifested when you're using love more than fear, when you are speaking your truth rather than doing what's convenient, when you're not falling into the cynicism that it exists so much in our country right now. When you oppose those forces and you stick to your own beliefs and values, then you are expressing your soul.

8:51 Far And that's so I wanted to contrast that because I think it's so important for listeners and viewers. Oftentimes they may not have recognized. I mean, I can tell you, you know, I have a phrase that you're familiar with. I call it the walking dead. This is where people aren't connected to their soul fire or so really what lights them up at all, and they're just kind of going through the motions. They're on the hamster wheel. And oftentimes when I describe that to people, they're like. Oh my god, that's me. And I think that's an important part of this whole journey is to start to recognize I do I got stuck here. I do need some help, I need a way out, I need illumination, I need help, or maybe I need a hand held partner to take me through this journey with me.

9:40 I think when you're with other people who think in this way, you know. One of the most point of stories in this book is about my friend Jimmy, who. Was a longtime friend from my childhood. He was our paper boy. He and I were at extremes political polar posits, and he would always tease me come into our home, like if we were having people over and he'd come in and I one time I. Had CNN on and he looked at it and he goes, you're not going to get the real truth from them. And he would poke and poke and poke, but he never had slanted me. He never got angry, and at times I would get more intense than he would because he was sort of teasing me about thinking that I was so naive to not believe.

10:24 This mag of movement. Okay, but why do I use him as an example? Because I found out recently that he was at the end of his life and we hadn't spoken in two years because the last time he was at our home he left and he supposedly I was told by other people that he was upset with me because I said, I don't want to get into this political discussion, but if you want to, I'm going to tell you what I think. And I did, and we didn't. I sent him an. Email, text message, phone message, but he never responded to anything. So I thought maybe what I was hearing was true. He was upset with me. So I went to the hospital and seeing when he was at the end of his life. In the first thing he said to me with tears in his eyes, he held out his hand, wanted me to hold his hand, and.

11:06 He said, we hugged it out, right. I said, yeah, we hugged it out because I hugged him before before we left on that night where we. Had this disagreement. He goes, just want we hugged it out. So what he was saying is that our relationship, our love, our compassion for each other was more important than political views. He came to a book signing that I did three years ago. And I know that he was not particularly favoring maybe what I had written about, but he came. Why did he come? Because his friend had written a book. That's why. That's right. Now, that's not beautiful. We had opposite views, but that didn't interfere with the love of respect we had for each other.

11:50 Today we're encouraged to hate the other people. You know, our president said at a memorial recently that he hates his enemies. Is not listen, Well, this is the opposite of what my friend would advocate. He would never said that he didn't hate because I thought different. That's what the fractured world, that's what promotes it. Understanding Why can't we have different points of view? We've had different points of view and arristry always without hating and seeing another another. Party as the enemy. Yeah, reminding me of something really that speaks to this.

12:32 I was exposed to this idea, and then I got to host a Jeffersonian dinner a couple a couple of years ago through the Conscious Capitalism Dallas chapter. So a Jeffersonian dinner is it comes from President Jefferson, who would oftentimes assemble people who have very different viewpoints around his dinner table, and the whole point of the evening was to be able to unite people, to let people speak and share their very different views, and that there was it was going to be done in a respectful way where everybody could. Hear it and listen to it, take it in. And then the idea was is that those individuals would leave and go back to their respective homes, communities or whatever, and that knowledge, that new knowledge would then flow into that and be disseminated with them through that person and so sharing the idea. That's just I love this idea of come to the table with a different perspective. And there's rules, of course, to host the Jeffersona dinner, and you can't just id only oppose it to a person who speaks. There's ways to be able to respond. But I think, boy, it wouldn't it be amazing if we could have more of those kind of everyday Jeffersonian moments.

13:40 There was a time in this country where that existed. I mean, you know, John McCain and Kennedy, and Kennedy were good friends to the best friend. And Nancy Reagan told the sorry about tif Oneil and rural Wigan arguing in debatings. A two o'clock in the morning, where she had to come down to the kitchen take and say, go to venue two. You're ridiculous. And yet when Reagan was shot, who was the first one on his bedside, Tip Oeil and he said, I love you missed the President. That's because they were both patriots. They believed in what they were doing was for the good of the country. Today, I think what has to serve so many people is we have very ego driven leaders who are there for their own benefit, not necessarily for the benefit of the country.

