The Industrial Philosopher | Cristina Digiacomo

Cristina: [00:00:00] And I know that's sort of like a pithy answer, but it's the truth. Our thoughts shape our reality. This is a very fundamental idea and concept from many, many, many, many philosophers across the millennia. We shape the circumstances in our lives just by the way that we look at them.

Harpreet: [00:00:31] What's up, everybody, welcome to the artists Data Science Podcast, the only self-development podcast for Data scientists. You're going to learn from and be inspired by the people ideas and conversations that'll encourage creativity and innovation in yourself so that you can do the same for others. I also host open office hours you can register to attend by going to Bitly.com/adsoh forward slash a d s o h i. Look forward to seeing you all there. Let's ride this beat out into another awesome episode, and don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave a five star review. Our guest today works with executives and entrepreneurs to teach them ideas and concepts from the greatest thinkers of all

Harpreet: [00:01:24] Time so that

Harpreet: [00:01:26] They can cultivate

Harpreet: [00:01:26] Their minds, manage with calmness, navigate obstacles and lead the way forward. She's combined a 20 year

Harpreet: [00:01:34] Career as a rank and file

Harpreet: [00:01:36] Executive and a master's

Harpreet: [00:01:38] Degree in organizational change management

Harpreet: [00:01:41] And over 10 years of

Harpreet: [00:01:43] Study in practical philosophy to become a driving

Harpreet: [00:01:46] Force behind the idea

Harpreet: [00:01:48] That you can have great

Harpreet: [00:01:50] Experience at work by being wiser.

Harpreet: [00:01:52] Today, she's here to walk us

Harpreet: [00:01:54] Down a three fold path of awareness, action

Harpreet: [00:01:57] And wisdom that will help us [00:02:00] develop our own philosophical practice so that we can apply discipline and rigor to our thoughts and actions

Harpreet: [00:02:06] So that we can serve and achieve more. So please

Harpreet: [00:02:09] Help me in

Harpreet: [00:02:10] Welcoming our guests today. The world's

Harpreet: [00:02:12] First industrial

Harpreet: [00:02:13] Philosopher, Christina

Harpreet: [00:02:15] Jacomo

Harpreet: [00:02:15] Christina, thank you so much

Harpreet: [00:02:17] For taking time out of your schedule to come onto the show today. Really appreciate

Harpreet: [00:02:20] Having you

Cristina: [00:02:21] Here.

Cristina: [00:02:21] I am so excited to be here.

Cristina: [00:02:23] Harpreet, thank you for

Cristina: [00:02:25] Having me on. I'm so,

Harpreet: [00:02:27] So happy to have you. Yeah, I think I came across you

Harpreet: [00:02:32] When I think I saw

Harpreet: [00:02:33] You comment on like Ryan Holidays post or something

Harpreet: [00:02:35] On LinkedIn. And then I clicked.

Harpreet: [00:02:36] I clicked on your profile and I was like, Oh, well, she's written a book that's really cool industrial philosophy. That sounds so awesome. So I immediately knew how to reach out to get you on the show because I love philosophy as well, and I love talking about it. I'm really excited to it to have you here.

Harpreet: [00:02:51] But before we

Harpreet: [00:02:52] Get into all of that, talk to us a little bit

Harpreet: [00:02:54] About where you

Harpreet: [00:02:55] Grew up

Harpreet: [00:02:56] And what it was like

Cristina: [00:02:57] There. Yeah, so

Cristina: [00:02:59] Well, first I was born in Milan,

Cristina: [00:03:01] Italy, and so

Cristina: [00:03:03] I was five years old when we came to the states and I grew up in the Hudson Valley, which is about an hour and

Cristina: [00:03:10] A half north of New York

Cristina: [00:03:12] City. But I still have memories

Cristina: [00:03:14] Of Milan,

Cristina: [00:03:15] And my family lived there for about 17 years. But English wasn't my first language, and I loved upstate New

Cristina: [00:03:22] York just lots of nature. It was really

Cristina: [00:03:25] Just it was

Cristina: [00:03:25] Amazing. So, yeah, that's

Harpreet: [00:03:27] Really cool,

Harpreet: [00:03:28] Man. So that that Jacomo it's like the Italian. That's so cool.

Cristina: [00:03:32] Exactly. You, you got the hand gestures down and everything. Everybody he did the he did the pies on like, you know, fingers pinched gesture

Cristina: [00:03:43] That, you know, is

Cristina: [00:03:44] The universal gesture of Italian ness.

Harpreet: [00:03:47] So, so do you still speak

Harpreet: [00:03:48] Any any Italian or Oh, that's so cool.

Cristina: [00:03:51] Yeah, I. Well, so the interesting thing is when when we moved here, my parents wanted me to get into an American school right away, [00:04:00] so they sat me in front of the television Sesame Street, the electric company. You know, the kids' shows, and that's how I learned English.

Cristina: [00:04:08] Problem was is I forgot all of

Cristina: [00:04:10] My Italian because my

Cristina: [00:04:12] Parents didn't

Cristina: [00:04:13] Speak Italian at home. That's how they wanted me to be integrated as quickly as possible. So I've been back to Italy and my Italian comes back when I'm in Italy, but and I can speak very simply.

Harpreet: [00:04:26] Yeah, that's kind of similar to me with my Punjabi.

Harpreet: [00:04:29] It's very, very simply spoken.

Harpreet: [00:04:31] But it's interesting because there's a huge community of Punjabi people

Harpreet: [00:04:34] In Italy

Harpreet: [00:04:35] And one of my wife's

Harpreet: [00:04:36] Cousins, their family moved

Harpreet: [00:04:38] Here to Winnipeg

Harpreet: [00:04:39] Recently after they were born

Harpreet: [00:04:41] And raised all in all in Italy. And I've got cousins myself

Harpreet: [00:04:45] Who are in Italy. I think

Harpreet: [00:04:46] They're in

Harpreet: [00:04:46] Parma. I believe that's where they're at. But yeah, that's that's cool to to hear that you kind of have a kind

Harpreet: [00:04:53] Of you definitely do have that immigrant experience. What was that like growing up?

Cristina: [00:04:57] Well, when I first started

Cristina: [00:04:58] School, it

Cristina: [00:05:00] Was very hard to make friends because I

Cristina: [00:05:03] Didn't know how to

Cristina: [00:05:04] Speak like I knew how to. I mean, I could speak some English,

Cristina: [00:05:09] But it wasn't super conversational. And so I

Cristina: [00:05:14] Remember just

Cristina: [00:05:16] Feeling like I

Cristina: [00:05:17] Spent

Cristina: [00:05:18] By myself, you know?

Cristina: [00:05:19] But then eventually, like once I got once I got over the language

Cristina: [00:05:23] Barrier, that was fine.

Cristina: [00:05:25] And I think for

Cristina: [00:05:26] Me, really,

Cristina: [00:05:28] I

Cristina: [00:05:28] Miss being

Cristina: [00:05:29] Connected to my culture through language.

Cristina: [00:05:34] I really

Cristina: [00:05:35] Do. I'm connected in other

Cristina: [00:05:37] Ways like food.

Cristina: [00:05:40] But but there's something about the Italian language is just so beautiful, and I just wish I was more of a

Cristina: [00:05:46] Part of my life.

Harpreet: [00:05:47] Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Harpreet: [00:05:48] Definitely connected to the Italian culture through the food as well. That's one of my favorite things to eat.

Harpreet: [00:05:53] So, so

Harpreet: [00:05:54] Talk to us about when you're when you're in high school, what did you think your

Harpreet: [00:05:57] Life would look

Cristina: [00:05:58] Like? So [00:06:00] I really

Cristina: [00:06:00] Didn't have an idea.

Cristina: [00:06:02] I was very

Cristina: [00:06:04] Much

Cristina: [00:06:05] Around graduating.

Cristina: [00:06:07] I was very in the, I guess you could say sort of in the moment, but maybe only five feet like being able to see five feet ahead of me. It was. Very much

Cristina: [00:06:15] Like, OK, a these

Cristina: [00:06:17] Classes graduate survive high school basically like, I mean, really, that's what it that's what it was because I was a super nerd and it was like, I just want to survive high

Cristina: [00:06:27] School. And then the

Cristina: [00:06:28] Next step was like, I just want to get into college. I actually don't care

Cristina: [00:06:32] Where I go.

Cristina: [00:06:33] I didn't care where I where I went. I was pretty much left up to my own devices. And so for me, it was just like, I will go to whatever decent school accepts me.

Cristina: [00:06:44] And so

Cristina: [00:06:45] That was like the next five

Cristina: [00:06:46] Feet. Then it was all right.

Cristina: [00:06:48] Let me survive college. And then I graduated from college and it's like,

Cristina: [00:06:52] All right, what's the

Cristina: [00:06:53] Next five feet?

Cristina: [00:06:54] So I had no idea. I really had no idea where my life was. My life was going to be like.

Harpreet: [00:07:00] And one of

Harpreet: [00:07:00] Those five

Harpreet: [00:07:01] Foot steps brought you

Harpreet: [00:07:02] Into the world of being a deejay during the early 2000s, right?

Harpreet: [00:07:06] So talk to us about that experience.

Harpreet: [00:07:08] How did you get into the DJ world?

Cristina: [00:07:11] So I was always had musicality. I, you know, played the piano when I was a kid, but I couldn't read sheet

Cristina: [00:07:17] Music so I could

Cristina: [00:07:19] Only play by

Cristina: [00:07:19] Ear.

Cristina: [00:07:20] And I always loved music. I was like one of the first kids in my high school who was listening

Cristina: [00:07:25] To hip hop, who was listening

Cristina: [00:07:27] To

Cristina: [00:07:27] Techno, you know, and

Cristina: [00:07:28] I actually really loved classical music and classic rock. I mean, I was very my range in terms of musical taste was very broad and electronic like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream.

Cristina: [00:07:41] So, you know, as I

Cristina: [00:07:42] Got

Cristina: [00:07:42] Older. Well, what

Cristina: [00:07:44] Happened was I was living in New York City for about three

Cristina: [00:07:48] Years and

Cristina: [00:07:50] I had an appointment. I had never been to the World Trade Center before. I had been in the city for three years, had not been to the World Trade Center, and I had an

Cristina: [00:07:58] Appointment on [00:08:00] Guess

Cristina: [00:08:00] What day? September 11th,

Cristina: [00:08:03] 2001. I had a meeting on the seventy

Cristina: [00:08:06] Fifth floor of World Trade

Cristina: [00:08:07] Center, one of

Cristina: [00:08:09] The day of all days, the day of all days,

Cristina: [00:08:12] First time and

Cristina: [00:08:14] I was running

Cristina: [00:08:15] Late for my meeting and it

Cristina: [00:08:17] Was all good. It was like I

Cristina: [00:08:18] Was the client, you know, wasn't I was the client.

Cristina: [00:08:21] So it was a big deal that I was like running a few minutes late. And it turned out to be an absolute

Cristina: [00:08:29] Blessing because

Cristina: [00:08:30] I was on the subway and I was in the subway and they stopped the subway and they evacuated the subway. And, you know, it was very confusing and my office was two stops in the other direction.

