The 7 Dimensions of Leadership: Activating Your Soul to Tap Purpose and Maximize Impact

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 Working a Purpose program. Thanks for tuning in again this week. Great to have you. This program has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. I'm your host, doctor Elisee Cortes, and if we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist and LOCO therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto now help companies to inlive and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture and inspirational leadership activated by meeting and purpose. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site at least Coortes dot com. I have a very special surprise for you for this for this evening's conversation. Is this going to be your early Christmas present? We have with us today. Richard Barrett a globally recognized thought leader and values based leadership, cultural transformation, personal development, and the metrics of personal, cultural, and societal well being. He is the President of the Academy for the Advancement of Human Values, the founder of the Barrett Values Center, leader of the Global Humanity Awareness Initiative, the developer of the Barrett's Culture Analytics for organizations and global well being. Indicators for Nations, also a fellow of the World Business Academy, a former values coordinator at the World Bank. He's also a founding member of the the twenty Values Task Force for the G twenty. He has written numerous books, one of which is What My Soul Told Me, which I also read. Richard A hearty welcome to Working on Purpose. I'm so delighted to have you on well.

2:29 Thank you so much. It is a pleasure to be talking to you all the way from London. Thank you for joining me. And as I told you, when I first reached out to you, I learned about you and your work Richard through my mentor Land Secreton, who has written also about about twenty two books or so. And when I heard what you were doing, especially around around your soul, work, consciousness, etc. I was like, I really want to talk to this man. So thank you for saying yes, good. To be with you. What can I say? And I love how part of what was so enticing about getting to talk with you. I love how you talked about showing up for a speech in the Netherlands years ago, and you you hadn't really been in touch with the organizers, and so you didn't really know what they wanted you to talk about. So you just ask one I think one person in the audience what what do they want to hear about? And then from that you just consulted your soul and delivered a fantastic talk.

3:23 So I thought we could do the same here. Let's get starting. So so the soul, of course I've read now I've now read Soul centered Living from Survival Service and of course what my soul told me and part of the new leadership paradigm. And I have never had anybody so beautifully explain how our souls come to us. So let's just start there, shall we. Well, yes, well, let's just start with a little correction. You don't have a soul, no you. I am mitule yes, thank you saying that, And that is that's. A game when you actually realize that, because it means that you have a point of reference for everything to do in your that you want to do in your life. Well, who is the you that wants to do it? Well, the soul incarnated into your body, let's put it that way, with a few ideas about what it might want to do in your life. And as long as you stay in touch with that, you will have a lot of plain sailing that is insane. It will be totally smooth, but you'll be on the right track in terms of meaning and purpose and the things that you talk about in the introduction to this program. HM.

4:42 Well, and I appreciate that you also said something I recognized when when I was reading your book, something about you know, if you can get your your if you don't align your ego with your soul, then the soul willfully express itself. Yes. Well, you know, the ego is very helpful in many ways, and it develops during the first twenty years because of your life, and it's identifies with the body, and it lives in a particular culture or experience and a family setting, and it has needs, and the needs are to survive or feel safe and to feel secure. So during those twenty years, that's what you're focusing on, That's what the ego is focusing on. And then depending on where you live and your parents and all and the culture you're brought up in, and you're going to learn how to be in that world and get your needs met. Now, it may be quite difficult. Not every is born to self actualized parents. They may have very difficult lives, and they learn what I call maladaptive beliefs.

5:55 They learn that, you know, it's hard to be to survive, or it's hard to be loved, or they may have a parent advisation you'll never amount to anything, and so it's hard, it's hard to be to get everything in place, and so the ego develops fears, and it's those fears, which, let's put it this way, rock your boat during the next few years of your life. And it's the fears that prevent the soul from showing up because the energy of fear cannot mix with the energy of love. The energy of love is the energy of the soul, and the fears of the ego get in the way. So the first job to do, as soon as you begin to realize that you can self actualize and you can self realize, is to identify what these fears are that are holding you back and try to master them and or get over them. Not easy, but mastering your fears is the first step in leading yourself. We're talking about leadership here as well, and so leading yourself is, well, how am I going to lead myself if I can't get in touch with my essence, and my essence is my soul, and my soul knows why it came, what its mode of self expression, is, what it wants to do.

