H to See'rs, Be-ers, Knowers and Doers, a podcast about intuition. Do you know what that is? Intuition to me, is that inner sense of knowing that something is true and yet I have no proof, but there's so many definitions and there's so many ways it can come and I'm looking to bring together and share with you some amazing guests, who have some amazing life stories and also some insights into how intuition can come. And I'm looking to gather those crows in the trees. I hope you're one of them.
I hope that this podcast inspires you to be more connected to your intuition. And I hope that by doing that, we make the world a better place. Thanks for coming on this journey with me .Before we get started today, I would love to share some tools with you to help with stress and feeling overwhelmed, especially for the energetically sensitive person. Feel free to go to my store on my website at www.healingvitality.ca. Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me.
So today I'm really excited because I have an old family friend, Ian Cavanagh joining me today. So thank you so much, Ian , for saying yes,
My pleasure, Heather, happy to be here.
There's an connection. Cause I actually interviewed your son before I'm interviewing you. It was a pleasure to get to know him a little bit better through that process as well. You're in the family realm through my brother. And so thank you for , for saying yes and we'll see where this will go. So I'm gonna put the floor to you and say, tell us about yourself, Ian.
Wow. That's a , that's a big question in of itself. I'll do my best to make this a short version of , so born in Calgary, Alberta to a mom who was from New Brunswick and a dad who was from Northern England, moved to Atlantic Canada. I went to Nova Scotia when I was roughly two to three years old and had my formative years in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Made it through the school system, went off to Katie , a university where I did my pre engineer engineering and got to meet many folks who have become really lifelong friends including your brother and then the Drummond family moved on from there to technical university of Nova Scotia and completed my electrical engineering , uh , and then began my career back in New Brunswick with company called New Brunswick Telephone with whom again, I, I shared time with, u h, your brother working there and
during the course of my time at A cadia, I also met my future wife. Diane, we've been married 30 years now. Yeah. A long, long time. And it's been a wonderful t hat's 30 years. You know, you hear about, u h, c ertain couples with t heir trials and tribulations. I guess we're still waiting for those to happen. We we've. I consider myself very fortunate in this regard. W e, we feel that the relationship has just kind of strengthened over all those years.
You've learned a lot, you know, you've been support to another, but it's been a marvelous, marvelous j ourney. So back to career, I ended up doing from NBTel I moved on, to a series of technology s tartups i n the software and software services spaces that took us, u h, as a family, which, u m, three kids had come along to California for a number of years a nd moved back to A tlanta. Canada had our h ome b ase with the family i n Nova Scotia.
And then more recently moved back to new Brunswick and h ave retired in a , u m, a small community here in rural new Brunswick and, u h, hunkering down enjoying a rural lifestyle with, u h, with Diane and just surviving COVID as we all are. So that's the really long short story. The three children spread out now, one in Ontario, two in Nova Scotia.
Right. Well, and I think you've just given us a point for an outline, but there is a lot of, I'm going to say branches that have come off that tree and experiences that have come off that tree. That is why I'm excited to talk to you today to go from, what I know, to go from engineering, to being voted.
One of the top 50 CEOs, which is all about people in my world to becoming a fly fishermen there's nudges and intuition that happened because when you are dealing with people, to me, you have and successful at dealing with people. There is intuition that flies in your path all the time. I think in order to manage personalities and be seen doing it in an effective, respectful integrous way.
And I also think that the leaps from Atlantic Canada to California and the leaps back to the Atlantic Canadian pond, so to speak would have been also intuitive in some way. But I'm speculating on how all that went. So is there any insights you'd want to give in those areas in particular,
We will kind of randomly maybe work our way through some of this. The decision to move to California was , um, was a huge one for me professionally and for us as a family and to be candid, Heather, I, you know, I had my own reservations about going for many reasons. You know, it was going to be far away from family and kind of home.
As I knew it, I spent a lot of time , um , working in California, you know, traveling back and forth from the Maritimes, but was quite content to, to live here in the Maritimes, enjoy the lifestyle. And all of that had to offer the safety, security, civility, et cetera, but you know, the opportunity presented itself.