Cristina: [00:08:42] So here I

Cristina: [00:08:43] Am. I go, I'm like, OK, I'll just go back to the office like, I don't know what's going

Cristina: [00:08:48] On, and I walk

Cristina: [00:08:49] Out of the subway station and I'm like, Look up and the towers are

Cristina: [00:08:53] Burning and I'm standing

Cristina: [00:08:55] There. And it was like I saw in real

Cristina: [00:08:58] Time one of the

Cristina: [00:08:59] Towers collapse, and you just don't understand what you, your mind can't comprehend when something like it's when you're seeing something

Cristina: [00:09:08] Like that. So it was hard for me to

Cristina: [00:09:11] Process, and it took me a little while to

Cristina: [00:09:13] Realize like I got

Cristina: [00:09:15] A second chance

Cristina: [00:09:16] Because the people that

Cristina: [00:09:17] I was supposed

Cristina: [00:09:18] To meet, thankfully they made it out alive, but they had

Cristina: [00:09:21] To walk down seventy five flights and barely made it out, and they saw really horrific

Cristina: [00:09:26] Things. You know, they

Cristina: [00:09:28] Basically their companies gave them a leave of absence for like six months because they just were so traumatized. And I realized I got a second chance

Cristina: [00:09:36] And I thought to myself, What do I want

Cristina: [00:09:39] To do? What is like the one thing that I really, really would

Cristina: [00:09:43] Love to do?

Cristina: [00:09:45] And I realized I had been going to raves and going and seeing DJs since I was like 13 years old. And now I'm like in my mid 20s and I'm going to learn how to

Cristina: [00:09:56] Deejay, so

Cristina: [00:09:57] Scrape together whatever money I had, and I got [00:10:00] myself to use turntables, which I still have. Actually, what you're seeing right here is my DJ booth. He's right behind me and I still have those turntables and I taught myself how to DJ. And so in the early 2000s to the mid 2000s, I played some.

Cristina: [00:10:16] I played

Cristina: [00:10:17] An underground house, parties in the city and a couple of really well-known

Cristina: [00:10:21] Clubs. And that was, yeah, that was how I basically, it's kind

Cristina: [00:10:27] Of like how I took advantage of a

Cristina: [00:10:30] Second chance. Yeah, yeah, that's wow.

Harpreet: [00:10:32] That is an insane story. Glad you

Harpreet: [00:10:35] Are safe, and I'm glad you used that opportunity to do something creative and

Harpreet: [00:10:38] And kind of a positive

Harpreet: [00:10:40] Thing that came out of a negative experience in a way.

Harpreet: [00:10:42] But I read this this article that you had written and you talked about

Harpreet: [00:10:45] How being a DJ has taught you grit, focus and

Harpreet: [00:10:49] Presence. So talk to us about that. How did being a

Harpreet: [00:10:52] Deejay teach you these

Cristina: [00:10:53] Qualities? So with deejaying, you have

Cristina: [00:10:56] To be very comfortable with the idea

Cristina: [00:10:59] That something will go wrong. That's it.

Cristina: [00:11:02] Something's going to go wrong.

Cristina: [00:11:03] The gear

Cristina: [00:11:04] Is going to

Cristina: [00:11:04] Fail.

Cristina: [00:11:05] The sound system is going to fail. The promoter may be a jerk. No one may

Cristina: [00:11:10] Show up like

Cristina: [00:11:12] It's, you know, I

Cristina: [00:11:14] In the.

Cristina: [00:11:15] Ten years or so that I was a DJ, I think I remember

Cristina: [00:11:19] Once when

Cristina: [00:11:20] Everything just went great.

Cristina: [00:11:23] So what that does to you is

Cristina: [00:11:27] It gives you a sense of

Cristina: [00:11:29] Resilience, not

Cristina: [00:11:30] In the sense. It's not like, Oh, something's going to go wrong and sort of a fear based kind of way. It's just like, OK, something's going to go wrong. I've figured out how to fix it in the past.

Cristina: [00:11:42] Things happen and you just

Cristina: [00:11:44] You, you become you have

Cristina: [00:11:47] Grit because of it.

Cristina: [00:11:48] As far as focus is concerned, there are a gazillion things that are going on. Djs make it look so easy because they want to look super cool.

Cristina: [00:11:58] But let me tell you, there are things [00:12:00]

Cristina: [00:12:00] That are going on that you cannot even imagine,

Cristina: [00:12:04] Right? So you've got

Cristina: [00:12:05] All this gear really technical, so you've got to keep an eye on

Cristina: [00:12:09] That. You got to keep an

Cristina: [00:12:10] Eye on the musicality. You've got to keep an eye on and be tuned in to the floor and the crowd and the mood. You've got a mood

Cristina: [00:12:19] Match, everything.

Cristina: [00:12:21] Then you've got some drunk person thinking that they can make requests and they're like bugging you.

Cristina: [00:12:27] You know, the

Cristina: [00:12:28] Promoter, you see the promoter at the door, you know, doing the count of like how many people are coming in and all the time, all this time, you have to be so completely focused on the music and making sure that you do not miss a

Cristina: [00:12:45] Beat because the second you miss

Cristina: [00:12:48] A beat match or miss a

Cristina: [00:12:50] Cue or

Cristina: [00:12:52] You have an equalized properly man that gets so magnified through the speaker system and everybody can hear it. So the focus that that are really like a good DJ has to have in order to do their thing, and you have to be super excited and look happy while you're doing

Cristina: [00:13:12] All of this.

Cristina: [00:13:12] So the level of focus really, really sharpens me. And then

Cristina: [00:13:16] Finally, with regards to presents, I learned

Cristina: [00:13:20] Very early on that it wasn't

Cristina: [00:13:22] About me. I learned very

Cristina: [00:13:23] Early on that my role had nothing to do with wanting to be. I wanted to be a good DJ because being a good DJ

Cristina: [00:13:31] Meant that

Cristina: [00:13:32] I helped someone get through a bad

Cristina: [00:13:35] Day. You know, my

Cristina: [00:13:36] Job

Cristina: [00:13:37] Was to,

Cristina: [00:13:39] You know, someone lost their job that day or someone broke up with their partner

Cristina: [00:13:44] Or lost a loved

Cristina: [00:13:46] One or was just having

Cristina: [00:13:48] A really bad, you know,

Cristina: [00:13:50] Series of events. My job was to make them forget about all of that, even for just

Cristina: [00:13:55] A second and and

Cristina: [00:13:56] Bring happiness

Cristina: [00:13:57] To them. And so to me, that's what presence [00:14:00] is.

Cristina: [00:14:00] Presence has nothing to do with me.

Cristina: [00:14:02] It has to

Cristina: [00:14:03] Do with being super completely 100 percent connected to the heart of the person that's standing in

Cristina: [00:14:10] Front of you. That's what

Cristina: [00:14:11] Presence is, and that's what

Cristina: [00:14:12] Deejaying taught me.

Harpreet: [00:14:13] Absolutely love

Harpreet: [00:14:14] That. That is so cool.

Harpreet: [00:14:15] So were you always

Harpreet: [00:14:16] Kind of a philosophical person or was this something that,

Harpreet: [00:14:20] You know, deejaying

Harpreet: [00:14:22] Got you more into philosophy? How did this work? How did you get into into philosophy?

Cristina: [00:14:26] I believe that I was always philosophical. Even when I was young, I felt really connected to everything. I mean, I remember the moment where I was aware of my

Cristina: [00:14:37] Existence, you know, and

Cristina: [00:14:40] I was eight

Cristina: [00:14:40] Years old and

Cristina: [00:14:42] We had woods behind our house and I went out and into the woods.

Cristina: [00:14:45] Not too far, but I was always a

Cristina: [00:14:47] Very outdoorsy,

Cristina: [00:14:48] Woodsy kid, and I'm

Cristina: [00:14:50] Looking out in the

Cristina: [00:14:51] Woods and

Cristina: [00:14:52] I felt so connected to everything, and I felt so

Cristina: [00:14:56] Aware and I was like, I

Cristina: [00:14:58] Felt my existence

Cristina: [00:14:59] And there were others.

Cristina: [00:15:01] I was like

Cristina: [00:15:02] That. And I think that deejaying

Cristina: [00:15:05] And even to some extent, the career that I had because I was always very interested in

Cristina: [00:15:10] Strategy in my

Cristina: [00:15:11] Career where where I think my ways of trying to operate in the world on a philosophical level and not realizing that I was actually

Cristina: [00:15:21] Philosophical and

Cristina: [00:15:23] Not actually understanding that there was a whole like body of work that I that

Cristina: [00:15:30] I wasn't aware

Cristina: [00:15:32] Of or really tapping into. But I was very philosophical in my experiences in life and how I reflected on those experiences.

Cristina: [00:15:41] So why is

Harpreet: [00:15:41] It that philosophy and wisdom they get lumped into these categories of being like Woo

Harpreet: [00:15:47] Woo or or out there? Why do you think that is?

Cristina: [00:15:50] I wish

Cristina: [00:15:50] I had an

Cristina: [00:15:51] Answer.

Cristina: [00:15:52] Honestly, I really do. And if I were to

Cristina: [00:15:55] Answer, I

Cristina: [00:15:56] Feel like it would come out as disparaging to

Cristina: [00:15:59] Other [00:16:00] people.

Cristina: [00:16:01] And I are critical of other people and I don't want to do that. All I can say

Cristina: [00:16:07] Is all

Cristina: [00:16:09] I know is that that's kind of the reaction that I encounter sometimes from a. There are people who are curious about who are curious about philosophy and may not have been exposed

Cristina: [00:16:22] To it a lot

Cristina: [00:16:23] And have these preconceived notions, so I have

Cristina: [00:16:26] Heard that

Cristina: [00:16:28] Sort of. Isn't that just kind of like woo woo new agey stuff or

Cristina: [00:16:31] Whatever, but I don't

Cristina: [00:16:33] Know

Harpreet: [00:16:33] Why. Yeah, it's interesting. The new agey stuff. It's this is

Harpreet: [00:16:37] Wisdom that's

Harpreet: [00:16:38] Been around for like thousands and

Harpreet: [00:16:39] Thousands of years. But how do you define philosophy?

Cristina: [00:16:42] I define philosophy is a protocol for engaging with the world.

Harpreet: [00:16:47] I like that's the way of life. It's a way to live

Harpreet: [00:16:49] Your life protocol to live your life. Absolutely love that.

Harpreet: [00:16:52] And you've done something unique. So you've taken philosophy, applied

Harpreet: [00:16:56] It to the industrial

Harpreet: [00:16:57] World and kind

Harpreet: [00:16:58] Of created this unique

Harpreet: [00:16:59] Intersection that you call industrial philosophy. Talk to us about, first of all, what is industrial philosophy and

Harpreet: [00:17:06] How did what was the genesis of

Cristina: [00:17:08] This so?

Cristina: [00:17:09] Philosophy is protocol for engaging with the world, and industrial philosophy is using philosophy to engage with the working world.

Cristina: [00:17:18] And it's

Cristina: [00:17:19] Really borne out of

Cristina: [00:17:20] Three things.

Cristina: [00:17:21] First, my background and education and organizational change management.