14:28 And the ways they're acting, the ways they're talking are the kind of. Language we've never heard in our lives because it's filled with hate and resentment and sadism, and that's so, so so destructive. Yes, indeed, I want to let our listeners and viewers just think about that for a second, just reflect on this idea of the fractual world that we live in, and also consider, of course, what can you do to be a service to be able to heal that. So let's take our first qu do that. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. We're there on the air with doctor Arthur Cerra McCauley. He's a licensed clinical psychologist who has been treating clients for more than forty five years. I guess patients for forty five years, sitting with them as saying they navigate some of their darkest days and reaching for their higher states and growth.

15:16 We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez 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 at least 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. Thank you staring with us, and welcome back to working on purpose.

16:27 I'm your host, doctor release Cortes, as I'm dedicated to help them create a world what organizations thrive because our people thrive are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness. How we do business in a way that better's the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my ladies came out is called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose canoretically and live in your business. And I wrote to help. Leaders understand today's discerning workforce. What do they want and need to be able to give you their best and stick around? And then I offer you twenty two best practices to provide it for them through your leadership and your culture. You can find all my books on Amazon or on my personal site at least cortenessa dot com if you are just now joining us. My guess is doctor Arthur Cierra McColley. He's the author of Soul Fire, Igniting Inner Strength at a Fractured World. So I wanted to dig a little deeper into some of the concepts you talk about in the book. As we go along here, certain listeners and viewers can get a deeper understanding of what it is and to walk away from the program putting to use some of the things that you're going to teach us on this on the show, and I thought it would be interesting if we could talk about maybe one or two of the kindling your core practices that you talk about, whether that's the physical, the mental, and spiritual them give them something they can immediately start to use when they leave the program.

17:43 I think one of the most important things in terms of kindling kindling your soul fire is to be. Able to pause and not be overly reactive. You live in a very overly reactive. Culture right now, so take a moment, sometimes even be silent. You don't have to respond immediately think through things. That's where empathy comes into conversations, because if we don't slow down, we can't have empathy. When we speed up and we're overreactive, we produce stress, homeows, we produce repetitive, obsessive thinking. And we don't see other people. Clearly, we have to slow it down. I give examples in the Book of Two Men Who an example of two men who were arguing about their different political news before groups started, and the only way they came to any kind of reasonable position together was to slow down. You're yelling, Why are you yelling? Why are you raising your voice? Because the louder voice doesn't mean you're right back up, back up, back up, back up.

18:42 What happened at the end. Of two or three discussions with the two of them is they realized. They went that far apart. One man who owns his own business and he was very concerned about the economy and he thinks the Democrats give it way too much money. The other man is thought that the power administration has no ethic and no civility and no integrity. And they both are people of integrity and civility and reason. But they had to see each. Other's points of view, and ironically, in the end they realized neither one of them like the leaders that we have right now, but they have different political positions. Okay, like we said, I said, and were talking before. That's always been the nature of our country. So pausing is is incredibly important because if you don't pause.

19:30 And you don't slow down, empathy goes out the window. Empathy if the environment is too hort or too cold, it's not there, which means we cannot understand each other. We're talking at each other, and we see a lot of that in this US and them environment right now. We're talking at each other. We're not really listening. You know, one of the things that I'm grateful for, and I think I'm going to say i'm proud of, is for my own growth journey. And you and I have talked a lot over the years ago out the various. Things that I've gone through and how I am growing and what I've come from is I have gotten so much faster at being able to more quickly connect with people and where they are. I'm oftentimes I'm the first person to come to tear up when somebody shares something.

20:18 There's a crowd of us, and I'm connected to and listening to what they're having to say, and it has an effect on me because I'm listening and I'm present to it, I'm taking it in and I'm really grateful for that growth because I don't know that I would have experienced it that same way. Ten years ago, fifteen years ago. Well, you're a thoughtful listener, which is why I. Told you the first time the first time I was on your show, like I was as sounded, you actually read the book. Normally, I get this thing, give me ten things to ask you and give me ten. Answers, and then you know that the host has not read anything it's just a very superficial.

21:02 Conversation, but with you, it's an in depth conversation. Because you have a passion for making people better, for making the world better, and you know that unless you listen, you cannot learn that's true. Thank you for seeing that in me. I do. That's exactly how I really think and feel about it. So one of the other things that I really found valuable about your when I haven't done a lot of work on shadows, but you talk about shadows and light and facing the shadow. Yes. And one of the things that I thought was really really interesting about your what you say in there is you were talking about how you well dreams carry shadow material.