7:14 And so you have to try to get over those fears to allow that space or self transformation in order to become what eventually would become one with your soul. As I said what my soul told me, eventually you become one with your soul. But there's a journey in the journey starts being with being aware of your soul and connecting with your soul, and befriending your soul, trusting your soul, and finally becoming one with your soul. A couple of things that sporked from that, Richard. One is that I believe that you referenced David hawkins work in your book, his Map of Consciousness.

7:55 Yes, yes, yes, yes, it's I'm very into consciousness. Yeah, very much, and I'm writing book right now about becoming conscious. Yeah, there's very much a topic of interest for me too, and I had come across this work. In fact, I now read two of his nine series of books. I am, yeah, I am, I'm in the I'm in this Richard. That you can see why I reached out to you. I'm like, I have this man on and when your next book comes out, we'll have to have you come back on and talk about that. But so the idea of what you mentioned before, fear and love can't coexist. That I appreciate that he and on his map of consciousness, fear is like on the scale of you know, zero two, a thousand, what is it like one hundred and fifty or something like that, and love is it like five hundred or something. Is that correct?

8:43 Yes? Yes, So then the other thing I would love for you to do for us, Richard, is if you could un generate as you did in the book. You talk about if I have this something about you know, our our soul thrust itself onto our physical beings. So you talk about like the third and the fourth dimensions or something like that. Could you explain that? Yeah? Okay, So we think we we believe at the ego level that we live in a three dimensional material, physical world, you know, and because that's our experience one that we're born, that's the world we live in. But actually the soul lives in an energetic world, and an energetic world, in a higher order, higher order world than the physical world, and so and the energetic world. You know, you cannot die. The soul cannot die, whereas the ego, because it's attached to the body, believes it can die. Now, where does the ego come from. Well, the ego is the creation of the soul, actually, and it the soul creates the ego within a few months of your I'm going to say, of being born, but actually in the womb.

9:59 And and as. You as you move into the world as a baby, you begin to find separation. Now, the soul lives in a world of total connection and love, and you enter into a world of separation and fear. Now, depending on how well you're looked after by your caregivers and parents, that can be an easy transition, but for many people it's not an easy transition from. And so the soul creates this psychic entity called the ego, to act as a buffer from the pain of separation.

10:42 Nows the ego can also create psychic entities, and we call them alter egos. So this is not too far fett. We know about alter egos. And so the soul creates the ego, and the ego creates alter egos when it cannot deal with what's going on. It develops another person, another thing. You have to be pretty pretty out, shall I say, in difficult circumstances before we start creating all the egos. But anyhow, the soul creates the ego, and then the ego doesn't know it's the creation of the soul and good about his work of protecting the body, which is the vehicle of the soul. And so in that sense, the soul is happy to have the ego look after is like physical life. But let's not forget that the soul actually is in the energy fuel, and that energy fuel is a higher dimension of consciousness and everything, everything in the world is energy so gradually, so that's when so the ego begins to develop fears which build it, which which because of the separation, and it's very difficult for the soul and the ego to blend together in their motivations. If the motivations of the ego are fear motivisions of the soul a love driven anyhow, that's the journey that we're all on. And really that blending depends on two things. One where you're born to self actualized parents who are who are not too directive but help

12:18 you to grow and develop in your own way, and to what extent are you able to overcome the fears that the ego develops in getting its survival, safety, and security needs. Now, if you can do those that and then you begin to self actualize, and from self actualization to self realization or self actualization is different from self realization. Self actualization is becoming all you can become in the cultural framework of your existence. You self actualize and you become the best version of yourself. But within that framework of existence, self realization teach you to a whole different level where you finally unite with the soul and all of the all of the important things, well the things that were important when you were self aptizing actualizing. Now you're being to look look at and say, no, that's not so important to me. Now, I'm not that interested in being you know, all of this wealth. I'm not that interested in being the best at that. I want to find out who I am at the deepest level of my being and find empathy and compassion in the world.

13:29 So it's that's the journey of the soul. And yeah, there is so you know, pull marks of the ego for doing his job, but not too driven by fears. Okay, So otherwise you're going to have to overcome that before you can really self actualize and self realize. So part of where I've come to in my own journey, Richard along this line is I have really come to the notion that I believe aligns with yours. But you tell me, if I've got this right, I'm come to the notion that, you know what, if the whole reason we're here is to get present, to are really president and connected to who we are as a soul, and connected to our purpose, and to live that so that we really make a contribution that elevates the consciousness of the world. That's kind of what I've come to in terms of my own spiritual journey.