Cristina: [00:17:26] So really understanding

Cristina: [00:17:28] How organizations work, how they function

Cristina: [00:17:31] And what the process is and principles are of

Cristina: [00:17:36] Creating a great

Cristina: [00:17:37] Organization. The second aspect

Cristina: [00:17:40] Is

Cristina: [00:17:41] My own experiences

Cristina: [00:17:43] As a manager, as an executive, you know, as an employee within organizational

Cristina: [00:17:48] Life for 20

Cristina: [00:17:50] Years. So not as a consultant, not as an

Cristina: [00:17:52] Academic, but like real.

Cristina: [00:17:55] Like, you know, I'm going to the status meeting and I'm about to have a panic [00:18:00] attack.

Cristina: [00:18:00] Real experience, right?

Cristina: [00:18:02] So that's sort of the third pillar of industrial of industrial philosophy is understanding what the real experiences are for people in the working world. And then the third is philosophy. And this third, but certainly not last,

Cristina: [00:18:16] Because when I

Cristina: [00:18:18] Started studying practical philosophy 10 years ago, I was using what I was learning to help me cope with the challenges that I was facing at work. And so when I decided to pursue something related to philosophy, which I'm really passionate about, but also like, Hey, we are not having a good experience in our in our work

Cristina: [00:18:43] Lives, organizations

Cristina: [00:18:45] Are really

Cristina: [00:18:45] Struggling and thinking

Cristina: [00:18:47] About that. That's that's where I came up with industrial

Cristina: [00:18:50] Philosophy, which is

Cristina: [00:18:51] Taking all this

Cristina: [00:18:52] Guidance from

Cristina: [00:18:54] And whether these philosophers knew they were impacting the working

Cristina: [00:18:59] World. But if you look at ideas

Cristina: [00:19:02] From like Xenophon or Plato

Cristina: [00:19:05] Or Aristotle like, it's all

Cristina: [00:19:09] Wisdom and principles around leadership and you know, all these other ideas. Wow, Zou and Emerson, like if you if you start to take a look at what they're teaching through the world, through an organizational lens or through the lens of a person in the working

Cristina: [00:19:26] World, it's like all this insight just opens

Cristina: [00:19:30] Up. And so I just felt it was worth creating a category called industrial philosophy that encompasses philosophy for the workplace.

Harpreet: [00:19:39] Yeah, absolutely.

Harpreet: [00:19:40] Love it. I encourage you guys to check out. Check out the book wise up at work I really, really enjoyed.

Harpreet: [00:19:44] I enjoyed reading that one. So speaking of being wise, what is what is the difference between being wise and acting wise?

Cristina: [00:19:52] So being what we

Cristina: [00:19:54] Are all wise. So that's

Cristina: [00:19:56] A that's a

Cristina: [00:19:56] First. That's the first

Cristina: [00:19:58] Thing to

Cristina: [00:19:58] Understand.

Cristina: [00:19:59] And many [00:20:00] people, I mean, people are like full stop right there.

Cristina: [00:20:03] No right. And I

Cristina: [00:20:06] Understand that's really challenging

Cristina: [00:20:08] For people

Cristina: [00:20:10] To to wrap their heads around because they see every day people not acting

Cristina: [00:20:15] Wisely. So they can't

Cristina: [00:20:16] Believe that we are all wise. But this guidance was from

Cristina: [00:20:19] Aristotle and many

Cristina: [00:20:20] Others. We have an innate

Cristina: [00:20:22] Wisdom now where it gets, where the difference

Cristina: [00:20:26] Is, is acting on that

Cristina: [00:20:28] Wisdom, which is a different it's a different modality. And so

Cristina: [00:20:33] Acting

Cristina: [00:20:33] Wise is

Cristina: [00:20:35] Really about removing the

Cristina: [00:20:38] Impediments from

Cristina: [00:20:40] The innate wisdom that's

Cristina: [00:20:41] In you and allowing

Cristina: [00:20:43] That innate wisdom

Cristina: [00:20:44] To come forth through

Cristina: [00:20:46] Your actions and your

Cristina: [00:20:48] Thoughts and

Cristina: [00:20:49] Your the way you operate

Cristina: [00:20:51] In the

Harpreet: [00:20:51] World. Yeah, absolutely.

Harpreet: [00:20:52] Love that you laid

Harpreet: [00:20:53] Out this kind of, I guess, four aspects or four

Harpreet: [00:20:56] Aspect guide to

Harpreet: [00:20:58] To actually removing

Harpreet: [00:20:59] These impediments

Harpreet: [00:21:00] And and being more

Harpreet: [00:21:02] Wise in the workplace. That was the clarity, thought decision.

Harpreet: [00:21:06] And finally, wisdom

Harpreet: [00:21:08] Can you can you walk us through these four things and we'll

Harpreet: [00:21:11] Do a deeper

Harpreet: [00:21:12] Dove in a couple of my favorite

Harpreet: [00:21:13] Ones from the

Cristina: [00:21:14] Book? Absolutely.

Cristina: [00:21:15] So the first aspect of wisdom

Cristina: [00:21:18] Is your

Cristina: [00:21:20] Perception of

Cristina: [00:21:21] Reality, right? And the thing

Cristina: [00:21:24] Is a lot of times your perception of reality is not actually what reality really

Cristina: [00:21:30] Is, it's it's your perception of it. So the first line

Cristina: [00:21:36] Of defense, if you know, for lack

Cristina: [00:21:38] Of a better term,

Cristina: [00:21:40] Is really understanding what the truth really is to the best of your ability,

Cristina: [00:21:45] Which means removing

Cristina: [00:21:48] Your inner monologue about that person at work who's bugging the crap out of you and they need something from you.

Cristina: [00:21:57] And, you know, like, what's the truth? [00:22:00] They're just asking you for help. What's your

Cristina: [00:22:02] Perception? Oh my God, they're asking me for help. Again, they're such a pain

Cristina: [00:22:07] In the A. That's perception. Where would

Cristina: [00:22:10] You rather

Cristina: [00:22:10] Be in your

Cristina: [00:22:11] Alternate reality, where everything's kind of crappy in this person's

Cristina: [00:22:15] Burden, where the

Cristina: [00:22:17] Truth is, where it's just a really simple exchange of, Hey, I need help. Ok, let me help you boom done over.

Cristina: [00:22:25] Right? So perception, what is the truth? The second

Cristina: [00:22:29] Aspect is managing your thoughts about what you

Cristina: [00:22:31] Perceive, right? So just as

Cristina: [00:22:34] The example I

Cristina: [00:22:35] Gave you, right, we have a choice. We have a choice to manage

Cristina: [00:22:39] Those

Cristina: [00:22:39] Thoughts.

Cristina: [00:22:40] And are you going to stay in that thought about that person or are you just going to get on

Cristina: [00:22:44] With it because you're operating from truth? The third

Cristina: [00:22:47] Is being thoughtful and deliberate

Cristina: [00:22:49] About what you're going to do, and a lot of times we don't take that second

Cristina: [00:22:55] To think, but to deliberate like what is the best course of

Cristina: [00:22:59] Action based on

Cristina: [00:23:01] How I'm seeing the truth, how I'm managing my thoughts

Cristina: [00:23:05] About it, what should

Cristina: [00:23:06] I do? And then finally, the

Cristina: [00:23:08] Fourth aspect is

Cristina: [00:23:10] Actually action.

Cristina: [00:23:11] And it's, you know, philosophy

Cristina: [00:23:14] Is not just about thinking, it's about

Cristina: [00:23:16] Acting and acting appropriately. And so all those four things, you know, the

Cristina: [00:23:23] Perception

Cristina: [00:23:24] Of the truth and the truth. Managing your thoughts being deliberate and acting accordingly. Wisdom is the word for all of that.

Harpreet: [00:23:34] And it just

Harpreet: [00:23:34] It all starts kind of with that perception piece of it, right?

Harpreet: [00:23:37] Because we are telling

Harpreet: [00:23:39] Ourselves

Harpreet: [00:23:40] Stories, right?

Harpreet: [00:23:41] And if the story we tell ourselves is, Oh my God, this person is

Harpreet: [00:23:44] Coming here to bother me

Harpreet: [00:23:45] Again with a question like, what the

Harpreet: [00:23:47] Hell? Then we can change

Harpreet: [00:23:49] Our perception of that right. We can instead flip around and say, Oh, you know what? This person views me as a very helpful resource, and I should be grateful for the opportunity to share my knowledge

Harpreet: [00:23:59] With somebody [00:24:00] who doesn't

Harpreet: [00:24:01] Have the answers. Whatever you can

Harpreet: [00:24:03] Just flip the script a little bit, and it's coming from pausing at that

Harpreet: [00:24:07] Perception instead of going with that initial

Harpreet: [00:24:09] Reaction. I pause, reflect and then kind of move forward with that. So I mean, that's that's

Harpreet: [00:24:14] Hard to do, man, because

Harpreet: [00:24:15] I mean, I've been

Harpreet: [00:24:16] The type of person that I would just go with a knee jerk reaction to just say

Harpreet: [00:24:19] Stupid shit or, you know, just because

Harpreet: [00:24:21] It's a reaction. How do we pause? How do we? I guess,

Harpreet: [00:24:25] First of all, is it is to get to wisdom.

Harpreet: [00:24:27] Is it in that order we should take those steps?

Harpreet: [00:24:29] Does it start with that perception?

Harpreet: [00:24:31] And if it does, how

Harpreet: [00:24:32] Do we how do we mitigate that knee jerk reaction?

Cristina: [00:24:36] Well, you use

Cristina: [00:24:37] The operative

Cristina: [00:24:37] Word pause.

Cristina: [00:24:39] I have a pausing practice.

Cristina: [00:24:41] I pause

Cristina: [00:24:42] Before a

Cristina: [00:24:42] Meeting. I pause

Cristina: [00:24:43] After a

Cristina: [00:24:44] Meeting.

Cristina: [00:24:44] I pause several times a day. And really what it is is just sitting quietly for a minute. And that's it. No, you know, no,

Cristina: [00:24:55] Nothing involved just coming to stillness and pausing because when

Cristina: [00:25:00] You

Cristina: [00:25:00] Pausing and the act

Cristina: [00:25:02] Of that is

Cristina: [00:25:02] A muscle and we've trained

Cristina: [00:25:04] Our, you know, we've become

Cristina: [00:25:06] Trained for that knee

Cristina: [00:25:07] Jerk

Cristina: [00:25:07] Reaction. We have to

Cristina: [00:25:09] Train

Cristina: [00:25:09] Ourselves for that from that

Cristina: [00:25:11] Knee jerk

Cristina: [00:25:12] Reaction. The antidote

Cristina: [00:25:13] To that knee jerk reaction is to

Cristina: [00:25:15] Pause, pause before you say something, take a beat, pause before

Cristina: [00:25:19] And after

Cristina: [00:25:20] A meeting, pause before and

Cristina: [00:25:21] After an activity. And the more that you do

Cristina: [00:25:24] That, the more

Cristina: [00:25:25] You're going to see

Cristina: [00:25:27] Things more clearly, the more

Cristina: [00:25:29] You're going to

Cristina: [00:25:30] Recognize that, you know, maybe you should

Cristina: [00:25:33] Not say that

Cristina: [00:25:34] Thing or blurt out

Cristina: [00:25:35] That thing, baby, it's not the right time

Cristina: [00:25:39] To act, or

Cristina: [00:25:40] It is the right time to act and you feel more

Cristina: [00:25:44] Forthright. You begin

Cristina: [00:25:46] To create

Cristina: [00:25:47] The resets

Cristina: [00:25:49] In your mind that are necessary for clear

Cristina: [00:25:52] Thinking when you pause repeatedly.

