Lori Schwanbeck lives her purpose in creating the conditions that enable people to thrive in personal and professional life. Working in the intersection of psychology, mindfulness, emotional intelligence and leadership, she designs and facilitates programs focused on building workplace well-being. She has taught thousands of people in diverse global organizations including LinkedIn, Autodesk, Bain Consulting, Google, Tennis Australia, MEA, Julius Baer and Disney.
She is a senior faculty member at Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), an organization born at Google, where she mentors and trains teachers, and designs and facilitates both in-person and virtual mindfulness based emotional intelligence programs. Lori recently completed a 2-year project in Bhutan working in partnership with the Gross National Happiness initiative bringing SIYLI’s program to all levels of the Bhutanese government.
Lori co-founded Mindfulness Therapy Associates, a psychotherapy and coaching practice where she works with high performing executives using mindfulness practices designed to support emotional and relational health.
Lori holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Saskatchewan, and a MA in psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She is a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, trained by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach through the Greater Good Science Center
She lives her passion immersed in nature and you can often find her in a kayak or hiking the hills of Northern California where she leads nature-based mindfulness retreats.
💫 We cover :
💫 Mentioned in this episode:
To connect with Kasia
Lori Schwanbeck lives her purpose in creating the conditions that enable people to thrive in personal and professional life. Working in the intersection of psychology, mindfulness, emotional intelligence and leadership, she designs and facilitates programs focused on building workplace well-being. She has taught thousands of people in diverse global organizations including LinkedIn, Autodesk, Bain Consulting, Google, Tennis Australia, MEA, Julius Baer and Disney.
She is a senior faculty member at Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), an organization born at Google, where she mentors and trains teachers, and designs and facilitates both in-person and virtual mindfulness based emotional intelligence programs. Lori recently completed a 2-year project in Bhutan working in partnership with the Gross National Happiness initiative bringing SIYLI’s program to all levels of the Bhutanese government.
Lori co-founded Mindfulness Therapy Associates, a psychotherapy and coaching practice where she works with high performing executives using mindfulness practices designed to support emotional and relational health.
Lori holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Saskatchewan, and a MA in psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She is a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, trained by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach through the Greater Good Science Center
She lives her passion immersed in nature and you can often find her in a kayak or hiking the hills of Northern California where she leads nature-based mindfulness retreats.
💫 We cover :
💫 Mentioned in this episode:
To connect with Kasia
Kasia: [00:00:00] Transpersonal psychology expands the sense of self beyond what they call the skin encapsulated ego and says that who you are is, it's our body, it's our spiritual sense, but it's also this, the self that transpersonal psychology is really interested in is the self that is interwoven with a larger reality than just the sort of building blocks from your early history.
So It's both a theory, it's practices, and it's a way of relating and knowing our experience as a being that is much more vast than our biography.
Hello and welcome to Nourish. My name is Kasia and I'm a holistic counselor and first year doctoral student studying acupuncture and traditional [00:01:00] Chinese medicine. My mission with this podcast is to share the stories of inspiring humans who have discovered that elusive state. Of balance between the Western concept of success with more Eastern philosophies of inner knowing and spirituality.
Think yin and yang and flow. Now, these two do not need to be separate, but I know firsthand how difficult it can be to reconcile them. As a Silicon Valley burnout SKP myself. Teaser, I left the tech world after 10 years of a thriving career in product management. I want to share the stories that I wish I had heard when I was struggling to find that balance and flow myself.
My hope is that these interviews can inspire you to rethink your own approach to mental health. physical and spiritual well being. And if you are struggling, find your way back to authentic alignment. So sit back, relax, and ground yourself back home. My love [00:02:00] now let's get started.
Hi everyone. And welcome back to nourish. So I just finished re listening to the episode I'm about to share with you with Lori Schwambach and I am totally floored. This episode is so deeply loaded with incredible information that I honestly think I'll be listening to it over and over again. It embodies the word nourish and I'm so honored to bring it to all of you.
Alright, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me take a moment to introduce my incredible guest, Lori Schwambach. Lori truly lives her purpose in creating the conditions that enable people to thrive in personal and professional life. She works at the intersection of psychology, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and leadership.
She designs and facilitates programs focused on building [00:03:00] workplace well being. She has taught Thousands of people in diverse global organizations, including LinkedIn, Autodesk, Bing Consulting, Google, and Disney to name a few. She is senior faculty member at the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which is a world renowned organization born at Google, where she mentors and trains teachers and designs and facilitates both in person and virtual mindfulness based.
