Mat Lock
Neil, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here. I'd love to be here. Yeah, thank you. Great if you could just, I guess let's kick off with you explaining a little bit about who you are, where you are in the world. And then we'll dive in from there.
Neil Seligman
So I'm here in London, and I run a little business called the conscious professional. And I've got a journey which took me from being a Reiki Master to being a barrister, which is a trial lawyer, to running my own training and coaching fun, which is all centered around mindfulness and conscious leadership.
Mat Lock
Awesome. Now I'm, I know when we had a pre chat, and as there's always a way, I, I don't tend to ask too many questions so that it's nice and fresh and genuinely organic. When we go live like we are now. I am itching to know, have the journey of becoming a barrister took a turn to not being a barrister anymore, and taking a very different career path. But actually, what I'm interested in as the first question, I suppose, is to understand what it was that motivated you to put the huge amount of effort into becoming a barrister in the first place, only to find that actually, it wasn't going to be your future. Yeah,
Neil Seligman
great question. And, you know, I think we make these decisions very young. And realistically, the reason that I started heading towards the legal profession as a child was because I love stationery. And it seemed like the lawyers had the best stationery. Like I collected stationery, when I was a kid, my mum used to work at conferences as a hostess, and she would bring back all these kind of free pads and pens and all sorts of kind of freebies from these companies. And had a draw that was just like, stacked full of stationery. And, and that that probably led my my thinking about I suppose I was reasonably good at like English and history and the sorts of things where the adults around you start saying, Have you thought about or I was like, okay, and did some work experience. And yeah, and then it got a bit more interesting when I started realizing there was two roots. And same as in Australia, as I understand it, you can be a solicitor, more of a kind of office space lawyer, or the barrister, trial based lawyer. And because there was also sort of developing an interest in performance, the barrister, things seemed like a sort of safer way of heading towards something a bit more in their acting sort of public speaking realm. And then going full on as, as an actor, which, you know, I was quite shy growing up. So it took me a while to sort of get into acting, which I did mean a new
Mat Lock
legal legal theater, isn't it?
Neil Seligman
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's, yeah, a lot of big personalities stomping around a courtroom, trying to sound eloquent and persuade people of stuff. So.
Mat Lock
And often, they do sound eloquent. And I, in a former life, I was a police officer in the UK. So I was on the way depends, I guess. But yeah, I was certainly looking from a different angle. It's a receiving end of those delicate questions. Yes,
Neil Seligman
yeah, of course, examine a lot of police officers in my time.
Mat Lock
I hope you weren't too hard. And I didn't expect that answers the rationale of why or how you became a barrister or went down the legal path. But perhaps that it's interesting that when we think about the really the motivation, the intrinsic motivation that took you off down that path, it wasn't a deep seated sense of, of writing wrong or, or anything like that. It's interesting, actually, the trigger perhaps was an innocent question or regularly mentioned, if you thought about being a lawyer, you've got all these pads and pens and so on. It's interesting how that just that might have been just the trigger at the time without realizing it by either party.
Neil Seligman
Yeah. And I suppose yeah, there was a bit of the kind of idea of, of just justice in righting wrongs, which, you know, was appealing and so as I learned more about it, and started to kind of understand a bit about what lawyers did, and what what kind of, I suppose kept drawing me on from the initial inspiration based in paper, and was the the idea of helping people solve problems. I was always quite sort of I'm fascinated by problem solving and felt like that was something that I wanted to be really kind of practical in the world. So it was a bit of a disappointment when I got to law school, and at Bristol University to realize that it was the academic study of law for three years. So it was like completely not practical at all. It was all about, you know, learning these old cases. And looking back one understands this is an important grounding in how to, you know, become a good lawyer, sort of well rounded lawyer and to think about things from lots of different angles and see where it comes from. But yeah, it took a while before the practical stuff kicked in.
Mat Lock
Sure, and so you were practicing as a barrister, and how many years? Did you do that before? Finally, taking the step to take a follow a different career path?
Neil Seligman
Yeah, so we trained for five and I practiced for seven or eight. So
Mat Lock
yeah. From what HR? I guess that was? Yeah. Through University.
Neil Seligman
Yes. So out and 18 to 20 to 23. Studying and then practice till I think there must have been 30 When I left.
Mat Lock
Some that was a huge, did it feel like a huge move at the time a shift to step away from all of that that you've known? And I guess I'm the income that it provided to pursue a different path.
Neil Seligman
So it's a sort of a yes or yes and no type of an answer to that one. Because whilst I had been studying law, going through the early stages of my career, I'd also been growing my interest in in Reiki and meditation, which had actually crossed my path before I became a well, actually before I studied law. And so I started learning Reiki when I was, by chance, really, in my late teens, so at around 18, I was out in the states and working at a kid's camp, and there was an Australian Reiki master from Melbourne, who was the nature counselor. And, yeah, he ended up teaching me and a few others Reiki across the summer, it kind of completely blew my mind open to the energy kind of world I suppose. And so for
Mat Lock
those not familiar, can you just give us a watch Reiki just for those who are not familiar with it.
Neil Seligman
So So Reiki is energy healing system. It's a hands on or hands off system. A lot of people might have come across it at a spa, or on a retreat, there's often a Reiki practitioner there. And the idea of it is it's about channeling universal source energy for the benefit of your client. And a lot of people experience it as relaxing, they might experience kind of pleasant physical sensations through the body, they might see different visual kind of effects or images and, and some Reiki practitioners will work specifically with particular ailments and so on. And it's another way of looking at health and other kind of angle into it.
