Show Notes – Dave Conley

Radical self-care – learning to love himself as much as his loved Carole.

Are you dead? No.  You're alive – let's keep it that way.  Drink water, eat and move.  All very primal. 

This started cracking open the space to some powerful questions.  What do you want?  I want to live.  What kind of life do you want to live?  I want a healthy life, I want vocation and achievement that makes sense of my life, I want community, I want relationships.

What do you want?

What will having that do for you?

What is it going to be and how to you want it to be?

A day doesn't go by when I don't ask – what is the most important thing? What is it that I want to be doing?  And how are they aligned?  What are the most important non-negotiable things?  It is really easy to just distract ourselves, self sooth ourselves and pretend we feel good. 

Self-care is non-negotiable for me because that is how I bring the most the best to my vocation, that is how I bring myself to my relationships, and how I bring myself to my community and what my legacy will be.  There is a great big life that I want to live.  I'm not going to be on my death bed saying "thank god I spent so much time on Netflix."

He couldn't have learned the tools for self-care without friends, community and insatiable curiosity. 

The vast majority of people are adventurers in some way – they're adventurers in their own life.  We are meant to be curious about things.

His friend introduced him to a lovely older woman who was quite small but she filled the room with the energy she put off.  They had a lovely conversation and she invited him to come up a meeting that she takes every week.  There were 100s of people at this thing.  I turned to my friend and said "who did you introduce me to?"  Her name was Tara Brach.

Then he went to Wisdom 2.0 in San Francisco. 

He attended the SIYLI conference which stands for Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute.  Headed by Chade-Meng Tan who introduced mindfulness to Google.  He trained in that method for 5 or 6 months.

Getting into the science of things.

Learning something new always starts with people.

"My priority starts with me".  It has to otherwise everything else spiral out of control.  Not in big ways but in small ways and they add up over time.  It is a tide that rises its not a tsunami that hits you. 

It starts by acknowledging that you have choice.  And what you choose to do forms your vision.

The biggest obstacle is time.

The second biggest obstacle is habit.  Making something thoughtless so it happens automatically.  When you aren't resilient you will go to the easiest parts that will help you get through.  When you are resilient you do all your tools with style and get back to where you need to be going. 

Sleep is a huge part of the work that he does.  It is a foundational work.