You Were Not Born to Suffer: A New Way to Heal

Speaker A: How much of your suffering comes not from what happened to you, but from the way you learn to keep rejecting yourself to survive? I'm Shenandoah Chefalo, your host of Mindful Management. This is the show where we build healing centered human workplaces. Today I am joined by Blake Bauer, best selling author of youf Were Not Born to Suffer, Overcome Fear, Insecurity and Depression and his other book, Love Yourself Back to Happiness, Confidence and Peace. Blake is also the CEO of Elevate Wellness. He is an internationally recognized author, counselor, Qigong master and alternative medicine practitioner whose pioneering work centers on unconditional self love as the key to self healing, fulfilling our life's purpose and realizing our full potential personally and professionally. Drawing on his own journey through deep suffering, addiction and self destruction, Blake has spent decades searching for freedom in his own mind and body while supporting others to do the same. His work integrates insights from psychology, neuroscience, traditional Chinese medicine, nutrition, shigong, mindfulness meditation and many other healing traditions. He has now advised well over 100,000 people worldwide, many of whom could not find solutions in traditional medicine, psychology or even in workplace wellness programs. Blake and his team built Elevate Wellness as a trusted mental health app designed to drive happiness and human connection 247 supporting universities and companies by increasing performance and well being with always on research informed support. His mission is simple. I might say some might find it radical, but in a world where all human knowledge can fit in the palm of our hand, no one should have to feel alone, unwell or powerless. What I appreciate most about Blake's work and one of the reasons I'm so excited to have him on the show today is, is how direct it is. He frames our suffering as a call to stop abandoning ourselves emotionally, physically and spiritually and to practice that kind of self love that is fierce, honest and deeply practical. Welcome to Mindful Management, a podcast by Chefalo Consulting where we share the knowledge, stories and resources you need to create a trauma informed culture that supports wellness, growth and resilience. I'm your host, Shenandoah Scheffalo Blake, we are so grateful to have you here and for spending some of your time with us. Welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you so much Shen. I'm very honored to be here with you too Blake.

Speaker A: Your story is so personal to me and I know it's going to be so personal to many of our listeners. But before we talk about self love as a practice or as a solution, I'd love to ground in your story. I find so much healing in hearing other people's stories and I'm wondering if you might tell us what were the turning points that you took from your being in your words. Because I don't want to put words in your mouth. But self destructive and in pain to someone who's now teaching unconditional self love around the world?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Like a lot of us, I grew up around a lot of of self destructive influences. Pain, trauma and then addiction to mask that pain. Like we all find ways to cope, you know, through alcohol, drugs, food, work, you know, being a workaholic in today's world. Scrolling. Being on technology, too much, et cetera. So I turned to drugs and alcohol as a teenager to survive and to self medicate and was just very out of control, numbing my pain, trying to survive socially. By the time I was 18 years old, I had been arrested a number of times and I had a habit of driving on a regular basis, you know, high on different kinds of substances and drinking. And I was also a top athlete growing up. In high school I played football and was co captain of the varsity football team with two of my best friends. And I had offers to play college football. One, um, night I was coming home from a party and I was driving and I was on pills and alcohol and cannabis. And I got to a freight train in the middle of the night. And as I was waiting for the train to pass, I couldn't keep my eyes open and I put my car in park and I put my head back and I fell asleep and I woke up to police knocking on my window. And I rolled down the window and I said to the officer, excuse me officer, was I driving too slow? And he said, son, you've been parked here for at least an hour with the car running and the lights on. We got a call from this house over here. So I was arrested. I got a bad dui. My football coach later found out halfway through my senior season and he kicked me off the team. I lost my offers to play college football. And so for me that was the catalyst that sent me to my rock bottom. But then also triggered my healing journey and the discovery of the fact that I never learned how to love myself. And on top of that, I had a very toxic, unhealthy, self destructive relationship to myself. And so from the age of 18, I woke up every day asking the question, how do I heal myself? Because I was in so much pain. And there was this part of me that knew that life wasn't meant to be so painful and hard, but I didn't know how to get out of it in a healthy Natural way. And then part of my suffering, too, was also not understanding the purpose of my life or the purpose of life. And how do I make decisions around a career and planning my life when I don't even understand what I'm doing here? And so I moved forward from 18 just trying to answer those two questions, went to five different universities, studied with experts and gurus, and all different kinds of techniques and modalities. And then I had this epiphany where I realized I was just looking for love and learning how to love myself. And through my training, I could actually see how disease grows in the body biologically and how depression and anxiety grow in the body as a result of us never learning how to have a healthy, kind, optimal relationship to ourselves on every level of my being. And then I was so desperate to understand this that when I had this clarity, my next thought was, I was 24, very naive. My thought was, how do I tell everybody? And then that was the beginning of trying to share this with anybody who cared to understand.

