Tami Simon speaks with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, poet, peace activist, and the author of over 100 books and numerous Sounds True learning programs, including The Art of Mindful Living and Living Without Stress or Fear. In this interview, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about his experience as a young monk, the engaged Buddhist movement, and the core of the Buddhist teachings: liberation through mindfulness. (45 minutes)
Tami Simon speaks with Tara Brach, an author, clinical pychologist, and founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (District of Columbia). She’s the author of the Sounds True audio learning program Radical Self-Acceptance: A Buddhist Guide to Freeing Yourself from Shame and Meditations for Emotional Healing. Tami and Tara discuss radical acceptance in the face of difficult emotions. (54 minutes)
Tami Simon speaks with Geneen Roth, author of the best-seller Feeding the Hungry Heart and the Sounds True audio learning course When Food Is Food and Love Is Love. We discuss the spiritual lessons which resulted from Geneen’s financial losses with disgraced investment advisor Bernie Madoff, and how this experience caused her to re-examine many of her long-held beliefs about money, loss, and the preciousness of this moment. (67 minutes)
People once believed that emotions were the opposite of rationality, or that they were lower than or inferior to our allegedly logical processes. But decades of research on emotions and the brain have overturned those outdated beliefs, and we understand now that emotions are indispensable parts of rationality, logic, and consciousness itself. In fact, emotions contain their own internal logic, and they help us orient ourselves successfully within our social environments. Emotions help us attach meaning to data, they help us understand ourselves and others, and they help us identify problems and opportunities. Emotions don’t get in the way of rationality; they lead the way, because they’re vital to everything we think and everything we do. Emotions aren’t the problem; they’re pointing to the problem, and they’re trying to bring us the precise intelligence and energy we need to deal with the problem.
In [The Power of Emotions at Work], we’ll learn how to listen to emotions as uniquely intelligent carriers of information, and how to build healthy and effective social and emotional environments at work – not by ignoring or silencing emotions (you can’t), but by listening to them closely, learning their language, and creating a communal set of emotional skills that everyone can rely on. This work is not difficult at all, but it can be unusual in an environment that wrongly treats emotions as soft, irrational, or unprofessional.
The serious problems we’ve baked into the workplace don’t come from any specific management style or ideology, so I won’t focus on managers or leaders as if they’re uniquely powerful or uniquely to blame. These problems also aren’t limited to specific occupations or income brackets (though low-wage work is regularly dehumanizing and hazardous); these are long-term, widespread problems based on a failed workplace model – and on an outdated social and emotional approach that does not support (or in many cases, even comprehend) human relationships and human needs.
This book is the result of decades of exploration and study into how the workplace got to be so unworkable, plus decades of experience in how to access the existing genius in people’s emotional responses (in surprisingly simple ways once you understand how emotions and empathy work). With the help of the genius in our emotions, we can create emotionally well-regulated and worthwhile places for all of us to earn our living and spend our lives.
Luckily, we don’t have to do anything special to welcome emotions into the workplace, or even to make room for them, because emotions are and always have been in the workplace. They’re in the responses people have to workplace abuses; they’re in disengaged workers; they’re in workers seeking other jobs while on the job; they’re in workers who rightly avoid communicating upward about serious problems; they’re in low-wage workers who learn how to survive in hellscapes like call centers, fast-food restaurants, gig work, and robot-like warehouse jobs; they’re in living-wage workers who tolerate unhealthy workplaces because they can’t afford to leave their health insurance behind; and they’re in high-wage workers who may have to bow down to their superiors and compete with their colleagues to be seen as “winners” – and whose experiences of workplace abuse may not be taken seriously because they make so much money and therefore have no right to complain.
We can also see the emotions in our responses to workplace successes; in our healthy working relationships; in the ways we gather together to solve problems; in the ways empathic workers and leaders empower everyone around them; in the ways our colleagues support us when we’re struggling; in the ways businesses step up in times of loss; in the ways we create open communication and humane workflows; in the ways we teach each other; in the benefits, support, flexibility, and living wages we provide for our workers; in the honest sharing of business difficulties or financial losses; and in the laughter we share on great days and rotten days.
Emotions are everywhere in the workplace because emotions are a central feature of human nature. They aren’t removable, and in fact, trying to remove them is a huge part of what created the failed workplace model we have today. Emotions are crucial to everything we do and to every aspect of our work; therefore, we’ll learn how to listen to emotions, work with them, and respect their intelligence. And in so doing, we’ll build a better workplace – and a better world – from the ground up.
Karla McLaren, M.Ed.
Karla McLaren, M.Ed., is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and empathy innovator. Explore her books and audios on the power of emotion and creativity here.
This is part of a Conscious Business series brought to you by The Inner MBA®. You can learn more about the program at Innermbaprogram.com
Pānquetzani is a traditional herbalist, healer, and birthkeeper from a matriarchal family of folk healers from the valley of Mexico, La Comarca Lagunera, and Zacatecas. At a time when countless women in BIPOC communities are facing a maternal mortality crisis, Pānquetzani is working to bring back the nearly lost Indigenous approaches to childbirth and the postpartum journey. In her new book, Thriving Postpartum, she shares the sacred ritual of la cuarentena (or quarantine) that honors, nurtures, and empowers a birthing person’s transition into their new life.
Enjoy Tami Simon’s conversation with Pānquetzani exploring the philosophy of “use what you have,” sacred foods and using ritual in your approach to nutrition, sacrifice and reciprocity, community care and creating a collective framework for postpartum healing, maintaining your sovereignty (and sanity) within the Western medical system, the “postpartum doorstep drop off” and other simple ways to support new moms, postpartum depression from the perspective of traditional Mexican medicine, honoring the placenta, healing intergenerational trauma, the practice of tuning in to your womb, and more.
Since we’ve just completed the release of our 10-part series, We Are the Great Turning, we wanted to introduce you to another podcast with a spirit similar to ours: Outrage + Optimism.
The episode we’re going to play for you is called “Our Story of Nature: From Rupture to Reconnection.” It’s the first in a miniseries that shines a light on our relationship to the rest of nature. Remembering our place in the web of life is an essential part of building the Great Turning.
Be sure to subscribe to their podcast, and give them a follow on social media @outrageoptimism.
Now that this season of We Are the Great Turning is over, naturally, the question that’s emerging is … “What’s next?” As we consider whether to do a second season, we’d love to hear more about what you got from the first. What impact has it had in your life, and what might you love to hear from us next? Send us an email or a voice note at greatturning@soundstrue.com or send Jess a DM on Instagram @jess_serrante.
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