Emotional intelligence programs. And if that weren't enough, Lori recently completed a two year project in Bhutan, working in partnership with the gross national happiness initiative, bringing the search inside yourself leadership Institute program to all levels of the Bhutanese government. Her full bio can be found in the show notes, but the last little nugget I want to add is that Lori is my therapist, which is why this conversation is so on a personal level, deeply nourishing to share with [00:04:00] you.
She's supported and really helped me evolve through what I'm going to call my most difficult, groundbreaking, and most incredible years of my life. This episode is almost as incredible as she is we cover finding your life's purpose Understanding the self from the perspective of transpersonal psychology the keys to healing your subconscious blocks how to live in alignment with nature cultivating compassion and self awareness the science behind motivation and ancestral trauma and And so much more all these topics are discussed through the lens of psychology With a dose of science sprinkled in there What an episode I know you're gonna love it.
Now, let's get into it[00:05:00]
Lori
I am so excited to have you here to be having a conversation out of the context of our therapy sessions. It's just beyond exciting.
Thank you so much for joining me on the Nourish podcast. Oh, it's my pleasure, Kasia, and I've been looking forward to this. I really love what you're doing and I'm excited to support you and the listeners in, um, whatever we can share that will be of service.
Yeah. And you've kind of witnessed this whole transformation. So I feel like this is like a full circle moment. All right. But before we dive into the questions and you know, I have a lot, I would like to kick it off with a question that I ask each and every guest. And that is, what are three words that you would use to describe yourself?
I just love this question. And the words that bubble up first, I would say playful, playful slash sarcastic, but playful, [00:06:00] optimistic. And loving, Oh, I love that. And I love hearing this, like from the context of, you know, being your, um, client, your patient, whatever, whatever, what have you. And so this is just so amazing to like hear this other side, because as I definitely would give you the loving and all the rest, but like playful, I was like, Whoa, Lori coming at me here.
Surprise. Okay. Well, I love that. So let's dive into it. You are a psychotherapist, executive leadership coach, and you currently spend your work days in between your own private practice, leading retreats at beautiful places like Esalen, Canyon Ranch, and or facilitating, well, actually you design and facilitate mindfulness based emotional intelligence programs in organizations worldwide.
But this was not Always your story as I know you pivoted into this world after a marketing career. And so I would [00:07:00] love for you to share with the audience, you know, what that pivot looked like and kind of what motivated you to make this change? Cause a lot of our audience, actually, they are people who choose to make, you know, create their second careers or make huge life changes like that.
Yeah, and I, I'm noticing that as you asked the question, Kasia, I'm feeling the presence of my 25 year old self in the conversation with us, who is so like, Oh my God, I don't know what to do and everything seems okay, but I'm not really happy and, uh, so I was like, Yes. I'm from Canada. I had a product marketing background and I had all of the indications of a very successful career, a lot of advancement opportunities.
And, you know, in some ways I actually had a lot of fun with it. There came a point and I call it my early midlife crisis or my past life sometimes [00:08:00] in my mid twenties where I realized. Increasingly so that I felt empty and I looked at my boss and my boss's boss and the kind of the trajectory if I was to stay in this line of work and it didn't really excite me.
And, you know, so I did what I think a lot of people do is thinking, well, if I accomplish more, like the more, more, more, then maybe I'll be satisfied. So I worked harder, I got, you know, raises, got promotions, and there's still this sense of emptiness. And yet it was confusing because from the outside, everybody was looking at me saying, Oh, you're so successful.
And so there's a lot of admiration that I was. Receiving, especially from my family and growing up as many of us do, we are so shaped by the expectations and norms, whether they're overt and expressed or just what we see from our family. So I was doing all the right things and still there's this emptiness.[00:09:00]
Then one day I was going for a walk, actually I was going for a run at that time along the Bow River in Calgary, Alberta, where I was living. And I saw an older woman sitting on a bench. overlooking the river. And I say older, she's maybe my age now. I don't know. At that time, she seemed older, but I just had the thought, I wonder what she's thinking about.
And I was musing on my run and I thought, Oh, I bet she's thinking about her life. And when I am that woman sitting by the river, like thinking back on my life, what will I be thinking about? And, you know, at that time, I was very, I knew what kind of car I wanted to get. I had, it was like the neighborhood I wanted to buy a house in.
I was very focused on the markers of success in terms of consumption and things. And I thought, I'm not going to be thinking about those things. I'm going to be thinking about the impact I had and the people in my life. And it was just really one of those aha moments [00:10:00] where it felt like some larger wisdom came through me.
