The Buddha at Work: Lessons for Leaders from Spirituality with Lodro Rinzler
Lodro Rinzler - Award-winning author of 7 books including The Buddha Walks into a Bar and Take Back Your Mind: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times
He has taught meditation for 20 years in the Buddhist tradition, is the co-founder of MNDFL meditation studios and travels frequently for his books, having spoken across the world at conferences, universities, and businesses as diverse as Google, Harvard University and the White House. Named one of 50 Innovators Shaping the Future of Wellness by SONIMA, Rinzler’s work has been featured in The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, FOX, CBS, and NBC. He lives in upstate New York with his wife Adreanna, daughter Ruby, and a menagerie of small animals.
When you think of Buddhist meditation, you might not immediately see the connection with great leadership and a healthy workplace culture. And yet, today's guest illuminates just how profound and perhaps even essential a consistent meditation practice is for modern leaders.
And the good news is it's also highly accessible for all of us. In today’s episode we’re speaking with Lodro Rinzler, the award winning author of seven books, including The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, The Buddha Walks Into the Office, and Take Back Your Mind, Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times.
Lodro has taught meditation for more than 20 years in the Buddhist tradition, is the co founder of MNDFL Meditation Studios, and speaks across the world at conferences, universities, and seminars. And businesses as diverse as Google, Harvard University, and the White House. There's plenty of science to show that meditation has an enormously positive impact on individuals and teams in terms of stress reduction.
In this conversation, you'll learn a bunch of other benefits, which have less to do with KPIs, And more to do with a more meaningful life.
Learn more about Lodro Rinzler here:
Connect with Lodro Rinzler on LinkedIn.
And find his brilliant books including The Buddha Walks into a Bar and Take Back Your Mind: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times here.
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Sally Clarke: Welcome to We Are Human Leaders. When you think of Buddhist meditation, you might not immediately see the connection with great leadership and a healthy workplace culture. And yet, today's guest illuminates just how profound and perhaps even essential a consistent meditation practice is for modern leaders.
[00:00:25] Sally Clarke: And the good news is it's also highly accessible for all of us. I'm Sally Clark, and today Aleksisana and I are speaking with Lodro Rinsler, the award winning author of seven books, including The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, The Buddha Walks Into the Office, and Take Back Your Mind, Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times.
[00:00:44] Sally Clarke: Lodro has taught meditation for more than 20 years in the Buddhist tradition, is the co founder of MNDFL Meditation Studios, and speaks across the world at conferences, universities, and seminars. And businesses as diverse as Google, Harvard University, and the White House. There's plenty of science to show that meditation has an enormously positive impact on individuals and teams in terms of stress reduction.
[00:01:07] Sally Clarke: But in today's conversation, you'll learn a bunch of other benefits, which have less to do with KPIs, And more to do with a more meaningful life. Let's dive in.
[00:01:19] Sally Clarke: Welcome to We Are Human Leaders. Laudro, it's such a delight to have you with us today. This is a conversation both of us have been really looking forward to. We'd love to start as we always do, by getting to know you a little bit better and understanding the story that's. brought you to the important work that you're doing today.
[00:01:36] Lodro Rinzler: Thank you for having me here, first and foremost. It's such an honor to be here with both of you, and I love the topic of this particular podcast. I know it helps a lot of people, so it's nice to be here. For me, I was actually born and raised Buddhist, and I think that's not that common here in the United States.
[00:01:52] Lodro Rinzler: Where, my parents had started meditating when they were in their 20s. So, they were studying with a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, and by the time I came around, it was already in the household. Sort of environmentally, we would say. It's not like they said, go meditate, but they found me one day. Story goes, at least, they tell me.
[00:02:07] Lodro Rinzler: That they saw me in my room with my Facing a wall with my legs crossed and closed the door behind them. And over dinner that night, they said, so what were you doing there? I said, well, I was meditating. And they said, what does that mean to you? I said, well, I sat there and I noticed my breath when I got distracted.
[00:02:25] Lodro Rinzler: I went back to noticing my breath and they're like, yeah, that's basically it. I mean, that's the thing. So it's funny because I'm a nerdy kid and I got bullied. I was small and non athletic and my parents were like, what do we do? Do we put them in karate? So they weren't quite sure. So they said, well, I don't, maybe we just send them to a meditation retreat.
[00:02:43] Lodro Rinzler: So when I was 11, they thought that's the thing to do. So they sent me to a meditation retreat. So I'd like get more confidence or something. And I, not having the context, I think a lot of adults these days are like, a weekend of meditation. That sounds like a lot. But I really enjoyed it, and then I kept going with it until I was about 17 or so, and I applied and was accepted into this program.
[00:03:04] Lodro Rinzler: I'd like to think it still exists. I should look into it. It's at Gampo Abbey, which is the monastery or nunnery that is run by Pema Chodron. to have her book sitting next to me right now. And I did a, somewhere there where you take the robes, you shave your head, you take the monastic precepts, all of it.
[00:03:21] Lodro Rinzler: And this is meant for like young people. I think it was 18 to 32 and they made an exception for me. And the element that really struck me at that time was I was doing a walking meditation with these big windows and it's right on this cliff where I saw this whale breach the water and then crash back into the sea as I was doing the walking meditation.
[00:03:43] Lodro Rinzler: It sort of stopped my mind. And I realized in that moment that what I was doing was very different than with something my parents had ever done. We all have those moments that maybe the tradition we were raised in, we have a separation, we go in a different direction, we continue that direction, but it's ours at that point.
[00:03:57] Lodro Rinzler: And the latter is the case for me that I was then realizing, Oh, this is my thing now. And I started pursuing it in earnest and then continued to do longer and longer retreats and was eventually invited to do a meditation teacher training when I was all of 18 years old, at which point they were like, okay.