Speaker A: So, like, it's so hard for me because as I listen to you, I see so many parallels and, of course, differences, right? So as a kid who grew up with a mom with addiction, who found myself in foster care at 13, what happened for me was I wanted to revolt against everything, against drugs and alcohol, right? Because I had seen it so much with my mom that my exact opposite was like, my life will be great if I don't do that thing. Now, that wasn't true because then I aged out during my senior year of high school, from foster care into homelessness. And then, like, you found myself on this, why am I here? What does this all mean? What's my purpose? If my own mother can't love me, how can anybody else love me? How do I fit in the world? I surely don't love myself because I don't even know what love is. All of these things that I hear from you that set me on my own path of self healing, finding all of these things. And for me, someone gave me, maybe when I was about 22 or 23, the book the Secret. And I remember listening to that book, thinking, this might be the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And it set me on the path that I'm sitting in front of you today because I thought, who has all of these positive thoughts? I don't know a single person with this many positive thoughts. And thus everything else began, right? And now I go, oh, yeah. What the secret's missing is all this stuff about trauma and Pain and healing. When you look back now, what do you wish someone told you when you were younger about suffering and self worth?

Speaker B: This is such a great question. And I was talking about this recently with some close people to me, One is, it took me a long time to understand that there was a greater purpose in my suffering because early on I felt like I was just suffering and like, why would I be in so much pain? And then as I started to help other people and I could see that the lessons and insights that I gained from my own suffering actually changed lives, I started to realize that all my trials and tribulations were not in vain and that they had a greater purpose. And so now today, when I'm going through something challenging in the back of my mind, I know that I'm going to be able to help even more people because I'm going through this situation. And that in and of itself helps you to snap out of suffering when you have that perspective. Because so much comes back to, how are we thinking about this situation and how are we perceiving the situation? And then I think the other thing was no one ever told me that I had a right to exist. And because I had a right to exist, I also had a right to my feelings and my needs and my preferences and my calling. And it took me such a long time to learn to value myself in a world where everybody wants you to please them and do for them. And obviously that's a big theme as you navigate self care in the workplace, which I know you focus a lot on in building these types of environments. And so I think it just took me a long time to realize that I was worthy of existing.

Speaker A: So one of the things that really caught me when I started diving into some of your materials and looking at the book, Blake, was the title of your book, which was you are not born to Suffer. And the first thing that popped into my mind was something that I heard a long time ago after I wrote my first book and I was doing some things and somebody said, I think I was chosen to suffer. And I remember struggling with that myself for a long time in my healing journey of like, no, uh, it has to be me, because if it wasn't me, it'd be somebody else. And I don't want anybody else to go through what I did. Right. There was this like, trying to own it, wear it like a badge of honor almost. What do you say when people say to you, no, I think I'm a bad person. Everything that's always happened to me is about suffering. How do you respond to those people?

Speaker B: I think there's two basic categories of suffering. One is intrinsic suffering. So for example, the Dalai Lama is often said that, you know, just like coming out of your mother's womb, a baby cries because it's painful to go from the cozy safety of the womb. There's some pain involved. So there's that. There's the aging, your body changing, physical pain in your joints, things happening with your teeth or your eyes. That type of suffering is intrinsic and will happen to all of us to some degree. And then there's losing the people you love, right? That's a big one you can't control. You're going to lose family members, you might lose your spouse, you might lose a pet. So these are parts of life that are unavoidable. Suffering, that's unavoidable. But then what I love to focus on helping people understand is how much of our suffering is self created. And that's the big blind spot. And so first I like to just empower people with some clarity because often we don't see that we're choosing the suffering or we're creating the suffering. And it's simply we just were never taught because our parents typically don't know better, and then our teachers at school don't know better. Our doctors and our therapists don't even know better. And no one teaches us one, how to take 100% responsibility. And two, I always say the universe or your higher power gave you your body, is this miracle like a Ferrari or a Rolls Royce. But no one ever teaches us how to drive it. And so we've been self creating suffering and challenging situations out of unconsciousness. And once we can start to see how we're generating that, it's a lot easier for someone to say, okay, well, I can see how I'm allowing myself to be hurt, or I can see I'm hurting myself because I never learned how to take care of my mind or I never learned how to express my emotions in a healthy way. So I start with that kind of story.