Mat Lock
Yeah, sure. Thank you. Appreciate. So 18 to 20 issue work, becoming much more involved in that.
Neil Seligman
Yeah. So as I was going through uni in the summers, I was spending my summers out in the States. And so yeah, there was that one year I learned it. So the first beginning bit, the next year, I learned again with the different person but who was also a fellow student the first year, and then the next year, I went out to Carabus in the Pacific where my original Reiki master was now on mission. And I spent the summer there learning the master levels of Reiki and type of Reiki. So my main practice is Usui Reiki and then led to another practice which is karuna, Reiki, which brings in toning and sound. So, so yeah, so it sort of became a real fascination. And by the time I was practicing, as a barrister, I also had a little side business called the holistic life practice. So that's what I mean by saying, you know, it wasn't the biggest of surprises that there was nothing else coming. And, you know, having said that, I had this little business going on, it wasn't producing anywhere near the income of my legal practice, not many jobs do All kind of promising to, if I even if I sort of gave things up, it wasn't like, Oh, here's, here's the replacement mortgage. But the actual kind of the final impetus to step away, came about eight years in, and I was just walking through the carpark of in a temple in London. So it's sort of crazy area in town, which looks like it's, you know, sort of from the olden days. And there's these beautiful old traditional buildings and squares and churches and gardens. And it's lovely to walk through there was walking through the car park after trial, a friend of mine bounded up to me, who I hadn't seen for ages. And I said, Hey, Neil, how's it going? And I hear you're one of the rising stars of the civil bar. Now, as he said, those words to me, what I heard in my head was your star is rising in the wrong field, you have to leave. So that was like the insight that landed and it was, it was delivered with such a vibration of truth. It was like a gong going off inside my body. And it was like, Okay, this is this is now happening. And so it was sort of that moment that catalyzed all of the body of questioning into action in that moment. So still took me five months to wrap, wrap it all up. And but
Mat Lock
but you were clearly prime, you were ready. And it just needed that event. Yeah, I
Neil Seligman
didn't know it was ready. But yeah, looking back, I must have been ready because I said yes. Yeah.
Mat Lock
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you listened.
Neil Seligman
Did you have a similar moment when you were heading out to the police are heading out of the country?
Mat Lock
Oh, well, the places a long time ago. I actually have come safe with my father. I mean, I went from 16, you know, is in the police cadet, and then at 18, and I was wearing a big hat walking around the streets of Birmingham. And I did, I think five years of that. So seven to seven very formative years of my sort of young life. And I've actually a conversation with my father, who sat me down and the to two parts of the conversation. First was, we love you, but we don't like the person you're becoming. You're becoming very hard, very hard and cynical, etc, a young age. And the other thing was, he was a dental surgeon. And I had my myself and my brothers had a lovely upbringing in a very privileged upbringing in many ways, and which we were aware of, and he said, Look, you've had a great upbringing, it's entirely up to you what you do for a career, and we'll support you in anything you do. But you just have to understand that the salary, you know, the earning potential you have in the police isn't going to fund anything like the lifestyle that you've enjoyed. And it was the first part of that, that really struck the chord, I have to say it was like to be told by your dad, that we love you. But we don't really like the person you becoming that really hit home. So that was actually the trigger for me. Yeah, I had until that moment considered, yeah, I mean, I enjoyed the place, and had a good ear had some really solid friendships, and which I still enjoy today. And it was all very exciting, and so on for a young, a young man in the UK. But that conversation was the turning point. And within six months, I had taken the time they offered you a career break, where you could take up to five years off, knowing that you could return to the job when I knew I wouldn't return. But it was nice having that little safety net, I suppose. That gave me the impetus to head overseas, I went to Canada and yeah, what was going to be just a bit of travel around Canada, we've got some friends in Canada, family, friends, and I was going to just paint into there and then out again, and off I go. And I actually ended up staying and working for them and formed Yeah, very new career path, which took me back to the UK and ultimately here to here in Australia and Singapore and everywhere else. I've been pretty rigid. But it's interesting that there was a very clear moment for me, but it was a conversation with someone else. I think the difference was I hadn't considered a career change. I hadn't considered not being a police officer. That was all I knew in my adult life actually. And yeah, but I was open to it clearly. Yeah, shock tactics maybe. But I yeah, I listened And I ultimately took action quite quickly. Yeah.
Neil Seligman
Yeah. So I suppose we both sort of recognized a truth in the message that came. And that expertly action.
Mat Lock
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm, I'm interested, the conscious professional, how did that come to be them? Because she's a different company, you had the sort of side to side business, when you were a barrister, you had the side business? And did that morph into the conscious professional? Or is this something new? Yeah,
Neil Seligman
I wouldn't say more often, it's a it's a was a new entity, if I can put it that way. And I, you know, left and the holistic life practice was already running. So I kept doing that wasn't enough to sort of keep everything sort of going. So I started doing some freelance training work, here and there as well. And but it was about three years into that. Well, my teacher calls it my walkabout phase. sort of
Mat Lock
sense to a lot of the audience here.