14:21 Well, yes, but that journey starts with elevating your consciousness, and that's really the most important part. I mean, we all want to do things to other people, but you've got to start with yourself, you know. That's like I want to be a leader, We'll start by needing yourself. You know, if you can't need yourself, how are you going to need others? So for the soul's there are three important things. One is self expression, secondly connection so you can make a difference, and then contribution to society. And so these are the upper levels of consciousness. After you self actualized, begin to move into your self expression, connection and contribution. And as long as you can do that, your soul will flourish and you'll find joy in your life.

15:12 Whereas if you're still trying to get your ego needs met, and you might be happy one day when you get a promotion, but the next day you've completely forgotten about it. Or you want a new car, and you get happy when you get a new car, but the day after or two days later, you've forgotten about it. The happiness is the shortest lasting emotion there is, whereas joy comes from the fulfillment of the soul's desires, is the longest emotional experience. So delightful. I want to comment on what you said here, but let's grab our first break. It happens, It comes by so fast, it's amazing. And your host structor early is Cortales who go on the year with Richard Barrett and globally recognized thought leader and values based leadership, cultural transformation, personal development in the metrics of personal culture and society, and well being. We've been talking a bit about work, especially anchored in the realm of the soul. After the break, I will comment back on what he just talked about with soul and joy, and we'll also talk about the people that actually don't believe in this business.

16:10 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 a lease 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 alisee at eliscortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

17:18 Thanksteresting with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As I'm dedicated to also to creating a world where people realize their potential at work and are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and go to read their greatness, and we do business at better as the world. I keep researching and writing my own books, So my latest one came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and purpose can radically in life in your business, and I wrote it to help leaders understand the lay of the land in today's workforce, what do they want and need? And then I offer twenty two best practices to help equip those organizations to create that for them. You can find my books at my personal site at least Coortes dot com and also on imason if you are just now joining us. My guest is Richard Barrett, who has authored numerous books, including What My Soul Told Me and The New Leadership Paradigm Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading an Organization, leading Society, to name just a couple. So I promised I would respond back to what you were saying before we get on the break here, Richard, that I just thought was so interesting about this notion of expressing the soul or is, and I believe you talk about this as inspiration. But I remember very distinctly, Richard, I had started teaching college here at at the University of Phoenix since Sons this university in twenty eleven, and I got so electrified to be back in the world of academia again, and I was teaching various psychology courses, and I just was like there was something in me that just said, at least you have to go back and do expand on your post your doctoral research on meaning and work on identity.

18:48 And it was such a governing call, like I just could not resist it, and I gave myself over to it. And the rest, job we say, is history, because that is really what set me on this path and I'm on today where I'm squarely in the meeting in the purpose camp. And it was totally me being obedient to that, to that, to that inspiration, that message. So what you're what you're saying to me, is you, first of all, you've got to sole impulse. You surrendered to that impulse. Yes, changed, yes, yeah, And that happened. That happened to me many years ago, twenty thirty years ago. I was still at the World Bank, but I was already teaching personal transformation, and I was. I was doing a workshop in Boulder, Colorado on finding Meaning and purposing Lang, which is your Billywick what you do. And so somebody said to me at the last afternoon, so what's your purpose?

19:45 Well that was a fair enough question, and I had I had a well rehearsed answer, which was I'm an internationally recognized speaker and author on personal and organizational transformation. Now I wasn't, but that was that was my inten if you like. Now, when he asked the question, I could not think of those words. The words would not come to me, and it was very embarrassing, and so I just closed my eyes for probably five or six seconds, which is a long time when you've got somebody in front of me who was asking you a question. An out of my mouth came the words and I'm an architect of global transformation. Now I'd never said those words, I've never had those words. But I realized at that point that was my soul speaking to me. Just as you had that experience, that was my experience. It was like, okay, so we're up and running and this is the direction.

20:36 And then I thought, well, how am I going to be an architect? Of global transformation, and I got, well, I don't know, but if that's my soul's message, I can sit back and enjoy the ride. And that's what I did. I just think it's delayful. Of course, I'm wanting more and more people to become unleashed, if you will, from the tackles, the shut other things that prevent them from being able to express that soul. So to that end, Richard, let's talk about values. Values are very, very very important in your world and work, and speak to us a bit about why is you are Why are you so anchored in the world of values? So well, that was my That was basically during when I left the World Bank as a transportation engineer and it became a transformation Engineer's.