And I thought, okay, well, do I have the , uh, do I have the chops, you know, to go to , to California, to work in the high-tech sector for a venture back company where , uh , you know, colleagues would be Harvard educated, MIT, educated, Stanford educated being this kid who went to Acadian and TUNS, can I actually, can I do that? And so I had more than my fair share of insecurities in that regard. Um , and it was actually Diane . He said, come on, let's just, let's just go for it.
And , uh , and I hummed and hawed because of the trepidation and beyond Diane's counsel and support, my parents were wonderful and this will lead to intuition as well. But, you know, my parents said , Ian , you've got nothing to lose. Atlantic Canada isn't going anywhere. So go. And when they said not going where they didn't mean from a progressive economic standpoint, they meant from a physical standpoint, Atlantic Canada will always be here.
Don't feel because you choose to go somewhere that you can never come back. And so that was really great counsel . And so , so it was them, it was Diane. And then it was a gentleman who I had worked for for the past several years. And then it was a gentleman called Greg Shankman company was called Genesis telecommunications labs. And we had done a joint venture with them.
And Greg Shankman was a Russian emigre as opposed the other co-founder Alec, most Lawsky who were geniuses in their own, right. Alec from a technology perspective, Greg, from really a business leadership perspective and people. And it was , it was Greg who early on had, had talked to me about intuition and the power of intuition and how you have to learn to trust yourself. And I would say I was dismissive of that at some level.
And he said, and that's actually normal because most people, when they're young, don't listen to the proverbial gut. Your gut will tell you something, but you haven't developed maturity enough to actually listen to it and trust it. And so, you know , that was probably the deciding factor to say, you know, an opportunity has been presented to me.
I have the support of my family to undertake this and you know what, notwithstanding my trepidation fear and trepidation, I actually do feel that this would be an interesting opportunity if nothing else, to learn, to see a different part of the world to learn. So we packed up and we went and I'll tell you what was fascinating. This is , this was, this was very reinforcing as I led up to the actual move. I had heard from a venture capitalist in Halifax.
And he had said , uh , we have a tech, a tech company here. We're looking for a senior executive to lead it. I'm wondering if you would be interested, we heard your name and heard that you had recently left Genesis. I said, well , uh , I guess timing is everything, but no, I've actually made the decision to , uh , to move to California. And he said, wow, that's , that's fantastic. His name was David Wilson in Halifax. And he said, do you mind if I ask where you're going?
I said, no, I don't mind at all. I says , this tiny little company based in Palo Alto, I said, the company is called Kana Communications. Just kind of getting off the ground. I'm sure you've you would never have heard of them. And he said, Mark Gainey. I said, Mark Gainey is founder? I said, yeah, Mark Gainey is a founder. I said , in fact, he is in large part, why I've decided to go because I was really drawn to Mark.
Mark was a former competitive athlete in university, smart as a whip and had started this company. And I was, I was really drawn to Mark and his values. I said, so you , you know, Mark Gainey . And he said, I sat at the desk next to him in California at TA and Associates, which was a venture capital firm there. And the hair just as it does to this day, stood up on my arms . I went, wow. And then immediately said, so Dave, please tell me about Mark.
Like , is he what I think I was looking for validation? And he said, he's every bit that. Mark has subsequently after that company went on to found another company called Strava, which if any of your listeners are in the cycling or running realm, it's probably one of the most popular social apps in that space. And actually just as of two days ago, he raised an additional 110 million in a series F round.
So that , that was , uh , it was just a fascinating experience that landed me in California, the postscript. The internet boomed , the internet bust we wrote where rode the ride up , we rod the ride down. The write up was way more fun. The ride down there was much more learning associated with human behavior and how people deal with stress when things come crumbling down. Uh , so many head to when the internet bubble burst and ultimately we then took the decision to move back home.
After that had happened, I was still employed at the time, but looking around going, wow, there are a lot of MIT, Stanford, and Harvard folks that aren't working at the moment. If I ended up losing my job, you know , will I be able to compete with them? I came to realize during my time there, where every bit is capable of from this part of the world, our Canadian education system is world-class in terms of post-secondary education. Absolutely world-class.