Harpreet: [00:25:55] And sometimes action could be an inaction, meaning choosing [00:26:00]

Harpreet: [00:26:00] Not to say anything or choosing not to react to a

Harpreet: [00:26:02] Situation right that you could get irritated at work by something

Harpreet: [00:26:06] Somebody said

Harpreet: [00:26:07] During a meeting. And instead of just blurting

Harpreet: [00:26:09] Something out, making the situation

Harpreet: [00:26:11] Work, just pause, reflect and you don't even need to. Act that inaction can be just as powerful, right? Exactly. So digging deeper on that word, the clarity.

Harpreet: [00:26:23] So talk to us about when we say we talk about

Harpreet: [00:26:26] Clarity in your book, what is it that

Harpreet: [00:26:28] You that you mean by that?

Cristina: [00:26:29] So clarity,

Cristina: [00:26:30] Clarity

Cristina: [00:26:31] Does get bandied

Cristina: [00:26:32] About a lot,

Cristina: [00:26:33] But essentially it's going from your own opinion about something to the truth about

Cristina: [00:26:39] That thing. It's seeing really seeing rather

Cristina: [00:26:43] Than what you tell yourself,

Harpreet: [00:26:45] And it's pure. And so we talked

Harpreet: [00:26:47] A bit about pausing what what other practices do you use to help you kind of see the truth

Harpreet: [00:26:52] In any like

Harpreet: [00:26:54] Suppose that we are in a confrontational situation

Harpreet: [00:26:57] At work, not that I always

Harpreet: [00:26:59] Find myself in confrontational situations. That's not true. I find that

Cristina: [00:27:03] That anyone

Cristina: [00:27:03] Would want to have anyone would feel confrontational towards you.

Cristina: [00:27:07] Yeah.

Cristina: [00:27:08] I can't see

Cristina: [00:27:09] It.

Harpreet: [00:27:10] Sometimes, sometimes

Harpreet: [00:27:11] Just like forcing my ideas through. But anyways,

Harpreet: [00:27:14] So, so pausing is

Harpreet: [00:27:15] One technique. What else do you do in situations where where maybe you are trying to get to

Harpreet: [00:27:21] The

Harpreet: [00:27:21] Truth, but maybe your impressions or your perceptions of the situation are kind of dragging

Harpreet: [00:27:26] You down a certain

Cristina: [00:27:27] Path? Yeah.

Cristina: [00:27:28] So super major mega hat tip to my man, Socrates for

Cristina: [00:27:34] This, right?

Cristina: [00:27:35] Because Socrates

Cristina: [00:27:37] Really gave us some of

Cristina: [00:27:39] The most important guidance we could ever get, which is

Cristina: [00:27:43] To ask a question the Socratic method, the

Cristina: [00:27:46] Dialectic I do the Socratic method on

Cristina: [00:27:49] Myself all the

Cristina: [00:27:51] Time, Harp read. Believe me

Cristina: [00:27:54] All the time, and

Cristina: [00:27:56] It does get me to clarity. It really does.

Cristina: [00:27:59] And [00:28:00] there

Cristina: [00:28:00] Are questions. There are all kinds of questions you can ask yourself, Is this true?

Cristina: [00:28:04] What I'm thinking? True. How is

Cristina: [00:28:06] This situation affecting

Cristina: [00:28:07] Me? Is it

Cristina: [00:28:08] Really

Cristina: [00:28:08] Affecting me? And you know, to

Cristina: [00:28:11] To start with a

Cristina: [00:28:13] Question when you

Cristina: [00:28:14] Begin to feel that angst or you begin to think, think to yourself, what is this teaching

Cristina: [00:28:20] Me right now? Because I

Cristina: [00:28:22] Believe that everything and everyone that's in front of you is your

Cristina: [00:28:26] Teacher. And so when you look at

Cristina: [00:28:29] Situations through that

Cristina: [00:28:31] Lens, you

Cristina: [00:28:32] Begin to see things a little bit more

Cristina: [00:28:34] Clearly. And so

Cristina: [00:28:36] Pausing,

Cristina: [00:28:37] Asking questions and knowing

Cristina: [00:28:39] That there's just being default. There is a lesson in what is happening right now for me is another is another practice that I that I do.

Harpreet: [00:28:50] Often that's hard to do right. Like, did you

Harpreet: [00:28:53] Encounter any struggles when

Harpreet: [00:28:54] You're first trying to

Harpreet: [00:28:56] Think in this way? I guess almost like metacognition, thinking about the way you're thinking and forcing yourself to answer these questions? Was that a bit of a challenge for you? And how did you overcome that?

Cristina: [00:29:06] Well, to me, the

Cristina: [00:29:08] Only challenge is thinking that it's a challenge. So once you get over that, it's not a challenge.

Cristina: [00:29:14] And I don't mean

Cristina: [00:29:15] To be

Cristina: [00:29:16] Sort of like that.

Cristina: [00:29:17] Actually, I realize I sound like an asshole saying that. But what I mean

Cristina: [00:29:22] Is the reason

Cristina: [00:29:23] Why it feels like a challenge is because we think it's a challenge as opposed to, Hey, let me just try this out. Like, let me just keep at it. Like, Let me try this thing out. Observe, see what happens? Oh, I got an

Cristina: [00:29:36] Insight or oh

Cristina: [00:29:38] Ok. Things looked a little bit differently, but that was interesting. And we we go into it with a little bit more open mindedness. I find Post-its

Cristina: [00:29:49] Help, too. So a lot of

Cristina: [00:29:50] Times I'll just put a

Cristina: [00:29:51] Reminder like everyone

Cristina: [00:29:53] And everything that's in front of you is

Cristina: [00:29:54] Your teacher.

Cristina: [00:29:55] And I love notifications on my phone. I put practices [00:30:00] in my calendar. I mean, there's all kinds of ways to

Cristina: [00:30:02] Remind yourself, but really, the only

Cristina: [00:30:06] Thing that is difficult for people is to remember to

Cristina: [00:30:08] Do it.

Cristina: [00:30:09] That's the that's the difficulty. And once you. And then once you forgive yourself for forgetting

Cristina: [00:30:15] To do it, then you can just

Cristina: [00:30:17] Keep on with it and just go at your, you know, do it in your

Cristina: [00:30:20] Own way.

Harpreet: [00:30:21] Yeah, that's something that I do.

Harpreet: [00:30:22] Sometimes I'll beat myself up over not doing a practice. And then I was like, Well, that kind of defeats the purpose. Like, It's OK if I missed doing

Harpreet: [00:30:29] Something, just make sure you

Harpreet: [00:30:30] Get next time or you have the time right now. Just get it done. Just because it didn't happen at the set time you

Harpreet: [00:30:35] Said you're going to do it doesn't mean that you

Harpreet: [00:30:36] Can't get it done today, right? What are what are some some of these messages you have pop up

Cristina: [00:30:41] During your day? Well, actually,

Cristina: [00:30:42] Harp, can

Cristina: [00:30:43] I just make a suggestion? Yeah, please. When you said sometimes

Cristina: [00:30:47] You beat yourself up for

Cristina: [00:30:48] Forgetting a practice, that's your practice. That's your work. That's the work right there. Why are you? You know, like explore

Cristina: [00:30:56] That, examine that. Like, where does where does the beating up come from?

Cristina: [00:31:00] Because the

Cristina: [00:31:00] Second you're like, Well, let me just get this done, or let

Cristina: [00:31:03] Me just move

Cristina: [00:31:05] On to the other thing, whatever it was that was saying, Hey, I didn't do this great the first time around, it's trying to tell

Cristina: [00:31:14] You some. The thing. And so the

Cristina: [00:31:16] More

Cristina: [00:31:16] That you sort of move on to

Cristina: [00:31:18] Something else, it will come back

Cristina: [00:31:21] Up again, no

Cristina: [00:31:22] Matter, no matter how much you push yourself, no matter how much you can do all the things to get it done, it's never going to sink in the way you want it to because there's something inside of you that is telling you

Cristina: [00:31:37] That you're not doing

Cristina: [00:31:39] It good

Cristina: [00:31:39] Enough.

Cristina: [00:31:40] So whatever insight that you would be able to glean from a practice is going to be completely blocked because there's something else that wants you want you to

Cristina: [00:31:51] Look at it. So actually, when

Cristina: [00:31:53] You get into that moment, we're like, Oh damn, I didn't do the

Cristina: [00:31:56] Thing immediately.

Cristina: [00:31:58] Your your response [00:32:00] would be like, Oh, OK, well, that's interesting. Why am I feeling that way? What is it about this me not doing this thing that's making me feel this way right now? What is that? Because when when we have things that come up that aren't seen or acknowledged or at least acknowledge, Hey, I didn't do that thing, that's OK.

Cristina: [00:32:19] They come

Cristina: [00:32:20] Back with a

Cristina: [00:32:20] Vengeance because they

Cristina: [00:32:22] Haven't been

Cristina: [00:32:22] Seen.

Harpreet: [00:32:23] Yeah. And that's deep that that's

Harpreet: [00:32:25] Going to give me a lot to chew on. For me, it would be

Harpreet: [00:32:27] Something like, you know, like, forgot to write in the journal today, you know, the goddamn forgot to write it. And, you know, just quickly do the

Harpreet: [00:32:33] Thing to get it done. So I can move on to

Harpreet: [00:32:35] The next thing just I can

Harpreet: [00:32:37] Check it off my my box.

Harpreet: [00:32:39] But I guess you're saying is go back to that feeling of when I'm talking down to

Harpreet: [00:32:43] Myself like, Oh my God, you idiot, how could you forget to do this? This is on your list. Go back and examine that feeling.

Cristina: [00:32:49] Yeah, exactly. That's what

Cristina: [00:32:50] You should be journaling

Cristina: [00:32:51] About, not journaling

Cristina: [00:32:54] To. I mean, think about an insight that you because you wanted to check

Cristina: [00:32:58] It off, right?

Cristina: [00:32:59] You wanted to check the box.

Cristina: [00:33:01] There's no insight there.

Cristina: [00:33:02] The insight is I'm just going to check, I'm going to ignore. I'm not going to acknowledge that I beat myself up because I didn't write a journal entry.

Cristina: [00:33:12] I'm not going to acknowledge that. So I'm just going

Cristina: [00:33:13] To do

Cristina: [00:33:14] The thing to check off the box so that I can

Cristina: [00:33:17] Say to myself that I did that thing and

Cristina: [00:33:19] Move on, right? Yet the next time that you

Cristina: [00:33:23] Don't

Cristina: [00:33:23] Remember to write in your journal, you're going to beat yourself up again. But if you sit and you're like,

Cristina: [00:33:30] Wow, that's interesting. It's just a journal

Cristina: [00:33:31] Entry, like,

Cristina: [00:33:32] Why am I beating myself up about not doing my journal

Cristina: [00:33:35] Entry and ask the question?

Cristina: [00:33:37] Ask the question, What is this trying to tell me?