Neil Seligman
Yeah, that the three walkabout phase, and in a meditation, the name, logo, and the subject, mindfulness landed all at once, and just, you know, wasn't there. And then there it was. And that's quite a difficult process to sort of understand really all kind of explained, so it's best not to think about it too much. But just to say, thank you, and off we go. But it was, it was from there, really, that that everything sort of started moving in a clear direction. And, you know, it was very much a corporate facing entity. And it was all about mindfulness, which was this is in 2012. So in the UK, mindfulness had not landed as a mainstream thing.
Mat Lock
That would have been a tough sell, I think back in 2012, it was
Neil Seligman
a non gentle, was very much. So I went to like, you know, the, the network that I had in sort of training and learning development people and like, Oh, this is what I'm going to be doing. And they're like, We don't want it. We like you. But we don't want that. No, thank you. We don't know what it is. We definitely don't want it. Thanks for coming in. This is great. So I started selling them professional resilience courses, and adding in a module on mindfulness. And then they were like, Oh, like this mindfulness stuff. This is a few years later, but mind. And yeah, it gradually built built out from there.
Mat Lock
Interesting. The language, though, completely open to the resilience training. Yeah, perhaps without understanding what the training actually entailed. And why but just the language was more acceptable, then?
Neil Seligman
Well, I mean, the resilience course, here, that's actually remained our most popular course. And it's sort of grown and grown, because it's modular. And so you know, they'd be taking on a training for a couple of hours or half a day or whatever. And half an hour of that would be mindfulness snuck in amongst kind of personal well, being digital well being emotional intelligence, you know, a bit of this and that. And whereas now, you know, most of the things I teach about in the topic isn't offered directly mindfulness. It's a mindful approach to the topic. And I use mindfulness as the kind of foundational practice from which we resource ourselves from our own experience to have something to kind of work within the session. So yeah, it's become just kind of central as the practice.
Mat Lock
You're on the other end any silver linings to the pandemic, I think there are. And one of them, I believe, is a greater awareness and acceptance and understanding and normalization around not just the terminology, but the reality of mental health and important to of mindfulness and health and working environment, human connection. Which there's no downside to any of that in terms of it being more acceptable and there being greater awareness around it. I still find if I talk about mindfulness maybe to those who haven't, you know, for certainly for those You haven't trained with us yet? Haven't sort of been through any Yes, any of the sort of ecosystem components, I sometimes find the word mindfulness still seems a bit woowoo, a bit treehugger hippie stuff a bit? That's not for me kind of approach. Do you still find that? Do you find mindfulness is still somehow, as a term? Not widely understood? Perhaps, maybe that's the issue.
Neil Seligman
I don't encounter that very much, actually. And I'm not sure if it's because, you know, a lot of places that I'm speaking or engaging, and it's something that they've been dealing with fairly seriously for, you know, certainly, you know, four or five years now. You know, it's always an interesting one to, to work with any organization or individual to find the language and the access point for them to, you know, usually there's some outcomes that they'd like to improve. And if mindfulness is one of the ways in which you can, you know, you're pretty sure you can help them, then it's really just a case of, you know, how do I build a bridge, from what I know, in a practice that I know, could be really resourcing for you to, to where you're coming from? And, you know, I think as, as more and more people, you know, find people in their friends circle in their colleagues circle in their, you know, people higher up in the business, who are talking about it, who are doing it, and, you know, becomes more and more, you know, well, why wouldn't you for me, it's become, you know, similar to talking about going to the gym, people talk about meditation at the same sort of level as that. And I think as a practice, it will become that as well. Like, you know, everybody knows what the gym is, everybody knows that going to the gym is generally good for most people, some people do it, and some people don't do it. And that's kind of that, and I think it's mindfulness is is one of those things as well. And, and gradually, people, people will kind of realize that there's something there. And you know, they're going their own journey for whether it's for them.
Mat Lock
Yeah, absolutely. How do you describe mindfulness help, someone who perhaps wasn't entirely clear about what mindfulness is we hear mindfulness, wellness, we, you know, all these sort of terms, they often get kind of thrown together, and how would you describe mindfulness?
Neil Seligman
So, and I think the simplest way for people to understand it, and the reality of what it is in our current society now is mindfulness is the secular rebrand of meditation. So you sometimes get into very strange discussions with people kind of almost arguing about the differences between mindfulness and meditation and so on. And it's like, well, you know, it is a it's a practice of silence, right. And we're teaching people to do it as a formal seated practice, and then to apply that in an informal way into their lived experience. And the the idea of this is that it allows us to explore our inner world of consciousness, which is made up of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. And it turns out that this is useful for most people. Because for most of us in our education, and socialization, we haven't really been pointed towards are in a world of thoughts, emotions, and sensations, and asked to kind of build our own Map to navigate it better. And it turns out, that when we do start mapping our inner world of thoughts, emotions, and say, sensations, that we start realizing, oh, here are all the ways in which I get lost in fear and worry. Here are all the ways in which I get annihilated by my emotions, here are all the ways in which I'm able to communicate my inner experience, and here are the ways I can't and and we start realizing there's a massive kind of practice here of exploring what our inner experience is, and so that we can both know ourselves more fully, but also then engage better with the people around us. And it also turns out that in doing this for ourselves, we develop the skills of compassion and listening, and an appreciation for the inner world of other human beings in a way that might not have been obvious to us if we hadn't done the work on ourselves. So, you know, as as a root into meditation, for me, if anyone is interested in any type of performance or excellence, then they have to be looking both outward into the external expression of that skill or what activity into the world. But they also have to have an equal and opposite look in to see what what are the functions of programs that you're running, that are helping and hindering you, as you attempt that activity? So yeah,
Mat Lock
no, thank you. That's I think anyone would be clear, after listening to that. So thank you, um, given that you're typically dealing in the C suite, in this case, I, yeah, 20 plus years in a corporate environment myself, in different parts of the world. And, in fact, the last 10 years, so half of those are close enough to half of those was working for German company, who were really a serious employer, they were a good company, they were serious about being, you know, turning out good product. And they were serious about being a good employer. But when it comes down to it, ultimately, they had shareholders. There was a board, there were expectations about the bottom line at the end of the day, and in fairness to them, they were very focused on attracting and retaining talent. So those were the driving commercial, commercial realities of what was a very responsible business in many ways. And they continue to be I would imagine, how can how can mindfulness How can being a conscious professional, how does that speak to those? How does that? How does that work? Because at the end of the day, if you're asking companies to make an investment in these, these services, how do they measure the success of them? Yeah, how do you approach that I'm genuinely intrigued.
