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On episode thirty of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Simon Timm. Simon is a mindfulness and meditation teacher and the author of the book An Introduction to the Self Salutation: How to Resolve Negative Emotions Through Mindfulness Meditation.
Simon spent most of his college years battling depression. Unwilling to spend the rest of his life on Prozac, he searched for another way of living with himself. What he found was meditation. After college, Simon moved into a Hindu ashram and spent sixteen years as monk.
When Simon left the monastic life in 2011, he recognized the need for a meditation practice to help resolve the negative feelings within him—rather than just help lift himself above them. This prompted Simon to explore different modalities of personal transformation and ultimately to develop the Self Salutation.
Simon has a master’s in religion from Yale. He currently lives with his spouse, Allyson, in the Washington, DC metro area.
Simon joined me for an authentic and deep conversation about meditation and the experience of nirvana.
When asking Simon what compelled him to stay throughout his early days at the ashram he says, “Sitting in meditation for a couple of hours at a time was intense. It would feel like sometimes I was going crazy. But at other times it worked. And I lifted myself up and I experienced nirvana. It was like a state of freedom from my mind and from my psyche. I experienced a place of joy and happiness, and I would come back down into myself, but that taste of the potential was enough to keep me going.”
When asked to share about his experience with meditation Simon shares, “The experiences I had in meditation are not so rare for people to have. It's not so difficult and it doesn't have to be a lot. I think a lot of people experience meditation and suddenly, it’s quiet and the mind becomes quiet. It might be just for a moment. But in that moment, you experience what that freedom can be like.”
To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-nine of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Alex Krongard. Alex served in the U.S. Navy for over 30 years, primarily in joint special operations commands and the Navy SEAL Teams. He was a member of SEAL Teams 1, 2, and 7, as well as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Alex was the first commanding officer of SEAL Team 7, which he commanded in Iraq from the late fall of 2003 to the spring of 2004. Later he commanded Naval Special Warfare Group 1 with responsibility for the training and readiness of the four West coast SEAL Teams and associated logistics and support units.
Alex’s final military jobs were as a counterterrorism director on the National Security Council staff in Washington, D.C., deputy commander of Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa in Djibouti—and Deputy Operations Officer for the U.S. Africa Command. Alex retired in September 2016, as a Rear Admiral, Lower Half.
Following retirement, Alex worked as an investment banker with DC Advisory in their San Francisco office, predominately in the cybersecurity and government security services sectors before serving as CEO to The COMMIT Foundation for two years. COMMIT assists military service members with their transitions to post-service life.
Alex grew up outside Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in English Literature and from the National War College with a Masters in National Security Strategy.
Alex joined me for an honest, humble, and real conversation about his time in the military. When asked about enacting change through culture, Alex shares, “The scary ones I've run into are cultures that won't change…No matter what you do, you cannot change the culture. And sometimes you're not in the right place. Or you're not in the right job to do it. Sometimes it's a type of work where the traditions are so set in stone that you cannot do anything about it. I think you must know when to say, I can't do this. For elite performers I think that's almost impossible. A lot of elite performers have not just struggled but failed and ruined their reputations because they weren't willing to say, look, I just can't do it.”
When asked how you cultivate trust within teams Alex talks about shared knowledge. “Buster Howe, a two-star Royal Marine from the UK, gave us this great talk on trust. And he said trust is adding reliability. Meaning, I can be relied on to get something done. Ability: I'm able to do it. And intimacy. Intimacy being—we can have a conversation about this and not pull any punches and divide it by the perception of self-interest. So, if someone can get nothing from something and they're going to do it for you anyway and they're reliable, capable, and they're intimate with you, that's high trust.”
 
To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-eight of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Yuri Hauswald. Yuri is an icon of the gravel cycling world. As a professional endurance cyclist for Giant Bicycles and the Elite Athlete and Community Development Manager for GU Energy Labs, Yuri is also an innovator, storyteller, and mentor to many. He is probably best known for winning the world’s premier gravel bike racing event, Unbound, formerly Dirty Kanza, in 2015 at age 44. No stranger to adversity, Yuri talks about his mindset and motivation for facing challenges head on.
When asked what has sustained his healthy and extended athletic career Yuri tells us, “I’ve always enjoyed pushing my physical limits. If I had to put my finger on something—and I don't understand the chemistry of it—it’s the endorphins. The chemicals that are triggered in our bodies and in our brains when we go into those states…when you're pushing yourself physically…I've always found some sort of pleasure and joy from doing that.”

When asked how he finds the discipline to keep going Yuri says, “I trust my training around certain power zones. My coach and I figured that my diesel engine could run at a high efficiency for long periods of time. Not super-fast. I wasn’t fast but I had the ability to hold good power numbers for long periods of time. So, sticking to that and having the discipline to know that.”

For the rest of us, he says a simple practice to get through hard times is to “take a deep breath. Take that pause. Have the tantrum. Figure out the next steps. Keep moving forward and you're going to be super proud of yourself when you get through those conditions.”

About finding joy in challenging times Yuri says, “Sometimes things just suck. And you have to deal with that suck. You have to figure out a way through. Life is not always joyous, but I do think that when you get through that mud pit of suck—or whatever you want to call it—that the joy you do find on the other side is possibly more powerful and more meaningful because you did go through the suck. The most important thing in all of that is just continuing to move forward, whether it's baby steps or long strides. If you can find little ways to continue moving forward through that suck, you're eventually going to get through it.”