Cristina: [00:33:40] And then you

Cristina: [00:33:41] Journal

Cristina: [00:33:41] About that. And when you see it, then the next

Cristina: [00:33:44] Time that you

Cristina: [00:33:45] Forget, you be like,

Cristina: [00:33:46] Oh, well, I forgot the last time, and something really amazing happened.

Cristina: [00:33:50] It's going to be OK.

Harpreet: [00:33:51] I absolutely love

Harpreet: [00:33:52] That. Thank you so

Harpreet: [00:33:53] Much. Yeah, I'm definitely going to. Yeah, that's that's

Harpreet: [00:33:55] Going into the toolkit

Harpreet: [00:33:56] For sure. Thank you. So we're talking about

Harpreet: [00:33:59] Like thinking [00:34:00] and thinking these thoughts, right? We can be sitting still

Harpreet: [00:34:03] In the our outwards

Harpreet: [00:34:05] Appearances

Harpreet: [00:34:05] Where we're completely still,

Harpreet: [00:34:07] But it's all

Harpreet: [00:34:07] Going round and round in circles

Harpreet: [00:34:09] In our heads, right? So kind of a meta question here.

Harpreet: [00:34:12] What are your thoughts on constantly being in thought?

Cristina: [00:34:16] If I had a thought

Cristina: [00:34:17] About constantly being and thought, then that would be

Cristina: [00:34:19] A thought, right? But I

Cristina: [00:34:21] Do have some interesting statistic

Cristina: [00:34:24] For you and I've got a calculator out. So there's been a

Cristina: [00:34:27] Study where they determined that you have

Cristina: [00:34:31] About people have

Cristina: [00:34:32] About forty eight point six

Cristina: [00:34:35] Thoughts per minute. It's almost

Cristina: [00:34:37] A thought per second,

Cristina: [00:34:38] Right? Forty eight point six thoughts per minute now forty eight

Cristina: [00:34:42] Point

Cristina: [00:34:43] Six times

Cristina: [00:34:44] 60, which is an hour

Cristina: [00:34:46] Two thousand nine hundred

Cristina: [00:34:48] And sixteen

Cristina: [00:34:49] Thoughts an hour was

Cristina: [00:34:50] Twenty

Cristina: [00:34:51] Four in a day.

Cristina: [00:34:52] Sixty nine thousand nine hundred and eighty four

Cristina: [00:34:56] Thoughts in a day. Wow. And imagine that most

Cristina: [00:35:01] Of those

Cristina: [00:35:02] Thoughts aren't true. Are lies stories judgments? I mean, that

Cristina: [00:35:09] Is just an absolute full on onslaught, on our higher selves, on our true

Cristina: [00:35:15] Selves, on the reasoned mind. And so it accumulates. Which is why

Cristina: [00:35:21] Pausing

Cristina: [00:35:22] Resting stillness, asking the questions you know, taking a beat

Cristina: [00:35:28] Examining observing helps to minimize the accumulation of noise

Cristina: [00:35:34] That comes

Cristina: [00:35:35] From having close to seventy thousand

Cristina: [00:35:39] Thoughts in a day. That's my

Cristina: [00:35:41] Thought about

Harpreet: [00:35:42] Thoughts. Absolutely love that. I mean, you want to get to a point where you

Harpreet: [00:35:45] Just you have a calm

Harpreet: [00:35:46] Mind, just not just not thinking that much. I was reading a book by

Harpreet: [00:35:51] Guy Claxton, who was called Hair Brain toward

Harpreet: [00:35:54] His mind, and the subtitle. The subtitle of that book was

Harpreet: [00:35:58] How

Harpreet: [00:35:59] Intelligence [00:36:00] Increases

Harpreet: [00:36:01] When

Harpreet: [00:36:01] You Think Less. And I found that

Harpreet: [00:36:03] Fascinating,

Harpreet: [00:36:03] And I think part of that is because, like these

Harpreet: [00:36:06] Sixty nine something thousand thoughts

Harpreet: [00:36:07] That we have, they tend to be primarily

Harpreet: [00:36:10] Negative or even the same thoughts that we're thinking of the day

Harpreet: [00:36:12] Before and the day before and the day before. So how can

Harpreet: [00:36:16] We help ourselves

Harpreet: [00:36:17] Find out when we're having

Harpreet: [00:36:19] Those detrimental thoughts and natural way back into something more productive, right? Because we're just if we have this many thoughts

Harpreet: [00:36:24] Per hour and a lot of them are negative, we might not even notice

Harpreet: [00:36:28] That they're negative if that's all

Harpreet: [00:36:29] That we have going on, right? So how do we how do we notice that this is probably not something that's

Harpreet: [00:36:35] Served me well? I need to shift to

Harpreet: [00:36:36] Something more positive.

Cristina: [00:36:38] The only thing that I can say is when, if you feel like your life is

Cristina: [00:36:43] In the in the crapper, chances are it's because

Cristina: [00:36:47] You think it's

Cristina: [00:36:47] In the crapper. It's because you're

Cristina: [00:36:50] Ruminating on the wrong

Cristina: [00:36:52] Things.

Cristina: [00:36:52] And and I know that's sort of like a pithy

Cristina: [00:36:55] Answer, but it's the truth.

Cristina: [00:36:58] Our thoughts shape our reality.

Cristina: [00:37:00] This is

Cristina: [00:37:01] A very

Cristina: [00:37:01] Fundamental idea

Cristina: [00:37:03] And concept from many, many, many, many philosophers across

Cristina: [00:37:08] The millennia.

Cristina: [00:37:09] We shape the circumstance. Dances in our

Cristina: [00:37:11] Lives, just by the way,

Cristina: [00:37:13] That we look at them, and so if

Cristina: [00:37:16] You're

Cristina: [00:37:17] Feeling unhappy, if things don't feel

Cristina: [00:37:20] Right, if you

Cristina: [00:37:22] Feel like you're always swimming

Cristina: [00:37:25] Upstream and and

Cristina: [00:37:27] We all have adversity,

Cristina: [00:37:29] We all

Cristina: [00:37:29] Have circumstances that we can't

Cristina: [00:37:31] Control. We all have

Cristina: [00:37:33] Bad things happen to

Cristina: [00:37:35] Us. And I'm not saying that we need

Cristina: [00:37:37] To go into those situations or deal with those challenges. Happy, happy

Cristina: [00:37:41] Joy, joy.

Cristina: [00:37:42] But there's a difference between

Cristina: [00:37:44] Dealing with things with

Cristina: [00:37:46] A strong

Cristina: [00:37:47] Mind and a clear mind versus

Cristina: [00:37:49] One that is

Cristina: [00:37:51] Already weak and susceptible and

Cristina: [00:37:55] Believes

Cristina: [00:37:55] That your external

Cristina: [00:37:57] Circumstances

Cristina: [00:37:58] Shape who you

Cristina: [00:37:59] Are. [00:38:00] And so

Cristina: [00:38:01] I believe that when we we know

Cristina: [00:38:05] When things aren't

Cristina: [00:38:06] Going well, that's the thing.

Cristina: [00:38:08] The challenge is, most people don't want to

Cristina: [00:38:11] Admit that things

Cristina: [00:38:12] Aren't

Cristina: [00:38:12] Going well, so they ignore

Cristina: [00:38:14] Their

Cristina: [00:38:14] Feelings. They ignore the

Cristina: [00:38:17] The way they look at life, they ignore all the negative chatter in their minds. They think that's

Cristina: [00:38:23] That.

Cristina: [00:38:24] That's the way life is, that that's normal while they're having heart attacks, having insomnia, having stress, having

Cristina: [00:38:32] Anxiety and

Cristina: [00:38:34] And being and being really difficult to deal with with all the people that are trying

Cristina: [00:38:39] To deal with them.

Cristina: [00:38:40] You know that if you know that you're having negative thoughts, that's

Cristina: [00:38:44] Half the battle. If you're worried, like, are my thoughts negative?

Cristina: [00:38:48] There's nothing for you to worry about because you already care and you're already or what you're already. You already

Cristina: [00:38:53] Aware, you're

Cristina: [00:38:55] Already aware

Cristina: [00:38:56] Of it.

Harpreet: [00:38:56] Absolutely love that. So you're talking about in your book how

Harpreet: [00:38:58] How people get really attached to their thoughts and their ideas. And I guess, how can we avoid that? Because maybe people who are being really angry or upset or just

Harpreet: [00:39:11] In this constant negative chatter they begin to

Harpreet: [00:39:13] Identify with with that and

Harpreet: [00:39:15] That's who they are to themselves right there, attached to

Harpreet: [00:39:18] This type of thought pattern,

Harpreet: [00:39:19] Right? And that, you know, for example, is to say you're just attached to listen to a particular album for the rest

Harpreet: [00:39:25] Of your life, right?

Harpreet: [00:39:26] And it's the same record playing over and over and over in your head and you begin to

Harpreet: [00:39:30] Attach to that. What are some detriments of that?

Harpreet: [00:39:33] And I guess, how can we avoid that?

Cristina: [00:39:35] So I believe

Cristina: [00:39:37] In

Cristina: [00:39:37] Measure, right? I believe in

Cristina: [00:39:39] Finding the

Cristina: [00:39:40] Measure, meaning being

Cristina: [00:39:42] All in on an album and only that

Cristina: [00:39:45] Album, there's probably

Cristina: [00:39:47] Not a lot of measure

Cristina: [00:39:48] There because

Cristina: [00:39:49] There's there's a deficit in hearing other kinds of music or having other kinds of experiences with music.

Cristina: [00:39:56] Attachment feels

Cristina: [00:39:58] Like it feels

Cristina: [00:39:59] Heavy. There's actually [00:40:00]

Cristina: [00:40:00] A physical

Cristina: [00:40:01] Feeling, and how

Cristina: [00:40:02] To avoid getting too attached to ideas and thoughts is just awareness that

Cristina: [00:40:08] It happens, you know,

Cristina: [00:40:10] Already knowing like, Hey, there is a possibility I could be attached to

Cristina: [00:40:14] Something. Ok? There's a there's

Cristina: [00:40:16] A possibility

Cristina: [00:40:17] I might be hanging

Cristina: [00:40:19] On to this

Cristina: [00:40:20] Opinion with my cold,

Cristina: [00:40:21] Dead hand, and I might

Cristina: [00:40:24] Not be able

Cristina: [00:40:25] To see another

Cristina: [00:40:26] Point of view.

Cristina: [00:40:27] That's OK. It's going to happen. Let me be aware of it.

Cristina: [00:40:31] If it does, you can't. You can't avoid it.

Cristina: [00:40:33] But you can do is try to close. The gap between the time of thought happens through the process of attachment to the reframing of your perspective. Right. It's really the

Cristina: [00:40:45] Time. The longer

Cristina: [00:40:47] You're in that

Cristina: [00:40:48] Attachment, right?

Cristina: [00:40:49] So the point is to not spend so much time in the

Cristina: [00:40:52] Attachment and knowing that

Cristina: [00:40:54] It

Cristina: [00:40:54] Happens is

Cristina: [00:40:55] Half the battle. The more you reduce the time that it takes to alleviate the

Cristina: [00:41:00] Attachment, the happier you'll be.

Harpreet: [00:41:02] Yeah, it's like the simplest things are like the hardest to implement.