Neil Seligman
Yeah, so um, I suppose to kind of go wide on that to start with. And what we're going through at the moment, as a global society is a massive shift in consciousness at a time where there's a lot at stake. And we've got highly embedded capitalistic systems around the world, which have been overly weighted to profit at the extent, at the expense of planet and, and people. And we have a growing willingness to address this, particularly through COVID, we've had a bit of a sort of slap from Mother Nature, sort of go to your room moment for us all to sit down and think about what we've been doing. And seeing if we can come back with a better attitude. And as a result of that, in this sort of renewed intention or sort of groundswell of intention globally, to address our fundamental existential problems of climate and environment and all the rest of it. We have to also, and this is one of the rules of mindfulness have to begin where you are. So we have to begin where we are, which is in each company, looking at how we function, looking at the degree to which we're playing into the old system, which is about profit or all costs, and look at ways in which we can gradually or quickly if it's possible, move towards a more conscious engagement at all levels of the business. So over the years, we've sort of seen the markers in the sort of the rise of the conscious revolution. And, you know, we've had books out on unconscious business, conscious capitalism, I think in about 2014 came out, which I think still is the best kind of blueprint of how to really think through all the nuts and bolts of the company, you know, from its its purpose and vision mission, but also its higher purpose, it's really important to get the, the higher purpose of the, of the business, right, so it's inspired, so it's engaging. So it's a tune to some sort of infinite game in the sort of cynic type of model. And, and to think about the leadership strategies, the culture, and the stakeholder integration. So the values of the business are really clear and are expressed at all levels through the business. And so there's a lot of thinking to do in order just to kind of even overview that is a piece of work, which most businesses require someone to help them with. And then from there, it's like, well, what does this look like in our hiring strategy? What does this look like in our retention strategy? What does this look like in our comms? What does this look like in our leadership strategy and our structure in how we, you know, you know, say what the roles actually are, all these types of things start to become the little bitty jobs where we can now start harmonizing towards the higher purpose of the business. And of course, there has to be along the way, I'm still a non profit, we're not jettisoning capitalism, we're just bringing more awareness into it. That's why it's called Conscious Capitalism. And mindfulness is a tool of awareness, which is why I think it's foundational to all of this, if we don't have a capacity, or an intention to be a bit more aware than we were, when we started dealing with this 20 years ago, 100 years ago, or however long back, then we're just going to make the same mistakes again. So building awareness is is key, in my view.
Mat Lock
Sure, and how far down the path are we and I guess my real question is, are there any really good examples of companies who have adopted a more conscious capitalism approach to the way they operate? And the results then demonstrate how worthwhile that is, you know, we have some first movers out there who operators great case studies.
Neil Seligman
So I've always hesitant to give particular companies as as case studies because they changed the 40, and so on whole foods, and was basically the the book conscious capitalism came out of John Mackey's CEO ship of Whole Foods and how he kind of managed it and how it grew. And the growing pains and all of that, and his his attempt to kind of demonstrate conscious leadership and implement it is a really amazing case study. It's obviously now being bought by Amazon. So it becomes swallowed by a different entity. And so it becomes a more complicated picture to point to Amazon, and say that this is the most conscious business out there. I'm certainly not not suggesting that. But there are companies out there, Patagonia is often given as a, as a great example, female CEO, and a really kind of beautiful, integrated strategy that rolls out through the sustainability of the product into the way that the business is run sort of nuts and bolts and all the way through. And, and, you know, in some of the books that you read on this topic, you know, there are there are tables put together, which show that conscious businesses outperform their rivals. And it does make sense because if we're really focusing on everybody pulling in the same direction, everybody being aligned behind a higher purpose, everybody's needs being seen as important, rather than people for example, being seen as cogs in a machine or as deserving of giving their pound of flesh for you know, whatever treatment and then you know, you get you get a different level of trust, you get a different level of loyalty. But it's very much you know, this is the first decade that conscious leadership really is second decade that conscious leadership has been a term that people are using. So what you're looking at at the moment is really a tinkering in the conscious leadership conscious capitalism space. But I do believe that it's very much the future, you know, it's kind of an essential aspect of the human survival strategy for the century is really to bring in enough awareness so that our, our capitalist companies and governmental structures don't eat each other, you know, which is sort of the outcome of everything getting bigger and bigger and bigger and winning and more winners more losers, is that, you know, we eat, we eat each other, we the planet, you know, it's kind of like resources, munched there needs to be a lot more innovation and creativity, which I think COVID was pretty good for, in order to take us in a new direction. So it's knife edge stuff.