And one thing that Canadians certainly have in abundance was a commitment to work ethic, very strong work ethic. And if I, you know, on my team in California, head 60 to a hundred people at one point, you know , probably a atleast half of those work Canadians, and I ended up hiring because of that strong work ethic. So I came to realize in myself, I guess I'm, I'm able to compete.
I would never suggest for a moment that I was as smart as a lot of my colleagues, but I was certainly willing to work, you know , uh, every bit as hard or harder in order to , uh, to do okay there that's it that's one of the stories.
Well, and like literally my hair did stand up when you said that, and I am familiar with the app that he's created. So the world is a very small place, very small place. Very cool.
And you know what, Heather, sorry , I'll just interrupt you. We talked briefly last week, just leading up to this, that, that , uh , align between kind of intuition intention and coincidence. Now how many of these things perhaps happen daily, but , but not for us asking questions of those who, whose paths we've crossed. So, you know, had I perhaps not mentioned Hawaii, had he not called B , had I not offered where I was going, you know, by name, you know, these things would never have happened.
The connection would never have taken place. Um, and so it is, it is fascinating. You know, what we can learn by way of how small, I don't want to overstate this, but how small the universe is, how small or how small the world is, how small our country is, how small our community is, how small our neighborhood is. Right. But for asking leading questions that allow us to appreciate that.
Yes. And it's so true. And it's listening to the answer and allowing yourself to connect those dots. Even if it's in hindsight, I find that sometimes in the moment, the coincidence is aren't apparent, and then you're mentioning it to somebody else and you go, Oh my gosh, like, wow, did I did that just really happen?
So you're right on the money and people who are, and I don't think it's necessarily an introvert or extrovert thing, but people who are more open to sharing or being vulnerable are going to possibly see the connectivity of the world a little bit more because their cards aren't quite as close to their chest,
Yeah . I think another word I would use along with those would be trusting. There's a lot of strangely, but a lot of inherent distrust that people have in today's society. What will happen if I share information, will it be used against me? Will I be judged to where that the root of that comes from, but it certainly exists. And, you know , I can think of the relationships I have with my closest friends. And again , some of them are like that.
Conversely, I, and it's not, it's not a badge of honor necessarily, but, you know , I , I'm just very open because I'm comfortable being open. I don't, I don't, I don't fear, you know, if I share something about myself and it could be my darkest secrets or my greatest weaknesses, I'm not concerned that that's going to be used against me necessarily, but you know, I'm fairly well. I'm very self-critical and , um , I'm fairly self-aware.
So if that's the case, how can someone hurt me with information that I share about me in that regard?
Um , more than the power of your own mind. It's true. Yeah. And I, I think there's probably, if we really looked at the comparison between how we treat ourselves and how others treat us, we probably are our own worst enemies, like a hundred fold. Right. And we don't include those in the conversation of trusting, right. And yet we trust that inner, we trust that inner voice, how much when we shouldn't trust it, because it's not working for us.
It's kind of like the devil on the shoulder half the time.
You know, I had shared with you that, one of the articles I posted The question of who am I, who are you? And, you know, you talk about being vulnerable and trusting in sharing things about yourself. So that became a significant and final question that we would ask candidates. We were hiring in , in my business career, the last company, whereas a leadership role. And it really informed a great deal about the individual and our willingness, ultimately, ultimately to bring that person on board.
And yet it was remarkable how few people a) had ever been asked that b), were comfortable with the nature of the question, because it was seemingly so personal. And yet, as you alluded to early on, we at the end of the day where we, our people and our ability to master business or relationships in general is a function of understanding people and human behavior. And if you, if you'd like Heather I can kind of walk you through our process.
Well, I think it would be cool because I also think in having those conversation, your intuition is going to be flying as to a) are they telling me the truth? b) is this a fit for the company, like, I think that, that, that question allows the conductivity and that connectivity happens when those care and
A hundred percent. And it goes both ways. It is exactly. So the prospective employer is trying to ascertain is this person being real? And consequently, what does my intuition tell me as the result? And the individual themselves is trying to ascertain, is this a genuine question of interest about me and am I willing to permit myself to share openly? And honestly, again, having trust and faith that this won't get used against me.
And so, and , and their intuition needs to kind of inform themselves as to what , whether or not they're willing to honestly answer that question.