Harpreet: [00:41:07] Everybody wants the complicated answer. They give themselves an excuse not to do it like,

Harpreet: [00:41:11] Damn, you got to do all that. Sounds like it works with us hard. I'm not going to do it, but what you're saying is

Harpreet: [00:41:15] Just simple stuff.

Harpreet: [00:41:17] Just pause, right? It's easy to do. But then the

Harpreet: [00:41:20] Same time, it's

Harpreet: [00:41:20] So difficult because your mind just

Harpreet: [00:41:22] Wants to react, right? Constantly wants to react and go down these paths.

Harpreet: [00:41:25] So why is it that that

Harpreet: [00:41:27] We have such reactive

Cristina: [00:41:29] Monkey mind? So because

Cristina: [00:41:31] Our minds want want to stay in that delicious complexity,

Cristina: [00:41:36] It's delicious because it's a

Cristina: [00:41:39] Matrix of

Cristina: [00:41:40] Discontent and it keeps

Cristina: [00:41:42] You

Cristina: [00:41:43] Safe.

Cristina: [00:41:44] That's the ego's job is to keep you safe. And so it'll

Cristina: [00:41:48] Create all these

Cristina: [00:41:49] Sort of

Cristina: [00:41:50] Oh, that's difficult. Oh, I

Cristina: [00:41:51] Don't know if I could do that. That sounds

Cristina: [00:41:53] Complicated so that you go,

Cristina: [00:41:55] Don't go and do that new

Cristina: [00:41:56] Thing. And then

Cristina: [00:41:58] It's so sophisticated because [00:42:00] we now lead these very sophisticated before it was like Tiger will eat

Cristina: [00:42:05] Me run, but not anymore.

Cristina: [00:42:07] We are our whole world has become. So sophisticated, well, guess what evolved to become just as sophisticated as the world we live in, our ego, so our

Cristina: [00:42:19] Ego will

Cristina: [00:42:20] Continue to create complexity and problems so it can continue to try and

Cristina: [00:42:26] Solve them. It will create

Cristina: [00:42:28] New problems because it wants to continue to solve those problems because if it's not doing that, then you're going to go off and do something that

Cristina: [00:42:37] It thinks is new and unsafe

Cristina: [00:42:40] And that it doesn't understand, and therefore it will freak out and it doesn't want to be freak out. It's happier freaking out about the things that it knows.

Cristina: [00:42:51] So that's

Cristina: [00:42:51] Why our minds are so

Cristina: [00:42:52] Reactive.

Cristina: [00:42:53] Everyone's got a different, like a

Cristina: [00:42:56] Different

Cristina: [00:42:57] Reaction. They're reactive

Cristina: [00:42:59] About what triggers

Cristina: [00:43:01] You is probably very different than what

Cristina: [00:43:03] Triggers me, but that doesn't mean that the triggers

Cristina: [00:43:06] Don't

Cristina: [00:43:07] Exist.

Harpreet: [00:43:08] Yeah, I like that. We kind of have our own loops. They kicked off and we have a something that sparks it back. We're talking about the ego

Harpreet: [00:43:16] And not wanting us to

Harpreet: [00:43:16] Go into these new and weird situations. You talk a little bit about, I think, kind

Harpreet: [00:43:21] Of lines up well here about making

Harpreet: [00:43:23] Decisions. So I guess that is that part of

Harpreet: [00:43:25] The Eagles job

Harpreet: [00:43:26] To make decisions and I guess we'll start there.

Cristina: [00:43:30] The ego will present an interpretation of a

Cristina: [00:43:33] Situation and tell you there's a decision

Cristina: [00:43:37] That needs

Cristina: [00:43:37] To be made and

Cristina: [00:43:38] Sometimes and sometimes it will give input as to what that decision

Cristina: [00:43:43] Should be.

Cristina: [00:43:44] It's never, never really the right input.

Cristina: [00:43:47] It's never,

Cristina: [00:43:48] Really. I mean, unless you're about to get hit by a

Cristina: [00:43:50] Bus, chances are

Cristina: [00:43:52] The advice the ego is giving you about a decision that you

Cristina: [00:43:56] Need to make is like,

Cristina: [00:43:57] It's like the best friend that loves [00:44:00] you so much, but always gives you

Cristina: [00:44:01] Bad advice. Just love it. But maybe

Cristina: [00:44:05] Not.

Cristina: [00:44:05] Follow it, right? So decision

Cristina: [00:44:08] Making comes from the reasoned

Cristina: [00:44:09] Mind. The reason

Cristina: [00:44:11] Of mind is that is the mind that observes,

Cristina: [00:44:14] It's the

Cristina: [00:44:15] Mind that is

Cristina: [00:44:16] Patient. It's the

Cristina: [00:44:17] Mind that deliberates and the ego will

Cristina: [00:44:21] Tell you, will you have a

Cristina: [00:44:22] Duty to do

Cristina: [00:44:23] This? You have to

Cristina: [00:44:24] Do this because it's your

Cristina: [00:44:26] Duty or you have to do

Cristina: [00:44:27] This because we're

Cristina: [00:44:28] Scared, right?

Cristina: [00:44:29] Or, you know, it'll give you all these reasons why you have to make this decision.

Cristina: [00:44:34] But the only

Cristina: [00:44:35] Decision that is worth pursuing is that which comes from the reasoned mind that which is

Cristina: [00:44:41] Wise. And there's

Cristina: [00:44:43] All kinds of guidance on what is considered a

Cristina: [00:44:45] Wise decision.

Harpreet: [00:44:47] You share some of

Harpreet: [00:44:47] Those tips with the audience that can

Harpreet: [00:44:49] Help us make those better decisions.

Cristina: [00:44:51] My default is what is the good for all? What is the good for as many people as possible? You can't go wrong with that.

Cristina: [00:44:58] You really can't.

Cristina: [00:44:59] So so if you are in a conundrum and you're really wrangling with what to do about

Cristina: [00:45:06] Something, think about the

Cristina: [00:45:07] Others that are going to be impacted by that decision and allow that to guide you.

Cristina: [00:45:12] So that's that's tip number one, tip

Cristina: [00:45:15] Number two, really know the basis of your

Cristina: [00:45:18] Decisions, really, you

Cristina: [00:45:19] Know, are you doing this because you're scared? Are you doing this because you feel like

Cristina: [00:45:25] It's your duty? Like what?

Cristina: [00:45:27] What is your real rationale

Cristina: [00:45:29] For making that

Cristina: [00:45:31] Choice or that

Cristina: [00:45:32] Decision? And if it's

Cristina: [00:45:33] Coming from a place that doesn't

Cristina: [00:45:35] Feel grounded, then take more time. And that's tip,

Cristina: [00:45:40] That's tip number two, which leads to tip number three, which is take your

Cristina: [00:45:43] Time. It's OK

Cristina: [00:45:45] To take your time with the

Cristina: [00:45:48] Decision. It's important to

Cristina: [00:45:49] Weigh the

Cristina: [00:45:50] Consequences of what you're about to do. That's important.

Harpreet: [00:45:53] Absolutely agree. Yeah. So let's that I

Harpreet: [00:45:56] Want to get into the flow because

Harpreet: [00:45:57] I like

Harpreet: [00:45:58] This section you talked about in your book about [00:46:00] getting into the

Harpreet: [00:46:00] Real flow. So what

Harpreet: [00:46:02] Is this? What is the real flow

Harpreet: [00:46:04] And how can

Harpreet: [00:46:05] We distinguish that

Harpreet: [00:46:06] From the from from a

Harpreet: [00:46:08] Fake flow or the fake

Harpreet: [00:46:09] Flow? That's a thing.

Cristina: [00:46:11] Well, so real flow is the

Cristina: [00:46:14] Processes

Cristina: [00:46:15] Rest and then you have

Cristina: [00:46:16] An

Cristina: [00:46:17] Impulse and then

Cristina: [00:46:18] You there's an

Cristina: [00:46:19] Action and then there's rest. So rest, impulse, action, rest. I don't know

Cristina: [00:46:25] What fake flow is.

Harpreet: [00:46:28] I kind of made that up. I was wondering, is there a fake flow so that to kind of distinguish from that real flow with a fake flow, just be

Cristina: [00:46:35] Go, go, go. Perhaps perhaps

Cristina: [00:46:38] There might be a misunderstanding of flow,

Cristina: [00:46:41] Where

Cristina: [00:46:41] People seem to

Cristina: [00:46:42] Think that flow

Cristina: [00:46:44] Only occurs

Cristina: [00:46:45] When

Cristina: [00:46:45] You're in

Cristina: [00:46:47] Action and when

Cristina: [00:46:48] You're in

Cristina: [00:46:49] The moment and you're in the zone and

Cristina: [00:46:53] Everything in your being and your intellect and your emotions and your physicality is operating at

Cristina: [00:47:00] Optimal level, right?

Cristina: [00:47:02] That feeling that

Cristina: [00:47:03] Zone and what

Cristina: [00:47:05] But what I'm saying is actually flow is a more contextualized.

Cristina: [00:47:10] Experience, because that moment of the zone

Cristina: [00:47:15] Would not

Cristina: [00:47:15] Happen if there

Cristina: [00:47:17] Wasn't

Cristina: [00:47:17] Rest, if there wasn't

Cristina: [00:47:19] An

Cristina: [00:47:19] Impulse. And if there

Cristina: [00:47:20] Wasn't rest

Cristina: [00:47:22] After the

Cristina: [00:47:23] That

Cristina: [00:47:24] Action flow is

Cristina: [00:47:26] Impacted. The second you wake up

Cristina: [00:47:29] In the morning, it

Cristina: [00:47:30] Exists throughout your

Cristina: [00:47:32] Day, not

Cristina: [00:47:33] Just in that one hour of like, holy crap, like, I am killing it with this slide deck

Cristina: [00:47:38] Right now, right?

Cristina: [00:47:39] That moment would not occur had you maybe not had a good night's sleep or had you not taken the time to really think about what you wanted to say like.

Cristina: [00:47:52] So I

Cristina: [00:47:53] Don't think flow happens in a in

Cristina: [00:47:56] A vacuum by any stretch.

Harpreet: [00:47:58] Yeah, because I mean, for me, at least,

Harpreet: [00:47:59] It feels [00:48:00] like I always need

Harpreet: [00:48:00] To be in motion on the go, go, go, go,

Harpreet: [00:48:03] Go. And we talked about the

Harpreet: [00:48:04] Importance of of inaction being just

Harpreet: [00:48:06] As important

Harpreet: [00:48:07] As as action. But I guess if you were to to just

Harpreet: [00:48:10] Spell it out clearly for us here, why

Harpreet: [00:48:12] Is it that this inaction

Harpreet: [00:48:15] Is just as important as as the action?

Cristina: [00:48:18] Because it forces us to stop and think?

