Today I’m happy to introduce Lori Schwanbeck, a lovely human being who’s been working as a mindfulness consultant with dozens of companies and organizations like Google, the U.N., and even the ministry of Bhutan.

In fact, she was still recovering from her jet lag from coming back from Bhutan when we had this conversation.

Lori shares with us how practicing mindfulness at work can help us to enhance our decision making, think more creatively, and build stronger teams.

Lori also shares why it’s so important to be vulnerable, human, and be yourself at work in order to create connections with others, how that actually leads to incredibly powerful teams, and why mindfulness is such a powerful tool to enable all of that.

What I loved so much about this conversation was how Lori was so willing to get personal, and how she invited me to do the same. I opened up a lot during this interview and shared a few things myself about what it is about working at Hotjar that has enabled me to do the best, most effective work of my life.

She also walked me through two incredibly quick but effective mindfulness exercises that take less than a minute each but lead to some pretty meaningful insights, so I hope you follow along and do them as well when you come to them.

I’m so glad I had the chance to talk with Lori, and I hope you feel just as at home with her as I did.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:01:30] How Lori got into mindfulness, and how that led to becoming a mindfulness consultant
• [00:02:49] The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute
• [00:04:03] Where Lori studied transpersonal psychology
• [00:04:30] What was it that made Lori decide that mindfulness had to be a part of her life and work
• [00:06:00] Lori’s background with Vipassana meditation
• [00:08:25] How Lori can bring mindfulness and meditation into a workplace setting
• [00:11:33] Research on the efficacy of building emotional intelligence
• [00:13:28] The importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace
• [00:17:13] What Lori’s workplace training look like
• [00:18:53] How people could practice Lori’s teachings at home
• [00:24:32] How to introduce skillful behavior
• [00:26:10] What skillful behavior training looks like
• [00:28:03] The importance of being able to be vulnerable in the workplace
• [00:32:08] The types of companies and organizations who are interested in Lori’s training
• [00:33:34] How Lori overcomes skepticism of her programs
• [00:37:07] What happens when leaders of organizations Lori works with are skeptical or don’t buy into her methods
• [00:39:25] What Lori would say to people who are on the fence about adopting a people-first approach
• [00:41:06] Resources that Lori recommends
• [00:43:43] The three-breath practice
• [00:46:19] The neuroscience of breathing exercises