Speaker A: I love that as I'm just listening to you, it's going to get me on a rabbit hole. I didn't necessarily intend. Is that 100% responsibility? Because when I'm in organizations especially, it's so easy to hear from staff. If my boss, if the board, if whoever is above me in this hierarchy did something different, my suffering would change here. And when I say, well, that might be true, what can you do about it? It's often met with that blank Stare that disconnect from, we're choosing to work here. And I often hear the pushback of yes, but I have to do this job because it pays my bills and I have kids, uh, or I have these other responsibilities. How do you help people learn to take responsibility?

Speaker B: So one of the keys is nonviolent communication that I think is very relevant in a situation like this. You know, when we're stuck in any kind of situation, a personal situation or a professional situation, we tend to build up these emotions and then when we try to express ourselves, it comes out very messy or aggressive and we end up pushing people away. And I think a lot of people are intuitively afraid to sabotage a work situation because they know they're bottling up so much. Right. So one good strategy is to have a therapist or a coach personally that you can talk to. So when you go do, uh, to address a situation at work, you're not bringing all of your personal home frustrations and your work frustrations to the conversation with your boss. Because oftentimes you do that and you're overwhelmed. And then it comes out with your boss and it doesn't come out clear. Then you don't respect yourself or you feel ashamed of yourself for how it came out messy. So first is, you know, processing with a, uh, professional that's safe is probably a really effective strategy. Then when you go into the work environment, and this is also relevant personally, is learning what's called nonviolent communication. It's very simple, which is you learn to say things in the framework of I feel, and then you say how you feel. So you're owning how you feel 100%. Instead of saying you make me feel, you're saying, I feel frustrated in this situation, I feel confused. I want to do my best, but I feel at a loss of how to do that given the current circumstances. And then you say I feel, then you say I need. So you learn to take responsibility like I need to be in a work environment where I feel safe to communicate with my boss so that I know we're getting the best work done together. And so language becomes a superpower as you learn to express yourself, yourself non violently and with personal responsibility. Because as soon as you walk into an office or a meeting and you start pointing the finger as soon as I say the word you, and I start to point my finger at you, everybody's walls come up because everybody's been blamed and no one likes to be blamed. So it can be the CEO of the company, it could be an executive, it could Be your leadership, or it could just be your team, or it could be your employees. As soon as you start pointing the finger and you say you, everybody's defense mechanisms come up and they're gonna fight subconsciously to protect themselves. Like you, I know you focus a lot on trauma informed work. When we feel attacked, all of our old trauma is triggered and then we stop listening. We don't wanna grow, we just wanna buckle down and protect ourselves. And a lot of people don't understand this is going on in the workplace every day, all the time. It just, as you know, doesn't get talked about enough about. So I think nonviolent communication is a superpower in our personal life and our professional life. And then the other big thing that's a big part of my work is meditation. And like you bring up, the secret is we don't realize that from the moment we wake up till the moment we go to bed, we are shaping our daily experience with every single thought that goes through our head. And most of us believe our thoughts too much, we believe the negative thoughts too much. We're addicted to thinking and we spiral out of control all day and don't have the clarity. We need to address situations, you know, with personal responsibility, with grace, with dignity, with self respect and respect for the person that we're listening to. And so meditation on a daily basis is always what I advise. Helps you to regulate your own nervous system every day, train your body and your mind to be present and less reactive. And so, uh, when you walk into these challenging situations, you're more prepared to take responsibility in the situations that are the most scary. Because that's what I heard you say is really, it's just scary to address these things. And so that fear holds us back. And the irony is that we don't realize more than we are the victim of any person in front of us. We are actually the victim of our fear based thinking. And if we could just overcome the fear based thinking and say what we need to say in a graceful way, even when we're scared.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: That's when change happens. That's when the breakthrough happens.