Mat Lock
Sure enough, and your book conscious leadership aims to help individuals to, to understand or to understand what's required. I know it's somewhat empty, proactive lessons. Tell us a little bit more about that. What's that? How does that book serve the greater purpose that we're talking about?
Neil Seligman
Yeah, so I wanted to make a really sort of practical introduction to conscious leadership, which was very directed towards activities and practices and practical small things to implement. Sometimes when we hear about conscious leadership, it sounds like this kind of heady idea that is attempting to save the world. And we think that's a bit much to sort of deal with on a Tuesday morning, but 10 minutes. So I wanted to make a book that, you know, is something that you could dive into that you could sort of see the scope of it. So it's laid out into these kind of five different sections, from self knowledge to self maintenance, self management, self development, and self realization. And each has got these four topics, and you can sort of just look at one by one, maybe find a practice to try that day. You know, you can read a chapter on, you know, on the way on a bus or whatever, it's kind of an easy read, just so that you get a sense of conscious leadership is actually something that I can aspire to, that I can bring into my own day to day work, I can bring aspects of it home. And, and that it's not such a sort of lofty thing, here's some really simple practical aspects, where, essentially, and where we're all going on this kind of journey of, you know, the book was almost called self mastery. And really, you know, that's what leadership really is about really, most leadership training is about self development, looking in looking at our you know, that our constrictions our triggers, working through them, overcoming our barriers, and you know, stepping into potential and you know, that that is what this book is for building awareness and giving tools.
Mat Lock
Sure, so definitely, the style of book is you can pick it up, open it anywhere, read that chapter or that lesson and put it down again, and pick it up and do the same again, it's intended that way to be accessible. Yeah, absolutely. And certainly, it talks about the tools to increase your emotional intelligence to build stress, resilience, and lead yourself and others with greater compassion and clarity and joy. I'm interested about the emotional wallet, but the emotional intelligence piece. Ad Do you have you weave that into the training that you offer? And how do you bring that to the table for your clients?
Neil Seligman
Yeah, so and in all of the trainings that we're doing, whether we're sort of naming emotional intelligence or not, we are supporting and cultivating emotional intelligence in in participants because, you know, we talked about mindfulness as being this kind of mapping of our thoughts, emotions and sensations and emotions are in there. And the human being is an emotional animal. As much as you know, some people will tell you they're not or that they don't express their emotions or whatever. The human being is an emotional creature there's just no getting away from it. It's a that's a sort of factual matter. And, and yet, in in the workplace, we've we've got all these messages around how our emotional life is sort of completely unwelcome. And as a result of that, most people find themselves operating, or attempting to operate in a sort of emotionally free or clinical way. In order to develop emotional intelligence, the first part of it is to develop emotional self awareness. And if we've got a lot of messages, which are saying that we can't be in contact with our emotions, because it's not safe or appropriate for our environment, which a lot of guys actually get that message very early on, you know, boys can't cry, all of that kind of stuff that's being broken down at the moment to kind of rework to look that again, is really doing doing men a disservice. And women to to cut people off from their emotional reality leaves them with this kind of sense of the emotions being some kind of threat that needs to be managed in the sort of military sense of, you know, putting up boundaries and barriers and barricades. So yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of socialization and sort of thought structures, and to unpick when we start looking at emotional intelligence, because we have to enter an emotional intelligence conversation. And by becoming more emotionally articulate individually, one of the apps that we recommend to people is one way, I think it's called Mark Brackett. It's called mood meter. And it just gives you these prompts to check in occasionally and to, to just figure out what you're feeling a lot of people. And if you ask them what their feeling was, say they're, they're good, or they're fine, or you know, sort of a neutral state. But it, it helps you to become more articulates around expressing what the actual emotions are that you're feeling and with the high energy or low energy and kind of what it's characterized by. And that's the first step.
Mat Lock
Thank you. We'll put a link to that in the show notes for sure. I'll be checking it in myself. So that's Ei, building stress resilient. I mean, the last couple of years, and counting the language around resilience. The acceptance of the need the benefit of helping people become more resilient. is clearly something that yeah, again, playing mode, look at that. Go google my airplane. And still it does that. How good Thanks, Google.
Neil Seligman
Yeah, for stress resilience, you definitely need to turn off that mode.
Mat Lock
Well, yeah, I mean, I, I wonder what it was that listen to what which word it was that it heard. Anyway. But that, you know, that's for me, as we've talked about silver lining, in fact, there's much greater awareness around it. Again, when it comes to stress resilience, I'm interested to hear how you weave that into your framing, you know, when you're working with your clients or groups of clients, I mean, clearly meditation.