[00:04:13] Lodro Rinzler: Go start offering these teachings. And that was about 23, 24 years ago now.
[00:04:17] Alexis Zahner: Wow. That is so fascinating, . And I can't help, but think your early experience to spirituality and Buddhism is speaking about these kinds of divergent pathways, or when the pathway really feels like it becomes your own, your experience is so different from mine.
[00:04:32] Alexis Zahner: My experience of coming to meditation and spirituality was really to try and diverge away from the pathway I had grown up with. Which was one of no religion, no spirituality, frankly, limited, you know, emotional intelligence and space for this in the household. And one that I found myself on out of, you know, need for myself and really feeling like that was the path I wanted to travel down.
[00:04:54] Alexis Zahner: So such a. fascinating idea that we can be here today having this conversation together, yet coming to it from very different experiences. So thank you so much for sharing that.
[00:05:04] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, my pleasure. But honestly, I believe yours is the braver path because it is the sense of like trying something completely unknown and just seeing like, is this actually something that I can commit to?
[00:05:13] Lodro Rinzler: Which is, I mean, I, you know, I was sort of baked in it, right. But you, you had to make that choice. I think a lot of people are in your shoes and it's a very, it's a difficult choice to make, not just because you're breaking from what has come before and, but because meditation is sort of a scary practice, if we're being honest.
[00:05:27] Sally Clarke: Yeah, it really is. It's really uncomfortable. Yeah. I love to delve into that more, LaDre, because I think it is something that I get told a lot. I can't meditate. It's just not for me, this kind of sort of reluctance that we have in our culture. And I think particularly in sort of the addiction to busyness as well.
[00:05:43] Sally Clarke: But it's interesting also that you didn't have a point where you needed to sort of vastly rebel. That was somehow you were able to find your own unique way that was different to your parents and your own sort of divergent path, but still sort of incorporating a lot. I'm sure of what you received environmentally from a young age.
[00:06:00] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, that's exactly it. And I mean, that was the thing at that point, it was me just discovering what teachings really spoke to me, what actually felt unique to my lived experience as at that point, you know, late teens, early twenties. And that's ultimately what gave birth to all of, uh, 27, 28 years old. My first book was called The Buddha Walks Into a Bar.
[00:06:21] Lodro Rinzler: And it was like, I wasn't seeing people talking about, well, what if you still go out drinking with friends? What if you are actively dating? What if, you know, you were trying to figure out your career path? Like there wasn't meditation for blah, dot, dot, dot, any of those things. And I think that's sort of, You know, it was personally, I've always had this thing of like, if I don't see it out there, I sort of have to create it.
[00:06:40] Lodro Rinzler: It's just like a weird itch that I have to scratch. So that was that book was like, how do we actually then make this about our lived experience in the 21st century? And I do think that's something that we all sort of have to do. We have to grapple with not keeping meditation over here on one side and a fun hobby or something, or as we actually admit sort of uncomfortable hobby.
[00:06:59] Lodro Rinzler: And then, you know, the rest of our life over here, the idea of meditation practice is that we should be practicing for all of the other waking hours of our day. So if we're practicing being mindful, being compassionate, the point is that we then bring that up with us off the meditation cushion and into the bar and our dating life and our social life and all of it.
[00:07:17] Alexis Zahner: Yeah, I love that, Ladra. And something that certainly I found personally early on when I came to Buddhism specifically, and then started trying to integrate. Meditation and mindfulness practices into my life is that it almost felt incompatible with Western culture. And then having to get off my meditation cushion and go to a really stressful and a really busy job and deal with the day to day stresses that we experience.
[00:07:40] Alexis Zahner: And we'd love to dive into this a little bit more specifically around your work, around Buddhism in the workplace and how this impacts our career and our lives. And one of the things you say in your book is that knowing your intention in all things is key. Can we dive into this element of Your work a little bit more understanding the importance of intentionality specifically in meditation and then how this might actually apply or impact our working lives too.
[00:08:05] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, it's an interesting one. The example that came to mind, just because I mentioned the Buddha walks into a bar, which again was a bazillion years ago, but it's like, if I go out with friends and I'm not clear about why I'm going out with them, let me put in the positive sense first and I'll do the negative.
[00:08:18] Lodro Rinzler: If I'm like, I haven't seen my friend in a long time, I want to catch up. I want to have meaningful conversations, know what's going on with them. Then I might be going out to drinks with them, but I'll probably have like one or two and, you know, really focus on them. And my intention is I want to connect with my friend.
[00:08:32] Lodro Rinzler: The activities I'm present with them, I'm asking questions. I'm getting to sort of relearn who they are right now. And then the fruition is I'd probably wake up, not so hung over, actually feeling refreshed, more connected to that person. If I'm like, I'm getting together with my friend and I'm not clear about my intention, Then I might just say, Oh man, it's been such a hard week.
[00:08:49] Lodro Rinzler: We have a whiskey by the time they get there. I've had two. And you know, by the time the night's over, it's more about like us having drinks than actually connecting. And I wake up hungover. I don't feel good. I don't even remember what was it exactly that he said was wrong with his father. You know, it could be horrible.
[00:09:03] Lodro Rinzler: So, you know, not knowing our intention sometimes just gets us into trouble. So with meditation, we acknowledge right off the bat, which I love. We're like, okay, meditation can be uncomfortable, can be a little hard. And part of that is just us grappling with the fact that we think we should sit there in complete peace the moment we sit down, as opposed to the reality that we all have a thousand bazillion thoughts.
[00:09:23] Lodro Rinzler: That's the scientific number of how many thoughts we have every time we meditate. But it's not just when we meditate, we have it all the time. It's just, we happen to notice it when we're meditating. Yes. So we notice, oh my gosh, my mind is sort of all very busy. And That can be intimidating for many people, but the act of acknowledging the thought, coming back to the breath over and over again, creates new neural pathways that open us up to living a more present life.