Speaker A: Every day of my life, Blake, I am in boardrooms, team meetings, staff meetings, where one person will say to you before the meeting or after, here's the thing, the elephant in the room we need to talk about. And I say, well, why don't we just talk about it? And they're like, oh, we can't. Well, do you mind if I bring it up? You can, but it's not going to go Anywhere. And then I find myself bringing up the fear because it's not my fear. Right. I don't care what happened at uh, two years ago at some team meeting, I don't have any fear. I wasn't there. And I talk about it and there's some uncomfortability that fear. But as soon as we get going and I say how did we feel when that happened? And you let people start explaining all of a sudden, regardless of what the solution is at the end or the action that we take at the end, everybody goes, that uh, wasn't as bad as I thought. Right. There is the kind of diving into the deep end of the pool. If you were. The other thing I'm curious about, which my question's about curiosity. When I was on my healing journey, I'm still on my healing journey, but when I was really in the thick of it and still was having pain, one thing I noticed about myself is that I found my thoughts were more question driven. Do you think that there's a role in curiosity and in asking more questions and letting go of the fear based thinking when we're curious?

Speaker B: Absolutely. I think it's a very healthy. And whether consciously or by default, it was a really great pattern and habit that you developed. Because if you're curious then you're always opening the door instead of closing the door. Right. And if you're opening the door, you're less inclined to get stuck and you're more inclined to have clarity and insights and understanding that take you on to the next question, the next realization, the next breakthrough. So I think that that is super healthy because one of the things that gets us stuck is one we get trapped in the loop of the same thinking and the same belief and it's a closed loop and we won't even accept any information that goes against that belief or that thought loop. And we're seeing that play out right now in technology and the way algorithms become personalized to people and then it creates further and further division. Right. Like in our country we're experiencing this because you just keep having the same thought loops reinforced instead of being curious about the other perspective or all the other perspectives that could, that one could process a situation around. So I think curiosity is so healthy, um, and safeguard, uh, in getting stuck from getting stuck.

Speaker A: Yeah. And for me, listen, I think it was unconscious. Right. Because I think by nature I'm a skeptical person, probably not on accident. I think I'm skeptical because of the way I was raised, my own personal traumas. Right. And so I tend to ask a lot of questions, and was probably the kid in third grade that everyone was annoyed with because I was like, why? That doesn't make any sense. That was always me trying to, one, find a loophole, Blake. And two, I don't know if I can believe you. And so curiosity, I think, became a way that I protected myself. But then, as I went through my healing journey, was finding all of these paths like you. It was like, oh, wait. Curiosity is helping me to see the vastness of possibilities versus being stuck in suffering.

Speaker B: Beautiful. It sounds like it's been a saving grace for you. And I think the other thing that's coming to my mind is when you apply the idea of curiosity to something like a meditation practice where you're actually really facing your mind and your thought patterns. That question takes you into what you call just now, vastness, which is this big, uh, awareness, consciousness, where there are so many more possibilities than the one possibility we're trapped in right now. And so if curiosity can take you to that place and you're open to looking at things from different perspectives, to approaching things from different perspectives, from speaking about things from different perspectives, then you're empowered to create a new outcome, which is, if you're stuck, that means you're doing something that's keeping you stuck, and you want a new outcome. And you can't get the new outcome without being curious about, what am I doing in this situation? What am I thinking in this situation? That's sabotaging it, recreating the same thing. So I feel like I'm hitting my head against the wall. So curiosity is, I think, another superpower, another key.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think for our leaders listening, like, what's the question you could ask instead of the statement you could make? And I do that because, for me, it's about empowering Blake. Make a choice. Right. So Blake might come to me and say, oh, I'm really mad about these things, and, um, this isn't going well. And normally, I think what humans do is like, oh, Blake wants me to tell him what he should do or how to solve this pain that you're in that's causing you frustration or anger or whatever it happens to be. And there is a natural part of me that's like, oh, Blake, well, what you need to do is X, Y, and Z. I've already been down that path. Right. But when I can pause myself from that and say, blake, what's the outcome you're looking for? When I can just ask you a question, I find that it a empowers you to make a choice, but also takes me out of being the blame if it doesn't work. And uh, being the result of the why well shen, I did. You said xyz. I did xyz and I'm still suffering. When I say, well Blake, what do you want to see happen? And you pause to answer that it also stops that fight flight freeze you were talking about and gets you into that executive functioning of your brain of like, oh, future thinking, goal setting, right, possibilities, yearning, those things that can exist when we're responding from that. And to me that is the start of self love is like, uh, ah, I have to love me, but I can't love Blake. Blake has to love Blake. And that phrase, self love, right, it's on hashtags and mugs and all of the things I'm wondering, Blake, for you, what does that actually mean? Day to day in behavior and choice?

