Purpose Highway®

HIGHLIGHTS

06:25 Mistaking success markers for happiness is a mental shortcut

10:15 Outcome-based culture: Momentum can make us prisoners of our own goals

20:24 Happiness has many synonyms and people always do what makes them happy

26:34 Realizing the irrelevance of everything makes you free to pursue your happiness

28:59 Domestic violence strips away agency and Laura's glimmer strength saved her

37:47 Self-belief lets the fear die and lets you go beyond what is safe and familiar

46:57 Honesty, transparency, and kindness to oneself is strength

52:46 People learning to love themselves has the power to change generations of self-sabotaging thinking

56:48 Connect with Laura and get her book

QUOTES

07:31 "We love mental shortcuts. The subject of happiness doesn't really have mental shortcuts, which is why we go for the only available probable shortcut, which is wrong, of the symbols of what we think happiness is which is the success markers."

18:37 "Do you want that because you don't love yourself and you think that's the only way that you'll be worthy of self-love? What would happen if you loved yourself? Would you still want those things? Probably not. It's an invitation to know yourself, master yourself, and then powerfully choose what you truly want."

24:45 "When we constantly succumb to fear and safety-based obsessions and limits and worrying about avoidance of negative outcomes, you know what we're doing? We're actively choosing not to pursue joyful outcomes."

36:11 "In the moment that we realized that we are indeed sovereign, then we start to choose differently and we can show up with greater love for ourselves and for those around us, because what we see in the world actually changes."

38:26 "Self-trust and self-belief is everything. When we have unshakable self-belief... I can find myself in a crappy relationship and I know that I have the power to leave because I can handle whatever happens. I know that I can start a business because I know that if things go sideways and I lose my shirt, I'll recover and I'll be fine."

43:03 "When we can appreciate the temporary nature of things, I think it really puts us in a really powerful position to have more of that agency because we realized that the scary stuff, it's not permanent."

To find out more about Laura and get her book, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lldibenedetto/
• Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Six-Habits-Practical-Bringing-Dreams/dp/1734704330
• Website - https://www.thesixhabits.com/

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

04:07 Applied/functional neurology is a training system for the nervous system

08:02 Societal change causes our brains to move into protective outputs to keep us safe

13:30 Elisabeth used the lessons of applied neurology to cope with her own challenges and dysregulation

22:22 Protecting the vagus nerve and regulation as disease prevention 

27:32 Trauma and the myriad causes of dysregulation in society today 

32:57 Our own experiences allow us to send a unique message to the world

36:21 Moving down from brain to the body and listening for your purpose

39:15 Path to healing: Be curious and stimulate your vagus nerve

43:25 Change is possible by healing the patterns of the past

44:24 Connect with Elisabeth

QUOTES

08:31 "As things change, that is inherently threatening to our brain and to our nervous system. Not our prefrontal cortex, but our old brain, our survival brain, because our brain functions on pattern recognition and it uses that pattern recognition to generate predictions and to generate an output that again is intended to keep us alive."

10:02 "If you want to avoid moving into those protective outputs, you have to learn tools to regulate your nervous system in the times of change and to move that stress through your body so that you can handle it."

13:42 "Does that mean that all the time you're going to be resilient? All the time you're going to bounce back right away? No, but you will be able to handle more and you'll be able to come back onto the beam quicker if you take the time to regulate yourself, to learn tools for self regulation and to took practice daily."

21:33 "A dysregulated nervous system that goes on for too long creates chronic stress, cortisol pumping through the body all of the time. All of that cortisol erodes the vessels,

it damages the nerves, it creates inflammation, it creates a toxic environment in your body. And that is where 75 to 95% of disease comes from, from chronic stress."

29:26 "Trauma is not the event itself. It's what happens inside of our body. Trauma is how you feel inside and what happens again when you're re-triggered by something. So again it's that sense of your heart racing, your immune response kicking up, inflammation, tension in your muscles, emotional reactivity."

41:31 "I teach people to follow your dysregulation and that will lead you to your path of healing. So where you are stuck in those behaviors or those outputs that you can't get out of, that's your signal to come into that place and start to learn to heal your nervous system there."