[00:09:45] Lodro Rinzler: Anyway, back to our point. If my intention is not clear in meditation, I'm probably going to fall off the wagon pretty quickly because I don't understand why I'm doing it. If I know I want to be more present, I want to be kinder, I want to show up differently for my family, then when things get tough, when I get disheartened in meditation, where I feel like I'm feeling a little lazy, I don't want to go do it right now, do it later, or I'm feeling like I'm too busy, it's the knowing my why, the intention that will actually motivate me to get up, go over there, sit down, and actually do the work.
[00:10:15] Lodro Rinzler: So knowing our why is helpful there as well, but you talked about work, and that's the interesting one. I'm gonna tell a story, I hope it's okay. I mentioned it in the book. You probably already know which one I was touring for that book. And I went to Yale university in Connecticut here in the States. And I was invited to talk to their local Buddhist group.
[00:10:33] Lodro Rinzler: There's a woman who met me at the gate as I entered the university. And she screwed me up. I was like, let me give you the tour. And we were zooming around, got to talking, we were at a coffee place and said, what year are you? And she said, I'm a senior. I'm always very careful with people that are graduating college.
[00:10:48] Lodro Rinzler: Cause I remember that. And I was like, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. So she said, do you know where you're going to live or what, where you might want to go in May? And she said, so funny. You asked me that here because, uh, we're in a coffee shop and I want to be the chief marketing officer of Starbucks.
[00:11:03] Lodro Rinzler: I thought, wow. I had no level of specificity at this point in my life. Good for you. Agreed. Please tell me everything about this. You know, like that's, and she told me, you know, all sorts of things about like why that's a cool role and why it's a good company and so on and so forth. Fine. We went to the event and then after the event, I'm doing a signing and tell me that they're about to graduate too.
[00:11:25] Lodro Rinzler: They're also seniors. I said, same question. Have you thought about where you want to go? Funnily enough that that first person, I said, where do you want to live? And she's like, I'm going to be this role. passing right but this person's like i might go out west i might move in with my parents for a bit i'm not sure i think i want to work at non profits i know i want to help people but i'm not exactly sure what that means yeah it's like also awesome good for you and because these were so different Within, you know, an hour and a half of each other.
[00:11:50] Lodro Rinzler: I really stayed with me. It still stays with me to this day. Now here's the thing. If the intention, it's not even intention. What the first person had, it was a goal. The goal is I want this job at this, you know, this title at this company, there are 10, 000 ways this could not work out for this person. They could go into marketing, never get a job at Starbucks.
[00:12:06] Lodro Rinzler: They could get a job at Starbucks. And not get that one specific CMO title, they could get the CMO title and realize that they're not happy that they thought they would be working less hours or they'd be better paid or appreciated more. And you know, be unhappy that way. So either they get the job or they don't get the job, there's still room for them to have some unhappiness.
[00:12:25] Lodro Rinzler: That is a goal. Another goal is I want to lose 10 pounds as opposed to an intention, which might be, I want to feel healthy in my body. There's lots of ways to feel healthy in the body as opposed to just setting one specific goal. Not that goals are bad. It's just. There opens up more options. So the intention for this other woman that we talked about, it says, I want to help people.
[00:12:43] Lodro Rinzler: There are thousands of ways that she could help people. She could end up in nonprofits. She could end up working in a major company and saying, I'm looking out for the little guy. She could do any number of things in terms of a career path. But if the intention is I want to help people, the doors are open.
[00:12:57] Lodro Rinzler: So I think that's, it's like knowing our why is really key when it comes to our work. Why do I want to do this thing? And if we can make it less a goal of I need this title or this salary or this role or whatever and more of a, here's how I want to live my life. And last thing I'll say, I promise I'll shut up because this is a great question that you asked.
[00:13:16] Lodro Rinzler: It got me going. There is something I heard a million years ago, which is the difference between resume qualities and eulogy qualities. A resume quality is here's what someone did in their second quarter of 2024. And all of the feats that they had, you know, or like, here's the books that I wrote or whatever, whatever you want to put on a resume eulogy quality is the thing that you would want people to say about you at the time of your death.
[00:13:37] Lodro Rinzler: Cause I don't want people saying, Oh, he wrote a lot of books. I want people to say, he was kind, or he was generous, or he was loving. That would be great. But those are the qualities that I can actively cultivate. Whether someone ever wants to publish me again or not, it's not really entirely up to me. It's, it's, there's so many factors, but instead of saying that's my goal, it's like my intention, I want to help people, I want to be, live a loving life.
[00:13:58] Lodro Rinzler: Whatever it is, that is something I can really work with. I
[00:14:01] Sally Clarke: love that differentiation there, resume qualities and eulogy qualities, because no one wants their last quarter's KPIs read out of their eulogy, let's face it. I think it's a really beautiful way of framing what you've spoken to there, Lodger, in the kind of delineating between this goal and intentions.
[00:14:15] Sally Clarke: And I think in our, You know, modern society, although I suspect to some extent, Western society has always been framed somewhat like this. We make our joy and contentment conditional on something that's may or may not happen in the future. And I think for me, the difference in that is by creating an intention that is to be.
[00:14:33] Sally Clarke: Kind or to be particular, to be a particular way. That's something that I can start to integrate into my life immediately. It draws me back into presence and while goals are important. And I think ostensibly there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with setting goals and working towards them. It kind of feels like we rob ourselves of something when we just make life about goals because we're.
[00:14:54] Sally Clarke: Almost pulling that out into, into the future. If you see my meaning rather than be allowing the joy and contentment to also be here in the moment. And I think that's something for me that I find my meditation practice over the years has enabled me to really ground into the moment in a way that almost feels like it's climbing down out of those goals sometimes, like they're up here in my, in my brain, they're very busy.