21:44 You said that you believed that they were the psyche's way of balancing consciousness. They show you what you're ignoring and waking life. I track my dreams. I'm a person who I remember whatever I possibly can't upon waking, and the first thing I do want having my first coffee or tea is I captured them in my journal. A little bit more about shadows and dreams well shadows. What Young was trying to say is that there are things that all of us want to deny about ourselves. So we push them away. And it's very important this concept because in our current culture, I do believe that what we do is when we're not aware of them, we project them onto other people with hatred that we see of one side toward the other, and people stealing hatred every day on Instagram and Facebook.

22:32 Is it really about politics? What I try to teach people is no, It's about personality. It's about denying what's in them and seeing in other people. Is the complicated concept in psychology called projective identification. It means unconsciously, I see in you what I'm denying in me, but I don't even know I'm doing it, so I hate you for it, you know, And then you see a lot of that so shadows. How do you know if you are struggling with the shadow something about you that you've not come to integrate into your personality? Overreaction? For instance, I had I had a woman. That I mentioned in the group in the book, who was in one of my groups when she came in and she was furious about a staff meeting, and one of the guys asked, her, what are you so upset about? Well, I went into the staff mean she was a nurse practitioner, and she's not a pediatric nurse practitioner, but she saw her an eleven year old in the clinic and one of her colleagues just sort of innocuously said her, Oh.

23:30 I didn't realize that you had to have expertise. Now, my client couldn't sleep, she had insomnia, she was angry, she wanted to fight with her. And I said, what do you think she thought of you saying that she was? Well, I think she thinks I'm stupid, I said, will you ever call stupid. In your life? Of course, my dad called me stupid all the time. It was the principal law our grammar school. He came running one day and embarrassed, embarrass me and was angry. With my teacher because I was such a slow reader. I had nothing to do with this guy. You know, it's not a compliment. But would you lose sleepover for a week and want to fight someone right to get into a battle over it? No, it's there, unresolved suffer their dad. So that's what shadow is. And we know, you know, the body recognizes certain shadows before the mind does.

24:17 So sometimes we get a cue, We meet somebody we don't even know them. When we start to feel uneasy, we don't want we want to kind of walk away. We feel unpleasant because they're simulating something in us that we have not addressed. The more we address, the more clarity we have, and the more we have access to that soul fire within us. But if we're living with all of these emotional internal conflicts, we can't get to the essence of who we are. It deprives us of that soul fire in the distorted reality. I thought, also, thank you for that. That was very illuminating when it comes to shadows, very illuminating.

25:00 I really appreciated you have, Like I said, listeners and viewers, he has so many different exercises and ways you can immediately start working with. This stuff in his book. And the shadow exercise that you offer in the book about listening to qualities that you hide, judge or try to eliminate the ones you feel dangerous to admit, and then for each one, ask yourself what might be hidden there. I thought that was really really powerful, really powerful. Can you see a little bit more about how that exercise works and why it works. I think, first of all, it's important to ask those questions, but it's difficult because we're all too subjective and we sometimes are in such denial that we really don't see.

25:42 Sometimes we have to ask someone. Close to us. We can ask ourselves, we'll come up with much. Ask somebody close to you when you think that I don't recognize about myself that I might have trouble with, you are definitely going to get an answer. If you have good friends, there's a question about. That old age or a good friend tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Right, a friend love don't just play game. You don't just tell me. Something you think I want to hear and compliment me. But what do you think I don't really recognize? Well, you start getting answer. Psych you're pretty temperamental, you're too competitive, you are kind of greedy. You start to hear the things we don't like. Hear them.

26:23 We can't digest some and work with them. Everything is that is denied limits our joy in life. There's a correlation with the more we collect, the more that's in that shadow area, the more we don't deal with the more we do, so we can't have happiness in the full way. So there's a correlation between joy and suppression, and once you recognize that you don't want that because you want to have joy. I let's talk about that for just a second. Author, I completely agree with you, because you know, the work that I do around us show that's the life force of an organization to perform, and it's just that's why the engine that I've helped the organization stoke. I wonder how many people feel like they've lost the whole connection to joy?