Neil Seligman
Yes, no, anyone for stress, resilience, you know, we talk about mindset, anchors, and, and practices. So, just to give an example, one of my mindset anchors is the quote by Rumi live as if everything is rigged in your favor. And it's just something that, you know, I come back to, and it holds a bit of a sort of vibrational anchor for me, particularly when something challenging might be going on. And then we really encourage people to find practices that work for them and resonate for them in order to, to reset so you know, as a human being, it's very difficult for us to imagine that we're going to go through a full day or week without in some way being triggered into some sort of fear or anxiety, however intense that might modulate, you know, depending on what's going on our lives at the time. And so, you know, instead of trying to dodge anything that might take us away from common stability, it's about finding practices that work for you, regularly to get you back into a productive mindset and a calm vibration. So Yeah, when we go into sort of do a training on mindfulness, stress and performance, we go into the brain science and kind of what happens when the amygdala is triggered and what's happening to the brain and which parts of the brain go offline. And, you know, we go through all of that. The outcome of it, though, to sort of short cut it, is that if when we're panicking, we can remain connected to the breath and the body, then we can remain connected to our rational thinking, and be much more productive in the way that we manage it. So often, you know, we sort of have the stimulus, which might send us into panic, if we can insert the practice there, even if it's a 22nd practice. And we can have a very different experience of the next five minutes than if we just flow from the panic into dealing with whatever has happened. And, and then over time, when people sort of find the thing that works for them, and it starts showing up, they'll start reporting that they're having a very different experience of their day of their week of their life. And because stress resilience is something that's not taught very often on the way to becoming, you know, whatever you do professionally, you know, it's often not not trained very thoroughly. And so helping people individually or in group to come to come to practices that work is our
method.
Mat Lock
Sure, thanks. Do you use meditation, therefore, to install those triggers to change? So stimulus occurs to them, rather than following the normal behavior to become more aware. And,
Neil Seligman
yeah, you know, we try and introduce a range of different practices. And so for example, one of the ones that that we teach is called FHB. So something triggers you in your world, you notice that you've been triggered, and you fit your feet on the floor, you place your hands on your heart, and the body is on breathing. So feet on floor, hand on heart body on breathing, and, and it just allows you to stabilize it three points of contact into the physical body. And so you practice that for even 20 seconds. Most people once they've done it for 20 seconds, because it feels good, they want to do it bit more. So they do it a little bit more. And then it's as if you're saying, Ah, I don't have to depart myself. And when we don't depart the body, and the heart and the mind, we can engage with all of our resources online. And it's very different from how we're taught to engage, which is generally mind only. You know, a lot of people are taught to solve problems by thinking about their problems, worrying about their problems. But real problem solving, or wise problem solving, perhaps we might say, occurs when we remain connected to the body, the heart and then bring the mind on the route to accessing wisdom is through the body through the heart into the mind, it's not straight to mind. And most people were never taught the route to wisdom. And it's, it's a really powerful, simple practice.
Mat Lock
Yeah, I'm interested that I think they're still less so but still some stereotypes. Say that around what meditation is and how it looks and how it has to be performed. And maybe that in the good old days, Hollywood played a part in that and TV shows and so on. You have your other book is 100, mindfulness, meditations fascinated how you came to, to write that, create that book and write the book. I have 100 Different mindfulness meditations.
Neil Seligman
So I was trying to write a book for about four years. And it was going to be called the conscious professional
Mat Lock
note by all accounts,
Neil Seligman
with no pads as well. But I've been trying to write this book for like four years and it was called the conscious professional it was going to basically go along with the business and you know, be the sort of this is what the business stands for, and all the rest of it and this is what a conscious professional is and it just wasn't sticking and you know, anyway, I was getting frustrated with it. And then one morning, I woke up with an idea having been charming through a recipe book. So this recipe book was called genius recipes or something. Beautiful book. And I was like, oh, wouldn't it be cool to have a recipe book of meditations? Because a lot of the meditations at the time, were all the same. It was like a mountain one, Lake one, there was a body scan one, like there was a set of meditations that were out there of different people that the books kind of it. And I'd always sort of almost made up meditations on the fly when I taught and woven what we were talking about. And I really liked the sort of creative experience of that. So I thought wouldn't be cool to have a recipe book and meditations and to create a sort of a way of dipping in two very different practices to inspire people to kind of get into practice, a bit like a recipe book inspires people to cook different stuff. Like, how about trying this? And I read the book and six months from starting, like it was published within six months. And so that sort of was a lesson in sort of a ripe idea is the one to go with, rather than one. That seems like it should be right.
Mat Lock
Yeah, sure. Well, congratulations on that. That's a rapid fire. Yeah, that was just fantastic. What would be great. I mean, we could take a deep dive into describing meditation and the benefits of it. But but if you're open to it, we have the opportunity, I guess, for both by mail, and we could you could guide me and the listeners through a practice. If you're okay, dude.
Neil Seligman
Yeah, of course, I'd love to.
Mat Lock
If there's a tour putting you on the spot, you just said, you enjoy the creativity of that. And one of the main issue, one of the one of the top three, let's say, challenges, a lot of the clients we deal with, they talk about it, and it's, it's one of the big barriers to many other elements of improving their lives is just a lack of time. They're just so busy, busy, busy, busy, they're busy at work, they're busy at home, they're just busy and don't have enough time. And often we find that they're sacrificing their health and well being through the perception that they don't have time to take care of themselves. So if that's an appropriate subject time, then we could Yeah, you the royal week, you could guide me in the listener through a practice around time.
Neil Seligman
Sounds good show. Yeah, let's get straight into it.
Mat Lock
Okay, that no time to prepare.