And I really thought about like, what is it that I love about my work? Cause I actually did like a lot of what I did is creative, but what I loved the most were the people. And having conversations and connecting with people, and I am endlessly curious about people, people fascinate me. So I thought, you know, if I can understand people well enough to drive them towards a behavior change, which is really what marketing is.
Then maybe the behavior change, instead of it being consumption of a product, maybe the behavior change I want to support people making is towards lives of meaning and engagement and health and well being. And so that was a really big part of it. And I'll also say. And I don't share this part of the story very often with many people, but with you, I will.
At that time, I was also [00:11:00] having a lot of really spontaneous, I call them non ordinary experiences, where dream. I would have precognitive dreams. I would feel the sense of someone speaking to me just in my daily life, like just like in my waking life. And it wasn't, I didn't sense that it was a spirit or anything like that, but there was some.
deeper wisdom that was kind of knocking on the door, the different channels of my knowing that was not rational. It came through dreams. It came from, you know, when I was intensely exercising, when I was in nature, and I just really felt the presence of a wisdom much larger than my, both my rational mind and the self that has been constructed by living a life that I thought everybody thought I should.
There was something bigger that was saying, Hey, pay attention. And like, I'm hearing myself say this now and I go, I don't, for whatever reason it's coming right now. [00:12:00] But I became curious. I would probably add that to one of my words as well of describing myself. I was really curious, like, what is this? And I became less and less interested in the world of consumption, the world of business, and more and more interested in.
What it means to be human with all of these different dimensions of our experience. And so that led me, my combination of being curious about people, wanting to support people, curiosity about the non rational world, led me to study something called transpersonal psychology, which is really an exploration of what it means to be human beyond our personal narrative.
So it goes beyond any kind of trauma history or anything that a lot of psychology focuses on to include the dimensions of ourself, that, you know, the physical, [00:13:00] the spiritual. That's that. Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, Lori thank you for sharing that, like that entire story. And you know that since you know me personally, that to hear you say that is just so validating because as I reflect on many pivotal moments in my life.
Not just even the recent ones. Like I can so relate to that. And so to have you who I so deeply respect and admire kind of come at this from not just your personal perspective, but also your professional perspective to share that is just incredibly validating. And I know that a lot of people listening will feel the same way.
So The transition period, right, how was that because you know, you're going from what is a very stable path and you talked a lot about how, you know, it's what people expect of you. It's the [00:14:00] safer path. To first of all, having a very wisened experience in your, you know, 20s where you're actually reflecting on what you want your life to be like, but how did you kind of navigate trusting that voice and jumping into this unknown space of redefining your life?
What came up for you during that time? Oh gosh. Again, I'm feeling the presence of my 27 year old self in the room with us here. And, um, I love her. Welcome. She's just like, she was, she felt crazy at times. Like, I mean, again, like precognitive dreams, like it was pretty unusual and it was not something that I had a frame of reference for where I was growing up in Canada.
Here in California, there's, you know, you can just throw a stick and you can find people who are into that. That is not my family background, nor was it my, the milieu that I was in at all. So I felt a little crazy, honestly, and I felt scared, [00:15:00] but there was something about the feeling I had when that voice would speak to me that I felt like it was so wanting.
And knowing what is best for me, like there was just this warm, caring wisdom. And I had this bench that I would on my runs that I would run to that was kind of up overlooking this kind of ravine in this park in Calgary. And I would just sit there and I would just listen. And now I would say that was probably a time of meditation, but at the time I didn't know what it was, but I would just.
Close my eyes. It would be on the run. So there's something about the physical exertion, something about not being my head. And I would just consciously listen to whatever was coming up and the feeling I got of being supported and held and known. It buoyed me up with all the confusion and justification that I needed to do, because my family was [00:16:00] certainly not down with this.
My family thought, you want to, what? You want to move to California and be a psychologist? Like, you should see a psychologist. What the heck are you talking about? Like, you have like, Everything, like the perfect life, like what are you doing? And so, but the feeling inside when I listened to those external voices versus listening, stilling myself enough and listening and feeling the internal voice was so markedly different.
And then I also found that I, when I started reading about transpersonal psychology and different, just different aspects of it, of this inquiry really about what it means to live a meaningful and impactful life, I was just so fascinated. And it was fun for me that I couldn't help but do it, but it was hard.
My family was They didn't want me to move far away. They didn't want me to leave. What they saw was a career that, from their perspective, meant I would have a safe and secure life. And [00:17:00] also, whether they're conscious of this or not, was also a career that they could be proud of and would reflect well on them.