21:21 That way, I do you remember that in your Booker? I loved that. That's why I focused on. I focused on extending Maslow's model and creating a tool for measuring values so you could actually measure culture in an organization. And over twenty years that just mushroomed and grew. And now is used all over the world by major companies and it's a tool for measuring culture and deciding what type of culture people want in the organization. So so why values? Okay, So, because when we grow up, we grow up in a world of beliefs and and some conscious beliefs. And conscious beliefs now beliefs may or may not be true, but they're not the great way of making decisions when the world is changing very rapidly around you, and so you need something much more significant to anchor your decisions, and to anchor your decisions and your values is a much better way to go. And anchoring in your beliefs. Your beliefs may be true or may not be true. I mean, one time we believed the earth was flat, and so if you made decisions based on the world well it was flat, you were not going to get very far because you say it now.

22:43 So I believe that we should shift from belief based decision making to values based decision making. Values lie at the very hard of who you are and what's important to you and take you closer to yourself, because your soul has very important values which are about connecting, being a self expression, connection and contributions. So your soul is very into a sense of wonders of being connected to other souls because at one level, we are all all aspects of the universal energy field, and so in that sense we already are all connected. So values are What I realized was I talked about values in organizations and went to organizations all over the world and made speeches about values. I understood that I was actually talking about the soul, although I didn't broadcast that. Although my second book was called Liberating the Corporate Soul, and in that book I explained this method and measuring values, but I didn't go too deeply into it at that time. I'm going back twenty years then, But now I do believe that we all have a shared set of values which have to do with creativity, self expression, connection, empathy, compassion,

24:17 and they all originate from the depth of our being, from the soul. You know where It's really interesting for me now, having had you generate that around values. Is I am schooled in local philosophy or logo therapy doctor Victor Frankel's work. This is existential psychology, of course, and so when that puts forth, logo philosophy puts forth the idea that our main concern as humans is finding meaning. In that we have three sources of meaning available to us. That is, our creative contributions are the experiences and accounts that we have in our attitudinal mindset, and all of those situations are registered for meaning according to your value systems. So what you find meaningful will be different from what I find meaningful because our values are different. And so it's very very interesting. And so if you follow that arc to your work around values. Right, So I do a lot of working oorizations, helping people to understand their values, and I'm amazed how little people I meet people and their lives are totally changed because they've just discovered their values and they're fifty years old.

25:25 Right, It's just amazing. And then I'm so grateful I get to do that. So if you could come in a bit about this notion of how your work around values either speaks to or doesn't speak to the world of logo therapy and how we situate meaning. Yeah, so the quite a few things you said there which I want to pick up on. I do believe that that is true, that we are leave a meaning and purpose, but most of the world is not there because they haven't gone their ego needs. You know that they have struggled to survive and they is to struggle to find love and be accepted, and they struggled to be acknowledged. And these are the needs of the ego and exactly eighteen ninety the well, that's where they are.

26:14 They haven't got to meaning a purpose yet because they haven't they haven't been through that individuating stage. Now, to get through the individuating, first of all, you've got to meet your egos needs then. So I do believe that the task, big task that we have is to help people to find live in a society where they can get these needs men. Now, one of the few places on the planet where this is true is in Scandinavian countries where they got onto this idea many years ago in the mid eighteen hundreds and taught people personal growth and created cultures where everybody benefits. So people in those countries, and you're going to the laugh and they say, enjoy paying taxes because everybody benefits. You know, think about compare that to America and the UK. You know, nobody enjoys paying taxes, but in certainema they enjoy it. Be course, it lifts the whole society. That's a different value system.

27:21 I call that people awareness. In the USA, you live in a worldview of wealth awareness and what I call nation awareness. And actually the world view in the USA is descending even to a low level in recent years, and so that is true in some European countries, it's not just the USA. So your value system basically is built around your world views and the worldview that you live inside. And now that worldview and those values may not coinside with the values of the soul, but they are the values that you have to embrace. It's the beliefs of values you have to embrace every day to get your needs met and to self actualize in that framework of existence. And so as you grow and develop, your value is changed. They move up Maslow's hierarchy, and I extended Mazeow's hierarchy to create a several levels of consciousness model, which is basically what I'm most known for.