Neil Seligman
Okay, so I'm going to guide the practice with my eyes open, but just inviting those who are listening if it's appropriate for your situation. If you do wish to close your eyes, then just do something now and if not just hold a gentle, soft gaze. And we're just going to ensure that the body is sitting comfortably, feet flat on the floor. And just allow a sense of aliveness just to energize the spine. When that brings a little bit of tallness, or just allows you to soften just be guided by your body, whatever feels good for today. And as we drop in, which is going to bring our attention to the breath. So we start with a breath of breath is the doorway of mindfulness. So noticing the breath out the nostrils and we're breathing in through the nose and breathing out through the nose, lips together, teeth slightly apart and just relaxing the muscles at the back of the neck allowing the chin to drop for just one centimeter. Just noticing if there's any tension in the jaw and just breathing a little bit of relaxation to those muscles and an invitation to soften. And so we drop in on the breath and as the breath drops in awareness begins to gather also. Perhaps even imagining the warmth of awareness dissolving through the body like ink dissolving through water And here in practice, we might just get that sensation of landing, landing in the body on the breath. And as we land, we start to notice that our presence in riches, this moment of time, we begin to notice things which had been dialed out of awareness. Perhaps noticing the texture of clothing on skin noticing the warmth of the body landing in the feet, noticing this point of contact between the physical body and the physical earth. And even through socks and shoes and carpets and concrete and timber. We are connected body, and planet.
So we remind ourselves of everything that it has taken for us to appear in this way today. remembering all of our footsteps, throughout the whole of our life have been leading to this seat to this now, and here we are with the ability to breathe presence into this moment.
Mindfulness is a practice of embodiment. And it is one in which we remember ourselves. The word remember, means we put ourselves back together. The breath leads us into the body, the legs, feet, the torso, the arms, the neck, the head, the skull, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the scalp, the hair, the skin. We find ourselves breathing through the body in and through the body. For you feeling the awareness, the vibration of life, this process of dynamic, spontaneous life in which we are participant, a passenger a witness, both object and subject, we can come alive in the remembering of body and being and place and time. And so we might notice that mindfulness and presence doesn't take time but gifts us time.
The purpose of mindfulness is so that we don't miss out on our lives. So that we're here, so that we're present that we notice ourselves in and through time, both ways that human beings experience time as the fleeting present moment, but also as the eternal Now the narrative the story of our lives. And so as we breathe here connected through time and space, just reflecting for right now for today. What is the most important thing to remember? What is the most important thing to remember and remember, the most important thing is to remember the most important thing and how can you express that in one practical action as you set forth from practice today and so we will gather ourselves back through the body On the breath, finding the waves of the breath following the next exhale up and outs. Lighting once again, at the tip of the nose, the nostrils the sensations of air, the warmth of the exhale, and in your very own time, allowing the eyes to reopen.
Mat Lock
After so that felt very self serving. I appreciate it very much. And I'm conscious that anyone listening if they if they weren't in a position whilst listening to this, then I hope they really do make a note to go back and sit through that practice and participate in that practice. Out of interest, how long was that?
Neil Seligman
I think it was about five minutes.
Mat Lock
It's fascinating, isn't it? How time I mean, I meditate daily. Albeit only 10 or 15 minutes. But I always kind of lose sense of track of time, which I appreciate. Because I'm being present and being in the moment and focusing. Which is part of the point, right. But for anyone, and when a lot of the stuff we do in level up, which is only a five week primer performance of productivity. And we introduce breathwork we introduce all sorts of things, but they're only five minutes. And even though we guide, people say well, if you've got 20 minutes, then that would be amazing. But if you haven't, then just give it a go for five minutes. And it's so powerful, even just five minutes and fast. For anyone who thinks they don't have five minutes, or 10 minutes in their day, to practice some form of mindfulness, in this case, meditation. And I think they're missing the trick. Because it feels amazing. Yeah, I think when
Neil Seligman
people say they don't have time for mindfulness, what they're really saying is, they don't consider it important enough to give five minutes of time to, which is fine. But I think, you know, I sometimes call BS on people's time issues around that. And, you know, say you were you only need the same level of professionalism with mindfulness as you do with brushing your teeth. And pretty much all adults brush their teeth twice a day. And it's not something you don't get people at the office going, Oh, I haven't got time to brush my teeth. Sorry. My breath stinks. People don't say that. It's like, No, it just happens because you consider it an important thing to do. And I think at some point, it clicks with people. It's like, oh, this little mental hygiene thing that I do, which is takes five minutes, or whatever, is actually really important. But they have to kind of see and feel the benefit of it in their lives to notice that kind of consciousness modulation, that anchoring. That can take place in a short time to realize it's worth worthwhile.
Mat Lock
And as you said, when when something feels good, we're motivated to do more of it. I know that you've created I'm interested at what stage you felt the need to create your online meditation programs and learn how to meditate in 10 days. Zen in 10, at what stage in your journey, do you realize that people just needed needed a way of learning how to do this?