And they still really don't understand what I do. But, um, so it was, it was really hard, really hard. But here you are today. Here I am. With the younger version of yourself as well in the room. Probably very proud of you. Relieved we're not in the turmoil anymore. Well, that particular turmoil. There's always turmoil.
So true, so true. So, transpersonal psychology. I'm really curious to know, because I actually have not done much research about this, and I think a lot of people listening are probably not super familiar, but, you know, with it, like, what makes it unique as opposed to, I guess, what you would call, I don't know, traditional psychology?
Is it the theory? Is it kind of the tools that you use as a psychotherapist that has studied in this manner? [00:18:00] The best way I can describe it is that You know, in Western psychology, we really look at the development of self and the ego self that, you know, gets along in the world. And a lot of focus on psychology is about our family conditioning.
And certainly I think that's valuable because we are very influenced by that. Transpersonal psychology expands the sense of self beyond what they call the skin encapsulated ego, and says that who you are, It's our body, it's our spiritual sense, but it's also this, the self that transpersonal psychology is really interested in is the self that is interwoven with a larger reality than just the sort of building blocks from your early history.
So. It's both a theory, it's practices, and it's a way of relating and knowing our experience as a being that is much more [00:19:00] vast than our biography. And the benefit of this, well, two things. First, it really spoke to my own experiences that I was having of knowing myself as tapping into wisdom that was so beyond.
My lived experience, but also when we know ourselves as something beyond our biography, we can also tap into resources that are beyond what we might feel. So I feel connected to like a bigger field of life force. I feel connected to. ancestral wisdom. I feel connected to nature because I am that. I'm not just the building blocks of the story of my life.
And so I would say transpersonal psychology blends Western psychology, specifically positive psychology, I would say, because it looks at, instead of what's wrong with people and let's get them to baseline functioning, which I would say is most of Western psychology. It [00:20:00] says, okay, let's look at the other half of the bell curve and look at what is possible.
So the best correlate I would say in our Western framework would be positive psychology and it leaves in that, but it also draws upon psychology, spirituality from other cultures, from other parts of the world who conceptualize the self. As much more than just our biography. And so there's a wide swath of influence that informs both the theory, the practices, as well as how we conceive of reality, frankly.
And I definitely do experience that when I'm in session with you. I guess your approach is so unique. I'm curious. When it comes to healing, right? And I don't know if this is traditional Western psychology, so please correct me, but at least I've always come in with the notion of, I have this experience, I'm going through this thing.
[00:21:00] If I can get to the root of this problem, like figuring out that, let's say, you know, this happened in my childhood, therefore I'm like, you know, looping on this trigger and it's showing up in these different ways. You know, I'm happy to talk about, for example, like let's say. financial lack and scarcity mentality, let's say a very recent occurrence without getting into details.
Hey, dad, he's a fan of this podcast. There's this notion, at least this belief that if I get to the root of it and I figure it out, I will be healed. What is your perspective on that? You know, Does it matter if we figure out the route? Should we be trying to do that? You know, as we're like going through this journey of quote, I don't know, unblocking ourselves to become the happiest, most accomplished, healthiest, balanced versions of ourselves, or is there a different way that we should think about healing when it comes to mental and [00:22:00] like psycho emotional health?
I think, again, it comes back to how we conceive, uh, the question of who are we really. So in your biography, you know something about your relationship with finances because your father has a certain relationship with finances, and that's true for all of us. We have, we're very imprinted. But as you and I have talked about, there's also https: otter.
ai Like Western psychology, part of it is starting to open up to intergenerational trauma and the transmission of belief systems, ways of being or physiology, nervous system that gets carried through the generation. So we could get to the root of what we can know in our rational mind, but the root is so much deeper.
The root goes all the way back to the first bacteria that photosynthesized and expelled oxygen as a byproduct. And I think that's important to realize, and this is what I, I think that Chinese [00:23:00] medicine does really well, is it recognizes that we are a system. So we can find one piece of that, and it might be in our biography, and we might call that the root, because that's the It's the only place our rational mind can go.
If we were really to feel the crumb trails, we might feel something much larger and that might come to us through dreams. It might come to us in ways as I was feeling something stirring inside of us that we need to pay attention to. And so Finding that root with the cognitive mind may or may not both free up energy and help us feel less, less self critical because we can see, oh, yeah, there's some causality here.
And we have to realize the causality is much more than our rational mind could ever know. And, you know, the fields of interpersonal neurobiology and, evolutionary psychology, like they're really showing that, you know, whether it's through our DNA, if we want to get kind of in the [00:24:00] material realm, or if we want to talk spiritually, there's other things that are, and other patternings that are influencing us.