So , so this , you know , to give you a sense of insight as to why this was so important to give you an example, when we originally had our management team get together for an offsite where we were focused on establishing, defining, establishing the organizational values for the company, it was critically important that we not only ran a business, but that we did so in accordance with a clearly defined state of values so that people working with us could predict and appreciate our behavior in
any given instance. So we were working with , uh , an advisor who we had hired from India. His name's Dr Sampath. He had a company call Arpitha and Associates , A R P I T H A and Dr Sampath had spent 30, more than 30 years now of research on understanding the relationship and correlation between vision and values. And in its simplest form.
He would say, if you can define the values properly and execute on them from a , an operational standpoint in your business and being true to those values, that with a clearly defined vision, you will increase materially, the likelihood of executing on that vision. Conversely, the opposite holds true. You can define whatever vision you want for the company.
If you fail to either define values or operate consistently in accordance with those values, you will always struggle to achieve the long term vision of your organization because people basically won't buy into it.
No , the authenticity is zero then, right? And, and then your productivity or employee satisfaction, all those things just fly out the window. And so many companies don't get that important piece. So
Exactly Dr. Sampath , would've posed to us this question of who are you? And he would have said, okay, there at the time, there were seven of us in the room. How, how well do you know each other? You're going to sit down and define the organization, organizational values for this company. And you're going to lead this company. How will do you know each other?
And you kind of look at each other and go, well, if you have known you for 10, 15, 20 years, in some cases, but you don't really, really know them, you know, them superficially, you might know , might know their partner's name. You might know that their children's name , but you really, really don't know what is defined them.
So he took us through this exercise of having us more or less bare our souls and part of the exercise, you know, walking around this space, you know , we pushed all the chairs to the other side of the room, which was the first knee jerk reaction by the management team going, what is happening here followed by, well, let's take our shoes off so we can connect with the ground.
Now they're really, you know, first of all, they're , they're terrified because they don't know where they hole their sock . Uh , second of all, they can't understand why they're walking around this space, but in an effort to get to who you are, you know, the first thing he , he proposed was as you're , you're walking around this space and just, you know , letting your mind relax.
I want you to think about what you consider to be a significant achievement in your life, a positive event, something that was very gratifying, you felt good or good about impacted you to that extent. And so we walk around holding that question and then, and then he would say now to the extent that you're comfortable and only to that extent and without judgment share with the people next to you. So you're like, Oh, okay, that's no problem.
So one person would say, well, you know, for me, it was meeting my life partner. Another person says while I was the first person in my entire extended family to ever graduate post-secondary education. Wow . Didn't didn't know, that's kind of cool. And another, another person that maybe that the birth of a child.
So suddenly you're beginning to peel back the onion and you're getting insights into people, again, who you thought you knew, but now at a much deeper level, because you're appreciating them as a , as a human and in their own words, their expression of what they felt impacted or defined in that regard.
Right What they valued as kind of top of the totem pole ,
Exactly then he set us about walking again in this space. This is now I want you to think about your life and your career. And I want you to think about , um , difficult times challenges, adversity, tragedy, or trauma, let that sit with you for a period of time. And then to the extent that you're comfortable and only to that extent and without judgment share with people next to you. And now everyone has a crisis because it is a moment of truth.
And the question is, do I really trust these people enough to share with them the answer to that question? There was no obligation for people to do so, but, you know, we have made a commitment coming into this room that we were prepared to. So it was almost how could you not,
Right. And there's peer pressure. We're here for our purpose to make our employees live up to those standard . Yeah. There's lots there.
To intuition, intuition, and trust. You know, do I trust these people because if I'm going to share this with them, I'm clearly going to demonstrate certain vulnerabilities. Is there the risk that, that will be used against me, either in the form of ridicule or career advancement? No matter what it is, will this be used against me in any event? There was this decision on our parts that we would kind of honor this process. And so people started sharing their challenges and struggles.
For me, it sounds, even as I say it , it sounds trivial by comparison to what other people share. I failed calculus my first year. And everyone's kinda like, ha ha ha like how it's kind of funny, I'm saying, yeah, it's , it's maybe funny now, but at the time it wasn't
No it's , it was a , that is a ground stone for your whole engineering career. Yeah .