Cristina: [00:48:20] And I

Cristina: [00:48:21] Feel that

Cristina: [00:48:22] If you

Cristina: [00:48:23] Were to go back and look

Cristina: [00:48:25] At like, let's

Cristina: [00:48:26] Say, you had a project and it didn't really

Cristina: [00:48:30] Go that great or things, you know, kind of it didn't

Cristina: [00:48:34] Go great,

Cristina: [00:48:35] Didn't go well,

Cristina: [00:48:36] And you start to take a look

Cristina: [00:48:37] Back nine

Cristina: [00:48:38] Times out of 10. The reason

Cristina: [00:48:40] Why it didn't go well was

Cristina: [00:48:43] Because there wasn't an attention paid to the

Cristina: [00:48:46] Means of

Cristina: [00:48:48] That project, the means of the work

Cristina: [00:48:50] Versus the outcome of the work. And so action, a lot of

Cristina: [00:48:55] Times people perceive it as like, it's the

Cristina: [00:48:58] Outcome. But when

Cristina: [00:48:59] There's attention

Cristina: [00:49:01] Paid to the process and the

Cristina: [00:49:03] Means and being deliberate and having attention to

Cristina: [00:49:07] Detail, the outcome will will

Cristina: [00:49:10] Happen in the way that it's going to happen and hopefully in a positive

Cristina: [00:49:14] Way.

Cristina: [00:49:15] So an action is important because it's it's the natural law.

Cristina: [00:49:20] You're following the

Cristina: [00:49:21] Natural law of things

Cristina: [00:49:22] Because it's it's a very

Cristina: [00:49:25] Important component

Cristina: [00:49:26] In all of that. It forces

Cristina: [00:49:27] Us to stop and think

Harpreet: [00:49:28] It's an important thing. I think it's just the theme of this. This discussion has been the

Harpreet: [00:49:33] Importance of just pausing importance of just taking a moment before getting

Harpreet: [00:49:37] Dragged along by your impressions and your

Harpreet: [00:49:39] Perceptions. I think I'm entitled this episode. Pause. That's what I'll do. So you talked about how you were working a lot in

Harpreet: [00:49:47] Strategy and whatnot. So what has philosophy taught you about being a better strategist?

Harpreet: [00:49:51] I'd love to tell her a little bit about that.

Cristina: [00:49:53] Yeah, I have to

Cristina: [00:49:54] Say, if I were to go back to

Cristina: [00:49:56] Strategy work, I would kill it. And I'll [00:50:00] tell you why, because

Cristina: [00:50:01] Philosophy has taught me so much about what actually a human

Cristina: [00:50:06] Insight is, what a

Cristina: [00:50:08] Universal

Cristina: [00:50:09] Truth really is, and that

Cristina: [00:50:12] Is the core strategy work. The core strategy work is to find that fundamental essential nature of that

Cristina: [00:50:20] Thing and then

Cristina: [00:50:21] Build the actions and the activities that support and enable the Data essential nature

Cristina: [00:50:27] Of that thing. That's what

Cristina: [00:50:28] Strategy is, and I feel like, you know, a lot of strategists get involved or overinvolved or over measured in the activities

Cristina: [00:50:38] Around the thing

Cristina: [00:50:40] And maybe might be fuzzy on the essential nature

Cristina: [00:50:43] Of that thing and what

Cristina: [00:50:44] Philosophy has taught me. It has given me razor

Cristina: [00:50:48] Sharp ability

Cristina: [00:50:50] To see and pick an insight like a needle out of the

Cristina: [00:50:54] Haystack. And so I think that

Cristina: [00:50:57] Philosophy is such a great study for

Cristina: [00:51:01] Strategists. Absolutely.

Harpreet: [00:51:03] Yeah, I find myself in this awkward position

Harpreet: [00:51:05] That little is not necessarily awkward position at work, but

Harpreet: [00:51:07] You know, I'm trained as a

Harpreet: [00:51:08] Statistician, as a data scientist. That's the work that I do. And now I'm in a position where I have to

Harpreet: [00:51:13] Help implement or at least plan out a Data strategy or this large organization. And I'm like, I don't really know how to be strategic. Like, that's that tough to do, but that's I like that

Harpreet: [00:51:25] Just getting to

Harpreet: [00:51:25] The essential truth

Harpreet: [00:51:27] Of the thing and then figuring out all the activities that will

Harpreet: [00:51:30] Support that.

Harpreet: [00:51:30] So when we're getting to this essential truth of

Harpreet: [00:51:32] The thing, was there like one or two

Harpreet: [00:51:34] Questions where you ask

Harpreet: [00:51:35] Yourself at the beginning of

Harpreet: [00:51:37] Any strategic

Cristina: [00:51:38] Initiative, what's really

Cristina: [00:51:40] Happening here?

Cristina: [00:51:41] What's what is most important and what will be what could

Cristina: [00:51:47] Possibly be the most ideal

Cristina: [00:51:49] Outcome that isn't

Cristina: [00:51:50] About the bottom

Cristina: [00:51:51] Line, but is about

Cristina: [00:51:54] What will be the most

Cristina: [00:51:56] Good. So what's the most important thing? What does

Cristina: [00:51:59] The most [00:52:00] good and what's the

Cristina: [00:52:01] Essential? What's the

Cristina: [00:52:02] Essential

Cristina: [00:52:02] Nature of it? And I want to just

Cristina: [00:52:04] Go back once again, harpreet

Cristina: [00:52:06] First words out of your mouth

Cristina: [00:52:07] Where I don't know how to

Cristina: [00:52:08] Do strategy. So you're not going to be

Cristina: [00:52:11] Able to do the strategy if you already automatically are entering into the strategic work thinking that you can't do

Cristina: [00:52:18] Strategy. Yeah, I guess I just

Cristina: [00:52:19] Don't have the experience

Cristina: [00:52:21] Of it.

Harpreet: [00:52:21] Yeah, that's right. Adopt a bit

Harpreet: [00:52:22] Of a growth mindset that I haven't done strategy

Cristina: [00:52:25] Yet. I think there's another journal entry there, so immediately. So again, think about what what was it that was telling you that you don't, that you don't know how to do strategy?

Cristina: [00:52:34] I could tell

Cristina: [00:52:35] You right now it was yours. It was your circular thinking. It was your ego because your ego is like, Oh, we've never done strategy before deer in headlights.

Cristina: [00:52:44] We're not good at it. It's going to be terrible, right? Because this new

Cristina: [00:52:48] Thing is in your

Cristina: [00:52:49] Life. Your ego freaked out and told you a story about yourself

Harpreet: [00:52:53] That isn't true. To get kicked

Harpreet: [00:52:55] Out of this kind of circular thinking

Harpreet: [00:52:56] Loop around

Harpreet: [00:52:57] Me feeling like I don't know how to do strategy. It's just as simple

Harpreet: [00:53:01] As, like the

Harpreet: [00:53:02] Growth mindset thing where I'm like, OK, I don't know how to do strategy yet, but it can be learned

Harpreet: [00:53:06] If I if I put a little bit

Cristina: [00:53:07] Of effort or

Cristina: [00:53:08] There is an even simpler. Here's an even simpler way to look at it. I don't know how to do strategy.

Cristina: [00:53:15] All right. Three.

Cristina: [00:53:16] All right. I don't know how to do strategy laugh. You know, have a sense of humor about it. Like, All right, well, we're going to figure this out. I don't know how to do it, but we're going to figure this out. Yeah, that's the that's the philosophical

Cristina: [00:53:29] Approach, because the thing

Cristina: [00:53:30] Is, and don't get me wrong, I love growth mindset stuff. And but the growth mindset stuff is,

Cristina: [00:53:36] Is there's something

Cristina: [00:53:38] Even more fundamental that you need to be doing, which is accepting the fact that you don't

Cristina: [00:53:42] Know something, Socrates

Cristina: [00:53:44] Said. I know that, I know not, and that's what makes me a wise man.

Cristina: [00:53:48] So right

Cristina: [00:53:49] Now, you are not accepting the fact that you don't know

Cristina: [00:53:53] Something. And until you

Cristina: [00:53:54] Can accept that fact

Cristina: [00:53:55] With

Cristina: [00:53:56] Delight and humor and curiosity and [00:54:00] you know, a little bit of like, Oh, that's all right and a little bit of

Cristina: [00:54:03] Acceptance, that growth

Cristina: [00:54:05] Mindset stuff is going to basically put a layer on top of something that isn't resolved and you are just going to be running into

Cristina: [00:54:13] Trouble.

Harpreet: [00:54:14] A lot of good, actionable advice for me in this episode. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, that's true.

Cristina: [00:54:19] I mean, you know, I forgot to tell you, I like to give unsolicited advice,

Cristina: [00:54:23] So I

Cristina: [00:54:25] Appreciate you letting me do that.

Harpreet: [00:54:27] Oh, absolutely. I appreciate it. And I like that. Like, just approach the

Harpreet: [00:54:32] Challenge with a cheerful

Harpreet: [00:54:33] Spirit, right? Because it's a

Harpreet: [00:54:35] Challenge. But the challenge is the way kind of forward.

Harpreet: [00:54:38] Like to quote Marcus Aurelius?

Harpreet: [00:54:39] They right? I think that's good. Everyone knows the the

Harpreet: [00:54:41] Impediment to advance of action, which stands in the way becomes the way. So my lack of knowledge is standing in the way. But it's also going to be the way that I

Harpreet: [00:54:48] Figure out what I need to do as long

Harpreet: [00:54:50] As I'm

Harpreet: [00:54:50] Accepting it and approaching this daunting task. The the flip that I write, I

Harpreet: [00:54:55] Should be approaching this

Harpreet: [00:54:56] Opportunity with a cheerful

Harpreet: [00:54:58] Spirit as the opportunity to learn and grow and add new

Harpreet: [00:55:01] Skills to my set.

Cristina: [00:55:02] Exactly. And again, just to put

Cristina: [00:55:06] A finer point

Cristina: [00:55:06] On it, the

Cristina: [00:55:07] Obstacle is that you think there's an obstacle

Cristina: [00:55:11] That's the real obstacle. It's not that

Cristina: [00:55:12] It's not just

Cristina: [00:55:13] That you don't know, it's it's the fact

Cristina: [00:55:16] That you think that you

Cristina: [00:55:17] Should know that's the real obstacle.

Harpreet: [00:55:20] I think that I should

Harpreet: [00:55:20] Know

Harpreet: [00:55:21] Instead of thinking that I

Harpreet: [00:55:23] Can figure it out. I guess the

Harpreet: [00:55:24] Subtle, subtle shifts

Harpreet: [00:55:26] In thinking right, like approaching a task and not being able to

Harpreet: [00:55:29] Know how to do it, thinking that I

Harpreet: [00:55:30] Should be able to know how to do it, but

Harpreet: [00:55:31] Really, it should be

Harpreet: [00:55:32] Approaching a task that I have not yet

Harpreet: [00:55:34] Had an opportunity to do and then telling myself that, well, first of all, now I'm given an opportunity to do it and in the

Harpreet: [00:55:42] Actual doing of

Harpreet: [00:55:43] The thing, I'm going to learn, right? Awesome. Yeah, let that sit with me this evening.

Harpreet: [00:55:48] Thank you very much for that. I know we're running up on time here. We'll wrap up with the last formal question.

Harpreet: [00:55:53] Actually, let's do one

Harpreet: [00:55:54] More question before the last

Harpreet: [00:55:55] Formal question. Ok. Yeah, yeah. So I think might know the answer to this, but [00:56:00] let's let's let's say, ask it anyways. So is wisdom a trait that can be cultivated?

Cristina: [00:56:06] So, so remember,

Cristina: [00:56:08] Wisdom

Cristina: [00:56:08] Is innate, so being

Cristina: [00:56:10] Wise

Cristina: [00:56:11] Is innate.