To find out more about Elisabeth, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabeth-kristof-0859612/
• Website - https://brainbased-wellness.com/

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

03:22 Growing up agnostic and with an allergy to nuts

06:57 Moving to LA alone and working in real estate

10:59 2011: A peanut butter cake brings Chris to the brink of death

25:58 A realization that death was imminent and letting go of materialism

34:10 Meeting his grandfathers spiritually and being not to die yet 

38:17 Putting to words the experience of a reality other than this physical realm

44:37 Response to skeptics: Science may or may not prove his experience true

48:48 NDE produced a painful consciousness shift and reintegration was difficult

56:50 Focusing on healing and integration and teaching others on NDE

1:13:34 The need to reconnect with community for a fulfilling life

1:16:25 Connect with Chris

QUOTES

28:54 "My throat was not opening up. I was not responsive. They could not get oxygen into me. So I'm suffocating slowly. And I didn't feel anything. I felt this very calm peace, and I had this realization... this understanding that I was dying at this point."

34:47 "I'm in this conscious state of leaving my physical body, leaving this reality, leaving this life. And I had both my grandfathers present themselves to me. And as clear as it could be, my one grandfather goes, you can't die. You can't die yet. It's not your time. You have work to do."

39:07 "It seemed normal. It seemed appropriate. It was just understood. There was no discrepancy. I could say the words coming to me now is where there was nothing that wasn't what it should be.

41:13 "And that's what we went from. We went from this euphoric bliss and this experience with deceased loved ones to I just need to breathe right now. I need to come back, I'm back to we need to live right now."

52:02 "I'm here sitting here in Beverly Hills selling mansions, and now these things don't matter to me. My value system is different. What I want is different. My relation to others is different. Everything. My diet's changed. My sensitivity is sunlight, music, noises, food has changed overnight."

1:06:36 "It's okay if church on Sunday or Shabbat on Friday is not fulfilling. That's all wonderful. Everyone finds peace and sustenance in wherever that is. And if you don't have it in what you're doing, keep looking, and it will change."

To find out more about Chris, please see the link below.

• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/chris.kito.33

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

04:39 Joe's childhood in Tacoma and enlistment in the Airforce

08:20 Creating opportunities in the military and growing into leadership roles

12:03 Leadership is service, but who are you serving?

18:04 Service liberates oneself from the existential vacuum

21:18 Sacrifice and service: Finding meaning and developing purpose

28:17 Ethical dilemmas vs ethical lapses 

33:29 Secular and non-secular ethics must factor in human nature to be effective

37:04 Find your leadership values and develop your self-awareness 

40:07 Curiosity as a character trait creates emphatic leaders 

41:13 Connect with Joe

QUOTES

12:25 "My leadership philosophy is service, and then followed by recognition, and then after recognizing the people that deserve the recognition, then it's improvement. So it's growing people, but that foundation is service."

19:29 "I no longer have to serve myself to help myself get promoted or anything, so I think it was a great, liberating feeling. But I think some people never get that feeling because it continues to want to stroke their ego."

28:24 "Ethical dilemmas are when you have two values that are contradicting... and now you're having a problem with picking what the right answer is, where ethical lapses you know that that's the wrong for... and you did it."

33:08 "I think that treating people with courtesy, respect, withholding judgment, these are things that are universal. It's not just in the Christian beliefs system. It's very much across."

39:13 "If you're not self-aware, you are not going to make an effective leader. That is the first step. Developing that emotional intelligence is a huge part and a foundational part of emotional intelligence is self-awareness."

To find out more about Joseph, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jybogdan
• LinkedIn (Llama Leadership) - https://www.linkedin.com/company/llama-leadership
• Website - https://www.llamaleadership.com/
• Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-llama-lounge/id1507339010

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

04:42 Secular institutions can reinforce values but not provide their structures 

10:01 Integrating your authentic self into your professional role

15:07 Inattention blindness: Distraction with business blinds to values

20:48 Bringing self-awareness to work and becoming a person of conscience

27:23 Leaders can transition from being to corrupt and not realize the transition

33:19 Keep your humanity: Refuse complicity and believe in the power of 2

40:24 Living according to values and leading a meaningful life

42:13 The Commitment Project: An attempt to impart values to students

46:56 There is choice in a corrupt system and it starts with the right thoughts

51:37 Corruption happens when you allow rationalization to become your thought

58:27 Becoming a pacifist and committing to values to live by 

1:02:03 Buddhism meditation and awareness of the impermanence of life

1:05:09 Anchoring on your own conscience code on connection

1:07:04 Connect with Richard

QUOTES

13:56 "There's a lack of integration between the personal and the professional realm over certain basic values that ought to be informing both sides of the life and these are values like compassion for suffering, honesty, and transparency."

21:26 "One of the most important things people can do to bring this sense of self-awareness to their day-to-day life at work is to think of themselves as a person of conscience, someone who has values and they implement those values at home by duty and habit."