27:11 What is joy anymore? Do they think it's real? I think we're at a time where the depression rates are very high, anxiety is high, addition is high, and prejudice in particular has been the. Highest it's been in the last thirty years. Anti Semitism, Islamophobia, sexism, agism. I mean, it's all there because we are in an environment of hatred. And then you start to think that, well, everybody's like that. No, no, long, Eve, don't ever say everybody, because it's not true. I was meeting with a client from another country the other day. She goes, I've never come to America. You're all I can't believe you elected this guy twice and you're all so angry in it.

27:53 I said, whoa we do mean, we're all, we're all you're talking to me, we need we're all. You know, that's like saying the leader of one country is the country right where generalizations. Coming right right? And when you generalize you make mistakes often. So we have to slow down and see what is the truth. Yes, indeed, which people are struggling with right now, because every day you turn on the news you hear more. Look two three weeks ago, people were saying, oh my god, what's going to happen next? What's going to happen next? And now we're in the war, and what is that is that making vulnerable people feel like things are going to turn around?

28:37 No, it's not. Because people are being killed and we don't know why and have clear. Reasons as to why. And so now, okay, what's the next thing? A woman says yesterday in therapy, she said, but now I'm having nuclear dreams. And I said, what do you think that's about? You? Well, that's the next thing, isn't it. You know, it's this and that and. Vengeance against anybody who opposes what you say. And now we're in a war, and what's the next thing. Yeah, it's easy to imagine how that can esculate for people. I can completely see that. So speaking of that and this, you do this so beautifully. We'll have a whole chapter on the language of the heart, and then you offer many, many different practices of heart listening. Can we have a couple of examples.

29:31 I think heart. Listening has to do with the body because the heart gives cues. Our physiology gives cues. But when we're moving rapidly, our mind denies them. So but when we slow down and we try to figure out, what is that age in the back of our neck? Or why am I getting headaches every day? Why all of a sudden do I have somemach indigestion when I've never had it before in my life? What's going on? The body is trying to tell us something. The body is saying, wait a minute, slow down, find out what's troubling you, rather than denying it and seeding ahead.

30:12 That's where pausing comes in. That's where renewal comes in, because when we slow down, and you have to have courage to do this, because if you pay attention to the body, you're going to notice some conflict either within your cell phone, between you and someone else. And look human beings are operating. We operate on We don't want conflict. We want to just everything is easy. But that isn't life, and that isn't human beings, and that isn't how we grow or get more intimate with other people. When we resolve conflict, we get closer to people. Right now, we're in an area where people are categorizing each other. By political party and that's that, and not really knowing what's behind that.

30:58 Like the example I gave of the two men in my therapy sessions, they have more in common than not, but because they characterize each other so quickly, they lost. Track of that. They didn't even uncover it. I someone told me. That when two people are together and they care about each other and they are near enough proximity that their heart's actually be at the same rim. Is that true? Yes, it's it's empathic secretocy. Okay, well that's.

31:40 A much better place for us to LEA are listeners with on this next break and where we left them last, which was with the shadows, Let's talk about. What did you call it? What synchronicity and pathic empathic synchronicity. Let's just think about that on this next break. I'm your host, doctor Earliest Cortes. We've got another doctor. Archis here mccollay, who a licensed clinical psychologist who has been treating patients for more than forty five years. Sitting with MSA navigate some of their darkest days and reaching for their highest states of growth. Will be right back.

32:27 Doctor Elise Cortez 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 at least to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. 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 alisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to Working on Purpose.

33:18 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. I mentioned that my last book came out recently, The Great Revitalization. It has twenty two best practices to help you elevate the culture of your organization for today's to start your workforce, you can download a free three page assessment to learn just how you're doing as a destination workplace. Make your way to gustoshnow dot com and you can grab it from the home tab or of many other places on the site where you can download it from if you are just now joining us. My guest is doctor Arthur Cere mccoley. He's the author of Soul Fire, Igniting Inner Strength and are Fractured World, So as people are scrappling with how to live and get by and ideally even thrive in today's fractured world, I appreciate it.

34:11 Also your whole. Chapter on anchors in the current so ways to help people better situate themselves, plant themselves if they will. And there's two things that you that I would love to have you expound on. One is the values Map and the other one is the Boundary Script. First, they're talking about the need for anchors in the current give us some more context for the people that don't know what we're talking about there. Well, I think in terms of values, it's knowing what you believe in and what's unshapable within it, and that's where entigrity comes in. And in terms of boundaries, when you make your boundaries vague, you don't engender respects. When you're making firm and clear. If someone says something inappropriate to you and you let them know that that's not okay, you gain more respect. So values are knowing who am I and what do I believe in and what can I not give up just for the sake of pleasing someone else. And boundaries are how do I respect myself?