28:24 And that's the basis of the cultural measurement tools that I invented, and it's also the basic of the seven stages of psychological development. So what we do is we create during those first twenty one yuser a sort of false self, a self that is designed to get our needs in the environment in which we live. Now, behind that false self is this true self it's true self, which is the soul, the values of the soul. And in addition to your true self, there's a unique self.

29:05 Now that unique self is that self which has this specific mission and purpose in life. And it's only you have that particular mission in the way that you can do it. And when you align your values of your true self, that's the values of the soul with the unique self, you move into self realization. But the trick is to somehow shift those values and beliefs of the false self into those higher order values. And you can see what they are when you look at Maslow's work and my seven levels of consciousness moment.

29:45 By the way, when I did my meaning in work and identity research Richard, I did for the second time the post Stock I interview one hundred and fifteen men and when between the ages of eighteen and eighty across twenty different professions, and when I coded for the meaning levels, I did it all to along males Low's hierarchy needs, which was just it just seemed like it was just a natural sort of thing. It just it just so. And of course you will be surprised that the higher the level of meaning, the more that that along males' higher that was registered in the work, the more important the work was for in terms of the person's sense of self for who they were being in the world, or there was a you know, there was no distinction between the two, if you will, exactly.

30:27 Yeah, So they were living and they were living authentically, yes, yes, and that's and you see, when you're not living authentically, you feel uncomfortable. Now this new book I'm reading, I just just the last two days I came up with what I considered to be a revolutionary title and I don't know what I'm going to use it, but it's called psychological homeostaces. Mm. Now we know what homeostas is the body keeping everything regular in regular order, and you know p H levels and temperature and everything. But the body knows how to do that, and when it when it can't do it, you have pain. And when you get pain, then the higher order entity you and your mind, I've got pain.

31:17 So the body is no longer functioning properly in homeostasis and you go to the doctor and get it fixed. Okay, So how about psychological homeostasis because there is a feedback loop and I just mentioned that, you know, when you're living authentically, you you feel uncomfortable, or when you have an emotional fear based emotional reaction, you feel really bad. You know, you get really upset, and then later on you you're really upset that you've got upsets. And these are a feedback loops exactly. It's a homeostasis feedback loos in a psychological environment. And so my whole idea of this new book is to think, well, how can how can we map the the feedback you get from your mind through your emotions and feelings in order to find your through development. Just as the body knows how to live his life, but when it gets out of kilter, if you like it, finds it difficult to work. So when you get out of kilter and your psychological development, you can call on your song.

32:36 I can't wait to read it. On that note, let's take our last break here. I'm your host, doctor Really's Cortees, and we're on there with Richard Barrett. He's a globally recognized thought leader in value space, leadership, cultural transformation, personal development, and the metrics of personal culture and society wellbeing. We've been getting more. Deep the naysayer aspect of this work be right back.

33:16 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 a lease 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 Alise A Lisee at Elise court dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

34:09 Interesting with us and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, Doctor Lee's Cortes. I mentioned in the last break that my latest book came out. It's called a Great Revitalization. What I did for you is I created a free three page organizational assessment to help you understand the extent to which your current culture is meeting the needs of today's discerning workforce. You can find it at my website and download it. It's The website is gustodashnout dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest is Richard Barrett, who has authored numerous books, including What My Soul told Me in The New Leadership Paradigm, Leading Self, Leading others, Leading your organization, leading society, to name just a couple. So, as I. Mentioned before, I think it would be remiss of us maybe if we didn't talk about the people that probably are like, this is all crazy, this is just we don't have soul, and you know we're just Adams, etc.

34:56 I was watching a podcast with a perialist, a scientist who does actually acknowledge spiritually, but he's adamant that we don't have souls. I'm sure you have been posed this question numerous times over the years. What do you say to those people? Well, I know I have a soul because I it's a personal experience. And okay, so you can't do a repeated experiment and everybody that says, look yes, and everybody has a soul. But when you've spent thirty thirty five years working with your soul and understanding your soul and getting these inspirational moments, you can't deny there is something bigger than you are. Now. There are other areas of the globe where this is more fully understood. For example, in the Far East, it's well understood that the body is an energy field and actually would understood by Einstein. Also, it just hasn't down into the academics. You know, if you look around where it was it nineteen forty fifty and sixty and nineteen seventy, the leading the thought leaders were people like Maslow, Roberto said Giuli from it's only Carl Young. Every one of them had an idea of