34:39 "Never take this journey alone. The damage comes when you allow yourself to be isolated, when you allow yourself to be minimized and marginalized and you know what's going on is toxic. You know it's wrong but you don't speak because you think you're the only one."

40:24 "I think a lot of why people respond when you speak up for values is it's healing for them within themselves. And people really crave that sense of integration which is a sense of meaning and purpose."

53:42 "Aristotle teaches us that virtue, just like exercise, is a habit. And as soon as you allow yourself to behave in a way that violates your own conscience, you form the habit of being unvirtuous. So the power of two helps."

56:03 "It's much easier to keep your principles a hundred percent of the time than it is to keep them 98% of the time."

57:14 "What is the spiritual side of your life? It's the side that connects you to all the things greater than yourself."

To find out more about Richard, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-shell-4baa15203
• Wharton Profile - https://lgst.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/shellric/
• Website - http://www.grichardshell.com/

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

04:12 Starting with idealism and instead choosing corporate success 

11:45 Working for big law and paying the price for success 

19:16 The highest performers almost always require external validation

21:50 Repeated bouts of shingles convince Hana to make a change

25:26 When the world crumbles, you have the opportunity to create a brand new world

29:13 Reconnecting with her social work and applying her skills for others' benefit

31:35 Finding spirituality: Be willing to cry the tears and hold up the mirror 

37:00 You CAN have a career doing what you love

39:35 Resilience without spirituality is possible by reconnecting 

41:24 Connection to spirit: Are you happy?

44:12 Connect with Hana

QUOTES

14:30 "I think it's difficult before you enter big law to understand exactly what the cost is going to be. It's not just your time. It is your mental space. It is your emotional bandwidth. It is time with your family. It is a good night's sleep. It's being on call 24/7."

20:55 If you don't set boundaries around how you achieve your goals, then achieving them at any cost is not going to make you feel fulfilled."

25:08 "If I chose not to practice law or move into a different profession altogether, am I still me? And that journey was actually the most beautiful unfolding of a real sense of truth about who I was beyond what I did."

25:37 "When you were in that moment of everything around you sort of crumbling, do you actually start to realize there's a blank canvas in front of you? There's this opportunity to pick up the paintbrush again and not to recreate the world that crumbled around you."

 32:39 "You have to be willing to put down any resistance to the lessons that life is bringing to you. If you are confronted with a challenge, you have to be able to welcome and embrace that and ask yourself, what is it here to teach me?"

35:16 "We have a choice on how we evolve in life, on who we become, and that choice exists every single moment. We are never condemned to be a certain way based on what we've experienced in the past, but it takes responsibility and honesty to be able to move forward deliberately, not just through patterns of behavior that we cycle through again and again."

39:40 "Disconnection from spirit is not a permanent state. Resilience requires you to understand what it feels like to be disconnected from spirit."

To find out more about Hana, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanadhanji/
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hana.dhanji
• Website - https://hanadhanji.com/

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

04:29 Morals and ethics and making businesses Irresistible

08:40 Intersecting moral, ethics, and character in business

12:18 A 10-day trial: Yermi loses, his mom, family, and business

17:44 Surviving the tear: Volunteering in prisons and finding meaning

25:13 Every human being matters and incredible character transformations

31:14 Lifers in prison live more meaningful lives than most people

37:54 Morality in business makes for good business

46:31 The practice of empathy is the practice of non-judgment

53:58 Connect with Yermi

QUOTES

07:13 "Irresistible is three things. Number one, you have to be happy. Number two, you have to have a good attitude. And number three, you have to have a good character because everybody wants to be around the person who's happy.”

31:52 "These people who have nothing to live for, all of a sudden have everything to live for, and they're living meaningful and purposeful lives... what about... the business professionals... they're not even living half the life that these guys are living."

35:04 Definitely, you want to see change in the world? Do more business. You want a world of a good place, do more business, but it has to have meaning and purpose. Two people have to feel that there's a good connection and they'll do business together."

49:45 "If we start judging, it's probably something in ourselves that we want control, something in our self that we feel less than, or I don't know. All of that is tied into character and attitude." 

50:38 "Right now, we should be focusing on who are we to judge anybody else? And the only way to avoid that is to work on our happiness, or work on our attitude, and work on our character. And a big, big portion of that has to do with empathy."