[00:15:15] Sally Clarke: I'm very interested in them, but when I can really ground myself in the moment as well, and with that intention. And just circling back to where we started, I think as well, that, you know, the difference between just sitting down on the cushion and letting 20 minutes pass and sitting down on the cushion with the intention to let it change you to, to really, truly be present is also a really key one that I've noticed in my own practice personally, particularly this year, that sometimes my intentionality has wobbled and it's really impacted me as a human being.
[00:15:43] Sally Clarke: So I really appreciate how you've unpacked for us the impact of intentionality sort of from the cushion to the office, right through to our funerals. Um, I really, I think it's such an important concept that we lose sight of in our very busy future oriented lives. And to sort of extend this a little larger, you know, we think a lot, I think particularly historically we've thought as sort of work and spirituality, never the two shall meet.
[00:16:06] Sally Clarke: These are sort of two separate components of our lives. And I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on that separation, particularly for younger people and for younger Buddhists, perhaps in particular.
[00:16:17] Lodro Rinzler: The separation of spirituality and sort of work and things like, yes, of course. So the element here that I think is so interesting is that sometimes we take the view that work is the thing that we have to go through in order to relax.
[00:16:31] Lodro Rinzler: Right? I work Monday to Friday or whatever it is, and then I get to relax on the weekend. Whereas relax is actually a quality, like the qualities we were just talking about. And I was thinking about this, gosh, what was happening this morning? Oh, right. I was talking to you too, before we started recording, we just have a little bit of a calamity of our house, a lot of constructions taking place, and I have a one and a half year old and said, you know, I should take my daughter and get her out of here.
[00:16:54] Lodro Rinzler: So we are driving. I started fleeing my house, taking her out into the world. We were figuring out where we're going to go. And the low tire gauge came on, on my car. I said, Oh gosh, another thing. I said, how silly of me. I was like, I have this period of time that I can go and enjoy this time with my daughter.
[00:17:11] Lodro Rinzler: And I'm like, Oh, poor me. I have to pull over for a minute to reinflate a tire. Right? So it has this, it's a shift in view. I could have said, Oh, first there's construction at my house. Now the tires are going flat. Everything is wrong. And just let myself spiral. Right. And hold myself in a state of tension.
[00:17:28] Lodro Rinzler: No one's holding me in state of tension, me in that case. Or, wow, what a great morning that I got to spend with my daughter, and it happened to be, you know, that there was some noise and a flat tire, but like, we had a great time. And it was just, the only thing that happens in that is the shift in view. So the view here is, and it's similar to what we were talking about around intention, like, do I want to enjoy this time?
[00:17:48] Lodro Rinzler: Or do I want to feel relaxation in the midst of this? Or do I want to suffer and sort of perpetuate my suffering? There's a great Buddhist analogy called the two arrows. Which is, you're walking through a forest, and out of nowhere, an arrow comes and hits you in the arm. And out of it starts to spiral.
[00:18:04] Lodro Rinzler: You say, oh my gosh, who would ever shoot me? Oh my go I bet it was so and so. They're always out to get me. This is so typical of them. I'm gonna tell everyone why I was right in this situation, and they were wrong, and what a jerk they are. And as we're doing that, We're just perpetuating the second arrow, which is another form of suffering.
[00:18:20] Lodro Rinzler: First arrow, the pain that we experience as part of life. Second arrow, the suffering we then perpetuate in our own minds as in response to that, that pain. So I think that's a pretty common one when it comes to work, that there might be difficulty at work. You might have a difficult coworker or boss.
[00:18:38] Lodro Rinzler: Someone that you don't like, or a project that you really wish you weren't doing, or whatever it is. And then there's the second arrow of, and here's why they always make it about, you know, themselves, or here's why, you know, this project is so unfair that I actually have to work on it, or whatever it is.
[00:18:52] Lodro Rinzler: That second arrow is the thing we can really address in life. There's always going to be first arrows. There's always going to be various pains, but the thing that we want to do is pluck that arrow from our arm and tend to our healing, as opposed to going into the second arrow. So, you know, if we know that there's going to be difficulty at work, we need to prepare the mind and say, can I at least not get by into the second arrow?
[00:19:11] Lodro Rinzler: Can I at least not perpetuate all of the mental anguish that I keep going day in and day out around it? And that's where the meditation thing is really helpful because meditation practice, again, creates these neural pathways that say, Oh, you don't have to chase after every distracting thought, do you? I can acknowledge that thought, I can come back to the present moment, I can acknowledge the thought again, I can come back to the breath again, over and over again, so that the brain starts to say, I don't have to do that in the rest of my daily life.
[00:19:35] Lodro Rinzler: I can acknowledge that, you know, it's unfair that they're making me do this thing at work, and let go of that, you know, I don't have to hold on and do secondary stuff. So I think that there's this, um, It's not just like, wouldn't it be nice to integrate my meditation with my daily, it's just the more we meditate, the more it naturally happens,
[00:19:51] Sally Clarke: right?
[00:19:52] Alexis Zahner: I love the phrase. It's such an interesting point. Literally, I can't help but think when I started on my mindfulness journey, some 10, 15 years ago now that I was. just a perpetuator of that second arrow. And every day of my life, I was the kind of person where, you know, a small inconvenience would blow entirely out of proportion.
[00:20:14] Alexis Zahner: And my brain had this brilliant capacity to create a lovely story about how I was so victimized by the world around me. And all of these negative things were continually happening to me. And the way I Used to frame it to myself and certainly the way sometimes we talk about it now when we're, we're supporting leaders in this sort of work is, you know, something we can all relate to in the Western world is the necessity of paying tax every year, whether it be annually or however it works.