Gone to university. I had never failed a quiz. You know, math and science had basically come pretty easy to me. ergo, you know, why I ended up going into engineering. And then during my first year, I mean, there is a bit of a story. I ended up getting sick. I had a year sinus throat infection. I ended up in the infirmary for two weeks and I missed a couple of weeks of , of differential equations second semester. And that's when our calculus was a full year course.
I didn't have the confidence or perhaps it was hubris that caused me not to seek counsel advice or anything to catch myself up. And so then suddenly here I was the night before the final exam, and I'm looking at this section of calculus, differential equations going, I have no idea what I'm reading. I might as well be reading , uh , you know, Greek or, or , uh , an Arabic, you know, it just didn't make sense to me. So these are long stories.
I apologize, but they all become germane to this point. So I ended up pointing my mom and dad at a constant theme in my life has been the support and counsel of my mom and dad, and I said to mom like mom, I'm going into right . My calculus exam tomorrow. And I don't know if I'll pass . And mom's like, well, the sun came up this morning and the sun will come up tomorrow and you'll do the very best you can. And the next day the sun will come up again.
I'm like, okay, like , why are you not yelling at me or disappointed with me, put your father on it. You're like, okay. So I'm like, dad , uh , this is the situation. And my dad's a real kind of intelligent individual and very philosophical too at the same rate and very gentle man . And he said, well, son , when you're 75 years old, will it really matter?
And I'm like, who stole my parents, you know , but they had the wisdom to know that there was no point to exacerbate an already difficult situation. And the long story short, I went in, I wrote my exam. I did the best I could. I ended up, I think with a C minus, but you needed a full C to pass the course, no matter how I still try and rationalize this, I failed the course. And so I had the option to do summer school or to do another year.
My girlfriend who became my wife was going to be there for another year anyways. And I decided I would do another year. So, so, so I'm sharing that. And, and again, they, they're now developing different insights and perspectives on me because I'm saying while that may not seem earth shattering from a life experience standpoint to many, for me, it defined to a great extent who I was. I had a fear of failure from that point forward.
And I will tell people that I'm not as smart as a lot of people out there, but I am more than willing to work at whatever level it takes in order to succeed. And that contributed, I think, meaningfully to me in my, my life and my career And my, the rest of my time at Acadian tons , I was on , on scholarship because I, again, I was, I was driven not to have that happen again. So I shared that my colleagues are starting to get much deeper insights into Ian and who he is.
And again, their intuition is now informing them. Okay. You know, he's, he's being open and honest. And so their guards are starting to drop. Now, another one of the individuals says , well, kind of here goes. I said, well, I'm an only child. Okay. But immediately, I didn't even know that both my parents passed away and I might have known that. I don't know what you don't know is that when my mom passed away, not long after my father, my mom took her own life.
And it was such an extraordinary thing for this person to share it because they have not shared that story outside of their very immediate family, just because of the stigma associated with it. And didn't want anyone to think of his mother untoward. And you know , now we're all in tears and couldn't believe in , you know , it made me feel that my experience was so, you know, by comparison trivial to his. So The question then becomes, why is all of this germaine?
I mean, to the question, who are you, if I don't understand who a person is, I'm not best positioned to help them be successful. Worse than that, I may presume certain things based on their behavior that is completely erroneous, which causes me to make more poor decisions regarding them. So let's take a scenario where this individual says, and I should clarify, we used to hold our monthly management meetings the last Wednesday of every month at five o'clock or six o'clock the end of the day.
And the expectation was that everyone on the leadership team are participating in those either person or phone in. Well, there were times that this individual couldn't necessarily make it. He would let us know his son had a hockey game. Unfortunately he had to go to his son's hockey game and he wouldn't be able to make it, but he would follow up after and get the minutes from the meeting and take any actions required on his part.
Well, if you didn't have this insight, the manner in which you would deal with a scenario like that would be something like this, Oh, your son has a hockey game and you can't make it to our one management meeting. We hold a month. My son has a hockey game, but for whatever reason, I'm decided to prioritize my work and career. I'm a leader in this organization. I think that's the sacrifice that I need to make for the company. So now you begin to judge and say, and make erroneous assumptions.