Cristina: [00:56:12] Acting wise is

Cristina: [00:56:13] A skill, so the trait

Cristina: [00:56:15] To actually be cultivated is acting wisely. You are already wise, so there's nothing to cultivate there.

Cristina: [00:56:22] What needs to be cultivated is the act of being wise.

Harpreet: [00:56:26] And where can we cultivate this act of being wise everywhere that we are? Do we do it alone by ourselves as we interact with other people?

Harpreet: [00:56:35] How can we can we do that?

Cristina: [00:56:36] Every day

Cristina: [00:56:37] Presents us with

Cristina: [00:56:38] Opportunities.

Cristina: [00:56:39] Every every

Cristina: [00:56:40] Minute presents us with

Cristina: [00:56:42] Opportunities.

Cristina: [00:56:43] We just

Cristina: [00:56:44] Did it twice on this podcast

Cristina: [00:56:46] In this interview. We don't need to go anywhere.

Cristina: [00:56:49] We don't need

Cristina: [00:56:49] To do anything. We just need to

Cristina: [00:56:50] See what's in front of

Cristina: [00:56:51] Us and

Cristina: [00:56:52] Guarantee you walk

Cristina: [00:56:54] Out of your apartment. You will see

Cristina: [00:56:56] A million

Cristina: [00:56:57] Ways to look at the world either differently or your place in it or

Cristina: [00:57:03] Something. Some situation arises and you're like,

Cristina: [00:57:05] Ok, how can how can I

Cristina: [00:57:07] Be wiser

Cristina: [00:57:08] Here in this moment? You can. You completely alone, it's everywhere.

Harpreet: [00:57:12] Absolutely love it. Thank you so much. But we'll get to the last formal question, then we'll jump into our random round and that is

Harpreet: [00:57:17] It is one hundred years in the future. What do you want to be remembered for?

Cristina: [00:57:22] I, you know,

Cristina: [00:57:23] I just I want to be remembered for helping people. Really, I know

Cristina: [00:57:27] That's sort of like the beauty pageant kind of answer, but I really, really genuinely want to be

Cristina: [00:57:33] Known for, you know, helping people and and helping

Cristina: [00:57:37] Them gain a

Cristina: [00:57:38] Better knowledge of self, helping them to connect to who they really are. That's what I want to be known for.

Harpreet: [00:57:45] Well, I can tell you,

Harpreet: [00:57:45] You've definitely helped me today. And in the course of reading your book, you've definitely helped me as well. I encourage everyone to check it out. Wise up at work, we're

Harpreet: [00:57:53] Working to get this book.

Cristina: [00:57:54] So it's on

Cristina: [00:57:55] Amazon. So why is that that

Cristina: [00:57:56] Work is

Cristina: [00:57:58] You can find it on

Cristina: [00:57:58] Amazon. Awesome.

Harpreet: [00:57:59] I'll be [00:58:00] sure to link to

Harpreet: [00:58:00] That in the show notes. So, yeah, let's do some just fun, random round questions.

Harpreet: [00:58:05] What do you

Harpreet: [00:58:05] Think the

Harpreet: [00:58:06] First video to hit one billion

Harpreet: [00:58:09] Views on YouTube will be about? And when will that happen?

Cristina: [00:58:14] It's going to be a cat. I don't know. Maybe two years. Awesome. I mean, I don't.

Cristina: [00:58:18] I mean, a trillion is a

Cristina: [00:58:19] Lot of

Harpreet: [00:58:19] People. It is. Yeah, yeah.

Harpreet: [00:58:21] For reference, the

Harpreet: [00:58:22] Last time I

Harpreet: [00:58:23] Checked it was Baby

Harpreet: [00:58:24] Shark with like almost

Harpreet: [00:58:25] Nine billion, I think views. But I asked this question to a lot of people,

Harpreet: [00:58:29] Just because the wisdom of the

Harpreet: [00:58:31] Crowds think, Oh, it's fun. Yeah, it's fun to

Cristina: [00:58:33] Be in it.

Harpreet: [00:58:34] A lot of people say Cat the cat.

Harpreet: [00:58:35] Video Yeah. So if you're looking to be YouTube famous,

Harpreet: [00:58:38] Go by cat and start

Harpreet: [00:58:40] Recording the cat. What do you

Harpreet: [00:58:41] Think in your

Harpreet: [00:58:42] Opinion? What do you think

Harpreet: [00:58:44] Most people think within the first few seconds of meeting you? For the

Cristina: [00:58:47] First time, I've been

Cristina: [00:58:48] Called a house

Cristina: [00:58:49] On fire, and I think

Cristina: [00:58:51] That's pretty apt actually

Harpreet: [00:58:55] A house on fire. Break that down.

Harpreet: [00:58:57] And why is that apt I look at?

Cristina: [00:58:59] I take it as like super energetic and positive and sassy and feisty and like bright and warm.

Cristina: [00:59:10] And, you know, I

Cristina: [00:59:11] Don't look at it as destructive. I look at it

Cristina: [00:59:14] As like, you know, I don't know.

Cristina: [00:59:16] Hopefully, there aren't any listeners out there who have had their house burned down. And if so, I apologize.

Cristina: [00:59:22] You know,

Cristina: [00:59:22] I am not trying to make a positive analogy out of your drama, but yeah, somebody called me a house on fire and I actually

Cristina: [00:59:31] Really liked

Harpreet: [00:59:31] It. Yeah, like,

Harpreet: [00:59:32] It's just all about the perception of how you, how you choose to take it. I think

Harpreet: [00:59:36] It was it might have been

Harpreet: [00:59:36] Epictetus who says something

Harpreet: [00:59:38] Like if you choose

Harpreet: [00:59:40] To be or might have been Marcus Aurelius, choose to be harmed and you will be harmed. Choose not to be harmed and you won't be harmed.

Harpreet: [00:59:44] Right? Yeah. So what

Harpreet: [00:59:46] Are you currently

Cristina: [00:59:47] Reading? I am

Cristina: [00:59:48] Reading Plato's Lemonade Stand by Tom

Cristina: [00:59:53] Morris. Morris, he's he's definitely. I just think he's phenomenal.

Cristina: [00:59:59] He's a retired [01:00:00] philosophy professor who is just such an incredible writer, and he's just the most

Cristina: [01:00:06] Positive, lovely,

Cristina: [01:00:08] Lovely human being.

Cristina: [01:00:09] And I adore

Cristina: [01:00:10] I adore Tom Morris. And so he wrote this book called Plato's Lemonade Stand.

Harpreet: [01:00:16] It's fun if you check that out. Like, the first thing that comes to my mind

Harpreet: [01:00:19] Is like one of those

Harpreet: [01:00:20] Stands where you come up and pay five

Harpreet: [01:00:21] Cents to give it get a piece of

Harpreet: [01:00:23] Advice, type of thing like from the from the Snoopy show or whatever

Harpreet: [01:00:26] It was. Is that kind of what it's like there?

Cristina: [01:00:29] Well, the cover

Cristina: [01:00:29] Certainly looks

Cristina: [01:00:30] Like that. But yeah,

Cristina: [01:00:31] It's really about making

Cristina: [01:00:33] Play-doh accessible,

Cristina: [01:00:35] And it's just one of those books of like, hey, like, here are some ideas around philosophy and and he just is such a good writer makes it so accessible, and I appreciate

Cristina: [01:00:44] That about

Harpreet: [01:00:44] Him. Yeah, definitely check that one out.

Harpreet: [01:00:46] I picked up on recently.

Harpreet: [01:00:48] It's an older book.

Harpreet: [01:00:48] It's called the Cartoon Guide to Philosophy,

Harpreet: [01:00:51] And I can't read the name from here, but that you

Harpreet: [01:00:55] Might enjoy that if you type that and you'll be able to easily find that the cartoon guide to philosophy. It's a bunch of comics. And yeah, it's cool.

Harpreet: [01:01:02] So what song

Harpreet: [01:01:03] Do you have on

Cristina: [01:01:04] Repeat Blinding

Cristina: [01:01:05] Lights by the

Cristina: [01:01:06] Weekend?

Harpreet: [01:01:07] Oh, nice.

Cristina: [01:01:07] Yeah, that

Cristina: [01:01:08] Song just takes me

Cristina: [01:01:09] Back to

Cristina: [01:01:11] Like the eighties

Cristina: [01:01:12] And, you know, to

Cristina: [01:01:14] The soul of a heartbroken

Cristina: [01:01:16] Teenager. Yes, the check

Harpreet: [01:01:18] Was several times. Yeah, it definitely has

Harpreet: [01:01:21] A nostalgic vibe is that it's

Harpreet: [01:01:22] A good track. Oh, now we're going to open up the random question generator. All right. First question we have. What languages do you speak?

Cristina: [01:01:29] I speak English, a little bit of Italian, a little bit

Cristina: [01:01:32] Of Hebrew, actually very

Cristina: [01:01:35] Little and a little bit of Greek.

Harpreet: [01:01:37] Nice. What's the

Harpreet: [01:01:38] Story behind one

Harpreet: [01:01:40] Of your scars?

Cristina: [01:01:41] Oh yeah, I've got

Cristina: [01:01:42] These scars on my arm. I wish I had. I wish I had a more

Cristina: [01:01:46] Badass story

Cristina: [01:01:49] Behind these.

Cristina: [01:01:50] But we have an oven that's like just at a really

Cristina: [01:01:53] Bad angle, and I've burned my arm like several times. I mean, you know, [01:02:00] I look

Cristina: [01:02:00] Like like, I should

Cristina: [01:02:01] Be working

Cristina: [01:02:01] A grill like in a

Cristina: [01:02:03] Restaurant.

Cristina: [01:02:04] But yeah, oven burns,

Harpreet: [01:02:05] Pancakes

Harpreet: [01:02:06] Or

Harpreet: [01:02:06] Waffles. Ooh, waffles. The last one here. What? See your favorite candy. Chocolate. And how can

Harpreet: [01:02:12] People connect with you and where can they find you

Cristina: [01:02:15] Online? I'm on

Cristina: [01:02:16] Linkedin, so the thing is my name, my first name doesn't have

Cristina: [01:02:20] An agent, so

Cristina: [01:02:21] My first name is Kristin

Cristina: [01:02:24] A my last name

Cristina: [01:02:25] Is

Cristina: [01:02:26] D I

Cristina: [01:02:27] Capital, g i a c

Cristina: [01:02:29] O ammo. So I'm on LinkedIn

Cristina: [01:02:31] And you can also go to my

Cristina: [01:02:32] Website, Christina

Cristina: [01:02:34] De Jacomo,

Cristina: [01:02:35] And you can learn

Cristina: [01:02:36] More about me there.

Cristina: [01:02:37] And you can also

Cristina: [01:02:38] Sign up to get a free excerpt of why

Cristina: [01:02:41] Is up at work? You can check that out. I'll be

Harpreet: [01:02:43] Sure to

Harpreet: [01:02:43] Link to all of those in the show notes and your name correctly. Christina, thank you so much for taking time in your schedule to come on to the show today. Really appreciate having you here.

Cristina: [01:02:52] Thank you so much. This was really great and have a great day, everybody. What?