[00:20:39] Alexis Zahner: And it's almost like paying tax again on something we've already paid tax on. And that is like, the suffering is a guarantee in life. It is. 50 percent perhaps of being a human being or we can label certainly any of our uncomfortable experiences as being negative. We choose to, and then the narrative we create about them and then the rabbit holes we allow ourselves to go down becomes that sort of idea of paying tax again.
[00:21:00] Alexis Zahner: So I totally relate to that experience and have spent a lot of my adult life trying to unpack that sort of negativity bias around that neural pathway you mentioned earlier there.
[00:21:11] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. And I think we have to acknowledge that there is a negativity bias, that there is certain ways that the brain has been shaped evolutionarily, and at the same time, the brain is incredibly pliable.
[00:21:25] Lodro Rinzler: We can actually make new choices, and those new choices can actually, or the plasticity of the brain is absolutely incredible. It can actually continue to change as we age.
[00:21:33] Sally Clarke: I, I think also what you highlighted. For me, LaDro was this reminded me of the Viktor Frankl quote, which I will now butcher, but, you know, between stimulus and response, you have a choice and in that choice lies a freedom.
[00:21:45] Sally Clarke: And I think it's that for me, it's that create rather than immediately the neural, like as Alexis referred to that kind of immediate hormone, almost like body stress response that we have to these situations that the littlest thing sets us off. And we have a nervous system response to it. And before we know it, we're getting carried away in it, creating that little beat where we can actually.
[00:22:03] Sally Clarke: Even just for a moment, see, I have a choice here about how I respond to this. And I also have a choice if I respond. And I think it's kind of building in that sort of quite counter cultural shift towards reactivity that I think can be really powerful. And particularly for leaders in the workplace, when we can start to embody that and other people see See that.
[00:22:21] Sally Clarke: I think it can be incredibly powerful to see the ripple effect as well. That not just constantly being in this state of why me, why this, why sort of a negativity can be a really powerful one for, for teams, for organizations.
[00:22:35] Lodro Rinzler: I completely agree. Yeah, it's a great point, and I think that's the interesting thing about what you do, the two of you, which is, it's not just tips and advice, it's like, how do we integrate these principles into our lives?
[00:22:47] Lodro Rinzler: And that's the thing that I think it takes a little bit of doing, but makes the world of difference, that is the distinction between saying, Oh, yeah, it'd be nice to be a loving person, give me 10 things to do, and saying, Oh, it's about how I show up when I do go into my meetings with my team.
[00:23:02] Alexis Zahner: Yeah.
[00:23:03] Lodro Rinzler: It is about how I show up when, you know, someone asks me to hold the elevator for them.
[00:23:08] Lodro Rinzler: Like there's, we don't think of it, Oh, this is an act of love, but it is like, I'm not going to shut down my heart. I'm actually going to be here for you. So I think the integration aspect that you two are talking about is of utmost importance. And it is like a lived experience day in, day out thing, as opposed to a top 10 list, or, you know, pieces of advice that we can just wish, you know, right above our mirror or something.
[00:23:25] Lodro Rinzler: It's like, we have to learn to live these things.
[00:23:27] Alexis Zahner: Absolutely. And. You know, Lodro, you've already sort of mentioned this idea that to be a good Buddhist or a good meditator, we don't have to exclude ourselves from the modern world and sit on a mountaintop to achieve that. And can you help us for those of us who are perhaps feeling busy and stressed and not understanding how we can integrate this in our day to day lives?
[00:23:46] Alexis Zahner: What are some really practical work related strategies that perhaps people centered leaders,
[00:23:53] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, it's a really interesting question because it is like, there's no good catch all right, but there's a lot of things. I think for me, you know, I've done in addition to like being a meditation teacher and writing work, I've also founded nonprofits.
[00:24:04] Lodro Rinzler: I have found, co founded a network of meditation studios in New York city that was like a major business. Until, not surprisingly, during the pandemic, getting together in a room and breathing together was not the thing that everyone was seeking to do. I have had these moments of really being placed into big leadership positions.
[00:24:22] Lodro Rinzler: And one of the things that I always came back to personally, and again, this is just me, Lodro Rensler, and if it's helpful for someone out there, great, is I noticed that there would be times when you'd be put in a pressured position. You need to close a real estate deal. You need to hire someone. You need to dot, dot, dot.
[00:24:37] Lodro Rinzler: And the one thing that me and my business partner at the time that we would always say is okay, but we can't make this decision out of fear. To check yourself in that way is really powerful because there is a lot of, no, I need to get this done. This needs to be off my list and I need to move on to the next thing, whatever it is.
[00:24:54] Lodro Rinzler: But am I doing this out of fear? And what is that fear? To actually look at it. It means that sometimes we would take longer than we would want to do things. It means that sometimes we would make the wrong decision. You know, we would say, actually, we're not going to pick up that space. And then it would fall through and we might look back and say, Oh, that was a nice space, but it wouldn't have worked because it was a poverty mentality.
[00:25:14] Lodro Rinzler: And we didn't want to start a new venture with a poverty mentality. So I find that mentor of mine at one point said just in general about life, but I think it's very applicable to business that you want to be running towards something, not running from something. And that you want to feel excited, abundant about making decisions as leaders, as opposed to, Oh my gosh, I don't know, we've got a ticking time, you know, a ticking clock, we need to make a decision.
[00:25:35] Lodro Rinzler: Like, it's just not helpful. When there is a ticking clock, sometimes the answer is to walk away from it. And it's scary. It's a scary thing to do, but it's better than acting from fear. So that's one that came to mind, but on the flip side of it, you know, I, I think it's always, the big question that I try to do with my work is just how can I help?