So the root might be important, but we can never really know the deepest part of it. So let's actually, I would love to hear a little bit more about that ancestral part. And I remember in one of our sessions, you talked about a really interesting study about this. Could you share a little bit more about, you know, how Perhaps ancestral trauma or experiences can kind of show up in like our present life because you're right I mean if it is ancestral, you're not really going to experience the root the roots.
It could go so far back Well, yeah, there's been a lot of interesting research on this I think one of the studies that maybe we spoke about that I found really interesting was about rats with the smell of cherries. Was that the one? Yeah, I think, yes, that is the one. Yeah, so the, um, researchers took [00:25:00] cherry, uh, rats and they paired the scent of cherries with a shock so that every time a rat would have the scent of cherries, they'd get a shock.
And so then of course they were conditioned every time that they smelled cherries in absence of the shock, they'd have a stress response in their body. So that makes sense, right? Classical conditioning. Then what they did is those rats had babies and they did nothing to the babies. Those babies lived a rat life and those rats had offspring.
And then they measured the stress response to the. Grand babies of the original rats and those rats showed a stress response in the presence of the scent of cherries. So it makes sense. It really makes sense that as organisms, whether we're humans or rats or whatever, survival is critical for us. So there's a learning that happens, especially around threat.
That gets coded into our [00:26:00] DNA. And so any stimulus that evokes the threat response is going to be coded. And we're going to say, pay attention to that. And more or less rat oriented example is our research studies done with people. Who struggle with eating disorders or obesity that their grandparents generally went through some kind of food related trauma.
So famine, for example, and then that gets carried through. They've looked at Holocaust survivors and again, the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors tend to have higher levels of anxiety and depression. And so, you know, it's just. This is how we've learned as species, whether it's human species or animal species or plant species.
Susan Samard did her research at UBC looking at trees and how they pass down knowledge through their, their lineage as [00:27:00] well. It's how we survive. So that's really fascinating. I think the healing part of it is that it helps us. not blame ourselves and say that there's some character flaw in us if we're struggling in some way.
To know that we're, we're the product of a multitude of influences, whether that's simply just even through the DNA. However, we are responsible for healing our part of it, right? So we might not be to blame for the genesis of this. And most of the time, what we might call, especially for our kind of neurotic well, so to speak, what we might call our issues or challenges.
are actually our defense mechanisms that have kind of gone askew, right? And some of these defense mechanisms are things that, like we've been talking about, get inherited. And then we're like, gosh, and then we get reinforced by the environment we're in. And then we can blame ourselves and feel crappy about ourselves.
And we still have to do the work in healing. [00:28:00] Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. It just gets me thinking immediately because I mean, you know, my background, but just for the audience here to like, think about, you know, like the heritage from Eastern Europe and kind of some of the hardships that happened there, like to even imagine that perhaps some of the experiences that I'm seeing in my life, how that Could be ancestral.
So what do we do about this ? Like, are we doomed? Are, you know, forever the cherry is gonna follow us ? Well, again, it's, it's part of our survival strategy. It's not doomed. It's actually, this is how we survived. Right? And when we think about it, we were actually inside of our grandmothers. Like that tripped me out when I learned that, like, you know, so our grandmother's ovaries, oh my God.
created our mothers. Our mother, when she was inside of her mother had, you know, an infant [00:29:00] before they're born has all their eggs, right? So us as an egg, like that nesting Russian doll, we were inside of our mothers when they were inside of our grandmothers. And so it makes sense that we're going to be influenced.
What do we do with this is first, I think what I've seen. In our culture of striving, our culture of performance, our culture of perfectionism, our culture, even of the health and wellness industry, frankly, that says that we have to have the perfect diet, do the perfect thing, have the perfect everything, the presence of self blame is so crippling.
So I think the first thing is recognizing how can we have compassion for ourselves. So compassion, self compassion, I think is a foundational way of relating to ourselves. And then beyond that, then we bring in, for me, the transpersonal, this like sense of, so yes, I'm influenced by that. And we, we know this, the nature [00:30:00] nurtured.
We're not just our genes. We're not just subject to the patterning or DNA. We're also influenced by our environment. And so the question becomes, what environment are we putting ourselves in? And does that environment draw out the parts of ourselves that we can feel at our best? And I don't mean at our best from the perfectionistic standard, but our best where we feel vital, where we feel a sense of aliveness, where we feel engaged purposefully in our life.