35:19 I don't let people know that's not okay. You can't in a certain way. You know, you talk about sexism in the in the corporate world where you know women might get touched in appropriately, and it's you know, instead of being demure, you turn around and say, hey, do not do that. Do not do that. Okay. You're not slandering a person. You're not calling them our name, but just you're maintaining a boundary that that's off limitos with me okay, that gain resilience, self respect, and it's an example of your soul fire inaction. We tolerate injustice. That's not neutrality, it's complicity.

35:59 We have to express our soul fire. That's where the passion in us comes in. Our values, our boundaries, and I want you to respect me, and that behavior is not okay. Now, this is where it gets tender and interesting. Here. I can envision some listeners and viewers going, yeah, I really value whatever the right to carry arms, whatever it is, and I really value that. And so we're just going back to the Jeffersonian dinner conversation that we were having before about looking and looking at different views. Can you share a bit about how you help your patients navigate when they're hanging on to some very deeply held beliefs, can also values that you can see sometimes either they're doing it in a way that is not actually honoring other people's values or other people's space. So there's that, you know, what I'm trying to get to is that we can have really strongly held values, but sometimes maybe they have been informed in a way that at limits our overall growth or our ability to be able to be united with other people.

37:06 Yes. In the book, one of the examples I give is efficient. I call her read. And she was working in the corporate world and from another country. She came here to Boston to take a job and it was supposedly the dream job of a lifetime, and she was interviewed by a woman who she had heard about before and who guaranteed her that she wouldn't be working weekends. This was a company that valued health and balance. When she came, that woman had already left, and she was working for a man who was the opposite. He was very much a bully and dominating people. She realized right away that the people in the department didn't like him and didn't even know how we got to be in this position.

37:51 Long story short. We talked about her values. At one point, she has said, in my family, we grew up with knowing that the truth is so so important and you can never let the truth be violated or your truth be violated. And I said, well, the truth you were told was you don't work weekends, you don't have to travel consistently, and that's not what's happening. She was, I know, And I said, do you think that's any has anything to do with your insomnia at I said, you're not valuing the truth, this value that you have, You're allowing it to dissipate right in front of you. So in weeks in group therapy to get her too with trepidation and with the help of some other women in group Evan who had been bullied in the Corvid world, to address this man and said, it's either we go back to the initial contract.

38:44 Or I'm not here. And she was worried and she was fretting, and she said, you know, I was perspiring, And people in groups said, it doesn't matter if you were inspiring or not. You did what was true. You have a value the truth. He lied to you. They lied to you. That's not the truth. So you're going to exist in an environment where your core value is not seen as significant at all? How can you do that and feel healthy? And she was ignoring those cues in her body. She ended up with back aches and migraines and other things. The body tells the truth, as we had discussed earlier. But eventually she was able to gain her voice and speak.

39:28 And you have to do for your soul fire to be alive, you have to take action. You have to put it into action or else it's just hoarding. You're keeping your best self to yourself and saying yes to everything is saying no to yourself. That's what she was doing. Okay, work weekend, it's fine. No, it's not fine. That's why you're not sleeping. He said, you didn't have to work weakends. Thank you. That was I can't just I know that you've over the years, ag you've written so many books, as you've shared so many things that you learned from your patients and watch them triumph and such, and I just it's such a such an important and beautiful work that you do.

40:11 Doctors, doctor seeds. Yeah, Well, a couple more things I want to be sure and talk about before we finished the segment here. First I want to go to the idea of tending the flame. And I thought that this idea that you talked about is one part of that is to assess the environmental mismatches you might have. And you just describe one with Frida in terms of her work and her workload. Can you talk a little bit about so it's as we're talking about tending our flame, our soul fire, these what might be some environmental mismatches that listeners and viewers could notice and start to recognize. Well, what if you live in a community that you know is promoting prejudice. It's very possible certain parts of our country, we know that that exists. What you do you say there? Do you stay in that neighborhood? Do you stay in that organization? What if you're a single mom with three young kids and you need you need that check. So it really cuts to the heart of our dilemma of how do I respect my own values and boundaries and yet I need, I need to live, I need I need money, I need to support my children or whoever. So it can get confusing, but that's where we need other people. I think that's why group groups of people doesn't have to be group therapy. But when people come together as a group, ideas flow and people start to discover that you know, a lot of

41:41 us are. In this situation. Look over, eighty five percent of people in the corporate world and five years ago a study was done and eighty five percent of people who were bullied ever said a. Word wow, stayed in those environments. So what does that do? But it's not an easy to say, and I think you need the empathy of other people to realize this is very difficult, this is hard. But maybe there is another all alternative. Maybe Mary, who you just talk to, she says, well, my company's hiring, or maybe Frank says, I'm looking for our secretary or I'm looking for a project manager. When you come into a group of people and you see a lot of this in AA, of course, because people help each other not only find jobs, but remain sober, remain healthy, and it's free.