[00:25:52] Lodro Rinzler: You know, it's just, I do a lot of different things and sometimes it's like I teach a donation based class in my small town in upstate New York and we donate all the proceeds to a local non profit and it's not massive. You know, it's like, I think sometimes, you know, people pay a lot of money to go do a program with a load of rooms and I'm like, here's my tiny little donation based class.
[00:26:10] Lodro Rinzler: And it's beautiful and it's helping the community and like, everyone's benefiting people are coming in and they're getting benefit hopefully. And then the money that they're offering is then benefiting different local nonprofits around here. And it's one of those things where it's like, Oh, I feel good about it because I know I'm helping and not everything has to be the massive event.
[00:26:28] Lodro Rinzler: Not everything has to be the next big project. Sometimes the things that we have in line with the qualities we want, there's. Eulogy qualities we mentioned before that we want to cultivate over the course of this life. Those can be very, like, tiny things. They can be drops in the bucket of our life overall.
[00:26:43] Lodro Rinzler: But at some point, you know, we're still living in line with that intention and I'll add some.
[00:26:47] Sally Clarke: Thank you so much, Lodro. I had a sort of a visceral reaction when you were talking about making decisions from fear in the context of fear. of work, because I think that is something that is, and that kind of desire to simply get things off my list rather than consider them is something that I think all of us, you know, all of us can relate to as well, because it is something that is particularly in a environment where there is a strong tendency to compare ourselves to others.
[00:27:10] Sally Clarke: Not as there are strong tendency, but we have a lot of ways of doing that these days, right? With social media, with a constant online presence. And I think that can also be one of the drivers of us rushing through things, simply wanting To have the decision made rather than making a considered decision.
[00:27:26] Sally Clarke: And I think as you alluded to as well, it's really about embracing that sort of abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity or a poverty mindset and really looking at, you know, can I trust that what is meant for me will come on my path? And for me, and coming back to sort of the theme of what we're talking about today, it's, I think the meditation path for me is such an integral way of seeing.
[00:27:45] Sally Clarke: Seeding that trust. And so I really appreciate how you've really tied it together into sort of a work context for us, because I think that's such a powerful message for many of our listeners as well, that am I making this decision from fear? So thank you so much for that.
[00:27:59] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, and I had to apologize because you asked for something Buddhist in nature, and I could have been like, oh, here's your four noble truths of work.
[00:28:06] Lodro Rinzler: But you know, there's this professor here in the States called, his name is Robert Thurman, and he once said, you know, Buddhism is realism. It's just sort of like the practicality of our life. Yeah. You know, test these things out, see if they're true to your experience.
[00:28:18] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[00:28:18] Lodro Rinzler: And those are things that, yes, they have basis in Buddhist teachings, but just on a very like day to day operational level, I think they're just very practical and real.
[00:28:27] Sally Clarke: I love, I think it's Robin Wright's book, uh, Why Buddhism is Real. True, which I think is such an interesting approach as well. So I think there's, we can pop some things in the show notes in addition to your books, some other resources for listeners who are interested in understanding that more deeply.
[00:28:40] Sally Clarke: Now we have to ask this question, Laura, because it's something that both Alexis as a mindfulness practitioner and myself as a meditation teacher, we get all the time. People, I'm just saying, I'm just too stressed. to meditate. It's I've got too much going on. It's just not for me. My meditation is whatever else, an insert word here.
[00:28:58] Sally Clarke: And I'm curious, particularly with your own, you know, deep seated sort of your Buddhist approach to this. And how do you respond when people might say that it's just not for me, I'm too stressed, can't get there. Good luck to you, but not for me.
[00:29:10] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, it's funny. So at this point in my life, I also teach meditation teacher trainings.
[00:29:14] Lodro Rinzler: And I was like, here's the thing you're going to always have to grapple. Cause I feel like when you're a meditation teacher, you're on the front lines of like an education process. It used to be in the fifties here in the States, at least, you know, people would say, I'm going for a run and say, Oh no, who's chasing you.
[00:29:28] Lodro Rinzler: It's like the level. Awareness of exercise and health, it wasn't a thing here. And now, of course, we're laughing because, you know, everyone has some version of what they do to work out. You know, they do CrossFit or boxing or yoga or running or something. And. We are seeing that with meditation and mental health at this point, where, you know, it used to be people would think you're really weird for meditating, but now everyone knows someone who's done it, or at least has tried it a couple times.
[00:29:52] Lodro Rinzler: So they get into the zone of, well, I should give it a try. And the frontline education is, that people come in and they think it should be like a massage. Like, I should be able to sit down for a half hour and get up feeling pretty relaxed. But the honest conversation we've been having here today is, well, it's more of like you get this waterfall of thoughts dowsing you one after another, but gradually it does get better and the volume of them gets lower and you start to actually have more ability to be with the breath.
[00:30:17] Lodro Rinzler: And this gradual process is really helpful for you long term. It's like, Learning a new language, learning a new instrument. You know, at first it's very complicated. We don't know how to pronounce a thing or where to place our fingers on the instrument. And then gradually we learn the basics until before we know it, we're speaking fluent Spanish or playing Mozart.
[00:30:34] Lodro Rinzler: It's just something that happens over time. Same thing with meditation. So, but when people come in, they have that like, Ooh, I don't think I'm placing my fingers right or saying the words correctly that I must be doing something wrong here. Because I have a lot of thoughts and they get discouraged, they get disheartened.
[00:30:51] Lodro Rinzler: So the thing I always talk about with the meditation teacher trainings is like, we have to sort of hold their hand and be like, no, this is completely normal. This is what happens to everyone. And to find ways to communicate just that this is such a gradual training path so that people feel encouraged to stay with it.
[00:31:05] Lodro Rinzler: So if you are listening to this and you are saying, Oh, I, a nice guy seems nice enough, but you know, absolutely no way. I'm going to meditate because that's just way too hard. Like you're not alone. And that's. It's just a normal response, but I would encourage you to try it for 10 minutes. And it's not going to feel great that first 10 minutes, but it's something like, that's going to change your life if you do it long term.