Speaker B: That's probably one of the most important things we can get into. And ironically, I don't know if you had a look, one of my websites is unconditional-selflove.com and people will say, how do you have that website? And I'll say, well, I've been doing this a long time when everybody just thought I was really weird. And so now, like you said, it's everywhere. And for me it was not vanity, it was necessity. And I'm sure you get this. My journey was heal or die. And from a place of heal or die, that's where I discovered the necessity, the critical importance of self love. And so for 23 years I've been asking the question, what is self love? From the moment you wake up till the moment you go to bed. And so I'd love to dive into that. And so as a preface, a lot of people, when you think about self love, people think, is it a massage? Is it going to get your nails done? Is it going to get your hair done? So all the kind of external self care practices and those are all wonderful. So for your listeners that is highly encouraged. But that will not take you where you want to go. And so m the insights that are really important is one, if you think about it, from the moment you wake up till the moment you go to sleep, we are either hurting ourselves with our thoughts and our habits or we're taking really good care of ourselves with our thoughts and our habits. And the truth is it's just most people and most children, I'd say 99% of people do not learn at school, at home, at the doctor, at the religious institution, what it means to take optimal loving care of themselves with their thoughts and their habits from the moment they wake up till the moment they go to bed. And so my work has evolved to actually teach and outline these habits, which are laws of nature, if you will. It's just like you either are going against nature or you are going with nature. And if you go against nature, you're going to destroy, destroy nature, which is what we're doing on a grand scale globally. But I think that's all, uh, a reflection of our inner world because we're so self destructive. So one of the first big habits which I started to outline is the importance of expressing yourself honestly and kindly. So I mentioned, I called it nonviolent communication before. But if you think about it every day, you're either valuing yourself enough to be honest and kind with the people in your life, personally and professionally, or you're not. And if you're not, then you're basically rejecting and abandoning yourself, which are words that you used earlier, and you're hurting yourself. And so I would say, shen, if you were my dear friend and I said, am, um, I a bad person because I want to express myself honestly and kindly on a daily basis in my personal, professional life, would you say I'm a bad person for wanting to be authentic? So that's number one is learning to stop hurting yourself by being honest. And the second part is kind because let's say, shen, you did something, and I feel hurt and angry. I have two ways of approaching it, right? I can either call you names and start attacking you, which will likely get us nowhere, or I can learn the personal responsibility and the discipline and the mastery to say something like, shen, I feel really hurt because. And then as soon as I start saying things like I feel hurt or I need a safe place to talk with you about important things, I open up a container where I'm not pointing fingers, I'm not attacking you. I'm, um, not engaging your trauma, I'm not engaging your ego and your pain body. And I'm inviting you into a conversation of vulnerable conversations. If I'm not doing that on a daily basis, I'm not loving myself and I'm hurting myself. The next big one that follows on from that is how many times do we feel or need or want something, but we do the opposite, right? And it's not that we're lying, we're not trying to be dishonest, we're just out of integrity. Because we all learned from a young age to go against ourselves, to survive home, to survive school, to survive the workplace environment. And even a lot of people's marriages are them going against themselves to please the other person. And then they expect the other person to go against themselves to please them. And then think about that's why the divorce rate is so high and people do so much damage. But it's all because we're hurting ourselves first and we just don't realize it. So expressing yourself honestly and kindly, acting in integrity, getting in tune with what you feel and need and want, then acting in integrity, the next habit is everybody needs a little bit of time and space every day for self care, right? So often, especially in the corporate space and if you're a business owner yourself, you're over scheduled. And when you over schedule yourself and there is no space to breathe or to process a situation that you're coming from, integrate a situation that you're coming from, you end up being like a stressed out cortisol pumped full chicken with your head cut off. Running from home to coffee shop, to meeting, to lunch to meeting to commitment and you're all over the place. And then you do that five days a week and you're burnt out and you dread going to work on Monday, uh, and you're irritable at home. But if you were to just pace things out just a little bit better and have 30 to 60 minutes for yourself in the day for anything that you need that is considered self care. It could be a walk, could be listening to a podcast, it could just be sitting for 30 minutes to just breathe and process what's on your mind. We all need a little bit of time on a daily basis or else we're going to combust and blow up or make ourselves sick. So then one of the other habits is taking care of your mind, which we talked about because we don't realize how powerful our mind is. So if we're not doing that on a daily basis, we are hurting ourselves, we are reacting, we are allowing ourselves to be hurt. Because the mind is generating so much of what we're experiencing and then so much of what our body is feeling. And then, uh, valuing your time and your energy is a big one, right? Because all we have today is our time and our energy. And just think about how much time and energy we give to people. Situations, a position at a job where we don't feel appreciated, we don't feel valued, we feel used, we feel disrespected, we don't feel seen. But that's where the personal responsibility comes in is I'm allowing this. I'm staying here because I'm scared. Right. I'm staying here because I doubt myself. So then what can I do to address my self doubt? What can I do to address the fear so I don't stay stuck and I can start valuing my time and my energy. So these are really the big ones that we need to learn to do on a daily basis. In addition to getting our nails done, getting our hair done, you know, getting a massage.