42:29 People come together. One of the groups that I work with here in the Boston area is. An interfaith group where people come together of different religions and atheias as well, and they help each other learn from each other. But when they're in these dilemmas, they get ideas from each other. When we adjust with ourselves and we start to get depressed and we start to get low, we sync within ourselves, we lose our soul fire, and we need to be around other people who will help that ember come to life. So true, so so so true. Okay, So then now we can build on what you just said there and you have a whole discussion on the fire that heals and you know, this really speaks to me. This makes our various conversations and the book that you and I co wrote together, The Power of Selfial Healing, this idea of transforming pain into wisdom is so compelling, and I think for so many people, I think when they hear that phrase, it's got to give them hope that I can do something with this pain. It's not just because at once you know it's there to destroy me. I can actually transform it into wisdom.

43:42 I think wisdom. Someone asked me the other day, what's the most important thing capacity to think that as people age that they need to acquire to be fulfilled, And I said wisdom, because I think. What happens when we suffer we learn. Right. You may be in a. Poor marriage and you learned something about that spouse and the qualities of that person that you missed that you didn't see initially, and now you know you're not going to go there yet. You may have worked for somebody who acted inappropriately or treated you poorly, but you understand why you took the job and how you made. The mistake of jumping to it first without really thinking. Because the corporation has a very known name, so it's working through the pain that we come out of it with more insight and wisdom. And you know, Eric Erickson said the.

44:35 Last stage in life. If you don't have wisdom, what do you have? Because wisdom says I can see people now, I can know people in ways that I never did before. And in the mindfield of relationships, I know who to get close to and I know who remain distant from. Now I have a map, but it's my own map. And how did I acquire it? Because I was hurt, because I. Suffered, Because yeah, yeah, so true. Well have you talk about the importance and the opportunity and the invitation to become delight and then you also talk about the obligation of radiance and the completion that begins from that, which.

45:18 Is where I think I want to have us finished, to finish the show. If you could just speak to that, because actually that offers hope and it invites people into this fold. I think we need to radiate our life. We need to help other people whose embers are not glowing, and when you step into their world, you turn the flickers into a flame and it becomes more of a movement and your soul. Far is enough, will always be enough. But you need to do something with it, and you need to protect it. You need to practice those renewable practices that we talked about. So that it doesn't dim. But you need to give it away. You need to give it to other people, because when you illuminate other people, you will the world and they will never forget you because you're there's nothing there's no better feeling than teasing off the potential and someone who doesn't think it's there.

46:13 Here are such a gift to the world. Doctor Arthur CERR. Mccauley'm so grateful to call you my friend, to call you my co author, and to share you with my listeners and viewers around the globe. Thank you for coming back onto Working on Purpose. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you very much for having me always to talk with you. Indeed, indeed, listeners and viewers, you are going to want to learn more about this incredible man, doctor Arthur SERA McCauley, the work that he does as a clinical psychologist, and his numerous books. One way to do that is to start by visiting the empathysolution dot com. That's one of his sites, Theempathy soolution dot com. Last week, if you missed a live show you can always catch it be a recorded podcast. We were on air with Futurists for Sean Tobaka Walla talking about his book Rethinking Work, Seismic Changes in the War When and Why. He shared how leaders can stay ahead by rethinking work and embracing transformation, from evolving organizational models to the new why behind work.

47:08 He talked about what it takes to lead and thrive with a workplace and business up tomorrow. Next week will be on the air with c Brown, author of AI Ultimatum, Preparing for a world of intelligent machines and radical transformation. This conversation, we'll build on this episode and take us into the macro aspects of how technological advancements are changing everything about the way we live. See you, then, let's continue leading into discovering how to elevate your operating system as a leader and create destination workplaces where the legendary business takes place. 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 Cortes, each week on W four C Why. Together, We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion.

47:56 Performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there. Let's work on purpose M HM.