And so environmental, to the extent that we have the ability to choose the context we're in. And some people don't. To the extent that we can choose like, Oh, I'm noticing when I'm in this job, I tend to binge more. My addictive tendencies are present. I need to pay attention to that. What, what can I change both in the outer environment, but also change in the inner environment?
What thoughts do I tell myself? [00:31:00] What beliefs about who I am and how I'm valued? What's the motivation system that's active in me right now? And is that leading to the outcome that really is nourishing to me? Name of your podcast, which I love. So that's really where I turn to. And, and along that, and I've, we've talked about this before, looking at people that you admire in life, because that expands the frame about what is possible, right?
Who are people that are doing things in your life where you feel that vibrancy come up? And what is, because that gives you a clue of what your system, your body, mind, spirit system is drawn to. And I'm going to pause there. I've said a lot, but we can unpack any of that. That is so beautiful. And. I just really appreciate hearing it out loud in this way, and I know the audience will as well, because I think all too often we're so focused on the [00:32:00] next goal, the thing we're trying to solve.
We're just really chasing after that next milestone that we don't really stop to reflect, like, okay, I'm sick. How do I feel about this? Like, really start to tune in to what's actually going on, which actually leads me to my next question. For a lot of listeners, and I try to reflect on myself, like, even a few years back, the prospect of, like, having self compassion feels like a near impossible task, especially if you're in a loop of, you know, overworking, fatigue, burnout, and, like, let's say, say you have some of those emotional triggers coming up around, like, let's just say scarcity or lack or deservingness, you know, I don't deserve this job, right?
So I'm going to work harder and now I'm fatigued and I'm burnt out and you know, gosh, then there's all the negative self talk like you suck at your job. Everyone else is better than, I mean, you know, you probably hear it day in, day out. And then on top of that, you put like societal pressure of. [00:33:00] We are celebrated for exhaustion and striving and, you know, it, things are changing luckily, but that's a lot of what you see out there.
So for people who are listening to this and being like, my gosh, that what you're just saying, Lori sounds like a breath of fresh air, but I have no idea how to start to tap into that. What would you advise them to do? Like if they're just starting to dip their feet into like imagining a different life for themselves and they know something's off.
I think first is, you know, self awareness is so critical. And I know you asked about self compassion and I'll speak about that in a moment, but the self awareness I think is a foundational capacity. And that's really the first capacity in emotional intelligence, which I teach a lot about in organizations, but self awareness is really.
Knowing my internal states, my preferences, my resources, and my intuition. So it's really this fine attunement to how my body, [00:34:00] my heart, and my mind are responding to any moment. So, I think. Journaling can be a great way of cultivating self awareness. Meditation, specifically sensing the body, something called interoception.
Our body is giving us information all the time and that we generally override with the mind. But those are the first things like cultivating self awareness and That's, that's going to kind of nudge you along the way. A really important part of self awareness, Kasia, is looking at what your motivational system is that is operating.
And I'm doing some research right now, or some work right now with researcher Dr. Tanya Singer, who's one of the world's leading researchers on compassion and self compassion. She studies motivational systems and how they impact the brain and our neurochemistry and ultimately our behavior. And so for you, for me, for our [00:35:00] listeners to ask the question, like what motivational system is driving what I'm doing?
And so let me tell you the three motivational systems. The first is incentive focused. And this is oriented around achievement, consumption, power, very familiar for most of us, right? It's goal driven. There's a sense of wanting or craving with it, and that's connected to the dopamine system. So it becomes very addictive because we want something, we're anticipating there's going to be a reward, right?
Incentive focused. If the belief happens, Or if we don't achieve it or the comparing mind comes in and we see that we're not enough, what that activates is it activates our threat response because our sense of self or identity is threatened, right? So the lack of success, shall we say, in the incentive model activates the second motivational system, which is the threat system.
And this is very [00:36:00] much that fight, flight, right? We might be motivated through anger. You might be motivated through fear. So this is the approach, the avoid, the freeze. And this maps on to the amygdala, that part and high cortisol and stress levels. Third motivational system is what she calls her socially focused emotional motivational systems.
And this is the affiliation motivation system, which is I want to belong and I want other people to like me. And the care motivation system, and that's really I'm motivated by altruism or the care of others. And this is really, this is connected to the opioid system in the brain. When this system is activated, we feel better.
It's very like it calms pain, oxytocin floods. So none of these systems in and of themselves are bad or wrong. But if We're over indexed on one of them. [00:37:00] We're out of balance. And that, that doesn't work. So to really look at yourself, like what motivation system is activated in what I'm doing and what would it be like to make a decision to take a step?