36:29 the psychology with the soul. I mean, I said, only had a map of the mind with the soul of the center. So what I said to these people is, look, you know, fine, why do you do some research? Why don't you do some think out of the box and look at what was around fifty sixty seventy years ago. It was very much understood that the psychology had a soul. Now the soul went out of psychology because it became academic and it became behavioral HM. And in my book as a New Psychology of Human well Being, which I wrote a few years ago, now, my whole purpose with that book was bringing the soul back to psychology because it's it's been kicked out by the academics. And so when I hear these people talking, and there's no way I can convince them, and I'm not even going to try, But I just say, why don't you read a little more widely because there is so much information out there instead of putting your blinkers on and not willing being willing to to to think about other ways of being?

37:39 What's his? Keegan has this socialized mind, that self organizing self socialized mind forgot about? The second one is like, but the third one is the self transforming mind. Now, the self transforming mind is willing to look at its beliefs and change them if necessary. So what I say to these people is, you know, I don't care if you want to go on believing what you believe, that's fine with me. You know, you'll have problems, you'll love sickness, you'll have all sorts of issues to deal with. But if you really want to lead a life of deep well being and enjoy, then open the book in this topic and explore it a little more. Because basically these people have got their minds closed and no point in telling them that. But encouraging them to read wider is one way of moving past that. But I'm not going to waste my time and energy trying to convince somebody because it's hardly worth it because people are very fixed in the ideas, particularly academic m.

39:00 I of course agree with you. I just had to treat that a little area. Now. One thing that's really interesting to me back the idea of the east versus the West. The first time I heard this, Richard, I heard it from Paul Skinner, who was a friend of mine who came on my podcast a few years ago. He's also in your city, London, and he mentioned I had mentioned that my parents had passed in January of twenty nineteen, and he said, oh yeah, my dad dropped the body a few years ago as well, and had never heard that phrase before. It dropped it out right, if you could speak a bit to that, and to me, it makes complete sense. You know, if we are we are our souls and we have a vehicle through which we live in this dimension, right, it makes sense that we just leave it behind when we're ready to be ready to move on.

39:43 Yeah. See, see, we understand very little about who we are, and that's the whole point of self realization is to realize the big deep into the question who am I? And eventually you get to the point of recognizing you know, you're a universe, so being in an individuality perform and that when you die you simply move from the material world fully into the energetic world. You're already in the energy energetic world because actually the mind is an energy field and it embraces the whole body, so you know the so when when the body dies, you know, the mind, the energy field leaves. Now where it goes, I don't know.

40:33 I'm I have no recollection of past lives or any any transitional experiences, but there is there is so much literature, so much it made so much sense that you you know, you can see, yeah, that that makes sense to me. And that's my experience of life, is that it's energetic and that when it as I align with my soul, I feel a great sense of well being. Now, eventually we all die, and the question is, well, how do you want to die? Do you want to die peacefully?

41:18 And do you want to die with regrets? Do you want to die painfully? Sometimes we do die painfully, But the question is are you at ease with the idea of leaving behind the body. As you put it, Are you at ease with that idea of leaving behind your body? It's a difficult idea to get used to. I you know, I'm nearly eighty years I am my Next year I'll be eighty years old. And so my mother lived to be one hundred. And in many ways she has a small life. What do I mean. I actually never had a driving license, she never had a passport. She lived in a local community. She was the cleaner at the local Methodist chapel. She arranged flowers, she made the chapel beautiful for people, and that was that was her life.

42:12 And she self expression. And she lived in the community and made the community feel better when they came to the chapel. And she lived to be one hundred. I want to do that. I want to make people feel better. I want them to feel good about who they are, and so and so I think. You know that. I was just thinking when I was working on my book this morning, there were three areas where we build our self esteem. You can build self esteem through power, and you don't have to look too far in America to find that. You can build your self esteem through authority, and you can build your self esteem through influence. And I think I think people like yourself and myself. You know, one of the reasons that when we're younger we feel good about ourselves is because we're able to influence things later on. You don't care about self esteem. It's like, what and I'm not interested in self esteem. I'm like, I'm a whole person. I don't have to get feedback from the world that I'm a good person. I don't need that. I know i'm a good person. I know I'm a solo of a human experience. But in the earlier years, in the middle years, and these are the three of the areas where we derive our self esteem.