[00:31:26] Lodro Rinzler: So I'm always trying to find new ways to actually talk to people about like the long term benefit of this. It's the sort of thing where. If we stick with it, it is absolutely life changing. It does make us kinder. It does make us more present. It allows us to live our life in a meaningful way, because we're actually showing up for it, as opposed to being distracted by the 10, 000 things in our head.
[00:31:45] Lodro Rinzler: And that is, if we want to live a life that feels meaningful, like, we gotta give something like that a real try. Not just a one and done. But, That's why I always say like, okay, listen, try it for 11 days at 10 minutes a day. Like I'll go give a corporate talk or something and be like, you'd listen to me for an hour.
[00:32:00] Lodro Rinzler: You know, what is that? That's two hours. You just two hours of your life and then you'll be hooked and you know, sort of like my sales job, but 10 minutes a day. After 11 days, it supposedly starts to become more habit forming in the brain. It becomes easier to do. To the point that we hit 21 days, it's a fully formed habit.
[00:32:16] Lodro Rinzler: At least this is perhaps outdated literature that I read, but I think it's valid when it comes to meditation. After 21 days, we start to see the benefits and we say, Oh, I get why I'm doing it. I get that this is changing me, but we sort of have to pace ourselves to get there. So, Oh, can I do two hours over 11 days?
[00:32:31] Lodro Rinzler: Yes, that's something we can all do 10 minutes
[00:32:33] Alexis Zahner: a day. Ludra, I have so much to say about this because I feel like, you know, having integrated a mindfulness and meditation practice in my life now for, you know, roughly 10 years, I feel like I'm maybe a little ways into that before and after journey. And I 100 percent resonate with that before experience of feeling too stressed.
[00:32:51] Alexis Zahner: And for me, and this is just. From my experience, but it certainly seems to be the thing. The question I get asked most is, but how do I make my mind go blank? How do I have no thoughts? And that's always the interesting misconception that I see for people. It's not about ridding our mind of thoughts, but about creating the space for them to be there without needing to necessarily do that.
[00:33:13] Alexis Zahner: Anything about it, which can also feel a little, maybe esoteric on a first go around with that experience as well. Is that something you hear a lot coming up with the folks that you support on their journey?
[00:33:22] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah. I just think you put it so beautifully there. Really. It's exactly that. And let me put it this way.
[00:33:28] Lodro Rinzler: Cause there's definitely someone, as you said, that's Thinking, Oh, I have too many thoughts to meditate. If you go to the gym and you grab, let's say a 20 pound dumbbell and you lift it one time, that's not much of a workout. Now, if you go in there and you pace yourself and do, you know, maybe 50 reps of that dumbbell, that's a workout and it will.
[00:33:45] Lodro Rinzler: feel uncomfortable at a certain point. And you will, maybe you want to give up at 40, but you go to 50 and you may even feel a little tender the next day, but that's how the muscle, it tears, but it grows back stronger. And we know that same thing with the mind. If you are sitting there in meditation, you're the very rare person that has one thought in that 10 minutes.
[00:34:02] Lodro Rinzler: That's like doing one rep good for you, but like, it's not much of like a retraining the mind to be present. But if you have 50 thoughts and Or a hundred thoughts. It's like doing a hundred reps of acknowledging, I don't have to get distracted by thought. I come back. The more thoughts you have, the more opportunity you have to do the meditation practice.
[00:34:18] Lodro Rinzler: I love that.
[00:34:18] Alexis Zahner: Yeah.
[00:34:19] Lodro Rinzler: So I think if you have a lot of thoughts, you're in great shape. You're going to learn to be present so much more quickly.
[00:34:24] Alexis Zahner: I love that. And the 50 reps a day over six months, that weight's going to start to feel much lighter.
[00:34:30] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah, that's exactly it.
[00:34:32] Alexis Zahner: Love that. Now, and Lodro, we would love if we could please invite our listeners, along with Sally and I, could you guide us through a typical practice?
[00:34:42] Alexis Zahner: You know, maybe it's an introduction meditation or for someone that's maybe never had this experience before, would you guide us through a practice now?
[00:34:48] Lodro Rinzler: Yes. I'm happy to.
[00:34:49] Alexis Zahner: Thank you.
[00:34:50] Lodro Rinzler: There's really only three things I'm going to say, but I'll be probably speak at length. The first is that we're going to take a relaxed and uplifted posture.
[00:34:58] Lodro Rinzler: The second is that we're going to notice how the body's breathing. And the third is that when we get distracted, we'll come back, but let's try this. So if you want to sit in a chair, I'm sitting in a chair at the moment, you can just place your feet firmly
[00:35:08] Speaker 4: on the ground a bit about hips width apart. And then if you're on a cushion, you can just sit with your legs loosely crossed.
[00:35:17] Speaker 4: It doesn't have to be too complicated
[00:35:20] Lodro Rinzler: here, just nothing
[00:35:21] Speaker 6: masochistic. Maybe the knees drop a little below the hips.
[00:35:29] Speaker 4: And then just feeling the weight of your body on the earth, you can lift up gently through the top of the head as a way of balancing.
[00:35:40] Speaker 4: Extending
[00:35:40] Speaker 6: upwards through the spine, extending vertebrae by vertebrae.
[00:35:51] Speaker 6: You can just place your hands, palms down on the lap,
[00:36:02] Speaker 6: tucking in the chin slightly, we
[00:36:05] Speaker 4: relax the muscles in the face. Uncreasing the forehead, relaxing the tiny muscles
[00:36:13] Speaker 6: around the eyes, the cheeks.