Being supported by one of the other motivation systems. So specific example, if you, like many people are motivated by the incentive, focused achievement, status, power, right? And you feel that craving, the not enough, the wanting, okay, I recognize that. And this is where self compassion we're not judging it.
It's what's reinforced in our culture. What would it be like to activate more socially focused? What would it be like to extend acts of kindness or compassion? Okay. Well, today I'm going to work. I'm going to do my high pressure job, but I'm going to pause to check in with my teammates and ask them, Hey, How are you doing?
I know we've been working remotely for a long time. How's it going for you? Or I know your daughter just graduated from high school. How was [00:38:00] that for you? And then again, the self awareness start to notice what it's like, what it feels like, because it will feel differently. There's an entire different.
biochemistry and brain structures involved. What does it feel like to be more affiliative versus competitive, more cooperative versus competitive? Because it feels very, very differently. So that's, I think the first step is really this cultivation of. Self awareness. And then recognizing, okay, I recognize I'm in the striving part.
What would it be like to bring in savoring instead of striving? Oh, okay. I'm going to pause today in my busy work life and really enjoy My tea with my partner outside on the deck and the mind might be going, Oh, but you have to do the thing. The thing it's like, wait, I'm shifting into savoring. And what would it like be like to reflect on what impact I want to have on [00:39:00] the world instead of.
What impression do I want to make? Right? So it's these shifts. So recognizing what motivation system you're in, feeling what it feels like, trying on one little act and noticing what it feels like. Now, why do I say this? Because it's the feeling in our bodies that is going to be more motivating than any idea we have.
Let me say that again. It's the feeling in our body. That is much more motivating than any idea we have. So if we can experiment a little bit with savoring instead of striving, with being collaborative instead of competitive, with stillness rather than busyness, and listen and sense how that feels, that then builds on itself.
That's like the engine that keeps us focused on what nourishes us and building that life where we feel more engaged. Wow, I love that because it's like a both mix of [00:40:00] practical kind of logic, like a logical approach to looking like, okay, where am I in balance? Where am I out of balance? And then it's also kind of very intuitive and like, Kind of rooted in your body and it allows you to make like small changes as opposed to completely Overhauling right so question for you Have you kind of witnessed and maybe this is you in your own personal life or maybe this is client that you've worked with somebody that was able to balance all of these?
Like, is that, you know, is it something that we will constantly be working towards and tweaking? And I'll be even more specific, I guess, like sometimes I feel like the achieving is at odds with maybe not so much the kind of compassion for others, but at odds with like the savoring, right? Or at least it feels that way.
Is it possible to have [00:41:00] a mix of, of everything and like, Be quote, you know, like still be, let's say, building your business and, you know, succeeding for, you know, kind of in the world in general. And I'll give you an example. Cause I, I feel like in Silicon Valley, especially with like the startup world, there's this notion of we're racing against time.
And like, you're always looking at your competition and, you know, there's like this constant, like wheels are turning, but. It's at the sacrifice of let's say the savoring and like the collaboration. So is it possible, or maybe this is the new paradigm to have everything in balance, but still quote grow your business, let's say, or does that require a rethinking reshaping in general of what business and success looks like?
Well, We haven't talked yet about nature and nature is very much a big teacher for me and just the kind of the systems approach in nature. So as you're speaking, I was thinking about nature and how nature [00:42:00] gives us a clue, which is sometimes like the spring season. It's, it's really about blossoming. It's really about all the energy goes into producing the flowers and fruits.
During the more fallow times, attention is drawn in and down and rootedness happens. It might look like something's happening on the surface. So balance is not that at every, any moment in our lives, we're both Achieving and savoring. We're both striving and savoring. We're both competitive and collaborative, but it's just recognizing that at different moments we want to activate the different motivation systems depending on what we're doing.
But the problem is, is that most people are out of balance. As you said, most people that we may be aware of are imbalanced and over indexing on the achievement. There are people whose identity comes from helping others, and we might call that codependent even, and they're not, they don't take care of their own needs.
And so [00:43:00] they give their time away too freely, and then they're just completely burnt out. But then they need to take care of, you know, more the business aspect or the structure boundaries of their life. So it's really about attuning and recognizing what What season am I in, in my life in general, in a project that I'm working on, in the day, and when do I need to, again, engage the different systems that might be useful in that moment?