This person isn't committed. Are they really what we want for at the leadership of this organization? And worse than that, then we start to make erroneous assumptions about a person. Now that same person, two days later is out for lunch runs long. He gets back to another meeting and he's late. Now it's Oh, that guy wasn't committed to our leadership then . Oh, I bet you he's looking for another job. I bet you, he was at a job interview.
I mean, it's complete insanity can go , right by not understanding now where you to ask simple questions that would serve to clarify it would help immensely, but quite often we don't which lead to a mess. So now having understood this individual at the depth that we did, because we asked who are you? We now understand, okay, this person was an only child, neither parent exists.
So while all of us say our families are critically important, there is nothing that is going to get between him and the experiences, life experiences with his children. And with that knowledge and understanding, we can now go, Oh , you can't make it this particular meeting. We get it . I'll call you tomorrow. I'll let you know what you missed. And there's none of that right.
now, when you think about the level of commitment that, that in genders, within that person, to that organization, it's extraordinary. And that is why, ultimately that , that question of who are you became the final question that we would ask any candidates who had gone through a process being filtered would ultimately end up with me in a final interview.
And I would say that when , when asked the question, given this preamble, as I've given to you in a slightly shorter version, when finally presented the question, who are you? And I , I don't know, statistically, what, what percentage. But I would say a full 50% couldn't answer the question. And they would simply refer to regurgitating their resume. Like, I've read your resume. I know what's on your resume. You're not, you're not helping me. Right.
But if it was full 50% would do that and I would let them do it because I knew at that moment, okay, that's where they go. That's fine. 25% would do their very best to answer it. And again, your intuition would vary sometimes because, you know, sometimes it was like they were architecting answers that somehow they thought we might want to hear. And then there was probably 25% that it ultimately it was raw .
And we heard stories about people who lost a parent, you know, with whom they had a grievance that they , they weren't able to resolve before the parent passed and how they had to live with that. We heard the stories of mental illness that certain people lived with. And by the way, any, and all of these things that were shared with us, we , we weren't judging on that basis. These weren't things that gave us cause to hire or not hire.
Uh , and in some cases, you know, with fairly significant things that were shared, we , you know, we still hired them because it was, it was absolutely the right thing to do because we knew we could help people through life's challenges.
And so , you know , it was largely within that 25% bulk that we, we ended up hiring and who became part of our organization, which contributed to a culture of deep intention of values, alignment, and trust, which again is another cousin to intuition as a by-product , I guess, of intuition at some level. And so, you know , that's why the question holds so much meaning to me and why it's, it's a fascinating question for anyone to ask of anyone with whom they have relationships.
And can you answer, you know , I'd ask it of you, Heather, you know, think about the people you are closest to in life , uh , friends, family, do you really even know who they are, any questions
It is. It is absolutely. And I think somebody may just challenge me to answer that question
It's worth, it's worth reflecting on. Um , and then, and then finding if you have the personal courage to, you know, speak with a level of truth, you know, what comes of it though is much deeper, richer relationships for conversation and communication, which, which is just more profound.
I've done something similar in my very first career through a company called Humanitas and I've done it again in a Business Round Table environment called lifeline. And you basically start at birth and to the present day, go through all the significant events in your life and spill without filter, if possible and or whatever you're comfortable spilling.
And immediately like some adversaries were in my first group , um, as a group of seven and not necessarily my adversaries, but like a collective group of people. And that group coming back there was like the law of confidentiality you'll be fired if you share any of this stuff, the 'go to the fence and fight for somebody' after that meeting was a toe-to-toe like, it wouldn't matter.
They came, everybody came back with an increased awareness, increased honoring, increased , um , sense of awe for what people are doing in their day to day with whatever they've been handed in their previous experiences. So I think that there's in some relationships that question's never asked,
Well, certainly in the , in the work context, it's usually, it's usually never asked because I mean, there are certain organizations, quite frankly, who , who don't want to know who you are, you're, you're a widget in the wheel and just do your job and we'll, we'll produce whatever units we need to. There are others that I think are really transformative organizations that fundamentally do and understand the power that comes with , uh , having people engage with that.