43:30 And I was thinking, yeah, I think I would tick the box on influence if I had to. But actually, I think for me my self esteem, if I really have any self esteem, it's like I embrace love basically, And when I go and speaking organizations, to the leadership team or to the whole company or whatever. As I walk onto the stage, I get the organizers to the Beatles tune. All I need is love. I loved it when you said that in your book. Yes, I think that's delightful. Yeah. So again, so I will handle this name, this king.

44:11 All you need is a love. I've set them up. I've set them up to receive the words that are going to come from my soul and that it's true. It's like, can you bring love into the workplace in your relationships with other people? I know that sometimes people have to be sacked and then you know, things happen about got backs, et cetera. But can you do that with love? Well, I am heartened myself, Richard, that I hear that, you know, for a letter word being used more frequently in the world of business, and and certainly Lance Sycraton is hugely an advocate of that embraces that idea of love.

45:02 Everything it's about love. And word a word, you know. So I'm encouraged by it, Richard, that that there seems it's becoming more normative, if you will, to talk about love in the world of business. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It is because because the world is evolving, and particularly in the Northern hemisphere, particularly in the democratic countries, where we are allowed morell out to be who we are in the country, Many and most of the world in autocratic countries, and you really can't self actualize in those countries because you can't become who you really are, particularly if you're gay or lesbian.

45:53 My god, you could be in prison or even now that was that was true in the UK. It was in nineteen sixty something that they abolished the punishment for gays in lesbians. I mean, that's not long ago I was in my lifetime. Seriously, yeah, and so but ayea, I'm bringing you back to a personal level, and the key is to connect with yoursel and follow the impulses of your soul. Now I'm going to do something which I don't know whether it's going to work on that, but yeah. So so two and a half years ago, I was in the middle of a book and I got the message impulse from my soul to stop writing and start painting. And I knew immediately that I wanted to paint portraits. And I said to myself, okay, this is this is If this is true, then I need to practice my skills. So I set myself. I set myself a study program, studying the master's practicing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's two and a half years ago, and I just about got to the where I feel like I've found my niche. And here is my latest painting.

47:07 It's beautiful, just beautiful, And that's my Christmas card to most. Of my friends, which I just finished that today. So I don't believe that if you follow your sole impulse and you apply yourself. Now there's the key. You have to apply yourself, you can do and become anything that your soul wants to become. As you found out when you went to the university and had that experience, all that impulse to studying what your dissertation have been about. Oh, Richard, So we've come to the end of the show already. It goes by so fast. You know, this problem is listening by people around the world who really are interested in elevating their own experience and performance as a leader and creating and being part of organizations that really are elevated in consciousness.

48:00 Always like to leave them with well, I think I'd like to leave with the thought that there is a pathway to the implightenment, talk to this higher way of being, and it's important to follow your journey, be on your journey, and to have an open mind, to be willing to read very widely because there are many paths to enlightenment. There are many many paths, but you have to find your path. And so the other two things are examine your values as you, but more importantly, understand your fears and how are they contributing to your well being? Can you let them go?

48:55 What a gift you are. This is our Christmas gift to our listeners and view You are my Christmas present, Richard. I'm so grateful to know you, and I look forward to reading your next book and certainly ha when you come back on. Thank you for coming on working on purpose. Well, he's been in delight and the pleasure. And what can I say? Happy Christmas to all the listeners or all the viewers. Yeah, I wish you well being. Thank you Richard. Listeners and viewers, we're going to want to learn more about this amazing man, Richard Barrett, his work and his books, and the one thing you can do to start that process is go to his website. It's Barrett Academy dot com. So B A R R E T t academy dot com.

49:36 Last week, if you missed the Life Show, you can always catch it recorded podcasts. We were on Era doctor Andrew Kaddar talking about his experience and learnings of becoming a patient as he stepped out of his role as an anesthesiologist in medicine to having emergency open heart surgery. It was an incredibly tender and moving story, and he offered many ways to improve how healthcare is practice and how patients can more effectively steward their own healing journey. Next week, we'll be on the area with Christine Predinger talking about how she has grown her company called WG Content, which provides healthcare organizations with website content through an extreme focus of kindness and work life harmony. See you there for another inspirment education conversation, and remember, work is one of the best means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose.

50:24 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 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,