To find out more about Yermi, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yermikurkus/
• Website - http://yermikurkus.com/
• Email - [email protected]

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

03:55 Ram Dass becomes a recurring influence

07:03 Moving to Canada and discovering Sufism during a Rumi poetry night

14:57 A radical change in beliefs realigns Hamed's career to match his values

23:33 The law of attraction brings like-minded friends to Hamed's business

27:03 Spirituality versus mysticism: Sufism 

31:35  God does not look at your shape or form, He looks at your heart

33:31 Sufism is not a label, the point is love

36:59 Connect with Hamed

QUOTES

15:56 "No religion teaches anything except that God is the most compassionate and the most loving and one of the biggest lies we have ever heard from organized religion is that God's love is conditional."

20:04 "When a Sufi walks into a place, a room, where things are broken, what do you think will he do? Will he walk back out and find a room where everything is all nice and fixed, or fix the broken things? That was my answer."

24:01 "As our vibration changes and as we put our work and we build that presence within ourselves and our vibration changes, we notice that slowly, slowly things, the people around us, change."

27:56 "Spirituality is when we work on ourselves and when we heal ourselves and when we grow as human beings. That's a spiritual path. A mystical path is there is no me. There is only God. So what is it that I'm fixing? I'm already healed."

32:07 "The Creator says, in Islam, in Quran, I do not look at your shape, at your form, at your color. I look at what you're carrying in the deepest part of your heart. Are you carrying love? Or are you carrying fear and anger and judgment?"

To find out more about Hamed Murad, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamedmurad/
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/hamedmurad

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

05:30 Growing up under the Taliban was a life of oppression

14:36 Experiencing a drastic change in religion and the prevalence of fear 

17:50 Religion is used as an excuse to rule with impunity

21:04 9/11 brings war to Kabul and Hamed evacuates to Pakistan

27:02 Escaping from tyranny and the culture of violence

29:50 Education in the UK and meeting new religions

34:46 Curiosity sets in: What else is out there?

QUOTES

14:53 "Religion is the one of the easiest weapon to trigger people's emotions. It has always been, historically. If we go back to history and look at every religion, religions, the labels, have been used to motivate people."

16:18 "These were all, apparently, religious requirements. But they're not. This was, once again, a way to instill fear in people through religion. 

17:25 "When we use religion with so much fear, we build a grudge against religion. We may be practicing it outwardly for society, for Taliban, for whatever, to fit in, for label, for familiarity, but inside was an entirely different story."

27:15 "Even the regime changed, the mentality was the same. They say you can build infrastructure, you can build streets, buildings, but you cannot change people's mentality overnight. That takes generations."

33:55 "One thing I could not get over or deny within myself, to myself, really no one else out there, to myself, is that there is a bigger intelligence. I know. I felt it as a kid. That I could never deny."

To find out more about Hamed Murad, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamedmurad/

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

To find out more about Casey Berman, please see the links below.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseybermansf/
• Website (Leave Law Behind) - https://leavelawbehind.com/about/meet-casey/
• Website (Casey Berman) - http://caseyberman.com/

To hear more of Scott Mason and the Purpose Highway™ podcast, join our community at https://purposehighway.com/ and subscribe to get notified when new episodes go live.

HIGHLIGHTS

03:23 Becoming a lawyer and realizing the unhappiness

09:15 "I feel therefore I am" and opening up minds to new entrepreneurial horizons

13:10 Getting in the zone and exploring feelings instead of just logic

17:32 Working in the service road rather than the purpose highway

23:06 Destiny: Does it define your life or can you choose your own?

28:00 Every human being matters

32:00 Cloning Gandhi, MLK, Mother Teresa: Finding a beacon who loves 

35:07 Connect with Casey and Leave Law Behind

QUOTES

08:39 "You can't unring a bell. Once I saw that there were just other things out there, or once I saw that there was things that I didn't really like, that weren't that beneficial, not to be a diva but I just had to do something about it."

16:18 "I encourage really everyone to not just rely on the intellect, not just rely on 'I think therefore I am' because if you're doing that you are missing out on a whole portion of yourself which is feeling." 

25:08  "What it turned was not that I need to have success, I need to see it in my material world before I have confidence. But what I flipped was I have the confidence now and the success will show."

31:37 "We're different geysers, if you will, but we all come from the same water running underground. And when you realize that you realize that, at the end of the day, you're talking to yourself."

33:38 "Fear is not just being afraid but it's anxiety, depression, unhealthy competition, looking at things for stature, feeling lack, and all that. And love is collaboration. It's not just romantic love. It's collaboration, it's connectedness, it's being abundant, it's being confident."