But it starts with the individual, you as an individual, have to have a willingness to undertake that. And that is not something that everyone is willing to do. If I, if I said 50% people couldn't answer it, you know, so clearly at least 50% of people just could not bring themselves, at least in that context, you know, they thought they were coming in for an interview. And actually I've had people even say that it was kind of funny. I thought I was coming in for an interview.
I didn't know I was coming in for, you know, whatever the word is, intervention. Um , yeah, but again, for those, for those, with whom it resonated, it was, it was all powerful. And they would say, I've, I've never in my career being asked that question, either that simple of a question and or that profound of a question, and by the way, thank you for asking me because I'm a human, right. I mean , I'm not a machine, right.
If we were all machines, the work, the work world would just , and the world at large would just function , right.
A hundred percent. Yeah . With a lot less drama.
Well , you know , over here, Heather, I told you we good .
No, this has been excellent because there's, there's layers to what you're saying. And there always is. And I think if this can make people even "intuit" themselves to see where they are on that scale of the 50, 25, 25 and, and perhaps "intuit", whether they should start asking the people around them, that question to gather more understanding and awareness, and , and this is how we make the world a better place in like , so thank you. This is it. So
You think about, this is going to sound like an extreme comment or proposition. But if you think about, you know, the most recent political strife and societal strife existing, I'm going to say in America, but it's not just America, the world. Um, you know, if we had some ability to ask our neighbor, you know, questions that would help us understand why they behave the way they behave.
It doesn't mean we have to agree, but boy, I think we'd be more successful , uh , in the world than we are today. I mean , a lot of the failings has to do with the fact that we're not listening. We're not asking and we're not listening.
It is so true because you sat in those people platform and you listen to what they said and ask questions. People aren't heard today. And I, and I almost did it to you. Like I was grabbing your, your thought of listening as you were saying it . So it's it people aren't heard today and the value of creating that trust because you're listening to what the people are saying for understanding is huge. And again, that's how it changed the world.
Yeah. Listen, listening is a learned skill. Like we , we all think we're good listeners, but the vast majority of us aren't because we're programmed to talk, hear our own voice. And to great extent. I mean, you learn this when you learn anything about active listening, you know, we're already conjuring up what we're going to say next while you're talking instead of actually listening. So , so, so we're not digesting fully what the other person is saying.
And a lot gets lost as a result in that process. So, so we have to, basically, we have to learn to shut off and to actively listen before we speak. But that , that's something that we can learn to do if we train ourselves. And again, first to put out my hand, say by no means, am I perfect at this? I don't think anyone is, but it's certainly something we can work at.
Yes . And it comes down to being present in the moment, not multitasking , you know, putting away technology on top of compartmentalizing your day, so that you engage in the conversation That you're in right then that's a lot of the fun of these podcasts is because I get, I get the time to go deeper with people like yourself and know that whatever's going to be shared is going to be shared and I don't need to control it, manipulate it or any of that.
It's totally just going to go where it's supposed to go. So I wish, you know, one thing I wish I wish when I was younger, I was a better listener. I wish, you know , we probably all wish that. I think about my children. I don't know what the over this podcast or not, but, you know, I wish I had had the ability to listen to their little voices instead of always, you know , commanding and being the one to talk over them and direct them.
You know, I wish I did a better job at that with my partner, even to this day, I would say, because there's times I know I half listen and I get accused of that. So it has to, you know, it has to be like so many things. It has to be a practice and you can't expect all these things nor can you beat yourself up all the time. If you're imperfect, that's just reality. But if you can at least be aware and then kind of do resets every so often it helps. A hundred percent. Thank you so much for today.
And this has been fantastic.
Been a pleasure to be here, Heather,
we'll do it again. I think if you have the time, sounds like a plan. All right .
Thanks so much. Bye-bye
Thank you so much for giving us your time today. We truly appreciate our guests for sharing their stories and insights about how intuition has impacted their lives. And I'm so grateful for Peter trainer for his time and giving me this original music. It's now your turn. It's your turn to listen and act on your own intuition and help make the world a better place until next time, keep seeing being, knowing, and doing. If you like this podcast, please share it.
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