So, balance is not a uniform thing. We're constantly, we're dynamic. But the problem is, is that we have a static system that we're living into that burns us out. And our identity forms around that. And we don't believe it's possible to feel okay, to feel loved if we step outside of that. So true. So true. I just even realized, like, despite the podcast being themed Nourished, as I'm asking the [00:44:00] question, it's still linear.
And that's just such an incredible perspective shift, like, that, you know, to kind of approach Life with more of us, even like seasonal mentality, like kind of mirroring nature in a way that is so beautiful. Yeah. We're, we're an organism that has rhythms because we are nature and nature has rhythms. We override our rhythms with artificial light, with caffeine.
I mean, and I'm not, I'm, there's no judgment. I do it too. Yeah. With, you know, just, I often talk about the metaphor and maybe I've used this with you before about. How we give all our energy to our fruits and flowers and we starve our roots and the roots, the fruits and flowers are our accomplishments in our life.
What other people value, what other people can see, what other people can appreciate, but what feeds those fruits and flowers are our roots, but that's the, the quiet times. That's the more internal work. That's the [00:45:00] less flashy thing. And so it really. It's a necessity to tend to the roots of our lives and know that our rhythms are going to be very different than other people's rhythms.
And this is, you know, you asked about self compassion earlier. This is a part of it of recognizing that we each have unique needs at different times. The comparing mind comes in when we compare ourselves to Other people's rhythms, other people's fruits and flowers and self compassion is recognizing that, Oh, I'm actually a unique human being, but just like everybody else, I have unique needs and it's actually important to tend to them.
That's beautiful. Oh, I'm going to quote that. I might write that down and put it on a post it so I can look at it all day long. Oh, Lori. Thank you. I mean, this has been such an incredible conversation and I so deeply appreciate your wisdom. I could [00:46:00] talk to you all day, but you know, in the, for the sake of balance and also I guess limited time since we have a scheduled session for this.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to reel it in, but I would love for you to share, how can people find you? Is there something that, you know, you're really excited about that you'd like to share with the audience? I know everyone's going to be trying to seek you out after this conversation, so please share. Well, a couple of just thoughts as we wrap up, Kasia.
I really, I really appreciate what you're doing here and you're targeting an individual audience. And so us as individual humans, we have to look at like, what are my needs and how can I flourish? And you asked the question earlier about business and is there a new paradigm? I think businesses are also asking this question, um, not just as individuals within a business, but teams and organizations.
What Do we need as an entity, whether it's a team, an organization [00:47:00] to flourish to, you know, that the, be regenerative in how we approach ourselves as humans. And I do think that there is a recognition within organizations that we need to be aware of this because the rates of depression, disengagement, anxiety are just skyrocketing right now.
So. What you're doing at an individual level, I'm seeing people also do collectively, which is recognizing as humans. We've tried to attune ourselves to the machine and now virtual world. But I think there's this vital resurgence of recognizing organic nature self and attending to that. And that is, that's what I'm most excited about, partially because it's what guides my life and what I do bring into my workplace, whether it's individual sessions, as you know, or Within teams [00:48:00] is really that what is most essential for us to build lives of meaning and engagement, because as far as I know, we just have this one life and it's going to be over.
And one of the placards I have, I have a little tiny, um, framed statement on my desk that says you are alive and then against it, I have a little card that says. You will die and just that knowing that we're here right now and it's not going to last forever. How do I want to live as Mary Oliver, the poet says, are one wild and precious life.
So I just want to thank you for what you're doing, Kasia, and recognize your courage. As you step out into listening to that deeper call, that question of how does life want to live through you, not just what do I want to do with this life? That's the wrong question. But how does life want to express itself through this unique and beautiful human that you are?
So if people want to find me, they [00:49:00] can find me on my website, lorischwanbeck.com I've got some stuff there, but I've got to push myself to be a little bit more self promoting. A little on the down low. I will link it all. And, oh my gosh, I just want to extend that question that you just shared with me to the entire audience.
I feel like that is such a beautiful question to reflect on, you know, how does life want to live through you? I love that. I love that. Uh, Lori, thank you so, so much. This was such a beautiful conversation. It's a delight, Kasia. And again, just really deep blessings to you on your journey, um, as you listen to the call.
Thanks everybody for tuning in and see you next time.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Nourish. If you enjoyed this [00:50:00] conversation, please leave a positive review. Your rating really helps the podcast grow and your feedback means the world to me. I publish new episodes twice a month, so hit the subscribe button to be notified. Finally, if you'd like to learn more about the work I do as a holistic counselor or to connect, please head over to my website.
Or my Instagram at Mira underscore wellness underscore co. I love speaking with each and every one of you. Thanks again for being a listener and see you next time.