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-seven of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Dr. Lou Cozolino. Dr. Cozolino practices psychotherapy and consulting psychology in Beverly Hills, California. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School. Lou has been a professor at Pepperdine since 1986 and lectures around the world on psychotherapy, neuroscience, trauma, and attachment. With more than 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist and coach, Dr. Cozolino connects, attunes, and interacts with adults, adolescents, and families as they face a wide variety of life’s challenges. Working primarily from a psychodynamic model of treatment, Lou also employs strategies and techniques from other forms of therapy, including CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), family systems, and humanistic/existential therapeutic interventions. In our recent interview Dr. Cozolino unpacks his theory of and approach to executive functioning. He says, “I was doing psychotherapy, and I thought, well, you can't really talk about executive functioning as a cognitive process alone because the cognitive and emotional networks are all interwoven in the brain.” Dr. Cozolino also tells us that vulnerability is the best place to start when developing executive function. He says we all need “to equate vulnerability with strength. To move forward, you can't hold on too rigidly to the ideas and beliefs that got you to where you are. So, those things got you here, but they're not going to get you to the next step. But people tend to continue to repeat the things that have gotten them to success because it's hard to imagine that they could change and get even more successful.” He also describes the haunting feeling that can lurk inside even the most successful people. He says, “If you're a CEO, you're already successful, but you're not as successful as perhaps you feel you could be. You have this instinct that you have a kind of dark passenger: Like there's something inside of you that's keeping you from moving forward. And I've had some CEOs tell me that they've even personified it like it's a dark man that visits them at night...and that's just the projection of something inside. So, one of the greatest joys in life is finding someone who's successful but is haunted. And figuring out what else is going on inside of them so that they can free themselves from that. So, they can be done with that and move forward and not just work for a living, but really love working.” Dr. Cozolino explains what happens to executive functioning when we are in a state of fear. “I try to teach everyone that if you are afraid—or if you're highly aroused or activated—that the first executive system inhibits the other two executive systems. When you're scared, there's no real learning.” To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-six of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Ann Betz, CPCC, PCC, MNTC, the co-founder of BEabove Leadership and an international speaker and trainer at the intersection of neuroscience, coaching, and human transformation. A certified professional coach with more than twenty years in the industry, a published author and poet, and a researcher, Ann integrates her passion for the brain and consciousness with her interest in spirituality. Clients and students alike laud her for making the complexities of the brain come to life with depth, humor, and clarity. In our recent interview Ann describes how to identify a work environment that lacks psychological safety. She says, “What is the pattern? The pattern will tell you a lot, and then your body will tell you a lot. But you’ve got to map it to the pattern.” Ann talks about the negative impact of a psychologically unsafe work environment on performance. She says, “We're not designed to think carefully when we're in a fight-or-flight and/or freeze situation. We're designed to move. We’re designed to do what is necessary to survive. So, by design, our brains get blocked a bit so that we can do what's critically necessary for survival and not higher-level thinking. You lose the ability to think abstractly, and so you get less creativity. You get less empathic. You get less of the ability to make good decisions. That's the brain impact. In the body, you're draining your adrenal glands. Cortisol is shutting down your immune function. There are all sorts of things like that that basically say you're making yourself sick. And so, in organizations that have a high level of stress and a toxic culture what you will find is 1) more absenteeism, 2) more presenteeism—because when people can't think they don't work as effectively—and 3) higher healthcare costs.” Ann describes how to identify narcissistic behaviors by using the acronym CRAVED. She says that one way to assess if someone has those characteristics is by asking yourself the following questions: “Are they typically and habitually (C)onflictual. Are they (R)igid? Are they (A)ntagonistic? Do they pick fights? Are they (V)indictive? Do they act like a victim? Are they (E)ntitled? Are they (D)ysregulated? So, can they not regulate their own emotions?”Ann closes by giving us one way to positively impact a work culture. She says, “Really celebrate the integrated leader. Celebrate the leader that understands both how to get results, but also how to care for their people and really celebrate both and really keep focusing on that.” To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-five of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Caroline Burckle, an Olympic athlete, performance coach, and entrepreneur. After her Olympic career, Caroline went on to chase the next high. Even though she had moved on from sports to become an entrepreneur, the desire for validation and feeling she was “not enough” moved with her into her new profession. It was then that Caroline began to explore the interconnection between her bouts of depression, her physical injuries, and her mental health. She figured there must be a better way “to do this.” By this, she meant a deeper understanding of the somatic connection between mind and body. Caroline pursued her interest in the mind-body connection with zeal and went on to earn a Masters in Sport Psychology She also started a company with fellow Olympic medalist, Rebecca Soni, to help youth athletes improve their mental wellness and preparedness. Together, they hired a team of Olympians to mentor and support up-and-coming youth to achieve greater mental-emotional well-being as athletes. Today, Caroline wants everyone to know they can rewrite their script by firing on all cylinders—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Her professional work blends creativity, empathy, and movement. Caroline believes feelings are information, not a prescription. When we learn how to understand what our feelings are telling us in both our body and mind, we can work with them, not against them. Ultimately, Caroline believes that the goal isn’t just to become great, but to know who you are when you become great. In our recent interview, Caroline talks about the challenges of competing with a dysregulated nervous system. She says, “My worst races...my worst performances were when I was either in fight or flight, or in shut down. Both of those ends of the spectrum can be detrimental to any athlete.” She also describes her post-athletic career healing process. “No one is going to save you. This is up to you. And you have to figure this out and go through this process. And it was not pretty. There were months and months of feeling like I was getting worse. And then you realize you get worse before you get better.” Caroline also reminds us of the importance of identifying behavioral patterns. “If you don’t address it at some point, it will catch up to you because the same patterns you can use to compete and perform well do not necessarily serve you in everyday life.” To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com