Speaker A: Yeah, we need things that give us joy. And sometimes it can classify as 2. Like maybe I can get my nails done and process through some things at the same time. I want to talk about the chronic caregivers that I know that are listening to this podcast. But what is as I was listening through and I'm, um, with you, like inviting into vulnerable conversations like, where is the place for grief and for processing loss. And I'm thinking about that. Even with the small piece of your personal story you shared where you said, listen, I did these things and then I didn't get the college scholarship to football. How do you process that? Sometimes the grief is something big like that, but sometimes the loss is, gosh, I went from meeting to meeting to meeting because there was something urgent that happened and I gave up my pausing time or my self care time. And we don't grieve that loss. And I feel like sometimes it's the accumulation of some of those smaller losses that then make us feel really exhausted and burnt out. And as you're just thinking about your work, where do you set grief and processing?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So for me, I think meditation is always good, becomes my foundation because if I can start the day breathing slowly, not getting out of bed, anxious, with cortisol pumping through my body, there's going to be more space for me to feel my feelings. So feel the anger, the hurt, the sadness, the cycle of grief as it goes through our body. It took me a long time, especially as a man, to ask for help. So I think asking for help is really important. And today we live in a time where you can get an online therapist like immediately, basically. So I'm a big fan of platforms like BetterHelp and Headspace and Calm M and Spring Health in the corporate space where you can get a therapist online and talk to someone. And I always joke because I'm someone who helps people on a regular basis. And I also need someone to talk to too, sometimes to decompress and grieve certain situations. But so Shen, if you and I are friends and we Go out for coffee and you tell me your problems. You are obliged to listen to my problems. Right. And so we have that with friends and family. But I think it's really healthy to pay someone to shut up and listen to you. And you don't have to listen to their problems because you're paying for their time. And I like to make it really blunt because it's super important just to have one safe space in the world, one safe space where you can process anything you're thinking and feeling, and you're met with unconditional positive regard. You're met with acceptance and support, because most of us didn't have that growing up in any capacity. And once you start to experience that, you'll be blown away at how that helps you to regulate your nervous system throughout the day and process emotions more effectively because you've made it a habit of doing it on a regular basis.

Speaker A: The other side of this that I want to ask you about is because I know we have listening. My group of people that I call the chronic caregivers. These are leaders in child welfare, education, justice, health nonprofits. They're doctors, judges, lawyers, social workers, mental health clinicians. They answer the phone at a homeless shelter and. And they, frankly, Blake, have been rewarded for abandoning themselves to serve other people. They've been promoted in careers. They've been right, they've been given more responsibility. How do you talk to someone who feels immediate guilt the moment they consider putting their own needs first?