Neil Seligman
So, um, I think I've always known that like, you know, the, for the, from the beginning of kind of the business, I knew that you know, people needed to to be welcomed into the practice in a way that, you know, felt real and relevant to them. And I think because for a very slow started nobody being interested in my business to it getting busier over the years up until 2020 when COVID hit by then I had become so busy that I wasn't really going to have time to create an online course because I was doing so many speaking engagements and, and so on. But COVID gave me the opportunity to stop I had more space and time. Everybody was at home and was looking for online learning to replace some of the in person things that we'd lost through through lockdown and so on. And so it sort of provided the the right moment and I suppose that the other impetus for it was, you know, there's there is a place for all of these mindfulness courses and apps and things where you're carried through the practice by music or guidance, or, you know, some sort of talk or whatever. And, but I wanted, I've always really wanted to leave people with the ability to meditate without any of the crutches and so that they actually could feel for themselves that they they are the person doing the meditation or being the meditation, rather than having it done to them by a teacher or a guide, or music or whatever. Because that is sort of the pro challenge of mindfulness. Can we can we create the state in our own silence? from stress and worry? Can we navigate into center? Can we come back into our own inner hum of quiet? And that's what I wanted to teach people in the schools. That's, that's what's different about it. Really?
Mat Lock
Yeah, no, absolutely. No, it was interesting when when we had sort of pre chat. And since then, of course, I've gone through Zen intent. And for years, I've used headspace, as a form of guided meditation. And in fact, I had never experienced anything else. And so I'm now weaning myself off guided meditation as a result of going through examine Tim. And I really appreciate it I hadn't really thought about. I hadn't thought about it. But there had been occasions where I didn't have a very good, light signal for my phone. It's actually I missed a few. I've missed doing it. I skipped it, because while I didn't really or I was traveling, and back in the good old days, didn't want to, you know that the roaming charges were rutile. And Wi Fi wasn't so prominent, as in public Wi Fi, and so on. And so yeah, it was really interesting. I, there was nothing about it, even though I think there are huge benefits to it. And I'm a supporter of it, I have to say I had never thought about the fact that I was beholden to it hadn't actually learned I was yeah, I hadn't learned how to do it independently. And I appreciate very much that Zen 10 focuses on that empowers you to to develop your own ability to meditate where, when and where you live, and ultimately
Neil Seligman
get that's really lovely feedback. Thank you. It's that's that was the aim of it. So it's good to see that it's helping with that specifically.
Mat Lock
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, we'll we'll link to that in the show notes. So yeah, man having been through it, I can personally say it's fabulous. And it doesn't take a lot of time. If you know that it's going to be a great ROI. For sure. Nail I'm conscious of time. I mean, frankly, I think I could talk to you all day. But I am conscious of time. I mean, I appreciate that we you've guided me and and the audience through that practice, or anything else you'd like to. It's always nice. And I know you feel the same way to leave the listener with something. So whether even if it's just a final thought, or a piece of advice, anything really anything you'd like to share with the audience that we haven't touched on. Or maybe you'd like to emphasize something we have.
Neil Seligman
So I just share something that I'm working on in my own practice, personally, which is one of the things I do at the moment is I try and track all the ways in which I contract during the back on in the day, and sort of take it as my challenge to see if I can catch them and find a way of releasing them in the moment. I'm not very good at it. But it is it's a really interesting challenge to notice all the little, you know, we have big triggers, which are really obvious. But all the little triggers, things that happen, things that irritate me, things that people say people walking out in front, all sorts of little things that happen around me and see if I can notice those and and sort of work through them. What is it? What has what has taken me into irritation or frustration. Can I name that? Can I be with it? Can I release it? And another question I really like to ask myself, which is helping me with this contractions then is do I do that? So often the things that really irritate me when I asked myself the question, do I do that? Right? I also do it. I'm also guilty of doing it to other people. Yeah. And so yeah, this isn't a sort of fully worked piece of advice or anything, it's more a practice I'm tinkering with, in case it resonates with anyone else to have a guard.
Mat Lock
And how do you do that? I mean, do you do you make note, sort of just mental note.
Neil Seligman
And it's mostly mental notes. I will, I think, at some point downloaded all a bit more thoroughly. Because I think it'd be useful be useful to kind of see see all the different triggers and their different sort of levels of intensity. It's probably an exercise that sort of cold, you know, creating it for a training course, or something down the line when I've got it figured out. But I think it's a really interesting practice to see, you know, what are all the things that take me off center? And sometimes a lot of little things take you quite far away from center? And how do I get myself back? So?
Mat Lock
Yeah, that must be leading to an EEG for you, and even greater sense of self awareness. You're actively looking for those? You're ready. Yeah.
Neil Seligman
Well, yeah. I mean, I'm sort of obsessed with personal development and building awareness. And so yeah, I have a big appetite to kind of figuring figuring these little bits out.
Mat Lock
Okay, fantastic. Well, I appreciate it's a fantastic final share to say. Well, thank you to everyone for listening. And if you've enjoyed this, please go ahead and share it, of course, and leave us a review on whichever platform you're using. It really does help more than you know, the algorithms get hold of that, and help to share the love. And if you're interested in grabbing a copy of my book, lead by example, which talks about how to unleash your potential at work in life, I would love to send you a copy of it. If you can just go to the impact. project.io take a deep dive down that rabbit hole and it'll be in your doorstep. In no time. Obviously, my thanks to Neil will be posting all the various links to his socials, his website for sure. The books that the two books that Neil's written them, then the program and the app that was mentioned earlier in this conversation, it'll all be there in the show notes. So Neil, thank you very much indeed. It's been a pleasure having you here.
Neil Seligman
Thanks, Matt. It's been wonderful. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for having me.
Mat Lock
Yeah, absolutely. And until next time, for everyone listening it's time to be brave, have fun and make yourself busy making an impact on the world.