[00:36:25] Speaker 6: And, you know, in terms of the eyes, it's really a matter of
[00:36:27] Speaker 4: personal preference. You can keep the eyes open, resting the gaze about 3 4 feet ahead of you on the ground,
[00:36:36] Speaker 6: or just keep it loose and unfocused,
[00:36:42] Speaker 6: or just let the lids gently shut. Either way is fine.
[00:36:54] Speaker 6: And now just notice the body breathing. Just relax with the in breath and out breath as it moves through you.
[00:37:29] Speaker 6: Wherever you find the breath best is okay. It
[00:37:32] Lodro Rinzler: can be the mouth, the nose, the rise and fall of the belly, any of it is fine. But just notice. No need to change it, no need to
[00:37:41] Speaker 4: fix anything.
[00:37:43] Speaker 6: Just relax with each in breath and out breath.
[00:37:57] Speaker 6: And when you notice that you are distracted and the mind takes you out,
[00:38:06] Speaker 6: just gently acknowledge the thought and come right back to the breath.
[00:38:12] Speaker 6: If it's helpful, you could even silently
[00:38:14] Speaker 4: and very gently say,
[00:38:16] Speaker 6: thinking, just to acknowledge it. And then come back to however you're finding the breath right now.
[00:38:48] Speaker 6: Okay. We can emerge from the meditation, whatever way feels right,
[00:38:52] Lodro Rinzler: maybe bringing some movement into the body. That's really it. As I said before, it's the three steps of taking an uplifted but relaxed posture, connecting with the breath, and noticing when we get distracted and coming back.
[00:39:04] Sally Clarke: Thank you so much, Lodro.
[00:39:06] Sally Clarke: I feel like my voice might even have changed after doing that meditation with you. Thank you so much for sharing your practice with us. It's so powerful. And then as you said, it's so simple. Those three aspects, you know, it's sometimes I feel like there's a stampede of wildebeests in my head. And I just love that idea of rather than having to get powerful.
[00:39:25] Sally Clarke: It's becoming aware of them and just almost tapping them with my awareness rather than squishing them if that makes sense. So thank you so much. We really so appreciate you being with us here on We Are Human Leaders. I think we'll almost wrap it there. I'm sorry. I'm a little bit stacy for meditating. Is there any sort of words that you'd like to leave our listeners with in terms of perhaps a starting point for them if they're curious about incorporating a meditation practice into their lives?
[00:39:50] Sally Clarke: Sure.
[00:39:51] Lodro Rinzler: Yeah. I mean, both that and I want to jump back to like Buddhism for a spiritual leader or for, uh, leaders within different types of organizations. Because I know that one thing that's prevalent with a lot of the leaders I work with is this feeling of like, not enoughness. We talked about poverty mentality before, but this is more of an internal one of I'm not enough.
[00:40:10] Lodro Rinzler: I'm not doing enough for my employees. I'm not doing, creating enough. I'm not, et cetera, et cetera. And the Buddhist view. Here is that inherently, basically, fundamentally, we are good. We are whole. We are complete. We are enough. This is sometimes referred to as basic goodness. It is this notion that we aren't basically messed up as much as society may has whispered in our ear at some point along the way of.
[00:40:33] Lodro Rinzler: You aren't enough. You need to go get a better job, a better education, a better dot, dot, dot. You need something outside of you to make you happy and feel whole. That's sort of the messed up side of capitalism, frankly. That we always need something new and something more. And the Buddhist view is, if we let go of that for a bit, even in the meditation we just did, we might acknowledge Oh, for 30 seconds.
[00:40:54] Lodro Rinzler: I was okay. I didn't have that feeling of not enoughness. I felt good, whole, as is. And that's who we actually are. So that's what meditation really does. Like, I could talk about the stress, relief, and all of it, day in, day out. You know, I wrote a whole book called Take Back Your Mind, which is on anxiety.
[00:41:07] Lodro Rinzler: You know, how do we, meditation help us with anxiety and stress. But this is the real secret sauce of like those moments that we feel like actually I'm okay as is. That's what will ultimately keep many of us going with meditation. So getting going with it, I would just say, as I mentioned before, 10 minutes a day, you know, I have a certain workload myself, but I also have a one and a half year old daughter, as I mentioned, and there's something here of just like, wow, my schedule is pretty full.
[00:41:32] Lodro Rinzler: But I still find time to meditate. I know there are many people who are even busier than me, of course. But 10 minutes a day, I know we can all find that. And then the next thing I would say is just finding a consistent time of day to do it. People often ask, what's the best time of day? I say, whatever you can consistently do it.
[00:41:47] Lodro Rinzler: Because if we're always looking for a time, maybe I'll do it later. Maybe I'll do it later. We don't do it. But if we say, I know I do it after my morning coffee or after I close my laptop at the end of the day or before I go to bed or whatever it is, then it becomes as habitual as brushing our teeth. And in time feels as weird to skip as brushing our teeth.
[00:42:02] Lodro Rinzler: So those are the two big ones that finding the consistent amount of time, consistent time of day. And I think just the technique that we use would go a long way for most people.
[00:42:10] Alexis Zahner: Thank you so much, Lodro. Such simple yet easily integrated advice there when we look for that consistency and really take ownership of integrating that into our day to day.
[00:42:23] Alexis Zahner: It's been a real pleasure to have you with us on We Are Human Leaders. Thank you for joining us.
[00:42:28] Lodro Rinzler: Thank you for having me. It's such a lovely time with both of you.
[00:42:37] Sally Clarke: Thank you so much for joining us at We Are Human Leaders for this conversation with Lodro Rinsler. You can learn more about Lodro's work in the show notes, as well as the books that we referred to during the conversation. And you can learn more about human leaders at www. wearehumanleaders. com. Thanks so much for being with us.
[00:42:56] Sally Clarke: See you next time.