Speaker B: The first thing I want to do is just acknowledge and honor these people because I think it's a really beautiful thing and a big part of our purpose, I think, in life. And then even one of the habits of self love that I cap things off with is we're meant to give and to serve and to show up. And so it's a very natural, beautiful quality that I think is not appreciated enough. And then now we're going to go down to the deepest part of the rabbit hole, which I alluded to earlier, which is that what I've discovered is at the root of this pattern and all human suffering is that we have a guilt for existing deep down. And everybody does. And the guilt for existing, it's an existential thing that's deep down there. And that becomes guilt for having feelings and guilt for having needs. And so these people who feel guilty when they in the present about starting to think about doing for themselves, over abandoning themselves five days a week, seven days a week, whatever the calling is or the expectation is that deep down there is this guilt for having their own feelings, their own needs. And then we often try to prove our worth through what we do externally. And nothing is ever enough when you're coming from that place, because that place is I have to be more, do more, have more, I have to give more, serve more, to prove my value and my worth in the world, to feel valuable, to feel worthy. But that is a dangerous cycle because that will never give you unconditional worth and unconditional feelings of enough. And I'm someone who has suffered from this affliction deeply, which is why I know it so well. And what I realized was speaking my language would resonate, you know, and what I had to learn was that in the present it has to become a practice to give myself permission to be enough just for existing. Because I know deep down I'm a good person. And then I have to give myself permission to feel my feelings every day. I have to give myself permission to have needs every day and have preferences every day. And it doesn't have to be either or. But if I can take care of these things, that means my giving becomes sustainable instead of destructive. Right. So I give a lot, but I don't burn out typically because my self care practices I outlined earlier are strongly in place because I needed them to survive, otherwise I would have crashed and burned. And so I think it's needing to understand these habits practically from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed so you can sustain your giving. In fact, there was a phrase that I heard or thought about when I started writing my book, and that was once I love myself unconditionally. So when I have a really healthy relationship to myself, loving another person actually becomes an act of self love. Because from a spiritual, uh, or transcendent perspective, we're not separate. Right. It's just like being in an organization. You're not separate from the other teams because if one team doesn't function well, the other team's going to be impacted. It's just like the body, right? When cells or organs stop working and it affects the entire system because we're not separate. And so that's why there's such a natural inclination to give and to love and to help. But you trust that you can fall back on your healthy habits and self care patterns to fill yourself back up instead of expecting someone else to fill you up.

Speaker A: Yeah. So there's a Swahili word that sums up, I think beautifully, what you were just describing. And it's ubuntu, um, which means I am because you Are right. They're me, and I'm them. Like, I don't exist without you existing. So I want to talk about elevate wellness. But first, if we have folks who are listening to this and they're like, okay, Blake, I want to stop betraying myself. I want to stop berating myself, but I don't even know where to start. Do you have just a easy, uh, practical. They don't need to pay anything. How. What's a good first step?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So on my website, I have free meditation, which I love to give to all my clients. People come to my events. Free meditation, because one of the most powerful medicines is learning to meditate first thing in the morning when you wake up. Because normally we wake up. And then you're on autopilot because all your. Your programming just starts. A lot of people don't realize that the programming doesn't have to be the way it is, but the secret is meditation first thing in the morning when you start to think. The other thing that I like to ask people, if you ask yourself if I valued myself 100% in this situation, in this relationship, and most of the time, people have an instinctual answer to this. If I valued myself 100% in this situation and in this relationship, what would I say and what would I do? And then I say, go do that. Because it puts everything into perspective. You're in this relationship. That's challenging. If I were to actually value myself 100% in this situation, what would I say and what would I do that puts into perspective everything you're not doing to value yourself and then do that? So that question alone, I think, is really powerful at cutting through personally and professionally what you're confused about and struggling with. And that's a really important way of cutting through all the confusion, excuses, limiting beliefs.

Speaker A: I love that. So I want to let you talk about elevate wellness. We're living in a time, obviously, with immense, uh, AI. One of the things in my space, and I'm sure in your space as well, Blake, that has me concerned about tech is how do we have tech that supports but doesn't replace humanity and relationships and connections? Because I think both of us know how deeply important those things are. So can you tell us a bit about elevate wellness and why did you create it? What was the gap you saw that you were trying to fill with it?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So My career of 20 years has been primarily in real life, with teaching retreats, a, uh, private practice with clients, speaking, teaching, which I love. And as you know, the world has changed a lot in the last 15 years, as smartphones in particular have taken over everything. And so now we have these supercomputers in our hands that have access to all human knowledge and all research, but they're being used primarily to sell people things that they don't need, and then to mine data to sell people more things that they don't need. And I started to ask the question, what would be one of the highest use cases for this supercomputer that has access to all human knowledge and research if from day one, a platform was built to actually help human humans overcome their suffering and be well and feel connected 24, 7 in a way that I feel is not being done. And in contrast to social media right now, where we're all addicted to going online and connecting, because the drive to connect and to belong is the strongest drive in a human being and has been proven to be the single most impactful indicator of wellness and longevity over time is the health of our relationships more than diet, more than exercise. And so I also have had to use social media as an author and thought leader. And I had no choice because there came a point where publishers wouldn't even publish a book if you didn't have X number of people following you online. And then that became the way the world worked. And so I've been deeply intimate with these dynamics for 15 years since this all kind of took over. And so I started to ask the question of, you know, I really want to help more people. I feel, uh, an obligation because I feel so lucky to have understood what I understand. And so I just wanted to share it with more people. And I started to ask myself, what would a platform look like if it was designed optimally from day one? The code, everything with the intention of really helping human beings be free from suffering, feel connected, and harness this amazing technology for good instead of for profit or for evil. I have two partners, and, uh, one of my partners built and sold a company to Microsoft in 2021. And we met through my work, and he went on to be a director in artificial intelligence at Microsoft for four years. And so life brought me all the right people, technically to support the vision. The idea is that we are able to go into any organization. It can be a Fortune 500 company. It could be a university system, a, uh, high school system, a healthcare system. And we create communities for the people that make up that organization where those people can go in and feel safe. They can have access to a healthcare professional that's an expert on the issue that they're struggling with. And then we have trained an artificial intelligence model on the best holistic research in the world. So no matter what you're going through, you're always educated and empowered. Here's the top 10 research based things you can do from a holistic perspective. So you're always educated and empowered on what you can do to move forward. And I'm super excited about it because the world's changed. And when you think about the younger generation, we grew up, our brain developed without smartphones and technology. But the younger generations, they don't know who they are when they're not on the phone. Often they don't know how to have a conversation. They go there for everything. So I'm basically just taking this work and, you know, meeting the time, if you will, with where the needs at. Because there was an epidemic, especially with young people and depression and isolation and loneliness and it. In my mind, we need things that are tailored for this problem, that solve for this problem and meet us where we are with it, which is an addiction to our cell phones and to our technologies. And instead of making it wrong and shying away from it, I'm going into the heart of the problem and trying to solve for every demographic and organization that I can.

Speaker A: Um, Blake, congratulations. I mean, what a big undertaking. First and such a phenomenal mission. In September, I deleted all social media off of my phone. And what the experiment has taught me is like, I'm fine. I have enough curiosity that I can occupy my time with many other things is. But what I've realized is how it's disconnected me, even at this age, from so many friends and family that I have no idea what's going on with them. Um, because we don't communicate in any other way. And now that I've been away from it, I've realized how deep that void of connection is outside of this box. So happy you're doing elevate wellness, by the way.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: What a, uh, what a great mission. And please let us know how we can help and support because we would love to. And I'm sure there's many people listening who would love to as well. As we close every episode, Blake, we always do a few quick fire questions just to share whatever comes to mind. Do you mind?

Speaker B: Not at all.

Speaker A: What brings you joy?

Speaker B: Really good coffee. The sun.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And great, authentic conversations.

Speaker A: Love that. What is a simple daily practice you personally rely on when your own suffering flares up?

Speaker B: Moving slow.

Speaker A: Um, pole. Pole. More Swahili. Blake's bringing out today what's one myth about self love. You wish we could all retire that

Speaker B: it's not toxic selfishness.

Speaker A: Uh, what is a book, teacher or tradition other than your own that you often recommend to people beginning their journey?

Speaker B: A book that was super powerful for me was the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

Speaker A: Say it for the people in the back. Such a good one. Complete the sentence Unconditional self love is working when I'm my own best friend for our listeners. If today's conversation helped you share it with a leader or a helper, a friend, a family member who gives a lot and rarely pauses to care for themselves. This podcast exists so nobody has to choose between well being and results. Blake, I am so appreciative of your time. Thank you for your honesty and for insisting that our pain is a call back to ourselves, that it's not a life sentence. And also for building tools like Elevate Wellness that try to scale that care and use tech for good. To learn more about Blake's work, his book you Were Not Born to Suffer or Elevate Wellness, check out all the links in the show notes. We'll be sure to link them there and we'll have links to Blake's website and pages. Blake, anything you'd like to say to our listeners before we go?

Speaker B: I guess that I learned the hard way that if I don't say that my health matters, that my feelings, my needs, my preferences matter, that they'll never matter to anybody else. So it has to start with us saying that this matters. I matter. And then you'll reshape the world around you to honor and respect your inner world that you struggle with sometimes.

Speaker A: Blake, you matter to us. Thank you so much for being a part of our community for our listeners. Until next time, take what you need, try something new and tell somebody else. Thanks everybody. Mindful Management Creating a Trauma Informed Work Environment is brought to you by Shuffalo Consulting. To learn more about Shuffalo Consulting and our Trauma informed change management and professional development Solutions, please visit shuffaloconsulting.com that's Cheffalo C-H E F A L O consulting.com make sure you don't miss these transformative conversations by subscribing to Mindful Management wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening and remember, change happens one step at a time.